Tortured Spirits Read online

  “My husband has been a political prisoner now for thirty years. Malvado hasn’t executed him, because to do so would make him a martyr. He remains a symbol of the fight for freedom in our land.”

  Jake measured the woman before him. “What do you want from me in exchange for restoring Edgar to his human form?”

  “Isn’t it obvious? I want you to go to Pavot Island, break my husband out of prison, and bring him home to me.”

  Jake studied the intensity in Miriam’s eyes. “Is that all?”

  “I’m your only chance.”

  “Aren’t you better suited to freeing him with your vodou hoodoo than I am?”

  “White vodou isn’t a very practical weapon, and if I set foot on Pavot I’ll be killed on sight. I’m Malvado’s political opposition. He’s not worried about making a martyr out of me; he’s tried to have me killed here. That’s why I’m surrounded by bodyguards, all of them refugees from Pavot.”

  “It sounds like you need an army.”

  “You’re selling yourself short. I told you I followed my niece’s activities. There’s only one reason to distribute Black Magic: to create an army of undead soldiers. Once Ramera died, any zonbies she created ceased to function. But in the days leading up to her death, someone took it upon himself to exterminate her soldiers, half of them in a warehouse Ramera and Malachai used to manufacture their Magic, the rest at drug spots throughout the city. The police believe one man was responsible. I’d say whoever did that kind of damage without being caught knows what he’s doing.”

  Jake chose not to confirm her suspicion. “How will I get to Pavot Island?”

  “Take a plane. It’s a short flight. Or take a boat. Pavot is a dictatorship, but Americans are allowed to travel there, even though there’s no tourism trade. Once you arrive, I’ll set up a meeting with a contact from the resistance.”

  “How will I get back here? Even if I manage to break your husband out, this Malvado isn’t going to let me board a plane with him.”

  “Regardless of how you travel to Pavot, you’ll have to take a boat back, just like all the people who come here illegally. I can arrange that.”

  “Are there zonbies there?”

  “I never saw one while I lived there, but I heard stories. Everyone has. The tales spread fear over the island. One more reason for decent people to flee here.”

  “No wonder Malvado doesn’t want Pavot to join the UN.” Jake hated zonbies. “Ramera told me she’d summoned a demon. She called it a Loa. According to her, she fornicated with it and had its baby, which she killed as a sacrifice. That’s how she learned about Magic.”

  “She told you that?”

  “We had a chat before she died.”

  “Kalfu, a Petro Loa—one of the aggressive beings. One has to be willing to endure much pain to obtain that level of vodou power.”

  “The same power exists on Pavot?”

  “Yes. Malvado has surrounded himself with bokors who do his bidding. Sugar and rum are Pavot’s primary legal exports, but Malvado makes much more exporting heroin and cocaine. He must harvest Black Magic, too.”

  “You’re not exactly selling me on this whole plan.”

  “Pavot is an island of great beauty and terrible secrets. The chances of you rescuing my husband are slim, and the chances of you getting off that island alive are even slimmer.”

  “What will happen to Edgar? I can’t take him with me obviously.”

  “You’ll leave him with me. I need to make extensive preparations for his transmogrification. It’s one thing to reduce a human being into a lower life-form like a bird but another to turn a bird into a higher life-form, like a man, even if restoring a former man.”

  “Have you done either before?”

  “No.”

  Jake snorted. “So you want me to risk my life on some crazy-assed mission and you can’t even guarantee you can make the payment?”

  “There are no guarantees in life, but I believe I can restore your friend. And if I can’t, no one can. Me, my husband, and my surviving son are the only blood relatives of Ramera’s, and only I practice vodou. I’m you’re only hope.”

  Jake drew in his breath and exhaled. “All right, I’ll do it. I’ll go to Pavot Island and bust your husband out of prison.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.” Miriam opened a desk drawer, withdrew a gleaming knife, and crossed the floor.

  Edgar croaked.

  Jake held Miriam’s gaze, ignoring the blade as it descended and cut the rope binding him to the chair. When the rope fell away, Miriam stepped back and Jake rose.

  “You’ve got one seriously cursed family,” he said. “I’ll take my card back.”

  Smiling, Miriam drew Jake’s card from the base of the candle and handed it to him.

  Jake felt like a fool as he slid the card into his wallet. “How soon—?”

  Rising shouts outside cut him off.

  He and Miriam turned to the open vent in a glass block window ten feet away and heard a woman curse in Spanish. Jake and Miriam glanced at each other, and Miriam ran to the stairway. Jake seized Edgar’s cage, then ran after her. They stood at the bottom of the stairs as the upstairs door opened, spilling sunlight into the gloom.

  Shadows stretched over the wall as Fernando and his men entered with their hands raised. Fernando turned in the opposite direction, with his back to Jake and Miriam.

  But the voice of the woman who had cursed outside stopped them. “Vayan abajo!” Get downstairs.

  Jake and Miriam backed up as the three men descended the stairs with resigned expressions.

  A woman entered the stairwell behind them, bathed in hot sunlight, and slammed the door. “Quedate donde yo te pueda ver.” Stay where I can see you.

  Fernando offered Miriam a regretful smile.

  From his new vantage point, Jake watched the woman’s copper-colored legs as she descended the stairs. She wore Timberland boots and denim shorts. Then he saw the rest of her: a pink tank top that clung to her breasts, a gold necklace that matched her earrings, and a navy-blue New York Yankees baseball cap that held her curly hair in place. She gripped a Beretta in both hands like a pro. A compact video camera dangled from her hip.

  Jake had seen this woman before. Even with her eyes masked by her dark sunglasses, he knew her.

  They stood in a half circle around the woman, who held her gun ready to fire. She glanced in Jake’s direction.

  “Hola, Jake,” Maria Vasquez said.

  FIVE

  “You two know each other?” Miriam said.

  “Oh yeah,” Maria said. “We go way back.”

  Jake looked at Maria’s gun. “A Beretta?”

  “It’s not mine.”

  Fernando blushed.

  Maria turned to Miriam. “Next time you hire three punks to watch your back, give them all guns.”

  Miriam spoke in an even tone. “What’s this all about?”

  “That part of this equation is between me and Jake.”

  “Fernando and I own this club. If you’re here to settle a score with Mr. Helman, take it somewhere else.”

  Maria shook her head. “Lady, I’m not going anywhere until I get some answers.”

  “She was videotaping you through the window,” Fernando said to Miriam.

  Jake frowned. What the hell did Maria want with him here in Miami?

  “What did you hear?” Miriam said.

  “Every crazy word you two said to each other,” Maria said.

  Miriam glanced at Jake, who shrugged.

  “These men are freedom fighters from Pavot Island. Who are you?”

  “Maria Vasquez, detective third grade, NYPD.”

  “That name sounds familiar.”

  “We spoke on the phone nine months ago.”

  “You called to tell me my niece was dead,” Miriam said. “You asked me about Prince Malachai.”

  Jake couldn’t believe it. Maria had spoken to Miriam before he even knew she existed.

  “Good memory.�
�� The toughness never left Maria’s voice.

  “You sounded nicer then. Of course, you weren’t pointing a gun at me.”

  “I didn’t know you were a witch doctor.”

  “You’re out of your jurisdiction, dear. You trespassed on our property and violated our civil rights. This is kidnapping. Or is it an execution?”

  Maria lowered the gun. “It’s neither. Your boys tried to manhandle me. Once I disarmed goyo here, I was in a bind: take off or face off. After everything I just heard, I decided to take the direct approach.” She tossed the gun to Fernando, who caught it and tucked it beneath his shirt. Then her gaze settled on Edgar in the cage.

  “Fernando,” Miriam said, gesturing to the stairs.

  Fernando and the other two men went upstairs.

  Miriam looked from Maria to Jake. “I’ll give you some time alone. Try not to kill each other.” She ascended the stairs, muttering beneath her breath, “New Yorkers.”

  Maria moved close to Jake. “I saw that bird in your office—”

  “Just days after Edgar disappeared.”

  “Fuck you! This is not Edgar. Don’t give me that shit!”

  “I don’t care if you believe me or not. I don’t need to convince you of anything. What the hell are you doing here?”

  “The same thing I was doing in New Orleans.”

  Jake blinked as if he’d been struck. “You were in the crowd outside my hotel …”

  “And outside Mrs. Santiago’s house today.”

  “How long have you been tailing me?”

  Maria took a deep breath. “It feels like years, but it’s been less than one. Since this all started.”

  “Since what all started?”

  “The Black Magic and the fucking zombies. I have sixty DOAs under my name on the board in Homicide. And that’s just the ones who were already dead when you put bullets in their brains. It doesn’t include the vics in the Machete Massacres, the people those zombies killed.”

  “How can you believe in zombies but not that this is Edgar?”

  “I saw those things walking around the streets. Scarecrows. Zombies. Skeletons. And I saw their corpses after you did them. Teeth pulled out, fingers and toes cut off, all to make identification next to impossible. Stuffed with sawdust. Sixty of them. I’ll give you credit: you didn’t use the same gun on all of them. We counted six.”

  “Sixty people? Six guns? Sounds like six killers to me.”

  “But they weren’t killed, because they were already dead. They were all autopsied. Despite all that sawdust packing, the ME determined they’d ingested Black Magic. Some snorted it, some smoked it, and some shot it up. The chemists learned that Magic contains traces of human ashes among other things. It was a never ending cycle, wasn’t it? Junkies OD on Black Magic, turn into zombies. When they can’t function anymore, they get cooked into Black Magic. But where did the first powder come from?”

  Good question, Jake thought. “How did you figure all this out?”

  “I’m a detective, remember? Bernie thinks I’m crazy, and L.T. doesn’t know what to do with me. But no cover-up is going to change the truth. Yeah, cover-up: tourists might avoid the Apple if they knew real zombies walked the streets. It tends to make civilians nervous, you know?”

  Jake saw she was getting worked up. “Maybe it’s best never to discuss it.”

  “Easy for you to say. You’re not on the job anymore, and you don’t have sixty zombie corpses assigned to your name.”

  “Do you actually say ‘zombie’ at work?”

  “You think I’m crazy? With Bernie and L.T., sure, and not even with L.T. anymore. But other people talk about it. Detectives familiar with the case call me the zombie lady. One prick called me Sister Voodoo. He won’t make that mistake again.”

  “You didn’t track me down because the kids are making fun of you at school.”

  “Edgar was kicking it to Dawn Du Pre. The last time he was seen was entering her apartment building. A man fitting your description went into the building that night, too, and was later seen leaving. Dawn left shortly before that. Edgar never left. Then Dawn turned up dead with Prince Malachai in the foundation of a construction site across the street. A little legwork by yours truly revealed she was shtuping Malachai and Edgar at the same time. Only Malachai’s hoppers knew her as Katrina. Guess what? Dawn Du Pre never existed, and Katrina was just an alias. The bitch’s real name was Ramera Evans. But you already know that. You knew it the night you and Edgar went to her building and only you came out.”

  “The night she turned Edgar into this raven.”

  “Stop saying that!”

  “I had something Katrina wanted. She agreed to restore Edgar if I gave it to her. We met at that construction site. Things spiraled out of control. Edgar got in her face and down she went.”

  “Malachai was a lot deader than she was when we found them.”

  “She turned him into something else, some kind of superzombie.”

  “His face was missing.”

  “That was me.” Jake shuddered at the memory of the back of his head caving in Malachai’s face when the undead drug dealer had attempted to crush him. “Now you know my story, whether you believe all of it or not. What’s yours?”

  “I told you all along I was watching you. I knew you were in this up to your eyeball. I tailed you more than once. Got to know your routine pretty well: early morning run, lunch in that little park area next to the Tower, an occasional basketball game with Martin. Between my job and your cases, I never managed to devote as much time to you as I wanted. One night I saw you hop a cab with your luggage, so I followed you to a car rental agency, then across the state before I gave up and went back. I also ran a check on your credit card activity—”

  “That’s illegal.”

  “You’re a person of interest in the disappearance of a police detective. I learned you drove to New Orleans and checked into the French Lily. When you didn’t return after a week, I used my vacation time to go there. I stayed right across the street, with a nice view of your room. And I got your routine down there, too: early morning pickup by your guide, Vincent Wilkins; nine hours of door-to-door legwork; back to your hotel; dinner at a different restaurant every night; online research at the hotel; early to bed. I actually felt sorry for you when I learned you were searching for Miriam Santiago. I was tempted to leave an anonymous note under your door telling you where to find her.”

  Jake’s ears stung. “So why didn’t you?”

  “It became like a game. One vacation week turned into another. I dug into my sick days. Now I’m on leave. When you drove here, I didn’t have to worry about following you, thanks to your plastic. I just did a little stakeout on Miriam’s house. You spent a lot less time talking to her than I expected, which was disappointing. When you left her house, I was sure you finally made my tail because you drove like a madman. Then you pulled into this parking lot, and Miriam’s boys yanked you out of the car, and it looked like you were paralyzed. I snuck out and found that window. It was dumb luck they brought you down here.”

  “Thanks for coming to my rescue, by the way.”

  “I’d have gotten around to it. But I was too interested in your conversation with Miriam. The two of you confirmed everything I suspected about Dawn’s dead soldiers.”

  “It also confirmed what I’ve been telling you about Edgar.”

  “Or it proves Miriam is jerking your chain. She’s playing into your delusion about Edgar to get you to Pavot Island and spring her husband.”

  “You’re risking your career just being here.”

  “I promised myself I’d find Edgar or find out what happened to him. I promised that to Martin, too.”

  “We have that in common, except I know what happened to him.”

  “Too bad I can’t believe anything you say. You’re too dodgy, always covering your tracks. Only a guilty man does that. Your wife is murdered by the Cipher, and he gets eighty-sixed the next day, just hours after Edgar and I in
terviewed you. No one gets collared. No one gets interviewed about the murder. It was just some vigilante, and the city’s happy anyway, right?”

  Jake felt his jaw setting. “I’ll say this only once, okay? Don’t talk about my wife.”

  “I used to ask Edgar about it, and his manner would change; he’d get all quiet and evasive. I think he knew you killed the Cipher and covered for you. Maybe you made Edgar disappear because he knew the truth.”

  “Made him disappear where, in Katrina’s apartment?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Believe what you want, but you can’t have it both ways.”

  “That woman who worked for Tower—Kira Thorn. She provided your alibi when the Cipher got aced, then she disappeared. Convenient.”

  “Tower was involved in shady business. Kira was, too. She must have had her reasons for vanishing.”

  Maria sized him up. “You’ve told so many lies to cover your own ass you can’t stop. Three months ago, when Martin got sucked into that cult, Teddy Geoghegan from Major Crimes interviewed you about Mayor Madigan’s wife. That was right before Madigan and a bunch of power brokers turned up dead in that warehouse in Karlin Reichard’s Brooklyn shipyard.”

  Jake resisted the urge to clench his fists. Maria was closing in on him, throwing one piece of the pie after another at him. It was easy enough to dodge certain incidents and accusations but not one after another. “Marla Madigan hired me—”

  “I know why she hired you. I know what you told Geoghegan and the FBI. I also know that one of those power brokers was Benjamin Bradley, the founder of the Dreamers. Quite a coincidence: Martin joins a cult, then the leader of that cult winds up dead, along with the husband of your client.”

  “The media said those guys died of asphyxiation. Something about a gas leak.”

  “Another cover-up. The feds shut that crime scene down so fast it would make your glass eye spin. I spoke to one of the uniforms who first arrived on the scene. He was afraid to talk to me, so I got him drunk. He said one vic’s head was crushed. Another’s had been shot apart. The rest of them were floating facedown in water with great big holes in the back of their skulls. Does that sound like asphyxiation to you?”