The Darkest Night

by Rick Reed

  Cotton drew on the back of the paper. “Avizan. That’s who Marie represents,” Cotton said.

  Cotton said, “The real Marie Laveau lived in the 1800s. She was a Loa called Avizan and a mamba, or priestess. She is the Loa for healing, love, and religious ceremonies like initiations in the Voudon. The real Marie was in New Orleans, and people would bring her gifts of yams, plantain, palm fronds, and sugarcane syrup in exchange for a blessing of some sort. She was a force for good and not evil.

  “Papa is a gatekeeper. You need him and Azivan together during rituals.”

  “Cotton, I don’t understand how this could have led to Bitty’s murder,” Liddell said. “Do you think Marie or Papa killed her?” Liddell had lived in Louisiana, and so he’d heard talk of Voodoo, and he’d heard some of these names, but he’d never been interested. He hadn’t known about Sally’s involvement with Voodoo.

  “Voodoo isn’t usually a problem, but if Bitty was asking about it she must have thought something big was going on. Big people involved.” His face clouded, and his expression turned dark. “You don’t mess with shit like that. I shouldn’t even be talking to you two. You sure no one followed you,” he said, and took his rifle back to the window. He seemed to be watching something outside in the distance.

  “I told you that no one followed us, Cotton,” Liddell said. “Come and sit down.”

  Cotton opened the drawer again and this time came out with a spotter scope and trained it out the window. “Damn. It’s gone.”

  Jack got up and went to the window. “What’s gone?” Jack could see the barbwire fencing, and behind that a short field and some stunted trees. Beyond that he thought he could make out traffic.

  “Is that Highway 1?” Jack asked, but Cotton waved him away and continued to watch. He lowered the scope and put it back on the shelf. “Gone,” he said.

  Jack dismissed this as paranoia or the onset of dementia. “You said there are big people involved, Cotton. What do you think these big people are involved in? You were a cop. What would you call it?” Jack asked.

  Cotton sat down again, one hand on the rifle. “Just wait a sec,” Cotton said and went into the room from where he’d brought the chairs. When he came back, he was carrying a small dark-colored leather purse or bag. It was roughly stitched around the edges, and had a leather drawstring at the top where a couple of feathers peeked out. The feathers were speckled with something reddish black.

  “Is that the same thing Landry showed us, Bigfoot?” Jack asked.

  “I don’t think there was a symbol sewn into the one Landry showed us.”

  “It’s called a gris-gris,” Cotton said. “It’s a spell bag. It can be good or bad spells depending on what’s inside, and what it’s intended to do.”

  “Okay,” Jack said.

  Cotton continued. “This one here,” he held up the bag, “this one is a warning.” He turned it over, and Jack could see a symbol stitched into the material with red and black thread. The symbol resembled a trident with two bars crossing the shaft.

  “Okay,” Jack said again. He wasn’t afraid of leather bags, especially small ones with speckled feathers.

  “The Divine Messenger,” Cotton said in a soft voice. “It means I’ve been warned. I’m not sure what I’ve been doing, but whatever it was has definitely pissed someone off.”

  Jack saw the way Liddell was staring at the amulet. “What?”

  Liddell said, “I think this is the same symbol that was drawn in blood at Bitty’s.”

  Cotton had nothing further to tell them about Bitty, but as they left he said, “I got her killed. I should’nt’a tol’ her nothin’. My fault. All my fault.”

  Jack turned and saw Cotton pick up the scope and watch out the grimy window again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Papa Legba entered the plantation church, his bent frame leaning on a cane. White dreadlocks were heavily beaded with bones of all shapes and colors that framed the white painted face with dark circles around the eyes. Unlike the traditional clothing of Papa Legba he wore a purple alb—a sacramental vestment associated with Catholic priests during a Mass—tied at the waist with hemp. Canted on his head, he wore a battered top hat with a red feather stuck in the white hatband. He walked with a shuffle to the door on the left of the intricate altar and entered a small room where six hand-chosen female acolytes set cross-legged in a semicircle around Mamba.

  Mamba’s head was covered with a bright red scarf tied behind her neck. She wore a one-piece faded blue dress, the color of which was threaded with gold and silver. In the space between her and the acolytes were the elemental ingredients needed to make gris-gris amulets. A clay bowl of water, an incense stick representing air, a dish of graveyard dirt, and a stub of lit candle for fire. At each girl’s feet were small squares of leather, bright-colored shards of bone fragments and colored glass, threads, and pieces of parchment with sigils drawn on them in magic ink.

  Mamba gazed at Papa Legba while the acolytes bowed their heads, not allowing their eyes to wander toward the god of the underworld.

  “Tomorrow,” Mamba said to her group of acolytes who were all female, all under the age of fifteen, all beautiful with faces glowing in the presence of their Mamba. They wore expressions of the blessed as they rose and filed past Papa Legba, each one crossing themselves and kissing the back of his offered hand as they exited quietly.

  Papa waited until the last footstep echoed and the doors to the church closed with a bang. His slumped figure straightened up to his six-foot, ten-inch frame.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  “How is she?” Mamba asked.

  Papa turned his face away, and his jaw clamped tight. “We have a problem,” he said and turned back toward her.

  Mamba uncrossed her legs, and he helped her up from the floor. She tugged at the hem of her dress and smoothed the wrinkles. “Does it have anything to do with the drawing Luke asked me for?”

  Papa considered his answer. He wasn’t sure how much she knew about last night, or how much he could tell her. She had changed since they created this business. When Papa had found her she was skin and bones, living in a crack house, spreading her legs for anyone who would keep her high.

  Papa removed her from there because he saw something special in her. Something he could develop. He cleaned her up, she put on some weight, and he saw just how beautiful she was. He was the one who had turned her from Sally the crack whore into Marie Laveau, Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. She went from being a whore to running whores. Business had been prosperous for both of them.

  After Katrina hit New Orleans, he, like so many others, watched his business wash away. But he and Sally had come to the attention of some very powerful people. Prostitution wasn’t the only business making a comeback in New Orleans after the floods.

  With the backing of investors Papa Legba and Marie Laveau had moved here. She knew the town, knew the people—or so she said—and had connections with law enforcement. She could guarantee they would not be interfered with, and so he had proposed Plaquemine to the investors. Now it was all going to hell right in front of his eyes. All the careful and tedious planning, making the right friends, buying the right people, turning the heads of those who weren’t friends, starting slowly and growing the business. All threatened by one female cop. She was dead now, but she was like the Hydra. Where one head was cut off, two more grew. And all Sally could ask was how her daughter was doing.

  But now was not a time for recrimination. Now, more than ever, he needed his partner to mind the shop and keep her mouth shut. She was good at what she did; recruiting, turning young girls and boys against their guardians, bringing them to a better place where the promise of a blessed and plentiful life appealed to their childlike minds.

  “I want my daughter to know who I am,” she said, dropping all pretense and persona of Mamba.

  “She’s alive. She’s healthy. She’s eating well, being treated well.”

  Sally visibly relaxed. “I want t
o see her.”

  Papa’s anger flared. “You stupid bitch. We’re here because you neglected to tell me you had a daughter here. You brought her into this. She’s here because I had to keep her safe—for your sake. I’ve done everything I can. Now you have to do your part and let me do mine.”

  Sally was undeterred. “I want to see her,” she said, taking him by the arm. “I need to see her.”

  Papa pulled his arm away and walked to the door, but she said to his back, “If you don’t let me see my daughter, I’m going to . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence.

  “I’m going to do you a favor. Because we been together so long, I didn’t hear what you said. You’re a good partner when you’re clean.” He met her eyes and asked, “You are clean?”

  Sally cocked her head. “Do I look wasted? I’m just pissed off. We’ve been here six months and I haven’t seen her except from a distance. I didn’t ask her to come to this place. She did that on her own. She must have sensed I was here. How else would she have known to come here?”

  “How else indeed,” Papa said.

  “She didn’t know who I was. You could have just left her alone. I was happy just to see how she’s grown. To know she was okay. I wasn’t going to tell her. I’m warning you, Lincoln. She is not for sale. When this blows over . . .”

  Papa bit his anger back. “I’m sorry I was angry with you. But she’s had a better life than either one of us. You know that’s true.”

  Sally cast her gaze at the floor.

  “I admit I made a mistake taking your daughter, but we can’t afford to attract attention right now. We’ve got to keep this together a little longer. Ok? When we get to a place where we can walk away, we’ll run for the hills. You and me and your daughter too.” He’d said it with a straight face. He didn’t know how the investors figured out that Evelyn Blanchard was Sally’s daughter. He himself hadn’t found out until they told him. They were worried she would become a distraction, a complication.

  Loving had a price tag. But he didn’t love anyone. Had no one. When this was over, Sally and her daughter would be casualties along with everyone else. The investors were known for their “scorched earth” policy. He still had a value to them. He would get his money and set up somewhere else. He would find another Marie.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jack parked on the street outside the Iberville Parish Sheriff Department, a nice one-story building surrounded by modest homes in the Historic District. Cotton had told them he found the gris-gris tied to his fence after Bitty’s last visit. He didn’t see anyone leave it or he would have shown them the grave. Jack believed him.

  Jack didn’t believe in magic or coincidence. He believed in Mr. Glock. Murphy’s Law says: never bring a sissy little bag to a gunfight. But if the same Voodoo drawing had been left at Cotton’s and Bitty’s, it couldn’t be a coincidence. He would have been concerned for Cotton’s safety, but the old buzzard was well armed and more than willing to defend himself.

  “Why didn’t we come here first, Bigfoot?” Jack asked as they walked between parked brown and tan uniform cars and SUVs toward the door marked SHERIFF.

  Liddell put a hand on the heavy glass-and-steel door. “Landry told me there’s a new sheriff.”

  “A problem?” Jack asked. He knew Liddell wasn’t the kind of man to make enemies.

  Liddell said, “Sheriffs are elected just like in Evansville. This one came from Jacksonville, Florida. I’ve no idea what he can, or will, tell us.”

  “So let’s skip over him and talk to some of the other deputies you know,” Jack suggested.

  “Things work different here, pod’na. The chain of command is never broken. These are smaller law enforcement agencies for one thing. That means smaller staff, smaller budgets, less equipment, more reliance on state or federal resources. You couldn’t get away with calling someone Double Dick down here.”

  “You’re implying they wouldn’t like me,” Jack said.

  “Maybe I should do all the talking,” Liddell said.

  The receptionist was a male civilian. His name tag read Jon Dempsey. They introduced themselves, and Dempsey said, “Y’all have been the topic of conversation around here.” Here came out as he’yah. “The Sheriff’s been trying to call you. I’ll tell him you’re here.”

  Dempsey punched a button on his desk phone and asked, “You know where his office is? He’s expecting you.”

  Jack took out his cell phone. “Looks like you’re good to go, Bigfoot. I’ll let you talk to him. I need to call Katie.”

  “I’ll meet you outside,” Liddell said, and walked through the office and down a hallway.

  Jack went back outside and dialed Katie.

  “Jack,” Katie answered. “I’ve been worried.”

  He felt his face redden. He should have kept her updated, but by the time they got to Landry’s house last night it was late and he was done in. “Sorry I didn’t call last night.”

  “Or this morning,” Katie said.

  He guessed he was still getting used to being back together with Katie. Living with someone had different rules than living alone. When you lived alone, you didn’t have to hang clothes up, say where you were going or when you’d be back, worry about the time, or for that matter, even what day it was. But living alone also meant losing a connection to someone beside you. He’d rather go to bed and wake up every day next to Katie than have any of the “freedoms” he might be giving up.

  “We’re at the Sheriff’s Department,” Jack said. “Liddell’s talking to the new sheriff.”

  “Jack, I know Liddell told Marcie he was okay last night, but I want to hear it from you. Is he really okay? Are you okay?”

  Jack told her everything that he knew, leaving out the parts about being threatened by local law enforcement and having a rifle pointed at him. She already knew that Bitty had been killed and the part about Liddell being held for questioning, but he hadn’t told her about Liddell’s niece, Evie. She listened and didn’t ask questions until he was through. In other words, she was a good example of a detective’s wife. When it was her turn, she asked questions about the things he’d held back, and like any good husband, he’d lied.

  It was Jack’s turn again, and he’d asked about her and about Marcie. She assured him they were fine except for not knowing what was going on.

  “I’m with Marcie,” Katie said.

  He didn’t have to guess what they were doing. She and Marcie were shopping for cute shoes, getting manicures, pedicures, or having a late breakfast. His guess was confirmed when he heard someone in the background say, “Would you care for some more coffee?” Sometimes they shook it up and got their hair done together.

  He said, “Tell Marcie her man says hello and he loves her very much and he’ll be home as soon as he can.”

  “Did he say all that?”

  “No. But he’s thinking it,” Jack said.

  “When will you be home?” she asked.

  He didn’t know. He said, “When this is over, I guess.” She was a cop’s wife. She knew he would do anything for Liddell, and he hoped she knew that didn’t detract from his loyalty or love of her, but he also knew she’d had to ask the question.

  “Be careful, Jack,” she said, and those few words made him fall in love with her all over again.

  “I’m always careful. That’s why you never knocked me up, Muffin.” It was a joke they shared.

  “I’m going to be serious for a minute. There’s something you need to know before you and Liddell get into something dangerous.”

  Jack waited, wondering what she meant. Was Double Dick raising a “hue and cry,” arming the peasants with torches and pitchforks? He knew he should have called Captain Franklin last night to get permission to stay in Louisiana. But what was he going to say? “Captain, I still haven’t shot anyone or violated anyone’s rights. I think I’ll stay a while and make the trip worth it.” She was quiet. That was worrisome.

  He heard her excuse herself from the table, an
d she said, “Wait a minute. I’m going outside.” She came back on the line and said, “Your remark about being knocked up made me realize I should tell you. I probably shouldn’t say anything. I promised Marcie that I would keep this to myself until you both came back.”

  Jack blurted out, “What are you saying? You promised Marcie what?”

  In an excited whisper, Katie said, “She’s pregnant. Marcie’s pregnant, Jack!”

  He was speechless. A million thoughts went through his mind. He was ecstatic for Bigfoot and Marcie, of course, but he was shocked and falling down a rabbit hole into a past that he’d tried to put behind him. He remembered how happy he’d been that he was going to be a father. How he’d planned everything, and how his world had revolved around the idea of a baby. That plan didn’t take into account a miscarriage and a divorce.

  He didn’t trust himself to say anything because he didn’t want to ruin Katie’s obvious joy over Marcie’s good fortune.

  “Say something, Jack,” Katie said.

  He found some words. “I won’t tell him a thing. And I promise to bring him home safe.”

  “And I want you to come home safe, Jack. I love you, you know. I don’t know what I would . . .” her words trailed off.

  “And you will never know, Muffin. I’ll get us both home. Just promise me one thing.”

  “Anything,” she said.

  “Promise me you’ll never let Cinderella sleep in our room again,” he said, and she laughed. He could imagine her smile and it warmed him, made him stronger for what was to come. “I’m still throwing up in my throat a little.”

  “Hey, Jack. Sorry to interrupt, but I want you to meet some people,” Liddell said, coming out of the Sheriff’s Department doors.

  Jack held a finger up. He said to Katie, “I’ll get this done. You tell Marcie to quit worrying. If it gets dangerous I’ll handcuff him and bring him home in the trunk of my car.”

  “Thank you. And don’t forget, Marcie doesn’t know I told you.”