The Noir Evil

by Richard Paul Caird

  Dust and sand bellowing up from his solitary footsteps and unintentionally filled both the silent detectives’ mouths as they kept quiet whilst desperately clinging on the underside of the old boxcar, not wanting to be detected by the potentially violent guard. Merlyo could see that Zalewski was about to sneeze and so he released his steadfast grip of his weaker left arm and grabbed his partners nose, instantaneously stopping him from sneezing and keeping their covert location secret. The unaware guard slowly continued to walk past the pair whilst he regularly swung the baseball bat in a variety of differing violent ways, silently insinuating to all whom observed him what he would do if he discovered any interlopers upon this sacred ground.

  They then waited a few more hesitant seconds before they both slowly and carefully lowering themselves quietly back down upon the dusty railway track below them, relieved that they had avoided his detection. They then continued to listen in to the familiar voice that was currently talking to them within the boxcar above them, fully understanding the anxiety of the female speaker whom resided within. The nervous voice of an unusually shabbily dressed and undercover Miss Poppy Rose Valentine could be heard as she talked out load whilst waiting for the imminent arrival of the infamously known Voodoo Doctor “The things I do for you guys! Geez! How did I ever get myself talked into this?”

  Poppy was the good doctor’s latest new client and she anxiously awaited the possible Mad Butcher himself to enter this macabrely decorated boxcar which could well be his own torture chamber of horrors. She nervously fiddled with her ill-fitting clothes as she sat upon the lonesome chair, fully expecting a nightmare of a man to soon enter the boxcar. The worried Merlyo lay upon the train tracks and was concerned about her safety because this so-called mysterious Voodoo Doctor could very well be the actual Mad Butcher himself and if he was not then he might at least potentially have some valuable information on his whereabouts. This is what he had told the eager Poppy and his equally eager partner beside him the previous evening at Wohl’s Café in a meeting that he was already beginning to regret.

  The concerned Merlyo also felt immensely guilty because he was lying to them and had willingly lured them here under false pretences and for his own selfish reasons. He had taken this uncharacteristically and unusually drastic step because he simply had not seen Poppy at all in the last few weeks, even just for lunch, and so this was the only way that he could think of to get to see her again. The potentially solving of the Mad Butcher case was an invitation that she could simply not resist and she was officially off the infamous case, she was still being kept up to date with all the latest developments by both himself and the ever knowledgeable Gerber. Merlyo knew that lying to both was drastic step but he was getting desperately upset because he was still having sleepless nights which only Poppy could remedy and so he had considered this an act of a desperate man whom was in dire need of both sleep and a little affection.

  He would be the last one to admit that he was jealous of her constant attentions towards Ness but he was indeed that and it pained him to imagine them together or hear about the latest social event that they had both attended. He knew that if he read the words “Eliot Ness and Evaline Michelow” within the newspaper they actually represented “Eliot Ness and Poppy Rose Valentine” because he knew she was always with Evaline, protecting her from a suspected Polizzi mafia hit which never appeared to materialise. As the months had painfully worn on his previously carefree attitude towards her open relationship with Ness had slowly become more eroded, mainly because he felt himself falling more in love with her and requiring her intimacy on a more regular basis.

  He hated to deceive both her and his partner but he was out of options and so very tired due to the constant attentions of his haunting spectre which still doggedly persisted to remorselessly invade his troubled dreams. Poppy had readily accepted his tantalizing offer because she had become so incredibly bored guarding Evaline whom spent most of her days religiously shopping, going to café’s and occasionally socialising with her at the odd event. To the anti-establishment Poppy this extravagant lifestyle was a form of social brainwashing of the female species and was a falsely fabricated illusion of reality that had been unwittingly created by the masses after the Great Depression. She obviously adored certain types of shopping but living on a day to day basis simply for pleasuring oneself, indulging in socialising and frequenting parties was simply not for her.

  She constantly craved excitement, be it within her personal life or public life and this was why she had always had such an extremely complicated love life in combination with an excitable work life. She readily admitted to missing her old uniform days at the department and all the excitement that it brought with it and so she eagerly jumped at this chance to go undercover with both detectives. She was looking forward to going on one of there now famous exploits and undercover incursions within the lawless area of Kingsbury Run and was sure that if she was given the chance, she could stop the deranged Mad Butcher from hurting anyone else.

  The guilt ridden gumshoe silently lay there in the dirt with his partner next to him but what he had told them both about this dubious character did have an element of truth within it because he could indeed be the man they were all looking for. They also had no alternative because the last two frozen bodies that they had located within the swimming pool dump site where still predictably unidentified, further adding emphasis on to this new line of inquiry. No new leads had turned up after Ness and his men violently stormed into the shantytowns without warning and burned it all mercilessly to the ground.

  The population in general was now actively turning against the police thanks to his desperately careless actions of burning down the homes of the poorest in society before sending them off to an uncertain future within the harsh environments of the Salvation Army workhouses. Only an empire of ash was left in his wake that vengeful night and he had not discovered any new clues as to the possibly whereabouts of the Mad Butchers abattoir or his identity. The very next day the determined Ness had gone with a photographer to inspect the hole that he had discovered before ordering the burning of the shantytown and he fully expected to see a lone carcass of the dead Mad Butcher within its smouldering interior. Instead it turned out that this mysterious hole was simply a storage area for wine and stolen items that the owner had utilised after his many frequent forays into the wealthier regions of Cleveland’s inner city, ultimately proving to be yet another dead end in the never ending quest for the Mad Butcher.

  Ness’s actions had the undesired effect of simply highlighting the plight of the poor and vulnerable whom inhabited the poverty stricken area and garnered ever growing support for punishing Ness because of his harsh treatment of them that night. The press had labelled Ness as an uncaring, cruel and twisted man whose unwarranted total destruction of the shantytown was the act of a desperate man at the end of his tether. Also his merciless use of baton wielding policemen to quash the striking protestors nearby the double homicide of the Cuyahoga River only emphasized the newspapers point. They labelling him as a broken man whom was far more interested in pleasurable personal pursuits rather than being concerned with the wellbeing of the average Clevelander. Ness was now the whipping boy of the ferocious newspapers and one of the most disliked men in Cleveland because of his unwitting self-character assassination of his beloved public reputation.

  His own fall from grace was now fully complete with many speculating that the mayor would have to force him to resign and possibly even sack him if no resolution came soon to the Mad Butcher case. For his part Ness no longer seemed to care about the newspapers’ opinions of his many recent questionable actions and he was often not seen for days on end which gave rise to the speculation that he appeared to have fallen into the abyss of opium addiction. Even Ness’s most loyal Unknowns had now started to covertly question his sanity after they had discovered absolutely nothing during that dreadful night of burning, absolutely nothing after illegally searching homes under the guise o
f “fire safety checks” and absolutely nothing after dragging in hordes of medical professionals of which Gerber was included.

  Some suspected that Ness’s new girlfriend had an undesired negative effect upon him and that his frequent partying lifestyle had now totally consumed him. Some had even suggested that he was far more interested in living the high life rather than helping solve the infamous case and even though the newspapers had no idea of his dark habits of addiction, many had guessed that he had issues within this dark area. In reality however he would regularly ask how the investigation was going and wanted to keep updated with any new developments but even he knew that his rash actions that infamous blood moon night did more harm to the department than good. This caused him to become lost within his own jaded world of substance abuse and further pushed him away from his work colleagues and into a dark world where few where able to follow.

  The ruthless congressman Sweeney had also been quick to capitalise upon his misfortune and had taken the priceless opportunity to have his loyal press corps demand for his immediate resignation and possible dismissal over the entire dismal affair. The mayor however was reluctant to replace Ness with someone new whom would feel the pressure just as much as him and so he decided to keep his ally within his powerful position, reluctant to replace him with a mystery man of the congressman’s choosing. All within the department had been convinced that they would find something relating to the case that fiery night and there had been little to no objection from anyone whom was involved. All were sure that if they had indeed discovered any small inkling of the Mad Butcher, and subsequently arrested the culprit, the press would not have been so harsh with the determined safety director. All within the department also suspected that after such harsh treatment by the merciless newspapers, a disheartened Ness had decided to take a public step back from the toxic investigation altogether. He had probably been fatally burnt by his own harsh actions upon that wickedly infamous night and many theorized that he had also started to believe his own bad press and had been saddened by what he had ultimately become.

  So now this so called “Doctor Voodoo” was all that they currently had as a potentially productive line of inquiry and Merlyo suspected that he may well have some valuable information regarding the Mad Butcher but deep down he doubted this even to himself. This was primarily because of the unreliable source whereby this information about the doctor had initially originated from, further making him feel physically ill as he recalled the previous night’s events at Wohl’s. He had told both Poppy and Zalewski that his “reliable” informant, whom he neglected to mention was a sixty six year old unemployed alcoholic vagrant, had informed him that there was some strange African American mystical medicine man whom was working illegally within Kingsbury Run. This self-proclaimed medicine man called himself the Voodoo Doctor and he was working within a derelict train yard and practiced an unusual form of healing by combining both traditional herbal medicine with the dark arts of Caribbean religion.

  He went on to say that the Voodoo Doctor used an old abandoned boxcar on the disused railway tracks as his office and that had been doing it for a while now, as well as carrying out illegal abortions and possibly even murdering people as ritualistic sacrifices for his unknown black heathen gods. He was also known to give out numerous forms of illegal drugs, marijuana and alcohol to the local hobo’s for protection and advertised his services for woman whom wanted abortions as “free of charge”. Merlyo had also suggested that this particular individual may also have some sort of peculiar weapon because he had also heard from the same reliable source that he had a strange and mysterious “death ray” that he used to kill anyone who got in his way or made trouble for him. Merlyo had instantly suspected that this so called “death ray” was nothing more than an extravagant gun of foreign design that he brandished whenever threatened by other drug dealers whom dared to invade his territory.

  It was also rumoured that this mysterious individual maybe the very same man who was charged in 1928 for decapitating an individual but was acquitted after the victim could not be identified, further adding to his viability as a good solid suspect. The calculating Merlyo had gone on to tell both Poppy and Zalewski that this abandoned railway boxcar that he was using as an office could be the Mad Butcher’s infamous abattoir because it offered a safe environment for him to dismember his screaming victims and that it needed to be checked up on it immediately. There was just one minor problem, the indefectible Voodoo Doctor would only see clients whom he knew well and where from the local area, unless it was a woman whom he was always readily willing to see. He was willing to perform whatever medical service any woman sought because he supposedly had a vast knowledge of unknown herbal medicines that where currently unknown to the traditional spheres of medical science.

  This so called “secret knowledge” that he had been known to boast about on the streets had supposedly been brought back by him from the darkest parts of the Caribbean and Africa to Cleveland in an apparent act of selfless kindness to help the local impoverished community. The locals could not afford the extortionate consultation prices of the Cleveland city doctors and where not insured so they were ripe pickings for any charlatan that came riding into town. Merlyo however kept his suspicions about the suspected fraudulent aspect of the boxcar doctor to himself mainly because he wanted Poppy to come with them in hope that by just being near him again she would wish to see him on a more regular basis and forgo her cruel absence from his lonely life. The previous evening Poppy had eagerly agreed to go in as bait whilst he and Zalewski both hid under the old boxcar quietly and listened in to what was happening. When the time came both detectives would then storm in and arrest the outrageous Voodoo Doctor for dealing in illegal abortions as well as drugs distribution before they would then check his premises for any signs of the Mad Butcher and his ghastly slaughter house.

  Poppy had been in there for a few minutes already whilst he and Zalewski had frantically run under the old railway boxcar after avoiding the lone security guard’s sporadic observations. The guard was the same red-eyed, thin and shabby looking African American male whom had been carrying the multi-coloured wooden baseball bat earlier. He was oblivious to their covert presence and had walked by the boxcar a few times now, whistling to himself a solitary tune and occasionally smoking a cigarette which was packed with a potent smelling marijuana. The sun irregularly shone through the breaking clouds which circled high above, miraculously revealing the blue sky that lay beyond and which had so unusually been absent from the skies of Cleveland recently. The two detectives had just managed to get a look inside the dimly lit interior of the old rusted boxcar by using a narrow gap within the wooden panned floor and scanned his secretive office.

  The interior of the Voodoo Doctor’s domain was a sight to be believed because it consisted of a large wooden chair, covered by an animal skin and was surrounded by miniature bones and skulls of all variety of avian animals. Behind this throne of avian bone was an old rusty, steel ladder which ascended to the ceiling access point which was itself falling apart at the seams. The walls where covered in all manner of jars and bottles and where labelled with words like “love”, “revenge”, “jealously” and filled with an assortment of animal parts and liquids of all variety of amazingly vibrant colours. The focal point for all whom dared enter this bizarre boxcar was the large multi-coloured rug that precariously hung on the wall behind the throne and had an unknown inscription on it which read "Trop Pou Te".

  An assortment of various varieties of avian feathers where stuck haphazardly all over the rest of the wooden walls as well as a small round mirror which hung precariously upon the wall facing the throne of bone. A large wooden but rickety table had a small box and wax doll on it whilst another small wooden chair faced the throne from across this table with a concerned looking Poppy seated uncomfortably upon it. Merlyo had keenly observed, from his exceedingly uncomfortable observation area, that she looked nervous and irritable as she sat alone and b
it her lower lip incessantly, lessening her mounting anxiety by increasing the distracting pain around her mouth. She had continually looked around her bizarre surroundings for twenty minutes now after she had been initially escorted here by the thin looking security guard whom now diligently patrolled the surrounding dusty area in his goat leggings.

  Incense candles burned prominently throughout the boxcar and especially upon the large wooden table, giving off a sickly smell of strong lavender which was infused with an even stronger smell of potent marijuana. In the corner of the boxcar, behind the seated Poppy and directly above the two concealed detectives, was a small circular iron cauldron which hung precariously from the sealing by three broken mirror covered ropes. These spectacularly decorated ropes sparkled what little sunlight there was around the room and gave this doctor’s chilling chamber a somewhat reminiscent feel of a nightclub as the light slowly rotated around the boxcars wooden walls. The cauldron itself hung over five small lit candles which were causing the cauldrons unknown contents to bubble and give off a musky smell that saturated the entire boxcar with its strange and unidentifiable odour. Close by the bubbling cauldron was a small wooden statue of some ugly unknown god or demon with a small drum placed conveniently next to it, adding further intrigue into the mad mind of the absent doctor.

  Just then the man of the moment himself opened the sliding but squeaky boxcar door as the Voodoo Doctor stood there in the unsettled dust as the sun behind him highlighted its unnatural height. He then eagerly climbed into the old creaking boxcar with remarkable speed and dexterity and quickly stood up, effortlessly showing off his impressive height again as he rose to well beyond seven foot. The Voodoo Doctor was a very well-built African American man but somewhat shabby looking as he graciously introduced himself to an anxious Poppy with a large and comforting smile, hiding his true insidiously devious motives. The two struggling detectives silently jostled for a better view under the boxcar and observed the infamous Voodoo Doctor greet his latest client with a kiss upon her shaking hand whilst he observed her in more detail before he quickly slid the boxcar’s squeaky old door closed behind him.