Burnt Black

by Ed Kovacs

  “You’d quit the department?”

  “Twee said it’s not necessary. But if I ever leave for three months with some story about wanting to see the world or joining some exchange program, it means I’ve gone to spy school.”

  * * *

  Honey and I stood waiting next to a wooden classroom door with a large frosted-glass window in the eerily quiet second-floor hallway of Tulane’s Dinwiddie Hall. The occasional muted sound escaped from inside, where Drake was teaching his Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion class.

  A large corkboard mounted to the pastel yellow wall was covered with flyers promoting worldwide anthropological conferences, seminars, lectures, and graduate programs at other schools. One of the flyers announced that Professor Robert Drake from Tulane University would be presenting a lecture on “Sexual Politics of Human Sacrifice” at Chichén Itzá, the famous Maya archaeological site near Cancún, Mexico. The date was about a week away. I ripped the flyer from the board and handed it to Honey. We had yet to speak since the heated exchange in her car at the traffic light.

  Before she could respond, the classroom door opened and students began to filter out, not in an explosion of released energy and high decibels, but in soft spurts of humanity simply ambling on to a new location.

  Drake finally emerged and froze with a scowl at the sight of us. He stood silently holding his briefcase until the last of his students had cleared the doorway. I handed him the search warrants.

  “I can’t believe you have the audacity to come here, to harass and embarrass me at my place of work, an institution of higher learning.”

  “I can’t believe that two dead Las Calaveras members have your phone number in their cell phones,” said Honey. “Care to explain?”

  Drake didn’t answer.

  “Shitface here has no answer for us, Honey. He doesn’t even get that we’re here as a courtesy. Would you rather we bust down your front door and drill your safe open, or would you prefer to open them for us?”

  “Finals start tomorrow. I can’t—”

  “Have an alibi for yesterday morning, Drake?”

  “You can direct that question to my attorney.”

  “Screw you, then,” I said. “Hand over the briefcase and your laptop.”

  “What?”

  “You’re holding the warrants, smart-ass.”

  I ripped the items free of his grasp. A few students turned around to watch.

  “Wait!” He quickly scanned the document, frowned, then lowered his voice. “What do you need me to do?”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  He looked shocked. Honey and I spun away from him and marched toward the elevator. I felt a mean satisfaction deep inside. Like a lot of people who have achieved some station in life, however inconsiderable, Drake clearly regarded himself to be superior, and he didn’t hide his pedantry well.

  He reluctantly followed us to the fourth-floor faculty office area, where Mackie and other detectives stood bathed in soft light filtering down from renovated skylights. But the light didn’t soften the seriousness of their features, as they patiently waited with empty plastic tubs and a hand truck. Onlookers gawked but remained silent.

  Drake provided the password to his office computer, and Mackie and his team went to work.

  “What’s the password to the laptop?” I asked Drake.

  “You’ll have to ask my attorney about that.”

  I’d anticipated that response and handed the laptop to a female patrol officer who already had orders from me to take it to Kerry Broussard at the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office Crime Lab.

  “If you’re okay here, Mackie, we’re moving to location number two.”

  “Yeah, we’re good.”

  “What is location number two?” asked Drake. He managed to say it without sounding like a smart-ass.

  “Ride with us and find out,” said Honey.

  It surprised me, but Drake accepted the invitation. Maybe he was getting accustomed to riding in the back of police cars.

  We left the building without further delay, and within a few minutes Honey had pulled her car out onto St. Charles Avenue. The first stop would be a curious curio shop in Riverbend where Tony Fournier’s obsession began fifteen years ago.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Kruger and a large team would be meeting us in Riverbend with an empty police cargo van, since we didn’t know how much stuff we’d be hauling out from the curio shop. As Honey turned onto Leake Avenue, my cell rang. I checked the caller ID; it was Kruger.

  “We’ll be there in a couple of minutes,” I said into the phone.

  “Then you might already be close enough to smell the smoke,” said Kruger.

  I heard sirens in the background on his end of the line as Honey made another turn.

  “Tell me you’re joking.”

  “The whole building is an inferno. The closest water main is busted. The nearest hydrants have been sabotaged. FD is doing their best, but it’s a write-off. The way it’s burning, they’re already calling it arson. They say accelerants had to have been used.”

  I was sitting in the back with Drake and stared at him. He didn’t make eye contact, but a slight look of smugness took hold of his face. The prick knows. He arranged it.

  I hung up without breaking my gaze. “Your fire insurance is up to date, I take it?”

  He wouldn’t look at me, but his smugness spread like a bad fungus.

  * * *

  We kept Drake locked down in the back of Honey’s unit while we checked in with Kruger. He lit a cigarette and I joined him with a cigarillo.

  “May as well add a little smoke to the smoke,” he said, as the fire raged behind us.

  Since this was a residential street, there would be no security video to check. Lots of neighbors milled around rubbernecking, and I was reminded of how fires used to be the bread and butter of newspaper reporting. I guess car chases were the modern-day equivalent for TV news, but the NOPD was so backward, we didn’t even have an air unit to track fleeing felons.

  “Let me guess. None of the neighbors saw a thing,” said Honey.

  “Today they didn’t,” said Kruger, exhaling. “But yesterday, Mr. Jimmy Washburn, the black gentleman in the white T-shirt standing on the porch across the street, noticed four guys in an unmarked box truck. Heavily tattooed Mexicans.”

  “Could be the remnants of the local Skulls gang,” I said.

  “Sounds like it. They cleaned out the shop. Upstairs and down. Mr. Jimmy got curious because he could use some furniture. When he went over to ask if they were selling anything, he noticed two guys hauling a freezer out of the downstairs.”

  “Gee, wonder what was in it?” asked Honey, sarcastically.

  “I got descriptions here,” said Kruger, holding up a pocket notebook. “One of the perps has a front gold tooth with three stones in it: diamond, ruby, and emerald.”

  “Classy,” said Honey.

  “White, red, and green. The colors of the Mexican flag,” I noted.

  “Mr. Jimmy said the Mexicans had keys to the place. I’m thinking they placed incendiaries when they moved the goods out, and today, somebody used a remote device to ignite them.”

  “Did Drake use his cell?” Honey asked me.

  “Not that I noticed.”

  “Grab his cell and see who he’s called. It’s within the scope of the warrant,” said Kruger.

  I nodded. “Better if we don’t talk to Mr. Jimmy while Drake is watching, but did he ever see any activity here?”

  “Only at night, including the other night. Never in the day, is what he said.”

  I scanned the crowd. Kruger was one damn good cop. He’d covered all the bases for us here. “Wait a second.… Is that Tony Fournier?” I asked, looking up the street. The lone figure of a man in a down jacket, baseball cap, and sunglasses leaned against a parked car about half a block away.

  “That’s Tony, all right,” said Kruger. “What’s he doing here?”

  I took a step forwar
d, but Fournier abruptly turned, got into a white sedan, and sped off.

  “I don’t like that. At all,” said Honey.

  “We need to talk to Tony,” I said. “But first, what say we hit Drake’s house? Before it has a chance to burn down, too.”

  * * *

  “I’m sorry,” said Honey softly, looking me in the eyes. “I…”

  We stood in Drake’s home office. The entire house was empty. Nothing remained except dust bunnies and crud. The freestanding safe that had been here was gone. As we had wandered through the vacant house moments ago with Kruger’s team, no one had said a word.

  I could tell Honey felt horrible about the situation.

  “I’ve handled this case badly. Should have given you freer rein to go after Drake.”

  “No apologies. You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just the breaks,” I said, pulling out a hard pack of Partagas mini cigarillos made in Havana and a gold-plated Bugatti lighter that had once belonged to a drug kingpin I shot.

  “I didn’t think it was murder,” she said. “I didn’t push like I should have.”

  From the start, Honey had agreed with the chief on the overdose scenario, and now the whole case was unraveling before our very eyes. Guilt was clearly dogging her.

  “Forget it. I’m going out for a smoke.”

  I walked past Drake silently standing in the living room with his hands in his pockets.

  “What a pity. I just had everything moved from here to my curio shop the night before last. And now I’ve lost it all.”

  “My ass bleeds for you. But don’t even think about leaving town.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. I have unfinished business with a few people.”

  I stared at him. The prick was threatening me.

  “It’s not what you’re thinking,” said Drake. “I told you that a demon might have been summoned, and if so, we’d all be in danger. And I was extremely sad to learn today that Mr. Jackson, the UPS driver had a fatal accident. It might be a coincidence, but what if it wasn’t? I’d be very careful if I were you.”

  “You’re not the only one with unfinished business,” I said, giving him a look like I wanted to kill him. A part of me wanted exactly that.

  I walked out to be met by a chill, sharp wind. A quick call confirmed that indeed the UPS driver Jackson had been killed in a traffic accident. Damn.

  A black storm cell rolled in fast as I started to walk a circle around the house. The dozens of cat graves reminded me that we might make a cruelty-to-animals charge stick, but I wasn’t sure we could nail Drake with much more than that. And I’d be calling the arson investigators to make sure they crawled up his ass.

  Before I’d gotten back to the front door, icy rain lashed me with a sobering cold. I ignored the rain, scanned the property, and drifted again toward the backyard. The shed stood empty, and all the yard tools, everything, was gone.

  I exhaled deeply, letting go of my anger toward the professor, letting it wash down into the earth with the rivulets of rainwater. I reconstructed the murder scene in my mind all over again, working out possible scenarios for how a third person could have gotten away undetected. The Fish and Game warden we’d brought in had found no evidence of anyone exiting Drake’s property on the back side, and she was so good at reading sign that I took it for gospel.

  After ten minutes, Honey found me near the back door and pulled up the hood on her Gore-Tex jacket. Before she could speak, I flashed my chronograph at her and then dramatically pushed a button. I bolted, running all out, toward a tree line about fifty or so yards away, then pressed the button again. I jogged back to Honey and showed her the stopwatch feature.

  “The killer panicked as soon as the doorbell rang. He or she then popped off three rounds; could be the gun was firing blanks. Maybe it was only a prop in the little passion play here. Anyway, the shooter hustles to the back door. Which you found unlocked when you and I arrived that day. The killer then ran balls-out for the tree line like I just did. It took me six point three seconds. The UPS guy was still hauling ass in his truck up the long driveway to the road, where he then had to turn around his big, brown step van with no rear windows. Then he parked facing the house, watching. I believed him when he said he didn’t see anyone leave the house from that moment on. But by then, the killer was already well out of sight, following the tree line over there all the way to the front of Drake’s property, right up to the road, around the bend.

  “Hell, if we had stayed put the other morning when we heard the shots-fired call, we would probably have seen the murderer.”

  I lit a cigarillo quickly, sheltering the slim, brown stick from raindrops, then continued. “Our perp then runs across River Road and over the levee, unseen. It would be a piece of cake to track along the river, back toward town. If Drake is the killer, he simply calls Townsend, tells her where he is on the levee. She picks him up, then brings him back and dumps him into the middle of our investigation.”

  “What if Townsend is the killer? Or Vermack? You saying one of them arrived here early in the morning with Sanchez and Ruiz?”

  “No, I’m not saying that. If we exclude Drake, then the killer arrived here on foot. The getaway car could have been parked somewhere along the levee. Our murderer never intended to park at what would become a crime scene.”

  Honey nodded slightly, considering. “How was the poison administered?”

  “Orally. They shared some ‘sacred’ wine or something together. Except the killer didn’t drink the doped stuff. I figure the killer was acting as a ‘guide,’ like Becky explained to us, and didn’t partake in the sex. Maybe Felix and Roscindo didn’t touch each other, maybe they just masturbated and did that thing where they sent their energy to the guide.”

  “If you want two guys dead, why go to the trouble to kill them that way?”

  “Exactly. That is the million-dollar question. That’s why the overdose scenario seemed logical to you.” I flicked ash from my cigarillo. “And this takes us back to my latest thinking about what kind of ritualistic killings we have on our hands. I have two theories. If the killer did it for religious reasons, then maybe it’s all about ‘death energy.’”

  “What?”

  “People who practice chaos magic use something called a ‘death posture’ to achieve what they call ‘gnosis.’ That is part and parcel of how they charge a sigil. They put themselves in a state of exhaustion or depletion or elation to get this gnosis. No gnosis, no magic—that’s how important it is. And the Crimson Throne members claim they can move energy from others, or take it. What if the killer’s plan was to bring a victim to the edge of some horrific death, and then take this intense gnosis energy generated from that?”

  Honey looked skeptical, but she motioned for me to continue.

  “And if they thought orgasmic energy was strong, good for their magic, then imagine how much more powerful fear or pain energy from a person dying in agony would be.”

  Honey raised her eyebrows and nodded. “Okay, whether it’s real or not, it seems like a plausible motive. Given who the suspects are.”

  “It’s not only plausible, it’s happening. A standard tenet in magic is that strong emotion creates energy, so the nonviolent outfits like Wiccans, neo-paganists, chaos magicians, and so on use sex magic or whatever to do their thing.”

  “Which is what the Crimson Throne did.”

  “Right. But some who practice Santeria, some Satanists and some in the vampire cults use sexually sadistic acts to gain power by stealing energy from their victims. These folks believe the strongest emotions are fear, sexual stupor, and religious ecstasy. So has our killer developed a ritual that combines all three emotions? Because with our Mexican friends inside, there was sex, there was the religious element of being on the altar, and there was fear and/or pain. The looks on their corpses were something out of a horror film. Hell, the one guy’s hair turned white.”

  “The question is,” said Honey, “what the perp wants to achieve with the energ
y.”

  The rain suddenly let up, and I glanced at the sky, then back to Honey. “That’s right.”

  “And it could also apply to Becky Valencia’s death?”

  “Yes. The coroner said she had an orgasm before she died. She was surrounded by thirteen black candles, giving us the religious element. And collapsed lungs would have been a hellish, excruciating experience.”

  “Sex, religion, and fear. All three elements.” Honey absentmindedly rubbed her temple. “You said you had a second theory.”

  “It involves secular ritual killing—no religion involved. I’m still working out the kinks. You check Drake’s cell?”

  “He didn’t make any calls or texts after we picked him up,” said Honey.

  “Someone was watching him. Or us. Maybe one of the Skulls.”

  “Could Fournier have set the fire?”

  “Why would he? As a vendetta?” I asked. “He couldn’t put Drake away after trying for fifteen years, so he burns down his curio shop instead? I don’t buy that.”

  “Could Drake and Fournier be working together?”

  I smiled at Honey and pointed my finger. “Congratulations! That is the single most cynical, jaded, paranoid speculation I’ve ever heard you make. I like that. And it might explain why Fournier’s niece is hooked up with Townsend.”

  I looked up at the sky, working my brain as I considered the possibility. “Based on the facts we have now, I’d have to say no. But we should keep the notion open as a remote possibility.”

  “Okay. But I want Fournier brought in. He’s got some explaining to do.”

  I nodded.

  “Do you believe Drake moved all of his possessions into his shop and then burned them up?” Honey asked.

  “Absolutely not. Might be worth getting some people on the phones, checking the storage facilities, furniture movers, freight forwarders to see if we can find where Drake is stashing his goods.”

  “Agreed.”

  “One more thing. We have another death to add to this case. Jackson, the UPS driver, was killed in a traffic accident today. Drake practically told me I was next.”

  Honey looked shocked.

  “Kruger can take Drake downtown. Let’s you and me go find the patrol officers who responded to Jackson’s accident scene.”