Tortured Spirits Read online

  “There’s no such thing as magic,” Miriam said as Jake carried Edgar back to the car.

  That’s what you think, Jake thought. He had encountered the supernatural too many times to doubt its existence. Sliding behind the wheel, Jake bowed his head.

  Edgar croaked beside him.

  “I’m sorry, Edgar. We both knew it was a long shot.”

  Sitting up, he turned the ignition for the car’s air-conditioning and called Carrie.

  “How’s the Florida sunshine?”

  “Hot,” Jake said. “Miami’s a bust; this case is closed. Miriam Santiago was the right person, but all she managed to do was put the kibosh on my plans.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “It’ll take me twenty hours to drive home. I’ll spend one more night here and leave at the crack of dawn.”

  “You want me to find you lodging along the way?”

  “No, I’ll play it by ear and see as much of the coast as possible.”

  “Bring me some fresh oranges, will you?”

  “Sure.” Jake set the phone in the cup compartment for easy access. Without warning, his left hand clamped onto the steering wheel with unexpected force, like a magnet drawn to metal. He blinked at his hand.

  I didn’t do that.

  His right hand shifted the car into gear, then seized the steering wheel as well.

  I didn’t do that, either…

  His foot stomped on the gas pedal, and the car surged forward with such speed it threw his head back.

  “Shit!”

  He tried to reposition his hands, but they wouldn’t budge. Both hands gripped the wheel as if his fingers had been welded to it. He tried to ease up on the gas, but his foot continued to press it. The Fusion whipped around an SUV; Jake’s hands and foot executed the maneuver in perfect synchronization with no guidance from him. He tried to stomp on the brake, but his other foot did not respond. He had no control over his body, couldn’t even turn his head.

  “Edgar, we’ve got trouble!”

  Edgar cawed beside him.

  No such thing as magic, my ass!

  The Fusion screeched to a stop at a red light, throwing Jake forward.

  A police car cruised by, its uniformed driver casting a disapproving look in his direction.

  The light turned green, and Jake’s hands steered the car left onto a street lined with low commercial buildings. He spotted a couple of Hispanic men chatting in front of a cigar store and a woman unloading her baby from a car.

  In his head, he heard a rhythmic sound: thrum … thrum … THRUM!

  Almost a year earlier, he had heard similar drumbeats when Katrina had forced him to endure violent, horrific hallucinations. He had given Katrina his business card under innocent circumstances when he knew her as Ramera Evans, a publicist dating Edgar. She had used the oil from his fingertips on the card—his DNA—to cast spells on him, including tying his back into knots. And he had just given his card to Miriam.

  “Damn it!” He wanted to pound the steering wheel but couldn’t.

  A pair of teenage girls in revealing clothing crossed the street ahead.

  Moisture formed on Jake’s brow. If the car sped up, he would strike both girls, killing them. He could just see it: he would mow down the innocent girls, wind up in a high-speed police chase against his will, and ultimately be charged with vehicular manslaughter and serve time in a Florida prison, where big men with tattoos would beat him for his crimes …

  Jake wanted to honk the horn but couldn’t even manage that. The car slowed down, just missing the girls, and accelerated again.

  She’s inside my head, he thought. Seeing through my eyes! He pictured Miriam sitting on a plastic-covered sofa in her house, with a video game controller gripped in her hands. Maybe a candle burned beside her …

  “Slow down, esse!” a man called.

  A big green sanitation truck appeared in the distance, blocking his lane.

  Oh no.

  A sanitation worker grabbed a garbage can on the sidewalk and dumped its contents into the bowels of the truck.

  The Fusion increased speed. In the passenger seat, Edgar cawed. Jake heard the drums beating, the Fusion’s engine, and the sanitation truck’s compacter all at the same time.

  The sanitation worker climbed onto the side of the truck, where at least he would be safe from the impact. The truck’s rear filled Jake’s vision, and he squeezed his eyelids shut, bracing himself for impact.

  His hands jerked the steering wheel left, and the car veered in that direction. Jake opened his eye and saw they had cleared the garbage truck, but now he was driving in the wrong lane. Relief washed over him, mixed with anger.

  “You bitch!”

  His jaws snapped shut, rattling his teeth, and he could not open them again. Protests issued from his throat and through his nostrils.

  A red pickup appeared ahead, driving straight toward him.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have said that …

  The truck grew closer, larger. Jake glimpsed a man wearing mirrored sunglasses and a straw hat. The man honked the truck’s horn.

  Jake waited for the Fusion to switch back into its lane. That didn’t happen. Instead, Jake’s foot stomped on the brake, and the Fusion screeched to a sudden stop.

  The man jerked his steering wheel to one side, steering the truck into the opposite lane and passing Jake.

  Jake exhaled. At least the pickup’s driver didn’t stop, get out, and beat him to a pulp.

  Jake’s left foot slid off the brake, and the Fusion lurched forward. The car switched into the correct lane and navigated a left-hand turn. The sidewalks appeared deserted, though Jake saw plenty of vehicles parked in the lots of commercial buildings.

  Where the hell is she taking us?

  The Fusion decelerated and turned into the lot of a yellow sandstone building with Cuban architecture.

  A nightclub, Jake thought as the Fusion circled the lot. The car pulled into a parking space, and Jake stepped on the brake. His right hand left the steering wheel, shifted the car into Park, and killed the ignition. Then he grasped the steering wheel again.

  Jake studied the stairs leading up to the nightclub entrance and the stone balcony there.

  A black metal door on the building’s side burst open, and three men charged out: one black, one Hispanic, and another who looked like a mixture of the two. They ran straight for the Fusion, and against his will, Jake unlocked the doors, which the men jerked open. One of the men pried Jake’s fingers loose from the steering wheel, and another seized Edgar’s cage, causing the raven to caw.

  Now Jake wanted to hang on to the steering wheel, but two men pulled him from the car. The Hispanic man snatched the keys from the ignition, and he and the black man jerked Jake forward. Jake’s feet moved of their own volition, with no assistance from him. Not a single part of his body responded to his commands, and he saw no one on the street to help him.

  Abducted in broad daylight.

  The men guided him through the open side door and down a flight of cool, dark cement stairs to a storage cellar where cases of liquor had been stacked to the ceiling. The Hispanic man moved a metal chair into the middle of the room and pushed Jake onto it. The black man looped a dirty rope around Jake’s torso several times, pinning his arms to his sides and his back to the chair. Jake had done the same thing to Simon Taggert, the head of White River Security, just three months earlier. Taggert ended up dead, though not by Jake’s hands.

  The man who looked mixed race set Edgar’s cage on a desk piled high with papers. Jake stared down a short, narrow hall leading to a bathroom. Salsa music drifted downstairs.

  The Hispanic man nodded to his comrades, who went upstairs, and stood before Jake. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not going to do anything to you.”

  Jake heard the metal door above swing open, and sunlight spilled down the stairs like water. The door closed, and footsteps scraped the stairs: heels clacking on cement.

  M
iriam Santiago.

  He heard her speak another language and raised his eyebrows upon realizing it was French rather than Spanish.

  The Hispanic man nodded in response to her commands, then headed upstairs.

  A moment later, she stood where he had, holding a burning white candle in one hand and Jake’s business card in the other. “Now let’s try this again. Only this time, I’ll ask the questions.”

  FOUR

  Turning to the desk, Miriam looked at Edgar. She blew out the candle and set it down.

  Jake regained feeling in his arms and legs, and his jaw loosened. He opened his mouth and moved his lower jaw in a circle, then opened and closed his fingers.

  Miriam nodded at Edgar. “Who is he?”

  “I call him Edgar.”

  “I didn’t ask you what you call him. I asked who he is. What’s his real name?”

  “His real name is Edgar.”

  “Do you still want to play games with me after you saw what I can do?”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Do you expect me to trust some gringo who comes knocking on my door, asking personal questions about my family and my relationship to vodou? I brought you here so Fernando and his men could guarantee my safety.”

  “Why do you need help from them? If it was really you who took me for that spin, I should think you wouldn’t need hired muscle.”

  “Fernando isn’t muscle, and I don’t pay him. We’re partners in this club. He’s loyal to me and my husband.” She gestured at the candle. “I practice white vodou. It can’t be used to harm anyone, even in self-defense.”

  “It came damn close.”

  “You should be happy; you hoped I possessed a working knowledge of vodou, and it turns out I do.”

  Jake had to admit he was relieved. If Miriam could control his body from several blocks away, she just might be powerful enough to restore Edgar.

  The upstairs door opened and closed, and Fernando trotted downstairs. Jake recognized his .38 in one of Fernando’s hands and the envelope with Miriam’s information in the other.

  “This is all that was in the car,” Fernando said. He handed the envelope to Miriam, who took out its contents, and set the gun on the desk.

  Miriam scanned the documents, then returned them to the envelope, which she tossed onto the desk. “For a private eye, you didn’t get much on me.”

  “My assistant did that research. I haven’t had much free time.”

  “Who is Edgar to you?”

  “He’s a raven.”

  Without taking her eyes off Jake, Miriam said, “Fernando, use Helman’s gun to shoot his friend the raven.”

  Fernando picked up the .38 without hesitation, clicked off the safety, and aimed the gun at Edgar, who flapped his wings in a frantic burst of motion.

  With my own gun! Jake thought. “Hold it! Okay, relax. I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

  Fernando looked to Miriam, who nodded. He clicked the safety back on and set the gun on the counter.

  Edgar calmed down.

  Jake faced Miriam. “His full name is Edgar Hopkins.”

  Miriam held his gaze. “Wait for me upstairs, Fernando.”

  Fernando went upstairs without complaint.

  “That’s a long name for a raven,” Miriam said.

  “It comes with a title: Detective, as in NYPD. We used to be partners until I resigned from the force, which is how I wound up as a PI. Edgar got involved with your niece, not knowing she was a wrong number. Ramera was dating Prince Malachai at the same time.”

  “I knew about this Prince Malachai. I had a number of conversations with my niece, and when I became convinced she had embraced black vodou, I used my contacts to see what she was up to. I couldn’t believe it when I heard she was distributing Black Magic.”

  “So why didn’t you do something to stop it? Do you have any idea how many people died because of that shit?”

  “I was prepared to intervene when I learned she had created an army of zonbies. Then she and this Malachai turned up dead in the foundation for a new high-rise. Problem solved.”

  “I figured out she was playing both Edgar and Malachai for fools and told Edgar. He raced off to confront her in her apartment. I got there just as she was leaving and found him like”—he pointed at Edgar—”this.”

  “And then you killed my niece?”

  “No. She killed Malachai and turned him into some sort of superzombie, different from the others. I did kill him. I stole her drugs, and she agreed to restore Edgar to normal in exchange for her supply.” Katrina had really wanted Nicholas Tower’s Afterlife program, a research project on the supernatural and the afterlife that had cost millions of dollars, which Katrina had labored on. “I agreed to her terms, but Edgar had other plans. She slipped from a girder at the construction site. I tried to save her, but Edgar literally got in her face, and she fell to her death.”

  “Why are you coming to me now for help?”

  “I believed only Katrina—Ramera—could restore Edgar. Two and a half months ago, I learned otherwise. It took me some time to track you down. I spent three weeks in New Orleans before I found a lead. That was yesterday.”

  “This Edgar Hopkins must mean a lot to you for you to expend so much effort on his behalf.”

  “He’s my friend.”

  “He’s lucky to have a friend like you.”

  “Edgar has a son who needs him. I promised the boy I’d bring his father back home. Can you help me?”

  Leaning close to the birdcage, Miriam looked Edgar in the eye. “I can help you.” She turned to Jake. “But I’m no philanthropist. I don’t work miracles for free.”

  Of course not. “What do you want?”

  Miriam set a chair before Jake and sat facing him. “You were honest with me. I’ll extend the same courtesy to you.”

  “I’m a captive audience.”

  “You know where I was born?”

  “Someplace called Pavot Island.”

  “Pavot Island is on the opposite side of Cuba and close enough for us to spit on. It’s the same size as Jamaica. Pavot Island has always promoted itself as a democracy, but because we trade goods and services with Cuba over America’s objections, the US government pretends Pavot Island doesn’t even exist. Pavot Island doesn’t belong to the United Nations; there’s no US ambassador there. Check ten maps available in this country, and you’ll be lucky to find Pavot identified on three of them.”

  Jake had never heard of Pavot Island until his search for Miriam.

  “My mother, Louise, was born on Pavot. So was my father and so was I. But my father died when I was very young, and my mother brought me here for a better life. She remarried to a man named Mincey, who worked in a factory in New Orleans and owned his own house. He was my sister Havana’s father, but my mother was unlucky in love, and he too died young. My mother raised Havana and me in the ways of white vodou, though she jokingly called it ‘that old black magic.’

  “Years later, back on Pavot, the political climate took a turn for the worse. An ambitious man named Ernesto Malvado made dangerous noises about changing the country’s direction. Pavot was a democracy, albeit a corrupt one, and Malvado preached fascism.

  “I’d always felt closer to my birth island than to my adopted country, so when I was old enough to legally make my own decisions, I returned to Pavot Island and joined the Democratic Party, which opposed Malvado’s corporatist party. It was in my role as an activist that I met Andre Santiago. Andre was an idealist like me, but he had something I did not: the ear of the people. He became Malvado’s political opponent. Malvado had the backing of the corporations on the island, but Andre had the support of the people. Wherever Malvado went, Andre showed up with protestors, including me. It must have driven Malvado mad, but he tolerated us while he sowed the seeds of his power. Andre and I married and had two sons.

  “Havana moved to New York City, where she married a man named Evans and gave birth to Ramera. Ramera was eight when M
alvado finally ascended to the power he craved on Pavot. That was a terrible year for my family. Havana and her husband were murdered by drug dealers. Ramera was traumatized, and my mother brought her to New Orleans. There was nothing I could do; Ramera was a US citizen, and Andre and I had problems of our own. Malvado had his soldiers arrest Andre as a dissident. He was sentenced to prison without a trial. I was not allowed to visit my husband and pursued every legal means to do so. The stress was unbearable, and I had two sons to raise alone.

  “For four years, I fought to have my husband freed, while all around me darkness ruled the island. Pavot was always a center for vodou, but with Malvado in charge, black vodou dominated. Through a letter smuggled to me, Andre instructed me to return to the US with our sons and fight for Pavot from here. Fearing for our lives, I obeyed.

  “Fernando and some of our other friends were aboard the boat that brought us here. I spent one month in New Orleans with my mother, and that’s when I met Ramera. She was twelve, and her eyes chilled my soul. I know she needed me, but so did my husband and our sons. I set up shop here in Miami, where most of the people from Pavot in the US live, and established the Andre Santiago Freedom Foundation.

  “For ten years that followed, I lobbied Congress and the White House to pressure Malvado to free my husband. I sent one son to college. Today Carlos is a lawyer and works for the foundation. The other, Roberto, returned to Pavot, where he joined a resistance movement and was killed.

  “Ramera graduated from Tulane University and started writing a book about vodou. She visited me here to interview me about the book, which I tried to discourage her from writing. She was a beautiful woman, sophisticated, and she wanted to expose too much about our religion. The secrets of vodou are not meant to be shared with the common public. She wrote the book over my objections, and it caused controversy among practioners and believers. Ramera then accepted a high-paying research position; she told me nothing about it, told my mother it was directly related to her book.

  “Then Katrina struck, and my mother drowned in her home, and her body floated through the streets. I saw Ramera for the final time at my mother’s funeral. Her eyes were as traumatized as the first time I saw them, but the pain was replaced by fury. I did my best to keep tabs on her and didn’t like what I learned. Vengeance and vodou are a potent and deadly combination, and now she’s dead.