Decker laid a hand on his shoulder. “If we can safely believe Moses Adebolu, which from all the evidence I believe we can, then all we are up against is the single most vengeful god in the whole of the Santería religion.”
“And that’s his name? Changó?”
“You got it.”
“All right,” Hicks said. “Supposing I go along with this. Supposing it’s true. What’s this goddamned god so goddamned vengeful about?”
“I have no idea, specifically. But the nightmares I’ve been having … and the way that the victims were killed … I think it has something to do with the Civil War, and with the Battle of the Wilderness in particular.”
“You’re talking about the Devil’s Brigade?”
Decker nodded.
“But all that happened in 1864. Over 140 years ago.”
“I know. But gods don’t die, do they? Not so long as people go on believing in them. Maybe they don’t die even if people don’t go on believing them. They’re not fairies, after all. They’re part of the earth, part of the sky, part of everything.”
“I don’t want to step out of line, Lieutenant, but you’re beginning to sound, well—this is kind of Lord of the Rings here.”
“Come talk to Moses, see if he doesn’t change your mind.”
Decker knocked on Moses Adebolu’s multicolored door. He waited patiently, turning to Hicks and lifting his eyebrows. “You wait till you meet this guy. He’s a character. And you should see his daughter. That’s if she is his daughter, which I seriously question.”
He knocked again. “All right,” Moses called. “I can hear you, my friend. I just have to pull up my pants.”
They could hear him shuffling toward the door. As the handle turned, however, there was an extraordinary warping sensation in the air, as if the whole of perception had been twisted. This was instantly followed by a sharp, intense sucking sound, like a high wind, which Decker instantly recognized—oxygen being dragged violently into Moses’ apartment through every crack and crevice around the door.
“Down!” he shouted at Hicks, and football-tackled him across the landing.
Hicks, sprawling, said, “What? What is it?”
“Down! Get downstairs!”
He shoved Hicks square in the back and Hicks lost his balance and went tumbling and bumping down to the hallway. Decker himself seized hold of the banister rails and swung himself down, six stairs at a time, like an acrobat.
As they reached the front door, there was a shattering explosion, and the whole building seemed to jump sideways. Chunks of plaster dropped from the ceiling, rails were ripped up like railroad tracks, and what was left of the John the Baptist window burst apart in a million sparkling fragments.
Hicks stared at Decker and his face was white with plaster dust and shock.
“Was that a bomb?”
Decker was busy jabbing out the fire department number on his cell phone. “God knows. Come on.”
Up above them, doors were opening and people were shouting and screaming. A large section of the third-story staircase had collapsed, and lumps of plaster were still falling down the stairwell. Decker shouted, “Police! Don’t panic! We’re going to get you out of here!”
He approached Moses’ door. All the paint on it was already blistered, and only one painted eye remained, staring at him with the serene knowledge that all things must pass. He cautiously touched the door handle but it was too hot for him to try turning it. There was no smoke coming out from underneath the door. Instead, the air from the landing was still being steadily sucked inward, with a soft whistling sound, which told him that the interior of the apartment must be incandescent.
“Hicks, come on, sport—let’s get these people out of here. This building doesn’t have long.”
A woman with dreadlocks and a black leather minidress was leaning over from the landing above, screaming, “I got to get my clothes! I got to get my DVDs!”
“Lady, no chance. This house is going to be ashes in two minutes flat.”
Hicks and Decker stood at the foot of the third-story stairs and helped the residents to jump over the gap. The woman with the dreadlocks; an elderly woman in a holey bathrobe, carrying a cat; a young man with a shaven head and muscles; a middle-aged woman with a head scarf and dangly earrings.
When the last of them was clambering down the stairs to safety, Hicks turned to Decker and nodded toward Moses’ door. “What about him?”
“Don’t even think about it. Whatever happened in there, he’s toast. We try to get in there, we’re toast, too. Let’s go.”
They followed the residents down to the hallway. Decker was only halfway down, however, when Moses’ door burst open. A huge fireball roared out of it, and flames rolled across the ceiling, setting fire to the hanging lampshade and the banister. Decker felt the heat blasting against his face and he clamped his hand on top of his head to prevent his hair from being singed.
Moses Adebolu appeared at the top of the stairs, staggering like a zombie, and he was blazing from head to foot. His clothes had been burned off him and his skin was shriveling. The heat from the blast had been so intense that his glasses were welded to his face, and the TV-like lenses had turned milky white.
“Changó!” he screamed. “Changó!” His voice sounded as if it had been wrenched out of his lungs with red-hot pincers.
“Fire extinguisher!” Decker told Hicks, and Hicks jumped down the front steps and crossed the road to the car. Decker took off his coat and climbed the stairs again, holding the coat up in front of him to shield himself from the heat.
Moses swayed, and then he toppled down the stairs, still blazing. Decker had to jump out of the way as his burning body cartwheeled past him, all fiery arms and legs. He fell all the way down to the hallway where he lay with flames flickering down his back, more like a black, crunched-up insect than a man. Hicks came back with the fire extinguisher and squirted foam all over him, but it was obvious that he was dead.
Decker went back upstairs to see if there was any chance of saving Aluya, but Moses’ apartment was so fiercely ablaze that he couldn’t even make it up to the landing. The fire was actually bellowing, as if it were furiously angry. Decker went back outside and made sure that everybody was standing well back. A crowd was gathering and every time another window shattered they let out a strange, long-drawn-out moan.
“My DVDs,” wailed the woman with the dreadlocks.
“Any sign of the girl?” Hicks asked.
Decker wiped the sweat and smudges from his face. “Couldn’t get close enough. If she is in there, she wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
They watched the flames waving from the second-story window. One of the drapes blew out and flew off into the morning sky, like a burning ghost.
“Think it was a natural gas explosion?” Hicks asked.
“Who knows? Moses had all kinds of herbs and potions and stuff. Maybe he had something inflammable.”
The first fire truck arrived, its siren wailing and its horn blasting. Then another, and another.
As the firefighters unrolled their hoses, Decker looked behind him, underneath the shadow of I-95. Aluya was standing there, in an orange Indian-style silk pantsuit, with an orange silk scarf on her head. She was holding a woven shopping bag filled with celery and other vegetables.
Decker went over to her. “I’m sorry … there was some kind of explosion. Your father didn’t make it.”
She stared at him with her huge brown eyes as if she couldn’t understand what he was talking about.
“Is there any place you can go?” he coaxed her. “Any relatives?”
“My father is dead?”
“I’m really sorry. The whole place went up, just like that. Where have you been, shopping? You were lucky you weren’t inside.”
“It was Changó.”
“What?”
“It was Changó. I told him not to defy Changó.”
“I don’t think that he was defying him. It was more like he
was trying to appease him.”
“Changó wants his revenge on you. If Changó wants his revenge, he will never rest until he has it. Owani irosun, the greatest vengeance. My father thought that he could be greater than Changó, and this was the price. Changó warned him, with the coconut shells, but he didn’t listen.”
“I’m sorry,” Decker said. Behind him, he heard the fire pumps starting up. “What are you going to do now?”
“I will stay with my sister.”
“Okay … but if there’s anything I can do …”
She looked at him for a long time without saying anything. Then she turned and began to walk away.
“I’ll need to get in touch with you!” Decker called after her. “I have to ask you some questions, and we’ll probably need you to identify your father’s body!”
“You will find me when you need me,” Aluya called back.
Decker caught up with her and took hold of her arm. “Listen,” he said.
She shook her head. “You’re not the man you once were, Lieutenant. Changó has put his mark on you, and there is no more time for you to do the things you once did. You will scarcely have time to panic.”
“Well, that’s honest, even if it’s not exactly reassuring.”
“My father also used to read the cowrie shells, Lieutenant, as well as the coconuts. He read his own shells last night, and no matter how they fell, the pattern always brought ossogbo, which is not good. The last pattern was oggunda oche, which means that the dead are angry.”
“I still need to know how to get in touch with you.”
“No, you don’t. You need to find Changó and discover what it is that he wants from you. Otherwise you will not live longer than two goings-down of the sun.”
With that, she walked away, with her shopping bag swinging. Hicks came up to Decker and said, “What was that all about?”
“You want it in words of one syllable? I’m in shitsville.”
“That’s two syllables.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Soon after they returned to headquarters, Sergeant Novick came up to Decker’s office with a large yellow envelope. Novick was tall and hesitant, with a chestnut cowlick and spectacles that you could have used to start a campfire, but he was one of the best photographic experts on the force.
“I had a piece of luck with this one, Lieutenant,” he said, taking out a glossy black-and-white print.
“Jesus, I could use some luck. Tell me.”
Novick laid the print down in front of him. It was a blown-up detail of the photograph that Decker had taken from the Maitland home: a Confederate soldier in a slouch hat decorated with black rags and a long gray greatcoat. It was surprisingly sharp and clear, and Decker could see that the man had a long, stern face with angular cheekbones and deep-set eyes. His nose was hooked as if it had been broken, and he was heavily bearded.
Novick said, “The image was not only out of focus, because this man was standing in the background, but it was blurred, too, because he’d moved during the exposure. But what I did was to make a digital image of the original photograph, and enlarge the pixels so that I could examine the picture in minute detail. Then I could filter out the blurred pixels and crisp up the image by making a computerized analysis of what the guy would have looked like if he’d kept still.”
“What’s it like to be incomprehensible, Novick? Does it interfere with your social life or anything?”
“I’ll tell you something, Lieutenant, I’m proud of this piece of work. And I’m even prouder because I’ve found out who he is.”
“You’re not serious?”
“Oh yes.” Novick rummaged in his envelope again and produced another print. “I went to the library this morning and looked through The Confederate Army in Photographs. All I was looking for were more pictures by the same photographer, but look what I found.”
It was unmistakably the same man, photographed in a studio, with a painted landscape of trees and cliffs in the background. He was wearing a slouch hat, but without the rags, and a neatly buttoned tunic. He was thickly bearded, but his beard was much trimmer than it was in the photograph taken during the Battle of the Wilderness.
Underneath, the caption read CAPTAIN JOSEPH SHROUD, OF KERSHAW’S DIVISION OF THE FIRST ARMY CORPS, OCTOBER 17, 1863.
Decker opened his drawer and took out a copy of Sandra’s drawing. “Look at this. Sandra’s So-Scary Man. No doubt about it. It’s the same guy.”
Novick leaned over his shoulder and pointed to Shroud’s hat. “You see these … they’re not rags at all, even though they look like them. I blew them up even more and they’re feathers.”
“So the So-Scary Man was one of the Devil’s Brigade,” Hicks said. “And it looks like Maitland’s great-great-grandfather was too.”
Decker said, “We need to know more about this. Something happened during the Battle of the Wilderness—something so bad that it refuses to go away. I think I need to go back down to Fort Monroe—see if I can’t dig something out of the archives.”
Cab came into the office, with his necktie loose, looking sweaty and harassed, and holding up a dispatch note.
“Hi, Captain. How was Charlottesville?”
“Forget Charlottesville. Uniform just called in another homicide, 1881 May Street.”
“Can’t you give it to Rudisill? I think we’ve got ourselves a hook on the Maitland case.”
“This could be connected to the Maitland case. The apartment was locked on the inside. Nobody saw nobody enter and nobody saw nobody leave. Besides that, the method of killing was bizarre, to say the least. The guy had his eyes poked out, and apparently he was scalded.”
Decker stood up and put on his coat. “In that case, I think we’d better go take a look. Hicks?”
Erin Malkman was already there when they arrived, snapping on her latex gloves.
“We can’t go on meeting like this,” Decker said.
Erin gave him a humorless grimace. “You’re going to have fun with this one.”
Decker and Hicks went through to the bathroom. John Mason was still floating in the bathtub, facedown. His skin was lobster red and he was grossly swollen. Erin rolled him over so that Decker could see his bloodied eye sockets.
“What’s that smell?”
Erin stirred the bathwater. “Meat stock, to put it bluntly. This man was boiled for at least twenty minutes.”
“Boiled? How could he be boiled?”
“Whoever did this to him found a way to raise the water temperature to one hundred degrees Celsius and keep it there.”
“How is that possible?”
“I have no idea. Maybe he had some kind of portable heating element with him, like an immersion heater.”
“This gets crazier.”
A uniform came in with a notebook. “Victim’s name is John Ledger Mason, aged thirty. Single, domiciled here with his widowed mother, Ivy Mason.”
“His mother didn’t see anything?”
“She takes sleeping pills. In fact she couldn’t sleep too well during the night so she took two more than usual, which totally knocked her out.”
“When did she last see her son?”
“Late yesterday evening. He works as a chef at Appleby’s Family Restaurant on East Main Street. He told her good night and went to take a bath. As I say, she woke up at about three in the morning and took more sleeping pills, and she eventually woke up well past eleven o’clock.
“She called the victim and when he didn’t answer she looked into his bedroom. His bed was made and the drapes were open, so she assumed that he had gone out. She didn’t go into the bathroom until nearly one o’clock, because she wanted to change the towels.”
“Where is she now?”
“One of the neighbors is taking care of her. Apartment eight.”
“Anybody else see anything?”
“Nope. No sign of forced entry, either. The victim’s bedroom window was open a couple of inches, but there’s no possible access from
outside.”
Erin said, “You notice the bruising on his shoulders? It looks as if somebody was holding him down.”
Decker and Hicks went across to apartment 8, where John’s mother was sitting at her neighbor’s kitchen table, looking even more pallid than usual, especially since she was wearing a bright red dress. Her neighbor was a fat woman with greasy gray hair and slippers that made a flapping noise as she walked around the kitchen.
Decker showed his badge. “The officer downstairs tells me you didn’t see anything or hear anything?”
“That’s right,” she whispered.
“Well, maybe God was taking care of you, ma’am. Whoever killed your son was a very ruthless individual indeed. Who knows what he might have done to you?”
“John was always such a gentle boy. Why would anybody want to kill anyone so gentle?”
“We’re going to do our best to find that out. You can’t think of anybody who might have harbored a grudge against him? Anybody who might have wanted to do him harm?”
“He always kept to himself. He never argued with anyone, even if they upset him. He always used to say ‘grin and bear it.’”
“Mrs. Mason … I gather you’re a widow. What did your late husband do?”
“He was a printer. He used to work for CadmusMack.”
“His family didn’t have any military connections?”
She frowned at him, and then she shook her head. “Not that I know of. Why?”
“You don’t happen to have a Mason family tree, do you?”
“What would that have to do with somebody killing John?”
“I’m not sure. But it would help me if I knew something about your late husband’s antecedents. Especially his great-great-grandfather.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t think I can help you. Bill didn’t get on with his family at all well, especially his father.”
“Was he a Richmond man?”
“Born in Petersburg. But his family moved to Richmond when he was very young.”
“All right, then. Thanks anyhow.”
On the way downstairs, Decker said to Hicks, “We need to check the Mason family history, right back to the Civil War. I want to know if any of John Mason’s forefathers was assigned to the Devil’s Brigade.”
The Devil in Gray Page 19