by Sharon Sala
“We don’t know where she is, but she’s a person of interest in a case we’re working,” Wallis said. “Would you please see if she’s still registered in this hotel?”
“Of course,” Samuels said, and swung his chair around to the computer and typed in the name. A few moments later he paused and looked up. “She’s still registered here. Room 404.”
Wallis nodded in satisfaction. “We need to see it.”
Samuels opened his desk and pulled out a master key.
“If you’ll follow me.”
They were on their way out when a clerk burst into the room.
“Mr. Samuels! One of the maids found a body in Room 404. She doesn’t know if the woman is dead or alive.”
“Call 911 and have hotel security meet us there,” Samuels snapped, and increased his stride.
“Shit,” Pomeroy muttered, following Samuels out of the office.
“This way. It’s faster,” Samuels said, and headed for a service elevator.
The ride was short. As they got off the elevator they heard a woman screaming and ran. It was the maid, squatting down in the hall with her hands over her head, praying between shrieks. Hotel security came out of a stairwell at the other end of the hall and joined them.
Samuels picked out a man from their security and pointed at the maid. “Take her to the break room. The police will want to talk to her.”
As it turned out, they had no need for the pass key. The maid had gone in to change the sheets and the door was still ajar. As they entered, they saw the woman’s nude, bloody body lying on the floor. She wasn’t moving.
“Oh dear lord,” Samuels said, and took a step forward.
“Stay back!” Wallis snapped, then countered the order with an apology. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to bark. If you would direct the rest of the officers and crime scene techs to this room when they arrive, we would greatly appreciate it.”
“Of course,” the manager said. He shuddered as he gave the body one last glance and quickly left the scene.
Wallis squatted down beside her to check for a pulse, expecting a flat-line. When it thumped beneath his touch, he rocked back on his heels.
“She’s alive! Call a bus!” he yelled.
Pomeroy grabbed his phone as Wallis leaned closer. He wouldn’t move her for fear of exacerbating the injuries, but made sure there was no obstruction to her breathing. When he was satisfied her airway was open, he assessed the visible injuries.
The bruising on her body was massive, and there was blood, both dried and seeping in different locations. One eye was swollen shut, and there was a long slash down the back of one arm, as well as cuts and scrapes on the palms of her hands. What he couldn’t figure out was how she got from the crime scene to here, or why she was still alive when everyone else on the scene had been decimated?
“Bus on the way,” Pomeroy said, as the sound of an approaching siren could already be heard.
Wallis touched her arm. “Hang in there, lady. Help is coming.”
Pomeroy had been moving around the room, and from what he could see, nothing made much sense.
“The bed is bloody as hell, and so are the clothes on the floor. At one time, she was obviously in bed in this condition, because there’s too much blood in too many places, for it to be scatter.”
“I agree,” Wallis said. “We’ll leave this for the crime scene techs to figure out. Right now we’ve got a live witness. I just need her to wake up and tell us what the hell happened out there.”
Moments later they heard footsteps running down the hall. Pomeroy stepped out to flag them down, and then moved aside as they rushed inside.
Wallis gave the woman up to the EMTs, and the room up to another team from crime scene, and as soon as they transported her, he and his partner followed the ambulance to the hospital.
***
Pain was the first thing Layla felt as she began to regain consciousness. Her eyelids were heavy, like she’d been drugged. She heard someone calling her name and struggled to wake up.
“Layla! Layla Birdsong! I’m Dr. Toussaint. You’ve been injured and are in the emergency room. Can you tell me where you hurt?”
Layla licked her lips, her voice just above a whisper. “Everywhere.”
She heard a woman’s soft, Cajun voice near her ear.
“We’re taking good care of you, cher.”
Layla tried to take a breath, but her belly hurt. She reached for her midriff, but someone grabbed her hand. It was the same woman with the soft voice.
“No, baby… don’t move. Let Doctor Toussaint work his magic on you.”
The doctor was talking, but Layla lost focus when she began hearing the drums again. He was near! She could feel it. And there was something else that she knew. He didn’t belong in this world.
Chapter Two
Detectives Wallis and Pomeroy were waiting for Toussaint when the doctor emerged from the exam bay.
“Is she conscious?” Wallis said.
“She’s in and out,” Toussaint said. “We’re moving her upstairs as soon as a room is available.”
“Can we talk to her? I have nine bodies in pieces out in a street and she’s my only witness.”
Toussaint frowned. “You can try, but if it rattles her, you’re out.”
The detectives nodded and quickly strode into the room. There was a nurse checking vitals that gave them a sharp glance, then saw their badges and looked away.
Pomeroy paused, shocked by the brutality she had endured. “It’s a freakin’ miracle she’s still breathing,” he muttered.
Wallis moved toward the bed.
“Miss Birdsong? Miss Birdsong? Can you hear me?”
Layla heard the voice and registered the question, but it was a struggle to answer.
“Um… hear.”
“I’m Detective Wallis, and this is my partner, Detective Pomeroy. We’re with the New Orleans Police Department. We need to talk about what happened to you.”
“Gang,” she mumbled, and then reached toward the pain in her belly.
The nurse stopped her. “Don’t touch it, honey. There are bandages.”
“Hurts,” she whispered.
“Doctor Toussaint ordered pain meds. They’ll be here shortly,” she said.
Tears rolled from the corners of Layla’s eyes.
“Can you tell us what happened?” Wallis asked. “Do you remember?”
She shook her head. “Not much.”
Wallis persisted. “Tell us what you do remember. It’s very important. You said there was a gang.”
She thought back, remembering the dark street and the oncoming storm. The men! They’d come out of the shadows without warning.
“One grabbed me here.” She touched her breast. “Another had a knife. Cut my stomach… my arm. Thought I would die.”
Pomeroy glanced at Walllis, sickened by the violence she was describing.
“What happened then?” Wallis asked.
“Not sure… I fought. I think… no, I know that I killed the one with the knife.”
Wallis’s eyes widened. “You took one down? What did the others do?”
She frowned again, trying to remember. “Watched. Shouting. Laughing…until he died. Then the storm came.”
“Did you see what was happening during the storm? Think hard. What tore those men up?”
She finally opened her eyes. Both men were leaning over her bed, waiting. She heard the drums again.
Answer truthfully.
“The whirlwind… it was a whirlwind.”
Layla exhaled slowly then closed her eyes.
The nurse frowned. “She’s had enough. You need to leave now.”
Wallis nodded. “If we have any other questions, we’ll come back tomorrow.”
Layla didn’t answer. Like she had a cho
ice? The man—the spirit—whatever he was, said there would be tapes. He said they would be leaked and bad people would come. It was beginning, just like he said it would.
She was scared—as scared as she’d ever been in her life. The only thing that kept her from coming undone was the promise he’d made to come back.
***
They’d watched the tapes—all of them. Some were better than others depending on the angle of the cameras, but they all told the same story. A gang of nine had come out of an alley and attacked Layla Birdsong. What she had neglected to mention was that after they’d cut her twice and were about to close circle and finish her off, she backed off like she was gearing up for a race, smeared her own blood on her face and gone after the one with the knife without hesitation.
Wallis had gotten chills watching, and was resisting the urge to rewind it again. She was one tough cookie. Once she and her attacker went down, the gang had closed circle. The cameras didn’t catch how she’d managed to win the battle, but it was all too clear she was the only one who got up when it was over.
And that was when everything got weird.
There was a huge flash of light on the tape, which they took to be lightning, and then all of the shots from the cameras became blurry as the air became filled with debris. By the time it cleared enough to see what was happening, the wind had begun gathering, spinning and turning into a swirl of contained power unlike anything they’d ever seen.
It wasn’t a tornado because they could see the top and the bottom of the whirlwind moving violently and independently of the storm. It appeared to be targeting the men one at a time, which should not have been possible.
Even as Wallis doubted his own perception, he watched one man thrown backward into a light post with such force that his feet and head touched behind his back. Then another was lifted a good thirty feet up and unceremoniously dropped, splattering brain matter all over the street. The clothes on another man came off like a snake shedding skin, and then the wind went deeper.
Pomeroy groaned and then grabbed his partner’s arm. “Oh hell, Wallis. Look! Look! Son-of-a-bitch! It was the wind that peeled the bastard’s skin. It was the wind! How fast does it have to blow to make that happen?”
Wallis’s gaze was still fixed on the screen as the wind moved toward the woman pinned against the building by its force. The whirlwind was still turning, but when it stopped forward motion, and appeared to be hovering, Wallis gasped.
“That’s not fucking possible.”
Then just like that, she was gone. As she had said, the whirlwind took her. But how? Where? All of a sudden it was nowhere in sight. Not on any of the tapes. They should have been able to see it moving away—not completely disappear. What in hell were they to make of this? And, it still didn’t explain how she got to the hotel.
He had a feeling she knew more than she was telling, but whatever happened to the gang members, it was the storm and circumstance that had done them in.
He reached for the remote and turned off all the screens.
“So does this close the case?” Pomeroy asked.
Wallis shrugged. “As far as I’m concerned, it does. We know exactly how the nine men died, including the one she fought with. She took one down and then the storm hit. She lucked out there, or it would have been a different story.”
“But how did she get to the hotel?” Pomeroy asked.
“Hell, maybe she flew like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. I don’t know. If she doesn’t remember, it still doesn’t matter. Our job is finished here. Mother Nature took care of the criminal element in this case.”
“Want me to get the Captain?”
Wallis nodded. “He needs to see this. He’ll be the one to make the call, but there’s no doubt about it. Layla Birdsong is guilty of nothing but being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
***
Doctor Toussaint was making morning rounds as Layla was shoving breakfast around on the plate. He walked into her room just as she was trying to take a drink of juice through swollen lips.
“You need a straw for that,” he said, and yanked the straw out of her water and poked it into the cup of juice.
Layla took a sip and then set it aside.
“Thank you.”
Toussaint nodded. “Let’s check out your eye,” he said, nodding with what she hoped was satisfaction. “The swelling is beginning to subside. Can you see anything out of it?”
“A little, but it’s still blurry.”
“That should clear up as your eye continues to heal. Let’s see how your stitches look, shall we?”
His nurse removed the bandages on her belly, as well as the ones on the back of her arm.
“Looking good,” he said. “The seepage has stopped. No signs of infection.” He scanned her chart as the nurse began applying fresh bandages. “Slight elevation in temperature but that’s to be expected. How’s the pain tolerance? We can up the meds a bit if you’re uncomfortable.”
“I’m managing. So how long do I stay here?”
He smiled. “I can understand your lack of empathy for our fine city, but you’re going to have to bear with us for a few more days.”
“I have a job to go back to on Monday.”
He frowned. “Not this Monday. Call whoever you have to call and tell them you have been delayed.”
She thought of the school on the Navajo reservation and her first grade students. Although teachers were supposed to start work on Monday getting classrooms ready, classes for the fall semester didn’t begin for a couple of weeks. Surely she would be well enough by then to work.
“Yes, I’ll make some calls,” she said, including one to her grandfather.
She had been calling him every day since her arrival in New Orleans. He was probably worried that he hadn’t heard from her today; such turmoil from an innocent conference on early childhood education.
She waited until the doctor was gone and the food tray removed and then pulled the phone into her lap. The last thing she wanted to do was cry when she heard her grandfather’s voice, but they were all the family each other had left, and why she was in Arizona teaching on the reservation instead of back in Okmulgee, Oklahoma where she’d been raised.
Thinking of Oklahoma made her think of Donny Boland, the man she’d once dated. When the need to move to Arizona to take care of her grandfather arose, Donny got mad. He told her to put the old man in a home somewhere and stay there with him. He kept saying life was for the living and her grandfather’s life was nearly over. Why give up her future to babysit an old man?
She’d been stunned by his callousness, and then so angry she’d tossed him out of her life and told him never to come back. Even now, she regretted ever thinking she loved such a jerk, let alone having sex with the man. It still made her feel dirty.
However, today was about the present, and Donny Boland was in the past. She took a deep breath, gathering her thoughts and her emotions, and made the call.
***
George Begay had been sitting by the telephone since before daylight, waiting for his granddaughter’s call. He knew she was in trouble, just like he’d known the day his wife of fifty-seven years would die. When the phone finally rang, he was relieved. One way or another, he would know what had happened. He didn’t say hello. He didn’t even wait to see if it was actually Layla who was calling.
“What happened to you?” he asked.
Layla sighed. She should have known it would be so. Grandfather always knew when something was wrong.
“It’s a long story,” she said. “Just know that I am okay… or at least I will be.”
Once he heard her voice, the fear slid from his heart.
“Are you hurt?”
“Yes, but I’ll heal.”
He focused in on her voice and closed his eyes. Within seconds he saw men and blood and wind.
It was the fear in his voice that was her undoing. She tried to hide it, but her voice was trembling as she began to explain.
“My car broke down on the way back to the hotel. It wasn’t far and I started to walk it. But it was late and there was a gang. I thought I would die, but I did not.”
“You fought.”
The lump in her throat was getting bigger. “Yes, I fought, and I killed the one who cut me.”
The silence was telling. George Begay did not trust the white men or their courts. “Are you in trouble?”
“No. There were nine of them and only one of me.”
“How did you get away?”
She thought of the whirlwind and the spirit that was within it and knew it was something that could not be explained, especially over the phone.
“There was a storm. I will tell you more when I come home.”
He closed his eyes and concentrated on her voice, then struggled against the shock of what he saw. It was not a storm, and they both knew it.
“When will that be?”
“I’m not sure. The doctor is going to make me stay a while.”
George grunted softly. “You are hurt worse than you are saying. I will call the school and tell them to look for a substitute.”
“Thank you, Grandfather. I was about to ask if you would do that for me.”
“You will give me the name of your hotel and the phone number to the hospital.”
“Why?”
“Because I am coming there to be with you.”
Layla frowned. “There’s no need, Grandfather. They’re taking care of me. When I’m well enough, I will come home.”
“No. You are going to need me. It wasn’t a storm, Layla, and you know it, but the storm is coming. You are going to need all of your people before this is over.”
Layla’s heart skipped a beat. Everyone on the rez accepted that George Begay knew things others did not and she could do no less.
“What are you saying, Grandfather? What did you see?”
“That was no storm.”
The skin crawled on the back of her neck. “It was a whirlwind.”