Black Magic Woman (Morris and Chastain Investigations)

by Justin Gustainis

  “That reminds me, didn’t I hear it say something about you liking girls and boys both? It’s none of my damn business, but do you play for both teams, Libby?”

  Libby Chastain plucked at the hem of her bathrobe for a few seconds. “Yes,” she said finally. “Yes, I’m bisexual.” She looked at him then, one eyebrow raised in challenge. “But that doesn’t make me some kind of a slut, Quincey.”

  “Jesus, Libby, of course not,” Morris said hurriedly. “I didn’t mean anything like—”

  She held up a hand. “All right, okay. I’m sorry. I guess I’m feeling a little defensive at the moment.”

  “No, listen, like I said, it’s none of my damn business, and anyway I wouldn’t presume—”

  She stopped him again. “Quincey, it’s all right, just relax, okay?”

  She leaned back in her chair. “We’ve never talked about our personal lives much, although I know we care for each other. At least, I know that I care for you, and I’m pretty sure it’s mutual.”

  He gave her a lopsided smile. “Witch’s intuition?”

  “Something like that, maybe. Anyway, I’m a devout practitioner of serial monogamy. I’ve had romantic relationships with several people in my life. Some of them were men, some were women. But always one at a time. And I’ve never even considered something like that sexual free-for-all we saw at Duval’s place.”

  “I understand,” Morris said. “And I respect that, not that it matters.”

  “It matters to me, Quincey. Which is why I want you to understand that what you saw when you came bursting in here a little while ago was the result of an enchantment by that creature.”

  “You don’t have to tell me. I felt it, too, remember? If you hadn’t done something drastic, I swear she would have had me making the sign of the double-backed aardvark with her faster than you could say—”

  Despite herself, Libby began to giggle. “The sign of the what? Double-backed aardvark? Who on earth calls it that?”

  “A good ol’ boy from down home, name of Joe Bob Briggs. Used to host his own movie show on cable, ‘Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater.’ Ever see it?”

  “Guess I must have missed that one, I can’t think how,” Libby said with a barely suppressed smile.

  Morris’s voice turned serious again. “It raises an interesting question, though. What was the point of all this?”

  “The point of sending an incubus/succubus, you mean?”

  “Exactly. We’re assuming it was sent by the black witch we’re after, right?”

  She nodded. “No other explanation makes sense.”

  “All right then. I can see why she’d want to set fire to the building in Boston. If we get burned to cinders, she’s got no more problem. As you said, it makes sense, in an evil, twisted sort of way. But what does it matter to her whether we get laid, even by a minor demon? Succubi aren’t killers, are they?”

  “No, they’re not. Not of the body, anyway.”

  “I’m not following you,” Morris said.

  Libby tightened the belt of her robe, as if against a sudden chill. “Intercourse with a succubus or incubus is said to rob the victim of vitality, ambition, and short-term memory.”

  Morris snorted. “Sounds like some pot heads I knew in college.”

  “It’s much worse than a marijuana habit, Quincey. Some accounts even describe these creatures as devouring the soul. It’s a form of psychic vampirism.”

  “Jesus.”

  “And it’s like vampirism in another way, too.”

  “What’s that?”

  “After the first successful attack, there’s nothing to prevent the creature from coming back, again, and again. And after each time, there’d be a little less of you left.”

  “So if you and I had succumbed to that thing, either together or separately...”

  “Then tomorrow morning we’d have considerably less enthusiasm for continuing this expedition of ours. And the next morning, we’d have even less.”

  “Then I’d say we were pretty lucky you were able to come up with an incantation to drive that thing out of here. Talk about a demon lover!”

  “That’s exactly where the term comes from, I’m sure of it.” Libby fussed with her robe some more. “Quincey?”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “Will you stay here, for what’s left of the night?” Seeing his eyes widen, she added hastily, “Not for sex. I don’t want to change our relationship that way, and I don’t think you do, either. But, I don’t know... I guess I’m scared to be alone.”

  “I’m kind of glad you asked me that, Libby,” Morris said softly. “Since I’ve been sitting here trying to come up with a way to suggest the same thing without sounding like I was trying to put the moves on you.”

  They turned out all the lights but one, and Morris kicked off his shoes. The two of them lay together on the queen-size bed, close but not quite touching.

  After a while, Morris drifted off to sleep. But Libby Chastain lay awake, wary and watchful, until dawn finally came to drive the night’s evil away.

  WHEN MORRIS RETURNED to his own room, the red message light on his telephone was blinking. He read the directions posted on the phone for retrieving voicemail messages, pressed the right buttons, and waited.

  There was a click, then a familiar voice said in his ear, “Quincey, it’s Simon. I don’t know if this is what you need, but it’s all I’ve got. There’s a mambo in New Orleans, calls herself Queen Esther. I hear she might be involved in... all that shit you were asking about.”

  The line went silent, and Morris was about to hang up when Duval’s voice continued, “Listen, man, don’t bother to call back, and don’t come over to the church anymore, okay? In fact, if you’re smart, you’ll forget this whole witch hunt you’re on and just go home. But either way, leave me out of it. I just dip my toe in these waters once in a while, but you—you’re swimming with the fuckin’ sharks, dude. Keep at it, and they are gonna eat you alive.”

  CHAPTER 17

  THE WINDOW IN Fenton’s borrowed office looked out over an airshaft, but at least it let in light and air. The bright morning sunshine that was coming through it did nothing to lift the spirits of either Fenton or Van Dreenan, who were combing through the reports on the Glassboro murder, looking for something, anything, that remotely resembled a lead.

  Fenton’s laptop, which was open on the desk, “pinged” to announce the arrival of an e-mail message. Fenton glanced at the screen, then looked away and went back to his work. Two seconds later he stopped, turned back to the laptop, and started reading more closely.

  “It’s from the Trenton field office,” he told Van Dreenan. “Ever since you ID’d the killings as possible muti murders, I’ve asked our field offices, the ones that are closest to each of the four crime scenes, to go through the local law’s incident reports for the periods before and after the murders, a week either way. I also asked them to keep an eye on current stuff as it came in.”

  “With a view toward accomplishing what?”

  “Finding anything hinky that might connect up with our case.” Fenton was rapidly opening the files that had been attached to the message.

  “You did not, surely, use the word ‘hinky’ in your requests,” Van Dreenan said with a tiny smile, his first in days.

  “No, I believe I used words like ‘unusual,’ ‘anomalous,’ ‘idiosyncratic,’ and ‘fucked-up.’ Well, maybe not that last one.” Fenton paused to read for a few seconds. “But this, my man, is some kind of seriously fucked-up.” He turned the laptop around so that it faced Van Dreenan. “Check it out.”

  Van Dreenan read what was in front of him. A frown developed on his face and grew deeper as he continued. Finally, he looked up at Fenton.

  “A woman apparently blunders into an armed robbery at a—” Van Dreenan glanced at the screen again, “convenience store. What is that, a ‘convenience store?’”

  “Small grocery store. Often attached to a gas station.”

  “Oh, of course
. I know what you mean. So this woman, described as ‘African-American’—how did the witness know that she was African? Or American, for that matter?”

  “It’s just a polite term for black people,” Fenton said, with a small sigh. “Don’t read any more into it.”

  “All right. The robber attempts to take the woman’s purse away from her, and she blows some kind of powder into his face, blinding him.”

  “Blinding him, but good. Check out the ER doctor’s report. The guy’s eyeballs just about dissolved. He’ll never see again.”

  “Yes, I read that part,” Van Dreenan said. “But why is that of use to us? She blows some kind of caustic soda into the man’s face, which has the expected effect. Good for her, I say. One less criminal on the streets.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Fenton said. “I might even agree with you. But go a little further down.”

  Van Dreenan gave him a dubious look, but went back to the report, reading rapidly. Then he stopped. Scrolled back up. Read one part again, slowly. Then he looked at Fenton, and there was an odd expression on his face. “A chemical analysis of the blinding agent finds several kinds of herbs and some ground-up tree bark. That’s all, nothing else.” Van Dreenan shook his head a couple of times. “None of these ingredients should have done any harm to the man’s eyes at all, beyond mild irritation—the kind you would have from any kind of dirt that gets in your eyes.”

  Fenton nodded slowly. “Yeah. Exactly.”

  “And this damage is rather too extreme to be considered a psychosomatic injury, even if the robber was a likely candidate for such, which he is not.”

  “Yeah,” Fenton said again. “Told you this was fucked up.”

  Van Dreenan was looking at the screen again. “I recognize these herbs,” he said slowly. “They are often used, in my country, in tribal magic rituals. One of them is even native to South Africa, I believe.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Van Dreenan had long believed that “uh-huh” was one of the most useful terms in American English. It can express agreement, skepticism, indifference, or acknowledgment. It can also be used when you’re so overwhelmed by circumstances that you can’t think of anything else to say. Van Dreenan was betting that the last one of those applied to Fenton right now.

  The two of them were silent for a while. “You know,” Van Dreenan said finally, looking down at his hands, “of the many differences between your country and mine, one that I find most striking is the proliferation of surveillance cameras you have here, at least in the urban areas. I am not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, mind you. It can certainly make a policeman’s job easier. But you have them everywhere, it seems. Office buildings, car parks, banks—” He paused then, and looked up at Fenton, “convenience stores...”

  Fenton stared at him for a long moment. “You know,” he said, “I would have figured that out for myself. Eventually.”

  “Of course you would have,” Van Dreenan said graciously.

  Fenton turned the laptop back so it was facing him and began to type quickly. After a minute or so, Van Dreenan asked, “What are you doing?”

  “Getting us a road map.” He clicked the mouse. “There. It’s printing now.” He gestured with his chin in the direction of the door. “Maybe you’d care to pick it up from the communal printer out there.”

  “Why do we need a road map?”

  “So we don’t get ourselves lost on the way to Glassboro, New Jersey.”

  THE MEDIA ROOM at Glassboro police headquarters contained a single TV/monitor that was hooked up to both a VCR and a DVD player, and four chairs. Three of these were now occupied.

  “I appreciate your letting us take a look at this without a lot of preliminary paperwork,” Fenton said to Detective Hank Mulderig.

  “It’s okay, no problem,” Mulderig said. He was a big, untidy man with white hair and bushy eyebrows, with a gut that showed he hadn’t had to pass a physical fitness test in a while. “Thing is,” he went on, “I don’t see why the FBI should give a shit about some two-bit gas station hold-up, especially since we already got the perp in custody.”

  “We’re less interested in the perp than we are in the woman who blinded him,” Fenton said.

  “Yeah, wasn’t that somethin’?” Mulderig said. “Last I heard, the docs still haven’t figured what was in that powder she used on him. Kid’s a fucking meth-head, name of Tommy Carmody. I’ve busted him twice, myself. What happened served the bastard right, you ask me.” He stopped, looked at Fenton, than Van Dreenan, and back to Fenton. “This some kind of terrorism thing?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes it is,” Van Dreenan told him.

  “Damn,” Mulderig said softly, as if to himself. He picked up the remote and pointed it at the monitor, which came to life immediately. Then he aimed at the videotape player and pressed another button. “Okay, this is the footage from inside the store when it all went down.”

  The tape began to play, producing an image, black and white but very sharply focused, of the interior of the convenience store. There was, of course, no audio.

  They watched the clerk taking packs of cigarettes from a carton and stocking the shelves behind the register. They saw the twitchy young man in the dark jacket, whom they now knew to be Tommy Carmody, approach the counter. And they saw the squat black woman who came to stand a few feet behind Carmody, holding a small bag of some kind of snack food.

  Fenton thought he heard a sharp intake of breath from Van Dreenan, but didn’t say anything.

  They watched as Carmody drew down on the terrified clerk, then turned to train his gun on the woman. They saw him speak to her, yelling probably, threatening her with the gun. They saw her hold out the bag, saw it fall just short of Carmody’s grasp, saw him bend forward to pick it up, then the woman’s other hand coming up quick as a striking snake, the small cloud of powder suddenly in the air between them, Carmody staggering as he clutched his ruined eyes.

  Each of the three men was privately glad he could not hear the screams.

  They watched as the woman picked up her bag and scurried out the door, seemingly oblivious to the chaos she was leaving in her wake.

  Mulderig pointed the remote again and stopped the tape.

  Fenton was tapping a couple of fingers on his knee, a frown creasing his face. He said to Mulderig, “Mind if we see it again?”

  “Sure, whatever.” Mulderig pressed the rewind button.

  Fenton noticed that Van Dreenan was rubbing the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “You all right?” he asked.

  “Fine,” Van Dreenan said, his voice sounding a little husky. “By all means, let us watch it again.”

  Fenton looked at him for a moment longer, then turned back to the monitor. When the tape reached the point where the woman blew the powder into Carmody’s eyes, he said, “Stop. Run it back a little bit, then play it again, will you?”

  Mulderig did as he was asked. This time, as the scene played out, Fenton said, “See that? The bag didn’t slip out of her hand, she’s letting it fall, deliberately. It’s a sucker play. She wants what’s-his-name, Carmody, to lean forward and get it.”

  “Why the fuck would she do that?” Mulderig asked.

  “To decrease the range,” Van Dreenan said quietly. “She wanted to make absolutely certain of her aim.”

  Mulderig’s eyebrows went up, then he looked back at the video monitor. “Jesus. That is one cold, calculating bitch.”

  “Ja,” Van Dreenan said. “That is exactly what she is.”

  FENTON LOOKED AT Mulderig. “So, where did she go after she ran out the door? They’ve gotta have cameras covering the outside, too, right?”

  “Yeah, they do,” Mulderig said. “Gimme a second.”

  The detective changed tapes in the machine, and within a minute they were watching the black woman as she exited the convenience store. She made her way quickly over to one set of gas pumps, where a tall, very thin man had apparently just finished gassing up an old Lincoln Connie. The woma
n spoke to the man, who said something back and then looked in the direction of the convenience store. A moment later, he jumped in the Lincoln and sped off, the woman in the seat next to him.

  As Mulderig ejected that tape, Fenton said thoughtfully, “The price of gas being what it is these days, they’ve gotta have a camera aimed right at the pumps, to get the license number of anybody who fills up and just drives away. Kind of like that guy did.”

  “Figured you’d wanna see that one,” Mulderig said, as he slipped another tape into the VCR. “This is it right here.”

  This time, the camera gave them a good shot of the car from the rear. They watched as the tall, thin man approached and began to pump gas.

  “Wonder where he just came from?” Fenton said.

  “The john,” Mulderig told him. “It’s on another tape, if you wanna see it.”

  The camera angle gave them a clear shot of the Lincoln’s license plate: PCL 976. Fenton squinted at the screen. “What state is that plate from? Can you tell?”

  “Yeah, it’s Mississippi,” Mulderig said. “Guy’s a long way from home.”

  “Assuming it’s his car, and he didn’t boost it someplace,” Fenton said. “Have you got a registration?”

  Mulderig shook his head. “Not yet. We put in a request to the Mississippi DMV, haven’t heard back. Even with computers, they still tend to be a little slow down there.”

  “We’ll see if they move a little faster when the request comes from the FBI,” Fenton said. “I assume you’ve got a BOLO out on the car?”

  “Bolo? What is that?” Van Dreenan asked.

  “Acronym for ‘be on the lookout,’” Fenton told him. “Kind of a general alert to area law enforcement.”

  “Yeah, we BOLO’d him this morning,” Mulderig said. “We’d kinda like to talk to the woman, since what she did in that store was technically assault and battery. And the guy drove off with thirty-eight bucks’ worth of hi-test unleaded he didn’t pay for.”

  “If it’s all right with you,” Fenton said, “I’m going to have somebody from the FBI field office stop by for these tapes. He’ll have them copied and brought right back to you. I want to see if I can get some blow-ups made of their faces.”