1 Death Warmed Over

by Kent Holloway

  Finally, the portly little redhead shook her head. “I honestly have no idea. I can’t believe it. I thought that guy was trying to get rid of these types of people. I had no idea he was into the weird stuff too.”

  Becca was about to ask a follow up question when her phone buzzed in her pocket. “Excuse me a moment,” she said, before putting the phone to her ear. “This is Chief Cole.”

  “Chief, it’s Jeremy. We’ve got him. We found Spenser Blakely and arrested him.”

  38

  SUMMER HAVEN POLICE DEPARTMENT

  FRIDAY, 3:55 PM

  Silas and Becca looked at Spenser Blakely through the two-way mirror on the other side of the interrogation room. The overweight, balding man, oblivious to their presence, looked an absolute mess. His clothes and hair were disheveled. His face was smeared with blood and dirt. His white shirt was torn at the sleeves and ripped down his torso.

  He sat in his chair, shifting every so often in an attempt to get comfortable, but could never seem to find the right position. Sweat glistened down his forehead as his eyes darted back and forth in the room.

  “He looks a bit nervous, don’t you think?” Silas asked.

  “Wouldn’t you?” Becca turned to Sergeant Tanner. “The blood? Did he resist arrest?”

  Jeremy shook his head. “No. He was like that when we found him. When we showed up, he practically jumped in my patrol car begging me to take him to the station.”

  Silas glanced down at the officer’s arms. They were clasped in front of him as he stood at attention in front of his superior, those infernal long sleeves blocking any view of the tattoos that graced his skin.

  “And where exactly did you find him?” Silas asked, turning his attention back to the suspect. “At his house?”

  “Sort of,” the sergeant said. “He was hiding in an old treehouse in back of his property. The thing was built back when the Parsons used to own the place.” He chuckled. “If Larry hadn’t heard something shuffling around up there, we might never have found him.”

  “I’ll have to remember to compliment him on a job well done,” Becca said. “Has Blakely said anything?”

  Jeremy shook his head again.

  “What about the lab work on the knives…the one found in Andrea’s body and the ones we found in her house and Blakely’s collection? Are they back yet?”

  The sergeant handed her a file folder. “Yep. And found DNA that matched his on the dagger found in Alvarez’s travel chest too.”

  Becca offered a conservative nod, but Silas could tell she was pleased at the news.

  “Lawyered up?”

  “Nope. Says he wants to talk to you as soon as possible. Alone.”

  Silas’ eyes narrowed. “Well now, that’s rather unexpected,” he said.

  “Not about wanting to see me alone,” she replied with a half-smile. “You have a certain way of making people not want to be around you. But I am rather surprised he wants to talk at all. He’s shown nothing but arrogance toward me and my father for years. If I was a betting woman, I would have laid odds on him asking for a lawyer straight away.”

  “Me?” He brought his hand to chest, aghast. “I’m the picture of charismatic charm.”

  “Yeah, right.” Becca turned toward the door. “Well, let’s not keep the good man waiting.”

  Silas began to follow, but she stopped him with her hand. “Not this time, Dr. Doom. It’s too important. I don’t want to spook him. That means you’ll be sitting this one out.”

  “But…”

  She gave him a look, then turned to Jeremy. “Keep an eye on him, will ya?”

  The sergeant nodded, grinning. “Will do, Chief.”

  With that said, she exited the observation room and made her way to interrogate the suspect.

  Silas watched as Becca opened the door to the interrogation room and took her usual seat at the bolted-down table. An expression of instant relief washed over Blakely’s face at the sight of her.

  “Chief, thank God you’re finally here,” he said. He tried to raise his hands as he spoke but was limited by the handcuffs chaining him to the table.

  “Really? Then why were you hiding from me all this time?”

  “I wasn’t!” His response was instant. “Not from you. I wasn’t hiding from you.”

  “She is rather brilliant at interrogation, isn’t she?” Silas said to Jeremy, who hovered just behind him at the window, but the police officer said nothing in response.

  “If you weren’t hiding from me, then who?” Becca said, bringing Silas back to the interview.

  “I can’t tell you that. Not now anyway. Not here.” Blakely’s eyes drifted around the room as if half-expecting a specter to lunge from the shadows to murder him right there on the spot.

  Then again, maybe he is expecting a specter of sorts, Silas thought, casting a backwards glance at the taciturn police sergeant.

  “I’m not buying it, Mr. Blakely,” Becca continued, waving her hand up and down in front of his face to garner his undivided attention. “All this. This act you’ve got going. We’ve seen your sanctum. We’ve found your stash of bilongo dolls in your print shop. This scared little innocent act isn’t going to work on me.”

  “No, no. You don’t understand. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” Blakely said. “But I need something in return.”

  Becca’s brow wrinkled. “You need something from me?”

  The newspaper man nodded. “Yes. Yes. I need to get away from here. As soon as possible. Prison is fine. I’d just rather not be anywhere near here while I’m incarcerated.”

  Becca opened her mouth to speak, then closed it before looking back at the two-way glass. She was clearly as stumped by this turn of events as Silas. It was, for a lack of a better term, unexpected to say the least.

  She returned her attention back to the suspect. “Okay, fine,” she said. “So, tell me. Why did you kill Andrea Alvarez?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Mr. Blakely, you just told me you were going to tell me everything and you start off with a lie?”

  “I swear! I didn’t kill her.”

  “Look, we know about the Ebo knife you switched out from your collection to Andrea’s. Your DNA is all over it.” She opened the ever-present file in front of her and thumbed through a handful of pages. “We found the chicken blood you used to pour on her at the beach. And even the candles in your sanctum were the same brand as those found at the scene.”

  “Yes, I stabbed her. I moved her to the beach and simulated a ritualistic sacrifice,” he said. “But she was already dead when I did it. You have to believe me.”

  “Why do criminals always say that?” She closed the folder. “Actually, Mr. Blakely, I don’t have to believe you. That’s part of my job description. What I do have to believe is the evidence and right now, it all points to you.”

  “Ask him about Elaine Shepherd,” Silas shouted, knowing full well she couldn’t hear him. He growled in frustration. Not being part of the interrogation that he’d worked so hard for was maddening. “Ask him about the working he put on Andrea!”

  “I’m telling you, I didn’t kill her,” Blakely protested. “I had no reason to.”

  “What about Elaine Shepherd?”

  “That’s my girl,” Silas chuckled.

  Spenser Blakely’s eyes widened at the mention of Andrea’s co-worker friend. “What about her?”

  “You don’t know?” Becca was smiling. “We have her in custody right now. Conspiracy to commit murder.”

  “Conspiracy? Whose murder?”

  “Andrea Alvarez. She went to Jacinto Garcia and asked him to kill her with a death curse. When he refused, she came to you. Isn’t that right?”

  “S-she told you?”

  “No.” Becca leaned back in her seat. She gave him a victorious look. “But it wasn’t hard to figure out when we learned she’d secretly come by your work in the early morning hours. You might be a killer, but the one thing no one would mistake you for is a
lady’s man. You two weren’t having an affair, so the only other thing it could be was that she asked you to perform the death curse on Andrea yourself.” Shaking her head, she chuckled. “And you pretty much just confirmed my theory with your answer.”

  Blakely sat up straight. “Look, you’ve got it all wrong.”

  “You mean, she didn’t ask you to perform a working on your girlfriend?”

  “I, uh…”

  “What’s the matter, Blakely? I thought you wanted out of this town…even if you went to prison.”

  “I do!” he shouted, his eyes once more darting around the room. It was as if his outburst might have attracted the attention of some unseen thing. “I’m sorry,” he said, more calmly. “I do, yes. But I also figured you wanted the truth and not just what you assume to be true.”

  “Okay. Then, start being straight with me. Did Elaine Shepherd reach out to you about putting a death curse on Andrea Alvarez?”

  He hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Yes. She did. Andrea had apparently told her about me. Told her we’d met during our worship meetings. When Omo Sango had refused to do the curse, she came to the only person she knew who might be able to do it.”

  “Why would she come to you? I mean, you were dating Andrea. What would make her think you would do something like that?”

  Blakely hung his head. “Because,” he said with a sigh, “we had broken up.”

  39

  “Broken up?” Becca asked. She hadn’t expected that answer at all. “Why?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Neither one of us are going anywhere anytime soon,” she said. “So, try to un-complicate it for me.”

  He exhaled, looking down at his fingernails with feigned interest.

  “Mr. Blakely?”

  “I had done something foolish,” he finally said. “Something I thought would help her. When she found out about it…”

  The room suddenly erupted with banging from the two-way mirror. Someone—she assumed Silas—was pounding excitedly on it. She turned around and attempted to burn a laser-thin hole in the glass with her glare. The look had the desired effect. The banging stopped and she turned back to her suspect.

  “And what exactly did you do, Mr. Blakely, that caused her to be that upset?”

  The door to the interrogation burst open and Silas Mot dashed inside with Sergeant Tanner running after him.

  “He placed a death curse on James Andrews!” Silas shouted.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Jeremy said to Becca.

  She nodded and waved him away. “It’s okay. He can stay.”

  Tanner glared at Silas a moment, then backed out of the room, closing the door behind him.

  “Now, what were you saying, Mot?”

  “That’s what his bilongo was doing in the print shop,” Silas continued. “We assumed it was made recently. After Ms. Alvarez’s death. We assumed that because he’d created bilongos for us, which would have only been done after we started snooping around.” He leaned in closer to Blakely, giving him a threatening glare. “You know, that wasn’t very nice, by the way.” He patted the suspect on the head as he said it. “Anyway, truth is, he had performed the death curse on James Andrews, thinking that if he died, Jamie would automatically go into her custody.”

  Becca turned back to Blakely. “Is this true?”

  He nodded. “Yes. She had tried so hard to get custody of Jamie back. She was devastated when that shyster of a car salesman refused. She tried to get legal help, but no one would give her the time of day and it was killing her a little inside every day she wasn’t in that boy’s life.”

  “So, she found out about it and didn’t respond exactly how you thought she would?”

  “No, not at all. She was furious with me. Broke things off right then and there.”

  Silas, who seemed brimming with enthusiastic energy after figuring out how James’ bilongo fit into the case, sat down beside Becca with his chest puffed up. “And she went to work the next day and told her sister from another mister, Elaine Shepherd, about the breakup and she thought maybe you might just be mad enough at Andrea to perform the curse,” he said with a smug curl of his lips.

  “Basically, yes,” Blakely said. “She came to me and told me what she wanted. I didn’t intend to go through with it, but considering Mrs. Shepherd wasn’t a believer herself, she wouldn’t know any better. So, we worked out a deal.”

  “What kind of deal?” Becca asked.

  “She would convince her firm to send advertisers to my newspaper and I would create a bilongo doll to make Andrea think she’d been cursed.” He looked up from his examination of his fingernails. “But there was no curse imbued with it. For all intents and purposes, it was nothing more than a rag doll. No power behind it at all.”

  “Why would you do that to her?” Becca asked. “Even if you didn’t put your mojo into it, you knew how she would react to seeing it. You knew that she would believe in it and be terrified.”

  He gave a sad nod. “I did. But I wanted her back. I thought if she thought she was cursed and that Omo Sango was the one who put it on her, she would have to come back to me. Figured she would need my help to break the curse and we could start fresh.”

  “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!” Silas barked. “And most cruel.”

  Becca wanted to reprimand him for his outburst, but truth was, she was thinking the same thing. The man was the worst sort of parasite.

  “And, of course, the curse and its implications couldn’t hurt any in raising circulation for your newspaper, right?”

  “Yes.” His cheeks reddened as he said it. “It was a perfect opportunity. I could get Andrea back, sell papers, and, if I was lucky, get rid of Omo Sango in one fell swoop.” Blakely tried to clear his throat. “Could I have some water or something? My throat’s dry.”

  Becca glanced back at the two-way mirror and nodded. She knew Jeremy would still be back there and would have heard the request. When she was confident her officer was going to get the water, she returned to her next thought.

  “So, what went wrong in this plan of yours?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Well, if everything went well, there was no need to kill her. Yet, someone switched her medications out without her knowledge and killed her. Since you and she were dating, that gives you plenty of opportunity to do it without her catching on.”

  “That’s how she died? Her medications?”

  “Actually, someone else’s medications. They were switched, as I said.”

  “Why on earth would I kill her? I wanted her back!”

  “You just admitted to stabbing her and dragging her to the beach,” she said. “We’re recording this interrogation now. Do you want me to let you hear what you said?”

  “No, I know what I said. And I’m telling the truth.” He fidgeted in his chair. “Look, I heard about her breakdown in Jacksonville. When I found out she was home from the hospital, I came over to check on her. When no one answered my knocks at the door, I let myself in using the key she’d given me.” Sweat glistened across his forehead, illuminated by the harsh overhead lights. “I went up to her room and found her in bed. She was already dead.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Around one in the morning.”

  “Why so late?”

  Blakely shrugged. “You know my schedule, Chief Cole. I went there on my way to run the morning edition.”

  “And what did you see when you got to her place?”

  “Exactly what I said. She was in bed.”

  “Under or on top of her covers?”

  “Under. But she was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, which I thought was kind of weird.”

  Becca looked him up and down, weighing his words. He seemed pretty sincere, but a few things just weren’t adding up.

  “Okay, so how did it go from finding her body to you putting a knife in her back and dumping her body on the beach.”

  He coughed again, then cleared his thro
at. “Is that water coming?”

  “Shouldn’t be long now.” She motioned for him to continue. “Go on.”

  “I thought about calling the police, I really did,” he said. His voice was gravelly. Hoarse. “But then, I realized the opportunity I had.”

  “To pin her death on Omo Sango and the rumor of the death curse you spread with your paper.”

  “I wasn’t trying to frame him, Chief. I was trying to point you in the right direction.” He tried to throw up his hands in frustration but was hindered by his chains. “I still can’t believe you’ve ruled him out as your suspect. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s the one responsible for Andrea’s death.”

  “What?” A lump began to swell in her throat. Had she miscalculated? She’d all but discarded Jacinto Garcia as the killer after meeting with him. “That doesn’t make any sense. We know he didn’t put the curse on her. Elaine Shepherd even admitted as much. The only motive he would have had to kill her was to ensure the public believed his curse actually worked. It was a matter of street cred. But if he publicly denied casting the spell, there was no reason for him to save face.”

  Blakely laughed, shaking his head. “You’ve got it wrong, Chief Cole. He wouldn’t have murdered her for that. In his world, it’s up to the Orisha whether a curse works or not. If an Orisha chooses not to kill someone with one of his curses, that’s on the Orisha, not the Babalowa. It wouldn’t be a motive for…”

  There was a knock on the door and Jeremy appeared with a bottle of water. He set it down at the table in front of Blakely and backed out of the room. The reporter unscrewed the bottle’s cap and downed half the bottle before he continued.

  “It wouldn’t be a motive for murder.”

  “So, why would he kill her?” Silas asked, suddenly intrigued.

  Blakely shook his head. His hand shook as he set the water bottle down in front of him. “Uh-uh. I’ve said too much already.”

  “But you’ve basically accused Garcia of murdering Andrea,” Becca said. “If you don’t give us a reason, we can’t take it seriously and you’re still our chief suspect.”