The Legend of Marie Laveau Mystery Trilogy

by Jewell Parker Rhodes

  “I was on the run for a while. Came back as a cop.”

  “I’m sorry.” Marie and Reneaux both stared out into the darkness. Insects lighted on the glass. Kind Dog lay down on the backseat.

  “I dream about my brother. I wake up in sweats, seeing his flesh, the blade.”

  Marie laid her head on his shoulder. “It haunts me that Marie-Claire might’ve felt pain.”

  “She would’ve wanted you to save her child.”

  “But at such cost.”

  “Maybe she called out, reached you with her mind.”

  “Do you think?”

  “Why not?” he said, his breath warming the darkness. “All I know is it’s not your fault. It’s Allez’s fault. The DeLaCroixs’ fault. Both families have seeded the world with drugs, gambling, prostitution. Both DeLaCroixs—the mother and grandmother were responsible for their daughter and great-grandchild. You’ve done more than either of them.”

  Reneaux reached inside his jacket. “Enough confessions, let’s concentrate on stopping them. Do you know how to use a gun?”

  “No.”

  “Here.” Reneaux clicked on the interior light.

  The gun was sleek, shiny black. In her mind’s eye, the gun’s barrel was draining blood. “I fix gun damage. Not cause it.”

  “There’s no one else here but you and me.”

  Reluctant, Marie took the gun.

  “The cartridge clicks in here. Here’s a spare. Put it in your pocket. Once the cartridge is snapped in, release the safety, aim, then shoot.

  “Remember. We don’t have a search warrant. If it’s just a ball—escort services—prostitution—we should come back. We have to see someone inflict harm.”

  “I had another vision. Saw a girl dead, undead.”

  “Then a rescue. In and out. No one seeing. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  Reneaux shut off the light and the engine.

  Reneaux clicked on his flashlight. “Let’s go.”

  Marie turned on her light. Kind Dog was beside her.

  Reneaux flashed the beam of light down a narrow gravel trail. “Invited guests go this way. Spoilers,” he directed his beam into the woods, “the back way. Ready?”

  Marie nodded. They slid down the embankment, onto wild ground. The soil was soft; sluggish water flowed above and deep beneath the surface. Mud sucked at their shoes, inching up their ankles, their pants. Mosquitoes, gnats, ticks were searching for exposed skin. Reneaux slapped at his throat; Marie pinched a blood-sucking tick from her wrist.

  There was a flurry of sound. A small animal—rabbit? squirrel? rat?—squealed before dying. She and Reneaux trudged deeper into the untamed land. The universe was darker. Marie focused on the sound of Reneaux’s footsteps, pressing and releasing mud.

  Willow, cypress, and oak strained high, arching into a canopy of green, blocking out the moon and stars. Vines fell like curtains, stroking skin, feeling like tentacles, cobwebs. Ferns slapped against arms and legs.

  There was a sharp embankment. Reneaux shouted, “Careful.” Then slipped, and in a second, he was up to his waist in swamp. Marie threw him a vine, thick as a snake, and pulled him out. An animal splashed into the water.

  Reneaux murmured, “Crocodile.”

  Marie shuddered. The land was a perfect defense. One main road. No surprises for the guards. A man or a woman could get lost. Probably starve or be eaten.

  “Why not dump the girls’ bodies here?”

  “Allez says they did.”

  “Except for the last one. A calling card for you.”

  “No. Allez says he didn’t do it. Maybe it’s our helper. Maybe the girl was never intended to be tossed overboard.”

  “Another clue.”

  “Yes. Just more desperate than the others.” Marie stumbled. She couldn’t help envisioning bones decomposing in the swamp.

  Kind Dog limped badly. Mud oozed into his bandage.

  Marie guided him to a tree base, patted the ground. “Stay. Kind Dog. Stay.” She rubbed his ears, whispering, “Be safe.”

  Dog whimpered, pacing back and forth like a caged lion.

  “He’ll settle down,” said Reneaux, his beam shining north. “Let’s keep going.”

  Marie looked back. Dog was watching her.

  Buoyant, high-pitched, violin strains contrasted with the untamed earth, the dark water packed with leeches, eels, and water moccasins.

  Things unseen disturbed Marie most. Tormented spirits. Not loas like the Guédé. But souls who’d lost their lives too early; souls who’d experienced suffering, abuse. The closer she came to the house, the more she felt the spirits. Recent and old—generations of history. Thousands of souls aching, all tied to a plantation house, now controlled by descendants of ex-slaves.

  “Keep low,” said Reneaux.

  The house rose like an illuminated white monster, rows upon rows of windows lit with candelabras. A fountain with white, baby-faced cherubs gurgled and sprayed foamy water. Greek columns spanned the wrap-around porch.

  Dozens of sedans and limousines were parked in the driveway. Chauffeurs lounged while guards patrolled the porch and perimeter.

  “Heavy artillery,” said Reneaux. “AK rifles. Machine guns. This isn’t a tea party,” he drawled. “No ordinary southern hospitality.”

  Marie said nothing. There was a foulness in the air. She wanted to blend back into the night, the overgrown swamp land. But a girl might die. Or worse. Become undead.

  They inched farther up the embankment.

  The first floor had mammoth French doors and bay windows. There was a clear view of couples whirling, waltzing like this was nothing more than a grand cotillion. Men bowed low; girls curtsied. Bodies merged and flowed in stately, intricate measures.

  “It’s a ‘who’s who’ of Orleans’ underworld. Most of them scum, bottom dwellers, cruel enough not even to want to pretend respectability. Except here. Dressed like overstuffed penguins.

  “Drug lords, casino kings, interstate fences who move a million a day, some skinheads, liars, tax cheats, murderers. My, my,” said Reneaux. “Twenty-first-century good ole boys.”

  “Look there.”

  “Severs. Shit. And Logan, another hospital trustee. He’s a police captain. And see the one with the thick mustache? He owns a luxury hotel in the Quarter. What do you know? Outright criminals and the gutless ones who hide behind respectability.”

  The antebellum South come to life. With twists: overseers and masters. As if there’d been no emancipation. It was a grinning minstrel show but far more elegant and deadly. Quadroon girls, bubbly with champagne, were being offered to the highest bidder.

  “Is this how far we’ve come?” Marie murmured. “Folks still wanting to believe in the white superiority myth of the South.”

  “Power. Segregation and race-mixing controlled by a black man.”

  “And Madame DeLaCroix?”

  “According to city records, she owns the house. Ssssh.”

  A guard walked straight toward Marie and Reneaux, belly-flat in the wet soil. Marie felt some creature crawling up her pants leg.

  The guard stared into the woods. If he stepped an inch to the right, looked down, he would surely see them.

  “What is it?” shouted one of the guards.

  “An animal, I think.” He lit a cigarette, inhaled, and blew rings of smoke. “Time for a drink soon.”

  “Snatch. Time for some snatch, I think.” One of the guards chuckled; another hollered, “Black and brown snatch for the likes of us.” A voice called, “Be alert,” and the men quickly quieted.

  Reneaux, crouching, moved toward the back of the house. Marie followed. There was a clearing marked by stones and pans of beans and rice. An altar was covered with multicolored glasses of burning candles, knives, even a machete. Buried in the altar’s heart was an iron rod, another crossed it, a third up from the bottom.

  “Upside-down cross,” Marie whispered. Wrapped over the intersecting joints was a snake. Maybe a moccas
in. Or a boa constrictor. “Alive?” she asked.

  “Don’t know. Allez’s unique evil. Blasphemous and exotic.”

  “Voodoo as Devil–worship.”

  Marie saw the Guédé, their hands reaching skyward in lamentation. The smallest Guédé mimed dancing, then eating and falling across the altar.

  “The girls were drugged here,” she said, her voice reed-thin. “The wind carried their screams, dispersing them into the air.”

  The second Guédé danced, pretended to swallow and fall down dead. The third and tallest Guédé mimed unzipping his pants; then, grotesquely, he feigned sex with the other Guédé. Flopping them on their knees, their sides, running, without tiring, between the two.

  “Most times, it was one girl, occasionally two. Once drugged, the men abused them.”

  Marie buried her face in her hands.

  “How do you know this, Marie?”

  “The Guédé. They’re trying to stop the outrage.” She looked, transfixed, toward the altar. A cacophony and calliope of girls: some wailing silently, some beating the earth, some immobile with fear. Women from three centuries, fighting for their lives, sharing a common fear.

  “Can you go on, Marie?”

  She stared blankly, then fixed on Reneaux, matching her breaths to his. “Yes.”

  “There’s a servants’ staircase off the kitchen.” Reneaux hooted, throwing his voice to the west. “Southern boy trick. Next time go.” He hooted again and Marie curved left, then upward to the right. Slipping through a side door, she could overhear the cook complaining about not enough greens and pâté. A waiter howled, “Not enough champagne.” A scullery boy was slapped, then told, “Hush,” when he started crying. “You lazy boy.”

  Heart racing, Marie tiptoed up the stairs. Coming down the stairs was a ghost; a house slave from long ago who carried a tray of café au lait and half-eaten toast. At each creak, Marie pressed her back and hands against the wall—terrified some servant or guard would discover her. The house ghosts seemed to move about their business, centuries old, acknowledging Marie with a grim smile.

  The house was maddening. Two worlds: past and present. Both mannered and decadent.

  Lilting music and laughter drifted up the stairs, a sharp contrast to the somber sounds on the second floor. She heard whispers punctuated by soft cries. On the landing, she saw a man dragging a girl down the long hallway decorated with elaborate scones and white molding. She could barely move. Haints, ghosts were lingering in torment. Some, their faces to the wall; others, milling about aimlessly.

  A child needed her.

  Marie moved quickly down the hall. The man opened a double door and pushed the girl in. She stopped before the door, her hands touching the stained wood.

  Where was Reneaux?

  She didn’t hear anything behind the door. Old wood usually talked, but from behind this door, she heard nothing.

  She could stay outside the door and be caught or go in. She clicked off the gun’s safety and stepped inside a suite decorated like an Egyptian revival harem.

  There was a room on the left. She could see an ornate satin bed, hear whimpering, see black-panted legs shifting, slightly lifting and sinking deeper into the mattress.

  She held the gun steady. The girl, her dress hitched up to her thighs, silk stockings and garters showing, was being crushed into the mattress. Pounded hard.

  Marie cocked the gun. The man lifted himself off and over the girl, his face red and perspiring, his penis flaccid. The girl, crying, smoothed down her dress and covered her breasts. The white satin was stained red.

  Marie kept her gun fixed on the man. No tenderness for a woman believed to be disposable. Still, the girl was alive; she was the brunette of Marie’s vision.

  “Come with me.” The girl’s streaked eyeliner and mascara made her look younger. “Get up. I’ll help you.”

  “She wants to stay here.” The man grabbed the girl’s arm.

  “Let her go.” Reneaux’s gun was trained on the man’s heart. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “You’re here when I needed you.”

  Marie reached for the girl. “Let me help. I’m a doctor.” She helped the girl walk, feeling her ribcage shuddering, her lungs gulping, fighting for air.

  In the hall, Reneaux lifted the terrified girl. She cried against his shoulder.

  “Let’s hurry, Marie.”

  “Something’s not right.” She paused, arrested by a smell—a chemical, man-made, not organic smell. Or was it the reverse? Some unfamiliar, organic smell. Primeval. Latent in the darkness. She’d smelled it at Breezy’s. Heavy and rank. She heard screams and whispers, indistinguishable words. The house was trying to share secrets.

  At a door, the Guédé were waving her in.

  “In and out, Marie. We’ve got to get this girl out of here.”

  “Reneaux, please, wait.” She was drawn to the door. Each step she wanted to undo, but the Guédé waved her on, encouraging. She stopped at the door.

  Her hand touched the brass knob.

  She opened it and almost screamed. Rows, like a girl’s dormitory, of sleeping beauties. All of them dead, undead. The stink settled in her hair, her clothes. Sounds were raised to a fever pitch. Marie clamped her hands over her ears.

  The girl in Reneaux’s arms screamed, hysterical. “Home. Please take me home.”

  “What’s your name?” asked Reneaux.

  “Sondra.”

  “Sondra, we’ll get you out of here. But stay calm.

  “Marie,” insisted Reneaux, tugging her. “In and out. We’ve got our witness. We’ll come back for these girls.”

  Her eyes red, Marie mourned, “Too late.”

  Allez and two other men stood behind Reneaux.

  “I’ve been expecting you.”

  Reneaux set Sondra down. A guard frisked him, took his gun, a switchblade from his pocket. Leaning against the hall wall was Sondra’s rapist—his pants up, shirt loose, fly undone.

  “Take her,” said Allez. The drunken man lurched, fondled Sondra’s breasts, then dragged her down the hall.

  “Help me,” the girl screamed.

  Marie cursed; Allez blocked her path. The second guard pressed a gun to Reneaux’s abdomen.

  “Let her go.”

  Allez laughed. “Marie, the optimist.”

  “Then let Reneaux go.”

  “To spread ugly rumors about our parties? Impossible. An honest policeman is a liability, a risk.” Allez nodded at the guard. The guard fired his gun.

  Reneaux’s expression was stunned surprise. Holding his abdomen, he fell backward, as if a rope was tugging him down. Nothing to cushion his fall. Fall, falling down flat.

  Sound was trapped in Marie’s throat. She could see the bullet’s course, flying through flesh, abdominal muscle, into intestines and stomach. No blood spread outward from Reneaux’s back. The bullet was lodged inside.

  She dropped down beside Reneaux. His mouth was gaping, his chest rising and falling rapidly.

  “Let me see.” She lifted his bloodied fingers and saw the gaping hole. A .45 hole, with sulfur, gunpowder, cotton fibers, and ragged flesh. “Call an ambulance.”

  Allez crouched. “The only person who can save him is you, Doctor Levant. Maman Marie. He’s your only patient. Use voodoo or medicine, whatever you like.” Allez rose, motioning his guard to leave first. “I’ll be back in an hour. Either he’ll be dead or you’ll have saved him.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “A miracle. I want to know if you can save him.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Pass the test and I’ll promise not to murder those you love.”

  “There isn’t anybody.”

  “Reneaux, of course, will probably die. As Jacques did. Did you know Jacques was a friend to both you and Marie-Claire? And what about DuLac? El? No love for them? What about Marie-Clarie’s child?”

  “You were at Breezy’s.”

  Allez smiled. “I’m everywhere. This world
and the next. Heal him if you can, Marie. You’re running out of time.”

  Reneaux was in shock. He needed to be kept warm, the bleeding stanched. She stole a pillow and sheets from the girls’ beds. “I’m sorry,” she said. The girls kept sleeping like princesses. Except it was the deranged prince, not the witch, who cast the hateful spell.

  Reneaux’s blood was soaking into the wood. She knew she couldn’t stop the bleeding. She had nothing to operate with—no scalpel, no sutures. He was dying. His life’s blood slowly draining.

  Downstairs, folks were dancing. The music and chatter masking sounds. Allez was probably even now bartering another girl for money.

  “Reneaux, can you hear me?”

  His tongue wet his lips. Marie bent close. His lips touched her ear.

  “Out of here,” he mumbled.

  “I’m not leaving without you.”

  “Out.” Exhausted, he coughed. Blood was draining into his lungs.

  Hell. There wasn’t any way to save him. All the tools she needed were in an ER van or at a hospital. Cross-legged, she sat on the floor, frustrated and crying.

  “Marie, child”—the words echoed from the walls. “Marie, child.”

  The Guédé were sitting cross-legged, across from her, next to Reneaux. Close-up, she could see their skeletal faces and sunken eyes.

  “Marie.” The sound wasn’t from the Guédé. It was a woman’s voice. Faint and plaintive.

  “Marie, child, she could touch a child’s brow, and lift the sickness right up into her hand. Once a man near death, chest aching, lungs choking on fluid, called for the Virgin, but it was ‘She who Worships the Old and the New’ who told him, ‘Hush, go to sleep,’ and when he woke, his fever was gone, his lungs clear.”

  “Mother?”

  “They called her Queen. Queen of the Voodoos. Marie Laveau.”

  “Mother, please.”

  She felt a chill in the air, then a rush of warm air, circling her, making her feel safe. She inhaled, a mist flew inside her mouth. It wasn’t her mother. It was the other Marie.

  Marie felt an intense love.

  “You are my child. Women hand sight down through the generations. Mother to daughter.”