It was sort of sweet. I’d spent years in ancient parts of the world, in neighborhoods and buildings dating back to the Holy Roman Empire or the Qing dynasty. Now I lived in a city where urban history was counted in fewer than a couple of centuries.
The elevator finally arrived and I rode it to the third floor, where I found Nigel sitting in a nondescript cubicle, hunched over a computer terminal at a beige office desk. In his late fifties, he had male-pattern baldness and unruly eyebrows that gave him a hawklike visage. Three framed pictures sat on his desk: a younger version of himself with a plump brunette at a Christmas party, kissing; and two young girls, not pretty, exactly, but gleaming with the loveliness of youth, wrapped in the black off-the-shoulder wrap typical of high school graduation photos.
“You came right over,” he commented as he wrapped up the remains of a sub sandwich and dabbed at a drop of mustard on the front of his shirt.
“I appreciate your seeing me on such short notice.” I took a seat in the extra chair by his desk. “I noticed the article you wrote about the child abductions in Hunters Point.”
He nodded.
“I wanted to ask you about the disappearance of Elisabeth Potts. Do you remember her?”
His ergonomically correct desk chair squeaked as he leaned back, lacing his fingers together behind his head.
“Sure I do. It was one of my first big stories, back when I first started here at the Chron. That’s when I had lots of energy; I was determined to figure it all out.” He shrugged, his shoulder straining against the plaid cotton of his short-sleeved button-up shirt. “The police investigated the hell out of the parents—that’s standard. Grandparents, too. Didn’t find a thing.”
“Did you suspect any of the relatives were involved?”
“Usually they are. Stranger abductions are relatively rare, s’matter of fact. I’m pretty cynical after all these years, seen too much, but in this case I would have been surprised. They just didn’t have the vibe, if you know what I mean. It was Frances herself who kept pushing the police to do more. Even a year later she was still calling me to see whether there was any new information on the crime. She went half out of her mind, poor gal. Besides . . . it’s not as though they were the only ones.”
“How do you mean?”
He shook his head and blew out a long breath. “There’ve been kids disappearing from that neighborhood, one at a time, for years. They’re all treated separately, so no one wants to put them together. I talked with the cops, suggested it might be a serial. But frankly, there are so many marginal folks living over there, I don’t think they gave it much credence.”
“A serial? As in the same . . . perpetrator?”
“Possibly.”
“It’s been thirty-five years.”
“True. Not too long before little Elisabeth Potts disappeared, in early March of that year, there was one of those really sad cases that come along every once in a while, where a woman was abandoned by her husband and wound up drowning their kids in the bay out near what became India Basin park. Ever since then, far as I can tell, every coupla years, ’round about early March, like clockwork, a kid disappears from that neighborhood.”
“Elisabeth was snatched . . .”
“On March fifth.”
“But we don’t know whether she was the first?”
“As far as I know, she was. But like I say, it’s hard to know for sure. The people over there are transitory; not a lot of folks stick around as long as the Potts family.”
“This may seem like a strange question, but was there any sort of evidence of something . . . otherworldly?”
“Ah, you’ve been listening to rumors.”
“Rumors?”
“About the lady ghost who comes and gathers up the kids.”
A shiver ran up my spine. “Could you tell me more about that?”
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs, the chair squeaking loudly. “Not like I believe it. But it’s one of those urban legends, always interesting. Some of the descriptions are pretty graphic. According to some of the folks, voodoo can help keep the ghost at bay, which is interesting, since the community that believes in the ghost lady is mostly Spanish.”
“Latino,” I corrected. “They speak Spanish, but they’re mostly from Mexico and Central America.”
“Right. Anyhoo, for some reason they felt like their own botánica magic wasn’t effective, so they turned to voodoo for help. I even spoke to a voodoo priestess at one point. She passed away a few years ago, but her pro tégé has taken over. Still works with that group occasionally. Goes by the name of Hervé something or other.”
Voodoo again. I couldn’t avoid it any longer.
“Do you have contact information for him?”
“Sure. I wrote a whole article on it a while back.”
“Could I read it?”
Nigel took off his wire glasses, leaned toward me, and fixed me with a hawk-eyed look.
“You don’t actually believe this crap, do you? I mean, that whole satanic-ritual abuse scare has been largely discredited. Turns out child abuse is pretty standard.”
“I like to keep an open mind. And I believe that others believe.”
With a sigh, he put his glasses back on, turned to his computer screen, lifted his head as though looking out the bottom lens of the bifocals, scrolled through options, and finally clicked his mouse several times.
“I’ll be right back.” He got up and headed to the large office printer across the room.
I sat for a moment before giving in to curiosity and getting up to look at what was on the computer screen. With my typical grace, I managed to knock a stack of papers from the desktop to the floor. Stooping down, I started to gather them together.
“Fancy meeting you here.”
I saw muscular thighs first, then looked up to see Max Carmichael crouching down on the other side of the pile. He helped pick up the papers.
“Um . . . hi,” I said, smooth as always.
“I’m glad you’re here. I need to talk to you.”
“This isn’t really the best time.”
“You’re not here to see me? I’m crushed.”
Despite his light tone, he looked down at me with an accusatory gleam in his eyes, which were as gray and clouded as the foggy afternoon. Though I had to admit I had been looking forward to seeing him again, his skeptical attitude came back to me loud and clear.
“Gosnold refuses to take me out on the bay.”
Grabbing the stack of papers, I finally stood up and set them on the desk. I turned to face Max as he straightened as well.
I nodded. “It’s for the best.”
“I had a whole film crew lined up.”
I noticed the same woman who had lingered in the doorway of Aunt Cora’s Closet the other day in one of the glassed-in offices. She was looking over at Max and me, a distinctly possessive look in her beautiful eyes.
“You’re being watched,” I said.
Max glanced over at the woman, then back at me. “Violet? She’s harmless.”
“She’s . . . proprietary.”
He looked down at me with a crooked grin. “Jealous?”
“Listen.” I avoided his eyes, and his question. “I told you it was dangerous to go out on the bay with Gosnold. Why don’t you let him show you the nice ghost over at the Queen Anne Hotel?”
“Because I was after Gosnold, not some mythical ghost. And in case you forgot, the other ‘haunted mansion’ he agreed to show me was something of a bust, as well.”
“Back off, Carmichael; I saw her first,” Nigel interrupted in a teasing voice as he returned to his desk.
“You old fraud,” Max replied. “You’d never look at another woman.”
Nigel just grunted and sat in his desk chair, handing me the printout. I tried to shield the headline—Child Snatcher or Supernatural Specter?—from Max as I slipped the article into my backpack.
“You two know each other?” Nigel asked.
&nbs
p; “Not as well as we’d like,” Max said.
Nigel raised his eyebrows and his gaze shifted from one of us to the other before he spoke to me directly. “Anyhoo, more likely it’s their parents on crack, but whatever. By the way, here’s the newest one. It’s no surprise, second week of March.”
He handed me a piece of paper with a bulletin with the huge headline: Missing Girl. The photo was a school portrait of Jessica Rodriguez, grinning. I couldn’t stop recalling the image of her smiling over her shoulder at us as she hopped out of the house. My heart rose to my throat. I swallowed hard.
“Thank you for your help, Nigel,” I managed.
He nodded and handed me two business cards, one of his own, and one for an Hervé LaMansec, along with his shop address on Valencia Avenue. He stood.
“Let me know if you unearth anything, and I’d be more than willing to look into it further. Sometimes a case like this just takes a new pair of eyes.” We shook hands, and Nigel’s kind gaze held mine. “Just . . . be careful.”
“Thanks again.” I nodded, gathered my things, and started across the room to the elevator. My knee had stiffened while I sat, so I walked with a decided limp.
“What happened to you?” Max asked as he trailed me.
“I tripped,” I said over my shoulder. “Why are you following me? You’re a mythbuster, right? You don’t buy all this witchy stuff.”
“Something like that.” He reached toward me, and for a crazy moment I thought he was going to embrace me. For an even crazier moment, I thought I would let him. I caught a whiff of his scent—soap, laundry detergent, and an underlying musk that was purely him.
His arm snaked around me to push the elevator call button.
“Then why are you following me?” I asked, clearing my throat in an attempt to recover my wits.
“Morbid fascination.”
“Just what I always wanted,” I said as I watched the elevator indicator numbers slowly light up. “To inspire men with ‘morbid’ fascination.”
He chuckled. “Where are you off to next?”
“A coven meeting. We’re planning on sacrificing a virgin.”
“I’ll bet you’re going to go see that voodoo guy Nigel mentioned.”
“Gee, Max, you’re like a mind reader. Are you sure you don’t have magical powers?”
“I’ll go with you.”
“No, thanks. How are you feeling, by the way?”
“I’m feeling fine. My sister’s a doctor. She took a look.” The elevator arrived and a young woman with an armful of files stepped off as I got on. Max held the door open, staring down at me. “She says there’s no way the wound’s only a day old. It healed too fast.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You shouldn’t go alone to see this guy.”
“Any particular reason?”
“He calls himself a voodoo priest. Isn’t that reason enough?”
“I can handle it. I’m a big girl.”
“I noticed. That’s quite a dress you have on,” he murmured as his eyes drifted over me, down and back up. Then he stepped onto the elevator and allowed the doors to close behind him. “I’ll drive.”
“Look, Max, take it from one who knows: The last thing a voodoo priest is going to respond to is your blatant disdain and disbelief.”
“I’ll keep it under wraps.”
“Even if you were a great actor—which, I hate to break it to you, you aren’t—if this practitioner is worth his salt, he’ll sense your cynicism immediately, like I did. This isn’t Charles Gosnold we’re dealing with here.”
“I’ll be good. I promise.”
The elevator pinged its arrival at the garage level. I wasn’t sure why I was considering letting Max come with me, except that I found his presence oddly comforting. Of course, the last time he was in my company he got hurt . . . as did Maya when she joined me at Katherine’s home.
On the other hand . . . chances were good that Hervé something-or-other was a fake, like so many so-called “priests.” And we were going to be in a public shop, after all. But just in case he wasn’t, and something were to go terribly wrong, Max should have a talisman.
“Do you still have my medicine bag?”
He nodded. “I wanted to ask you about that. . . .”
“Just keep it for now. Let me see. . . .” I started fishing around in the bottom of my backpack as Max led me over to a dark blue pickup truck. “Aha! Here it is.”
“This is the second time you’ve brought out necklaces when we’re together.”
I slipped it over his head and paused, my arms on his broad shoulders, and murmured a brief incantation.
“There,” I said as I patted it. His chest was broad and strong. Our eyes held just a little too long.
“I’m not really a medallion-wearing kind of guy.”
“I don’t know much about voodoo, Max, but I reckon it’s powerful. Did I steer you wrong last time?”
“Last time I wound up with a couple of inches gouged out of my torso.”
“It would have been a dang sight worse without my protection; I guarantee you that.”
“Hmm,” Max said.
“What does ‘hmm’ mean?” I asked as I climbed into the cab of the truck. It was an older model, but not full of trash like my van. I keep my vintage Mustang immaculate, but the work van’s another story.
“It’s my attempt to be diplomatic. I’m not used to women giving me jewelry. Not to mention being chased by ghosts.”
As we traveled across town to the Mission District, I was glad that Max was at the wheel. He drove like a local, weaving our way through quiet residential streets, down an alley, through a parking lot, then back out to a main thoroughfare. I was lost within the first five minutes.
“How long have you written for the Chronicle?” I asked.
“I’m freelance. I was a correspondent for Reuters for the last five years, mostly in Europe and Africa. But my dad lives up in Marin, and he’s getting up there, so I decided to come home for a bit. And you? You mentioned you’re from Texas?”
I nodded. “I only moved here about six weeks ago.”
“How do you like it so far?”
“I love it. The people here are . . .”
“Whack-jobs?”
I laughed. “Wonderfully eccentric. I’ve never been anywhere like it.”
“Mark Twain used to write for the Chron; did you know that? He once said San Francisco was the most cordial city in the nation, and that he was better treated here than he actually deserved.”
“I think I feel a little like that.”
“Better than you deserve?” His eyes shifted over to me. “I doubt that.”
I turned to look out the window, feeling a rare blush stain my cheeks. Max reached forward and turned on the radio, trying a few stations before settling on an old ies channel playing a love song. The strains of “When a Man Loves a Woman” filled the cab, and Max hummed along under his breath. Cute. The man liked sappy old ies music.
When he pulled the truck onto Valencia we rolled along slowly until I spotted the address across the broad boulevard.
“There it is.”
“Looks like a dive,” grumbled Max as he parallel-parked in a space about a block down.
“It’s just a regular old voodoo shop.”
“Uh-huh. I don’t use ‘regular’ and ‘voodoo’ in the same sentence.”
“Stop being such a curmudgeon. You wanted to come, remember? Maybe you should go get yourself something to drink while I talk to LaMansec.”
“Nah, I’ll stick with you,” Max responded, as though he were doing me a favor. He held my arm protectively as we crossed the wide, busy street.When we approached the cobalt blue door of the shop, he looked down at me and added: “But morbid fascination can only take a man so far. If there are any virgin sacrifices, I’m telling.”
Chapter 15
Detalier’s looked like a typical store from the front display window, which showed keepsakes similar to the
things one finds in a lot of shops in the Haight: carved statuettes, embroidered runners, inlaid pipes. Inside, Max had to duck to avoid hitting his head on the carved gourds and brightly painted wooden animals that hung from the ceiling. Two teenage girls were giggling over a hand-sewn hex doll, and a Japanese couple lingered near the black candles. Shallow shelves presented various body parts made of wax, which seemed a little gruesome until I realized that they were no stranger than the small metal milagros sold in botánicas. Skulls, bones, and wax-sealed bottles filled with various concoctions crowded a turquoise bookshelf. In one corner was an incongruous display of Che Guevara paraphernalia, along with a selection of cigars. Most disturbing was a statue of a large, horned, goatlike creature with a human body, sporting a pentagram carved on his forehead.
The pretty young woman sitting behind the register wore colorful swaths of batik and African mud-cloth prints, her long dreadlocks tied up in a brightly patterned scarf. She had traditional tattooing on her face: blue-black dots in a spiral on her cheeks and across her smooth forehead.
She smiled at us in welcome. Without being called, a man came out from the back of the store, ducking through a brightly beaded curtain that clacked loudly behind him. He was heavy but not fat, of average height but with a football player’s physique. His eyes were wide-set and startling, his skin so dark it gleamed. From his air of authority I assumed he was the shop owner I was looking for: Hervé LaMansec.
“I’m Lily Ivory,” I said. “I was hoping to ask you a few questions.”
We locked eyes for a long moment. He gestured toward Max with his chin, and spoke in a sonorous, deeply inflected voice.
“Who he?”
“A friend.”
“No friend to us, I think.”
“He’ll be fine. Just a bit skeptical.”
He nodded and grunted. “What you want?”
By now we had attracted the attention of the other shoppers.
“Could we talk in private?” I asked.
He held my eyes a moment more before nodding. “You alone. He stays here.”
Max opened his mouth to protest, but I had anticipated him.
“Max, please.” I held his gaze briefly. Then he and LaMansec shared a manly moment of trying to stare each other down before Max finally shrugged and took a seat in a colorful painted wooden chair next to the reception counter.
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