The Broken Ones

by Stephen M Irwin

  “Are you sure?” Jon asked.

  Oscar looked up, squinting against the raindrops. The sky above was as black as a well. The thunder roll echoed off the canyon of buildings and died.

  Guests began to trickle back indoors. “Drunk,” he heard one say. Oscar felt his neck grow hot. Before long, it was just him and Jon getting drenched.

  “Maybe,” Jon began, “a trick of the light?”

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  “Lightning, I mean—” Jon’s big fingers flicked in the air.

  “Look, get back inside,” Oscar said. “Leonie will kill me for letting you get wet.”

  “What, kill her biscotti dealer? No way.” Jon grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. “Come back in. Get a drink.”

  “I think I’ll head home.”

  Oscar saw a flash of relief in his friend’s eyes.

  “Well, get some rest, yeah?”

  “No worries.”

  The big man hurried inside. Lightning flashed again, and heavy thunder rolled like mighty bones in a mightier drum. From somewhere in the concrete-sided dark came a heavy whoosh, then another, departing. Maybe it was wind.

  Oscar strode quickly to his car. Across the road, keeping pace with him and watching the footpath, was the dead boy.

  Chapter 8

  In daylight hours, the Industrial Relations Branch was a grating drone of bland phone calls, clattering printers, and wheezing copiers. Oscar hung his jacket and hat on the stand beside his desk and looked out the window. The rain had stopped, but the sky remained as gray as moth wings, and wind beat against the buildings. Far below on the street, a woman and a child pushed against the prevailing gust. Then someone coughed behind him.

  Neve’s lips were pursed tight. The frown she’d worn yesterday had returned and looked settled in to stay.

  “Hi,” he said. “You all right?”

  “Oscar.” She rocked unhappily from foot to foot, not looking into his eyes. “Listen. Yesterday, I was thinking—”

  Oscar’s phone rang. He held up a finger—one second—and picked up the receiver. “Mariani.”

  “Good, you’re in.”

  Inspector Benjamin Moechtar had a light, democratically flat voice that elevated no syllable above its cousins. “Do you have a minute?”

  Oscar could see that Neve was working to keep her arms at her sides, as if they wanted to spring loose and fly her far away.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Moechtar asked, “Now all right?”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Oscar hung up and looked at Neve. “What?”

  Suddenly, she turned and hurried off across the Branch floor. She strode past Foley, the overweight senior sergeant currently heading IRB. Foley looked up from his computer, watched Neve’s backside, then turned to Oscar and gave a connoisseur’s nod of approval.

  Oscar went to the elevators. He still hadn’t formed an opinion about Moechtar, who’d been his commanding officer for nearly two months following the resignation of Bob Daley. Daley’s wife had taken a turn and needed him at home. “Taken a turn” had later been revealed to mean “tried to poison her three grandchildren by putting pesticide in a birthday cake.” When she pleaded that “the man with no head” had made her do it, Oscar had been called in to investigate. But since no deaths had occurred the offense had been bandied about in departmental no-man’s-land just long enough for Daley to agree to an early, very quiet departure. Moechtar, his replacement, now headed three departments: Internal Audit, Conduct and Ethical Standards, and the Nine-Ten Investigation Unit. He’d come from Legal Services, which now had forty percent fewer full-time staff. Moechtar was a former accountant: a financial hatchet man.

  At the ninth floor, Oscar strode down a hushed corridor to stop outside a dark-paneled door. He knocked.

  “Come in.”

  Oscar entered. The carpet was business blue and impeccably clean. Two more doors ran off the office: one to a small meeting room, another to a private bathroom—a perk that made Moechtar’s rank an attractive goal. Moechtar himself was seated behind his desk, a small, spare man in his late forties. His glasses, his suit, his tie, his hair were all neat and regularly proportioned. Like his speech, Moechtar’s face was an instrument calibrated to range between polite interest and civil unconcern. On one paneled wall were photographs of Moechtar with various VIPs: the state premier, the New Zealand defense minister, a now dead Italian tenor. In none of the photographs was Moechtar’s expression any different from the one of neutral attention that he now presented to Oscar.

  “Good morning, sir,” Oscar said.

  Moechtar nodded and spoke evenly. “Service guidelines state that, as a detective, you are permitted to wear”—he opened a tabbed page in the manual—“ ‘Neat business clothes, preferably suit and tie for males.’ ” He looked up at Oscar.

  Oscar tried to recall when he last ironed his threadbare shirt and hand-patched trousers but failed. He did have a tie; it was currently holding up the drain hose of his washing machine, which itself worked only on the rare occasions that the power came on.

  “Take a look at what the guidelines recommend for females,” Oscar suggested.

  Moechtar looked down at the manual. He read, “ ‘Neat business clothes, preferably business suit or jacket-pant set.’ ”

  “Exactly. No tie,” Oscar said. “Kind of discriminatory. Maybe we guys should get together and complain.”

  Moechtar looked up at him, wearing the expression of an entomologist observing an insect of a genus he really should know but just couldn’t quite catalog.

  “Take a seat, Oscar.”

  “I’m kind of busy.”

  “Please.”

  Oscar sat. Careful as a beekeeper, Moechtar flipped with neat fingers through the top papers of his in-tray and found the envelope that he was looking for. He handed it to Oscar.

  “What is it?”

  Moechtar nodded for Oscar to read. He opened it. A request for transfer. Neve had signed and dated it that morning. Oscar felt a bitter little stab in his belly.

  Moechtar said, “She brought it to me. I could sign it, but I’d prefer to leave that to her supervising officer.”

  Oscar folded the paper and put it into a jacket pocket.

  “And I read your report,” Moechtar continued. “The Jane Doe at the sewage plant.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You kept it from Homicide.”

  “The attending General Duties officer thought it was a Nine-Ten case. I agree.”

  Moechtar nodded thoughtfully. “Homicide would like it.”

  Oscar felt a twitch of excited satisfaction. “Haig called you?”

  “Yes, he did. Would you consider giving it over?”

  “Sure.” Oscar thought for a moment. “No.”

  Moechtar sighed like a put-upon maître d’ and pulled from his in-tray a grubby-looking collection of papers. Oscar recognized the interim report he’d put in Moechtar’s pigeonhole two days ago.

  “I understand no one is claiming it to be a Clause Seventeen killing.”

  “There was no one there to claim it, except the body. There is evidence of mutilation that suggests an occult ritual was associated with the death.”

  “The symbol.”

  “Yes.”

  “So, murder, you think?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Yet not for Homicide?”

  “No offense, but Homicide can go get fucked.”

  Behind Moechtar a toilet flushed, and Oscar heard one of the doors in the back of the office open. He turned as Haig stepped out, flicking his fingers dry.

  “Fucked by whom, Mariani?” Haig asked, wearing a pleasant smile. “Not you, surely. You’re too busy, I hear. Paperwork, paperwork.”

  Haig stood at a leather chair and looked to Moechtar, who nodded. Haig sat and crossed his ankles, a man at his ease.

  Oscar felt his jaw tighten.

  Moechtar said, “I did tell Inspector Haig that although the case is yours I wo
uld be just as happy if you chose to devote the next few days to compiling a clear operational summary that we can make some decisions on.”

  Oscar frowned. He felt like a man who’d come home in the dark to discover that someone had rearranged all the furniture. “Next few days? What do you mean? What about other Clause Seventeens?”

  Moechtar checked his watch and began slipping papers into a leather document wallet. “I’ve sent a memo out around the South-East to say the Nine-Ten Unit is offline.”

  “Offline this week?” Oscar felt a new possibility dawn. “Or offline for good?”

  “That really depends on your operational summary,” Moechtar said. “So, what to do with this.” He slid Oscar’s report to the middle of the desk. “As far as I’m concerned, Detective, it’s your case. But since Inspector Haig, who’s read your report, believes it falls under his purview it would be common decency to hand it over.”

  Oscar turned and watched Haig.

  “I’m not commonly decent,” Oscar said.

  Haig’s smile didn’t change, but something hard sparked behind his eyes. “Well, that’s no skin off my nose.” He stood and walked to the door. “Just trying to help. Ben. Detective.”

  “Geoffrey.”

  “Inspector.”

  Haig pulled the door shut behind him. The office fell quiet for a long moment.

  Moechtar picked up Oscar’s report and returned it to his in-tray.

  “I’m no detective, Oscar, but to me this looks like a fairly standard assault and murder of a street kid.”

  “There was nothing standard about her mutilation.”

  Moechtar nodded, not really interested. “Well, do what you will. But get me a coherent operational report by close of business Friday. I don’t want a muddled collection of guesses—I want considered numbers that I can work with. Accurate paperwork is essential to the delivery of justice.”

  He zipped closed the document wallet, then stood and looked meaningfully at Oscar.

  Oscar took the hint: the meeting was over. He stood and headed for the door, pausing only when Moechtar spoke again.

  “And, Detective? Do try and look the part.”

  Oscar sat at his desk, thinking. He could still shift the case. He could hand the Jane Doe over to Homicide with his inspector’s blessing, knuckle down, and bring home some solid convictions for the Barelies. The thought left him cold.

  Because, as he had told Moechtar, the Jane Doe’s mutilation was unusual. This was a Nine-Ten case; he was sure of it.

  His phone beeped. A text message from Paz Lovering, asking if he’d like to know more about his “ugly damned symbol.”

  “Anyone seen de Rossa?” Oscar asked the room.

  Foley was staring intently at his computer; he shrugged his spongy shoulders. “Hey, Mariani?” Foley’s chair groaned as it swiveled. “Where’d you come from again? Before here?” He clicked his fat fingers.

  Oscar stood and pulled on his coat. “Ethical Standards.”

  Foley pointed at him—gotcha—then tapped his screen. “Listen, hypothetically, if I had a … you in a hurry or something?”

  “Kind of,” Oscar said, grabbing his hat.

  Foley nodded, held up fat hands. “It’ll keep. Another time.” He grinned. “Hey, I’m happy to slip Neve a note? Something else?”

  Foley winked. Oscar ignored him and strode out to the elevators.

  “Slow down,” Lovering said. “You’re not on ‘Dancing with the Assholes.’ Stop wiggling your feet and watch the damned road. Jesus, you’re worse than Denna.”

  Wind buffeted the car, and the sky was undecided; clouds skidded in from the east like street thugs trying to look casual. Oscar drove across the Story Bridge and into the winding, river-hugging streets of New Farm, where apartment buildings and houses coexisted behind overgrown trees.

  Gelareh Barirani had been one of Paz’s researchers at ARClight. She was in her late fifties or older, and Oscar thought she must once have been utterly striking. Her hair was still dark, and her cheekbones high and distinct. She lived in a six-pack: a rectangular three-story block of flats—three up, three down. Hers was ground floor and boasted a tiny courtyard that smelled of mint, coriander, and climbing rose. Oscar asked her how she persuaded her herbs to flourish and her grandchildren not to destroy them, and she replied with a dozen tips. Their horticultural banter made Lovering grizzle, retreat to a corner of the courtyard, and close his eyes.

  Gelareh made mint tea and pulled out the photograph Paz had printed of the symbol on the Jane Doe’s belly, and a sheaf of greaseproof papers. On each sheet she had traced different elements of the sigil: on one, the star; on another, the patterned cross; on yet another, the texts with arabesque swirls, and the chopped and wedge-shaped symbols. While she poured the tea, Gelareh apologized for not having had more time to work on it.

  “Your symbol is, I think, a concoction.” Her voice had a lovely curl that sounded like waves and stirred up tastes of spice. “Not from one country, not from one era.” She shuffled the papers. “Now, where to start?”

  “Assume he knows nothing,” Lovering called from outside. “I find that is the least frustrating way.”

  “Oh, yes, because you’re so smart, Paz Lovering,” she shouted back. “You who got lost in Ben Yehuda Street.”

  “It was busy!” Lovering looked at Oscar for sympathy. “It was crazy with tourists. Baden-Powell would have gotten lost there.”

  “Some Jew,” Gelareh tutted, and smoothed out the first sheet of onionskin paper. On it was traced the seven-pointed star. “Okay, the heptagram. Well, seven, as you know, is the number of perfection for some religions, including some divisions of Christianity and the Kabbalah. The star of seven points is also called the Faery Star, or Elven Star. Some pagans believe it shows the four cardinal directions—north, south, east, west—as well as above, below, and inside … within. Some Wiccans believe it helps open the way to the realm of Faerie. Alchemists from the sixteenth century used it as a symbol of power, to denote the seven planets then known in the solar system. Oh, and the seven-pointed star is also used five times on the Australian flag.” She looked at Oscar. “Patriots have been known to go too far.”

  “That doesn’t really narrow down our list of suspects,” Oscar said. “Christians, Jews, pagans, alchemists, and radical patriots. I guess I can rule out alchemists.”

  “I’m not finished. Older than all these was the star’s use in my stomping ground.” She smiled. “Mesopotamia. Five-, six-, and seven-pointed stars were all symbols associated with various gods and goddesses. They were appropriated and absorbed and amalgamated as years went by. The seven-pointed star”—she touched the tracing—“was associated with the goddesses Inanna and Ereshkigal.”

  “And who were they?” Oscar asked.

  “Sisters. The queen of heaven and the demon goddess of chaos.”

  “Polar opposites.”

  Gelareh shrugged noncommittally and flattened out the next tracing. The cross. On paper, it looked like an elaborate plus sign, its equal-length arms filigreed at the ends but appearing almost structural with a gridwork of crisscross patterns.

  “I had to guess some of the lines,” Gelareh explained. “But this looks like a vévé. Or, really, a part of a vévé.”

  “A what?”

  “See?” Lovering called. “I told you.”

  Gelareh ignored him. “Vévés are sigils used in vodou. You know what vodou is?”

  “Voodoo? From Haiti,” Oscar replied. “Spirit worship. Possession.”

  Gelareh wrinkled her nose. “Haitian vodou has strong roots in West African vodun, you know? Yes, it is spirit worship, not unlike Native American and Celtic religions. The belief that spirits govern all aspects of earth and life. They live in stones, trees, animals, and they can be called upon to render assistance, to give comfort, confer favors—”

  “To intervene,” Oscar said.

  “Exactly. If they are called correctly and given appropriate offerings. The vévé�
��they are like doors, or keys, or … hmm.” She searched for the word. She looked outside to Lovering, but he was snoring lightly, the teacup on his belly. “The towers with the lights?”

  “Lighthouses?” Oscar said.

  She nodded. “Yes. Lighthouses to attract the Loa, the spirits. Like nasty moths.” She smiled, and the paper rustled dryly under her fingers. “This looks very much like a portion, the cross portion, of the vévé used to summon Baron Samedi.”

  “Samedi?” Oscar asked. “French? Baron Saturday?”

  “He is one of the major spirits. A Guédé, a guardian of the crossroads between the dead and the living. But, as I say, this is only a portion of the Baron’s vévé. Here.”

  She had a reference book tabbed, and opened to a page that showed an almost childlike drawing that looked like a cross on an altar flanked by two coffins and embellished with asterisks.

  Oscar frowned. “And the vodou priests and priestesses, they cut these into their flesh?”

  “Oh, no. They draw them with powder, maybe flour, even gunpowder. Like the Navajo use pollen or cornmeal. But no incisions, no.”

  This was raising more questions than answering them, Oscar thought. And they were only halfway through the sheets.

  Gelareh flipped to the next tracing: crescents, stars, something that looked like a church spire, and other badly formed shapes that made no sense to Oscar.

  “Pictograms,” Gelareh explained. “Very hard to read from the photograph.”

  “It wasn’t the best quality.”

  Gelareh said nothing. “Still. This glyph”—she turned the image upside down and Oscar could see that it looked like a heron or a crane—“looks very much like an Akh.”

  “Egyptian?”

  She nodded. “The symbol of the soul. A ghost.” She drew his eye down to a curl of lines that came into unpleasant focus: a skull in profile. “And this looks a little like an Aztec image. I’m not so good with Aztec. But skulls and skeletons? Very popular in ancient Central America.”

  Oscar remembered his and Sabine’s honeymoon—October in New England and November in San Francisco. The stores there were full of pumpkins and Halloween masks. Oscar and Sabine had gone down to Garfield Square to see the Day of the Dead festival—Día de los Muertos. So many skeletons. “For La Calavera Catrina,” explained a beautiful young woman whose face was painted as a white-and-black skull. “To remind us that even the rich die.”