Evil Ways (Morris and Chastain Investigations)

by Justin Gustainis

  "The guy, too?"

  "He gets in the way, he gets in the way. Tough luck. You're not getting soft on me, are you?"

  "Shit no, I was just thinkin' that nobody's payin' us for him. He'll be a freebie."

  "Sometimes in this business, you gotta make sacrifices, Lee. Okay there they go. Stay close, but not too close, huh?"

  "You got it."

  Quincey Morris gave the driver an address in midtown, and sat back in his seat. "I hope Harry's still there," he said to Libby. "If not, we can try his office, which is just down the block."

  "I hope he knows something about that... business you're looking into," she said, mindful of the driver, who might have big ears. "It'd be nice if we had somewhere to start."

  "Harry knows a lot of people, and he's got his fingers in a lot of pies."

  "Sounds unsanitary, but I know what you mean. How do you two know each other, anyway?"

  "We'd each been hired separately to investigate what turned out to be two ends of the same case. We met in the middle, so to speak, and decided to cooperate. Worked out pretty well."

  "Let's hope it does this time, too," she said. "Maybe he'll even have some thoughts about who might have sent those two visitors I had the other day."

  "Yeah, that is pretty damn odd. I won't insult you by asking if you've been thinking about who might have the motivation to send those fellas calling on you."

  "I've been thinking about little else, and it's gotten me nowhere."

  "Well, it makes sense to somebody, I reckon. Sooner or later, we'll find out who."

  "Then pay a visit of our own."

  "You can count on that." As he spoke, there was something in Morris's eyes that made Libby very glad she was not the person he was thinking about.

  They were silent for a while, until Morris told the driver, "I think that it's coming up, on the other side of the street. Just let us off anywhere along here, will you?"

  Throughout the journey, they had not once looked behind them.

  "Cab's lettin' 'em off, Charlie."

  "I got eyes. Slow down. We don't want to pass by until they're both on foot."

  "This is what the ghetto boys call a 'drive-by,' ain't it? Never did one of those before."

  "We was all cherry once, kid."

  "You wanna use this thing, or me?"

  "What thing?"

  "This wand doohickey that Pardee give us. He said it would, like, overcome her magic for a little while, long enough for us to take her out."

  "Fuck that, put it away," Charlie said. "A bullet in the head is a bullet in the head--I don't care if she's a witch or the fuckin' Pope."

  "Yeah, man, but Pardee said--"

  "Fuck Pardee, too. He's got no respect, the way he talks to us, like we're fucking morons, or something. We'll show the bastard how to make a hit. Get your window all the way down."

  From the holster under his arm, Charlie pulled a long-barreled .44 Magnum, and he could see that Lee had that rapid-firing Tech-9 of his ready. "Okay," he said tightly. "Let's drop the hammer."

  She and Morris were standing at the curb, waiting for a break in the traffic, when Libby Chastain noticed the black Oldsmobile heading their way very fast, then heard the squeal of its brakes as it suddenly slowed. Inside were two men.

  She snatched her suitcase from Quincey's hand, shouted "Servate nos--iam!" then released the handle just as the car pulled up opposite them.

  The ensorcelled bag rose four feet into the air, broadside to the Oldsmobile. It moved with blinding speed to absorb the five fast shots from the driver, and when the boom of the other man's Magnum sounded, the suitcase was between that weapon and Libby, too. The driver fired three more times, with the same result, and two more magnum slugs fired from the back seat also buried themselves in the bag's side.

  Meanwhile, Quincey Morris had hooked an arm around Libby's waist and yanked her behind the shelter of a parked car. Then he reached for his cell phone to call 911--for all the good that would do them now.

  The driver could be heard yelling, "Shit, I told you!" as he pulled from between the seats a cloth bundle that parted to reveal a foot-long metal rod. The driver pointed the rod at Libby's bag and shouted "Macabo--no, uh, Makibo!"

  Then the car exploded.

  Libby knelt next to Charlie Strom who, his back broken, lay amidst the wreckage of the Oldsmobile. He was bleeding from several places, and the left side of his face and neck were horribly burned. He twisted and squirmed, like a snake that has been run over by a truck.

  Using the first two fingers of her right hand, Libby began making some cryptic signs in the air. At the same time she spoke, very fast, in a language that has been dead for over 2,000 years.

  Perhaps half a minute later, Strom stopped writhing on the asphalt and lay still. His good eye stared at Libby Chastain. From over her shoulder, she heard Quincey say, "This one's gone."

  "I've been able to block your pain, but I can't heal you," she told Strom. "Your wounds are too extensive, and I don't have the right gear with me to even make an attempt. I'm sorry."

  Charlie Strom's mouth moved, but no sound came out.

  "Tell me who sent you," Libby said gently. "I need to know, so I can protect myself. Who hired you to kill me?"

  The mangled lips moved again, but this time a strangled voice managed to say, "And if... I don't, I s'ppose you'll... turn the pain back... on."

  Libby shook her head, although she wasn't sure if Strom could see her. "No, the spell stays in place, regardless. But, please, tell me. I won't lie to you--you're fading fast. You might not even last until the ambulance gets here. Do something decent, as your last act on this Earth."

  What was left of Charlie Strom's mouth split into something that might once have been a grin. "Lady," he croaked, "I haven't got the time." Then the grin was gone, forever.

  III

  REVELATIONS

  Chapter 9

  Redford, New York, is the kind of place for which they invented the word "boondocks." Twenty miles outside of Plattsburgh, it is a community of isolated houses, with lots of wild ground between them. It's the perfect locale for people who value their privacy.

  Annie Levesque's driveway was an eighth of a mile long, unpaved, and sloped upward at an angle that must have played hell with efforts to get it plowed out in the wintertime. Having reached the top, Detective Pete Premeaux turned off the engine of the unmarked police car, and he and his two passengers sat looking at the place that Annie Levesque called home.

  It was a smallish log house, a type common to that area. It looked mundane at first glance, but closer inspection revealed some things that were not quite right. All the windows were boarded up from the inside, although each appeared to have an unbroken glass pane in place. The smoke that came from Annie's chimney was the black, roiling kind that you associate with a working factory, not the placid white of wood smoke. On the end of the roof opposite the chimney, looking incongruous, was a satellite dish that looked to be in better repair than the rest of the house.

  The carcass of a butchered deer hung from a hook on the porch, a pool of blood spread out from beneath it, about a million flies partaking of the buffet. Premeaux, Fenton, and Colleen O'Donnell got out of the car, and slowly approached the house. As they drew closer, they could see an intricate, circular symbol painted on the front door.

  "I drove through Amish country in Ohio, once," Premeaux said. "That there looks kinda like one of the hex signs they all have on their barns."

  "Not quite," Colleen said. "Those are designed to repel evil. This... well, this is something else."

  Premeaux knocked on the heavy wooden door and it opened immediately, as if the woman had been standing behind it, waiting for them. Displaying his badge and ID card, he said, "Miss Levesque, I'm Detective Pete Premeaux from the Plattsburgh Police Department. These two folks are Special Agents from the FBI. We'd like to ask you a few questions."

  She stared at him. "Questions? What kinda questions?"

  "About
a couple of cases we're investigating. It won't take long. Can we come in?"

  More staring. Then she said, "No, I don' t'ink you can do dat. I come out."

  She stepped out onto the porch and pulled the door shut behind her. "Now, what you want wit' me?" She had a pronounced French-Canadian accent, not uncommon so close to Quebec Province.

  "Is there some reason why you don't want us to come inside, Ms. Levesque?" Fenton asked politely.

  "This my house, my property. You got maybe a warrant, something like dat?"

  Fenton shook his head.

  "No? Den we talk out here. I like da fresh air, you know? Good for my heart."

  Annie Levesque looked to be in her early fifties, and the years had not been kind to her. She was somewhere between plump and fat, and her skin had a yellowish cast to it that, in some parts of the world, would have suggested malaria. Limp brown hair hung down, just touching the old gray sweater she wore atop blue polyester stretch pants.

  Annie Levesque's heavy face bore the sour expression of someone who knows that the world has proved a miserable place so far, and it isn't likely to get any better tomorrow.

  "What you people want wit' me? I got work I gotta do."

  "What's that symbol you have painted on your door, there, Ms. Levesque?" Colleen asked. "It's quite unusual."

  Annie slowly turned her head and looked at Colleen as if seeing her for the first time. If so, what she saw didn't please her--her eyes widened briefly, before narrowing to slits that, if anything, made her look more unattractive than before. After slowly looking Colleen up and down, Annie said, "My cousin Hervé, he make the folk art. He asks can he make some on my door, I say sure. Says it bring good luck. Why not?"

  "So, your cousin," Colleen said, "he didn't mention that it represents an ancient demonic curse, calling the powers of hell down on anyone who might trespass?"

  Annie's laugh, like everything else about her, was unpleasant. "Demons? Curse? You make crazy talk, lady." She turned back to Premeaux. "Dat why you come up here? Waste my time with crazy talk?"

  "No, we didn't," the detective said. "We wanted to ask you about dry ice."

  More of the stare--this time accompanied by the running of her tongue over thick lips. "Dry ice? I don't know nothing about no dry ice. You still makin' the crazy talk."

  "The seafood manager at Price Chopper says otherwise, Ms. Levesque," Fenton told her. "He told us you've bought three kilos of dry ice from him in the past month or so."

  Her eyebrows went up in an exaggerated show of comprehension that would have embarrassed a high school production of Our Town. "Oh, you mean da hot ice. Dat what we call it 'round here. Hot ice, 'cause it like burn when you touch it, eh? Yeah, I get some from the supermarket. So what?"

  "So, we'd like to know what you use it for," Colleen said.

  The grin she gave Colleen revealed that Annie Levesque's teeth had not received the attention of a dentist for quite some time. "I use it in one of dem old fashion' ice cream makers, like from da old days. You gotta get it real cold. Some folks use the reg'lar ice wit' rock salt, but da hot ice work better. More cold, eh?"

  Colleen nodded as if this made perfect sense to her. "That must be a really old ice cream machine you have."

  "Yeah, sure. It belong to my mother. Pretty old, I guess."

  "You know, I'm very interested in antiques of that sort--old machinery, and so on. I'd love to see it!"

  This time, the reptilian stare went on for the space of three or four breaths. "Is broke. I had to t'row it away, can't get parts no more. Sorry." She did not appear in the least contrite.

  "What did you do with it?" Fenton asked. "I mean, how did you dispose of it?"

  "I take to da landfill, wit' my other garbage, two, mebee t'ree weeks ago. Is in there someplace, you wanna go look." The ugly grin had made a reappearance.

  "Probably not worth the trip," Fenton said. "But not everything around here is an antique, is it?" He glanced upward. "I couldn't help but notice the satellite dish on your roof. You watch much TV, Ms. Levesque?"

  "Yeah, sure, I watch." The grin was gone now. "Not too much else out here to do, eh?"

  "Do you ever watch any of those CSI shows? They're very popular, I hear."

  "Yeah, I guess I watch dat sometime. So?"

  "Well," Fenton said, "if you watch any of those shows, you've probably heard of DNA analysis. Every person's DNA is unique, did you know that?"

  "You say so, I believe you. Look, I gotta get back--"

  "And DNA can be extracted from almost anything on the human body." Fenton went on as if she had not spoken. "Blood, fingernails, urine. Even hair. Just a single strand of hair can identify the person it belonged to."

  Premeaux had been watching Fenton closely, and now said, "The thing is, we're investigating a couple of murders where DNA evidence could prove very important," he said.

  "Murdered? Who got murdered? I don't know about no murder."

  "It was those children," Premeaux said. "Suzanne Wilson and Billy Dufresne. You must have heard about it."

  She nodded slowly. "Oh, yeah, sure, I see somet'ing on da news. Terrible, eh? But what dat got to do wit' me?"

  "This wasn't in the news reports, because we withheld it from the press," Premeaux said. "But those poor kids were cut open, and some of their bodily organs were taken--while they were still alive."

  "Mon Dieu," Annie said. Then: "How you know they still alive when this happen?"

  "The presence of free histamines in the blood," Fenton said. "You only find those levels when someone has died in great pain. The CSI people were able to determine that."

  "And they discovered something else, too," Premeaux said. "Inside the body cavity of one of those poor kids, they found a hair. A human hair. And it did not come from the victim. They checked."

  "Which means it can only have come from one place," Fenton said. "The head of the person who cut that child open."

  "That's right," Premeaux said. "And since DNA can be extracted from a single hair, we now have a DNA profile of the person that hair belonged to. All we need is something--or someone--to match it to."

  "And that's the main reason why we're here, Ms. Levesque," Fenton said. "To ask you to voluntarily contribute a hair sample. We only need a couple of strands, and it won't hurt, I promise." His face grew hard. "Not nearly so much as those kids were hurt. Not even close."

  Annie Levesque looked at him. "And what if I say, I don't wanna do dat? What den?"

  "Then we'll come back with a court order, and take what we need," Fenton said. "Even if we have to place you in cuffs to do it."

  Fenton was bluffing like mad, and he was glad that Premeaux had picked up on it and was playing along. There were no hair samples found in either victim, and even if there had been, they had no probable cause on which to base a warrant request. Fenton wanted to see what Annie Levesque would do, or say, when the pressure came on. He had a hunch it would be revealing.

  Annie nodded slowly, as if nearly resigned to her fate. She sighed and said, "I wanna call my lawyer, see what he t'ink about this. You wait here." She turned back toward her front door.

  Colleen O'Donnell had deliberately not taken part in the tag-team badgering of Annie Levesque. Instead, she was observing the woman carefully, waiting for the darkness that must surely be inside her to emerge.

  She watched Annie Levesque reach her front door, then rest her hand on the curse symbol painted there, as if she were about to push the door open but had stopped to think about something. Colleen heard the woman start to speak, very softly and strained to focus her concentration. Finally, she was able to pick up a couple of words. They were neither English nor French. After a second or two. Colleen recognized the language.

  It was ancient Chaldean.

  That was when she grabbed Fenton's arm, backpedaled quickly, and shouted, "Get off the porch! Now!"

  Premeaux was on the other side of Fenton, so Colleen was unable to reach him, as well. He seemed to have no notion of what
was going on.

  Which was why he did not immediately follow the two FBI agents as they tumbled off the porch to fall a couple of feet into the dirt.

  Which was why he was still standing there, reaching for the pistol on his hip, when the windows in the house exploded outward, all at once.

  Which was also why a razor-sharp shard of glass nine inches long was able to bury itself deep in his throat.

  "Libby, come on!"

  Libby Chastain looked up from the corpse of Charlie Strom, a dazed expression on her face.

  "We've got to get out of here," Morris said. "Unless you want to spend the next four days in police custody, making up lies about what just happened."

  There were sirens in the distance now, drawing closer.

  "But where can we go?" she asked. "Police will be here any--"

  "There." Morris pointed at the pub across the street where they were supposed to meet Harry the Wizard. "We'll go there."

  There were concrete steps leading down from the street into the pub. As Morris and Libby made their way inside, carrying their luggage, the few patrons at the tables looked up incuriously then went back to what they had been doing--eating, drinking, talking, or all three.

  As they approached the bar, Libby said softly, "My Goddess, Quincey, what is this place?"

  "Apart from the obvious, you mean?"

  'Look at the layout--thirteen windows, thirteen pillars, thirteen tables."

  Morris turned from signaling the bartender and scanned the room. "Hmm. Interesting decorating scheme."

  "And the arrangement of those tables is designed to disrupt any magical energy that might be released in here."

  "Yeah, Harry told me once that this place is sort of neutral territory for the city's occult crowd. No magic of any kind allowed on the premises. Kind of like Las Vegas used to be for the Mob."

  Behind them, a polite voice said, "Help you folks?"

  The bartender was a tall, lean man of indeterminate age; he might have been an old forty or a young sixty. He had a wise look, as if he had seen everything at least twice, and was incapable of being surprised by anything.