by Jen Blood
The vein sticking out in his forehead didn’t look like a good sign. He swiped his hand over his eyes and took a breath.
“You sure you don’t want that coffee?” I said.
Thibodeau barked a short laugh and shook his head. “Shit.” He took a long, slow, deep breath. “Rachel tells me I need to take up yoga. Maybe when this is done.”
“How’s your kid doing?” I asked.
He looked at me for a second—weighing out whether to answer or just deck me outright. When the battle was done, he shook his head. “Not sure. He’s got acute lymphocytic leukemia. Right now it looks like we might be headed for remission, but we don’t like to use that word. Not yet.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Solomon got up and poured coffee into my favorite travel mug, without waiting for Thibodeau to agree. She handed it to him.
“Me too,” she said. “Sorry, I mean. If you need anything...”
He looked from her to me and back again, the overt hostility momentarily diminished. “I’ll let you know,” he said. “Thanks for the coffee. And keep your heads down, would you?”
“We will,” I agreed.
◊◊◊◊◊
After he’d gone, Solomon got dressed while I scrubbed the blood off my bedroom wall. Thibodeau’s crew had taken the Voodoo doll and the sachet, along with samples to test from the writing on the wall. After half an hour, I’d managed to get the bulk of it, but the message could still be read in the stain left behind. So much for our security deposit. I shut the bedroom door, and took a shower.
Since it was Saturday, Solomon didn’t have work at the Tribune and I figured Buzz was off with family rather than hanging around the paper over the weekend. Solomon and I locked up the apartment and I drove us down to the Ledger office. The fog had turned to rain, and showed no signs of slowing. It was still warm, though, the air clinging like a second skin with every move I made.
I’d been quiet for most of the morning since Thibodeau had left us, thinking about his warning. He was right: at the very least, I should get Solomon the hell out of this. Whatever this was. A woman dead, a stalker trailing after us taking snapshots, a scarred supposedly dead man shadowing me, and an effigy on my wall.
“So, what’s the plan?” Solomon asked me when I pulled up in the parking lot out behind the Ledger. “I read that there’s a service for Charlene this afternoon. One of us should probably go and talk to someone there. And then I was thinking of the whole black magic angle... It’s not like Portland has a lot of this kind of thing going on. If someone’s doing spells, it shouldn’t be hard to track them down.”
I agreed with a silent nod.
We were in my Jeep, looking out on the water. Two streets over was the crime scene where Charlene’s body had been left. I considered that for a second. Was there any significance? It was a hell of a process to prepare her body the way the killer—or killers, according to Solomon’s theory—had done. Blood drained, organs removed, eyes plucked. It must have taken some time. Charlene hadn’t been seen since that morning, and it must have taken some work to relocate her and stage her on the pier.
“What are you thinking?” Solomon asked. She turned toward me, but I kept my eyes on the horizon. I was tired—too tired to come up with theories, really. Too tired to be reasonable.
“Maybe we should start talking about you going somewhere,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows at me. “Unless you’re talking about Disneyland, forget it. You heard Thibodeau: we’re not supposed to leave town, anyway. We’ll keep a low profile, keep our heads down. Wolf’s got our backs.”
“Yeah, like last night. If—”
“Diggs,” she said evenly. “I’m not going. I’ll be careful. We’ll be careful.”
She got out of the Jeep like the conversation was over. I got out of the driver’s side, locked up after a moment of thought, and went after her.
“Listen, Sol—” I started again.
She stopped walking, and turned to me. We were on the corner of Commercial and Chandler’s Wharf, Saturday traffic passing at a leisurely clip. It was just past noon, and the tourists were already out despite the weather. They wore LL Bean slickers in yellow and red and blue, and carried umbrellas and shopping bags and cameras. The locals barely bothered with jackets. Solomon waited for a cluster of girls about her age—not locals, if my shopping-bags-and-slickers theory was to be trusted—to pass before she spoke.
“I’ve watched about a dozen hours of footage of Charlene Dsengani,” she said. The hard façade was gone, like that. “I liked her. She was a fighter. She didn’t deserve to die that way.”
“I agree.”
“And I don’t like Johnny Cole,” she continued. We were in agreement on that, as well. “And somehow or other, I think he’s tied up in this. And even if he’s not...we’re in this. We tripped over it, sure, but it doesn’t mean we should just leave it alone now, just because things are a little unsteady.”
“A little unsteady—”
She held up her hand. “You’re not stopping, right?”
She had me on that—there was no way I was walking away. I just wished to hell she would.
“Right,” she said. “So, if you’re not stopping, I’m not stopping. I don’t want to keep having this conversation. I’m a grown up. I make my own choices. And if you try to bench me, I’ll go straight to Paul Rafferty over at the Tribune and I’ll work with him on the whole thing. So...”
“That’s low,” I said.
“I learned from the best.”
◊◊◊◊◊
The office for the Casco Ledger consisted of a single, vast room on the second floor of a warehouse being renovated on the Portland waterfront. If things went according to plan, the single room would eventually become a stylish suite of offices, and the warehouse would become one of those trendy professional buildings becoming more and more common in the city. I unlocked the back door and ushered Solomon inside, stepping over power tools and extension cords to reach the inner sanctum.
Buzz didn’t seem to have any doubts that one day his big investment would pay off. I wasn’t quite as optimistic, but I admired his faith. We went up the stairs and I unlocked the door to the office and stood aside to let Solomon in first. Contrary to what I’d expected, we found Buzz at his desk buried beneath a foot-high stack of paperwork. He looked up when we came through the door.
“I thought I told you to make yourself scarce.” He glanced at Solomon. “Both of you.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I just had some things to catch up on. I’m trying to get a jump on ad layout before everything else hits the fan Monday morning.”
“I thought Alice was helping with that,” I said. If possible, he looked more tired than he had when I’d seen him the day before.
“She had to go out of town,” he said. He’d barely looked at Solomon or me since we’d come in. “Visiting family.”
“I thought family was visiting you,” Solomon said. She sat down on the edge of his desk without an invitation. He swore under his breath, but she didn’t give up her spot. “What’s going on?” she pressed. “You look like shit. You’re in the office on a Saturday. Alice bailed. Clearly something’s up.”
I settled at my own desk and waited. Buzz scrubbed his face with his hands and shook his head.
“I’ll tell you later. First fill me in on last night—I heard Thibodeau paid you a visit this morning.”
I didn’t bother asking how he knew. Instead, Solomon and I went through the whole spiel again, finishing up with the disappearance of Lisette and Maisie. By the time we got around to the mystery man who’d left photos with the neighbors, it was almost an afterthought.
That, however, was the thing that seemed to get Buzz’s attention more than anything else.
“So this guy—mustache, former football hero gone to seed... That sound like the guy?”
“We haven’t actually seen him,” I said. “But the description s
ounds right.” Something about his tone set me on edge. Solomon had moved from his desk to the makeshift work station we’d set up for her in the corner. She likewise shifted her attention at Buzz’s words.
“Why?” she asked. “Seriously—what’s up? And don’t tell us you’ll give us the details later. We’re all in this together, right?”
He hedged, rolling his eyes at me. “Fine. The same guy showed up at my place—the one who’s taking pictures of you. He didn’t waste time with his camera with me, though. He was lurking around the house the other night—that was why I left Solomon with Johnny at the bar. Alice called... She was spooked, asked me to come home. So, I get there and the son of a bitch hauls me out of my car and tells me to leave the story alone—to stay away from Lisette Mandalay.”
“And your solution to that was to ship Alice and her family off to her relatives and give Solomon and me the all-clear to keep pursuing the story full throttle? Thanks for the heads up,” I said.
“I told you to be careful,” he said, the words laced with guilt. “It’s a big story—I knew you wouldn’t back off anyway, regardless of what I told you.”
“It would have been nice to get all the facts up front, though,” Solomon said. “So what else did this guy say? Did he say who he’s working for?”
“No, he must’ve forgotten to mention that. I’m thinking somebody upscale, though—he’s a sleazy son of a bitch, but he knows what he’s doing. I did a little research, and his services don’t come cheap.”
“So you got a name?” I said.
“Eugene Elias. Former military. Permanent Masshole. From Weymouth; still has an office there.”
“You say upscale?” I mused. “So that rules out Johnny Cole, then.”
“Johnny would have just had Wolf or one of his goons muscle us out,” Solomon agreed. “The pictures this guy took of us are too subtle for that.”
I’d already made the mental leap by now, but I wanted to see if Solomon was on the same page.
“Rick Foster?” she asked me, including Buzz in the question with a glance.
“Or Bobby Davies,” I said, thinking of the news last night that Davies had spooked Lisette not long ago.
“That’s what I’ve been thinking,” Buzz agreed. “Do you think you can get into the Tribune archives today?” he asked Solomon.
“Sure, no problem,” she said. “I have the interview with Foster on Monday—Rafferty won’t think twice if he finds me hanging out there doing research on Foster and Davies.”
“Good,” he said, then hesitated. “And you’re sure you’re okay with scooping them like this?”
Her response wasn’t as quick as I’d expected. “I was thinking about that, actually. And I thought...maybe it doesn’t have to be a matter of me screwing them over to get this story.”
“I’m listening,” Buzz said.
“What if we worked together on it?” she said. “You’ve got a weekly here anyway, so readers are looking to us for more in-depth coverage, right? While they look to the Tribune for breaking news. So maybe Diggs and I could share the byline at both papers, going at it from different angles....”
“You think Rafferty would go for that?” I asked, skeptical. “He’s not my biggest fan.”
“No,” she agreed. “And he’s not big on Buzz either, but doesn’t Alice carry some weight with their publisher?”
“She used to run their ad department,” Buzz said. “They’re still on good terms.”
“So maybe you could get in touch with her,” Solomon continued. “And just ask. If the two papers work collaboratively, that could mean good things for the Ledger down the road. People get part of the story with the Tribune; for the rest, they pick up the Ledger.”
“Our target demo is different from theirs,” Buzz said, thinking it through now. “And it’s not like I’d be poaching their advertising or vice versa—most of the folks who buy ad space from me are far left of center, and they skew a lot younger than the Tribune’s readers.”
“Exactly,” Solomon agreed. She was getting excited now, her eyes lit. “Trust me, Rafferty doesn’t give a shit about scoring advertising from Videoport or the head shop on St. John.”
“We’d need to set some clear parameters,” I said. “My first loyalty is to Buzz and the Ledger—Rafferty should know that up front.”
Buzz sat back in his chair, considering all this. For the first time in a while, his shoulders seemed looser. “I’ll call Alice and have her work things on her end,” he said. “In the meantime, Sol, go on over to the Tribune and see what you can dig up on Foster and Davies. I’m especially interested in any connection they might have to Charlene, Mary, and Lisette.”
He shifted his focus to me. “You’re going to Charlene Dsengani’s funeral this afternoon?”
“That’s the plan,” I agreed. “I want a little more information on the connection to Lisette, and I figured I’d try to work the black magic angle now that someone has pulled me into that side of things.”
“Good,” Buzz said. “Then we’ll meet back here later tonight, once you’ve both had a chance to do a little legwork. I’ll hopefully have some news about this collaboration scheme of Solomon’s, and I might have an idea about how to track down Jacob Deng. I’ll pull a few strings, see if I can talk to Davies at the same time. ”
“You don’t want to share how you’re going to do that?” I asked.
“What am I, a rookie?” he said. “I don’t reveal my sources—but the old man’s still got a little bit of game in him.”
Solomon and I didn’t move, even after Buzz had bowed his head back to his work. He looked up again a second or two later.
“What are you waiting for?” he asked. “I’ve got a ton of shit to do around this place—I don’t need the two of you under my feet.”
“You sure you’ll be all right?” Solomon asked. “If Magnum—or Elias, I guess—already threatened you, he probably won’t take too kindly to you running at this thing full speed ahead.”
Buzz waved that off. “You know how many times in my career I’ve been threatened by men a lot scarier than Eugene Elias? I’ll be fine. You two just watch each other’s asses...and try to get some work done while you’re doing so.”
We agreed though I still had reservations, this sinking feeling in my gut that kept me rooted in the doorway after Solomon had gone. Buzz shook his head at me.
“Go on, slick,” he said when I remained in the doorway of the office. “I’ve got this. Go do your job.”
◊◊◊◊◊
Shortly before noon that Saturday, we left Buzz to his own work and headed out. I dropped Solomon at the Tribune with clear instructions to stay put until I came to pick her up. Buzz might not be worried, but I’d had enough scares over the last couple of days that I didn’t intend to let the kid stray too far from my sight.
Afterward, I went back to the apartment to try and find something appropriately somber for Charlene’s funeral.
This was one of the few times I hated my job. Reporters aren’t popular, but I still think they’re necessary; we keep people informed, make sure things stay fair and that the hierarchy in this world is held accountable when the law often doesn’t. But poking at people in a time of loss has never been my favorite part of the job.
I settled on khakis and a dark blue shirt, downed a shot of Jameson’s, and headed for the door at ten till one. It was raining outside now, a hard, heavy rain that didn’t touch the heat—the sidewalks steamed when marble-sized pellets bounced off the pavement, and there was no way in hell I’d ever make it to the funeral dry. I sprinted from the front door to my Jeep, my head down.
When I got behind the wheel, I paused. Halfway down the street, a lone figure stood beside a streetlight, oblivious to the rain. He was tall and thin, with pale blond hair cut short in a buzz cut. He wore a police uniform.
Not a Portland one, though.
My heart stuttered. For a second, it felt like I was living in the space between those pounding raindr
ops. When the man turned to look at me, I reached for the car door handle with the title of the last article the cop had featured in running through my head:
“Officer Involved in Internal Investigation Found Dead.”
Doug Philbrick stared at me with a permanent scowl. The rain didn’t touch him. He turned when I opened my door, and began to walk away with long, easy strides, on feet that didn’t seem to touch the sodden ground. I ran after him in the rain, water soaking my dress shoes, mud splashing my legs.
Philbrick turned the corner and stepped onto Congress Street.
When I reached the same corner and looked in both directions, he was gone.
Chapter 13
I was twenty minutes late for the Dsengani funeral, but it didn’t matter—there was so much chaos that the service hadn’t started yet. It was held in a small Unitarian church on a little side street in East Deering, a neighborhood on the east side of Portland that wasn’t far from Johnny and Wolf’s Portland house.
Cars and news vans overflowed the parking lot and spilled out onto the street. The mayor was there. Rick Foster was there. So were Bobby Davies, a couple of senators, and about two thirds of the African-American community, who were outnumbered by a considerable margin by white faces. The governor had sent his condolences, and an apology that he couldn’t be there in person.
There was no room to sit; there was barely room to stand. Mary Dsengani sat with Wolf in the front row. I didn’t see Lisette or Maisie. The reverend was a white woman, quiet and sedate, who spoke of Charlene’s many contributions to the community, the programs she’d started and the people she’d touched. I noticed Detective Thibodeau seated with his wife and a small, frail blond boy dressed in a suit a size too big for him. Another woman sat on the other side of the boy, larger than Rachel Thibodeau, and I realized why Laura Edgecomb’s eyes had seemed familiar when we’d first met: she and Rachel must be sisters. Thibodeau frowned when he saw me, then refocused on the reverend.