Gumbo Justice

by Holli H. Castillo

  He drove down St. Charles and turned on Carrollton Avenue, stopping in front of a three-story house that had been converted into several offices.

  Ryan rang the bell next to the bright yellow door of Suite B.

  A second later, the door buzzed and they were inside, the smell of recently-burned marijuana inundating the air. An overweight, bearded man with unkempt long hair, his arms and neck covered with tattoos, was sitting at the counter reading an Archie comic book. A smile spread across his face as he looked up, revealing large, slightly overlapping yellowed teeth.

  He rushed around the counter, and with a voice full of gravel said, “My favorite customer. Long time no see.” He picked up Ryan and swung her around, squeezing her in a full body hug before he put her down. “Can’t believe you’re related to L-7.”

  “Sometimes I have trouble believing it myself,” Ryan said, smiling back.

  “So what you been up to?” Jimbo sat back down. “I saw you on TV. You got any problems with that fag reporter, you just let me know. I got lots of friends don’t like reporters.”

  Before Ryan could answer, Sean shoved Devon’s sketch in Jimbo’s face. “Does this look like one of yours?”

  “Still can’t see how the two of you are related.” Jimbo held the sketch out a foot-and-a-half away from his face and stared at it for thirty seconds. “Yeah, this was one of mine, but I haven’t used that design in years. I update the devils every six months or so. People don’t want to have the same art as anyone else. But that one’s old. I don’t recall who got it.”

  “What about cops?” Sean asked.

  “Don’t care for them too much,” Jimbo answered with a shrug. “Anything else?”

  “No, I mean, would you remember if you did one of these on a cop? A white cop?” Sean’s eyes darted around the room and he sniffed the air. Ryan hoped he wasn’t going to try to sweat Jimbo over the marijuana.

  Jimbo thought for a second. “You know, that does sound kind of familiar, some years back, a cop asking for a devil on his arm. It was sort of funny. Why would a cop want a devil on him? But hey, who am I to judge? Can’t remember his name, though. Maybe if I think on it a while something will come back to me.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help jog your memory?” Sean pulled out his wallet. He must have realized that the threat of busting Jimbo for marijuana wouldn’t get results.

  Jimbo shook his head. “I’m not hitting you up for money. I would do anything for this lady. Even if she is related to you.” He turned to Ryan. “I have your number in my palm pilot. If I remember anything, I’ll call you.”

  “Exactly what have you done for him?” Sean asked when they were outside.

  “I made a phone call to a judge to get his mama out of jail.”

  “Why was she arrested?” Sean started the car.

  “Marijuana. No big deal.”

  “Pecan doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Sean said, and shook his head sadly. “Smelled like Jimbo may have burned up a few too many brain cells smoking dope himself to be of much help to us.”

  “His mother is seventy years old and got caught smoking after her chemotherapy treatment. Even Judge Jackson didn’t think it was necessary to keep her in jail.”

  They rode in silence for a minute.

  “Do you have any leads on the homicides?” Ryan finally asked.

  “I wouldn’t tell you if we did. You seem to forget that your involvement is limited to viewing the crime scenes, not solving the crimes.” He turned onto St. Charles.

  “It’s not like you couldn’t use some help. Look at how successful you were with Jimbo.” Sean had a lot of nerve. Sometimes he annoyed her even more than Shep did. Then, remembering her conversation with Shep the night before, she asked, “So what’s the deal with Shep’s family?”

  “Why are you so interested in Shep all of a sudden?”

  She ignored his question. “I said something last night to the effect that he should worry about his own family. He got kind of put out. Then I started thinking, wasn’t there something wrong with his family?”

  Sean gave her a severe look. “I would say so. Shep’s father used to beat the crap out of him and his mother. One day Shep finally got sick of it and fought back, and ended up putting his father in the hospital. His mother thanked him by kicking him out on the street. He was fourteen at the time.”

  “What happened?” She bit her lip, feeling a little bad about the family remark now. That was definitely not cool.

  “His dad died of a heart attack a few weeks later. Shep’s mom moved away with his little sister, and left him behind. Lucky for Shep some cousins took him in. You don’t remember any of this?”

  Ryan shrugged casually, but was appalled, as much by her own comment as by Shep’s family history. “I never would have said anything if I had known, you know.”

  “Well, maybe it would be a good idea if you thought before you shot off that big mouth of yours,” Sean said and shook his finger at her. Ryan slapped his hand away and didn’t speak again during the rest of the brief ride, feeling a mixture of anger at Sean for being right and shame at herself for being wrong.

  Two hours later, Ryan was finishing her third glass of wine and reading through the Gendusa file. Her father had stopped by after Sean left and told her about Gram. While Ryan was worried about her grandmother, she was equally upset at her father’s level of distress. Instead of focusing all of his attention on taking care of his ill mother, he had concerns about not being around to watch out for his defiant daughter. He seemed to calm down only after Ryan swore to watch how she dressed, spoke, acted, and pretty much lived while he was out of town. When he got back, however, all bets were off.

  Ryan tried to focus on the file in front of her. While the tape of Marcelo Gendusa was the stuff of a prosecutor’s wet dream, the rest of the file was dry and boring. She decided to give up for the night and was pouring herself a fourth glass when the phone rang.

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you see Conchita Beliza?” Her best friend, Edie Guilliot, was on the other end.

  “You must have Conchita Beliza radar,” Ryan said. “Every time that woman is on TV you manage to find her.”

  “That bitch stole my boyfriend. Quick, put on Channel Nine.”

  Conchita was reporting live from the St. Thomas. “With multiple murders in the St. Thomas Housing Development, the citizens in this neighborhood are asking what they can do to protect themselves against this wave of violence. Residents of the St. Thomas feel that the police aren’t taking the rash of criminal activity seriously enough, and wonder how many more people must be killed before the Superintendent reassigns full time officers to the development. Calls to Captain Kelly Murphy of the Sixth District were unreturned this evening. More information will be provided as it becomes available. This is Conchita Beliza, reporting live for WVUE News.” And then she flicked her tongue over her lower lip, the famous Conchita Beliza trademark.

  “That ought to put daddy in a good mood,” Ryan said, turning the TV off. “You’re right. Conchita Beliza is a bitch. Although Grant wasn’t exactly your boyfriend.” Grant was a reporter Edie had dated for a month last year.

  “He might have been if Conchita Beliza and her tongue hadn’t gotten in the way. What are you doing tonight? Feel like going out?”

  “Don’t you have a trial tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, so what, I’m just going to lose anyway.” Edie never seemed to care about winning. In fact, occasionally she would forget she had a trial scheduled and would wing it the best she could.

  “Well, I have a trial tomorrow I plan on winning. And I’ve got crime scene duty. I promised daddy I would behave. At least until he gets back in town.”

  “Ooh, and you’ve got Detective Yummy don’t you?” Edie smacked her lips over the phone, and Ryan could picture Edie’s bushy black eyebrows arched over her green eyes. “Girl, if you don’t try to break yourself off a little piece of that, you are crazy.”

  “I’m a litt
le too busy working on the Gendusa case.” She told Edie how she had manipulated Rick into letting Mike sit on the case with her instead of Bo.

  Edie didn’t seem impressed. “All I know is that if I was looking for a little action, Anthony Chapetti is definitely the man I would go to. Gendusa will be waiting for you in two weeks. Chapetti is in your grasp right now.”

  “I’m not looking for action,” Ryan said, annoyed that Edie was more impressed with the fact that Ryan would be working with Shep than she was with Ryan landing the big mob case. “Or in grasping Chapetti. Oh, you know what I mean.”

  Edie let out an cackle. “Yeah right. Anyway, I’m going out somewhere. If you change your mind, call my cell.”

  Ryan decided now was a good time to take a long, hot bath, finish her glass of wine, or maybe even the whole bottle, and then catch up on her sleep before the inevitable call came.

  WEDNESDAY

  1:30 A.M.

  Several hours later, Ryan heard the voice again.

  Does it hurt yet? The man loomed over her, a sardonic grin on his face.

  And it did hurt. She tried to scream, but no sound came out.

  Well, does it? Answer me, bitch.

  She opened her eyes, heart pounding, in a panic. Her eyes fervently scanned the room. The clock was on the dresser. She knew she was out of the nightmare when she saw the clock.

  She tried to go back to sleep, but the cruel smile and stony eyes taunted her from inside her closed eyelids. She fumbled on the night stand for the remote control and clicked on the television. She surfed, not really focusing on anything, willing her mind to slow down enough so her body could get the sleep it desperately craved. She did this for an hour, her eyes going back and forth between the television set and the clock until the phone rang.

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s another gift waiting for you,” the distorted voice said.

  “You must have the wrong number,” she answered, and then felt stupid for some reason.

  “Ryan, the gifts are for you.”

  The phone trembled in her hand, but her voice was steady. “Gifts?”

  “I thought you knew.” Silence. Ryan didn’t know if he was still on the line or not. “You’ll understand tonight.”

  Ryan stared at the phone in her hand as if it was alive, until she heard the operator’s recorded voice, “If you would like to make a call, please hang up and dial again.”

  She clicked the talk button on the cordless handset. The phone immediately rang back. She saw Sean’s cell number on the caller ID.

  “Yeah.”

  “Thirty in the St. Thomas. I’m outside.”

  Wonderful. Not even five minutes to get ready this time.

  She hung up without a word and quickly dressed, settling on a clean T-shirt and a pair of capri jeans. No matter what she promised her father, she still refused to dress up to visit another dead body. She hurriedly brushed her teeth and reached for her keys and tennis shoes on the way out.

  As soon as she opened the car door, Sean started in on her.

  “Your number was busy. Who were you talking to at this time of night?”

  “You must have been dialing at the same time as my prank caller,” she answered casually as she sat back and buckled the seatbelt. “Some loser with a voice distorter can’t seem to get enough of me.”

  Sean’s knuckles turned white as he clenched the steering wheel. “I don’t like the sound of that.” He carefully looked both ways at the stop sign on St. Charles before crossing the intersection.

  “At least he doesn’t say anything nasty. Not yet, anyway. So, what do we have tonight?”

  “The victim is a woman, probably a hooker, probably raped.” Ryan saw him watching her from the corner of her eye, but wouldn’t turn to face him.

  “Do you know the cause of death?” She wondered if the scene was going to be gruesome. This would be her first female victim crime scene.

  “Strangulation.”

  They rode in silence the rest of the way to the St. Thomas.

  Sean stopped the car at the intersection of Chipewa and St. James, the two streets converging to a point at Felicity.

  The police cars were parked near the same side of the development as the previous night, but two blocks down and around the corner. Several uniformed officers were standing under the street light. Sergeant Mitchell, the homicide sergeant, was on his phone as Sean and Ryan approached. Ryan lit a cigarette. Sean gave a reproachful look but said nothing.

  “Coroner and crime lab are on the way,” Sergeant Mitchell said as they walked up. The sergeant was more than a few inches shy of six feet, with a stocky build and thinning brown hair, just starting to gray at the temples. He rubbed the side of his broad face and then pinched the bridge of his nose. “Hooker, I’m presuming, looks like she was choked with something, like a cord or a rope, maybe. She has a ligature mark around her neck but no finger marks.”

  Behind him, a black woman who appeared to be in her twenties sat propped against an orange and white striped traffic barrel. The barrel had originally been placed in front of a section of the street that had collapsed two feet into the ground, making for one of the city’s better-known potholes. Instead of repairing the street, the barrel had been placed in front of the hole to warn drivers to go around it. A prankster had moved the barrel years ago, presumably to watch cars lose their tires, and it had sat on the sidewalk ever since.

  The dead woman had bleached white hair, cut close to her head, and full red lips, her lipstick unmarred by death. She was naked, her legs open and her knees slightly bent, with one hand placed between her legs in a lewd, masturbatory gesture. The only noticeable injury was the ligature mark. Angry red sores covered her body, and what appeared to be a piece of plastic dangled from her mouth.

  Ryan stared, recognizing the woman.

  Before Ryan had a chance to say anything, Shep walked up from the direction of the nearest apartment building. “I’ve got a little girl in building 40.”

  “Son of a bitch.” The sergeant’s fingers went back to the bridge of his nose. “Is she hurt?”

  “She’s dead.” Shep’s eyes were so dark the pupils were indiscernible from the irises. “She has the same mark around her neck.”

  The sergeant cursed again and started off in the direction of the building. “Is she posed like this one?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s something at least,” the sergeant said.

  Ryan followed behind, stepping outside of Sean’s reach as he tried to stop her. She rubbed her arms, feeling an inexplicable chill. She looked around at the surrounding buildings, the same feeling of unknown eyes watching from behind red brick walls.

  “I recognize that hooker,” she said as they walked. “Charmaine Reynolds. She was a defendant on a homicide last year. I didn’t like her, but I certainly never thought I’d be looking at her out here, like that.”

  Building 40 was only twenty yards away from the woman’s body, but faced the opposite direction. Two uniformed officers were kneeling in the open doorway at the top of the steps. The body of the little girl was seated on the top step, leaning against the wall, her eyes wide open.

  The tiny form was emaciated, with the same ugly sores as her mother. She was shoeless, clothed only in an inside-out T-shirt and a pair of dirty jean shorts.

  Ryan’s voice threatened to shake as she looked into the vacant eyes of the child in front of her. “Charmaine’s daughter, Jasmine. She should be around six. Charmaine bonded out of OPP, and when she came to court she’d bring Jasmine with her and leave her in the hallway alone. It came out during motions that Charmaine tricked in front of her, and I suspected she also tricked the kid out to perverts that like them young, although I couldn’t prove it.”

  “How did Charmaine bond out?” Sean asked with a frown. “Didn’t you say it was a homicide?”

  “She was charged with manslaughter, not murder. Judge McAllister gave her an ROR. Apparently he didn’t have a problem with
Charmaine killing her pimp. But then again, I heard rumors that McAllister had a professional relationship with Charmaine, if you know what I mean.”

  The sergeant shook his head. “He released a homicide suspect on her own recognizance? Somebody should have done something about that.” He walked back to Charmaine’s body, still shaking his head.

  “What happened with the case?” Shep asked, removing his gloves.

  “Street Crimes picked Charmaine up for solicitation and got a confession to the pimp’s murder. McAllister threw it out. Charmaine’s statement was the only link to the murder, so I had to dismiss the case.”

  “Was the confession good?” Sean asked.

  Ryan shrugged. “I’d confess to crucifying Jesus if Danny Di’Franco was kicking my ass.” Di’Franco was a detective with Street Crimes, well-known for his questionable interview techniques.

  Shep frowned.

  Ryan shrugged again. “I’m not saying Charmaine didn’t kill the pimp. She had a very volatile relationship with Marco Bouvier. But she had the crap beat out of her while she was in custody. Whether she killed him or not, her confession was not exactly voluntary.”

  Sean knelt next to Jasmine’s body, feeling in her pockets with a gloved hand. The dead child’s empty pockets were depressingly symbolic.

  Ryan looked back at the hooker’s body. “I called Social Services on Charmaine twice. I guess they were backlogged.”

  Suzie Chin and Larry Davillier from crime lab arrived together, and, a second later, Doug, the deputy coroner, pulled up in the coroner’s station wagon.

  The sergeant led Doug to Jasmine. “Anything you can tell us right now to give us any kind of a lead? I’ve got a dead six-year-old. I need to find this bastard fast.”

  Doug did a cursory exam of the child’s body. “I’m not going to be able to tell if she was sexually assaulted until I get her on the table. The cause of death appears to be strangulation, no finger marks, no patterns. From the smooth line I’d say most likely a belt or a piece of cloth. I’m sure I’ll find the same on the woman. Is that her mama?”

  The sergeant nodded.