Black Magic Woman (23 page)

"The next death will be her fifth. The fifth in this cycle, at any rate." Van Dreenan's eyes took on a faraway look, not unlike the "thousand yard stare" you find in soldiers who have seen a lot of combat and are approaching their breaking point.

Fenton was staring at him. "You all right, man?"

Van Dreenan blinked several times. "Yes, I'm sorry. I was thinking of something else."

"You know, I've noticed it before. You get kinda weird every once in a while, and it seems to happen whenever we're talking about
muti
murder, and no other time."

Van Dreenan shrugged, but said nothing.

When he spoke again, Fenton's voice was gentle. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

Van Dreenan looked at him hard for several seconds before dropping his gaze. "It may be that there is," he said slowly. "And, under other circumstances, I would tell you. I have come to respect you, Fenton, in the time we have worked together. Indeed, I find that I rather like you."

"I guess you could say that it's mutual. In both aspects."

There followed the embarrassed silence that usually occurs whenever two men in this culture talk about such matters. Van Dreenan broke it by saying, "I thank you for that. And I do not wish to—what is the expression?—hold out on you. But you are a professional and a man of integrity. If you were working on a case with someone who had an emotional involvement, a personal stake in the outcome, you would feel obliged to report it to your superiors,
ja?"

"I guess I would, yeah."

"And the reaction of your superiors would be what?"

"Most likely, they'd remove the emotionally involved person from the investigation. On the grounds that emotional involvement clouds judgment, and clouded judgment impairs the investigation."

"Precisely. Now, tell me something. Would you say that I have been an impediment to the investigation thus far?"

"Hell, no. We wouldn't be nearly as close as we are now if it weren't for you."

"That is kind of you to say. So any hypothetical emotional involvement I might have has not adversely affected the investigation, is that a fair assessment?"

"Sure."

"Then I would prefer not to speak with you about certain matters. Not now, in any case. It would be better if you are able to say later, under oath if necessary, that you had no direct knowledge of any personal feelings of mine that might relate to the subject of this investigation."

"I see."

"I must not be removed from this case, Fenton.
I must not.
And not only for my own sake, but for yours, as well."

Fenton ran a hand over his face. "All right, now you've
really
lost me."

"I know, and I regret that. I hope all will become clear to you in time. But for now—" Van Dreenan leaned forward in his chair, "I ask you to trust me. No, I
need
you to trust me. For a short while, only."

In the space of the next few seconds, Fenton's agile mind considered a variety of factors. But it returned, over and over, to his memories of the crime scene photos. The blood soaked earth. The ravages of insects and wildlife. The pathetic, pale, savaged bodies.

He kept thinking about dead children.

Fenton had children of his own, three of them. Girls, eight and three, and a boy, six.

All were within the age range of Cecelia Mbwato's victims.

He met the South African's eyes with his own. "All right, Van Dreenan. All right. I'll go along. Don't you make me regret it."

"It is my sincere wish," Van Dreenan said, "that neither of us will come to regret it."

"Yeah?"

"Did you take care of the car?"

"Yeah, sure. Found just what I needed and made the switch. Look why don't we—"

"We must leave here and find another place. Closer to where we have to go later."

"You mean Sa—"

"Hush! Not over the telephone!"

"Oh, for God's sake, lady. You're fuckin' paranoid."

"We have to leave here," she said again. "Keep in your mind that we are nearly done with this. It will soon be finished. Then you can sleep as much as you want."

Snake sat up in the lumpy bed. "Yeah, all right, okay. Give me half an hour."

"Take less than that. We have much to do."

"Which is…"

"The number five is very significant in black magic rituals, Fenton. No one is sure why, although the pentagram is, of course, a five-pointed star, and it has a long association with the dark path. Perhaps that has some bearing."

"Yeah, I've seen plenty of pentagrams, although most of the 'occult crime' reported in this country is nothing but bullshit."

"Role-playing young people, combined with panic and rumors?
Ja,
we have the same problem back home. It is one of the reasons behind those witch murders I told you about earlier."

"Murders of witches, you mean. Or rather, people accused of being witches."

"That is correct. A great tragedy, since the vast majority of them are guilty of nothing more than saying the wrong thing in anger, or having a sinister-looking face, or making enemies of the wrong kind of person."

"People deliberately use accusations of witchcraft, knowing they're false, just to pay off scores?"

"Ja,
exactly," Van Dreenan sad. "The same thing that happened in Europe during the Middle Ages, and in your Salem, Massachusetts some years later. Most of those poor souls were certainly innocent."

"You keep saying stuff like 'the majority' and 'most people.' What does that make the rest of them?"

Van Dreenan seemed to hesitate before he finally spoke. "Real witches, of course."

Fenton sat scratching his cheek for a few seconds. "You know, we had this conversation before, when you first got here."

"Ja,
I recall as much."

"This is the part where I say something like 'Oh, you mean people who think they're practicing real witchcraft, even though you and I know it's superstitious nonsense,' and you give me this 'Oh yes, of course, what else could it possibly be' crap."

"I was not planning to say that, this time."

"Yeah? How come?"

"Because," Van Dreenan said softly, "this time, I think, you are ready for the truth."

"It is a very good idea," Cecelia Mbwato said. "The closer we are, the sooner I can make delivery once the package is ready."

"Want your money, huh?"

She gave him another of her contemptuous looks. "Just like you want yours, I think," she said. "But it is more than that. There is the matter of safety to consider."

Snake blew air out his nose. "What we been doin' ain't exactly what I consider real safe," he said. "That's why we gettin' paid so much to do it."

"You say the truth. But there is no reason to make the risk last longer than we must. If all goes well tonight, we will have with us the evidence of five murders. These American scientists, they can prove what person a piece of flesh comes from. They catch us with these things… they hang us for sure."

"Most places don't hang ya any more," Snake said. "They use lethal injection or the electric chair. But I get what you're sayin'."

"I have heard of this electric chair," she said musingly. "It is said that people being killed that way sometimes catch fire and burn."

"Yeah, I guess I heard that, too. Don't matter, though. They ain't gonna be doin' it to us. We got this down to a science, now."

"A science. Yes, I suppose so." Cecelia Mbwato consulted the road atlas she had open in her lap. "Drive another thirty, forty miles, then find us a motel." She closed the atlas with a sound like a slap, and tossed it in the back seat. "Then we go to look for playgrounds."

"What's that mean?"

"You viewed the videotape, as did I. You saw what happened in the convenience store. And you have read the toxicology report, just as I did."

"Yeah, okay, I admit that's puzzling, but it doesn't—"

"Puzzling?" Van Dreenan's voice held some scorn of its own. "The woman blows powder in the robber's eyes,
ja?
Almost immediately, the robber's eyeballs start to… dissolve. Later, the powder is analyzed—by professionals, people who do this sort of thing every day. Hardheaded American science, the best in the world, is brought to bear on the problem. And what do they find?"

"Look, I know it might not—"

"What do they find in the man's eyes, Fenton? Sulfuric acid, maybe?"

Fenton raised his eyes to the ceiling. "No, no acid."

"Some derivative of lye? Anything like that?"

"Stop badgering me, Van Dreenan. We both know what the tox report said."

"Herbs, wasn't it? Several different ones, ground to powder. And tiny bits of tree bark. And nothing else."

Fenton rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. "Yeah, I know."

"The scientists did not believe it, either. The report said they were going to perform the analysis again. They should have completed it by now. Do you wish to check the results?"

Fenton looked at him. "I guess I'll do just that."

He turned the laptop toward him and began to type. Van Dreenan didn't bother to look over his shoulder.

It was less than three minutes before Fenton logged off and turned away from the computer. "Same results," he said with a scowl. "Exactly the same. Now the lab people are making noises about how the sample must have been mislabeled, or maybe contaminated at the crime scene. It's all CYA stuff now."

"CYA?"

"Cover your ass. A practice beloved of government employees everywhere." Fenton shook his head, as if trying to deny what he had just read. "Look, man, this just isn't possible."

"Except that it has happened," Van Dreenan said gently. "Believe me when I say that I know exactly how you are feeling. I went through the same process myself. As a Christian, and yes, I admit it, a white South African, I was raised to regard the tribal religious beliefs and practices of the native blacks as no more than superstitions—proof, supposedly, that their culture had not advanced as far as ours. No man's mind was more closed than mine."

"So, what opened it?" Fenton asked sourly.

"My investigation into the deaths of Miles Nshonge's wife and children."

"Miles? Cecelia? How is it that these native blacks, as you call them, all have English-sounding first names?"

"During apartheid, the government required it. No person's birth could be registered without a Christian first name. And without a birth certificate, it was impossible to later obtain a work permit, driver's license, and so on." Van Dreenan had the good grace to look embarrassed. "Once the African National Congress, Mister Mandela's party, took over, the practice was abolished, of course. But that had no effect on the millions who had been born before, unless they took the trouble to change their first names legally. Some have, but most have not."

"All right, so how did this Miles what's-his-name make you a believer in black magic?"

Van Dreenan ran his big hand slowly over his face, like a man bracing himself for something unpleasant. Then he leaned forward in his chair. "It was like this…"