“Bring ‘em.” He gave Hunter the location and hung up, then looked in the pot one more time before joining the others at the perimeter.
Randall said, “I’ll call Handley.”
John looked around at the markings on the trees and the effigies hanging from limbs, “Call the Haitian priest, Young Anson, too. We’ll see what he thinks about this.”
They made the calls, then marked the area and photographed everything in situ for the record. When they finished, John and Randall joined the officer, a man named Johnson, and the young boys. One of them, the boy with dark hair said, “We’re not under arrest, are we? The policeman said we weren’t.”
John said, “We need to take your statements, and then we’ll see.”
The other boy, the blond one said, “We were just out here looking at this place again.” He pointed at the hanging figures and the paint on the trees. “We saw these things about a week ago and thought it looked like the Blair Witch Project, so we came back to check it out.”
“How’d you get here?” Randall asked.
“On our bikes.” The blond boy said, and pointed through the trees, “Back over there on that side. We left them and walked the rest.”
John asked, “Did you see anybody here?”
They both shook their heads, and the black-headed boy said, “There was a car that left fast, that was all. I think they heard us coming through the trees, because we were talking and laughing. I guess it was those men who did this with the fire.”
Randall said, “Can you describe them?”
“They were black, that’s about all. I only saw their faces from the sides and then the backs of their heads while they drove away.”
“How many?”
“Two.”
Randall asked, “What about the car?”
“It was green. Not a dark green or a light green, just medium.”
“Do you know what kind it was?”
“You mean like a Chevy or a Ford or something?”
“Yes.”
The two boys looked at each other, then the blond one said, “I’d be guessing.”
John said, “You saw the rear of the car, though.”
“Yes sir.”
John worked his phone for a bit, then showed them the screen. “Which looks like the rear of that car?”
“None of them. These are new cars, the one that drove away was older, by a lot.”
“How much older?” Randall said.
The black-headed boy said, “A whole bunch, like ten or twenty years.”
The blond boy said, “Maybe even older, like when they first made cars back in the seventies.”
Randall glanced at the policeman, who grinned, then he looked at John and said, “How about we have them come down to the office and go through photos of all makes and year models?”
“Works for me,” John said.
They heard approaching cars slowing and parking by the others. Handley’s voice called out, “Gentlemen, where are you?”