Burnt Black

by Ed Kovacs

  If Drake were here alone, my task would be simpler. Instead, I was running recon and making sure the couple didn’t sneak off through the park entrance to a parked car with a destination unknown to me.

  At the corner I chanced a look. Drake and Sanchez had stopped in the mouth of the portico to the high temple, between twin representations of Kukulkan carved on columns supporting the upper lintel. But instead of entering, Drake stooped to mark a circle on the stone floor, a circle he and Gina Sanchez stood in the center of. They held hands and gazed up at the approaching storm.

  I couldn’t move in any nearer from my direction without exposing my presence, and I wanted to get closer, to better observe what they were up to. So I quickly retraced my steps and used another entrance to the high inner temple. Once inside, the night vision enabled me to thread my way past richly carved support columns. I moved to within twenty feet of the couple, watching them from the dank confines of the ancient sanctuary where I could hear them intoning some invocation.

  “… and be obliged to seek me from afar, until you come to grant me my desire, and then you may return again to thy destiny.”

  Drake and Sanchez paused and then turned to look into the temple entrance, in my direction. “Detective, won’t you join us? The show is about to begin.”

  Jesus H. Christ! They’d suckered me into a trap!

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I pulled the Taurus .40 caliber I’d taken from one of the Cancún thugs and emerged from the shadows to the sound of thunder cracking as if it had ripped the fabric of the universe.

  Drake and Sanchez turned toward me revealing they both had automatics pointed at my chest.

  “Why the pistols? Can’t you just put a spell on me or send a spirit to, you know, scare me to death and cause my hair to turn white?”

  “That takes too long. I didn’t spot you until after my lecture.”

  “So you brought me up here to do the deed on top of El Castillo. Nice view,” I said, not really looking. I figured I could shoot Drake first, then Sanchez, if it came to that. “What gave me away?”

  “Your aura. I know it well since I planted a marker in it.”

  “Is that right? Well, did you have a chance to plant markers with the eight federal agents who are down below, backing me up?”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  “I don’t like poker and I don’t bluff. I believe in attacking a target with overwhelming force.”

  Drake wanted to believe I was bluffing, but he looked like a guy who wasn’t so sure. Gina Sanchez I couldn’t read.

  “I’m also an excellent shot. If either one of you fire, even if you hit me, I’ll put a round into both of your foreheads before I go down. I promise you that.”

  “So it seems we have a Mexican standoff. For the moment.”

  “Why you come here?” demanded Sanchez. “You estúpido? You think Roberto kill Felix and other students?”

  “I didn’t say that, Gina. But killing comes easily for your boyfriend, ‘Roberto,’ doesn’t it?”

  “You idiot. You don’t know anything.”

  “I know that you don’t have much trouble shedding blood.”

  “You would know about the ease of killing, wouldn’t you?” asked Drake. “I checked you out. How many have you killed now? Officially it’s twelve, isn’t it?”

  “Unofficially, sixteen.”

  “I’m impressed that you murdered all of the Las Calaveras members in New Orleans.”

  “I’ve never murdered anyone. But let’s talk about you, doc, because the human sacrifice thing with the missing transients? What’s your number? Thirty? Forty?”

  Drake smiled. “Human sacrifice is completely misunderstood, except by those performing the sacrifice.”

  “How touching. You’re trying to make a case that you’re not a psychopath.”

  “And you’re trying to invalidate me, but I won’t allow that. Human sacrifice, indeed most all ritualistic crimes are valid religious rites specific to different traditions. They have tremendous value, power, and the prevalence of these rites in society is actually more shocking than some of the individual acts themselves. It’s humorous when law enforcement makes an attempt to figure out what’s going on. Those attempts never last long, because, quite frankly, most police are pretty stupid. And if you’re the best homicide detective the NOPD has, then that city is in a lot of trouble.”

  “I’ll agree that the city is in a lot of trouble. But the word on me is that I’m like an old elevator: I’m slow, but accurate.”

  “Accurate? You don’t even know who your killer is!”

  “Sure I do. And I know who put a contract out on me with the Skulls. The guy with the gemstones in his gold tooth told me all about it during his slow death on a dirty slab of concrete. I have his confession recorded.”

  Drake darkened. “Germano was an old friend of mine.”

  “Then maybe you’d like to examine his remains, although there’s not much left. Mostly just his teeth. That guiso business really is something. Speaking of which … I’m kind of disappointed Tico Rodriquez didn’t come to your talk tonight.”

  He glowered at me for several moments, then seemed to set it aside, to compartmentalize his feelings.

  “Perhaps my friends in New Orleans were too gentle with you. I can assure you that your treatment later tonight at the hands of my friend Tico won’t be so pleasant.”

  “You didn’t bring me here to kill me yourself?”

  “I would have no hesitation to shoot you right now. But be patient. Perseverance pays off. It’s been a long time coming, but this whole unfortunate episode is actually a blessing in disguise. Felix’s death enabled Gina and me to come out in the open with our relationship. And that albatross Kate Townsend is off my back. It led me to move back to Mexico, which I should have done long ago. It’s so much easier to ‘operate’ here.”

  “Hey, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, you want to know who killed my husband?” taunted Gina. “Well here’s a clue. It’s—”

  “I curse you with the black heart of Satan!” screamed a man’s voice from outside the temple entranceway in which I stood.

  As Drake and Sanchez turned to look, a hurtling figure shot past me and slammed into Drake. El Professor Negro went hurtling to the edge of the pyramid, where he dropped his gun, struggled to balance himself, then screamed as he tumbled down the stone staircase of El Castillo.

  Tony Fournier now stood in the magical circle, clutching Gina Sanchez with one hand as he held aloft a medallion with his other hand. “And you, old witch, will burn in the depths of hell!”

  Gina Sanchez fired her handgun three times in rapid succession point blank into Fournier’s midsection. He sank to his knees.

  I sighted on her, ready to shoot from twenty feet away, when a bolt of lightning from the storm cell overhead struck her in the chest.

  I looked on in stunned disbelief as a silent scream formed on her lips. Her body went rigid—as mine had done when I’d gotten tased—and she fell to the ground. I hadn’t seen an arc jump to Tony Fournier, but after Gina collapsed, he toppled over from his knees onto the stone.

  As I ran forward, the smell of burnt flesh invaded my nostrils. Her blackened face smoldered, her blouse had been blown from her torso, and the Christian cross she wore around her neck was melted, fused into her flesh. Her dead eyes stared vacantly skyward.

  Fournier wasn’t moving, and I chose to ignore him for now. I carefully descended the ninety-one steps to where Drake’s body lay sprawled awkwardly, obscured in the white shroud of fog. The man who so loved bones would have been aghast, as his flesh was ripped in a half dozen places where jagged shards of broken pieces of ulna, fibula, and scapula had torn through the skin on his arms, legs, and shoulders.

  I slipped on a pair of latex gloves and retrieved his cell phone. No calls or texts made or received in the last three hours. I found the number for Tico Rodriguez and sent him a text: I’m canceling the hit on the New Orleans cop. Will explain later. Abou
t to climb El Castillo.

  I trudged back to the top of the pyramid and checked Sanchez, but she didn’t have a cell, meaning there was an excellent chance they hadn’t alerted the Skulls to my presence.

  Fournier groaned and moved slightly. I hadn’t been in a hurry to tend to him since he had killed all of the victims in New Orleans and had made my life so miserable since that morning out on the West Bank, which now seemed like eons ago.

  His breathing was shallow, his eyes open slits. I took a cursory look at the gunshot wounds. At a trauma hospital in a major city he might survive. My audio and video digital recorders had been recording all night, but I checked them just to make sure.

  “You got your last name on the list, Tony. Drake is lying at the bottom of the pyramid looking like he got put in a rock crusher.”

  A faint smile appeared on his lips. “Then I’m a satisfied man.”

  “You’re a lying, murdering dirtbag is what you are.”

  “There’s a letter in my back pocket addressed to you. Exonerating Anastasia. Explaining details only the killer would know, like how many needles I put in Becky Valencia, the placement of Hans’s head and feet in the stove pan, things like that.”

  “As if that makes what you did okay.”

  “They drugged and raped my wife. And weren’t held accountable. The system is broken. So I held them accountable.”

  “What about Felix, Roscindo, Becky—rape’s not a capital offense.”

  “It was this time.”

  I shook my head. I certainly understood the emotion behind what he had done. Our eyes met.

  “You let Sanchez shoot you.”

  “I cursed her with a lightning bolt from hell and killed her, is what I did. Give me some credit.”

  “She was standing outdoors, on top of an ungrounded structure in a lightning storm. Wearing a metallic object around her neck. I’ll bet she’s not the first person to get struck by lightning on top of El Castillo. People get struck by lightning all the time around here, is what I heard.”

  He shook his head slightly. “You saw with your own eyes what I did and you still don’t believe in magic. You’re a hard case. Like a lot of people, you think if you don’t believe in it, if you ignore, it won’t affect you.”

  A gentle rain began falling. I took off my boonie hat and held it over Fournier’s face. “Why did you come after me?”

  “Go after you? I protected your ass every step of the way.”

  “Come on! You painted the sigil on my doorway, stalked my home.…”

  “Sure I painted the sigil, to try and spook you off the case. Why didn’t you go along with the program?” he said, struggling to smile. “Maybe you don’t believe in it, but Drake and Townsend were hitting you with heavy-duty magic. Ask Anastasia. I was the guy countermanding their efforts. Especially those first few days. I literally saw a demon enter your building on South Peters. A little before you ran out into the street.”

  The dream. A chill ran down my arms, but I didn’t let on. “You saw that, huh?” I asked. “Well, the only things I’ve seen on this case are the usual pathetic, self-absorbed assholes hurting other people for selfish reasons.”

  “And the reason you came to Mexico was why?”

  “You think I came here to kill Drake, to save my own ass because of the murder contract? I came here to catch you. Once I figured out Anastasia had been set up, I suspected Drake and made that case to the other detectives. But when I watched the security tape one more time I saw you.”

  “You saw me?”

  “You flexed all ten fingers. Nervous habit. It was obscured from the best footage, which is the footage I paid the most attention to. I would have missed it, except Anastasia had a reaction when she saw the video. So I checked it again and remembered seeing you flex your fingers in the interrogation room.

  “It must have been easy for you to get Anastasia’s prints on all that evidence: a paper bag, a cardboard box, the sneakers. You put the jar of poison there yourself, since it was the toxin you’d been using. And she rented the storage container at your request, right? I mean, you saw the day coming months ago when you might have to set her up for the fall.

  “Anyway, I knew you’d track Drake here, to his first public event. My plan was to bring you back to NOLA.”

  “Plan?”

  “You mean your sources inside the department didn’t tell you I was coming? That’s because only Chief Pointer was in on it. He was open to the theory you were our guy. And as long as I traveled at my own expense, the chief went along. He gave me four days to wrap it up.”

  “Sounds like you can squeeze in two days of margaritas on the beach, then.”

  The guy was trying to make jokes as he died. It almost made me feel sorry for him.

  “We don’t have a definitive on Hans Vermack yet, but how did you get the victims to have orgasms before you killed them?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, so why waste my breath—I don’t have that many left.” He punctuated that comment by making a short gasp for breath.

  “Explain the gunshots at Drake’s.”

  “I used a 9mm shooting blanks. I fired point-blank at Felix, and I think it scared him, yeah?” Fournier’s eyes started to glaze over. “I’m getting cold, almost finished bleeding out.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said, hanging my head.

  “You still got that pendant I gave you?”

  I looked at him and nodded. “I’m wearing it.”

  Tony Fournier laughed out loud. Funny, but it had only been in the last few minutes, as he lay here dying, that I’d seen him display any sense of humor. Or perhaps I should say irony.

  “You don’t believe squat, but you wear that thing, huh?”

  Then he closed his eyes and died smiling.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  I abandoned the crime scene, slipped away in the darkness to my rental car, and drove to Cancún, where I caught an early morning flight to Houston and then on to New Orleans.

  The chief wasn’t thrilled I’d walked away from the three stiffs, but he understood it was healthier for me if the Skulls remained in the dark regarding my Mexican holiday. I sat in his office with Honey, Mackie, and Kruger as we all finished watching the lapel-camera video of events on top of the Temple of Kukulkan.

  My three homicide compatriots had been in agreement on pressing for murder charges against Anastasia, but the chief had held off and only charged her with lesser crimes just to keep her behind bars. So now they sat across from me with a bit of egg on their faces.

  “Damn it, Saint James, how do you keep pulling these things out of your ass?” asked Mackie, as the video ended.

  “Fucking Tony Fournier,” said Kruger, shaking his head.

  “Exactly,” said the chief. “Even though he’s retired, Fournier was a serial killer. The department doesn’t need that kind of publicity. We’re still getting bad press from officer-involved shootings that happened during the Storm. I’m fed up with the notion that we are a department of nothing but dirty cops.”

  I suppose it didn’t occur to the chief that he was perhaps the dirtiest officer in the department.

  “So you’re suggesting what?” asked Honey, who clearly suspected the chief had a plan and that it was probably shady.

  “What’s the harm if Felix Sanchez and Roscindo Ruiz are ruled as accidental deaths due to a drug overdose? And that Becky Valencia’s death be ruled accidental as the result of a misplaced acupuncture needle? Kate Townsend can be logged as having died of an allergic reaction to some herb she was taking. I don’t think their families would rather be told their loved ones were murdered, do you?”

  No one replied. The chief looked intently at each of us in turn. No, we weren’t a department full of dirty cops, but he was asking those currently in the room to get a bit soiled right now.

  “The heads in the ice chest never went public, but people talk,” said the chief. “And the explanation is Drake’s own: He was a skeletal biologist legally
in possession of bones and body parts for scientific purposes.”

  “That leaves Patrice Jones on the hook for Hans Vermack,” I said.

  “Jones is an orphan, practically a vegetable. Evidence will emerge that she acted in self-defense. It’s no secret that Vermack abused her. The DA will change the murder rap to justifiable homicide. I’ll make sure she spends the rest of her life getting better care than she could get anywhere else.”

  The chief’s suggestions would afford him no banner headlines, but he’d score big points with the mayor and the city council and the business community, so it was still a win-win scenario as long as he could keep the real facts buried.

  “I’m in,” I said, surprising Honey, Mackie, and Kruger. I completely understood Pointer’s reasoning and didn’t believe that the truth emerging would make for a better result. “On a couple of conditions: Honey, Mackie, and Kruger each get issued a new unit. Not a different unit, but a brand-spanking-new, fresh-from-Detroit unit. And I get relieved of any duties as the department’s occult expert.”

  “Agreed,” said the chief, looking a little disappointed by the last part of my request.

  “Computers for the Homicide Section,” said Kruger.

  “Done,” said the chief.

  “I’m tired of going to Staples on my own dime,” said Mackie. “Office supplies, business cards for all the homicide dicks, and one of those fancy Herman Miller office chairs, something that doesn’t hurt my back so much. I’ve been sitting on the same damn broken chair for ten years.”

  “Fine,” said the chief. “Saint James, you make any copies of that video from Mexico?”

  “No,” I lied. I had several copies stashed away.

  “Delete it.”

  They all watched as I worked the controls. “It’s gone.”

  “We drop all charges and release Anastasia. Agreed?”

  Everyone nodded but Honey.

  “Detective Baybee, I need to hear from you,” said Pointer.

  “I was just wondering. Why it wouldn’t look good to the public? That we had hunted down one of our own,” she said.