Answering the Call

by Ali Vali

  The crime-scene house was lit up with blue flashing lights when she stopped and heard one of the uniforms whistle at the car. At least for his sake, the wolf whistle had better have been for the car. “Nice ride, Sept. You’re moving up in the world.”

  “It’s a loaner, so don’t get used to seeing it. Where’s the fun?”

  “Out back, but John said he’d rip our balls off if we leave our post.”

  “That would suck, so stay put, but I might have something for you to do later.” She accepted booties and gloves from one of George’s guys and followed them to the back of the yard. “Son of a bitch,” she said softly when she saw the body. This time the victim had been left tied and displayed like some nightmare from a horror movie.

  “We’ve got another one by the fancy car out front, but I peg it for a kid being at the wrong place at the wrong time,” George said as the floodlights came on, accompanied by the whirl of the generator needed to run them.

  This one was vastly different from the first copycat murder, at least as far as the victim and what was left behind. Whoever had done this had gone off script because she didn’t recognize the saint left behind, and the sacrifice seemed more complete with the other items in the salt circle. The circle was starting to melt into the ground as the late-night dew arrived, and she hoped the rest of their clues wouldn’t go with it.

  “My Catholic chops aren’t the greatest,” she said as she finally looked up at the altar and away from the body, and George laughed. “Just don’t tell my mother that.” He nodded and aimed his penlight at the base. “Who is that?”

  “St. Norbert, and I had to get down there and look, which basically means I’m going to hell with you. Another note’s rolled up in there, so if you want to see it, I’ll send Jennifer back to the office to open it.” George pointed to the pile of ripped but folded clothes and the small purse sitting on top. “This is a different caliber than Bonnie Matherne.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, trying to take everything in.

  “I’m no fashionista, but the dress is expensive, and the purse is Kate Spade. I’m not sure who Ms. Spade is, but Jennifer said nothing out here is a knockoff.”

  “What about the kid in the front?” She nodded to Lourdes Garcia and her partner Bruce Payton as they stood close by, taking notes for George. “You guys keep it locked down, and I’ll be right back.”

  “You got it, Boss,” Bruce said.

  She and George walked slowly as she illuminated the path to the front. “Why does this shit always happen at night?”

  “To keep evil hidden. That’s what my father and brother always said.” George spoke softly of his family, who’d also given plenty of years to police service. “If we’re dedicated enough we’ll flip the lights on, and the cockroaches can’t hide. And since this is your case, your dedication isn’t a question to me.”

  “Thanks, Uncle George.” She looked at the scene in front of her.

  A body sprawled by the passenger side of the dark sedan, the head held up at an odd angle against the bottom of the door. The way the young man was so haphazardly splayed out meant he was caught by surprise and fell where he was shot. She walked a large circle around the car to the driver’s side, where the door was open, and heard the dinging that meant the keys were still in the ignition.

  “The other kid fell right over here,” George said, pointing to the cones someone had laid out. “From what the EMS guys told me, he’ll be lucky to last a few hours, if that.”

  “Hey,” Nathan said, walking up with Julio. “What do we have?”

  “Female at the back, that kid, and one on the way to the hospital.”

  “One survived?” Nathan asked, moving closer to keep their conversation private.

  “We need to finish here, so how about we send Gustave to the hospital? It sounds like the kid might not make it, and I don’t want to sit around waiting for what might not happen.” She squinted when she saw the discarded but new-looking bicycle. “I don’t mean to sound like a bitch, but we have plenty to get through here, and I want to do it while it’s still fresh. This one didn’t go quite as planned, and these two guys might’ve seen whoever did that in the yard.”

  “That sounds good. We need someone we can trust, and Gustave and his partner are a good choice.”

  She took her phone out and dialed her brother as she kept walking the area. Jennifer glanced up from dusting for prints, and she raised a finger to give Gustave all her attention. “Hey, I need you to go down to Tulane Medical and interview a witness from our homicide. From what they told me, this guy’s critical, so you better hustle.”

  “I’m on it,” Gustave said, sounding like he was already moving. “I’ll get my partner to meet me there.”

  “Call me when you’re done.”

  “Are you at the new scene yet?”

  She stopped in the center of the sidewalk at the front of the house and looked for anything that popped out at her. “It’s another fucking nightmare, so try to get to this guy before we run into more bad luck and dead ends.”

  “Hey, Sept,” Jennifer said. “We found an ID on our victim up here. You aren’t going to like it.”

  “Who is he?” A closer look showed the face of a very young man who should’ve been at home studying and not dead in the middle of this mess. “Jesus, he’s only sixteen.”

  “His name is Miguel Navarro, and he’s a junior at McDonogh 35.”

  “Shit,” Nathan said, crouching down to take a look at the guy’s face. “What was he doing here?”

  “First, let’s take things in order.” She walked to Julio and shook his hand. “I appreciate you coming out with so little notice.”

  “No problem, but this looks like a drive-by,” Julio said, pointing toward Miguel.

  “Like I said, we need to take things in order.” She directed him to the back along the fence, since it didn’t appear to be disturbed, and Julio gasped at the sight under the bright lights.

  “Dios mío,” Julio said.

  “Someone called 9-1-1 and reported the two bodies out front, and when you see this you’ll rule out drive-by. I’m convinced they were shot after this,” she said, but Julio and Nathan simply stared. “Tell me about St. Norbert.”

  “He’s not one of the better-known orishas, just like St. Norbert isn’t well known in the church.” Julio stepped closer to see what the woman had around her. “It’s an altar to Ochosi, and not something we’ve seen before with Perlis. Ochosi is a skilled and stealthy hunter. He’s known in Santeria as an ethical god who always hits what he’s hunting for, using an arrow. That’s the only thing I don’t see here.”

  “So the fruit and birds are part of the sacrifice?” Nathan asked.

  “Yes, and,” he put his face close to the ground, “not rum this time.”

  Sept joined him and sniffed. “It smells like licorice.”

  “It’s anisette,” Julio said. “This orisha prefers it. If you take all this,” Julio circled his finger around all the offerings including the woman’s heart by the candles, “minus the human sacrifice, he’s paying homage to the hunter.”

  “You’re right. This is new, so our guy’s going off script,” Sept said. “And all this is the planned part.” The yard scene was the altar and why the killer had come, so the front was the unplanned part.

  “I didn’t come to this scene, and the girl getting away didn’t allow Perlis to finish his altar,” Julio said, not appearing able to turn away from the carnage. “Thankfully it was the end of his killing spree, so I don’t know who he’d planned this altar for.”

  “It wasn’t a question of trust, Julio,” she said, placing her hand on his shoulder and wanting to break the spell he seemed to be under. “We found part of an altar, but we had a live witness, which took precedence over everything else going on.”

  “What did he leave with that one?” Julio asked, and Nathan referred to his notes.

  “He put down one green and one black candle, and Erica had the
remnants of a three and seven on the tops of her feet. The trauma of what happened made her forget what he’d said, but it started with an ‘O.’”

  “Interesting,” Julio said, closing his eyes and shivering. “The orisha’s different, but the numbers are the same. Ogun had to be Perlis’s altar, and he’s known as a powerful warrior who fights for injustice but is also a protective father.”

  “That’s a joke, since Perlis killed his own kid,” Nathan said disgustedly.

  “The rest of this fits with what you found here at the Perlis scene,” Julio said, finally seeming to have hit his limit when he turned his back on the dead woman. “Whoever this is picked something important to them while keeping some of Perlis’s choices with the numbers.”

  “I guess that’s true, and thankfully Erica was smart. She used herself to get out of this situation, but this guy seems more focused on the task of killing. Either that or this poor girl froze and didn’t have the state of mind to do the same thing.”

  “I didn’t think there could be another cruel animal that could do this again,” Julio said, taking a deep breath.

  “The world isn’t always fair, and it doesn’t always make sense, but I appreciate your input. Hopefully we won’t have to meet like this again. I’d rather have a drink with you instead of this crap,” she said, shaking his hand.

  “Do you still have Matilda’s gift?” he asked, bringing his hands to his throat where he wore a few strands of colorful beads. He’d introduced them to the city’s high priestess, Matilda Rodriguez, during their initial investigation, and she’d given Sept a similar strand of red and white beads. It supposedly provided protection to the children of Chango, the king of all the orishas.

  She opened her collar and nodded. “Keegan hasn’t let me take it off since the night Perlis shot me and came close to killing Nathan and my brother-in-law. I might not have your deep-set beliefs, but I agree with her. It can’t hurt.”

  “A sacrifice to the hunter probably means your killer is looking forward to battling the warrior and hitting their mark with lethal consequences. That’s part of what they want, but I don’t know what else they’re asking for with all this.” Julio waved his hand, still appearing mortified. “Don’t take it off, and do accept the protection in which Matilda strung it for you.”

  “I’ll have an officer take you back, and I promise it won’t leave my neck. Thanks for your help, Julio, and call me if you think of anything else.”

  “Now what?” Nathan asked as they stood off to the side while George kept working.

  “Now we figure out the rest of what happened here and find the mistakes the two kids out front caused this asshole to make. No matter how much you plan and then work it, variations are going to create cracks that we need to find.”

  * * *

  “He’s in surgery, Detective, so you’re going to have to wait,” the emergency-room head nurse said, holding her hands up to keep Gustave back.

  “Where can we wait? We really need to talk to him the second he comes to.” Gustave waved when he saw his partner Sharon Colbert walk in.

  “I’ll set you up in our lounge and keep you posted,” the woman said and took them behind the desk to a room with snacks, coffee, and comfortable chairs. “Hang on, and I’ll get the nurses who worked on him when he came in. I’m not positive, but I think he said something.”

  “Was he carrying ID?” Sharon asked.

  “Wait here, and I’ll get what you need.”

  Two young but tired-appearing nurses came in and handed over a hazmat bag with a cell phone, keys, and a wallet. “It’s not dangerous. It was just the only bag handy at the time. His name is Mateo Moreno, and he’s a high school senior,” the redhead said, sighing loudly. “This job sucks sometimes.”

  “Did Mateo say anything at all while you were trying to stabilize him for surgery?” Gustave asked, placing the bag next to him. “Even if he was delirious, it might help.”

  The two glanced at each other and nodded. “I speak a little Spanish,” the brunette said, “but I’m not fluent. He repeated la diabla a few times and asked forgiveness of someone named Miguel.”

  “La diabla,” Sharon said, writing it down. “She devil?”

  “That’s the literal translation,” the brunette said. “I even looked it up to make sure, but I don’t know what he meant. And we don’t know who Miguel is either.”

  “He’s the other kid at the scene, but he was killed instantly,” Gustave said.

  “To tell you the truth, and I hope to hell I’m wrong, but it’ll be a miracle if this kid survives,” the redhead said. “Hopefully he’s a fighter, but that bullet did a lot of damage.”

  “Thank you, and here’s our card if you think of anything else.” He handed them over and went in search of gloves to handle Mateo’s personal effects. His driver’s license showed an address that was a few miles from where he’d been shot. “Francois,” he said when his brother answered. “I need you to go by this address and pick up the family. Their son’s in surgery, and they need to get here as quickly as they can.”

  “Detective.” The head nurse came in, and he lowered the phone. “Mr. Moreno crashed on the operating table, and they couldn’t revive him. He’s gone.”

  “Thank you,” he said to the nurse. “Never mind. Meet me at the morgue,” he told Francois. “I’ll see that his family gets this,” he said, and the nurse nodded.

  “The surgeon bagged the bullet as well, so if you sit tight, I’ll get it for you.”

  “Murder is never pretty, but it’s a fucking shame when the victim is seventeen,” Sharon said.

  “I’ll never understand something like this no matter the age,” he said and started mentally preparing to tell the parents their child was dead. The horrific task made him say a prayer for his two boys to always be safe. “We just have to do our best to make sure someone pays.”

  * * *

  “This was planned,” Sept said softly, walking around the dead woman and keeping her eyes on her face and not her eviscerated middle.

  “Do you see something?” Nathan asked.

  “This one is different because of that dead kid and the one at the hospital. Those two kids weren’t planned, so how do they fit in?” She walked back to the front the way the pretty girl had gotten to the backyard. The drag marks had flattened the grass. “So the killer does that,” she pointed to the yard, “and they hear these two out front. The guy comes out and gets rid of any potential witnesses.”

  “That sounds right, but this doesn’t look right,” Nathan said, pointing to the dead kid. “The bullet had to have killed him instantly. If that’s true, the shooter didn’t come from here.”

  She nodded and slapped his shoulder. “Good,” she said, glancing at the other side of the house. “The bullet came from over there, so let’s go take a look.”

  They walked to the other side of the house and found nothing on their first pass, but when she turned around, a small scrap of paper caught the edge of the beam of her flashlight. It had to have blown against the fence, but it didn’t show any sign of water or other damage, so it had to have been dropped recently.

  “Do you have an evidence bag?” she asked Nathan. He put it in a clear bag and held it up so they could study it. “FI,” she said, knowing there was more once, but the scrap had been torn from the main page.

  “Any idea what FI is?” Nathan asked.

  “Maybe,” she said, going back to the yard. “Do you have a name for her?” she asked George.

  “The card in her purse had only the name Lee and a phone number.” George held up another evidence bag. “That’s all that was in her purse aside from some mints and a few condoms. She might’ve been a working girl.”

  “Probably, but the clothes and the accessories put her in the escort category. We know only one woman who could tell us more,” she said, and Nathan nodded.

  “Brandi Parrish.” Nathan wrote down the name and number on the card George displayed.

  “I’m ho
ping it’s not one of her girls, since she’s already had too much pain and loss,” she said and glanced over her shoulder when she heard her name called. “Back here,” she said, recognizing Gustave’s voice.

  “Hey. We just finished at the hospital. Our witness didn’t make it, but he did say something before he died,” he said as they moved to the property line at the back. “Not that it’ll do us any good, but he told the nurse it was la diabla.”

  “She devil,” she said. It didn’t make any sense. “That’s it?”

  “He asked Miguel to forgive him,” Sharon said.

  “She devil.” She repeated the words to see if anything came to her. “Not that this scene isn’t important, but we need to see if those two boys lead us to something. Nathan and Sharon, could you run down the plate on the car in the driveway?”

  “I’ll do it,” Sharon said.

  “The killer wasn’t stupid enough to leave their car, so who does it belong to?” she asked as Jennifer headed toward George. “And I need to hear the 9-1-1 call. Maybe in the heat of the moment, this bastard made a mistake.”

  “Hey, Sept, we’re ready to move the body, if that’s okay,” the man from Gavin’s office said, and she nodded.

  “Did you send someone to notify this kid’s family?” she asked.

  “I sent Francois to get them after I found out who he was,” Gustave said of their other brother. “He’s been working the explosion at the Hilton with Jacques but was wrapping up. I talked to the Moreno family, and they said their son and Miguel had been friends since the first grade and loved getting into trouble together. Nothing bad enough to get killed over, so they’re in shock.”

  “What happened at the Hilton?” Nathan said.

  “A car bomb that took out five cars and a wall of the parking garage,” Sharon said, stopping to talk to someone on the phone. “A Lazlo Watts reported the car stolen this afternoon.”

  “Where was it when it was stolen?” Sept asked.