I promised I’d call.
When I finished, my grandmother stood up and beckoned me to follow. I knew it had to be serious if she was ignoring the dishes. She never let them sit around, afraid of roaches or mice.
She led me down the hallway. We passed the living room, the TV on, a Spanish soap opera she was addicted to. She ignored it and continued down the hall toward the last room in the apartment, at one time the master bedroom. She’d given it up years ago, moving her bed into the tiny room off the living room.
“We will speak in the Ile,” she said.
It was the first time I’d heard her refer to the room where she saw her clients as a house church.
“Why Ile and not cuarto de los santos?”
“My friends encouraged me. Y así paso. I do not mean to say that it takes the place of church.”
I knew what she meant: that she was still a churchgoing Christian. She prayed to Olofi—who served as humanity’s personal God on earth—but she prayed to God’s son Jesus as well. For her, there was no conflict.
“When someone comes to me to consult the orishas, I tell them, ask your church and your congregation to pray for you too.”
“So you have become a godmother, a madrina?”
“I am…just me. There are others with much greater knowledge.” She told me about some kid named Carlos, twelve years old, a child of Obatala, she said, with great powers, but I’d stopped listening. We had stepped into the cuarto de los santos, which I hadn’t been in since she had given it up as her bedroom, and I was stunned.
There were makeshift shrines everywhere. One with a dish and rock like the one by the door, this one much more elaborate, adorned with red and white beads, a jewel-encrusted crucifix, a dollhouse draped with a wilting vine. A few feet away another with pictures of saints wrapped in colored cellophane and a small cheap-looking plastic skeleton covered with rosary beads. And there were more: dolls with peacock feathers and fake flowers, stacks of fruit, toys, candles, pictures of saints and orishas, even a Buddha. I didn’t see a Star of David, but there probably was one.
My grandmother had always had a few modest shrines made from candles and pictures of saints, but nothing had prepared me for this.
“It looks like you’ve spent way too much money at the local botánica, uela.”
She told me not to make fun, that it was a pecado, a sin, that almost everything had been created by people who came to her for consultations.
In the center of the room were three benches like pews, plain wood, pockmarked and weathered as if they had been left outside during some church demolition, which was entirely possible. I asked her where she’d gotten them and she said that a local padrino had found them for her.
She told me to sit down in one of the pews, and I did. She touched the sleeve of my white shirt. “This was a good one to wear, una señal.”
“It was my only clean shirt,” I said.
“And you think that is not a sign?”
Then she told me she had seen another room, but not to draw, just to listen. She had felt something in this room, a presence of something evil. Then she described what sounded a lot like my apartment, an apartment she had never seen.
I was about to show her my sketches of the man I was trying to draw, but she had more to say, and another vision she wanted me to draw.
45
I realize this is delicate,” said Collins, “which is why I came to you, Chief Denton.”
“Perry, please. And I appreciate that, Monica.” Denton tried to imagine the FBI agent nude, but could not.
“There’s just a bit too much coincidence. Nothing concrete, not enough for an arrest, but I have to say we’re watching him.”
“Of course. I understand.” Denton tried not to smile. This was the best news he’d had all day. “I can see where you’re coming from. I’ll keep an eye on Rodriguez too.”
Agent Collins tried to concentrate but was getting lost in the chief’s blue eyes. She didn’t think a man like Denton would be interested in her, but there had been his arm on hers at the meeting, a conspiratorially wink or two, and now the way he was leaning in to whisper.
“Personally, I was against the idea from the beginning. It was Russo who encouraged it. Could be Rodriguez convinced her he’d be able to help.” Denton shrugged to make his comment seem offhand, but he wanted to be sure he seeded the possibility there was something going on between Rodriguez and Russo. “Don’t get me wrong. Russo’s a good cop. Sure, she’s made a few bad decisions in the past, but what cop hasn’t?” If Collins had not remembered Russo’s past, now she would.
“Right now it’s mainly a question of proximity,” said Collins. “And Rodriguez left prints all over the vic’s apartment, though there’s no way to date them. For argument’s sake, let’s say they’re new, that Rodriguez made them when he discovered the body.”
“That’s very generous of you, Monica.” Denton smiled.
Collins sat back and crossed her legs. “What I don’t like is that he traipsed across the apartment. I mean, why would a cop intentionally contaminate a crime scene?”
“I see your point.”
“I understand he was curious to see the drawing, but still…”
“If you’d like, I can put one of my own men on him.”
Collins looked surprised, and Denton worried he might have pushed it too far, supporting her suspicions over one of his own men. He laid his hand on her knee to distract her. “Can I be honest with you, Monica?”
“Oh.” Collins flinched a bit. “Please do.”
“I suggested my own surveillance because…well…if it turns out Rodriguez had anything to do with this, I’d like to know first.”
“I understand completely,” she said, feeling the heat from Denton’s hand. “And you needn’t worry. Whatever we find on Rodriguez, I’ll make sure you know about it.”
I had been drawing for a few minutes, my grandmother beside me, but I wasn’t getting anywhere.
“It is…an explosion,” she said, her eyes closed. “But I cannot tell you more. I cannot see more than that.”
“And do you know where this explosion is happening?”
“No sé. Es un…presentimiento.”
We were both into feelings these days.
I tried to get more information, but it was all she could come up with, so I put it aside and told her that I thought the unsub had been in my apartment.
She crossed herself, but did not seem surprised. She said she had been worried for days, that she had consulted the orishas and set up the bóveda all for me. She said she wished I was part of the faith and she could make me a saint.
“Me? A saint?” I laughed.
“Pórtate bien,” she said, behave, then asked what else had happened.
I didn’t want to tell her about Cordero and my fears that I’d become a suspect.
She looked into my eyes and laid her hand on my heart. “There is a problem, aquí adentro. Sometimes we anger the orishas and we do not know it. Sometimes it is not our fault and still the gods are angry with us.”
I knew exactly what I had done to piss off the gods, but couldn’t say it.
“There are things we can do, Nato, to scare away the espiritus malévolos.” She explained about receiving Eleggua and the warriors. Then she draped one of the beaded necklaces around my neck and I didn’t fight her. It felt strangely comforting.
She smiled, but it faded fast. “I do not have the power. It should be a babalao.” A male priest of the highest order with power over the future, she explained. A part of me wished he were here. My whole life I had resisted, but now I wanted to believe. I was like the dying man who has never been to church who suddenly wants the sacrament.
My abuela plucked a double-headed ax covered with red and white beads out of a shrine. She explained it was a symbol for Chango, god of thunder and lightning, and very powerful. It looked as if a kid had made it, half the beads fallen off. My cynic’s mind flipped back on: How could this hoke
y piece of fetish folk art possibly have any power?
My grandmother seemed to know instinctively what I was thinking. “The orishas will forgive you.”
She gave me new candles for my apartment and told me to create an Eleggua by the door. “Haslo, chacho. Esto es importante.” She gave me beads and shells. “For the Eleggua’s face, for his ojos y boca.”
Then she told me to tear off a little piece of the drawing I had been making and put it under the Eleggua.
“Why?”
“Because he is an enemy and if you place him under the Eleggua he will lose his power. And it would be good if…you sprinkled some blood on the Eleggua.”
“Like what? Kill a chicken or something? Perform some sort of voodoo rite?”
The muscles in my grandmother’s face tightened with anger, and I was immediately sorry. “Perdón, uela.”
“It is not voodoo. You know that. I never do el sacrificio, but now you must make el ofrecimiento, maybe some coconut and candy.”
I was tempted to make a joke, ask whether the Eleggua preferred Snickers to red licorice, but I didn’t dare.
“Algo rojo,” my grandmother said, which sort of spooked me as I’d just been thinking about licorice, red licorice.
She lit more candles, took my hand, asked me to pray along with her, and I did.
It’s a funny thing when one chooses to believe. I knew people, serious business types, who believed in feng shui, who rearranged their furniture so that they faced the door to invite money in, who placed tiny Buddha statues in corners to bring them luck. I’d always scoffed at them and here I was thinking that as soon as I left my grandmother’s apartment I was going to stop in Central Park to collect rocks for a god to ward off evil, and buy him some red licorice in case he got hungry.
When I got back to my apartment I found a big bowl, put the rocks into it, and wound the beads around them. I felt a little foolish but couldn’t ignore that one of my abuela’s visions had already proved prescient, and another—her description of my apartment and an evil presence—rang too true. I tried laying the shells onto the rocks to create the face, but they kept falling off, so I resorted to a glue stick. It was like a sixth-grade arts and crafts project, but I got into it, gluing down the shells to create the eyes and mouth. I didn’t know what to do with the licorice and ended up sticking it in around the edges of the bowl. They looked like headless, flowerless stems.
I spent a minute staring at my creation, wondering if I’d finally lost my mind, then figured what the hell, and pricked my finger with a pin. Three droplets of blood landed on the stone and were instantly absorbed into its porous surface. It was as if the Eleggua had eaten it. Then I tore a corner off one of my sketches, slid it under the rock, placed the whole thing beside my front door, stood back, and shook my head.
Rodriguez, you are definitely losing it.
But I didn’t stop. I took the glass-encased candles with pictures of Chango and Babalu-Aye that my abuela had given me and put one in my living room, the other in my kitchen window. I had no idea if that was right. Maybe Babalu-Aye didn’t like the cold and shouldn’t be in the window; maybe Chango needed sunlight? I switched the candles. I had no idea why, it just felt right. Then I stripped off my clothes, lay down on my bed, and for the first time in twenty-four hours fell into a deep sleep.
46
Terri spread the first set of the Cordero crime scene photos across her desk. They showed the superintendent lying facedown in a pool of blood from every conceivable angle; the second set, details of the body; the third, pictures of evidence collected by the CS team—the unsub’s drawing, a pizza box, a matchbook, a half-smoked cigarette, a pencil. At first none of it registered. But the next group of photos, these taken after the body had been removed, stopped her.
Terri shuffled through the evidence photos again. She had to be sure of what she was looking at.
Her hand was shaking as she called the G. She needed to know if they had this too.
Terri had called, rousing me from a deep sleep to say she was coming right over.
I was still a little groggy, but when she slid a crime scene photograph onto my kitchen counter, I was wide awake.
“Please tell me this isn’t your pencil.”
I tried to think. Did I have a pencil with me when I went down to see Cordero? I didn’t think so, but my thoughts were bouncing around like a ball in a pinball machine. “Maybe it fell out of my pocket when I leaned over to see the drawing.”
She placed a second photo in front of me, an outline of where Cordero’s body had been, the pencil inside it. “The pencil was under Cordero’s body.”
She didn’t have to spell it out.
“Maybe…it was Cordero’s,” I said, though I knew it sounded lame. “The unsub must have stolen it. He stalked me, right? We know that because he saw my tattoo. Then he breaks into my place, steals a pencil, and, Jesus, Terri, he’s setting me up!” My head was pounding again. I got some aspirin, Terri watching me the whole time, that look of doubt registering in the narrowing of her eyes and tightened mouth.
“I thought you believed me.”
“I do, but—” She shook her head. “This isn’t going to look good.”
She didn’t have to tell me that. I took a deep breath. “And there’s more.”
“What?”
“The new drawing, the one of Cordero…You thought it looked different and…it does.” I took a deep breath. “He’s copying my style. The softer pencil—” I tapped the crime scene photo of the Ebony pencil. “I’ll bet he made the drawing with this pencil—with my pencil. And that little detail you noticed—the one of the mouth drawn on the side? It’s a direct copy of a sketch I made—which I no longer have. He’s been in my apartment, Terri. How else could he have my sketch—and my pencil?”
“Oh, Jesus, Rodriguez. The G is running DNA on that pencil. A chewed pencil equals saliva. Saliva equals DNA.”
“How do you know that?”
“I called. I pretended I already knew. As soon as I saw the picture of the pencil I knew they’d be testing it, so I asked when the DNA results would be ready. Some techie told me he didn’t know, that they were backed up, which, thank God, is the only good news.” She sighed. “I’d say we’re looking at a matter of days.”
I eased myself into a chair, trying to comprehend the extent of the nightmare. “I’ll go to them, tell them before they find out.”
“Tell them what? That it’s your pencil they found under Cordero’s body? That a phantom you cleaned up after took it from your apartment to plant at the murder scene, along with a sketch that you say looks like you drew it?” She stopped me before I could say anything. “Your DNA isn’t on file, is it?”
“No, of course not.”
“Okay. So let’s say they get the DNA results from the pencil in two days. Then it’s another two days before they think to test yours.”
“So what are you saying?”
“That we’ve got about three or four days.”
Dolores Rodriguez had first consulted Eleggua because that was the way it was always done. Eleggua, messenger of the gods, who had cured Olodumare was always the first to be honored in any ceremony. Now she lifted the shrine from the floor, poured rum over the rocks, and sprinkled the surface with shredded coconut, though she knew the orisha favored the blood of roosters and turtles. She promised herself if things did not improve—if the feeling something bad was going to happen to her beloved Nato continued—she would find someone who would help. She would do anything to protect her grandson.
She stood over the Eleggua and recited the prayer she had memorized in English.
“Divine Messenger, do not confuse me. Divine Messenger, do not confuse me. Let someone else be confused. Turn my suffering around. Give me the blessing of the calabash. Owner of all four corners, head of the paths, my Father, remove evil so Nato can walk without death.”
Then she made her way from shrine to shrine, offering cornmeal to Chango, sunflower seeds t
o Osain, toasted corn to Ochosi, and finally dripped almond oil over Inle. She sat on a pew and asked all of the Santerian gods to watch over her grandson and protect him from those who would harm him. Then she tied a scarf over her hair, wrapped a shawl around her shoulders, and headed over to Santa Cecilia to ask the same of Jesus.
47
The Cordero crime scene photos and drawing were pinned to the corkboard wall behind Monica Collins’s desk.
“We should be getting DNA results soon,” she said.
She and her men, Archer and Richardson, along with profiler Roberta Schteir, had just reviewed the bureau’s file on Nathan Rodriguez and watched the taped interview he’d done with Collins.
“He looks nervous, doesn’t he?” said Collins.
“You would be nervous too, Agent Collins,” said Schteir. “Everyone is nervous in that sort of situation. It’s a normal human response. Of course having a guilty conscience compounds it.”
“I say we search his place,” said Richardson. “Take away his crayons and pencils.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” said Collins, thinking of her conversation with Perry Denton. “If Rodriguez allows the search, that’s one thing, we would not have to get a warrant. But any search, if we come up empty, will be an embarrassment for both the NYPD and the bureau. This is a serious allegation. We can’t search a cop’s premises without hard evidence.”
“The timing is perfect,” said Richardson. “ME says the vic was killed between ten and midnight. Rodriguez was back from Boston by seven, home all night, and admits to being in Cordero’s apartment around eleven-thirty. Damn close.”
“Too close,” said Archer.
“It’s not enough,” said Collins.
“What if he runs?” asked Richardson.
“I don’t see that happening,” said Collins. “He doesn’t know we’re really looking at him.”
Anatomy of Fear Page 20