Professor Herrera’s face registered surprise when Jimmy Paz walked into her office. Paz flashed his warmest smile and stuck his hand out and she took it with good enough grace. In Miami, when Iago Paz is announced, you don’t normally expect a black man to walk in the door. Paz was used to it, expected it, had grown to appreciate its disconcerting aspects. He did his quick cop take of the office and its occupant. Fifteen by twelve maybe, neat, organized, with just enough room for a chrome-legged Formica-topped desk, with computer and monitor. A chair and visitor’s chair in the same style, padded with orange plastic, a credenza in cheap institutional teak veneer, and, behind the desk, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, crammed with books and green cardboard reprint boxes, the contents indicated with red label tape. On a shelf in the center of this array, some family pictures, knickknacks of various kinds, a large plaster statue of Saint Francis of Assisi, brown-cowled, holding a rosary and a dove, the base wrapped around with green and gold ribbons. One small window, protected from the merciless afternoon sunlight by drawn steel venetian blinds. On the wall, diplomas: Clemson, University of Miami. A local girl, of course. Some framed photos, too, groups of people in explorer gear standing around with people wearing less clothes, lots of green foliage as background: the typical anthropology shot; also, framed antique botanical drawings of leaves, flowers, seeds, with Latin titles, something else in a frame on the credenza behind him, looked like a rosary.
The proprietor of all this was a woman in her late thirties, with blond hair, intelligent hazel eyes, reflecting a little unease now, Paz observed, which was okay from his point of view, parchment-colored skin made matte with careful makeup. She was a little heavy for her age, although not for her culture. Behind the desk, on the wooden floor-to-ceiling bookshelf, there was a picture of her with a darkly handsome, chunky man, looking younger and thinner. She’d married, had a kid, maybe?right, there was another photo, two of them, framed in silver, this next to a couple of bright leaves embedded in a block of Lucite. Not a pretty woman, but attractive in a severe way. She wore a sheer violet-colored silk shirt with a delicate stripe in it, under the beige jacket of a suit. A little formal for the professoriate, but perhaps she was teaching a class and wanted a little formality. That would be upper-class Cuban, Paz thought, the stratum from which this woman clearly sprang. Ordinarily she would have spoken with a man from his own stratum only to point out where to plant the new hibiscus or order the Lexus serviced.
But politely, of course. Politely, then, Lydia Herrera directed Paz to the visitor’s chair, offered coffee (declined), asked, “So, Mr. Paz, I understand Al Manes gave you my name. I assume this is about some plant?”
“Yeah, he said you were a pretty good ethnobotanist.”
“I am.” No false modesty for Lydia. “And you’re with …?”
Paz held up his ID and shield. “Miami police,” he said, and watched her carefully plucked arcs of eyebrow rise.
“And why does the Miami police need an ethnobotanist?”
Paz took Schrebera golungensis in its bag from his jacket pocket and placed it before her. “We thought you might be able to tell us what that thing is used for.”
Herrera picked it up. “Can I take it out of the bag?”
“Be my guest.”
She examined it, replaced it, handed the bag back to Paz. “It’s part of an opele.”
Paz consulted his notebook. “Yeah, that’s what Dr. Manes said, but what is it used for?”
“No, I mean, opele the thing, not opele the name of the nut. It’s part of an Ifa divining chain, an opele, also called an ekwele. It’s used to divine the future in Santeria and other West African-derived cults. Didn’t you ever see one?” The tone was slightly mocking. Of course a black Cuban ought to know everything there was to know about Santeria. That’s what they were for.
“No,” said Paz, coldly. “Do you have one?”
She was smiling. “As a matter of fact, I do. Over there on the credenza.” She pointed with a red-lacquered fingernail. He got up and looked. Not a rosary after all. The large black frame sat on a little stand, and in it, displayed against black velvet, like a diamond necklace, was a shiny brass chain about three feet long. Strung into the chain at widely spaced, even intervals, were eight pieces of thin tortoiseshell, gently curved. From the two terminal shells depended short cords, ending in cowries. Each tortoiseshell piece was carved into a tapering pear shape, with a ridge down the center of the concave side.
“That one’s from Cuba, mid-nineteenth century,” Herrera said. “You notice how the shell is carved?”
“Yeah, it’s sort of like the nut there.”
“Right. What you just showed me is the original. The craftsman who carved that one probably never saw a real opele nut, but the memory survived. Interesting.”
“Yeah.” Paz pulled his eyes away from the frame and faced Herrera again. “How does it work?”
“It’s a machine for generating a number. You don’t know anything about Ifa divination?”
Again the surprised, slightly mocking tone. Paz said, “No, but perhaps you would be good enough to instruct me, Dr. Herrera,” in the flattest voice he could generate. He was very close to breaking one of Barlow’s rules: anybody got something you need to know about is your best friend.
Dr. Herrera’s smile widened. Dimples appeared on her plump cheeks. Teaching Santeria to an Afro-Cuban! She would dine out on this one for months.
“All right, Detective. Ifa is the orisha, the demigod, of prophecy among the Yoruba and related peoples of West Africa. The opele is one method that the babalawo, the diviner, uses to consult the god. There are others, involving the number of palm nuts or cowries grasped in the hand. The purpose of both methods, as I mentioned, is to generate a number. As you can see, there are two possible ways for each of eight indicators to fall, and therefore there are sixteen basic figures that can form at each throw. The diviner marks a single line where a shell or nut has fallen concave side up, and a double line where one has fallen concave side down. The lines are drawn in two columns of four. In Africa the babalawo uses a shallow box full of fine wood powder to make the marks, but here they just use pencil and paper. Okay, so you end up with two columns of four marks each, single or double lines, I mean, for every throw, but it matters which column a particular marking is in, so you have to take account of the mirror images too. Are you following this?”
Paz said, “Yes, Doctor. If you include all the reverse combinations then the total number of combinations is sixteen times sixteen, or two hundred fifty-six. What happens when you get the number?” Remarkable, the nigger can do math in his head, Paz figured she was thinking. Guzana. Maggot.
“Yes, well,” said Dr. Herrera, deflated, “each number they generate relates to a particular memorized verse. The babalawo recites the verse, or more commonly, he just references it and interprets it to answer the client’s question. The information is assumed to come from the orisha, who influences the fall of the shells. This is Ifa, by the way.” She pointed to the statue on the bookshelf. “In Santeria, known as Orula or Orunmila. The Yoruba slaves who brought Ifa divination to Cuba and into Santeria thought that Saint Francis’s rosary looked like an opele and so they made the identification. The other santos or orishas in Santeria have similar histories. Eleggua, for example, is Anthony of Padua, Shango is Saint Barbara, because …”
“Right, got that. What I’d like to know is if any drugs are used in the divining ceremony, either by the diviner or the client.”
This was abrupt, peremptory. The professor did not like it. Not smiling now, she answered, “You mean intoxicating drugs? Well, rum is involved, but only sacramentally.”
“Not rum. I mean narcotics, something that would cause unconsciousness, like that.”
“No, not that I’ve ever heard. Of course, I’m not an expert.”
“No? You sounded like one a minute ago.” It was his turn to be a little tormenting.
She glanced briefly at the diploma wall. “I did my B.A. here at Miami. It comes with the territory?Santeria, I mean. Also being a Cuban …”
“But you’re not a participant.”
“No.”
“As an anthropologist, then, you know something about the rituals, what they do.”
“Some, but I don’t practice as an anthropologist. I’m an ethnobotanist. It’s a different specialty. Detective, maybe you should tell me what all this is about. The opele nut’s connected with some crime?”
“It’s evidence in a homicide case,” said Paz, shortly. “Are there, let’s say, sacrifices associated with this kind of divination?”
“Sacrifices? Well, many of the verses suggest sacrifices, but that usually means a tip to the diviner. Two chickens and ten dollars, that sort of thing.”
“I was thinking more of actual sacrifices. Killing things, right there, maybe before the ritual.”
“Not that I’ve heard of, but, as I said …”
“Yeah, right, you’re not an expert. Who would be?”
“In Santeria? Well, you have an embarrassment of riches here in Miami. On the faculty, Maria Salazar wrote the book on it.” Dr. Herrera reached to the bookshelf behind her, pulled down a thick volume, and handed it to Paz. Its title was simply Santeria. The dust jacket was red and had a picture of two red-and-yellow-painted wooden axes crossed and lying on top of an ornate covered urn. He flipped the book over. The author’s photograph showed a small elderly woman with fine features, her eyes large and deeply shadowed, her hair a halo of white frizz. She was sitting on a stone bench in a garden in front of a live oak covered with epiphytes.
He inscribed the name in his notebook. “Is she around?”
“From time to time. She’s semiretired now. Works mostly out of her home. You’d have to call her. You might also want to talk to Pedro Ortiz.”
Paz wrote this name down too. “And he is …”
“He’s a babalawo, ” said Dr. Herrera, smiling again, into his eyes. “He’s considered the best babalawo in Miami.”
He returned her look and he had to concentrate on keeping his expression neutral. He knew he had a problem with Cubans of this class, and he worked at it, on his cool. Coolly, then, he asked, “So anyway, you’re not a devotee yourself? You don’t believe in this …?” He left the word hanging. It could have been “crap,” or something more respectful.
“I’m a scientist. Santeria uses a lot of herbs, and that’s my business, to identify pharmacologically interesting folk medicines. As for the rest, the divination, the orishas … let’s just say that for a certain social class it provides a relatively inexpensive form of therapy and psychological security. If a bunch of uneducated people want to believe that they can call gods down to earth and interest them in Aunt Emilia’s bronchitis and Uncle Augusto’s sandwich shop, then who am I to say no?” Meaning, people like you.
Paz stood and put his notebook away. “Thank you very much, Dr. Herrera,” he said. “You’ve been very helpful.” He walked out, with the patronizing smile burning on his back.
Back in his car, with the A/C roaring, Paz called the university locator number and demanded, with the authority of the police, the home address and phone number of Dr. Maria Salazar. The operator hesitated, he bullied, she gave in. A Coral Gables address. But he did not wish to have another interview with another upper-class Cuban lady just yet, although he did not bring this reluctance fully to mind. Instead, he imagined a more important appointment. He called Barlow, got the beeper, left a message. He sat in the car, burned gas to make cool air, watched the fountain play on Lake Osceola, watched the students stroll languorously in and out of the cafeteria, the bookstore, the immense outdoor swimming pool. There was not much evidence of heavy intellectual activity to be observed. Most of the students were dressed as for a day at the beach. A young man walked by the car, stooped over, taking tiny steps. Paz craned his neck and saw that he was following a toddler, a little goldenheaded boy. The kid started toward the roadway, and the father scooped his son up in his arms, embraced him, tickled him until the child crowed with delight. Paz turned his face away, and did not feel what most normal people feel when they see paternal love. His stomach tightened and he took several deep breaths.
Paz refocused his attention, and did some light ogling of the undergraduate girls gliding by. Suntan U. He was not a big fan of the suntan. He preferred wiry women with red hair or blond hair, milky, silky skin and pale eyes, a cliche, he well knew, but there it was. Exogamous, a word he enjoyed. Either like Mom, or not like Mom, one of his girlfriends, a sociologist, had said of male tastes in women. Paz had at the moment three girlfriends in the steady-squeeze category: that sociologist, a child psychologist, and a poet working as a library clerk. He had always had several relationships going on, never more than four, never less than two. Women drifted in and out of this skein at their will. He did not press them to stay, nor did he insist on an exclusivity he was not ready to submit to himself. He was frank with them all about this arrangement, and was rather proud of himself that he never (or almost never) lied to get laid.
His cell phone rang: Barlow. Paz learned that the autopsy was done and also that Barlow had rammed the toxicity screens through as well, which was remarkable. Barlow said, “Yeah, I pushed them boys some. I figured it was going to be worth it.”
“Was it?”
“Un-huh, I guess so.” This was Barlow-talk for spectacular revelation.
“What?”
“Not on the line. I reckon y’all ought to get back here, though.”
Homicide is on the fifth floor of the Miami PD fortress, a small suite of modern rooms accessible via a card-eating lock. Only homicide detectives have cards. Inside there is industrial carpeting and a bay with steel desks at which the worker bees sit, and there are private offices for the brass, the captain in charge of the unit and the shift lieutenants. No one was in the bay when Paz walked in but Barlow and the two secretaries.
Barlow nodded to Paz and pointed at a thick manila folder sitting on the corner of his desk. Barlow always had the neatest desk in the bay. It was devoid of decoration, unlike those of the other homicide cops, nor did Barlow have little yellow Post-it notes stuck all over his desk surface and lamp. Barlow kept everything in his head, said the legend, or under lock and key.
Paz went back to his own desk and read the medical examiner’s report. First surprise: Deandra Wallace had not died of massive exsanguination resulting from the butchery that had been done on her. Her heart had ceased beating before blood loss would have stopped it. The baby, called Baby Boy Wallace in the report, had been withdrawn alive and operated upon shortly thereafter. The cuts on both mother and infant had been precise, with no hesitation marks observed. Tissue had been removed?here followed a short list?from the heart, liver, and spleen of the mother, and from the heart and brain of the infant. Unlike the mother, the infant had expired from its wounds. The instrument used had been extremely sharp, a short, wide, curved blade, much larger than a surgical scalpel, but smaller than a typical hunting knife. Both mother and infant had been healthy before the events under consideration. The infant was full term and?here another interesting surprise?labor had begun just before death intervened.
Next, the toxicology report. List of organs examined. Findings: negative for a whole list of recreational drugs, including alcohol and nicotine. Positive for: here followed a list of substances Paz had never heard of: tetrahydroharmaline, ibogaine, yohimbine, ouabane, 6-methoxytetrahydroharman, tetrahydra-?-carboline, 6-methoxyharmalan, plus “several alkaloids of undetermined structure” for which the chemical formulas were given. He sighed, went over to Barlow’s desk.
“Any thoughts?”
“None worth a dern until we find out more about what was in that poor girl’s body. I can’t hardly get to the end of some of them words, and I’m a high-school graduate. You have any luck?”
“Some,” said Paz, and related the results of his recent visits to the two scientists.
After a pause, Barlow said, “Well. I figured all that’d be something y’all’d know about.”
“Oh, come on, Cletis! Why, because I’m Cuban? Where do your people come from? England, way back there, right? You know a lot about Stonehenge? We get some druid dancing around town whacking people with a flint dagger, you’re gonna be all over his butt.”
“Y’all a lot fresher off the boat than that.”
Paz rolled his eyes. “Look: you know my mom, right?”
“I do. A fine Christian woman.”
“Uh-huh. Not your brand of Christian, but yeah. Think about it. You think my mom would give the time of day to that kind of sh … cow patty? As far as she’s concerned, Cuba is the Spanish language and food, period. That’s how I was raised. I know as much about Santeria as you know about European satanism.”
“Still. Somebody got to talk Spanish to a bunch of witch doctors …”
“Santeros.”
“See? Y’all’s the expert.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake! Cut it out!”
Ordinarily, Paz did not mind this sort of teasing from Barlow. But Dr. Herrera had gotten under his skin, the incurable wound prickled, or maybe it was that this case was turning in directions he did not like. The notion that he was going to be some kind of ethnic front man exploring mambo babalou-ay-yay penetrated the armor, as no amount of teasing could. Did Barlow know this? No, Paz was not going to pursue this line.
“What did the tox guy make of all this stuff?” he asked, waving the report.
“Oh, well, they had all the books out, jabbering like a bunch of monkeys. It was hard to get a straight answer out of them, or anyhow, one I could understand, being a country boy. Your ethnowhatdyacallit lady’d probably know. What I got out of it was a bunch of plant poisons. That one with the jawbreaker name’s a hallucinogen, and the others are too, mostly. Plus a narcotic. She might’ve thought she was at the junior prom while he was cutting her.”
“What about cause of death? One of the drugs?”
“Not that they could tell,” Barlow replied, “but like it says there, they found stuff they never seen before. Could’ve stopped her heart with them, or it could’ve been the shock, but her heart was full of blood when it turned off.”
“Well, I’ll go back and show this to Herrera,” said Paz valiantly, suppressing the repugnance, “and see if she can match these chemicals up with some plants. Meanwhile, we should go have a talk with Youghans. Maybe we’ll wrap it up with him.”
Barlow gave him a sidelong look. “What, you think a homeboy trucker could come up with a bunch a poisons nobody ever heard of?”
“Heck, he don’t have to be a pharmacologist. There’s two hundred herb joints in this town. He could’ve just walked into one with a stack of cash and said, ‘Hey, I’ll take a pound of the worst knockout stuff you got.’ “
“Read it again.”
“Read what?”
“That report. No drugs in the stomach contents. Found ‘em in her liver and her brain and lungs. Probable route of entry lungs and skin.”
Paz cursed himself. He was usually careful with reports, and he prided himself on being the more literate member of the team. Florida education had not been up to much when Barlow finished high school, and the man had trouble with reports. On the other hand, Barlow kept a lot close to his vest, so maybe that was an act, too, like the cracker slowness.
“Oh, so he burned some stuff and she breathed it,” snapped Paz. “What does it matter?”
“Him wearing his gas mask while he done it. And it all matters, Jimmy, every little thing.” He got up and walked toward the door. “Let’s see him and ask him how he done it. Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in. Luke 13:23.”
Julius Youghans lived in a frame house on one of the better streets in Overtown. It had trees, now dripping from the recent rain, and the lawns were cut and watered and the newish large cars parked out in front, Caddys and Chryslers and giant SUVs, indicated that the people in the houses had jobs and could probably have afforded better housing had they not been black and dwelling in one of the most viciously segregated and redlined housing markets in the United States. A lot of the houses had bars on the windows. Mr. Youghans’s did not. When the two cops got out of their car a dog started to bark somewhere in the back and did not cease barking during the time they remained. Cheaper and better than bars, a bad dog.
Push the front doorbell. They heard it ringing in the house. There was a late-model red Dodge Ram pickup in the driveway, rain-speckled and steaming vapors in the returned sunlight. The two cops exchanged a look. Barlow pushed the bell again and Paz went down the driveway around the side of the house. The dog was a pit bull, white with a big black spot over one side of his head. It was leaping up and down like a toy in a nightmare, crashing against the chain-link fence that confined it to the backyard, spraying slaver past its bared fangs. Paz ignored it and stood on tiptoe to look through the window. A kitchen. Crusted dishes in the sink, a single twelve-ounce can of malt liquor on the table still wearing six-pack plastic rings in memory of its vanished brothers. He went back to the front of the house.
“Checked the back door, did you?” asked Barlow.
“No, I’d thought you’d want to do that, Cletis. You’re the one with the special gift for animals.”
” ‘Fraid of a little old dog, huh?”
“Yes, I am. So. Julius must be a heavy sleeper, you think?”
“That, or he could be in some trouble,” said Barlow, withdrawing a set of picks wrapped in soft leather from his breast pocket. “Maybe fell out of bed and bust his hip. I believe it’s our Christian duty to try and help him if we can.”
The door opened on a living room, which was furnished with the sort of heavy furniture, cheaply made but expensive to buy, available in local marts. Youghans had gone for the red velvet and, his lust for velvet unslaked, had sought it as the matrix for the paintings hanging on the walls: African beauties in undress, a Zulu with spear and shield, and Jesus preaching were the themes. Some care and expense had been taken with the decoration, but the room had a neglected air. There were dust bunnies in the corners and cobwebs on the ceiling. A bottle of expensive cognac, empty, stood on a coffee table with a couple of dirty glasses. Picture: a man with some disposable income, proud, but recently distracted. The walls of the hall they entered next were hung with several examples of the same sort of wooden Africana they had found in the dead woman’s apartment, of a somewhat better quality, real ebony rather than stained softwood. Kitchen to the right, two doors to the left: bathroom, a small bedroom clearly used as an office, and at the end of the hall a closed door through which issued interesting sounds: bouncing bedsprings, squeals in a high register and groans in a low one.
In a loud, stagy voice, Barlow said, “They must be having church in there, Jimmy, that sister calling on the Lord like that. What do you think?”
“I would have to disagree with you there,” said Paz in a similar false bellow. “I believe we’re listening to the sounds of fornication.”
The sounds ceased.
“That’s hard to believe,” said Barlow, and, in a good parody of himself as a peckerwood preacher, continued, “What kind of low, no-count, scoundrelly hound would be fornicating when the mother of his child just been murdered and is lying all cut to pieces in the morgue? Why, no self-respecting woman would truck with a man like that. A man like that would have to turn to the skankiest, drugged-outest, most disease-infested, ugliest whore in town, and serve him right. Evil man: Cursed shalt thou be in the city and cursed shalt thou be in the field. Deuteronomy 28:16.”
Within, sounds of argument, heating up. The door swung open and out popped a girl in her midteens, plump, brown, and spitting angry, wrapped in a sheet, and carrying an armful of clothes. She pushed past the two detectives, went into the bathroom, and slammed the door. They stood in the bedroom doorway.
“Who the fuck are you and what the fuck are you doing in my house?” yelled the man on the bed.
Youghans was a solidly built redbone man in his early forties with a wide brush mustache and thinning hair, thick gold chains at neck and wrist, and a face full of dull sensuality, upon which now bloomed a scowl of frustrated rage. He sat up on the edge of his bed, his loins covered by a scant drape of blue chenille.
After showing their badges and telling him to get dressed, they left the room, and while they waited, they looked around, so that anything in plain sight that might suggest a violation of the law might fall under their eye. They even nudged a few objects into plain sight for that purpose.
“Take a look at this, Cletis.” It had been in plain sight, leaning against a pile of magazines devoted to either sex or autos that sat on one of the side tables in the living room. Barlow pursed his lips, but said nothing. Paz stripped an evidence bag from a roll in his jacket pocket and put the thing in it. He was smiling.
They got the girl’s name before she slammed out. Youghans shuffled into the kitchen some minutes later, dressed in greasy Bermudas and a red tank top. He grabbed and popped the tallboy can of malt liquor, drank half of it, belched, and said, “You boys picked a hell of a time to crash in here. Little bitch was polishing my pole, man, tight as a three-dollar shoe, mmm-mm! Shit, I was two minutes from getting my nut …” He rubbed his crotch mournfully. “This is about Deandra, right? Yeah, I heard she got killed. Fucking building she was in, I told her to move out of there, but she was the stubbornist bitch alive, ‘bout that and every other goddamn thing else.”
“When was the last time you saw her, sir?” asked Barlow.
Youghans scratched his head. “What is this, Monday? Must’ve been Saturday night.”
“She was okay when you left her, was she?”
“Sure, running her mouth like always. I’ll tell you, because you’re probably gonna hear it in the ‘hood, we did have us some words, shouting and all.”
“What did you fight about?” Paz asked.
“Oh, this hoodoo shit she was into. Hey, I got no problem with mother Africa dah-dah-de-dah, I got my kente cloth and all that, stuff on the walls, okay, but she had this mojo man coming round …” He finished his can in three great swallows. “Okay, first thing, right away, I don’t appreciate that, I mean him coming round. I mean, am I the man or ain’t I? Two, that nigger messing with her head, you know what I mean? Can’t eat this, can’t drink that, quit smoking, take this herb, that herb. Even told her when she could fuck. Shit! So I told her, you know, girl, get real! I told her I didn’t want her to see him no more and she threw a shit fit. She said he was this great man, dah-de-dah-dah. Because he give her a number that hit and she bought the fuckin’ store out. Like I didn’t never give her nothing. She said he was going to make her baby this big deal, used a lot of bullshit African words … I lost it, you know? Dumb-ass bitch!”
“You smack her around any?” Paz asked.
“Yeah, I popped her a couple, just before I bugged out of there. Nothing heavy, and I tossed some of her hoodoo crap out the goddamn window.”
A look between the two cops. Paz said, “Oh, yeah? Like what?”
“Some fucking statue, a little basket full of weeds and shit. Some kind of chain, with, like, big nuts strung along it. Tell the truth I was drunk. I wanted a little piece of ass and no horseshit about the great Wandingo …”
“That his name, this guy?” asked Barlow.
“Nah, it’s something else, em, something. Mepetene, something like that. Tell you the truth I didn’t pay none of that no attention.”
“You ever see him?”
“I had he would’ve needed a new face. But, no. And I tried, man. She told me he was gonna come one night, oh, couple weeks back, and I hung around outside her crib, maybe five, six hours, but the nigger didn’t show. Then, a couple days later, she tells me, oh, he was there. What, the motherfucker flew in the window? Only two stairs leading up to that crib and I was watching both of them. Telling lies like that, trying to impress me, fucker can go through walls. I tell you, man, I’m sorry the little bitch dead, but, you know, you fuck with the bull, you get the horns.”
“Sir, are you trying to tell us you think this hoodoo man killed Miss Wallace?” Barlow asked.
“Well, shit! Who the fuck else want to do something like that?”
“Like what, Mr. Youghans?” asked Paz gently.
“Oh, you know, slice her up like they done.”
“How did you know that, sir?” More gently still.
“Shit, her brother called me up and told me. Cursed me out, too, the lame little motherfucker. Blame me for it. Me? Shit!”
“So where were you between, say, eleven Saturday night and two Sunday morning?” asked Barlow.
In bed, was the answer, unusually as it turned out, alone but for the crotch magazines, and so they all went downtown, with Paz’s heart singing tra-la-la, because this was going to be a grounder after all.
When he had Youghans in the little room, with Barlow looking on silently, Paz did the usual act, kicking chairs. You piece of shit, Youghans, you were drunk. You were pissed off. You had a fight. You admitted that. And then it went too far?you stuck her, and then you got scared, and you started thinking. You cut her up. You made it look weird, like some loony did it. And you made it all up, didn’t you, the hoodoo man. And what about this?
Paz stuck it in front of Youghans’s face, the thing he had found in the apartment. A framed picture of Youghans and an unpregnant Deandra Wallace in happier days, the glass covered with little brown spatters.
“You took this out of there after you killed her. You didn’t want anyone to think about you, did you? That’s blood, Youghans. Her blood. That you put there when you cut her open. You bastard!” He leaped across the table at Youghans and grabbed a handful of shirt, shook the man and screamed into his face. Then he allowed Barlow to pull him off, as per script, and toss him out of the interview room, with appalled commentary.
Paz got a cup of coffee and strolled back to where a one-way window gave on the room, hooked a chair with his foot, and sat down to watch Barlow work. Barlow was the best good cop in the business, and seemed particularly effective with black and Hispanic suspects. They seemed grateful that a fellow who looked and sounded like the Grand Kleagle was as calm and considerate as a social worker on quaaludes. Paz watched the action, without flipping the switch to bring sound across the thick glass. It was more restful that way and he got to concentrate on the body language. He couldn’t see Barlow’s face, only the hunch of his back as he leaned over the table. He could see Youghans’s face, though, as it went through a series of transformations. Anger first, the brows knotted, the mouth gaping to shout, then confusion, the eyes wide and staring, the mouth slack, and then the collapse?tears, a rictus of sorrow, sobbing, and the hands brought up in shame, the head drooping. Paz looked at his watch. A little under forty minutes, not a bad time, even for Barlow.
Paz got a pad and pen from his desk and went to the interview room. Barlow met him at the door.
Paz said, “He looks ready to write.”
“Let’s leave him be for a while, Jimmy.”
“Don’t you want to get the confession while he’s in the mood?”
“No confession. You know he didn’t do that girl.”
“What! For Christ’s sake, Cletis … sorry. Then what the … what were you doing in there all this time?”
“I was helping a soul to Jesus. A man can’t live the way that man’s been living without its eating away at him. He really cared for that girl, you know. I just helped him to see that and see that what he was doing, the fornicating, the drinking, well, that was just a way of trying to forget what-all’d happened to her, and that maybe part of it was his fault, taking advantage of her, pulling her away from the church so she was bait for that devil.”
“Jesus Christ! What’re you talking about? He had the damn picture with her blood on it.”
Barlow’s eyes, the color of an inch of water in a tin pail, turned sharply colder.
“Jimmy, I’ll thank you not to take our Lord’s name in vain.”
“Sorry, but … I thought … I thought we had him.”
“I know you did, and I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that’s not our man. You know that in your heart, now, don’t you?”
Paz took a quick step away, kicked the baseboard hard, and cursed to himself in Spanish. Of course he did, and he knew why he’d concocted what now seemed like an absurd case against that pathetic lowlife.
He breathed deeply for a moment, facing the wall, head drooped. Then he turned around. “Yeah, right. All right.”
Barlow strolled back to his desk and sat in his chair, Paz trailing along after him, and then resumed as if nothing had happened. “But we know a couple more things about our fella. One, he thinks he’s real clever. He went around back under Deandra’s window and picked up all his Africa things, ‘cause we sure didn’t find any when we looked. He walked into that living room with a handful of blood and sprayed it on the wall, and then he took Youghans’s picture off the wall and walked into Youghans’s place, where he knew we’d find it. A frame.”
“So to speak. What’s the other thing?”
“Oh, just something funny. He said that little thing he was with when we showed up, she came over about noon today. He says he was in his place all morning, with the doors locked and that dog in the yard. Now, he also says that picture wasn’t there when he went to bed last night and it wasn’t there when he let his honey in. And between then and when we showed up, the dog didn’t make a sound.”
“So how did the picture get there?”
Barlow gave him a long, considering look. “Uh-hn, that’s the right question. How did it?”
“Somebody the dog knew and wouldn’t bark at,” Paz suggested.
“Possible, but not likely. Man says the dog barks at leaves falling down from the trees. Barks at the man’s momma. Barked when the girlfriend came.”
Barlow grimaced, showing a mouthful of crooked, yellowing, rural-bad-dental-care-type teeth. He rubbed his face vigorously. Paz thought of a big yellow dog shaking itself.
“What, Cletis? Tell me,” Paz said when he couldn’t stand it anymore.
“When you’re in the church,” said Barlow, “when you’re a churchgoing person, a believer, you believe in things you can’t see. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. Corinthians 2:9.”
Paz resisted the impulse to shove and needle. This had happened before, between them, it was part of Cletis’s thing, and Paz had seen the older man crack cases in this way.
“I’ve seen miracles,” Barlow continued. “I know you don’t believe me, but that don’t matter. I know what my eyes have seen. It was … two times in my life it was given to me to see glory, praise Jesus. Now, the devil can’t do miracles, can he?”
Barlow was looking at him differently. It was not a rhetorical question. Paz gave it serious thought. “Why can’t he? If you believe the movies, devils can do all kinds of weird stuff. I mean, he wouldn’t be much of a devil if he couldn’t, like, give you money, or make you terrific looking.”
“You believe that, do you?”
“No, I don’t believe it,” said Paz, exasperated now. “I’m just saying, if you give me that there’s a devil, then it follows that he’s got magic powers. Logically.”
Barlow scratched behind his ear. “Logically, eh? Tell me this, then: Exodus 7:10. Aaron casts his rod upon the ground and it becomes a serpent. And Pharaoh calls in his sorcerers and magicians of Egypt and they do the same thing, their rods become serpents, too. So, do you think they were the same kind of snakes?”
“I don’t know, Cletis. It wasn’t my case.”
Barlow ignored this. “They were not the same, no sir! The Lord caused Aaron’s rod to become a real snake, but the magician’s rods stayed plain old rods. They just made everyone think they were snakes. You see the difference?”
“Uh-huh. God makes real miracles, but the devil just tricks us.” Paz said this like a bored schoolboy in a catechism class. The payoff was not too distant.
“That’s right. The devil can’t do miracles, ‘cause he’s got no power of creation. Only the Lord has power of creation. The Lord can send an angel through walls, through the roof, anywhere he likes, but the devil’s got to use the door. The only power the devil’s got is what we give him, all he’s got is power over whatsoever mind that is not turned to the Kingdom, which is you and me, son. And all the other poor sinners out there. The devil can twist your mind into a knot. That’s who we need to look for.”
“Who? The devil? Okay, I figure our perp for around eight foot six, red complexion, wears a little beard, distinguishing marks?horns, tail, little hooves. I’ll get that right out on the wires. He shouldn’t be hard to spot.”
Barlow waggled a finger. “Don’t mock, Jimmy,” he said quietly. “I know you like to, but you can’t do it around this here case. It ain’t good for your health.”
“What’re you saying? Cut to the chase, here.”
“I’m saying look at the facts. A girl killed and cut up, and not just a girl, a girl about to have a baby. The baby’s cut up too. Not just cut up in a crazy way, neither, cut up just so, in a ritual way. Two, she let whoever did it do it without fighting any, that we could see.”
“But she was drugged.”
“There was chemicals in her body, but she didn’t take them through her mouth. They just got there and we don’t know how, and right now we don’t know what they do. For all we know, they might’ve made her wide awake, and she just told him to go ahead.”
“That’s nuts.”
“Uh-huh. To us, but you been in the police long enough to know people do all kinds of awful stuff to themselves and other folks, stuff that seems just fine at the time. Something gets in ‘em, and then later, that’s just what they say. You heard it yourself about four hundred times. I don’t know what got into me.”
“That’s a figure of speech.”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t always just a figure of speech. Not back in Bible times, it wasn’t. Our Lord was always casting devils out of folks. And maybe not even now, when you come to think on it. Then we got the other fact, that this fella seems to go where he wants to, and no one sees him, not even dogs. It takes some doing to get past a dog.” He fixed Paz with his eye and said, matter-of-factly, “I guess, when you put that together we’re looking for someone with demonic powers, God help us.”
Paz goggled for a moment and then felt a flash of raw anger. There wasn’t going to a be a brilliant payoff after all. With some force, he said, “Oh, for crying out loud! Look, we have exactly one informant for all this, and he might’ve been half in the bag at the time when. I’ll tell you what the real facts are. We got a perp did a killing, and he dressed it up with all kinds of African hoodoo. Is he wacko? I’ll give you that. Is he some kind of spook with weird mystic powers? No, he’s not. No offense, but that kind of stuff isn’t real, not anymore it isn’t. You want to believe it happened back in Bible times, hey, I respect your beliefs, but this is now, and we’re looking for a regular guy, a regular homicidal maniac, not the spawn of Satan. Talk about something getting into people?what’s got into you? I mean, unless you’re pulling my leg …”
Barlow nodded calmly as Paz rapped this out, and said, “No, I was never more serious in my life.” He sighed heavily and stood up. “Well, we’ll see, won’t we? For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. First Corinthians 3:19.” He patted Paz absently on the arm. “You’ll want to write up your report. Just put in the facts, for now.”