by Baxter Clare
Wardell was suddenly and clearly afraid.
“You know,” he said, plunking his beer on the end table, “I promised my wife I’d get lunch started and I haven’t done a thing about that. She comes home and catches me in fronta this ball game, they’ll be hell to pay.”
He stood. Frank had to follow suit.
“You don’t really believe Crissie’s doing anything harmful, do you?”
Exasperated, he puffed his cheeks and blew a load of air.
“Lieutenant, I don’t know what that woman does and I don’t want to know. Yeah, I hear things but you know what they say; don’t believe everything you hear. I know she’s a strange woman, a powerful woman. She can make things happen. Things that I sleep better at night not knowing about. You want my advice, I’d leave her alone.”
“You mean things like this?” Frank raised her gauzed hand. “The dog that bit me was red. Your sister-in-law warned me a couple weeks ago to watch out for a red dog.”
Helms nodded, “Exactly like that.”
“But you don’t believe she made that happen” Frank argued. “She might have seen it in some weird way, like a premonition, but she couldn’t make it happen.”
He shrugged again, “Maybe. Maybe not.”
“Do you think she could make things happen to her own nephew?”
He stared at Frank.
“I can’t say.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t, Lieutenant. Now I really best be getting to lunch.”
Frank flipped him a card.
“You seem like a decent man, Mr. Helms. If you think of something I should know, here’s my number.”
Frank had let herself out.
Now she twirled her pen around and around on the tabletop, losing herself in the pinwheel effect. The Mother had everyone tiptoeing around her like she was enthroned on eggshells. For Frank’s money, Mother Love was just another hustler. An effective one, but a charlatan nonetheless.
The odds were good, Frank had contended all weekend, that at some point she’d come into contact with a dog. If it happened to be a red dog, all the better for the Mother’s prediction. If it wasn’t, it was still a dog. An easy enough scam. Because Frank had been looking for the thing in rags when the dog bit her, the relic’s image was in the forefront of her consciousness. The dog bit her where the beggar had grabbed her a few days ago so her discombobulated brain had made a logical association.
The explanation sounded perfectly viable, and Frank wanted to believe it, but her reptilian brain fought her. Thrashing around just under the waterline of her consciousness, it whispered, too many coincidences. Reluctantly, she listed them.
Being warned about a red dog, and then a red dog biting her. That thing in rags popping up all over town like a target in a shooting gallery, then disappearing from the station. The intense deja vus when she’d been bitten; the one before that when she was in the Mother’s office. The freaky dream that had left her jumpy and rattled. And what about Darcy knowing all that voodoo shit and his wife being a mambo?
Separately, there were logical explanations for each incident. Bumping back to back, they made an ugly pattern. It was a pattern Frank didn’t want to see, but all her training and instinct told her the line between coincidence and design had broken.
She held a finger up, motioning Deidre to bring another stout.
24
Frank emerged from her office at six sharp and Johnnie crowed, “Hey, look at this—Frank’s imitation of Julia Child. Where’s the other mitt?”
Noah asked, “What the hell happened to you?”
“Didn’t you hear?” Johnnie answered for her. “Frank’s taken up pit bull wrestling.”
Jill rushed into the squad room and Frank said, “All right. Let’s get going. What’ve you got, Taquito?”
She called on Diego first, knowing he wouldn’t razz her or ask questions. She kept the briefing short, motioning Noah and Lewis into her office afterward.
“So what happened?” Noah insisted.
“Long story. There was this pit bull across the street. Dug out from under its yard and nailed me. Punched a couple arterial holes and made a helluva mess before Garcia beat it off with a board. I gotta give her a heads up for that.”
“Did you have to have stitches?”
“Forty-two. And a little reconstructive surgery, but it’s fine.” Frank held up Danny Duncan’s preliminary autopsy report. “Couple things Boo Radley failed to mention.”
Noah turned to Lewis, marveling, “You gotta love her. Forty-two stitches and reconstructive surgery, but its fine. You’re like the freakin’ Black Knight, Frank. ‘Oh, it’s nothing! Just a flesh wound!’”
“Don’t change the subject. Lewis, did you see the bruises on Duncan’s wrists?”
“No,” she answered, embarrassed. Frank handed her the autopsy report and recited it from memory for Noah’s benefit.
“Track the body down. If it’s been released, get to the funeral home ASAP. I want you both to check out this bruising. See if you can find a pattern. Get clear pictures.”
“Didn’t Boo Radley get pictures?”
“If you’d have been there you’d know that. I just got the text faxed to me. Did you see him take pictures?” she asked Lewis.
“I, uh, well, yeah, he took some,” Lewis admitted. “They were peeling this old lady’s face back on the table next to me. I must’ve got sidetracked.”
Frank sighed, “When you’re with Seuter, question his every move because he won’t volunteer anything. Duncan could have had a time bomb ticking inside of him and fucking Boo Radley’d take a picture and sew him up without a peep.
“I dropped in on Jesse Helms. She wasn’t there, but her husband gave me some names to look up. Lewis, run a male black name of Lincoln Roosevelt. Used to own the church the Mother’s in now. Might trace him through property records. That would have been back in the sixties. Helms said he might have moved to Kansas around that time.”
Lewis was making fast notes, bobbing her head.
“Run the second husband, too. Eldridge Jones. He ended up at the ‘Dad on felony possession. Got a back door parole. And here’s some names Kennedy dug up for us.”
Frank passed Lewis a sheaf of papers. She’d called Kennedy to apologize for standing her up Friday afternoon. Kennedy had rightly figured that unless Frank was dead she’d want the notes ASAP so had taken them home with her. Frank picked them up Sunday before visiting Helms.
“How’s she doing?” Noah grinned.
“Good. This should hold you two for a while. Now go away.”
Uncoiling his long frame, Noah declared, “Well, this talk meant a lot to me too, Frank.”
With her left hand Frank awkwardly signed off for personal leaves and overtime. She scanned a collection of 60-days, deciding to send them up to Foubarelle. Let him mark the red hell out of them, if he could even tell what needed correcting besides dangling participles and inappropriate use of commas. Thinking her supervisor would have been more useful to society as an English teacher, she reached for a pen with her right hand. Jolting it against the desk made her wince. Worse than that, the leering image of the relic popped up again.
“Fuck you,” Frank whispered to it. She concentrated Kennedy’s data. The narc had uncovered a nugget that neither Gough nor Joe had dug up during their investigations.
In 1967 Lincoln Roosevelt bought two life insurance policies, both naming Crystal Love as beneficiary. Seven months later, the insurance company identified his bones amid the rubble of an unexplained fire in a St. Louis boardinghouse. The Mother had collected $50,000 from the first policy and a cool $300,000 from the second.
Helms pronouncement, that his sister-in-law “can make things happen,” echoed in Frank’s head. Too many accidents around the Mother, and unexplained deaths. While her supernatural talents were debatable, Frank decided her maliciousness was not. If all these cases were connected, then Lewis was chasing a career serial killer.
&nb
sp; Frank was plotting a time line of the Mother’s suspected criminal involvements when the phone rang.
Bartlett, from Sheriff’s Homicide, said, “Look here, see. I gotta do this. ‘All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.’ Okay, so it’s a little trite, but you can’t go wrong with Saint Matthew. But seriously, I’ve thought about this. Stick with me. The first is Wilfred Owen. Great war poet. You gotta love him. Listen.
” ‘Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade how cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood; blue with all malice, like a madman’s flash; and thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.’ Great, huh? Now listen to this. ‘For—’ “
Frank interrupted, “So they were both cut. Was it swords or bayonets, Bartlett?”
“Houseman. Another great war poet. ‘For when the knife has slit the throat across from ear to ear, ‘twill bleed because of it.’ “
“English, Robbie.”
“Their throats were cut. Both of ‘em. It didn’t happen where they found ‘em though. They were cut, then dumped.”
“You got pictures?”
“Sure, I got ‘em. Got the whole enchilada here. Whaddaya want to know?”
“How do they look? Kind of tidy or the usual mess?”
Frank heard him flipping pages, muttering something about bloody blameful blades and boiling bloody breasts. She was never sure which irked her more; the endless quotations or his normal conversation, which was more like dialogue from a 40’s B-movie.
“Looks normal to me. As normal as guys can look with their windpipes letting the rain in.”
“So pretty messy?” she persisted.
“Whaddaya think, Franco? They got their throats cut, for crying out loud.”
“Let me borrow the book?”
“Oh, most pernicious woman! Oh, villain, villain, smiling damned villain!”
The murder book was archival. It wouldn’t sweat Bartlett to loan it out.
“Come on,” she coaxed. “I gave you Ackerman.” Then she tested a foggy line from a college humanities class.
“We gotta stick together. ‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers we … for he today that sheds his blood with me … forever shall my brother be … ‘ Close enough, huh?”
Bartlett burst out, “He which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart!”
Frank pinched the phone against her shoulder and rubbed her eyes while he finished.
“Come get your book, Franco! ‘Come cheer up, my lads, ‘tis to glory we steer—remarked the soldier whose post lay in the rear!’”
She started to interrupt his next soliloquy, then fell silent, all too familiar with the feel of gooseflesh rising in her skin.
“Say that again,” she told him.
“You’re a scholar and a gentleman, Frank. I knew you’d appreciate me someday. ‘Cry Havoc! and let slip the dogs of war, that this foul deed shall smell above the earth with carrion men groaning for burial.’ Shakespeare, my lady fair. The bard himself.”
Frank fumbled the phone into its bed, the dog’s searing teeth and the dream of the battlefield fresh upon her.
25
Tito Carrillo packed three pieces of heat. A .38, police-style under his arm, a .2 5 in his boot, and his favorite, a black 9mm Smith & Wesson in his waistband. Carrillo made sure the alley was empty before releasing a stream of piss against the wall. He knew that bruja negra was looking for him, but he felt confident. If she wanted a piece of him, she’d have to get a piece of his three friends first. He shook himself and zipped up, catching his shirt in the steel teeth.
“Mierda,” he whispered. He was so engrossed in pulling at the stuck fabric he didn’t see the huge shadows engulfing him. Fingers bit into his arms. He didn’t even notice the needle’s quick sting. Los hijos negros, that black bitch’s sons whipped a gag into his mouth. He writhed and twisted, trying to fight, but the hijos held him with ease. They shoved him into the car then squeezed in beside him. He kicked wildly, flailing his torso like a whip. Carrillo used the strength and courage that accompany imminent death, but he was still no match for the ebony twins; one held him in a macabre embrace while the other tied his wrists and ankles.
“That ain’t necessary,” La Negra said from behind the wheel.
Translated, the gutsy thought in Carrillo’s head would have been something like “The fuck it isn’t,” but even as he struggled he felt a strange numbness in his limbs. They jerked of their own accord. At the same time he noticed he was having trouble moving his eyes and that his lungs were getting awfully tight.
One of the evil hijos de la gran puta looked into his face. Carrillo saw the red lips move. He heard, “It’s working,” but the words seemed to come from a tunnel. They pulled the .38 from its holster, then he felt the 9mm leave his pants. But they didn’t know about his boot. If he could just get to the .2 5 he’d be okay. Streetlights raced over his locked lids. Ay dios, he couldn’t move! How could he get to his gun if he couldn’t move? Carrillo hadn’t cried since he was three, but he wanted to now.
The car stopped. Doors opened. Carrillo’s head fell and bumped. Hands grabbed him, pulled him. They moved swiftly against an angry wine-red sky. That was the color of hell, Carrillo thought. That’s where he was going.
Then he was rolling over and over, like when he was a boy, down the hill behind their house in Leon. When the rolling stopped, La Negra was looking down at him. A woman was singing soft and far away. Was it her? Hands moved back and forth over his frozen vision. His eyes were dry and he wanted to lick his lips. He couldn’t. He knew then he’d never get to his .25. That was enough to make Tito Carrillo a reverent man. He tried to shut his lids, but Carrillo had to apologize to God with the Mother in his eyes. He felt wetness soak the carpet. He prayed it was his bladder, prayed the sharp hiss he heard wasn’t a match striking.
Tito Carrillo was still praying when he blossomed into a hideous black and orange flower unfurling itself toward a disinterested moon.
26
Noah flopped onto Frank’s couch. Draping his long arms across the back, and sighing for emphasis, he announced, “Tito Carrillo’s dead.”
Frank rested her chin onto her good hand.
“What happened?”
Noah shrugged.
“Echevarria’s wife called while you were in the meeting. She was all hysterical and wanted us to come over ASAP. We get there and there’s this cow tongue hanging on her porch, all wrapped up in leaves and twine. Lewis bagged it. We got it off her porch and asked where her husband was. She said he split. Went to Arizona for a couple weeks to hang with a cousin. Since he heard about Tito.
“I said ‘What about Tito?’ and she looks at me all amazed. ‘That he’s dead,’ she said. Turns out he got lit up in an alley two nights ago. I’m gonna call LAFD, and the Sheriff’s, see what I can find out. Did the doc mention anything about a crispy critter?”
Shit, Frank thought, that had been Carrillo. Gail had trailed the job home with her the other night and Frank had complained about the smell.
“She mentioned something about it. It wasn’t one of ours so I didn’t pursue it. I’ll give her a call, see what she’s got. Where’s Lewis?”
“We thought in light of Carrillo’s immolation we should have SID look at the tongue. We might find some trace in it. Who knows?”
“Good. Anything else?”
Noah shrugged. “Lewis is running those names you gave her. I’m still trying to talk to the managers at her other businesses. They all think she’s a fucking saint. They don’t see her too often. Seems like one of the twins—Marcus, it sounds like—handles most of the business.”
“You gonna talk to her sometime? She knows we’re asking around about her.”
“Yeah, I know.” Noah stroked his chin. “But I want to get as much as I can on her before I hit her with anything. This way she’s sweatin’. Not sure what we’re up to.”
“I don’t think this woman sweats much. I’m sure she’s got her legal team marshaled by now.”
“Yeah, but if we can get something tight on her, even God won’t be able to help her.”
“I don’t think that’s who the Mother’s bankin’ on. Hey. You want to go by her church with me? See her in action?”
“When?”
“I don’t know. I’d have to check her schedule. See when she does her gig.”
“Yeah, let me know.
” ‘Kay. Keep me posted.”
“Aye, aye,” Noah saluted, rising.
“How’s Trace?”
“She’s good. Kids are good. It’s all good, baby.”
Lewis pranced into Frank’s office.
“S’up?” Frank asked, irritated at the intrusion into her quiet time.
“That nasty old tongue at Echevarria’s house? Turns out there was a note inside. SID lifted a print off it. You ain’t never gonna guess who it belongs to.”
“How the hell’d you get that back so quick?”
Lewis batted coy lashes.
“I got my ways,” she answered.
Frank gave her diamond in the rough a smile.
“Must be the Mother’s print.”
Lewis deflated like a popped balloon, demanding, “Who tolt you that?”
“You did. Why else would you be bouncing in here? What’d it say?”
“Nothing,” Lewis pouted. “Just had Echevarria’s name on it.”
“That’s good,” Frank encouraged. “Evidence she knows him and of mal intent.”
“It doesn’t give us nothing for Duncan though.”
“Patience, Lewis. You’re in homicide now. Collars come slower. Go home and start working jigsaw puzzles. Find the right pieces, put them together one by one. Eventually you’ll get the whole picture. Just a matter of time.”
Frank knew Lewis didn’t want to hear this horseshit. She hadn’t wanted to hear it a decade ago either.
“What else you got for me?”
“I found Eldridge Jones’s bunkie when he was at Soledad. Name’s Darryl Little. He’s up in Bakersfield. I want to go up and talk to him, if that’d be all right.”