Other books from AJ Davidson
Non-fiction
Kidnapped
Defamed!
Fiction
Churchill’s Queen
AN EVIL SHADOW
By
AJ Davidson
SMASHWORDS EDITION
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
AJ Davidson on Smashwords
An Evil Shadow
Copyright © 2010 by AJ Davidson
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
To Shannon
CHAPTER ONE
New Orleans 2003
Donny Jackson turned the key in the lock, pushed open the door and entered the apartment, then used his foot to hook the door shut behind him. His hands were full. In one he carried a medium-sized Samsonite case and a plastic bag containing a box of duty-free Cuban cigars, in the other his keys and a bunch of mail that had accumulated during his latest trip to Vietnam.
The temperature inside was just a few degrees from being chilly and he could hear the ceiling fan rotating slowly. For once the building's super had remembered to turn the power back on for his return. He used an elbow to flick on the lights.
It felt good to be home. If you could call an apartment he saw for less than two months out of every twelve home. There had been times when he felt it was nothing more than a five-room closet; a place to store his clothes and his MP3 player. Still, it wouldn’t be for much longer. If all went to plan then he had only three more weeks before he had his hands on more money than he had dreamed possible in his wildest fantasy. He would never have to work another day in his life. No more long-haul flights in cramped, tourist class seats. No more cheap, flea-ridden hotels in fourth-world countries. No more having to take orders from a bunch of pricks.
Setting down the case and the cigars, he quickly sorted through his mail. Predictably, all were circulars addressed to the occupier of apartment 36. Donny was meticulous about keeping his name off mailing lists, and the apartment was leased under a corporate name, by the firm that employed him. But it took more than that to defeat the marketing men.
He had expected to receive a card from his mother. It had been his birthday the previous day. Celebrated by the devouring of a Big Mac and a strawberry shake in a Hanoi McDonalds. His forty-second birthday and she hadn’t missed one yet. He went through the envelopes again in case he had overlooked it. Nope, nothing there. A little disillusioned, he threw the mail on the chrome and smoked-glass coffee table. He would trash them later.
Shaking off his jacket, he draped it over the back of a chair and slipped his feet out of his penny loafers. He sniffed at an armpit and screwed up his face. Boy, could he use a shower. He moved across the room to his MP3 player and selected a Garth Brooks album, turning up the volume. The music would help him unwind while he showered. Installing a remote speaker on the bathroom wall was his only contribution to the apartment’s fixtures and fittings.
Jackson walked into the bedroom and through to the bathroom. He swung open the glass door of the stall and turned on the water. It would take a few moments to reach the temperature he liked. Studying his face in the mirror, he considered shaving, but since he would need another shave in the morning, what was the point? He screwed the top off a bottle of mouthwash, took a hefty swig, and started to gargle away the taste of airline food.
As he lowered his head to spit in the sink, he caught a face reflected in the mirror. A mountain of a man with skin as shiny and black as an eggplant, his long hair hanging down in braids tied off with red and blue ribbon. Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe adorned the front of his short-sleeved shirt. The man grinned wickedly, displaying a solid gold bicuspid.
Jackson knew the dental work only too well. Gilett and he had worked together on countless occasions and Jackson had considered him an ally. The man’s unannounced manifestation in his bathroom suggested that he had been wrong.
The stiletto blade in his hand confirmed it.
Jackson twisted around and spat a stream of mouthwash straight into the man’s eyes. Momentarily blinded, Gilett’s stabbing thrust veered off course slightly and deflected against a collarbone instead of severing Jackson’s spine as intended. Locking his hands together, Jackson clubbed his attacker, catching him off balance. He followed up by grabbing a handful of hair and slamming the man’s head against the Spanish tiles on the bathroom wall.
He seized hold of Gilett’s right wrist. It felt as hard and rigid as a baseball bat. There was no way he could match Gilett for strength. He made a claw of his other hand and raked his eyes. Gilett caught his arm and pushed it away before he had inflicted any real damage.
They wrestled for dominance, grunting with effort, their feet slipping on the marble floor. A cloud of steam enveloped them as Garth Brooks started into Friends in Low Places
Gilett’s cannonball of a head was inches from Jackson’s. Close enough for him to catch the heavy sour stench of rum on his breath. Jackson tried to sink his teeth into a cheek. Gilett pulled away and butted him.
His nose bone cracked and blinded him with pain. Blood poured into his mouth and resistance started to drain from him. With only seconds to live, all he could think about was how he should have anticipated something like this. Jackson, how dumb can you be?
Drawing on the last of his reserves, he brought his knee up into the black man’s groin and was rewarded with a grunt and a slight loosening of the grip on his arm.
It was enough. He grabbed another handful of hair, jerking Gilett’s head backward to expose his throat.
Jackson rose on his toes and sank his teeth into the vulnerable larynx. He felt the crack as a bridge of bone and cartilage gave way.
The two men twisted around and stumbled. Gilett’s head cracked against the toilet. The stiletto went skidding across the floor. Jackson stretched for it.
Gilett’s hand reached it first and he turned and sank the blade into the fleshy part of Jackson’s thigh. His body went rigid and he screamed in agony, but the pain brought renewed strength and he drove a fist into Gilett’s damaged throat. Gilett let go the knife to protect his damaged larynx.
Jackson used the rim of the sink to haul himself off the floor, the knife protruding from his leg like some evil, black leech. He limped into the bedroom and collapsed on the bed.
Above the music Jackson caught the gagging sounds of his former ally fighting for breath. A cold fury exploded deep inside him. Fuck them and their treachery! Damned if he was going to make it easy for those cocksuckers.
Jackson gingerly touched the hilt of the knife and a wave of dizzy pain swept through him. He had seconds before Gilett would recover and come at him again.
Removing the knife would give him a weapon, but he was already in poor shape and could pass out from the effort. Even if he remained conscious, he was far from certain that a knife would be enough of an advantage.
He could make a run for it, but how far could he get with a knife in his leg, blood pouring from his nose and a gash in his shoulder?
His living room? The door of his apartment? If he could get that far, he could make the elevator. He might make even make it to his car. At least then he would have a chance.
He ran.
CHAPTER TWO
Val Bosanquet knew right off that his brother intended to ask a favor of him, and a big one at that.
The phone call earlier that Sunday morning had taken Val by surprise — it had been two years since they had last spoken, twice that since they had met face to face — but the venue and the timing of the meeting intrigued him enough to agree to his brother's request.
He knew that Marcus's only possible reason for suggesting Jackson Square was the fond associations the place held for them both. Memories of other Sunday mornings long ago back when they were kids. Of their mother attending mass in St Louis Cathedral while the three men in her life waited outside in the square. Their father would find a shaded bench to read the sports section, while Marcus and Val played at soldiers, their marching feet raising clouds of dust on what had once been the parade ground of the New Orleans Militia.
When mass was over, they would walk through Pirate’s Alley, find a table at a banquette cafe and order chocolate and beignets. It was a cherished memory from a childhood that had little to commend it, but one that Marcus was not beyond invoking when it suited him.
The cathedral bells starting to peal snapped Val’s thoughts back to the present and he quickly scanned the square. Little had changed. Swarms of rubbernecking tourists, clutching complimentary street maps in front of them like divining rods, were passing through on their way to the French Quarter, pausing briefly to admire the art hung along the wrought-iron railings. Outside the park, tired mules stood between the shafts of their buggies, flicking their tails at the pestering flies. A white-faced mime artist performed her routine in front of a group of twenty camera-festooned Japanese conventioneers.
Val had arrived early, knowing that Marcus would show up dead on time. They were both creatures of habit.
He picked him out the moment he entered the park. Catalogue Man. Two years spent in Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar had left a deep impression on Marcus. He brought back an affection for a dress style peculiarly British.
Acknowledging that he lacked any sense of taste, he would order entire wardrobes out of the mail-order catalogues of London stores, replicating exactly the outfits that caught his eye. Today he was wearing cricket whites, with the sleeves of a pullover draped over his shoulders and knotted loosely at the front of his chest. A cricket cap finished off the ensemble. Val allowed himself a sardonic smile. His brother, Dean of the Creative Arts faculty at the University of New Orleans, might not have attracted much attention on campus, but in the middle of Jackson Square ...
He sat on the bench next to Val.
“It’s been much too long. How are things with you, Valentino?”
Val flinched. Marcus was the one person who still insisted on using his full name.
“Pretty good.”
“I’m glad to hear it. You haven’t changed a bit.”
“Marcus, tell me what I’m doing here? Has it anything to do with Angie?’
Angie — Val still couldn’t speak her name without experiencing hollowness deep inside — was, technically, still his wife. Four years previously she had left him to move in with his brother. Too devout a Catholic to contemplate divorce, yet possessing a wickedly dark sense of humor, she reveled in the ambiguity created by her married name corresponding with that of her new partner. Val had wondered on occasions if Angie and he would have been together still had he been an only son.
“Leave Angie out of it,” Marcus said. “I’m here to offer you a job.”
“I have a job.”
“I mean a real job. One with a future. Designing and manufacturing illuminated signs for carnival floats is hardly what you’d call a long-term prospect.”
“It suits me.” Val wondered how Marcus had come to know of his latest entrepreneurial venture. There had been several ignominious failures in the first couple of years, but this time he had struck gold. Val and a few other members of the Black Cat carnival krewe had formed a company to cash in on the mother of all parties that was millennium year. Business had been good and the company was still turning over a good profit three years later.
It was evident from Marcus’s troubled expression that he was having difficulty coming up with the right words to finish saying what he had started. To gain a few seconds, he shifted his gaze to an Oriental man asking a passing stranger to take a photograph of his group. By the time they had moved on, Marcus was ready to continue.
“The campus police chief is retiring — ill health. A stroke has left his right arm and leg paralyzed. The post will be advertised this week, but with the new semester only two weeks away, we need to find a replacement fast. I want you to apply. I can’t promise anything, but my endorsement would carry a lot of weight.”
“No thanks. I gave up being a cop four years ago.”
“Don’t say that. Once a cop, always a cop. It’s in your blood.”
“Maybe it’s slipped your mind, but I left the department voluntarily.”
A puzzled expression clouded Marcus’s face. “I never understood what possessed you to resign. The youngest homicide detective lieutenant in the history of the New Orleans PD; the most decorated; a clear-up rate that kept you on the front-pages and made you the mayor’s favorite son. Then one day, out of the blue, you just turn your back and walk away.”
“I had my reasons.”
“Sure you did. That damned perverseness of yours right up there at the top of the list. You’ve always taken after Dad.”
Val felt a cold hand tighten around his heart. People say you only remember the good times, but what if there are times so bad you can never obliterate them? Their father had been prone to sudden, irrational bouts of violence, during which he would beat his two sons black and blue. These moods came on without warning, and usually without any grounds. Afterwards he would be guilt-ridden and beg their forgiveness. Marcus never gave it, but for Val, the time it took for the hurt to dissipate grew shorter with each attack until, eventually, he became inured to it.
Marcus was still speaking. “ ... cursed with the same insane compulsion to mess up anything that could be good for you.”
“And you’re starting to sound like Angie,” Val said, standing up. He hadn’t articulated the reason for his decision to anyone, not even fully to himself. There were unexplored depths to some men’s psyche which were best left that way.
“You may have turned your back on the one thing you were ever any good at, but don’t try telling me you don’t miss it.”
“If so,” Val snarled, “do you seriously believe that pushing paper across a desk and busting freshmen for smoking cannabis would compensate?”
“There’s considerably more to it than that. You would be your own boss, answerable to nobody. A rent-free apartment comes as part of the package. The money’s good, and you would be able to transfer your PD annuity fund into the university’s. I happen to know you haven’t vested it yet, so another few years of contributions and you could retire on full pension.”
“You’ve obviously done your homework. Shame you wasted your time. Give the job to the assistant chief,” Val said, turning to walk away.
“Don’t go. I’m not through explaining.”
“I’m through listening.”
“You promised me ten minutes,” Marcus said, raising his voice for the first time.
Val twisted around and gave him a hard stare. “Then cut out the bullshit and tell me the truth. Since when did you give a damn what I do? Is this some sort of scam Angie’s lawyers have come up with so they can shaft me some more?”
Marcus stood up and placed a hand on his brother’s arm.
“Do you remember a young girl called Marie Duval?”
“A Haitian Creole who did a Lizzie Borden on her mother. At the time of the killing she was six weeks shy of her tenth birthday.”
“You were the primary investigating officer.”
It was Val’s turn to be baffled. What possible interest could Marcus have in a killing that had taken place ten years before? “There wasn’t a whole lot of investigating required. What’s it to you?”
“Duval’s applied to the university to study Caribbean Art. We’ve accepted her. She scored over fifteen hundred on her SATs.”
Like some dumb kid brother, Val said the first thing that came into his head. “And you want my opinion as to whether she’s likely to kill again?”
“Not really. Professionals have already assured us that she poses a minimal risk. A condition of her acceptance by the university was her consenting to undergo psychiatric testing. The reports say that she is a gifted artist, well balanced and mature for her age — an ambitious young woman. Apparently her mother was a manbo — a voodoo priestess — who had been planning to initiate Marie. The child was locked up for nine days without food or water and was forcibly subjected to a series of barbaric voodoo rites and trials. The culminating test was for Marie’s right hand to be plunged into a pot of scalding water. If she was deserving of manbo status, her spirits would protect her, and her hand would suffer no harm. Marie genuinely believed she would fail the test and, in a weakened state, terrified and fearing for her life, she attacked her mother. She was acting in self-defense. If you ask me, the mother was the truly dangerous one.”
Val shrugged. It was much the same story as Duval’s attorney had laid on him ten years before. Like any street-weary cop, he gave little credence to bizarre defenses and had heard his share of weird ones. Yet he had been reluctant to totally discount Duval’s. His investigation into the Duval killing was the second time he had come up against the Art of Darkness. His first was as a rookie whose beat included a notorious Iberville housing project, plagued with petty crime the PD were powerless to do anything about. Then one day an oungan, a voodoo priest, stepped in and the word went out that there was to be an end to the vandalism, muggings and burglaries. The oungan was held in awe and was reputed to practice with both hands — magic and sorcery. Within a week it was safe to walk the streets at night. It had been difficult for Val to remain cynical when confronted with results like that.
“The Haitians have a saying,” he said. “Petit tig se tig. The child of a tiger is a tiger.”
Marcus looked away, his face momentarily displaying the derision he bore the unenlightened which usually included anyone who disagreed with him.
Val carried on. “You still haven’t explained what all this has to do with you offering me a job.”
Marcus turned back to face his brother. “Cards on the table. I’ve met Duval and was impressed with her determination. She has been turned down by half-a-dozen universities — she applied to out-of-state colleges at first. They’re keen enough to interview her, but the moment they learn of her background ...”
“Who can blame them? Who would fancy sharing a dormitory room with a convicted axe-killer? I can’t see your student body being thrilled when it learns who their latest freshman is.”
“On the contrary. We anticipate very little opposition from that quarter; they would be more likely to protest if we announced that we had rescinded Duval’s acceptance — not that it’s been officially announced yet. It’s the parents of the students who concern us.”
“The ones who stump up the tuition you mean?”
Marcus nodded solemnly. “We have negotiated extra state and private funding to offset any shortfall that would accrue should parents start withdrawing students. The governor is keen for Marie to attend a Louisiana college.”
“This funding. What form will it take?”
“Grants, endowments, a new Chair. Marie is being sponsored by the Assist Haiti charity, which has been lobbying strenuously on her behalf.”
“And all this extra funding is dependent on her starting classes in a fortnight?”
Marcus nodded hesitantly.
“And if you could find a way to limit the financial fallout, the university would come out in front, and you would be doing your career prospects a power of good at the same time. I was right when I sensed Angie’s devious hand behind this. She threw the towel in on me when I left the department, so now she wants to see you make Chancellor.”
“Why do you always think the worse of her? She’s too fine a woman for that,” Marcus said, his face slightly flushed.
“Maybe it’s because I know her better than you.”
“Still doesn’t give you the right to denigrate her at every opportunity.”
“It may not be the way of a gentleman, but chivalry died out the same day alimony was invented,” Val said, grinding his teeth hard to stop himself striking Marcus. “You want me to apply for the post, so the university can reassure concerned parents that the homicide detective who arrested Duval originally will be around to keep a close eye on her. In the hope — and to me it’s a long shot — some of them think twice before transferring their kids to Baton Rouge. Am I right?”
Marcus’s face flushed a deeper shade as he admitted that that was the case.
“And how long will it be before the university decides I’ve served my purpose and replace me? One semester? Two?”
“That wouldn’t happen. The job would be yours for as long as you wanted it.”
Val jabbed a finger into Marcus’s sternum. “You and your job can both go to hell.” He walked away.
“We need to move on it soon.” Marcus cried out after him.
Val preferred to do his drinking after dark, but sundown was too many hours away. Not really knowing who to be mad at didn’t help. Had he honestly expected anything different from Marcus, a man as slippery as a water moccasin? And it wouldn’t have hurt if Val had lightened up a shade. He found an empty stool at the end of Daft Eadie’s bar on Decatur and snarled an order for a double shot of Beam over ice.
Eadie’s thirty years of bar-keeping had equipped him with enough nous to set up a clean drip mat, dump some ice in a glass, pour the booze, and back off. A lesser man might have tried — as Marcus would have put it — to establish lines of communication. He might have got a smack in the jaw for his trouble. Val drained the glass, swirling the bourbon around his mouth before swallowing.
In a booth against the rear wall, two uniform policemen were finishing an early lunch. Their table was cluttered with serving dishes overflowing with empty shrimp shells. A couple of wine bottles had been upended in an ice bucket. One of them recognized Val and for a moment it seemed he was going to heave his butt off the bench and come speak to him, but he must have changed his mind because he eased back and signaled to his partner with a jerk of his head that he was ready to go. Maybe it because Val was no longer a member of his fraternity, or maybe it was the way Val was crunching ice between his teeth.
The other cop pulled a wallet from his pocket and removed two five-dollar bills. He made a show of slapping them down on the marble counter as they left.
Eadie waved and gave the departing cops a friendly smile, but his eyes turned cold and he let the money lie. He’d rather comp a fifty-dollar meal to the uniforms than soil his hands accepting their derisory tender.
Val shrugged. He had more on his mind than Eadie’s bruised ego.
Every homicide investigation has its own reasons for being memorable to those whose duty it is investigate, and for Val Bosanquet there were two damn good reasons why the Duval killing stood out, number one being that it was the first homicide he had been involved with after returning from his Hilton Head honeymoon; his first investigation as a married man.
The shout had come through to the Homicide squad room at the First District headquarters shortly after midnight. An anonymous male 911 caller had tipped off the uniforms at the Garden District station house and they had dispatched a patrol car to an address on the river side of the Irish Channel. Sergeant Williams had discovered the body and wasted little time landing the case in Homicide’s lap.
Val averaged one homicide per week in the Channel. The area was due south of the Garden District, but a zillion miles separated the two it you talked average household income. Densely populated by poor African and Hispanic Americans, it had once been home to some hundred thousand Irish who had fled the Famine in their homeland in the 1840s only to discover that in Louisiana they were considered more expendable than the expensive third- and fourth-generation slaves. They found themselves in an underclass where poverty was something to aspire to.
There was a solitary patrol car and a crime scene technicians’ truck parked outside the run-down Victorian building when Val pulled up. The June night was oven hot and the wind blowing off the river only added to the high humidity. Almost all the streetlights had been smashed, leaving the street and the building’s entrance in deep shadow. As expected, in a neighborhood where the majority of residents are illegals, there was a notable lack of curious onlookers.
The mortuary van arrived as Val stepped from his car. The assistant medical examiner threw him a cheery grin and started to whistle The Night the Lights went out in Georgia, as he rolled the gurney from the van. Val left him to it and went in search of Sergeant Williams.
He was standing inside the front door. Sweat had stained his shirt dark under his arms and across his chest. Val knew Williams — they had both worked the same shift as uniform sergeants for a fourteen-month stretch immediately before Val had made detective. He was a racist and a bully, who justified the evil shadow he threw by claiming it got the job done. It came as no surprise that he was still doing the same job. Williams hitched his leather belt up over his beer gut and flicked a half-smoked cigar past Val’s face into the street before leading him through to an apartment at the rear of the building.
A naked, low-wattage bulb hanging from the center of the roof illuminated the grisly scene directly below. A thin, dark-skinned female was lying face down in a pool of blood. She was barefoot and was wearing a loose-fitting dress in a faded, printed fabric. There were no visible wounds to her back, but all that blood had to have come from somewhere, Val thought.
“Was the door open when you arrived?”
“Yeah, with no sign that it had been forced, and the light was on.”
The room was little more than a lean-to shack constructed in the rear yard of the apartment block. Erected without foundations, the walls were of high-density fiberboard. The roof was asbestos sheeting; the floor was cypress planking covered in cracked linoleum. Val guessed that, without any windows for ventilation, the temperature inside would rarely drop below the high eighties. Clothing had been hung from protruding nails. What little furniture there was appeared to have been salvaged from a Dumpster. The table and chairs were resin patio furniture. A mattress was pushed lengthwise against an outer wall, a single sheet lying in a crumpled mess. There was a camping stove in the corner with a couple of battered aluminum pots stacked next to it. Farther along the wall was a sink with a single cold-water faucet. The stuffy atmosphere smelt of poverty and despair. Robbery could be ruled out as a motive.
“Take a look at this,” Williams said, a ghoulish grin on his face. He hunkered down on the woman’s left side, where the blood had spread the least, placed a latex-gloved hand on either side of her head and raised it. There was a moist, sucking sound as the head broke free from the clinging blood. “It’s my guess somebody took a meat cleaver to her.”
It was impossible to make any sort of estimate about the woman’s age; there wasn’t enough left of her face. White bone and gristle showed though strips of flesh; a collapsed eyeball hung loosely from its socket. Her upper palate and tongue had been cleaved in two and the teeth of her bottom jaw were shattered.
“Not tonight, honey. I have a splitting headache.”
“Cut it out,’ Val snapped, sickened by Williams’s clowning.
The crime scene technician switched on a high-intensity portable lamp, flooding the room in brilliant light. Val wished he hadn’t. The blood splattering had coated every surface in a five-foot arc around the victim.
“Any witnesses?” he asked the sergeant.
“Not one nigger saw or heard a goddam thing.”
Val gave him a cold stare. “What do you have on her?”
Williams was not a man who would have balked at extracting information from the building’s residents, by fair means or foul. He would have relished explaining to them that, contrary to what they might think, they had a lot more to fear from him than from the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
He dropped the victim’s head back into the blood and straightened up.
“Her name’s Valerie Duval. She’s a Haitian illegal. According to the neighbors, she and her daughter arrived here from Haiti shortly after the Duvalier regime went belly up. The husband was a Tonton Macoute henchman for Baby Doc Duvalier. He and their son were amongst the first to be fitted with gasoline neckties after his boss pulled out for France. Wifey here still had enough clout, though, to get herself and her daughter passage on the next refugee boat. She’s been supporting the two of them with income earned from practicing voodoo. Apparently the nigger bitch was a manbo — some sort of freaking priestess. She would call down the spirits to put a grisgris on your enemies or cast a love spell in return for a few dollars or a good meal.”
“Lay off the racist crap,” Val warned him.
Williams sneered at him. “What are you going to do about it? File a fucking report?”
“No. Right now I have all the paperwork I can handle on my desk. I’d take your gun and drag your fat ass out front and 'cuff you to the nearest street light. Then I’d let this woman’s friends and neighbors know what you’ve been saying about her.”
Williams’s face drained of color.
“Any sign of the daughter?” Val asked after a few moments.
The sergeant tried to give him a hard-ass stare, but thought better of it and backed off. This lieutenant didn’t make empty threats.
“We haven’t located her yet. Her name’s Marie and the neighbors say she’s around nine years old.”
Val walked the edges of the room, able to examine the contents in more detail under the glare from the portable lamp. Behind the circular table was a set of three drums, unglazed pottery bases and dog pelts for the skins. The smallest of the trio had what could only be Golden Labrador fur still attached. Val was aware of the central role drums played in voodoo, being the principal means of summoning the lwa, or spirits. He was no expert, but had picked up a working understanding of the religion. After witnessing the influence of the oungan in the Iberville project, he had made a trip to the city library and borrowed a couple of books on the subject.
Tacked to the fiberboard of the rear wall were three lengths of lining paper, the sort interior decorators use when preparing a surface for hanging heavy wallpaper. The sheets of paper were covered with drawings of veves, symbols of the lwa, done in charcoal. More often outlined on the ground with chalk dust or coffee grounds, the veves were to ensure that the spirits knew exactly which of them was being summoned during rituals.
One sketch was of a heart bordered by snakes, the veve of Ezili, the goddess of love. The next sheet had a cross drawn on it. Similar in appearance to a Christian rood, in voodoo it represents the veve for the lwa of the dead, symbolizing the crossing from one life to another.
Val did not recognize the third drawing. The sketch had similar characteristics to Masonic imagery, with what could have been a set of dividers over a square at its center, and surrounded with interlocking curlicues. The duality of icons came as no surprise. When the eighteenth-century colonial French attempted to abolish voodoo on Haiti, the practitioners, mainly slaves, adopted many Roman Catholic and Masonic symbols to help dupe their masters.
There was a collection of coffee jars and plastic bottles on the floor under the veves. One of the glass jars held a pint of evil-smelling rum, the others contained snake vertebrae and colored pebbles. The plastic bottles were filled with dried herbs and spices.
A baby-faced uniform officer entered, carrying a flashlight. He was making a beeline for Williams until he spotted Val.
“I think y’all better come take a look at this,” he said, waving the flashlight from side to side. “I was searching out back for the murder weapon when I found the girl.”
Val asked the medical examiner to remain with the body while the rest of them went outside.
There were some scraggly flaming-azalea and myrtle shrubs planted along the perimeter of the yard, but little grass had survived, the earth having been compacted to hard pan. The officer led the way to a live oak at the far end of the yard. As they approached, not even the heady scent of night-blooming jasmine could mask the stench of putrefying flesh. Val’s heart sank and he prepared himself for the worse.
Relief flooded through him when he made out the shape of several dark bundles suspended from the lowermost branches of the tree. The Simbi lwa were reputed to take up residence in trees, and carcasses, usually guinea fowl, are hung in the branches in offering, in the hope that the lwa will reciprocate with the gift of clairvoyance. What remained of the unfortunate Labrador had probably ended up the same way.
The moss-hung oak would have been planted around the same time as the building was constructed, probably twenty years after the War Between the States. The beam from the flashlight was directed at the bole of the tree, and then raised slowly upwards.
A mulatto girl sat astride a branch some twenty feet above the ground, both arms wrapped tightly around herself in an effort to control a bout of shivering that had enveloped her despite the night’s high temperature. She was naked apart from flimsy nylon briefs. When the light from the flashlight struck her face, she shut her eyes and twisted her head towards the trunk of the tree. The movement caused her to slip and she shot out a hand to steady herself.
“Move the light off her,” Val barked at the young officer “She’s terrified enough as it is and may drop if we frighten her any further.”
“I’ve already tried talking to her,” he said defensively. “She won’t answer and hasn’t budged an inch since I first found her.”
Williams suggested that they call the firehouse.
“No,” Val said. “She could fall before they arrive. If she’s a witness to what happened inside, she has to be on the verge of catatonia.”
Val took the flashlight and shone it at the base of the tree. Several wire nails had been driven into the trunk. Each one had three inches left protruding out from the bark. The girl would have used them to reach the lowermost branches, but it was unlikely they would bear his weight. He lifted his left foot onto one and exerted some pressure. It bent as easily as rubber.
“No use.”
“There’s something we could use,” the crime scene tech said, pointing back up the yard to a rusty oil drum lying on its side against the wooden wall of Duval’s shack.
The drum was half full of rainwater, which sloshed from the plughole, soaking their shoes as they rolled it across the compacted earth. It took them less than a minute to get the drum upended at the base of the tree.
Nixon would have been President the last time Sergeant Williams climbed a tree, and his partner was four inches shorter than Val. The crime scene tech held Val’s jacket and gun while he slipped his ID and the flashlight into a trouser pocket. Williams steadied the drum as Val climbed on top. Expecting the rusty metal to give way at any moment, he stood up shakily. A desiccated turkey hen carcass knocked against his face. Snapping the cord that was holding it, he tossed the stinking, maggot-infested bundle to the ground. Val reached above his head and felt for a branch he could wrap his hands around. Grabbing hold of one and kicking his legs in the air, he managed to haul himself up. He found a stout branch to sit on.
The girl was three branches further up. Val called out to her, trying to sound reassuring. “It’s okay, Marie. I’m a police officer. Nobody’s going to hurt you, but we have to help you down, so we can have a talk.”
The girl’s head turned towards him, but in the gloom it was impossible for him to see her eyes. What light there was in the yard came from a three-quarters moon, but little of it penetrated the leaf canopy. He levered himself up onto a higher branch pulled out his shield, and shone the flashlights beam on it.
She didn’t react.
“Don’t be afraid,” Val reassured her. “I’m going to climb up beside you and bring you down. You’ll be safe soon.”
As slowly as he could, Val reached across with his left hand and grasped the branch she was on. He didn’t want to risk startling her with any sudden movement.
As it turned out, it was the girl who made the sudden movement. The flashlight’s beam accidentally caught her face and for a split second her eyes, like those of a cat, reflected back the light. She produced a camping axe from somewhere and swung it at Val’s left hand. He pulled away, but not quickly enough. The head of the axe buried itself into the branch, removing his middle finger at the first joint.
He dropped through the tree like a lead weight, landing on the small of his beck across top of the oil drum, crushing it as though it was a milk carton. For a brief instant before passing out, he caught sight of the bloody stump and knew that he now had another reason never to forget the Duval investigation.
New Orleans General detained Val for two days. The surgeon tried his best, but was unable to sew his finger back on. He patched him up and made lewd comments over what the loss would mean to him.
Marie Duval was being held under protective custody in a secure room at the same hospital. Immediately after Val’s fall, Sergeant Williams radioed for the paramedics and the fire department. A fire fighter, using a ladder to climb the tree, had succeeded in bringing Duval down after a brief but fierce struggle. The axe was embedded that deeply in the branch, the girl had been unable to pull it free. It didn’t stop her sinking her teeth into the fire fighter’s shoulder and she would have drawn blood if the man hadn’t been wearing his thick bunking jacket.
She had yet to say a single word about her mother’s killing, or anything else for that matter. She was unharmed, but had lost the power of speech. The doctors who examined her couldn’t find any physiological explanation for her muteness and had called in a child psychologist.
Forensic tests had been carried out on the bloodstains found on the axe. The lab identified two types. They were a match for Valerie Duval and Val.
The chromed-steel axe, still coated with the light film of oil the manufacturer had applied prior to distribution, was a near perfect surface from which to lift fingerprints. The only prints found were Marie Duval’s. A child’s white cotton dress and scarf had been found hanging in the tree. Both were heavily spattered with the mother’s blood.
Val was hearing all this from Captain Paul Larson, a great bear of a man with a ruddy face, sleepy eyes, and a mop of wiry, gray hair. Contrary to the somnambulistic state his eyes would have you believe him constantly in, he was by far the most intuitive police officer Val had worked with. He was slouched comfortably in an armchair next to Val’s hospital bed, drinking from a paper cup the Chivas Regal that he had brought for him. Angie had insisted on remaining at his bedside since his injury, but half an hour earlier had finally been persuaded to return home to catch up some sleep. She had gone reluctantly, promising to be back in a few hours with some fresh clothes for him. The shirt and trousers he had been wearing the night he had been brought in were torn and bloodied.
“Between the doctors, Child Protection and the psychologist, we can’t get anywhere near the girl,” Larson explained. “They’ve circled the wagons around her and have retained a specialist lawyer from the children’s court to ensure she receives the kid-glove treatment from us. Though it she has genuinely lost the ability to speak, it’s debatable what benefit will come from interviewing her.”
Val grunted unsympathetically. “We know she can hear. Can she read and write?”
Larson poured himself another shot of Chivas. “The kid took an axe to her mother and has maimed a detective. She’s hardly in any rush to put it on paper.”
“Has she been placed under arrest?”
“Not yet. She’s not going anyplace and I thought you should be the one to do it.”
Val brooded over it for a few moments and realized that he had no strong feelings either way. Duval was a killer and it was his job to uncover enough evidence for the DA’s office to successfully prosecute her. The fact that she was a child didn’t really come into it. “Why not?”
“You’re positive you’re fit enough? I could assign another detective. All the evidence points to her having acted on her own, but with the media attention the killing has attracted, I want to make sure that nothing is overlooked.”
Val held up his left hand with the heavily bandaged stump. “I may be incapable of saluting the press in a fit and proper manner but I can still do my job. As soon as Angie returns with my clothes, I start back to work.”
Larson grinned and looked at Val’s injured hand. “If it helps improve your keyboard skills, maybe some good will come of it.”
Less than four hours later Val walked into the city morgue in search of the assistant medical examiner. He found him in the autopsy suite, halfway through a post-mortem on a Jane Doe floater. He was whistling Old Man River.
Val told him that he wanted a word, but that it could wait until he was finished. He knew it wouldn’t be long.
Before witnessing his first post-mortem, Val’s impression of an autopsy had been gleaned from television shows like Quincy. He had imagined that the autopsy suite would be similar to an operating theatre, spotlessly clean, equipped with lots of delicate, shiny surgical instruments laid out in rows. It came as quite a shock to discover that the majority of a medical examiner’s tools appeared more fitted to pruning pecan trees than to fine surgical procedures. That discovery and the rapidity of a typical post-mortem were the indelible recollections he had of that first procedure — not the offensive stenches or the gore that had been retained by the majority of his fellow probationers.
“How’s the hand, Detective Bosanquet?” the ME asked, when he finished and was peeling off his surgical gloves.
“Throbbing.”
“You were lucky. It could have been a lot worse.”
Val nodded. He had been thinking the same thing. It was part of cop folklore that a newly married officer would react differently to a threatening situation than a single officer, especially if a child was involved. He didn’t believe he would have handled the tree incident any differently if it had happened three weeks earlier. “I guess so, if losing a finger can be described as lucky.”
“I didn’t mean in that way. Valerie Duval tested negative for HIV. The incidence of AIDS amongst Haitians has reached epidemic proportions, exacerbated by the island’s extreme poverty and almost zero health education. Traces of the victim’s blood on the axe could easily have transferred to your wound.”
Val said nothing, but suddenly the throbbing did not feel so bad.
“You want the report on the Duval post?” the ME asked.
“Yeah, and I’d better take another look at the body. I’m still the primary investigating officer.”
The ME brought him through to the mortuary storage facility, located the relevant drawer and slid it out on its rollers. He took hold of the zip and pulled it open along the body bag’s full length. Val helped him ease back the plastic so he could better examine Valerie Duval’s body.
The flesh of her face had been rinsed and loosely reassembled, the eyeball inserted back in its socket. It would have been a gaunt face even before the attack; now it was concave, the cartilage and bone structure of her nasal septum having been destroyed. Val allowed his eyes to descend slowly along her body, following the mid-line of broad sutures that ran from her neck to her pubic mound. She was severely undernourished; her pelvic bones seemed to be trying to burst through her skin.
“Take a look at her hands and arms,” the ME said, extracting her right arm from the bag and rotating it. “No defense wounds. No cuts or lesions, no bruises or scratches.”
“She wasn’t expecting the attack?”
“That would be the obvious inference, though how exactly can you take someone by surprise when you re holding an axe?”
Not difficult, Val thought, if the attacker was the victim’s nine-year-old daughter.
“What about the angle of the blows? Can you tell me anything about the height of the assailant?”
The ME tucked the arm back inside the body bag. “Unfortunately not. The victim was five foot two inches tall and was struck three times from above with considerable downward force. A tall killer would have no need to raise his or her arm above shoulder height, while a short person could have inflicted the same type of injury by swinging the axe in an arc above their head. Any one of the three blows would have been sufficient to cause death.”
“Can you speculate as to the first blow?”
The ME shook his head. “That’s all it would be I’m afraid — speculation — and I’m not prepared to do that.”
Val questioned him for another quarter of an hour, but nothing of any significance came from it. He returned to his car and drove to the Irish Channel. The camping axe used in the killing had been brand new and how many camping and hardware stores could there be in that part of the city?
CHAPTER THREE
Val spent the rest of that day and the morning of the next questioning the owners and employees of stores within a ten-block radius of the Duval building. With the river to the south, it meant he had a semi-circular section of the city to cover. He worked east to west and eventually struck lucky with a camping and bait shop on Annunciation Street.
“I was meaning to ring in about it,” the manager explained. “But you know how it is. The store gets busy and you put it to the back of your mind. By the time business quietens down, it’s slipped your memory.”
“What exactly are you talking about? What slipped you memory?” Val asked patiently.
“The camping axe. I read about the Creole woman’s murder in the Times-Picayune and I said to Joe — that’s Joe Walsh, he works for me part-time, helps out at the weekends. Weekends is our busiest time, especially coming into---”
“What was it you said to Joe?”
“I told him there was a good chance that the axe was one of ours. I have a rack of them over here.”
The manager came out from behind his counter and crossed the well-stocked floor to a display of camping equipment. He lifted an axe and handed it to Val. Val didn’t fish and hadn’t been on a camping trip since he was twelve years old, but the paraphernalia to be found in stores like this had always held a fascination. He hefted the chrome axe in his hand to gauge its weight, rubbing his thumb along the rubber grip.
“Is that anything like what you’re searching for?” the manager asked.
It was a twin of the one that Marie Duval had used to sever his finger, though Val wasn’t about to confirm that just yet.
“What makes you think it was one of yours?”
The manager grinned. “A young coffee-skinned kid hoisted it from right under our noses. She walked in bold as brass, lifted it and walked straight out. I shouted for her to stop. She didn’t, and the store was full of people so I couldn’t chase after her. They do that — wait ‘til the place is busy before they do their thieving.”
“Did you get a good look at her?”
“Sure did. She must have been around nine or ten; had the face of en angel. A real cute kid.”
“Do you think you would recognize her again if you saw her?”
“Don’t know ‘bout that. Don’t know as though I would need to.”
“What do you mean?”
The manager rolled his eyes. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I have it on a security tape and was intending to phone the station. Come through to the back and I’ll show you.”
The office was a mess. Catalogues, fishing magazines and invoices were piled high on his desk. The floor was covered in cardboard boxes with lengths of fishing rods protruding from them like porcupine quills. The manager lifted a game-fishing reel off a seat and told Val to sit down while he sorted through the tapes.
He surprised Val by finding the correct one on his first attempt. He inserted it into the player and switched on. The viewing screen was mounted against the wall above a filing chest. He wound the tape on until he found the relevant section.
It was just as he had described. The store was busy as Marie Duval came in and headed straight over to the camping axes. She lifted one and made no attempt to conceal it as she hurried out the door. The faces of several customers turned towards the door, presumably in reaction to the manager’s shouted command for her to come back. Val had to take his word on that because the tape had no audio track.
The quality of the black and white picture was excellent. There was no doubt that the young thief had indeed been Marie Duval.
“Is the date on the tape correct?”
“Yeah, I always set it myself.”
Marie Duval had stolen the axe three days before the murder. Val scribbled the shop manager a receipt for the tape and drove to homicide headquarters. After Lieutenant Larson had watched the tape a couple of times, he gave him authorization to prepare an arrest warrant for Marie Duval. Murder one.
Dave Wells was the lawyer the Child Protection department had called in to act on Duval’s behalf. He was a lightly built man in his early thirties and came across as a well-intentioned and responsible member of his profession. Behind the lenses of wire-framed glasses, his eyes sparkled with intelligence and good humor. He would have great need of both in his chosen career, since much of his work involved arguing child custody cases. Cases where there were few winners. Val had caught up with him outside Duval’s room at the General and, taking him to one side, had explained what he was there to do.
“I’ve been expecting it,” Wells said, his voice full of regret.
“Has she spoken yet?”
“Not a word. She communicates with a pencil and a pad. Her spelling and grammar are below average for a nine-year-old, though her mind seems quick enough.”
“Have you questioned her?”
“Not about her mother’s death specifically. I have explained to her that I am here to represent her. She is happy for me to do so. I want to be there when you Miranda her.”
“I have no problem with that. What does the psychologist have to say?”
“Nothing much so far. She’s diagnosed temporary muteness brought on by the incident — classic post-traumatic stress syndrome. There’s been no bed-wetting, rage or breathing problems. Speech could return in a day, a month, a year. Being grilled by you is not going to help.”
“It can’t be put off any longer,” Val said, walking over to the door and reaching for the handle.
Duval was dressed in a hospital robe and was curled up in an armchair watching an episode of The Simpsons. She hadn’t heard the door opening or the footsteps as they entered the room.
Wells cleared his throat. “Marie.”
The kid turned to face them. Her eyes flicked from the lawyer to Val, then widened in alarm. She opened her mouth and screamed.
Captain Larson had one credo in life: a smart cop never takes anything for granted. Val knew it, the other homicide detectives knew it, and even the civilian clerks would have known it. The very moment you think you have an investigation down pat, it will turn around and bite you in the ass. This time it was Dave Wells doing the biting.
Duval’s piercing reaction to Val’s appearance at the hospital the afternoon before had set in motion a train of events. He was unceremoniously bundled out of her room by a couple of interns, who then sent for the pediatric resident. Val had hung around for an hour watching a series of white-coated specialists come and go, hoping that one of them would eventually permit him access to Duval. Wells was having none of it. Now knowing the seriousness of the charge, and with his client having regained her voice, he insisted on being given reasonable time to consult with her. Duval needed to be treated with understanding and consideration, Wells argued, if a further bout of speech loss was to be prevented, and he had a squad of doctors ready to back him.
Duval must have talked all night.
Captain Larson had called Val into his office early the following morning to break the news. He didn’t try to sugarcoat it.
“Wells has broached a deal with the DA’s office. His client will plead no contest to a charge of voluntary manslaughter if we drop the charge of assault against you.”
Val stared at him bug-eyed, not believing what he was hearing. Duval was prepared to admit the unlawful killing of her mother, but that it had not been murder. She would end up serving a year, maybe two, in a juvenile detention center. The assault charge on a police officer would have carried a minimum four years.
“That’s ridiculous. The DA’s office will never buy it.”
“I have a feeling they will. They’re not convinced that a grand jury would indict the child on a murder charge — not once they listen to the story Wells has come up with.”
“Let’s hear it.”
Larson pushed back in his chair. “According to a statement that the girl dictated, her mother had been initiating her as a manbo. She was confined without food for nine days and instructed in the rituals that a voodoo priestess uses to call upon the spirits. Voodoo initiation is seen as a rebirth. The neophyte dies — metaphorically — to be reborn as a permanent host for the lwa spirits. Duval’s hand was to be immersed into boiling water during the concluding ceremony. It’s known as a boule-zen. Apparently, the more severe the ordeal, the stronger the bond between the lwa and its host. The greater the manbo’s asson, or power.”
Val had heard enough. “This is bullshit. Duval wasn’t confined. We have a security tape of her stealing the axe three days before the killing.”