by Mario Bolduc
Shembazi handed the plastic bag with the gun to Kilonzo.
“Ah, I almost forgot. We haven’t checked yet, but I’m sure the investigation will prove that the bullet that killed Zuberi came from the gun you were hiding in the Jeep.” The inspector grinned triumphantly. “All’s well that ends well, Cheskin.”
Max felt exhausted. What Kilonzo was telling him was a complete fable, but it would be viewed as true. Max was the perfect patsy. He fitted the bill for this crime, or any other, real or imagined, they might want to pin on him.
He’d been trapped.
Kilonzo bent nearer to Max again, forcing him to look the inspector in the eye. “You’re alone. The High Commission won’t intervene. They don’t even know you exist. You’ve got too many identities. You’re mine, Cheskin, or Flanagan, or whoever you are. I can do whatever I want to you. No one will ever know. Welcome to hell, Cheskin.”
22
The headquarters of the Kagera Regional Police was an old elementary school, recycled though not transformed. There were still school desks here and there, reminders of what the place had once been. Each office had a blackboard, though now covered in obscenities. At the back of the building a new section had been built housing a handful of cells. It still smelled of fresh paint and plaster. A few moments earlier Inspector Kilonzo had paraded Max in front of the intake counter, handcuffs around his wrists, before being forced to sit in a greasy waiting room on a plastic chair. The walls sweated with humidity. He was forced to empty his pockets in front of a surprised-looking young officer. Kilonzo accompanied his ward to the new cells, all deserted, curiously enough. As if Max was an honoured guest.
“Only the best for you,” Kilonzo crowed.
The inspector pushed him into a cell and closed the door. Max heard him walk away. Then, not a sound, the intolerable silence of lifeless places.
His cell was tiny, poorly lit during the day, only a thin streak of light finding its way in. But at night it blazed like a carnival, harsh fluorescents bursting forth from behind metal mesh on the ceiling as soon as the sun went down.
Max spent his first night in that surreal atmosphere, going slightly mad from a liminal state both awake and asleep. Dream and reality mixing together in an awful soup that made him nauseous.
As the sun rose, he felt someone yanking at his hair. He fell off the cot onto the concrete. Standing two steps back, Kilonzo watched him. The goon who’d woken him placed his combat boot on Max’s head. A child stamping on an overripe melon just to see it burst.
“Walter was part of the Uganda National Liberation Army, the one you’ve so much affection for,” Kilonzo said. “That’s where we met, he and I. Since then I’ve kept him close. Whenever I need to make an impression on a prisoner, I call upon his services. He enjoys it so much, you know.”
Walter smiled.
“You were right to ask me questions about my service during the war against Uganda. We couldn’t have beat Idi Amin if it hadn’t been for men like Walter. They literally led the way to Kampala.”
Max tried to move, but the goon applied a bit more pressure with his boot.
Walter laughed.
“A war that liberated the world of a bloodthirsty tyrant,” Kilonzo continued. “And how did the international community thank Tanzania? We had to pay for every penny of the conflict. It took us twenty years to get back to our feet. Twenty years of paying debts for this war that we didn’t even declare.” Kilonzo put his hand on Walter’s shoulder. “He could kill you. Easily. But it’d be a shame to get rid of you so quickly.”
“Like you did with Valéria and her daughter?”
Kilonzo approached. “What did you say?”
“Don’t take me for an idiot,” Max said. “They busted down the door. The two women tortured. The kandoya. Your bulldog came off his leash, didn’t he?”
“And you dare claim I’m responsible for their deaths?”
Max didn’t respond. He tensed up for a blow he was sure Walter would deliver. But it didn’t come.
Kilonzo crouched. “You can disagree with my methods all you want, Cheskin. But don’t you dare call me a murderer.”
“Prove me wrong.”
The inspector smiled and turned to Walter. “He wants proof of my innocence! Can you believe it? From the very beginning this thief treated me like I was some dumb black without an ounce of sense. When he spits on me, he spits on you, too, Walter.”
Walter grunted.
“Think of your mother,” Kilonzo continued. “Your mother raped by Idi Amin’s white mercenaries paid for by Gaddafi. You never got your revenge. Well, here’s your chance. Make him pay for what they did. Hurt him, Walter. Hurt him bad.”
Walter grabbed Max by the hair and pulled him to his feet. A first blow across his face, throwing him to his knees. Then more blows, slow, regular, a drumbeat, as if Walter wanted to enjoy himself. As soon as Max was about to lose consciousness, he’d stop. Max would crumple breathless for a while and then Walter would begin again. Kilonzo, bored, left the cell after a few minutes. But the blows kept coming. Eventually, Max fell into unconsciousness.
He woke, his head heavy, filled with strange noises, strange thoughts. On the floor stood a bowl of fetid water that hadn’t been changed since he first got to the cell. He was dirty, exhausted, his brain unable to make connections between his exhaustion, the filth around him, the bowl of water, and his cot. How long had he been unconscious?
Walter returned to the cell shortly after and resumed his work. Max fell into darkness.
And the rhythm continued for what seemed like an eternity. Max tried to keep a sense of time by the change in lighting, artificial or natural. But soon enough he lost count — too much pain, too much confusion.
His life became a formless substance in which his mind wandered, always oscillating between conscious and not, incapable of latching on to anything.
Then one day the door to his cell opened.
Max put his arms around his head, thinking Walter was back. Footsteps. He kept his chin on his chest, unable to move, trying to protect himself, waiting for the blows that were sure to come.
A hand grabbed his head and pulled hard, forcing Max to look up: Inspector Kilonzo. He was wearing his dress uniform, the same he’d worn for Valéria and Sophie’s funeral. The policeman released Max. His head, heavy and bruised, fell down again against his chest.
“Don’t say I never did anything for you. I managed to save you from a lengthy, costly trial, at the end of which you’d be convicted of what we know you did — you murdered Awadhi Zuberi. Turns out that was a good thing, anyway. He was a charlatan. He exploited the poor and the sick. Why waste public funds to punish a man who rendered a service to the nation?” Kilonzo gauged the effect his words had on Max. Finally, he ordered, “Get up!” Then the inspector and his men dragged Max to a van behind the penitentiary where there was a group of onlookers.
“A few hours ago on the radio,” Kilonzo continued, “I announced that Zuberi’s killer will be transferred to a tribunal in Mwanza where he’ll face a judge who will determine whether he’s fit to stand trial.”
Max said nothing.
“Unfortunately, the trial will never take place. Because — and this is sad news indeed — you will try to escape and we’ll have to open fire. We can’t let a killer loose on the population. So, you see, you’ll be punished for your crime, but the taxpayers won’t pay a penny for a drawn-out, pointless trial …”
Before pushing Max into the van, Kilonzo took him by his collar and forced him to look at the small crowd. Young people mostly, but older men and women, as well. A few peasants, but also some who were visibly better off.
“I want them to see the face of the man who killed their favourite witch doctor,” Kilonzo whispered in his ear.
Onlookers stared at Max with fascination mixed with disgust. There was fear, too, as if the monster before them could free himself from the police and send them to the grave as he had Zuberi.
Kilonzo pus
hed Max into the van, and they drove off. Other onlookers were posted along the road. The officers were clearly having great difficulty controlling this angry, grieving mob, thirsty for revenge. The inspector was offering them Max on a silver platter.
“Turn right,” Kilonzo ordered the driver.
But that escape path was blocked, too. The driver turned and reached the main road on a barely passable dirt track. A police car was parked on the shoulder.
Kilonzo told the driver, “Go straight now.”
“There are people everywhere.”
“Just go,” Kilonzo repeated.
From his position in the back of the van, Max couldn’t see what was happening, but he could guess it was quite a scene based on the shouts, jeers, and honking. A roiling mass of people, their anger growing, looking for a scapegoat.
The van advanced slowly, despite the police escort. Kilonzo’s nervousness was rubbing off on Max. The vehicle finally picked up speed, and the passengers breathed easier, including Max. But as they exited a village, an abandoned scooter blocked the road. The driver tried to avoid the obstacle, as did the patrol car that opened the way, but a crowd materialized, obstructing the van. Men pressed themselves against the vehicle, rocking it, trying to flip it over. Inside, Max and his guards, shunted about, had to yell to make themselves heard over the thump of fists pounding the van.
Kilonzo was barking orders to the driver when the driver’s side window exploded in a shower of glass and dozens of grasping hands pulled him out of the car. A few moments later the truck flipped onto its side. Max protected his head as best he could, pulled on his handcuffs, and threw off the guard, who went flying, smashing his skull against the metal interior. Chaos ensued, with the crowd trying to get into the van through the passenger seat. Max, whom everyone seemed to be ignoring, went through the unconscious guard’s pockets for the keys to the handcuffs. He found them and quickly unlocked his shackles.
Freed at last, he flung himself at Kilonzo, slamming the inspector’s head against the side of the van and grabbing his gun just as the mob broke open the back door. Threatening them with the gun, Max ordered them to get out of the way. The crowd deflated with an almost audible gasp. It was easier to lynch someone when the victim was defenceless.
Max didn’t leave them any time to recover their courage. He hurled himself out of the van, shouting, brandishing his weapon like a madman. The mob backed off. The murderer was free and had a weapon, too, a bloodthirsty killer on the loose.
Where to?
Max needed to find a place to flee before the crowd reassembled. He climbed along the embankment, hearing the panicked cries of his recent assailants. A man tried to start his motorbike. Max ran up to the fellow, pushed him down, jumped onto the bike, and raced off at full speed. Onlookers leaped out of the way as he revved the engine. Max saw the patrol car make a U-turn, rushing to save the other policemen trapped in the van.
He accelerated and, driving north, found himself on a deserted road lined with huts. Their occupants stared at Max roaring by, knowing nothing of the events.
Speeding straight ahead, he thought only of salvation and hoped he had a full tank of gas. Soon he was completely lost. Paths forked every which way. He had to choose one of them, get off the main roads, but where would they take him? He didn’t know the countryside. He was easy prey, too easy. He needed a place to lie low, and fast.
Suddenly, around a small hill, Lake Victoria reappeared, as wide as a sea. A poorly maintained road followed the shore. Max headed straight to it, rounded another bank, and joined the path, picking up velocity again.
With a bit of luck, he told himself, he might make it. If he could reach the border with Uganda and find a way out of Tanzania. A chance in a million, but he didn’t have a choice. In Uganda he’d try to make it to Kampala. He could reach out to Jayesh Srinivasan in Mumbai. What would he do then? Go back to Tanzania? That would be suicide, but he’d figure it out later. For now, all that counted was getting away from Kilonzo and his men.
After driving for a long time, making sure no one was following him, he sped through the small village of Rubafu, then on to Kanyiragwa. Along the dirt road were a few huts lost in the middle of fields.
With the peasants ignoring him, Max pushed the bike to the limit for the last kilometres. He hid it in some bushes, then walked to the shore, certain he could pay a fisherman to get him across to Uganda. But how? With what money? He had no idea.
Then he heard the rumble of a familiar engine. He raised his eyes. Roosevelt Okambo’s Cessna was circling above.
He waved. Okambo tilted his wings. The plane was landing a bit farther off on the savannah.
Max ran.
23
Roselyn believed in capital punishment despite the statistics that demonstrated it was ineffective when it came to discouraging murder and other criminal activity. States that had abolished capital punishment weren’t more violent than others, like Texas, which continued to kill at a sustained rate. Criminals didn’t choose the time or place for their crimes based on the severity of the sentence. Yet she believed in the death penalty for moral reasons. It was just punishment as long as it stayed far from vengeance. It was unacceptable to kill innocent people. It was also needlessly cruel to let men rot on death row for fifteen years or more. Why give hope that a phone call from the governor might spare them the ultimate punishment?
In Texas clemency was never handed down. During his mandate as governor, George W. Bush hadn’t reversed a single decision made by a jury for the one hundred and fifty-two executions he presided over, including the death of Terry Washington, a man with a cognitive disability who had the IQ of a seven-year-old. Cases like those outraged Roselyn, just as judicial errors did, but not enough to get her to disavow capital punishment and demand its repeal, as the demonstrators did who gathered in front of the Walls Unit on execution days.
To them, Albert Kerensky and the tie-down team weren’t worth a dime more than the killers they executed. In Roselyn’s eyes, her husband was no more than the executor of a policy put into place by democratically elected representatives. Albert knew nothing about the condemned person’s previous life, his crimes or attitude in prison. Perhaps his ignorance was willed to protect himself. He had supervised the execution of Terry Washington in 1997. Had he known that the man he’d injected with a lethal cocktail had a disability? Newspapers had written about it so much that it was hard to imagine he hadn’t heard about it. And what about Karla Tucker the following year? The first woman executed in Texas since 1863. And Frances Newton in 2005, guilty of having killed her husband and children. How had he reacted afterward? Had he discreetly gone to church as he always did?
Roselyn had no idea. She was in the dark when it came to whether there had come a point when Albert had had enough, where he’d wanted to give up. Pass the syringe on to someone else, hand the management of his team to one of his staff. He’d never done it, continuing month after month, that infernal rhythm, handing out death with all the regularity of a metronome. Roselyn could still recall those difficult weeks when he was finally forced to retire. Albert was irascible, impatient, anxious at having to leave his job for good.
His life, his real life, was at the Walls Unit. In that doleful execution room, decorated like a hospital. It surely wasn’t at home with his wife and daughter. His retirement had been a sentence for him. An abrupt end. His own death row.
Albert kept a memento of each of his executions, a trophy of each of his victims. In her heart of hearts, Roselyn now knew that Albert had found deep pleasure in killing, or at least, great satisfaction. Perhaps it had been a profound need and his life had lost meaning when he couldn’t kill anymore. She had always seen him as the detached executor of justice but, in fact, each of his killings had been a complex tapestry of emotion. He enjoyed the act but regretted having to do it so regularly, and that perhaps explained his trips to church. He couldn’t help himself. He needed to kill but hated himself for not being able to control h
is impulses.
In short, if her husband was a serial killer, as she now believed, he was the most fearsome of them all, because his murders were permitted and justified by the law. His obsession, his madness, encouraged by the state.
Over breakfast, the day following her visit to Pontchartrain Auto Repair, Roselyn was absorbed by watching parents with their children in the hotel dining room, and barely felt the vibration of her phone. She thought it was Peter calling her, but it turned out to be Gene Saltzman.
“I might have something on Angel Clements.”
On second thought, the old man had remembered Angel was a friend of Mitch Arceneaux. Mitch had worked at the garage back in the day. Anyway, Roselyn mentioning Clements’s criminal past had shaken something loose for the old fellow. Arceneaux had heaped praise on his pal to the garage’s former owner, so the latter had organized a meeting for them to perhaps offer him a job.
“Mitch said he was an incredible mechanic, a guy who worked quickly and efficiently.”
“And why wasn’t he hired?”
“He didn’t mention his time in prison. If he admitted the fact, without being asked, he might have had a chance. The owner didn’t mind he was a criminal that much, but he wanted an honest man.”
“Where can I find Mitch?”
“He hasn’t worked here in years. I still have his mother’s address, though. When he left, he gave it to us in case we needed to reach him. But I don’t know where he lives now.”
After thanking Saltzman, Roselyn left her barely touched breakfast, jumped into her car, and headed for Fordoche, northwest of Baton Rouge.
As she drove on Highway 10, Roselyn tried to sort through what she’d just learned. The interview had been a front for Clements, who needed to trick his parole officer. He’d come all the way to New Orleans on this pretext solely to kidnap Adrian at Camp Connally. Why? And why had Norah told Albert what had happened but hadn’t said anything to her?