Sisters of the Mist

by Eric Wilder

  “Some of whatever you’re having,” she said.

  Abba and I waited in the parking lot until Rafael returned, arms loaded with a large jug of Chianti and a bottle of processed lemonade.

  “Don’t turn up your nose,” he said. “It’s all they had, and you can always share our wine.”

  I took the lemonade and said, “Beggars can’t be choosers.”

  After driving a short distance into City Park, Abba backed the Aztek up to the bank of a scenic lagoon, possibly the exact place where last night’s murder had occurred. After opening the dual tailgate, she dug around for a picnic blanket.

  “Voila,” she said, spreading it on the grass in front of the open tailgate.

  Abba and Rafael were soon sharing Chianti that they drank straight from the open bottle. A splash and resultant circular ripple of water marked the spot where a big fish broke the surface of the lagoon.

  “Father Fred’s place looked ominous,” Abba said. “Even if Desire is there, they won’t let her come to the door for a chat.”

  “She’s not there,” I said.

  “And how do you know that?” Rafael asked.

  “It’s probably the place they take their recruits for processing. I doubt anyone stays there very long.”

  “Then what do you expect to find?” Abba asked.

  “Information. I’m betting it’s where they keep their records. If so, we can find out where Desire is.”

  “Great,” Rafael said. “We’ll just knock on the front door and ask them if we can have a look at their records.”

  “Not funny,” Abba said.

  “What, then?” he said. “This is starting to feel like an exercise in futility.”

  “I have a plan,” I said.

  Rafael took a swig from the jug of Chianti. “Then don’t keep us in suspense,” he said.

  “It’ll be dark in a few hours. When the time is right, you can drop me off a block or so from the orphanage. I’ll break in, get the records we need and then get out.”

  Abba was smiling when she said, “Better pass me the bottle, Padre.”

  Rafael was grinning as he handed the jug to Abba.

  “And how do you plan to accomplish that particular feat?” he asked.

  “Experience,” I said. “I worked for the F.D.I.C. during my college years. We repossessed many houses. I became fairly proficient at breaking and entering.”

  “The F.D.I.C. hired you to break into houses?” Abba said.

  “Believe me, they repossess lots of houses. If you don’t want to go through the court system, then you send in a housebreaker.”

  “Are you making this up as you go along?” she asked.

  “I’d wait until the occupants left the house to go shopping, or to work. When they did, I’d break in, have the locks changed, and take control. Physical possession of the house precluded us from having to go through the court system. Worked like a charm.”

  “Nice man,” Rafael said. “Think I’m reassessing my opinion of you.”

  “Never said I was perfect. I learned enough to have made it as a cat burglar. I haven’t found a place yet I can’t break into.”

  “Comforting to know,” Abba said.

  “Father Fred’s compound isn’t exactly your typical house,” Rafael said. “More like an armed compound. How do you intend to get over the fence?”

  “Easy,” I said. “Climb one of those live oaks with draping limbs, and drop over to the other side.”

  “There’s a guard at the gate. How do you know what you’ll find once you get inside the compound?” Rafael said.

  “Though I only had a quick look at the place as we drove past, my guess is they’re more worried about someone breaking out than breaking in.”

  “Even if you get inside, you surely don’t think you can find the records we need without someone spotting you.”

  “Cat burglars steal things all the time from occupied houses. I’m up to the task,” I said. “I’ll figure everything out on the fly.”

  Rafael’s cool expression indicated he was less than confident about my boast.

  “Fine,” he said. “What about us?”

  “We wait until after dark. I’ll watch from across the street until activity in the compound tells me it’s safe to go inside. If the documents are there, it should take me about twenty minutes to get in, find them, and then get out.”

  “You sound pretty sure of yourself,” Rafael said.

  “Have a better idea?”

  “Can’t think of one at the moment,” he said.

  “I sense your skepticism.”

  “It’s your ass,” Rafael said.

  “And you?” I said, looking at Abba.

  She smiled and winked. “Sure you don’t want to get a little drunk on some of this cheap swill before you try?”

  “Better stick to my soda pop,” I said. “It’s loaded with sugar, and I’ll be buzzing for hours.

  ***

  Katrina had felled many of the big trees in the neighborhood, though not all of them. During my two-block trek to Father Fred’s compound, I followed a path through their shadows, and the ground fog beginning to kick up around my ankles. The red eyes of a Halloween witch in the front yard of a house down the street flashed off and on. The decorations weren’t half as creepy as the old orphanage across the street from me.

  No lights shined from the building’s many windows. The floodlights on poles in the courtyard were also dark. Something was amiss at the compound. Staking out a spot across the street in the shadows of a giant live oak, I waited, hoping to determine what it was.

  After half an hour, my eyes were popping as I stared at the security vehicle parked in the driveway. I finally convinced myself the driver must have fallen asleep. After walking a block down the street, I crossed to the other side and followed the sidewalk back to the compound. My brain told me the man in the car wasn’t guarding anything. My better senses screamed for me to walk past, and then to keep on walking. I didn’t listen to my better senses.

  I decided to saunter up to the driver’s window. If the guard was awake, I planned to tap on it, and ask him if I could bum a cigarette. If he were asleep, I would enter the compound through the front gate. If there were security cameras, then so be it.

  When I reached the old black Ford beater with the word ‘Security’ painted in white on the door, I found the driver’s window open, the driver neither awake nor asleep. He was dead.

  Someone had cut his throat, the front of his shirt red with blood. The blood had already begun to dry, the man’s body growing cold. A metal slug with a mysterious symbol scratched on it covered his right eye. I spent no time looking for a murder weapon, hurrying past the security vehicle and into the compound.

  The place was eerily quiet, the compound dark. When I found the front door open and wafting in a gentle breeze, I wondered what else I’d find inside Father Fred’s orphanage.

  I always carry a keychain flashlight. The beam did little to light the empty hallway in which I found myself. It sufficed until my eyes dilated and adjusted to the shadows. Finding a hallway door ajar, I opened it and peeked inside.

  The large room was where Father Fred and his staff housed prisoners waiting for someone to buy them. Leg irons and handcuffs draped from the metal frames of the dozen or more bunk beds. There was no air conditioning or even fans, and the large room reeked of sweat and urine.

  Though I’d left the ground fog outside, a pervasive chill cooled the back of my neck. The room was empty of human life, yet I felt the presence of unhappy spirits. I backed out of the room, into the deserted hallway.

  Down the hall, I found the building’s control center. Several computers with dead screens populated a room that seemed more suited to a jailhouse than an orphanage. I also found my second corpse. Like the man in the car, this one also had a severed jugular and a slug over his right eye.

  On the way out, I passed through a kitchen area and a small dining hall. A bowl of soup sat on one of the tables
, the half-eaten contents still warm to the tip of my finger. Finding no books or records, I returned to the hallway and stood at the base of the stairway, the beam of my light briefly illuminating a strange scratching on the wooden banister. After reaching the top of the stairs, opening a door and peeking in, I dialed Rafael on my cell phone. He answered on the first ring.

  “Wyatt, what’d you find?”

  “You need to see for yourself,” I said. “Can you join me?”

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “Is it safe?”

  “There’s no one here except me,” I said. “At least no one still alive.”

  Rafael and Abba parked the Aztek down the street and joined me. I was waiting for them beside the security vehicle, and they got a shock when they peered into its window. Rafael crossed himself, and Abba’s hand went to her mouth as they stared at the body behind the wheel.

  “Is he dead?” Abba asked.

  Her question made me grin. “If you can’t tell, I’d suggest you consider changing your college major.”

  “It was just a gut reaction. Don’t be such a dick,” she said.

  “Sorry. You set me up for that one.”

  “Next time, cut me some slack.”

  Rafael was paying no attention to our banter as he lifted the slug from the man’s eye, borrowing my flashlight for a closer look at the mysterious object.

  “Any idea what it is?” I asked.

  His reply was ominous. “I know exactly what it is. It’s a death token.”

  “What the hell is a death token?”

  “A witch thingy,” he said. “This scratching on the metal was done by hand during some black magic ceremony that quite possibly included the sacrifice of some small animal.”

  “Who . . . ?” Abba said.

  “A witch,” Rafael said.

  It was his turn to smile when she said, “A real witch?”

  “Yes, my dear, a very real and deadly witch. One that practices the black arts and is very good at it.”

  Rafael put the token in his pocket. He stopped at the front door, again borrowing my flashlight. He pointed the beam at a scratching I hadn’t seen, though it was similar to the one on the banister.

  “A witches mark,” he said.

  He shook his head when Abba asked, “Put there by the witch?”

  “By someone afraid of a witch,” he said. “Apparently, there was good cause to be frightened.”

  I led them through the dormitory, control center, and dining area, and then up the stairs to the second floor. Abba gasped when she saw body number three situated in a sitting position at a table. A black candle flickered, smoking and about to go dead.

  “Is that . . . ?”

  “Father Fred,” I said.

  She held up her hand. “Don’t say a word. The dagger in his heart tells me all I need to know.”

  Chapter 12

  Tony had dropped his dog off at the house, his wife Lil miffed when he left again and headed for Bertram’s bar. He was looking for someone in particular. Even if he didn’t find him there, he needed a drink in the worst way, and Picou’s was always a good place to quench one’s thirst. Though it was just getting dark, ground fog was already forming outside on the street, Eddie Toledo sitting at the bar, nursing a tall scotch.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  “Pull up a stool, Lieutenant. I was looking for someone to buy me a drink.”

  “You’re in luck. I’m working a case and on the payroll tonight. Your future father-in-law is paying for the drinks and information,” Tony said.

  “You working for . . . ?”

  “Frankie Castellano,” Tony said.

  “How do you know about Josie and me?”

  “Frankie says you’re responsible for keeping her from joining him at his horse farm north of here.”

  “Not any longer,” Eddie said. “He asked for her to bring me along. She left already. I’ll join her later.”

  “How did you get her to leave without you?”

  “I told her I have a dentist appointment tomorrow morning.”

  “Do you?”

  “A little white lie. My appointment was last week.”

  “And your reason for lying?”

  With a deadpan expression, Eddie said, “I’m a lawyer; that’s what we’re paid to do.”

  “I heard that,” Bertram said, bringing Tony his own tall glass of scotch. “You know how to tell when a lawyer’s lying, don’t you?”

  “When his lips start to move,” Tony and Eddie said in unison.

  “That’s the oldest joke in the book, Bertram,” Eddie said. “Get some new material, or I’ll have to find a higher class place to drink.”

  “I doubt I got anything to worry about,” Bertram said. “What are you doing out after dark, Lieutenant?”

  “Working on a case, and you two need to stop calling me Lieutenant. I’ve been off the force a while now and I ain’t ever going back.”

  “You’ll always be Lieutenant Tony to me,” Bertram said.

  “Me too,” Eddie said. “Get used to it.”

  Bertram left them to take a pitcher of beer to a couple of tourists that had tired of Bourbon Street.

  “If your dentist’s appointment was last week, why didn’t you just go to the horse farm with Josie. You working tomorrow?”

  “On vacation for another week now. I had a date with a cutie I met a while back. She called and canceled.”

  “Smart girl,” Tony said. “Now what?”

  “Join Josie tomorrow.”

  “Can you postpone for a while?”

  “Maybe. For what reason?”

  “Did you hear about the murder last night?”

  “Wyatt texted me a link.”

  “Oh yeah? Why did he do that?” Tony asked.

  “Because he thought there might be a chance we’d be implicated.”

  Tony drank a healthy swig of his scotch, hoisting his glass as he glanced around the bar for Bertram.

  “Hold your horses,” Bertram said. “I’m coming.”

  Despite the rolling fog outside on the street, business inside had begun picking up. After delivering fresh drinks for Tony and Eddie, Bertram hurried away to pour a glass of wine for an attractive brunette in a short, red dress and her slightly tipsy boyfriend.

  “What makes Wyatt think that you and him could be implicated in the murder?” Tony asked.

  “The trophy in the news article. Wyatt and I were at the track yesterday, the trophy in our possession just a few hours before the murder occurred.”

  “That would make you two prime suspects.”

  “Or the killer’s next victims,” Eddie said. “A big, ugly Mexican goon took the trophy from us before we left the track.”

  “Can you I.D. him?”

  “Lonzo Galvez; thirty-nine years old; born and raised right here in Louisiana; in and out of trouble most of his life though he’s never been convicted of a major crime.”

  “How’s he connected to Chuy Delgado?”

  “He’s not, at least directly. He’s the bodyguard of Angus Anderson.”

  “You’re shittin’ me,” Tony said.

  “Nope. Anderson and Contrado were drinking in one of the track bars. Galvez took the trophy from Wyatt and me after talking with them.”

  “Hell, Eddie, your life might not be worth a plugged nickel right about now. What the hell are you still doing in town?”

  “Wyatt and I won a sizeable amount of money at the track yesterday. Bertram deposited the check into Wyatt’s account, and it doesn’t clear until tomorrow.”

  “Can’t you just wait to get your share? It ain’t going no place.”

  Eddie grinned. “I’ve never had thirty-three grand in my checking account before. I wanted to see how it felt before I get whacked.”

  Tony whistled. “You won sixty-six thousand dollars?”

  “Yes sir, we did.”

  “Hot tip?”

  “Wyat
t never forgets a face; even a horse’s face. He realized Frankie had entered a sleeper in the race disguised as a nag. We bet the farm and the horse won going away.”

  “Lightning Bolt?” Tony said.

  “That’s his real name. Frankie was calling him Warmonger and had apparently falsified his pedigree.”

  “You must have bet big to win that much. If I was you, I wouldn’t tell Frankie it was you and Wyatt that lowered the odds.”

  “We already figured that part out,” Eddie said.

  “What else do you know about the horse?”

  “Frankie imported the jockey from Oklahoma so no one would know who he was.”

  “He paid the price for it,” Tony said. “He was murdered last night, along with Frankie’s trainer.”

  “How do you know so much about this case?” Eddie asked.

  “I was at the murder scene.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “I’m not sure I should tell you,” Tony said. “You being a Fed and all.”

  “Well, then you better tell me now. You know I’ll ferret it out if you don’t.”

  “Tommy called me. Seems the normal graft and corruption downtown has taken on new proportions because of the influx of Mexican mob drug money.”

  “Tell me something I don’t already know,” Eddie said.

  “Then hear this and let it sink in a minute. Tommy’s taking dirty money. Not because he wants to but because he’d out himself if he didn’t.”

  “I didn’t realize it had gotten that bad.”

  “It’s bad. Can you promise Tommy some sort of immunity if he cooperates with the Feds?”

  “You already know the answer to that. Did Tommy put you up to asking me for him?”

  “Tommy don’t have a clue how close he is to going to federal prison, and I ain’t talking about one of the white collar varieties.”

  “I’d have to know he’s willing to implicate anyone guilty, even if they were his close friends.”

  “You may have a problem there,” Tony said.

  “Then he’ll go to jail just like everyone else.”

  “Don’t be such a hard ass,” Tony said. “If you want his help, you need to cut him a deal he can live with. If not, I guarantee you’ll be no closer to accomplishing your goal this time next year.”