The Legend of Marie Laveau Mystery Trilogy

by Jewell Parker Rhodes

  “What’ve you got?” Parks strode across the room.

  “See for yourself.”

  He tilted his head, positioning his left eye. “What am I looking at?”

  “It’s a bacteria. I don’t know how or why the creature exuded it.”

  “Alive?” asked Parks.

  “Yes.”

  “That means we can kill it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What do you mean ‘maybe’?”

  “Just that. Maybe. There are further tests. Analyses. How it interacts with other chemicals. I’ve got a hunch it’s saline.” She tested it with a thin strip. “Yes, its some kind of sea brine. That would explain why Agwé tried to warn me. Why I smelled sea life, tasted salt.” She touched her lips, shuddered at the memory of the kiss.

  “You’re exhausted. Let me take you home,” said Parks.

  “I don’t want to endanger Marie-Claire. This creature, the wazimamoto, is coming for me.”

  “DuLac is with her?”

  “Yes. He’ll protect her with his life.”

  “Will he need to?”

  “Get out of here, Parks. I have work to do.” She stared again into the microscope. “Deadly. Beautiful.” She couldn’t help shivering, dreading the implications of a living substance.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “Look, Parks, if you want to help, help me make more slides. We’ll test for chemical reactions.”

  “Okay. You don’t want to talk.” Parks slid out of his jacket. “Got a lab coat?” Parks pulled a coat off a hook on the door. “Menotti. He’s not using it.”

  “She. ‘Menotti’ is a she.”

  “You think someone might mistake me for a doctor? I took Chem one. And two. Hand me some slides.”

  “I heard it,” Marie said softly, staring at the test tube.

  “What?”

  “It speaks. Its voice is nothing more than vibrations. But I felt . . . heard its words in my head.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “I didn’t want to believe it.”

  “How can I protect you if I don’t know what’s going on?”

  “I never asked you to protect me.”

  “It comes with the job. ‘To serve and protect.’ ”

  “I’m responsible for myself. I thought that was clear. Don’t smoke in here.”

  Frustrated, Parks blew out the flame. “Look, Doc. No one should be a victim.”

  “I’m not a victim. I’m an adversary.”

  “One who can’t go home.”

  “Won’t. There’s a difference.”

  “Dr. Laveau. This man bothering you?” Carlos entered the lab. He was short, five-one. But his shoulders were broad from swimming, lifting weights. Multi-colored tattoos covered every inch of his arms.

  “I’m a cop,” said Parks.

  Carlos shrugged, baleful. “What do I care? You need help, Dr. Laveau?”

  “Science, Carlos. I need help with some tests.”

  “Sure.” Carlos pushed past Parks, his shoulder hitting Parks’s arm.

  “Funny, a gangbanger in the chem lab.”

  “A dumb cop in the lab,” sneered Carlos. “What’ve you got, Doctor?”

  Marie pointed at the slide.

  Carlos looked into the microscope.

  “See if you can culture it. If you can, try all the antibiotics you can think of to kill it.”

  “I can do that.”

  “It’ll take a while for the cultures to grow,” said Marie, yawning.

  “You should sleep,” said Parks.

  “I hope it grows fast, before it kills again.”

  “This? This stuff, Doctor?” Carlos looked again at the cells. “Naw. It’s the simplest organism.”

  “You think so? Let me have the slide.” Marie pierced her finger with a scalpel.

  “What’re you doing?” asked Parks.

  She pinched her skin, letting drops of blood fall on the slide.

  She anchored the slide under the lens again. The reaction was swift. Cells devoured the blood, gaining nutrients and size, then dividing into more cells. “Look.”

  Carlos looked into the microscope. “What did you say this was?”

  “She didn’t say,” said Parks.

  “I’m not sure what it is. But if I’m right, the cells will need to feed again, and again. As if they’re continually starving.”

  “It feeds?” asked Carlos, kissing his medal depicting the Virgin. “Evil. Devil’s work.”

  “Not a rational opinion,” said Parks. “Aren’t single-cell organisms amoral?”

  Carlos scowled, his broad face serious. “But spirits aren’t amoral. Isn’t this part of whatever is killing?”

  “Carlos is right,” said Marie. She pointed toward the south wall. “They’re here,” she said. “JT, Rudy, Sarah.”

  “The victims?” said Parks. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Ghosts bearing witness,” answered Marie.

  “I believe you,” said Carlos.

  The three spirits were linked, hand to hand, against the far wall. Rudy and JT, protective, flanked Sarah.

  “I have to stop it.” Marie peered again into the microscope. “It has focus. Instinct. Searching for blood to survive.”

  “What?” asked Carlos.

  “Our wazimamoto.”

  “Our murderer,” said Parks.

  “Tonight it had form,” said Marie, breathless. “Not detailed, but shape. Parks, you even thought it was a man.”

  “I did.”

  “This have anything to do with the bloodsucking murder?” asked Carlos.

  “See? No secrets,” said Marie. “The vampire has followed me to work. It’s becoming more solid as it feeds.”

  “You think the more it feeds, the more stable it becomes?”

  “Yes. Somehow this substance allows the spirit to gain form.”

  “Wait,” said Carlos. He opened a small refrigerator.

  “Plasma,” murmured Marie.

  Carlos smeared the slide. He trapped it beneath the lens. “Nothing,” he said, disappointed. Then, he sliced his finger. Blood rose. He smeared it on the slide, locking the slide in place again.

  “It’s feeding?” asked Parks.

  Carlos waved Marie to the lens.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s dividing into new cells. Growing.”

  Parks’s cell chimed, high pitched, alarming.

  “Yeah. I’ll be there.” Parks snapped the cell shut.

  “Another murder?”

  “Unfortunately. Two in one night, Doc.”

  “Soon it’ll be a man. Using others’ blood to be. A true vampire.”

  “But how could these cells become a man? The science isn’t right,” said Parks.

  “It’s not all science. These cells indicate a source. I’m convinced the creature came from the sea. Agwé’s realm.”

  “Agwé?”

  “A sea god, Carlos.”

  “Like the orishas?” asked Carlos. “Water goddesses of Brazil?”

  “Yes. It’s a reminder that there’s a spiritual component. A mystery unexplained. This—” She lifted the test tube, twisting it beneath the fluorescent lights. “These cells are animated by the spirit.”

  “A resurrection science can’t explain,” said Carlos, crossing himself again. “Mi madre believed in Christ’s resurrection. Mysteries of the Black Madonna. The presence of spirits.” He tilted his head toward the south wall, toward the spirits he couldn’t see.

  “Except this mystery isn’t faith based,” said Marie. “No African-based faith has a legacy of such a creature. It’s mine to exorcise.”

  “Doc, you coming?”

  “Go on,” said Carlos. “I’ll run the cultures. Try to have some answers before morning.”

  “I didn’t mean to get you involved, Carlos.”

  “No problem. What’s this word ‘wazimamoto’?”

  “A professor says it’s a colonizer, murdering,” s
aid Marie. “Or a spirit so colonized it hates itself, its people. This creature wants vengeance.”

  “Vengeance,” echoed Carlos.

  “But I don’t know why.”

  “Vengeance is general,” said Parks. “Most crimes are specific. Specific targets.”

  “I’m the target.”

  “Doc, are you withholding evidence again? Why are you any different from JT, Rudy? Sarah? This creature just kills.”

  “Sure, Parks,” she said, looking at him, lying. “You’re right.”

  “You up to this, Doc?”

  “I’m stronger than you imagine.”

  “I’m not doubting your strength,” said Parks.

  “Neither am I,” added Carlos.

  Marie squeezed Carlos’s hand. “Beware the cold. Call DuLac for me. Tell him to beware the cold.”

  “Rain, too,” said Carlos.

  “It’s raining?” asked Marie.

  “For the last hour. Heard on the news the Mississippi is rising. Hurricane season, you know.”

  “I know,” said Marie. Hurricanes, seasonal, like clockwork—waves, hungry, licking at the levees.

  “Let’s go, Parks.” She nodded at JT, Rudy, Sarah. Like the wazimamoto, they, too, wanted revenge.

  What it most remembered was her. Soft, yielding flesh. Smell of honeysuckle and lust.

  All of who she was had once belonged to what he had been. Marie.

  He remembered—her name. Marie.

  He longed to write it in blood. Her name. His blood.

  Marie.

  He’d write her name. When he did, would she scream? Remember?

  “John.” His name was John.

  THIRTEEN

  MADAM MAY’S JOY HOUSE

  SATURDAY, EARLY MORNING

  Rain pelted the street like hail. Agwé was answering in kind, swatting the Mississippi against the levees. Rage and heave. Water rising.

  It was still dark outside, but, in a few hours, the sun would rise. Vampires avoided light, sleeping in coffins. What did a wazimamoto do? Daylight must be a factor. All the victims had been killed while the moon shone.

  Roach held an umbrella for Marie.

  “Nice,” said Parks.

  “I have some manners,” said Roach, offering a hand as Marie stepped out of the police car.

  “What’s the news?”

  “Easy ladies’ house. May’s complaining. Says she’s losing forty K a night. Should switch jobs. Be a pimp. What do you think, Parks? Could I run the Joy House?”

  “I think I’d like to see the body.”

  “I was waiting for you to wrap up. The forensics sweep is done. All the tourists and so-called tourists got a walk. Must’ve been a bribe. Some politician who didn’t want to be questioned. Maybe the mayor? Police chief? City councilman? All I know, all the male patrons got a pass. Only the whores left.”

  “Better than priests,” snarled Parks.

  “Enough already.” Roach shook his umbrella.

  Marie stepped over the threshold. A dim interior to make lust appear romantic. Votive candles on the tables. Pornographic paintings on the wall. Poor copies of the Kama Sutra. Advanced Copulating 300.

  Multihued women, dressed in silk, satin, and lace, lounged in chairs. On daybeds. A few smoked cigarettes; one prostitute painted her nails.

  A woman swiveled on a bar chair. She looked like a CEO. Elegant in a red Dior suit. A mixture of Asian and black heritages. She looked respectable, gorgeous. Only in New Orleans was “madam” a prized social position.

  “I’m losing money,” said May. “I’m sorry for what happened. But I’m running a business.”

  Marie ignored May and walked to the sound system. Billie Holiday was singing “Strange Fruit.” Marie pulled the plug. How ironic—a lynching protest song in a house of prostitution. Perfect accompaniment for a wazimamoto—another kind of Klan man. Marie couldn’t imagine how “Strange Fruit” would encourage sex.

  She nodded at the two women, bare breasted, in G-strings, sitting on the stage, next to dancing poles. The trick wannabes. Mostly single moms, struggling to survive. Sex-trade workers had their own pecking order. Dancers were dependent on tips. Prostitutes made the real pay—thousands a month. May took her overhead and marketing cut. But May would never end up in Charity’s ER, battered, face cut, with vaginal tears or a damaged uterus.

  Parks rubbed the day-old growth on his chin. “You ready?”

  She looked into Parks’s blue eyes. “New Orleans has always been hard on women.”

  “For what it’s worth, the North’s no different.”

  There was a brief moment of companionable understanding. Both detectives and doctors grew tired of seeing the same violent patterns. Sins and hurts, ever repeating.

  “Over here,” shouted Roach.

  Marie moved past Parks, down the hallway with plywood walls and improvised doors. The original rooms had been sectioned into smaller sex quarters.

  “Here she is,” said Roach.

  Marie stepped inside. The room was barely big enough for a twin bed.

  Striped mattress, no sheets. The girl, naked. High heels still on, deep scratches across her breasts, bruises on her shoulders and arms. She’d fought. One arm was thrown high above her head. Her torso lay twisted, her head at an odd angle, as if she’d been trying to look back, reach for an escape. Or maybe she was just trying to avert her eyes from her killer.

  Overhead was an exposed red bulb.

  There were the telltale pinpricks on the girl’s wrist. Her body drained, like a balloon without air.

  Marie lifted the wrist. No pulse. She touched the carotid artery: no pulse. Compulsively, she kept checking, rechecking that the poor girl was dead. And she was a girl—her hair still lush—hair didn’t depend upon blood—a crystal in her belly button. In her left ear.

  “I still can’t get an exact fix on time of death. Body’s too cold. Folks claim a john left her over an hour ago. No one saw her come out. Or anyone else enter her room. Nobody saw nothing,” said Roach.

  “Typical,” said Parks.

  “I think it’s the cold that dries the body,” Marie said. “Cold can be as drying as heat.”

  On the floor, the girl’s pink lingerie was ripped, shredded. The spirit had found a new talent. Hands that could tear. Ever becoming.

  Marie opened the victim’s fake leather purse. She smelled Jo Lo’s Glow perfume. Working girls loved the scent. No ID. Just a purse full of condoms. Virginia Slims. Birth-control pills. Valium.

  Parks asked Roach, “Madam May tell you the victim’s name?”

  “Pinky. New to the business. Came up from Abbeyville. Country girl wanting to make it big.”

  “Not much light,” said Parks.

  “With this bulb off, it would’ve been completely dark. She might not have known what was happening,” said Roach

  Marie looked at the girl’s crotch. A bikini wax. She wondered if the rape kit would reveal a substance similar to that in the lab. Or maybe not? Could a wazimamoto procreate?

  Or, maybe, her thoughts were on the wrong track. Maybe Pinky had been mesmerized, seduced; maybe she’d thought, for a blessed instant, that the wazimamoto was a sweetheart she’d left in the bayou. Only at the last moment, Marie hoped, had she realized the threat.

  Thunder snapped loudly, reverberating inside the room.

  Marie sensed a presence. She refused to turn around.

  Parks went to the head of the bed. He looked at Marie, then back again at the girl. “She looks like you,” he said softly.

  “You’re wrong.”

  Parks merely pointed.

  Marie walked to the head of the bed. How could she have missed it? Small eyes, slightly upturned nose. Not beautiful, but a symmetrical face, black shoulder-length hair. Her body lean rather than voluptuous.

  It felt like a knife turned in her gut.

  Marie looked about the room. Bare walls. Not even a chair. A room for sex. Not comfort. Not luxury. Just sex. She ran her fingers over the
pane of a slightly cracked open window, left from the original construction.

  “She must’ve been one of May’s best. A room with a view,” said Parks. “This must’ve been a third of the original bedroom.”

  Marie stood at the window. Feeling cold seeping through the cracked window, knowing for certain that the wazimamoto was outside, near. She trembled as cold swept across her neck. “It’s gone, yet not.”

  “You see it?”

  Marie didn’t answer. Parks was behind her; she saw his reflection in the pane.

  It was watching her. Had watched her.

  Parks didn’t see it. Mistaking the darkness for plain night, Parks jotted notes.

  The rain fell, drenching the world. Marie could see where the rain didn’t penetrate, where it flowed around the creature rather than through it.

  “You all right?” Parks was looking at her, speculative.

  It was strangely comforting that the creature was outside. Peering through the window, watching her, it wasn’t killing.

  “We’ll take care of her now,” said Roach. “Step aside so we can get the gurney in.”

  “Be gentle,” called Marie.

  “We’ll take good care of her,” said Roach.

  The two technicians, young, with dyed, spiked hair, both looked like Goths. They were old hands, though, at transporting bodies.

  “I’ll finish my autopsy at the station,” said Roach. “But I think my report will be the same. Blood gone. No known cause. No ID on the puncture marks. No fingerprints. Footprints. Nothing in the room. I’ll verify dehydration also due to extreme cold.”

  Roach directed the cops to lift the body. They lifted her delicately, like she was glass.

  Marie stared at the window. The creature was gone.

  “Let’s get the hell out,” said Roach, his belly leading his body. “Load her in the ambulance. I’m going to get Madam May to comp me a drink. Irish whiskey. Straight up.”

  They were an odd processional, the Goths carrying the body. Roach behind them, wiping his mouth, thirsty for a drink. Then, she and Parks.

  Parks’s hand touched the small of her back. As if he were escorting her to dinner or she needed guidance to find her way. She wanted to tell him to leave her alone. To let her be.

  Instead, she surprised herself, saying, “Take me to your place, Parks.”

  She wasn’t sure he’d heard her; but his hand moved upward, squeezing her shoulder.