"Lotta good I am. I can't even help you out. But at least you know where to find me."
"Is there something you want me to tell Jeffrey?"
But he didn't respond. He just smiled and kept on playing. I felt the others crowding in on me. Turning on me. When I glanced back, Vanessa had disappeared, and in her wake stood a group of shuffling party goers, staring unhappily in mine and Emmitt’s direction.
I thought I might have a word with Vanessa before I was dragged out of my dream, but she was nowhere to be found.
I tried to rush back to the center of the dance floor, but the crowd converged, blocking me in. I tried to find her dress, or glimpse her hair, but she had gone away, and I went to my knees, trying to peer between the feet of other dancers for a sign of her light blue glow. But I didn’t see anything at all.
* * *
I got the call from Vanessa’s dad just before dawn. I answered without checking the number. "Deuce, hey, anything new?" I asked.
It wasn't Deuce. D.L.'s voice sounded ragged, the chain rattling on an old fence. "She overdosed. Found her this morning." He paused. "She's gone, Rol."
As if to put a finer point on it, he added, "She's dead."
By some miracle of will, I managed to hang on to the phone long enough to press the little red end button. The phone beeped and then died.
Outside, a dry breeze kicked through the pines, the clouds above threatening rain, and the branches clicked on the side of the house.
Eleventh Chapter
Vanessa had bottomed out. She had reached a point where pursuing normal life no longer kept the shadows away, and instead of helping her out of the grave, I had thrown the first spadeful of dirt.
When my face stopped aching enough for life to be tolerable, I got out of bed. I snatched on a pair of pants and a shirt and kicked on my sneakers on my way out the door, but instead of calling Deuce to come and pick me up, I walked toward town.
Consequences and warrants no longer concerned me.
It was just the way of things, I guessed. The beginning of a penance I would be paying off for a very long time.
Several cars passed me once I hit the highway, and not one offered me a ride, not that I was in any kind of mood to accept generosity. The silence kept me stitched together.
I found the car a half-hour into my walk.
The Olds had been abandoned two miles down the road, on the shoulder next to a pair of dumpsters. All the windows had been smashed. Ditto for the windshield. Tail lights and headlights, too. The body was in okay shape because someone had taken a bat to it instead of an axe or chainsaw.
I flipped open my phone and dialed the detective. "Hunter?" I said when he answered. "I'm out of the private tracking business. Let me tell you what I know."
"What changed your mind?"
"Two decades' of momentum hitting a brick wall."
Our conversation was brief. I filled him in on what Jeffrey had told me, going into as much detail as possible, finishing up with H.W. Bullen’s break-in. I didn’t mention Vanessa, but she circled my mind for the conversation nonetheless. "They might deny it later, but they pretty much unloaded their consciences on me, so I think it's information you can go on with some confidence."
"Would've been nice to get this revelation sooner, McKane. You walked a thin line there for a while."
I cleared my throat. "I hope you can sort out this mess, Detective. Oh, and one more thing."
"Mmm-hmm." He sounded distracted.
"You said you're part of the task force to sort out unsolved hate crimes from way back, right?"
"Right."
"You might want to look into Jarrell Clements and Jarvis Garvey as accomplices in the murder my father was convicted of, and for the disappearances of the two men who used to own the juke joint where Laveau was found. I suspect there might be bodies buried somewhere in the vicinity."
Hunter inhaled sharply, as if to say something else, but I snapped the phone shut before he could. Then I turned it off and stuffed it into my pocket.
I thought that availing the detective of all my knowledge would somehow lift my burden, but the funk surrounding me continued to swirl. No catharsis to be found. I brushed away the broken glass and, clenching the wheel, thought about Vanessa for a while before driving off.
* * *
I ended up at the Laveau residence.
I got out, adjusted myself, and headed for the front door, which was already open. A pungent, unpleasant smell wafted out into the open air. It had a faintly musty odor, like skunk spray that lingers long after the little guy's been scraped off the tire tread.
Through the screen, I saw a silhouette working diligently in the kitchen, and I went right on in without knocking, expecting to see Janita. Instead, Uncle K was standing in the kitchen, fiddling with something that was ostensibly meaty but so putrid-looking I stared somewhere else.
He didn't acknowledge me at first. Then, without looking up, he said, in his naturally raspy voice, "Hey, there, crazy person. What did you come to mess and gom with today?"
"What kind of spell is that?" I asked.
He smiled, never looking up. His fingers moved deftly at skinning the small animal. "Dinner. So, the kind you eat, I s'pose."
"Uh-huh."
"I just bought this knife. You like it?"
"Sharp."
"Every time I pay for anything at the store, I can hear what people think. 'Is he gonna use that to stick in some doll?' It don't change, not one bit." He laughed. "People are the same."
He picked up a small piece of the meat and stuck it in his mouth, chewing diligently as he finished up. Once he cleaned the knife on a nearby towel, he scooped the remainder of the meat into a bowl with onions and cilantro and lemon juice, and he he mixed them together with his fingers. "Old family recipe," he said. "Janita won't touch it. Says it taste like sushi been left out in a swamp too long. Don't reckon you want some?"
K saw my expression and waved off the offer. He said, "Ah, hell, you people. I didn't want you have any of it anyways, damnit. Didn't even offer you to come in the house."
I leaned against the kitchen counter. “I’m done,” I said, trying to sound noncommittal. I was thinking about Van and her parents and how fucked-up my life was, and I couldn’t muster the strength to care about Emmitt Laveau right now.
“And yet the killer walks around, free as a blessed man,” he said, adding, “C’est la façon dont il va. I guess I should not have expected anything less.”
“It’s all pretty much locked up,” I said. “Do you want me to tell you what I know?”
“The men, they kidnapped him, and they tortured him, but they did not kill him. Or at least they say that is the truth.”
It took all my strength to keep my mouth closed, though I shouldn’t have been surprised.
His eyes flicked in my direction. “You think I don’t know things, because I am old, but I know plenty. I see everything.”
I started to lose my temper. “Then why drag me into this? Why not just go ahead and tell somebody? Or pull up some evidence of your own?”
“People, they cross the street when they see me. You think they gonna believe me when I tell them the local king had something to do with my grand-nephew’s death?”
“I just said Brickmeyer didn’t-”
“Here, you come into my house and you say that you have a handle on all the things about this case, and you don’t even know the truth.”
“One of the brothers basically just admitted to me that he had something to do with what happened to Emmitt. Do you just have a hard-on for Brickmeyer?”
I was beginning to sound like everyone who talked to me.
“I don’t got a hard-on for no man,” he replied. “The fact you still don’t see clearly tells me you know nothing, and you need to see the truth of the matter.”
“No offense, but the only truth you’ve helped me see is that I drink too much.”
He turned away from his food preparation, smiling. “Yo
u want me show you something real? Something visionary? I need to rub chicken blood on your forehead, start moaning and making voices for you?”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Listen. Come here. You and me, we take a trip, okay? I’ll show you something.”
“I told you, I’m out. Done. I’ve got to go and see some people about arranging a funeral.”
He waved his hands contemptuously at me. “You never cared about any of this. Your funeral will wait. This happens now, if it happens at all.”
Something about the gleam in his eyes was alluring. “I don’t-”
“Come along, come along,” he replied. “That Brickmeyer man, he needs to get what he has been asking for, and if you - or I - don’t give it to him, he will never get it.”
I paused in the doorway, and he pushed past me.
“You know that is the truth,” he said. “You worked at that police force. You think that worthless bunch would make a wave that would drown the man? I do not think so.”
My heart sank. “If we make this thing quick.”
"All right, then,” he said. “Let me go out back and get the shovel. We are going to need it."
* * *
We rode in my battered vehicle. On the way, I stared through the windshield as Uncle K talked, neither asking for my permission to speak nor caring if I opposed it. I wasn't in the mood to participate. But then he hit upon something that interested me very much.
"The men who owned The Boogie House, they practiced the religion, like me. Didn't know them, not personally, but they had their hands in all kinds of things."
I thought about that for a minute, reaching for a connection. "Do you think that might have something to do with the supernatural aspect of your grand-nephew's death?"
He smiled, as if I had just complimented him. "The spirits that got a grip on that place do so because the men that owned the building conjured up something and never put it down."
"And the Bullens? Did they know that?"
He scoffed, making a p-shaw sound. "Hell no. They needed a place to keep him, and they were heartless so they took him there. That place, it might have pulled them there, pulled them in like they were holding a magnet, but them men, they didn't know any better, if I say so."
"Emmitt?"
Laveau raised an eyebrow. The old man's eyes became watery and distant with remembrance. "No, not Emmitt. He didn't know nothing. The boy was special, damn special, but he didn't know nothing about the other side of the death line."
"But you do. You know. I mean, you really know. Why aren't you doing anything?"
His face turned into a scowl. "You drive. You don't bother with me. I know what I'm doing."
I couldn’t let it go now, not after I had struck him right between the ribs. “And me, how did you pull me in? Have you been slipping me drugs to make me have fucked-up dreams?”
His eyes sent my stomach twisting. “You don’t need my help dreaming up sick things, no,” he said. “Just you living has given you an attic full of dark places. Your dark places. Not mine, not ones I put up in your head.”
“But I didn’t start dreaming about the Boogie House-”
“And maybe you didn’t have any reason to dream it up ‘til you nearly put my ‘Nita to rest. Rolson McKane, all you are is darkness, and you almost dragged her into it. Just dragged her in so she’d never be seen again. That she almost died had nothing to do with her or little Emmitt, but you. Me, I tried to help you, but I can’t help you no more. Whatever’s gone bad in you, it sours all the good around you. Maybe I made the blade you cut the world with sharper, but it’s always been in your hand.”
I was speechless.
His lip turned up in a snarl. “You pretend like you didn’t know that, but you did. You can choose to forget your past, but that is one thing you must never, ever forget. Now you shut your mouth and do what you’re told, lest you ruin one more chance to see the world clearly.”
* * *
"Pull in the graveyard like normal and take the main path down to the woods," he said, as we approached the last stretch of country road. "Let me out by the tombstone, and drive on down there and park. Don't want nobody seeing you."
I did what he said, parking down by the copse of trees, and then I walked back up to where the old man stood, shovel slung across my shoulders. I looked at him for a moment, and then he gestured toward the ground.
We were standing by Emmitt’s grave. The dirt was still fresh looking. I glanced from the headstone to him.
"This don't sound like any kind of voodoo ceremony I've ever heard of," I said. "Would you have me dig up the body?"
The old man smiled viciously. His face became a collection of wrinkles. "Who said anything 'bout digging up the body? I just said 'dig'. I'll tell you when you’re done. Don't worry 'bout that."
I didn’t move. I had stepped through some muddy patches in the last few weeks, but this was beneath even me. My heart and stomach felt as though they had switched places.
“Dig,” he repeated. “You want me help you see truth, get to shoveling.”
“This is too far,” I said. “I’m not doing this. This is - this is just crazy.”
I felt the same kind of rawness in my gut as when I drank. The cure-all (or the drugs I’d been given) obviously had a long tail, and even though I had been impressed with Kweku Laveau’s mysticism, I wasn’t about to dig up a fresh grave. No way.
“If you do not dig, then you give me no choice but to put you in my sight line, and you do not want that, no.”
The intensity with which I stared at him did nothing to draw out why I might be doing this, and after a while, I felt myself consigned to it, pulling the shovel off my shoulder and sticking its blade into the ground. I said, "I'm sure Janita would not approve."
Looking into the old man’s eyes, I felt a shift. The longer he looked at me, the more I felt compelled to do what he was asking. Whenever he blinked, a humming in my brain stopped, and whenever his eyes met mine, the humming returned. It wasn’t as though I had no will, but I didn’t feel the need to follow my own instincts for now.
Finally, the old man said, "My niece will not be aware of this. No set of eyes in this town will see you. Else, you're in trouble, boy."
"I think we'd both be," I replied, and the man only made a wet coughing sound in his throat. In the distance, thunder signaled an approaching storm. The sky was a deep, bruised purple, occasionally split by slivers of lightning.
“I’m not digging up this whole thing,” I said. “If this is meant to teach me a lesson or something, just let me know when I’ve learned it.”
But I did it. I hesitated, and yet I still shoveled, and it brought me closer to something. Maybe not the answers I was seeking out - I guess I’m a seeker - but toward something meaningful. If I could derive no truth from this exercise, I could at least manufacture it out of thin air.
At first I worked slowly, mechanically, self-consciously, listening to the harsh clink of the shovel in the earth, but then I sped up, and soon the physical aspect of shifting aside the dirt faded into the background. The work took center stage, and after a while, I didn't care about the nature of it. I fell into a sort of trance, shoveling as though exorcising some kind of demon, ridding my soul of its dirtiness. It seemed to bring out everything raw and dangerous which had plagued me emotionally. I reveled in each thrown clump of dirt. I began to think that the work itself was the meaning of this whole production, and I continued.
Once, old women drove up in pristine sedans. They pulled in and looked questionably in our direction as they walked toward their destination, but K just smiled and waved and the women departed from us without a word. I half-expected the authorities to show but none did. With Janita's uncle standing there, arms folded across his chest, I experienced a strange comfort.
Once I had slipped into a monotonous rhythm, my mind drifted, as if the thoughtlessness of the physical work afforded it the chance to contemplate more important ideas. E
very thought I encountered was something I had been putting off, but it was also something that I needed to deal with, so the stinging sensation that pricked me every so often was welcomed without protest. I began to thrive on the grief, thinking not for the consequences. I felt sobs creep up from within, and I began to work with the image of Vanessa at the forefront of my mind. Crying and shoveling. Crying and shoveling. Crying and shoveling.
And as I worked, the day shifted from morning to afternoon. For a time, I thought I had become delirious.
Then I hit something hard. The tip of the shovel clanged against the surface of the coffin. In that moment, the reverberations seemed to shake more than my hands. That broke the trance, and the cloud over my brain lifted. But by then, I didn't care what came afterward. I realized he had brought me here for the work and the work alone. The ending was just the ending; the work was what mattered.
"Whup," the old man said from somewhere above me. "Them ain't roots you done got into. Open it up."
I hesitated. At least I thought this had been about the work. "Go on," he said, and I heard the rustling of his pants as he moved around to get a look at the coffin. "I can promise he won't jump out at you."
"That only happens in my dreams," I said, kneeling on the soupy dirt covering the casket lid. Exhaustion kept trying to convince me to lie down for a bit. My muscles ached severely, but I felt as though I had cleansed myself somehow. A baptism by dirt.
"Hurry up," Uncle K said, somewhat impatiently.
I wiped away clods of mud, revealing the newness of the casket, fully intending on opening it...at some point.
A close, murmuring thunder warned me against it, but on impulse I grabbed the shovel from behind me and began to cull the mud and dirt away from the sides of the casket, listening to the near-sickening scrape of the blade against the elm top. It was then I felt God's judgment closest to me, as though Kweku himself were an arbiter of the Big Man Himself, and I was ashamed.
A great wave of nausea filled me, and I was vaguely aware of the extremity of my tunnel vision, blackness pushing in around the edges, but I pressed on, commanding my limbs to keep moving, shoveling away the dirt and mud and rocks and bits of grass.
Boogie House: A Rolson McKane Mystery Page 31