“This book of mine you’ve read,” he asked. “Where did
you get your hands on a copy? It didn’t exactly make the best seller list.”
“City library.”
“Cheapskate. What do you make of the cd?”
“Loud. What is it?”
“Arabian Fantasy, an album recorded by David Fanshawe,
an English ethnomusicologist. He had ships passing through the Suez Canal blow
their foghorns, which he taped, then he wrote and arranged accompanying music.
Must have scared the crap out of every camel for fifty miles.”
“I don’t know about that. They can make some pretty
scary noises themselves.”
Bickford laughed again, and then abruptly changed the
subject. “Did this manbo of yours have a set of drums?”
“Yes, to induce the
danse-lwa?”
He nodded and drifted off into the music. Val said
nothing more, other than to give directions.
Daylight didn’t improve the appearance of Duval’s
building. The stucco was cracked, the paint faded. They pulled up outside and
Val waited on the sidewalk as Bickford eased himself out and slipped his arms
into the crutches.
The room was sealed with yellow crime-scene tape. Val
slid the blade of a penknife around the edges and pushed open the door. They
were met by a swarm of large shiny flies and a stomach-turning stench, so thick
it seemed to cling to their skin.
Bickford didn’t turn a hair. He hobbled in and,
without having to be instructed, started to examine the room. His attention was
immediately drawn to the drums. He extricated an arm from its crutch and
started to beat slowly on the largest of the three.
“Rada drums
,”
he
announced eventually. “The drums of choice for initiation ceremonies. They
honor the good spirits from Dahomey in West Africa.”
Not what Val wanted to hear. “What do you make of
these?” he said, tapping the wall below the three veve sketches.
Bickford moved over and examined them closely. “The
heart-shaped one represents Ezili, goddess of love — often portrayed by a
Virgin Mary figure. The middle one is the veve for rebirth.”
“Would you expect it to be part of an initiation
ceremony?”
“Absolutely.”
“And Ezili?”
He took another look at the heart-shaped veve before
saying, “Not that I’ve heard about
the Ayizan veve is normally reserved for that ritual — but it’s impossible to
rule it out.”
“What about the third veve?”
“Not one that I’m acquainted with. I’d say it’s
derived from Masonic imagery. If you have no objection to my taking a picture
of it, I might be able to run down some reference to it?”
“Go right ahead.”
Bickford slipped a pocket camera from his shorts and
quickly snapped a couple of shots.
They went outside to the yard.
Bickford poked at the compacted earth with the rubber
ferrule of one of his crutches. “If there had been a poteau-mitan in the
center, I would have said this area had been designated a sacred place,
delineated by the four cardinal points.”
“What’s a poteau-whatever?”
“A circular pillar that links heaven and earth. Most
of the ceremonial dances take place around it.”
“Could an oil drum substitute?” Val pointed out the
crushed remnants under the tree.
“Yeah, don’t see why not. Let’s have a closer look.”
He grinned broadly as he said “I take it that’s the tree you fell out of.”
Painted in faded red-oxide and barely visible on the
concertinaed drum were two snakes that Bickford stated were the lwa Dambala and
Ayida Wedo.
“Let me get this clear,” Val said. “Duval senior had
the yard rigged as some sort of temple, and an initiation ceremony could have
been conducted here.”
“It’s common enough practice. Voodoo has been driven
underground so many times, its followers are well used to making do with
whatever’s to hand. What way was the girl dressed when you found her?”
“She was near naked, though we found a white dress and
scarf hidden in the tree.”
Bickford seemed almost apologetic. “Voodoo initiates
are dressed in white. Catholic imagery again.”
“So the girl could be telling the truth?”
‘‘I guess so.”
“Wouldn’t there be a need for witnesses to the
initiation ceremony?”
“Certainly the early stages, not necessarily for the
boule-zen. Without the distractions of others, an initiate could be expected to
be more receptive to the lwa, and any manbo worth her salt wouldn’t want her
secrets exposed for all to see.”
Val tried one last shot. “We have conclusive proof
that the girl wasn’t confined for all the time she claims.”
Bickford shook his head. “I wouldn’t read much into
that. Voodoo has survived countless attempts at eradication by constantly
evolving, in contrast to the Christian or Islamic faiths which have changed
very little over the years. The principal reason being that voodoo has no dogma
to restrict it. The confinement might have been more symbolic than literal.”
On the drive back to First District, Bickford pumped
Val for information about life in the PD. He was in the midst of preparing a
paper on subcultures found in law-enforcement agencies. According to him, they
have their own language, their own beliefs and rituals, and their own taboos.
If the professor was expecting an argument from Val,
he was disappointed. Though he had overlooked one thing, Val reckoned. They
also have their dogma. Too damned much of it.
CHAPTER FOUR
It was after midnight when Val left Eadie’s bar,
having squandered half a day brooding over a ten-year-old case. The outside air
was still hot and full of ozone, thanks to an electrical storm winding itself
up over the delta. The narrow streets of the quarter were thronged with
revelers. He hailed a cab to drive him home.
Home was a preservation-listed, timber-framed house
off Magazine. Left to Marcus and Val equally by their mother in her will, it
was the one thing that their father had never managed to lose on the ponies at
the Fairgrounds’ track. A bedroom short of being worth serious money, it was
one of very few on the street not earning its keep as a guesthouse. Six months
after their mother had died, Val had bought out Marcus’s half. It had really
burned him up to have to shell out yet another half its value to Angie on their
separation, but he would do it a third time if it meant keeping the house.
Slumped in the back seat of the cab, his head
spinning, Val made a conscious effort to expunge the Duval investigation from
his mind. What was it to him that Marie Duval had not shown the slightest
flicker of remorse and ended up spending just six months in a juvenile
detention center? He had done all that was asked of him. So what if the
assholes at the DA’s office couldn’t appreciate that Valerie Duval’s homicide
had murder written all over it? Maybe if they had seen into the daughter’s
eyes, as he had done for a split second before falling from the tree, they
wouldn’t have been so quick to accept Wells’s deal. If he never heard her name
again, it would be too soon,
Val didn’t go into work the following morning; not
because of the jackhammer remodeling the inside of his head, but because he was
expecting Angie. He woke an hour later than usual and struggled into the
kitchen to make a pitcher of iced tea to rehydrate his insides. He drank one
glass, then poured himself another and took it back to bed. It was gone ten
when he heard her key turn in the lock.
Angie walked straight through the living room and into
the bedroom, waving a hand in front of her face.
“This place smells like a distillery.”
Dressed in a simple wrap-around dress and wearing
almost zero make-up, she still managed after all this time to take Val’s breath
away and he wondered yet again what it was she had seen that persuaded her to
invest six years of her life in him. Time that had added a new depth to her
beauty. Burnished gold hair which she wore long and straight; eyes that
sparkled like fireworks; NBA legs; great posture — all had appreciated with
age. Angie possessed a radiant vigor that is commonplace in kids of nineteen,
but rarely found in a woman in her late thirties.
Val was not blind to her imperfections, though, and
she had plenty. He knew what a bitch she could be when it suited her. She could
be manipulative and self-centered. A dedicated pursuer of social-advancement,
who scorned her own blue-collar background. The break-up of their marriage did
not come as a bolt out of the blue. They both knew within the first year that
neither was giving the other what they had hoped for. Angie’s affair with
Marcus started three months before Val made his decision to leave the PD. When
at last the marriage ended, they felt no need to apportion blame; instead, they
agreed to do all they could to preserve the good memories and remain friends.
They made plans to meet from time to time and talk as friends do. It was during
the second of these encounters, three months after they had split up, that they
surrendered to a mutual hunger and had gone to bed.
Val was still in love with his wife, and not for a
moment since then, despite the damage it would do to his brother if he was ever
to find out, had he considered calling a halt to their assignations.
She removed her dress, kicked off her shoes, and
slipped under the sheet. They didn’t talk much for a while.
Afterwards, it was Angie who brought up the meeting
between Val and his brother.
“He was in a foul mood for the rest of the day,” she
said. “Couldn’t you have gone along with it — for his sake?”
“No way, even if he had had the balls to come straight
out with it.”
Angie stood and wrapped a sheet around herself, toga
style. “I warned him to be up front, but he’s always been a little in awe of
you.”
“The only person Marcus is in awe of is anyone pulling
down a larger salary,” Val protested, though her comment struck a rawer nerve
than she could have possibly guessed. He recalled how his brother had often
claimed to know him better than Val knew himself.
“I’m serious. If you two are ever going to patch it
up, then you’ll have to be the one to make the first move. Brothers shouldn’t
fall out.”
“You can choose your friends. You don’t have that
luxury with your relatives or your enemies.”
“Damn you,” she said, picking up a pillow and throwing
it at Val. “I’d dearly love to know where you acquired your sense of morality.
The only enemy you have is yourself. You’re perfectly willing for us to cheat
on Marcus, while he continues to blame himself for breaking up our marriage.”
“I was a cop,” Val said simply, as though that
explained all. “If he wants a guilt trip, let him have one. I’m not cheating on
anybody. You’re still my wife.”
“Don’t remind me,” Angie snarled. “I have something to
tell you that concerns us both. Now I’m not sure that I want to.”
“What is it?” Val asked, but Angie had disappeared into
the bathroom.
After a quick shower, and without saying another word,
she gathered up her clothes and dressed in the living room. Most of their
bi-monthly sessions ended with them rowing. Val switched off the ceiling fan
and lay back in bed to catch the traces of her scent on the pillows. The sound
of the front door closing surprised him. It wasn’t like Angie to leave without
saying good-bye, no matter how mad she was at him. He stirred himself and went,
bare-assed, in search of a third glass of iced tea.
He found Marie Duval standing in the center of his
living room. It was a toss-up which of them was the most astonished. Duval
recovered first.
“Your wife told me it would be okay to come in,” she
said, allowing her gaze to sweep slowly over him.
Val barely caught her words as he spun around and
sought sanctuary in his bedroom. He slipped on a robe and pulled the belt
tight.
Duval had made herself at home and was sitting on the
window seat flicking through a magazine. She was wearing a man’s shirt over a
pair of faded 501s and had simple strap sandals on her feet. She had grown into
an attractive woman. Not a classic beauty in Angie’s Anglo-Saxon manner, but
with a grace and confidence that went way beyond her age. Tall and lean, she
was considerably lighter in color than her mother, though her high,
well-defined cheekbones still bore the nobility of her Dahomey ancestry. Her
hair was shaved closed to her scalp in a checkerboard design.
Val’s immediate instinct was to throw her out, but
first there was a question he needed answered.
“You have thirty seconds to explain what you are doing
in my house.”
“I want to ask you something. Face to face.”
“What did you mean when you said that my wife told you
to come in?”
“Angie and I have become good friends in the last few
weeks — she’s been very supportive. She explained about you and her and had me
wait in the car.”
“She brought you with her?” Val said, incredulously,
promising himself that he would call her as soon as he’d seen the girl off. He
had a mental flash of the bemused smirk sure to have been on Angie’s face as
she drove away.
Duval put down the magazine. “She seems to think that
a personal appeal might succeed where your brother failed.”
“What’s it to you? As I understand it, your UNO
acceptance has been more or less secured. Marcus wanted me installed as campus
police chief to further his own aspirations.”
“You’re only partly correct. My acceptance was
confirmed this morning. But don’t go blaming your brother. Marcus is a charming
man, though a little pompous at times. He means well. But it was my suggestion
that he offer you the job. At first he wouldn’t hear of it, so I pointed out to
him and Angie how it might prove advantageous to his career.”
She had had her thirty seconds and had left Val with a
dilemma: throw her out now or let her stay and say her piece. He let her stay.
“I’d have thought the last person you would have
wanted on campus was me,” he said.
“I have nothing against you.”
Val held up his left hand. “That wasn’t always the
case.”
“That was a mistake. I honestly believed you were
climbing up that tree to kill me. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
He pulled a face. “Splitting your mother’s skull with
an axe can really screw up a kid’s day.”
Duval hesitated and for a second allowed her sassiness
to slip, exposing a child-like vulnerability. “I didn’t kill my mother.”
“You signed a statement admitting that you did.”
She nodded.
“You stole the axe.”
Another nod.
“Your dress was saturated with your mother’s blood.
Your fingerprints were all over the axe.”
“Yes, Yes. Yes.” She bowed her head and her shoulders
shook.
It left him cold. “Then you’ll understand when I tell
you that I don’t believe you.”
“I didn’t kill my mother. I have never told anyone
what really took place that night.”
“You could start by telling me.” His voice sharp and
heartless.
“It isn’t easy for me.”
“Have it your own way. The door’s over there.”
“No it’s time it was told.” Duval sucked in a deep
breath and started. “Something had been troubling my mother for several weeks.
At first she was nervous, frightened of strangers. then one afternoon she came
back home in a state of real panic and over the next few days became
increasingly paranoid. She wouldn’t tell me what was wrong, no matter how much
I pleaded with her. She wouldn’t leave the house, wouldn’t allow me to leave.
She hammered nails into the oak tree to make at easier for me to climb, and
started to call the flat branch I liked to sit on my secret place. She told me
I was to run and hide there if bad men came. I don’t think she had ever been so
scared, not even in Haiti when my father was killed by the mob. I was desperate
to do something to help her, so I snuck out and stole the axe. Can you imagine
how I felt when it was turned against her?”
“Your statement about the initiation ceremony was all
lies?”
“Most of it was true. My mother started my initiation
that first afternoon. She must have been terrified of something happening to
her before she had a chance to pass on her secrets. But she would never have
hurt me.”
“If you didn’t kill her, who did?”
“A policeman. A white man in uniform. The two of us
were in the middle of a ritual when he knocked on the door. My mother seemed
relieved at the sound of his voice. She opened the door and let him in. He saw
the axe on the table and picked it up. He made a joke about it and asked my
mother what she planned to do with it. Before she had time
to answer, he struck the first blow. Her blood spilled on my
dress.”
“Had you seen him before?”
Duval shook her head and wiped away a tear with the
back of her hand. “He struck her twice more, then wiped the handle and dropped
the axe on the floor, staring at me all the time. He promised to hunt me down
and kill me if I ever told anyone about him. Then he turned and left. I seized
the axe and ran outside. I climbed to my secret place as my mother had
instructed me to do.”
“Did you tell all this to your attorney?”
“No. Wells wouldn’t have believed me.”
Val pulled a crumpled tissue from the pocket of his
robe and handed it to her. “It’s not an attorney’s job to make judgments.”
Duval dabbed at her eyes, then scrunched the tissue
into a tight ball in her hand. “I know that now. I don’t blame Wells. He was
very gentle and patient when he broke the news that I was about to be arrested
for murder. Explained what evidence was and that the police had already
collected enough to make a case against me. When he asked if anyone else had
been in the room, I didn’t give him an answer. He admitted that it looked
pretty black for me, but he couldn’t begin to understand what was going through
my head. All I wanted was for the police to leave me alone. I thought they
would if I told them what they wanted to hear.”
“What made you have my brother offer me a job?”
“I’m fond of him and Angie; they’re good people. They
both said that as a cop you were so straight, you would have made a flagpole
look crooked. Angie told me about how you had resigned from the police
department. I was intrigued and pumped her for more information. Then I heard
about the campus police chief having a stroke and I thought it was too good an
opportunity to pass up.”