Roots of Misfortune

by Seth Pevey

  “And, as they gazed out into the darkness of the swamp, do you know what they saw?” he said.

  “What Big Chief?” the little girl asked, an earnest but unsure grin on her button face.

  “Eyes,” he said. “They saw eyes.”

  “Whose eyes?” the girl asked.

  “The eyes of those who were already there in the swamp. The eyes of red men. The eyes of the Choctaw Indians!”

  Claps from the crowds, cheering, a bustling gratitude.

  The Big Chief stopped his story to twirl and shake, to cry out and wave his feathery arms for a minute. The whole tribe followed suit for a brief interlude of chaos—whooping and hollering and sounding the strange war cries.

  “And those Indians. They took in our ancestors and taught them how to live well in the swamp. Taught them how to trap possum and coon and how to put an arrow in a hog and how to scrape mussels from the riverbank and where to find oysters and the best muscadine grapes. They taught them how to live on this new land that they had never seen before.”

  Big Chief bent down again, but this time his great mask hovered a mere six inches away from Felix’s face. His suit, ponderous and wild, surrounded the young detective, seemed to fold him up in a feathery cocoon. Felix could smell him. Rum, stale tobacco and the sweat of a slighted man.

  “And what did the French do, when the good times rolled again? What did they do when the crops came in? When their bellies were full and round and soft once again? Of course, they went into the swamp…they brought with them men and muskets and dogs and they found us living peacefully and being well-satisfied off of what we had learned to catch and eat, with what we had learned out in the swamp from our red brothers. And do you know what they did?”

  The crowd seemed to know it in their hearts already.

  “They burned the red man’s villages. Shot their braves through the hearts with lead balls. Drove their women and children into the wettest, darkest parts of the swamp. But for us they had no bullets. Only more chains. And so, a second time we were stolen. A second time enslaved.”

  Felix looked up at the mask. “I didn’t…I didn’t know that,” he said, entranced by the whole performance.

  “Of course you did not know that. Of course you have no perspective. Why else would you come here and defile this sacred tradition. For it is now that we honor that time we spent in the swamp with our red brothers and sisters, honor their memory for the sacrifices they made. For the times we spent with them before we were returned to bondage and whips and sweat for the white man’s machine. This is why we wear the suits, this is why we practice war, this is why we dance and sing and mask and march.”

  Melancon was done listening, it seemed. He picked himself up off the ground again and brushed himself off with the back of the hat.

  “That has nothing to do with what is happening here, now,” he said, addressing the crowd. “We are here because of a girl. A Korean girl named Min Ji that has gone missing. In our investigation, we’ve found that your man here is wanted for murder. Now you’ll stand down chief or the NOPD will be here in the next ten minutes to break this whole thing up and probably haul you in. I’m a reasonable man but…”

  The Big Chief let out a loud belly laugh. It was a booming laugh, but not a warm one. It seemed to make the leaves fall from the oak twigs overhead.

  “One girl. You come here for one girl? Don’t you know detective, the world runs on blood. You come here and ask about this blood or that blood. But you don’t understand. I speak to you about an ocean of blood you don’t even understand that you are swimming in. You doggy paddle up here and you ask about one drop that might run away with the tide?”

  Something about the way he said it struck Felix. Who was this man? All his talk about blood and slavery had a way of hypnotizing you. The confidence with which he spoke was something of a gut-punch. But Felix had a notion, an instinct that wanted, somehow, to get a peek behind this mask.

  Melancon seemed to have the same instinct. “Something tells me you need to come in too Big Chief. I think the NOPD will be very happy to make your acquaintance as well. They just love stories about blood. You’ll find them a captive audience.”

  It happened quickly. A nod of the Big Chief’s head to his Wildman, and Felix’s partner was suddenly sprawled on his back, gasping for air.

  The shaft of the spear had struck Melancon across the face. Hardwood.

  Felix watched in horror as the scuffle escalated. Down on his back, Melancon sputtered blood from the corner of his mouth. The Wildman shifted his grip on the spear. Now he was holding it for a thrust. Landry raised the spear high over his head and again the crowd hushed. A tension and an anticipation ran through the throng. Melancon’s deep blue eyes spiraled. The old detective had a trickle of blood running down the side of his face. Felix struggled to get himself up. He had to do something, do it now.

  “More blood for the lwa!” the Big Chief yelled, and the crowd seemed to shift uncomfortably. Some voices cried out encouragement, excited by the sight of the red trickle or the vengeance-inspiring story. Perhaps they had become lost in the blurry line between performance and reality. Other voices were less sure, calling out warnings, admonishments, shocked disagreement. A few of them seemed ready to rush forward.

  But no one did. Felix would remember that, too. He would remember that even fine people, out for a Sunday barbeque, harbor a latent darkness in their hearts. Enough, at least, to watch evil come to pass and remain still.

  The Wildman was wild and the Chief was a man of power, and so the crowd was mostly shocked to torpor as the spearhead was raised high, over the prone body of Melancon. The terrible obsidian point was pointed downward, poised to fall into the detective’s semi-conscious breast.

  Obsidian: A shard of volcanic glass glinting in the wan light.

  Felix acted quickly. He had no other choice.

  Quickly, he fumbled in his coat pocket for the little fetish, hoping beyond hope that his crazy idea would work. Managing to regain himself on shaky knees, he stood and held the Voodoo doll up to Wildman Landry, who froze mid stroke. The entire tribe froze, seemed to gasp in their feathers and sequins. All eyes turned to the idol, its bean-shaped head and ugly features set against the darkening sky.

  “How’s this for context?” Felix said, keeping the Big Chief’s large form in the corner of his eye.

  Landry dropped the spear and shivered in his sequins.

  “Oh my, has the Wildman suddenly become the Tameman?” Felix said.

  Indeed, a meekness was coming over Trombone Landry’s posture. “The curse,” he whispered. “The curse.” His voice fell small and flaccid, now, barely audible over the approaching thunder.

  Felix held the stone head of the thing in one balled fist, the little legs of straw and bone in the other.

  “Say, you reckon I could break this thing in half Tameman?”

  The Wildman shook his head, backing up. Suddenly his costume seemed diminutive and he cowered behind the tribal leader.

  Big Chief glared at the bone doll, but there was a new hesitancy to his large frame. “Leave it alone fool. You don’t have any idea…”

  But Felix did have an idea. He had the idea that this, whatever the hell it was, was working. That it was saving their lives. That it was the only shot he had. He tried to be calm and cool as he slid his good shoulder under Melancon, who seemed to be regaining his faculties right at that moment.

  “Let’s take a quick walk, detective,” Felix whispered in his friend’s ear.

  He looked up at Landry. “You come one step closer. You or anyone, and I shatter this fucking thing right on the pavement!” the young man yelled, hoping the shakiness in his voice went undetected.

  Perhaps the people in the crowd were now simply more confused than anything else, but their bodies began to part for the two detectives. Everyone watched them, watched the doll, and no challenge was issued as Felix carried his stunned partner out of the tight circle of Indians and parade-goers.
>
  Facing the tribe, walking backwards, Felix managed to get some distance from the scene before he turned. When he did turn, his weak arm, the one holding the doll, hit the body of another bystander. A bolt of pain went down his arm, forcing him to drop the Voodoo doll to the ground, where it rattled against an oak root and bounced into the dirt.

  Abandoning it without a second thought, Felix was able to pull Melancon into a stumbling run. Once they had made it to St. Charles Avenue, they hopped on a passing streetcar and found themselves panting and filthy on one of the old wooden benches, near the back.

  “I think I’ve had enough parades to last a lifetime,” Felix said, pressing some tissue he’d borrowed from another passenger onto Melancon’s bloody temple.

  The rusty metal box powered up, sounded its warning clang, and commenced its tilting, rumbling track back towards downtown New Orleans.

  They arrived on Canal Street just as the fat raindrops began to fall from the leaden clouds.

  Twelve

  A bag of ice in one hand, a full tumbler of his whisky in the other, Melancon could feel himself nearly coming apart at the seams.

  He took a quick inventory: a blue, swollen bruise across his temple; a nosebleed dripping out like an old faucet; cuts and scrapes and torn clothes; a fedora flattened and left behind on LaSalle and sixty seconds of memory simply gone from when the spear shaft had knocked him unconscious, like a film reel being cut by a censorious projectionist.

  An old, childless man. A man without a family. A battered fossil growing quietly drunk on a rainy Sunday night while who knows how many young women were out there, writhing under their impending demise.

  An unread casefile glowered at him from his desk. His eyesight was blurry from the whack, but it was important that he read this now, while there was still time left. So little time, but time. There might be something valuable here, anything to help them suss out the kidnapper’s MO.

  Felix had already begun. He sat across the room, sleeves rolled up, staring intently into the copies he’d made of the report Janine gave them that morning.

  Bracing himself, the old detective took another drink and prepared to dig into the past once again.

  July 1998. A lonely stretch of highway outside of Panama City, Florida. A place called Mimosa Gas and Grocery. Early morning. The only person working the store is a twenty-six-year-old Marine Biology major at Gulf Coast University named Jessica Diaz.

  Melancon turns the picture of Diaz over in his hand. Nothing on the back. She’s a lovely but bored looking Latina with streaks in her hair. A round face, a little chubby on the chin, but with a fetching symmetry. An intelligent glint rests in her brown eyes.

  She doesn’t yet know what is going to happen to her.

  Melancon finds a written description of the CCTV recording, which the file states was blurry and hard to decipher. 1998 after all. The technology of filming everything in crystal clear recall was still years away. But, the surveillance camera outside records a purple Pontiac Bonneville pull up to gas pump number five at 1:06 AM. It has tinted windows and a left taillight busted. Two men exit the car. One is tall, over six feet. The other is average, maybe five nine or ten. Both are wearing black balaclavas that have no business in a Florida July. The tall one is dressed in some kind of Hawaiian shirt and blue jeans. The short one has a Chicago Bulls jersey on. Both wear undershirts. Because of this, the camera cannot decipher the skin tone of either man. The tall one has a black pistol tucked into his belt, behind his back. The camera catches it as they enter the glass doors. Fingerprints are later found on the glass.

  The camera inside is even worse, and it records only a sliver of events. Jessica with trembling hands in the air. Jessica frantically opening the cash register.

  She starts shoveling dollar bills onto the counter, urgently. The tall man points the pistol at her and leans over the counter. He says something which seems to visibly upset her.

  She shakes her head. She wants to live.

  Now they have all the money in the register, but for some reason, the men are not satisfied. They seem to linger. They are here for another reason entirely. The men take her into a back room where there are no cameras to record what happens next.

  The file describes a customer calling in two hours later to report the store being suspiciously empty. An officer later arrives to find Jessica in the back. A bullet hole from a nine millimeter is in the center of her chest, torn through her university hoody. There are signs that she’d been raped. Her pants have been…

  Melancon stopped reading, put his trembling hand on the cool glass of his whisky bottle. Best to skip ahead, he thought to himself. Or you might not be much use to anyone.

  The main thing investigators have to work with are fingerprints from the two, still unidentified suspects. At least, unidentified until Melacnon came along with his beer bottle trick and matched one set to Trombone Landry’s.

  Towards the end, Melancon finds the Lead Detective’s notes. Jessica Diaz was with child, the coroner’s report states. Early in her pregnancy, but enough to make it count as a double murder under Florida’s fetal homicide law.

  Melancon reads on and finds the leads drying up. The fingerprints return no matches. One of the only real clues in the file, albeit a small one, is that as the Bonneville is leaving the parking lot, the blurry camera manages to make out the first two letters of the license plate: NL. Investigators try to match it in the database but come up with far too many hits to be of any use.

  There is more there, but Melacon had had enough.

  The thunder rolled outside, and he felt suddenly sick to his stomach.

  That throbbing temple where the spear had struck. The whisky wouldn’t cure it. And the pain did not, contrary to popular sentiment, make Melancon feel more alive. It made him feel worse, much worse. The weakness of his flesh, the absolute indifference of the world, the rain falling in buckets outside his Basin Street window—the whisky wouldn’t help any of that.

  “We need new guns,” Felix was saying.

  Melancon turned to the safe behind his desk and removed two more .38 revolvers.

  “Those are the last two. Will have to get you to buy a few more if we lose these. Meanwhile we need to report the ones the tribe took as stolen.

  The two pistols sat on the mahogany and Melancon took a long drink while he looked at them.

  Felix nodded towards the manila file. “What you figure?” he said.

  But Melancon choked on his word, shook his head and looked at his feet.

  The young detective shot his partner another worried look, pulled a lawn chair up in front of the desk. He let the dog get in between his knees, gave him a good rub behind the ears, and then kicked the ball across the room so Scrappy would take off. He laced his fingers up on the desk and leaned in.

  “Look, David. Things are going to work out, you’ll see. We are going to be OK. Min Ji is going to be OK. And so what if the 24 hour mark passes us by in the morning? Maybe that’s for the best. I know you have a history with the NOPD, as do I. We don’t trust them. But…maybe they can handle this. Maybe we do need to step back and get a little perspective on things.”

  Melancon emptied his glass, felt a few errant streams of mash running down his stubbly cheek.

  He couldn’t stop it from spilling out. It was coming whether he wanted it to or not. So better just let some of the steam out, to keep the explosion at bay just a bit longer.

  “She’d be what, 30, 31 now?” he said at Felix, the deep burn hollowing out his gullet. “She’d be a young woman just…competent…beautiful. She’d be just who she was…the cement of her…would have set by now, for sure. Who would she be? I’ll never know. What would she believe in and how would she behave? She would surely have children, little grandbabies…and a farm. A lovely fig farm up in Tangipahoa or something.”

  Felix nodded. “I know it hurts partner. But you have to separate this case from what happened to Julie.”

  Melancon took another slug off
the bottle.

  Jessica Diaz. The girl on I-10. Min Ji. One more drink for…

  Felix stood up.

  “I know now isn’t the best time, partner. But, I need to ask you something, since we are on the subject.”

  Melancon found himself chewing on his lower lip.

  “It’s about Julie,” he said.

  An errant tear was trying to jerk its way out of his face. Stifling it, he looked up at his young partner with pained, blue eyes.

  “Do you have any idea where she might have been working…before she disappeared?”

  He hesitated, listening to the clock in the room ticking. What time was it anyway? His body felt like it had been up for days on no sleep.

  “She was in school. She wasn’t working. I told you that.”

  Felix looked uncertain, but nodded his head.

  “Why?” Melancon slurred.

  “Just…something I’ve been thinking about. I’ve been looking into it a little to see if maybe there is some way I could help. Maybe something you missed…”

  Melancon gave him a withering look.

  “I just mean because you were so close to the case. The personal nature of it all. There were probably things that you couldn’t possibly see. Like when you hold a painting up one inch from your face. So, I thought, maybe there might have been...something else.”

  “No kid, I don’t think so,” Melancon whispered.

  “Well. Let’s drop it and talk about this casefile.”

  Melancon nodded. It was late, and the day had been ridiculously long. But there was work left to be done yet. If only he could keep it together.

  “I mean, it is pretty shocking to realize who we are dealing with here. What kind of a person would it take to put a bullet in a young girl who was just doing her job? You’d have to really want to do it. And the sexual aspect? Do you suppose she was…chosen? Premeditated? I mean you’d have to be…”

  Melancon knew what you’d have to be. You’d have to be so disconnected from any reasonable human impulse that you were beyond the pale, so far beyond it that you had forgotten what the pale even was and migrated into a whole other country. You’d have to be so far out into the swamp, that you’d lost sight of the ramparts hovering behind you in the distance, forgotten that a place of human warmth and love and cooperation even existed.