“Power and money.” I glanced at the hilltop, recalling the words of my murderous ex-nemesis. “She said everything is always about that, in the end.”
“A simplistic view,” Max said. “But then, for all her education and achievement, she did not strike me as a woman of complex insight or emotional wisdom.”
“I’m with you, Max,” said Biko. “I never liked her.”
“I also continued to wonder what Shondolyn had been conditioned for. It must be an important role, since so much effort and risk had been invested in trying to gain influence over the girl. Unable to achieve a breakthrough in attempting to discern whom Shondolyn might be used to harm, I instead began to think about how she might be used as a victim. Which was when the prospect of human sacrifice occurred to me.”
“It never occurred to
me,
” said Biko. “Not once. And I’m glad. I don’t think I want to be the sort of person who gets thoughts like that.” After a moment, he said, “No offense intended.”
“None taken,” said Max.
“Look.” I pointed to the hilltop. The angry churning of the black clouds was dying down, the flashes of lightning were fewer and less fierce, and it looked as if the storm gathered directly over the watchtower was starting to break up.
“The dark loa have had their meal,” Max said. “They’re preparing to depart.”
“What are
those?
” Biko asked.
In the intermittent flashes of light overhead, we could see thin columns of smoke curling upward from two spots on the plaza and several places on the spiral iron staircase inside the tower.
“Her creatures,” Max said. “Their existence ended when hers did.”
“Oh, right,” said Biko. “You said once that to dispatch the zombies . . .”
Max concluded, “We would simply have to dispatch the bokor.”
“Looks like the Petro did it for us,” said Biko. “Even so, there wasn’t anything
simple
about it.”
“But how did you know about her?” I asked. “Or that I was in danger? Or that she had poisoned—”
“After the citywide power failure, Detective Lopez came to my shop looking for you. Two patrolmen he had dispatched to the foundation to find you had already reported that you weren’t there. With no way of reaching you by phone—”
Biko said, “All the towers went down when the power failed. No one’s been able to use a cell phone all night.”
“Detective Lopez started hunting for you in the places he thought you might be. Your apartment, my shop. He told me his next stop would be the set of the television show.”
“The show!” I said. “I’m supposed to be at work!”
“Are you kidding?” Biko said. “We’re in a major power blackout, Esther. No one’s working except emergency personnel.”
I realized that if Lopez was willing to speak to Max
and
to the staff of
The Dirty Thirty
, he must have been very worried about me.
I said, “After realizing I wasn’t with the cast, he probably suspected that the patrolmen he had sent to the foundation had been hoodwinked.” I gave a scant summary of what Catherine had related to me about his behavior when he arrived. “By then, he must have realized I was in danger.”
“Meanwhile,” Max said, “in his anxiety about you, Detective Lopez was rather more forthcoming than usual. He told me his suspicions about Catherine Livingston. Recognizing that he is a man of very conventional beliefs in certain key ways, I did not precisely share my suspicions with him, but we did come to a mutual understanding that something was wrong at the Livingston Foundation, we both feared for your safety, and we should each try to find you by any means available.”
Wow. To trust
Max
to look out for my well-being suggested that Lopez had been at wit’s end by then.
“So I proceeded to the Garlands’ home, where I asked Puma and Jeff to recount to me again how Martin Livingston had died,” said Max said. “Considering the story now from the detective’s perspective—his conviction that Martin Livingston’s wife murdered him—certain features of the unfortunate event suddenly suggested an obscure method to me.”
“A method of murder?”
“Yes. Since Martin’s confessed murderer is now dead, we’ll never know for certain, but I believe Catherine put a curse on him that is known as ‘sending the dead.’ It is a particularly dreadful way to die. The bokor sends dead spirits—in many cases, destructive, malevolent ones—to inhabit the victim. The result is often a delusional form of apoplexy.”
“A massive stroke accompanied by hallucinations,” I said.
“And fatal,” added Biko. “Once we realized Dr. Livingston might have killed her husband, and might done it using all the voodoo, Vodou, hoodoo, and other stuff she’s learned over the years, a lot of other things fell into place. Max and Puma saw the pattern, and they realized that your life might be the big mojo offering that she was going to make to the dark loa who were bringing storm clouds over the city.”
We looked up at the Mount Morris Park watchtower again, where our evil adversary had so recently met her well-deserved end.
“Hey, look,” I said. “It’s clearing up really fast now.”
Instead of looking like the mouth of a particularly turbulent hell, the sky overhead was now starting to look like just a healthy summer storm. Fat grayish-black clouds moved slowly across the vault of heaven, outlined at infrequent intervals by soft flashes of lightning.
Max inhaled deeply, paused for a moment, then said to me, “The flow of life energy here has returned to its normal pattern. All is well again.”
“That’s good news, Max. I’ve had enough of the dead coming back to life. They’ve got a right to rest in peace.” I said to him and Biko, “Tell me how you found Lopez.”
“We were looking for you,” said Biko. “We thought the dark ritual room seemed like the sort of place you might be held prisoner. Or sacrificed. We weren’t really thinking of anything as, uh,
epic
as what Dr. Livingston did tonight. Anyhow, we went down there, and that’s when we found him, and . . . Oh,
man.
” Biko shook his head. “I swear I screamed like a girl. For one thing, at first, we thought he was
dead
, because Dr. Livingston’s poison was paralyzing him. And the setting . . . He was lying next to Mambo Celeste’s corpse and not far away from Napoleon’s head. Grisly.”
“He’s a brave man,” said Max. “Upon being rescued, his only thought was of you—of trying to learn your fate. None of us had any idea where you were, you see.”
“But how did you cure him? How did you know what poison Catherine would use?”
“We didn’t. But realizing that Dr. Livingston’s talents for murder, mayhem, and victimization covered a broad territory, we brought a substantial supply of mystical solutions with us, not knowing what sort of problems we would face.”
“You saw the salt,” Biko said to me. Then to Max, “Boy, are we lucky that worked! And that those zombies didn’t turn on us when they were awakened.”
“An awakened zombie, though quite unpredictable, is most likely to turn on the person who enslaved it,” said Max. “Not some passerby who’s just trying to escape a cataclysmic event.”
“Good to know,” said Biko. “Though I hope I never to need the information again.”
“Me, too.” Realizing one of our group hadn’t been mentioned, I asked, “You left Nelli at home?”
“Yes,” said Max. “The storm frightened her terribly, and she’s been vulnerable to possession during the course of this investigation. So I thought it best to leave her to guard the fort tonight.”
“Oh.” I suddenly realized what their story of the night’s events meant. “Wait! Lopez still doesn’t know I’m all right!”
“We should hasten to the foundation,” Max said, quickening his pace. “He will be most eager to see you.”
We were approaching the front doors of the building when Lopez came out, moving fast. Puma was running behind him, warning him of the possibility of a relapse. Then they both saw me. Puma stopped speaking and gave a big smile. I saw Jeff bringing up the rear.
Lopez looked stunned for a moment, then so relieved his whole face looked younger. He crossed the distance between us, seized me in his arms, and held me tightly, not saying a word.
I returned his embrace, clinging to him, trying to sink inside of him. I inhaled deeply and realized he smelled rather pungent. I made a little snuffling noise and blinked.
“It’s the antidote they gave me.” His voice was husky. “It smells weird.”
His kiss was long and deep, and then he covered my whole face in kisses before hugging me again. “God, I was scared.”
“Me, too. She told me she had poisoned you. She told me you’d be dead.”
“Where is she? I need to arrest her.” He pulled away and looked at me. “And why are you in your costume?”
“I don’t even remember,” I said.
“Whoa.” He noticed the bruises and love bites around my neck. “Did I do that?” He kissed my neck gently and whispered, “Sorry.” He kissed my mouth again, then said, “Now I’ve got to go arrest Catherine Livingston.”
I pointed up to the watchtower. “She died in . . . a lightning strike. I got away.”
“She’s dead?” When I nodded, he gazed up at the tower with a disappointed frown. “Damn. Just when I finally had plenty for an arrest. She murdered Mambo Celeste, she poisoned me, and you sure
look
like she tried to kill you.”
“Well, she’s gone now,” I said. “And good riddance.”
“Are you all right?” he asked with concern.
“Yes.” I smiled. “I’m fine.”
“I’ve got a police car around the corner,” Lopez said. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”
“Um, no.” I backed away from the hand he put under my elbow, and I shook my head. “No.”
“What’s wrong?”
I heard the bokor’s voice in my head:
“Would he be lying in agonized paralysis awaiting his death now if not for
you?
”
This was the second time I’d nearly gotten Lopez killed. The Lord of Death would never have come so close to claiming him tonight if it weren’t for me. He’d only gotten involved in this because I had dragged him into it.
“Esther?” he prodded. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I’m not good for you,” I said.
He brushed my hair way from my face. “After a day like this, I don’t really care. Let me take you home.”
“I brought Baron Samedi to your door,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Who?”
“I think . . .” I said with real sorrow, “I have to give you up.”
The rain started coming down. Soft and gentle warm summer rain.
“Detective?” Puma smiled as she joined us. “I’m really sorry to interrupt, but someone’s calling your name on your police radio. The one that was in your jacket pocket when we found you.”
“Thanks,” he said absently, accepting it from her. The radio crackled with static, and now I heard it, too: someone looking for Lopez. The city was in a state of emergency, and they needed to find him.
“And Esther, this was in that room, too.” Puma handed me the little wax voodoo doll with the Star of David on its stomach. “It’s lost its power, now that she’s gone, but you should take it home and destroy it.”
“Thank you,” I said with relief, recalling how this thing had led to my abduction.
I ignored Lopez’s inquisitive look; and he evidently decided not to ask what this bizarre thing was that I was clutching to my chest.
As Puma turned away, Lopez said, “Wait, uh . . .”
“Puma,” she said with a smile.
“Puma. Thank you for your help tonight. I think I’d have wound up in the morgue if not for you, your brother, and Max.” He reached into his pocket for his card and gave it to her. “You have a friend on the force now.”
Puma beamed her beautiful smile at him. “Thank you, detective. But it was my pleasure. It was our duty. And you’re Esther’s friend, after all.”
“By the way, what was in that antidote? I smell a little funky now.” He added to me, “They sprinkled it all over me before they poured it down my throat. I was pretty out of it by then.”
Puma looked embarrassed and said, “Actually, Max is the one who mixed it. I just . . . uh, excuse me, detective.” She went and rejoined Jeff in the doorway of the foundation.
Jeff caught my eye, nodded toward Lopez, and gave me a thumbs up.
“All right,” Lopez said. “If you really don’t want me to take you home, then I need to go back on duty. By now, they probably think I wandered off a cliff in the dark.”
“Going back on duty is a good idea,” I said. “Even with the wind dying down, I’m sure it’ll take a while for all the power to come back on and order to be restored.” Catherine’s greed had done an awful lot of damage, both tonight and in the past.
“All right.” He frowned, looking puzzled and concerned. “And when things calm down, I’ll call you.”
“I don’t think you should.”