by Seth Pevey
That’s what you’d have to be.
“She…Jessica was pregnant.”
Felix nodded somberly.
“And the girl on I-10 was…pregnant.”
Another nod.
“And we know that Min Ji was with child as well…”
“Could just be coincidence. Or could be some kind of pattern,” Felix said, staring at Melancon’s now empty whisky bottle.
“I think I’m about to call my ex-wife,” Melancon announced.
The dog whimpered.
“I don’t think that is wise, partner…not now. Why don’t you sleep on it.”
The old detective tried his best to grin through the pain of a bruised face, if only to get Felix to stop with the worrying. “I can’t sleep through something like this, kid.” He reached for the old rotary phone he kept on his desk.
Only one ring. “Dorothy?”
“You sure you want to be doing that?” Felix said, from across the office. But it was far too late.
“Yes, it’s David. Yes, I know what time it is. Yes, I have been. Yes, whisky. Well, so what? No, there is no….no, I’m fine. Ok listen. You heard about the girl out on I-10 right?”
“You are calling me late at night, drunk and with no emergency, to ask me that?” Dorothy said. She yawned and Melancon could hear a male voice whispering in the background.
“So, you heard about it? The I-10 girl?”
A groggy, feminine voice from the past on the end of the line. “Well, of course David. It was all over the local news. Are you alright? You sound…not alright.”
“No, I’m not alright, Dorothy. Just listen. I think I might have found the guy who did it. And it looks like he has killed other young girls before. Local guy. Plays the trombone in the quarter and bashes people with spear shafts for fun.”
“Ok, David. So…what are you saying?”
Melancon turned away from Felix in his swivel chair, facing the window and the rain. A tear was rolling down his cheek. An honest to God tear.
A heavy pause on the line. “Are you saying…what I think you are, David? About Julie?”
“Maybe, it’s a long shot. But things are starting to add up.”
“David. You need to stop drinking. You are tearing yourself up. That was over a decade ago and…”
“You know what I was thinking about the other day, Dorothy. I was thinking about how, if Julie was still around, she would be at that age where she would start to have kids of her own. She would probably have two or maybe three babies. Grandchildren…I wish I had seen those grandchildren.
“Oh David,” she said. “It’s late. How much have you had to drink?”
“Not enough, Dorothy. You know that the girl out on the highway was pregnant, don’t you?”
“David…”
“And the girl we are missing right now. The Korean girl…she was also…”
“David…”
She just kept saying his name.
“And another girl, from a long time ago. Who he killed. She was also pregnant.”
This time, just a sigh.
“This guy seems to have a thing for young, good-looking women. And he…he does things to them. Sexual things Dorothy. He seems to like to...anyway he seems to have a thing for pregnant women. Some kind of a kink, or fetish.”
“Ok David. Now is not a good time.” An angry edge had come into her voice now. She seemed to be arguing with the male voice about whether to get off the phone or not.
Melancon wiped his eyes, picked up the empty bottle and upended it for any drops he’d forgotten.
“Look, Dorothy. I know it has been a while and we’re cold on each other these days. But I need to know, beyond any reasonable doubt, if there was any chance that our daughter could have been…”
“What David…Could have been what?”
He licked his lips, watching the rain fall. “Pregnant.”
Silence—long and heavy. The clock ticking. A few more whimpers from Scrappy’s corner.
She finally spoke. “Look, David…she was scheduled to have it taken care of, so it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. She was only a few weeks into it and said it wasn’t working out with the guy. I wanted to tell you David, but you already seemed like you were on the verge of falling apart. I didn’t want to make it worse on you. And with the drinking, I thought it might actually kill you. You know you made some references to suicide during that time and…”
“So it’s true Dorothy? You trying to tell me that our daughter was pregnant when she disappeared?”
“Oh David, don’t take it so bad. We both loved her but that was a long time ago…”
But it might as well have been yesterday to David Melacnon. He slammed his forehead down on the desk in front of him, causing Felix to look up. The dog whimpered again, and the detective lost his battle against the rising bile in his stomach. He leaned over to vomit into a small metal trashcan.
He reached for his bottle, found it still empty, and before he could stop himself had thrown it against the wall. It smashed into a thousand fragments. “All the secrets you kept from me, Dorothy. All those little details about our daughter…all those little somethings that you kept from me but never should have. You never should have because I’m a fucking detective Dorothy. Don’t you think you should have told me everything? Every little detail. So that maybe I could have done my job better? Wouldn’t you want me to do my job Dorothy?”
“David, maybe you ought to go in and talk to someone. They have these therapists now, these medicines that…”
“I’m talking to you, aren’t I? Not that it does any good, the way you keep secrets. Does your new husband Bill know you were supposed to be a grandmother and that you just neglected to tell me about that fact for a decade? Have it taken care of Dorothy? Well it looks like some psycho serial killer took care of it for us, Dorothy, and you helped cover his goddamn tracks.”
There was a heavy silence on the other end of the phone.
“I’ve got to go David. Maybe I’ve made a mistake even picking up tonight. But you know I care about you.”
“No. I don’t know anything of the kind,” he said, and retched again into the can.
He tried to calm down. “Look. I’m just upset. What about this guy, Dorothy? You said she had started seeing some guy? Why didn’t I know about that? What guy? I’m a goddamn detective Dorothy. Don’t you think that’s the first guy I should have interviewed?”
“I never met him, and I didn’t know his name, or how serious they might be. As far as I know it was a one night stand. I’m just telling you that we had lunch two or so weeks before the storm. She told me she had taken a pregnancy test and it had turned up positive, but that it wasn’t working out with the guy. That she had scheduled an…an abortion. That is all I know. She seemed sensitive about it, obviously. I figured, wait a while and then broach the subject with her again. Only…I never got the chance.”
“Jesus Christ Dorothy.”
“Don’t put this on me David. You weren’t there. You were off in your bottles and your investigations and we…”
She went on like that for a minute or two. Having her own say now. Airing her own long list of grievances. The detective looked up from the phone and saw that his young partner was sweeping up the fragments of his whisky bottle, a look of deep disappointment and sadness in his green eyes.
“Maybe you should hang up the phone,” Felix said as he emptied the dustpan into the trash.
Melancon tried to cut her off. “Dorothy, I’ve got to go.”
She kept going on, listing a long litany of his failures as a father, a husband, a detective.
“Let it go, man,” Felix said.
So, he did. He hung up the phone.
The two detectives just stared at each other for a minute.
But he wasn’t off the hook yet. Felix had his own list as well. “Look, Melancon. I know you are going through some shit. But I’m going to have to insist that you quit drinking until this case is closed. I
f you don’t, I’ve decided to pursue it on my own. Because I don’t think you are in any shape to be…”
“She was pregnant,” Melancon whispered, causing his young partner to go still and quiet.
The clock ticked, the dog whimpered, they could hear footsteps in the apartments above them.
Melancon stood on shaky legs. There was a redness filling his vision, blocking out the world. A rage had built up in his chest that was not yet satisfied. He felt it coming up from the pit of him, and all at once let out a terrible roar. The suffering cry of a wounded animal echoed through the office. He thrashed at his own desk with the back of his hand. The tumbler went flying, clanged on the floor but did not break. One of the pistols slid off and landed with its chamber open on the cypress. The case file scattered. The little balls of John the Conqueror root fluttered and bounced and found the ground.
And finally, the crumpled picture of Julie. It landed on its back, and that lovely, long gone daughter looked up at the two detectives. Melancon bent down and gently placed it back into his pocket, a look of shame on his aged face.
“You’re no good to anybody like this old man,” Felix said, his shoulders squared to him, ready to restrain his insanity if necessary.
Melancon collapsed back into his chair, put his hands to his face and held them there. “She was pregnant. My Daughter. My little Figgy. She was going to have a baby. Then she disappeared. She was going to be a Goddamn….organic…farmer...she was going to…”
Felix put a hand on the man’s shoulder and let him sob.
“That’s no excuse to throw yourself away, Detective. Or to let Min Ji die. Or to let this asshole get away with any more bullshit.”
Melancon remembered himself, looking at the scattered debris on the floor.
“I’m sorry. Sorry for all this Felix.”
“It’s ok man. Just like you helped me in my time of need, when Robert was killed, I’m here to help you. That is what partners do. Now I know your daughter means the world to you. And your gut says this guy might have been involved in her disappearance. But we don’t know that for sure. But it is just one more reason for us to nail this guy. Right now, there is another girl out there. Min Ji. She needs us Detective. There is a killer on the loose. A kidnapper and a rapist. He plays the trombone and performs as the Wildman on Super Sunday. And besides a whole bunch of Voodoo nonsense, that is about all we’ve got to go on. A set of prints to a murder twenty years old. That doesn’t help us find Min Ji. Hell, it doesn’t even connect him to Min Ji. We still haven’t pieced this all together. I believe we have just seen the tip of the iceberg. Now I need you on this one, Melancon. I can’t do it without you, and you know that.”
“They raped the woman in Panama City. Her pants were…”
“OK. OK. Let’s focus on what matters. Here. Now. The next step. What are your ideas, Detective?”
Melancon gave the boy a piercing look. His head was full of ideas, notions, misgivings. There were so many paths to take, each of them splitting and re-splitting into a nebulous web of overwhelming decisions.
But something happened then that stopped the conversation, if it could be called that, dead in its tracks.
The first indication that something else had gone awry, on that rainy Sunday night, was the sound. It was an abrupt, violent, animal sound, and it was coming from the other side of the office, just near the door.
Scrappy. The little creature had taken suddenly, violently ill, and was now being wracked by some sort of terrible seizure. The tremors of his body rattled against the cypress wood, echoing through the room. Foam erupted from the corners of his mouth and he writhed on his back, legs kicking up into the air.
“What’s happening?” Felix cried. “He’s having some sort of seizure.” The boy was quickly down on one knee trying to comfort the dog as best he could.
“Stay away from his teeth,” Melancon said, tripping over the debris-ridden floor as he tried to make his way towards the tragic scene. “They bite down hard when they seize.”
“What’s wrong with him?” Felix yelled at his partner.
“I don’t know Felix but…I don’t think he’s going to make it. He’s having a fit. Maybe he’s eaten something poisonous. Can you think of anything?”
Felix looked around the room, frantic. They both spotted it at the same time—something white lying by the doorway. Even Melancon, in his drunken state, knew unequivocally that the white square hadn’t been there when they’d come home from the parade a few hours before.
“What is that?” Melancon said. “I’ll hold him, you take a look.”
Felix went to investigate. The envelope had a brown powder pouring out of it. The tell-tale damp tatters of a dog’s exploratory scrounging were evident now, as was a trail of the sickly smelling dust leading from the doorway to Scrappy’s bed.
“Fuck, someone’s poisoned him,” Felix wailed, picking up the envelope and noticing an index card was stuck inside. He read it aloud in a shaky, furious voice.
“Antidote @ 1520 Basin Street.”
Melancon knew the place as soon as he heard Felix read the address.
It was the place the Hattian woman had mentioned, the place they’d mocked for being a tourist trap. It was a place he passed by nearly every day, sometimes spying an old woman sneaking cigarettes in the early morning light outside her storefront, often wearing strange and colorful dresses.
It was the address of the Voodoo shop.
“Could be a trap,” Melancon said.
“But look at him,” Felix replied. It was true, the dog was convulsing in a way that didn’t leave much other hope. The shop was a mere three blocks away. They’d have to act fast.
“It is either that or shoot him. And I’m not about to shoot my dog,” Felix said.
And so, Melancon found himself staggering his way down the street in the rain, following Felix, who carried the dog in his outstretched arms.
The old detective tried to stay balanced on his booze-soaked legs. His temple throbbed and his gut was a sour, burning lemon. If this was to be an ambush, he was in no state to defend himself. But there was no question about it—Felix was going, and Melancon wasn’t about to let his partner walk into a trap alone.
Foolish young Felix Herbert. He hadn’t yet learned some important life lessons.
Dogs were just like anything else, Melancon thought to himself, staggering through the darkness and the rain. They poisoned themselves, or they didn’t. They died, or they didn’t. And if they did die then that was just what happened. If a little life disappeared off the Earth and was never seen or heard from again, did it even tip the scales a fraction? That was just what happened to everything you loved. It died. It disappeared. It was swallowed up by the earth. It ended, often horribly, choking on the world’s many venoms.
Thirteen
The light was on but the door was locked at Mrs. Isadore’s Voodoo House, just down Basin Street from the detective agency. Inside, the owner of the shop sat drinking her tea near the empty cash register, waiting for the heavy rain to pass over. The wind howled and threw leaves and trash against her expensive shop window with its hand lettering, causing her to cringe with each salvo.
An angry wind. Something of rot in it. A festering.
Isadore Ducet was 72, creole, animated by tightly braided locks of hair and neck skin that swung when she walked. She wore colorful, loose clothes to hide her weight, smoked clove cigarettes, loved to watch Wheel of Fortune. She was alone now, but her life was peopled by many spirits.
And they were speaking tonight. You’d look around the shop and get the wrong impression—they didn’t talk in corny postcard platitudes, nor did they inhabit any shiny Chinese trinket. She sold those things, sure. But the spirits could not be bought. You could not hold them in your hand. They would not live on your shelf when you returned to Boston.
They were the past. Their hands wimbled just under the soil and their eyes saw what was beyond every closed door.
And right
then they were singing a terrible song about what was coming through her own door. She looked down into her tea and saw his face there clearly in the leaves. There was a cold, cold wind that seemed to blow right through her bones.
She could only wait, surrounded by the herbs and feathers and beads and dolls and masks, candles, petals, charms, fetishes. The things you could hold in your hand, put in your pocket and take away in place of your coin.
One picture on her desk was not for sale, and she spoke to it now. A bean-headed man looked back at her, his true colors hidden by the black and white film. But she remembered them: green eyes, purple kerchief, high yellow.
That bean head that had once lain beside her.
“Can you feel that Mr. Ducet? There is something coming on the wind.”
But he didn’t reply.
A rapping at the door confirmed it. Isadore looked out through the glass and saw the face she dreaded. Wet with rain it loomed there, unmoving, its eyes behind dark glasses. The long man, all slender and muscled, stood in the dark and peered in at her. Storm clouds gathered and darkened behind his great head.
She walked to her shop door. Her hands trembled, but found their way to the lock. A force moved inside of her, twisted the key in the door, moved aside to usher him in. There was no other way. When it came to your door you could not refuse it. You had to welcome it in and pour it tea and try to talk it back out the door with sweetness and warmth.
The long legs stepped into the room, the cuffs of his pants dripping onto her floor. His face was carved out of wood, and as a large grin fermented there on his lips, she heard them whisper.
Fly, Fly, Fly.
But she could not. Because the man’s living voice spoke louder, deeper, more immediate in the tight little storeroom.
“Isadore,” the man said.
She found herself backing up, keeping her face to him. Her wide bottom fell into its chair. A silent prayer, another glance at the photograph on her desk.