It had started with a call from a worried boyfriend.
"I've been dating Claudia for two semesters. We're in different departments at the city college.
"Claudia's mother died! She was taking time from her studies, emptying the apartment, hers and her mom's, deciding whether to stay or sell, maybe fund graduate school!"
"Has she made a decision?" Billie was trying to hurry him along. Folks so loved their backstory.
"No! I'd been helping on a Saturday, that was three weeks ago. No classes on Saturday, so I was sorting out the heavy stuff, disassembling the bedframe and stacking the parts. She'd gone through her mom's dresser, crying from time to time. All good! She needed to connect, she'd been feeling pretty lonely, not expressing her grief.
"We took a break, went out and emptied the mailbox, Mom used to do that every day and she'd overlooked it. She was sorting the stuff on the kitchen table, what to throw, what to keep, what needed a response."
That response would have been, Sorry! Mom's dead! Hard to do, keep facing that sad fact over and over.
"So, she'd ripped one big manila envelope open, like she was expecting it? Studied the sheet of paper, some lab test. Plus a note, it came along with it. Read it, and sat down hard. Read it again, top to bottom.
"I was all, like, Tell me? Are you sick too? What? But she didn't respond, just hustled me out, I gotta think! I can still hear the door clicking shut behind me, so final!"
And that was it. She was gone. Not there when he went back; nobody in the department had heard from her. Three weeks and no call, no letter, no answer to his calls or to the door!
Carson had no money, a dirt-poor student, on a small grant plus a stipend. Unwilling to shell out for a full investigation, that would sink his chances at a degree! End his career before it started.
He'd heard that maybe BRS could do something.
Claudia could be under threat! Running from a creditor! Running from something worse! He talked it up big, trying to convince Billie, hoping to be taken seriously.
Billie had taken it seriously. There were all sorts of ways folks preyed on women, she'd seen it all, too many to ignore another, no matter how unusual.
A woman went missing, Billie's first call was to Jillian.
"What you got for me?" Jillian had asked first thing; usually she called Billie and that was Billie's line.
"A lost girl! Claudia, got some news in the mail and disappeared from her mom's apartment, never seen since."
Jillian responded, instantly, like she always did, with full support.
"Do what you can! Let me know how I can help!"
"Her boyfriend, Carson, called. He's a broke student."
"All fees paid through the Foundation! Get to the bottom of it. Find Claudia and understand what she needs, bring her back, if necessary, if that's what she wants, whatever it takes!"
So now, here she was on an open-ended expense account, toiling up a muddy, rocky, overgrown mountain trail in Africa, a fifty-pound backpack full of dried food, water purification kit, first aid kit, the works. Her go-bag!
With Mollie, her aid-de-camp and general worker bee. Had wanted field work, from the first day on the job. Begged for it! And now they were both sweating like otters, streaming from their faces, drinking two gallons a day and half-covered in yellow mud. Field work at its least glamorous.
"Look at that! A golden weaver! Pure yellow! Supposed to be on the savannah; what is it doing up here?" Molly didn't pause, kept toiling but brightened at her find, a beautiful bird perched in a palm, you'd miss it except the color stood out against the green, green, green everywhere.
Mollie's enthusiasm was unending. She could out-positive even the famously upbeat Billie. Didn't have the same smile, her Midwest pig-farm upbringing in a conservative family didn't provide much opportunity for smiling. But never complained, never saw bad in anything, always approached the next challenge as another part of an excellent journey. Exclaimed over every new thing, which was a lot of things out here, Africa was nothing like Ohio, nothing whatsoever.
Which was why Billie hired her, brought her on this trip. Sometimes these investigations didn't end well. You had to exhibit toughness just to make the effort, then more to face what you found. It took a special person; Billie hoped Mollie was all that. It would be great, to have somebody stick around for more than a year, BRS turnover was high for field work. The last three had quit after one mission.
So far, so good! This case wasn't the usual, often there was an obvious threat, somebody trying to make a girl do what they wanted, make them behave. This time, just a letter.
Billie, in her usual fashion, had charmed the apartment building maintenance staff to let her in, did a walk-through of Claudia's place, her now-deceased Mom's place. Everything as Carson had described, bedframe half apart, drawers open, boxes half filled. Milk spoiling in the fridge. Clearly Claudia hadn't spent even another moment in tidying up, had read the letter and left almost immediately.
Hadn't left that letter, not even the envelope, that was a challenge. Would have made this all easier but no matter, Billie didn't let a little thing like 'no physical evidence; no clues; nothing whatsoever to go on' stop her or even slow her down.
She'd sat at the kitchen table, rifled the bills and ads and bank statements strewn about, thought "What's missing from this?" Something out of the ordinary, something personal, something about her and not Mom. Family?
She had tapped Jillian for that. No family, the last of her line, Dad long dead and Mom newly deceased. Jillian had called back with that intel, she had resources everywhere by now, her foundation did. Some Army records told the story, Tito probably came up with that, Dad's military record. Kelly more likely; Kelly worked the system while Tito ran the crews, a perfect couple if your business was in security which they were, TK Security.
So, the letter was personal, had to be, nothing else it could be. A lab report. And a note. So, an unusual result, personal notes were not the norm with lab reports.
Nothing from student health services, Mollie had made that call, Claudia last had a physical when she'd enrolled and nothing since. That one was easy, student records offices were run by student hires generally, not so careful about privacy. And Mollie was dang persuasive too.
It had taken Billie all of twenty minutes, shuffling the bills and statements, running over Carson's scant recollection. Manila envelope. Letter. Lab report. Sudden need to travel.
Claudia had taken a DNA test, one of those that promise to tell you where you're from, she was suddenly certain of that.
A few quick calls, there were only two or three companies that did much of that. Second call and she bluffed her way into an admission, yes, Claudia at this address had been sent her DNA results! In a brown manila envelope. They'd say no more but that just meant, call Jillian back, get Kelly involved.
Another twenty minutes, she had the complete story. Claudia's report wasn't a vague description of 'middle-European mix' or some such like most folks. She'd gotten a country, Tanzania. A tribe, some name that didn't mean anything to Billie, she'd not had much cause to study Africa yet.
And an address. Tukar.
Claudia's ancestors came from a single mountain village! So remote, so inaccessible that nobody went there. That meant, their genetic markers were so specific, so identifying that anyone who left that village could be read like a book, instantly known to be of that line, that place. The letter had spelled that out, told how unlikely that was, how Claudia was one-in-a-million, congratulations! Could they do a study on her?
Billie had a next place to look - that village, Tukar Tanzania. Claudia wouldn't be there, likely. It was very remote. Punishingly inaccessible. Brutally difficult to reach. Expensive transportation! Not a trip a city college education major would undertake casually, toss her semester, her education and her future away on a crazy quest. No, Claudia'd be off looking for others from the same place, expats, cousins? Family! She'd look until she found her people, her identity.
Because, of course, family was the most important thing.
On that, Billie came up dry. No organizations for those people, no publications or clubs. In fact, they seemed to be pretty clannish, private. The most recent mention she found was from most of a century ago! A traveler's logbook, not a lot there, just the fact there was a village Tukar, the people were farmers, folks in the surrounding area didn't like to go up there, some traditional taboo.
It was left to Billie and Mollie to make the trip, find the place of origin and learn what they could from her people. Had they heard from Claudia? Perhaps they would know of her dad or her mom, grandparents, maybe a cousin. Where a person of her clan might go, if under stress. Any communities of expats that might exist, under the radar.
Three plane flights, a train, endless busses and finally a rented land-rover to the foothills. And now, these trails. The local Zulu guide had refused to proceed! Said 'Umthakati!' which means 'evil witch', he was not willing under any circumstances to risk this final leg of the journey.
That left Billie and Mollie to confront the umthakati, on their own, in their home territory, on foot. Mollie had been enthusiastic at the prospect. "Never met a real witch!" which said all you need to know about Mollie.
Every half hour they'd break out of the overgrowth at a switchback, peer ahead, see terraces way up the hills, halfway to the clouds! Settlements ringed the mountain. People lived up there! Hundreds, maybe a thousand! Then back into it, another half hour of jungle-shrouded climbing, skirting mud slides, finding a way across streams, fortunately no rain recently or they'd be impassible cataracts.
Three-quarters of the day gone and another switchback like any other and the jungle opened up, ended, like a line drawn in the soil and they were at a village.
Mollie straightened, put two hands to her hips, stretched and Pop! Pop! and groaned. Billie stood beside her and just took it all in.
People worked quietly everywhere, fixing a shed, moving straw, dumping scraps to scruffy pigs in timber pens. Every flat spot had fields, orchards, vines, land was precious. Not a lot of flat spots at all, really. A man arguing with a donkey, the donkey was winning, reluctant to go through a gate, ears back.
No evil here.
Any witches, they weren't using brooms or boiling pots, they kept a low profile? Worked their conjuring out of sight anyway.
