The Empowered

by Craig Parshall

  Gil Spencer was shaking his head. “No, no, not that. Sure, I knew my boss wanted to meet with you after he got your e-mail. But that’s not who I am talking about.”

  “You don’t mean Jason Forester?”

  “You got it.”

  That was a shocker.

  “His handwritten notes are missing from his prosecution file in the case against that Russian child porn site. But we were able to retrieve his log from the metadata on his computer. Three days before he died, Jason Forester made an entry about planning to talk with you.”

  I immediately wondered who could have pilfered Forester’s files. “This data sabotage you described and the missing files—who would have had access?”

  “Well, his supervising US attorney, of course. And also our Criminal Division over at DOJ.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Sure. Attorney General Shazzar.”

  I chewed on all of that while Gil Spencer kept talking.

  “Anyway, Jason Forester was planning on talking to you about some magazine article you wrote. He wanted to know if you had picked up any useful leads when you did your research on the human trafficking of young kids. Runaways . . .”

  I was trying to process that. “I never knew . . .”

  Gil charged on. “Then the next thing that happens, he’s found dead at his desk.”

  “An inside source in DC called it voodoo. You know who that might be or why the tie-in to voodoo?”

  He shook his head. “No. But there was a very menacing message in the FedEx letter Forester received right before he died. Weird symbols. A skull wearing a top hat. Skeletons dancing. It also had letters from a newspaper cut out to spell these words: ‘You will die in five minutes.’ And according to the coroner, that’s exactly what happened.”

  After checking the time, he said, “Gotta go. I may have eyes on me. Have to be careful.”

  We both stood.

  I pointed to the Rabboni statue and explained. “By the way, that isn’t fear on Mary Magdalene’s face. It’s amazement. And joy, too, I think.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The story lays it out,” I told him. “She runs into the resurrected Christ. She’d thought he was dead. She saw him die with her own eyes. But then she finds him alive, just after Jesus had performed the ultimate act of supernatural empowerment—rising from his own grave, bringing forth his body. You know, habeas corpus.”

  At the corner of Gil’s mouth, a flicker of a smile. Then he strode off.

  55

  I made the long trek to the closest Metro station and on the Green Line subway to the belly of the beast in DC in order to meet up with Heather. We’d agreed on an approximate time for us to gather at 1789, an upscale restaurant in Georgetown. Because she had my cell, I felt disconnected. But according to my watch, I was on schedule.

  It was shoulder-to-shoulder in the subway car and I was standing, but after the first stop several seats freed up, so I sat down. Only two pieces of intel had surfaced from my conversation with Gil that might prove useful in pinpointing the leadership of Kuritsa Foks Videoryad. One bit of information wasn’t new but corroborated everything I believed. The fact that someone with influence inside the federal government in DC was behind the cruel enterprise. I came to Washington expecting it, but somehow it sounded even more disturbing coming from Gil Spencer.

  Secondly, three days before he died, Jason Forester had made notes to himself on his computer about wanting to contact me about my article. He must have been following up on any leads he could find about child abduction or adolescent sex trafficking. Clearly he was zeroing in on Kuritsa Foks Videoryad. I wondered who else might have known about Forester’s plan to talk to me.

  The subway cars slowed to another stop. The doors slid open. That was when I noticed him, not ten feet away, reading the Washington Post.

  “Vance?” I called out.

  Vance Zaduck put down the paper, looked over, and smiled when he recognized me. The seat next to me was open, so he trotted over and joined me.

  “What are you doing in Washington?”

  “Business,” I said.

  Vance shook his head and lowered his voice as he got personal with me. “Listen, when I found out about that Morehaven episode, I called the US attorney for New Orleans and read him the riot act. They should have called me before they roped you into a custodial situation. They knew that you and I had a professional relationship, for crying out loud. I could have helped you. Prevented all of that embarrassment . . .”

  “No apologies necessary,” I said. “I filed a habeas corpus and was released quickly. But that was a first for me.”

  “What were they thinking?” he asked. “I would like to know who gave them the directive to pick you up. Do you know?”

  “Not yet. But no matter. I’ve got other fish to fry.” I looked at my watch. “You know, Vance, I’d figure you to be the workaholic type. You heading home already? It’s not five yet.”

  “I’m playing the good uncle,” Vance said. “I’m heading out to my niece’s birthday party. She’s officially a teenager. Her mother—you know, my sister—she put the pressure on me.”

  I nodded.

  Vance looked down at the floor, his jaw clenched like he was struggling. “I have a decision to make,” he said.

  I waited.

  He hesitated. “Deciding how much I can tell you—ethically, I mean.”

  “What about?”

  “About you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. See, I’m on the team leading an internal investigation. Ever since Jason Forester died.”

  “Natural causes, isn’t that what you determined?”

  “Right now that issue is moot. The point is, he was threatened in a FedEx letter. And that was followed by Paul Pullmen’s murder. We’re looking at a possible federal insider who could be involved with both of those events. A traitor in our midst.” He looked me over. “Do you find that hard to believe?”

  “As time goes by,” I said, “I’m surprised by less and less.”

  His eyes narrowed. He was giving me a closer look. “I guess you’re talking about your moonlighting job, right? Chasing spooks and demons?” He gave a little snort.

  “Let’s just say that when it comes to rotten apples, I don’t believe evil has geographical boundaries—or professional ones either,” I said, looking him in the eye. “The real enemy is unseen. Malicious. Committed. Equally at home in halls of government as he is in suburbia or in the hood or in rural America.”

  Then I turned it around. “Vance, about what you just said—about what you can, or should, share with me. And about my name being involved in some way with the Jason Forester matter.”

  “Just be careful,” Vance Zaduck said. “If you are approached.”

  “Approached by who?”

  “Can’t name names. But I can warn you about one thing: be very cautious of anyone from the Department of Justice who tries to speak to you about Jason Forester and Paul Pullmen. And their deaths.”

  “Can you be more specific?” I said, sliding over a few inches on the bench to get a better look at Vance’s face as he drilled closer to the mother lode.

  Vance’s expression tightened. “Anyone who worked closely with Paul Pullmen at the Department of Justice. Someone who knew his comings and goings. We’re close to nailing the bad actor. And he’s dangerous.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “I’m afraid so. That’s all I can say.”

  My skin crawled. Vance had practically pasted Gil Spencer’s face on a wanted poster. And I had just come from a meeting with him.

  I said only, “Thanks. Food for thought.”

  Zaduck smiled. “Just be cautious. I remember, during your FBI interview in New Orleans when I was on the other side of the glass, that you mentioned you’ve got a daughter. She was in New Orleans with you.”

  “Yes. Heather.”

  “My advice? Take care of her. And yourself. You may want to get out of
the city for a while until we can clear things up.”

  After that, Vance closed up the conversation. He exited at the next station, giving me a quick wave good-bye.

  I took the Green Line all the way to Chinatown, then hailed a cab and headed over to 1789 at the corner of Thirty-Sixth and Prospect. I was looking forward to dinner with Heather. Another glance at my watch told me I was on time.

  Funny, the things that can go through your head in the backseat of a taxi. Excitement about reconnecting with Heather after being separated from her for hours. But after Vance Zaduck’s warning, wanting to keep her out of harm’s way. I was even entertaining the possibility of getting her out of town ahead of me, while I continued to dig.

  The clock was running. It was time for me to do something bold. If I shook things up, maybe the bad actor out there would come out of the shadows.

  56

  I had hoped dinner could at least be a brief respite when I could talk to Heather about her life. About growing up, and her interests, friends, school, sports, and dating life. All the things I had missed for more than two decades.

  Heather, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to spill some sordid details that she had learned.

  We were at a corner table at 1789 restaurant, and Heather was bursting with news. We ordered quickly, and then she started.

  “Oh,” she blurted out, “do I have something for you. That guy you met at the Mississippi River, at Dead Point, but not the guy you ended up wrestling with—you know, the pickup truck driver—but the one before that . . . the guy with the boat who was halfway guilty . . . or maybe not, maybe just a dupe.”

  “Right, Henry Bosant,” I said. “The man I wanted you to talk to.”

  “Well, there’s breaking news at Port Sulphur. I called Pastor Ventrie, and get this: Henry Bosant was found dead. Hanging by his neck from a tree.”

  That was a gut punch. Tragic news for Bosant, the new convert to Christ from a rough background, struggling with his possible complicity with a human trafficking ring.

  I had to ask, “Suicide?”

  “That’s the strange part,” she said. “The pastor talked to that officer who goes to his church, Deputy St. Martin, who investigated Bosant’s death. There’s some question about whether he hanged himself or whether he had a blow to the head first—blunt-force trauma—and then was hanged by the neck by someone else.”

  “Head trauma . . . based on what?”

  “Don’t know exactly. But the hanging part sounds fishy.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “In addition to Henry Bosant possibly suffering a fractured skull and being set up for a fake suicide, there was this business about his landline. His phone line was apparently tapped.”

  “He had suspicions about that. What else?”

  “Just that an official of some kind from New Orleans was the one who discovered his body.”

  “What kind of official?”

  “In the housing department.”

  That didn’t make sense to me. “Why would a New Orleans housing department person be in Port Sulphur?”

  “According to a news report, Bosant had been named as a witness in a housing violation, and the housing guy went down there to take a statement from him.”

  “That sounds like overkill, just to process some slumlord complaint or settle a rental dispute. What’s the official’s name?”

  “His last name was a little different.”

  I knew only one name at the Housing Authority of New Orleans. “Was it Lawrence Rudabow?”

  “Wow, yes, that’s it.”

  Heather peppered me with questions, so I told her about my meeting with Rudabow in New Orleans. She also wanted to know more about my meeting at the cemetery with Gil Spencer and the odd happenstance of my running into Vance Zaduck on the Metro, and whether I thought Spencer was as culpable as Zaduck was intimating, and how voodoo could be involved in any of this.

  On that last question, I simply said, “Circumstantially, voodoo is staring us in the face.”

  “Because . . . ?”

  “Your research on Palo Mayombe. Human sacrifice. Paul Pullmen was decapitated with a machete. It was left behind at the crime scene, carefully placed next to his corpse. As if arrogantly daring us to put it all together. Flaunting their ceremonial power. And Pullmen’s hand was missing. They use body parts of their victims in their ceremonies.”

  She asked, “Then what are we doing in DC? I mean, look at the last Palo Mayombe celebrity. Adolfo Constanzo, a drug lord. Raised in voodoo-saturated Haiti and tutored by a voodoo priest. Lives and dies in the most crime-ridden part of Mexico. All that’s a far cry from the nation’s capital.”

  I nodded. “It’s a conundrum.”

  “Where next?”

  I said, “Getting a face-to-face with Louisa Deidre Baldou.”

  “Yeah. She seems to be in the middle of everything,” Heather said. “Attending the ABA, where your address was on the death of Jason Forester and demonic involvement. Then she gets me to Bayou Bon Coeur, where voodoo is all over the place. Calls you with some coded message about Batman and Gotham City. Uses the word Jester, which helps lead us to the ruins of Six Flags . . .”

  “Where her sister Lucinda had been kidnapped,” I said. “Her remains found at Bayou Bon Coeur, a place with a dark voodoo reputation.”

  “Finding Louisa Deidre Baldou won’t be easy.” Heather thought on that some more. “Correction. Finding her will be next to impossible. She could be working anywhere. Just think how big the federal bureaucracy is.”

  “I’ve got a pretty good idea,” I said.

  Heather shook her head and winced. “I keep thinking back to that night at Dead Point and seeing that girl’s face in the porthole of the boat.”

  That image hadn’t left my head either.

  A few seconds later she looked at me, narrowing her eyes. “All right. Time to tell me what in the world was going on between you and that pickup truck guy by the river. That guy starts to scream. It sounds otherworldly. Honestly. You wrestle him to the ground. You’re shouting to him real loud, and then everything changes.”

  “You didn’t see him change physically, did you?”

  She took a second. “Of course not.”

  “Well, I did.”

  “Okay, you’ll have to explain that one.”

  I decided it was time.

  “I see things, Heather. Demons. When they inhabit people. And even when they don’t. Things that others can’t see.”

  She sat back, slack-jawed, finally saying only, “Oh, wow.”

  “Hard to believe, I’m sure. But there it is.”

  “And what you were doing with that guy by the river . . .”

  “Helping him. A rescue effort. Expelling a demon.”

  “You do that stuff?”

  “Never before. That was a first. It seemed like the right thing to do.”

  “You’ve been attacked by . . . demons, or whatever . . . attacked before?”

  “Often.”

  “In New Orleans?”

  “Several times.”

  “Where was I?”

  “Somewhere else, thank goodness.”

  She gave me a look, one that I won’t forget. It told me a lot about her, things that I had wanted to know but hadn’t heard from her yet. Just then, I saw it in her eyes.

  Then I heard it in her voice. Heather said, “I want in. All in. I want to stop this horrible stuff. All those girls . . .” Her voice was constricted, her eyes filling. “And I want to do it with you, Trevor. No more sitting in the backseat, watching like a spectator. Please, let me start now. Partners. You and me.”

  After I paid the check, we left the restaurant and readied to cross over to the other side of Prospect. I noticed how busy the traffic was in both directions.

  Heather told me she had parked the car on the street level below, down on M Street. It was a steep drop and we were looking for a quick route to get down there. Heather said there had to be a shorter walk th
an the long, roundabout one she had taken to get up to the restaurant.

  But while Heather talked, I was thinking about the real horror she knew nothing about: something she was willing to confront. Courageously, sure, but maybe a little recklessly. I had a great caution about it. On the other hand, she wanted to do it with me. That was the best thing of all.

  Heather was talking fast about how we might locate Louisa Deidre Baldou, and as a result she didn’t see the oncoming cars as she stepped off the curb and walked right into traffic. I pulled her back from the curb just as a big Escalade SUV came roaring by.

  She looked stunned. After a second she said, “Wow, thanks, Trevor. Really. Thanks for the rescue.”

  I said, “My job. Always.”

  57

  Heather and I stepped fast across Prospect, dodging traffic, till we made it to the other side.

  For some reason, my skin was crawling. Tingling all over. I decided to look back, past the 1789 restaurant that fronted Thirty-Sixth Street. The sidewalk outside the restaurant was crowded with pedestrians. But it only took a second or two to understand why I had the sense that we were being followed.

  There were two burly men in the crowd. And I recognized them right off because I was seeing double, except that one was wearing a red golf shirt and the other was wearing a yellow one. I impulsively shouted out loud to Heather.

  “Demon twins.”

  Heather stopped and half laughed. “Uh, what are you talking about?”

  “Bad news coming. They’re passing by the front of 1789. We’ve got to run.”

  “To where?”

  I noticed some steps that led to M Street below us. “We’re going down.”

  “Since when do demons come in twins?”

  “Since they attacked me in an alley in New Orleans.”

  I grabbed her by the arm and urged her straight ahead of me, down an ultra-steep stone staircase that plunged between a redbrick building on the left and a three-story limestone wall on the right. As we scampered down, I looked behind us, but no one was coming.