There was one way to find out. Val reached out a hand
and grasped the telephone wire. He yanked on it and the telephone slid off its
table and clattered onto the floor.
Gold Tooth burst out of the kitchen at full pelt. His
first shot shredded the back of the couch, his second blew the telephone into
bits.
Val fired once and caught Gold Tooth high in the left
shoulder. He stumbled and crashed against the dresser, sending the stack of
National
Geographic
magazines sprawling across the floor. Val emerged
cautiously from behind the couch. Gold Tooth was already up on his knees, one
arm hanging uselessly at his side, staring defiantly at Val and trying to rack
the shotgun with his one good hand. Val shot him again. A spurt of blood burst
from the right side of Gold Tooth’s chest. His fingers opened and the shotgun
dropped to the floor.
Moving slowly, the revolver held firmly in both hands,
Val approached the kneeling man. He bent down, picked up the shotgun and threw
it out the door.
“What’s your name,” he asked.
Gold Tooth swayed slightly but said nothing.
“Tell me who sent you after Jackson and I’ll use my
cell phone to call the paramedics? You might make it.”
“Fuck you!”
Val cocked the revolver and touched it to Gold Tooth’s
temple. His knuckle whitened as he applied pressure on the trigger.
“
M’fin
mouri
,” Gold Tooth whispered and
collapsed to the floor.
Val reluctantly eased off the pressure.
He checked for a pulse and lifted an eyelid. Gold
Tooth’s prediction was wrong; he was still hanging in there. He retrieved his
cell phone from the camera case and put a call in to the emergency services.
After he was finished talking, Val remained rock still
for a few moments, letting the final traces of cordite dissipate. A few ounces
of pressure on the trigger was all that had stood between him and the
fulfillment of the destiny which haunted him. What sort of monster had he
become?
His eyes slowly circled the room. Three people had
died in this room within a short space of time. Two of them because they had a
parent’s natural desire to protect their only child. He owed them some respect
for that, but it wouldn’t stop him searching them or their place before the
police arrived.
The bedrooms were first. He was hoping to find a
change of clothes for Donny or something that would tell him that at least he
had been on the right track. The closets were crammed with the cast-off
clothing. Donny’s parents were frugal people who appreciated the value of a
dollar. He found nothing in either bedroom. Next stop was the living room and
he spent some time going through the telephone numbers they kept in a pad on
the table beside their phone. None of them jumped off the page at him. There
was no point pocketing it, because the sheriff would be sure to relieve him of
it.
He discovered a 2x2 photograph in Roy Jackson’s
trouser pocket, in the crease of five folded ten-dollar bills held in a silver
money clip. The picture had been taken from some distance and without the
benefit of a telephoto lens, but even so both the subject and background were
discernible: Marie Duval on the sidewalk outside the restaurant where she had
worked part-time. He tucked the picture into the wallet that held his shield
and replaced the wallet in Mrs Jackson’s apron just as he heard the first
siren.
The parish sheriff was proud to be an elected
official. He was a sixty-five-year-old, two hundred and seventy pound, former
gas-station franchisee who had known the Jacksons all his life. He had attended
the same high school as Rita Jackson, or Rita Kellerman as she had been then.
He sat on the tailgate of his 4x4, a plaited straw hat
pushed back high on his head, and listened to Val’s story without interruption.
One of his deputies had already ridden off in an ambulance with Gold Tooth.
It was obvious to Val from the order and
perceptiveness of his probing questions that the man didn’t take the
responsibilities of his office lightly. It was, he told him right off, the
biggest body-count homicide he had had to deal with in his fifteen years as
sheriff, and he wasn’t about to take any short-cuts in his investigation.
He knew all about Donny.
“The New Orleans PD contacted my office and requested
I watch out for him. They didn’t say anything about sending a detective down.”
“I’m a campus cop, but I used to work homicide. Call
Chief of Detectives Paul Larson at First District Homicide. He’ll vouch for
me,” Val said, not at all sure that he would. Coming within a hair of blowing
away the prime suspect in a New Orleans murder hunt was not the way to
ingratiate yourself with Larson.
“All in good time. I’m not through asking questions.
Neither of the Haitians was carrying ID. Don’t suppose you can help me out with
a couple of names?”
“Afraid not. They left their car in town, maybe if you
locate it, there’ll be something to help you get a fix on them.”
“Any idea why they didn’t kill you?”
“I can’t account for it.”
To the sheriff’s way of thinking, two elderly,
God-fearing people had been murdered in his parish, which was a tragedy but not
one that he could reverse. The fact that one of the scumbags responsible was
dead and the other in custody was right and proper and went a long way to
balance things. But not all the way.
“Ain’t a campus cop just some sort of glorified
security guard? What gives you the right to come snooping around my parish
without so much as a by your leave? There’s only one man has jurisdiction
around these parts and that’s me!”
Val tried to appear suitably chastened. “I thought it
would be a routine stakeout. There was no point troubling you unless Donny
Jackson showed up
.
I had no way of
knowing it was going to explode in my face.”
“That may be so son, but you’ll be riding back to town
with me and cooling your heels in my office until I’m satisfied that your
version of events checks out. That could take a while.”
“How long?” Val asked irritably. “I have a lot of
questions I want to put to Gold Tooth.”
“You can forget all about doing that. If he lives —
and the paramedics aren’t taking any bets that he will — the only person doing
any talking with him will be me.”
Val knew it would pointless to argue. There was no way
the sheriff was going to bend the rules for him.
“When will I be free to leave?”
The sheriff mopped his forehead with a white
handkerchief. “What’s your goddamn hurry? The buddies of those two Haitian
goons will find you soon enough”
The nearest crime scene team that the sheriff could
call on was based in Morgan City. They made it to St Francis at midday and
started work on the Jackson house soon after. The sheriff went with them and
left Val in the supervision of a deputy for most of the afternoon. Val typed
and signed a statement setting out the sequence of events. It must have tallied
with the crime scene officer’s preliminary report, because shortly before six
o’clock he was free to leave.
“You’ll be notified about the date of the inquest,”
the sheriff said as he walked him to his car, still parked in the boarding
house lot. He handed over the binoculars and the camera case with Val’s shield
and cell phone. “One of the crime scene officers mentioned that the revolver
was cocked when he examined it, but that the last chamber was empty.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Rita was like the rest of her family. They all knew
how to handle a gun. She would have kept the hammer down on an empty chamber.”
“Guess I was pretty lucky then that two rounds were
enough to stop him.”
The sheriff turned his head around and fixed his
knowing gaze on Val. “I reckon you was.”
Val shook hands with him and said, “Will you answer
one question for me before I leave? What work did Roy Jackson do?”
The sheriff hesitated, then said, “He retired twelve
months ago. Before that he worked for the power company.”
“As what?”
“He was a line man. Why do you ask?”
“There was a picture of him and a bunch of guys I took
for fellow workers on a table in the house. It had been shot in front of a
Port-au-Prince hotel and it made me wonder what they were doing there. Haiti
isn’t what you’d describe as a popular destination for conventions.”
“You thinking there’s some connection with what
happened this morning?”
“It’s possible.”
“I doubt it. Too long ago.” The sheriff tilted back
his straw hat and grinned. “It was no convention he was on. The picture would
have been taken the time Roy and a crowd of other Gulf States Power Company
employees were sent to Haiti to lend a hand with repairs after Hurricane Diana
hit. I remember it was all Roy talked about after he came back. It was his
first time out of the States and he and the boys had a ball when they went down
there. Put up in a hotel, living on expenses, cheap booze, and no wives to rag
on them for six months. It was sometime before I was elected sheriff. Sixteen,
seventeen years ago.”
Closer to twenty-one, Val thought.
CHAPTER TEN
It took a motorist in a BMW flashing his lights and
leaning on his car’s horn to snap Val out of his reverie just as he reached the
outskirts of New Orleans. Lost in thought, he hadn’t noticed how dark it had
grown. He switched on his headlights and paid attention to the road. For a
while at least.
Why would a man keep hidden in his pocket the picture
of a young girl he had never met? More to the point: did that man have his son
kill the girl’s mother? Short of running a DNA test, there was no way Val could
prove that Roy Jackson was Marie Duval’s father, but he knew he was on the
right track. What better explanation could there be for the child’s life being
spared? Having a woman with whom you once had a brief affair killed was one
thing; it was a different matter
when
it came to your own flesh and blood.
Ten years later Roy Jackson may have learnt of his
daughter’s academic achievements and asked his son, her half-brother, to snap a
photograph of her. Maybe at last, Jackson may have thought, he had a child he
could be proud of.
Val had some of the answers, but not all. According to
Marie Duval, her mother had been running on fear before she was killed. If she
had been turning the screws on Jackson for money, then it was inconceivable she
would have let her guard drop when Donny turned up. No, when Valerie Duval
opened her door to Donny, she welcomed him as her savior, not her executioner.
Who or what had been behind his about-face? Val’s money was on Arena Victory.
But what problems could one lone and frightened woman pose that had left them
no option but to have her killed?
His phone was ringing when he reached home. It was
Angie.
“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to
contact you since yesterday.”
“Out of town.”
“If you’re going to switch your cell phone off,
couldn’t you at least let the station house know where you’re going? And what’s
happened to the answering machine I gave you.”
“What is it, Angie? I’m tired and I want to go to
bed.”
“I’m leaving Marcus.”
If Angie thought he would be ecstatic at her
revelation, she was mistaken. “Why? I thought the two of you were getting along
great.”
“I’ll tell you why when I come over.”
“Why can’t you tell me now?”
“I’d rather come over.” Her voice sounded as soft and
gentle as a caress.
Woman, he thought, Nolan’s warning still fresh in his
mind, you certainly know how to choose your moments. “I told you already, I’m
really bushed.”
“It won’t be for long, promise.”
He heard the hurt in her voice. “Not tonight, Angie.
Go make it up with Marcus. He loves you.”
“You’re a prick,” Angie snapped venomously.
“Goodnight, Angie.” He cut the connection, left the
phone off the hook, and went to bed.
He dreams of Duval.
She’s wearing a white peasant dress and has a red
kerchief tied across her head. Her feet are bare. It is shadowy and hot and her
body is moving to the soporific beat of Rada drums. The scene opens up and Val
sees that she is not alone. All around her are the dark, shining faces of other
servants of the lwa. The incantation they repeat reminds him of the prayers his
mother had whispered. He can smell a strong feral odor — a combination of the
muskiness of their sweating bodies, the earth under their shuffling feet, and
the oils they have anointed their bodies with.
Duval moves forward towards the central pillar, the
poteau-mitan, and starts to circle it. Her arms rise above her head, her hands
reaching out as though in supplication. Both eyes shut as she sinks into a
trance. Her body is a horse, being ridden by her lwa.
A snake-like tongue flashes in and out of her mouth.
The crowd edge closer. They start to touch. The red kerchief is removed, then
their hands gently ease the flimsy dress from her body, revealing skin that is
polished and firm, and tiny breasts the size and color of mangoes. The muscles
of her calves ripple as she steps from the dress. Her pubic hair is a lush bush
of tight dark curls.
The drums stop beating and a wooden cage is passed
from person to person on upraised arms. Inside the cage, a cockerel, its
feathers shiny as coal, flaps against the bars. Duval opens the small door and
takes hold of the bird by its neck. She removes it from the cage. A knife
appears in her a hand. She draws the blade across the bird’s neck, then holds
the dying cockerel up to the others. Their chanting ceases and they grow still.
Duval tilts her head to allow the cockerel’s blood to
flow into her open mouth. She swallows and a stream of blood bounces off her
lips and splashes across her breasts.
A single drum starts to beat, matching the rhythm of
her heart. She bends down and lays the body of the cockerel on the dusty earth.
The bird lies motionless, but the participants of the danse-lwa are
anticipating more. The bird’s head moves a fraction; it flaps a wing against
the dusty ground and struggles to its feet. The only sound is the slow beat of
the drum.
The lucidity of the dream wakens Val. The shallow
depression between his eyes is a pool of sweat, and a cold hollowness sweeps
through him when he realizes that the repetitive noise he is hearing originates
from some place inside the house. He opens the bedroom door and steps into the
hail, his heart racing.
The house is in
darkness,
merging black and gray shadows. Nothing moves. His feet feel tacky against the
bare wooden boards.
Val’s heart starts beating again when he discovers the
source of the noise: an operator-initiated electronic alarm that alerts a
subscriber that their phone is off the hook. He replaces the handset and the
phone starts to ring immediately.
It’s his friend with the high-pitched voice.
“Look out your window,” he says.
He does. A dark blue sedan is parked outside. Two
white men are standing beside it. They are big enough to play defense for the
Saints. Val moves away from the window and walks down the passage to the
kitchen and takes a look out back. As far as he can tell there’s nobody out
there. He returns to the phone.
“I see them
.”
“We need to talk. They’re there to escort you. Be
seeing you shortly.”
“What if I don’t want to go with them?”
“You will if you’re serious about finding Donny
Jackson.”
Val looks at his watch. It’s a little after three in
the morning.