‘To claim voluntary manslaughter, there has to be adequate provocation. The doctor who examined Duval found no evidence of abuse. She was malnourished, but so was the mother. There was no pot of boiling water at the scene. The victim had no defense wounds on her arms. It was premeditated, cold-blooded murder.”
The captain pulled a wry face. “I’m not saying it wasn’t, but can you imagine a jury’s response to Wells’s version of events? He’s a genius at tugging on heartstrings. And he’ll have a beautiful young girl at his side in the courtroom, while we're stuck with policemen and forensic experts. He’ll tell them how the girl’s father and brother died, about their perilous refugee flight from Haiti, the struggle for survival here, living from day to day, knowing that at any time they could be repatriated. The confusion created in the child’s mind as what she sees in America collides with her own culture. He’ll have the judge and jury in tears. And then he’ll start on you. You’ll be portrayed as the vindictive, heartless bastard who insisted on a murder charge being brought in retaliation for the girl’s assault on you.”
“Couldn’t whacking your mother with an axe be considered just a little bit vindictive as well?” Val said, standing up.
“Where are you going? I haven’t finished with you.”
“We’ve only the girl’s testimony on this initiation story. I want to check it out.”
Larson relaxed. “How do you plan to do that?”
“Professor Richard Bickford is chair of anthropology at my brother’s university. I once read a book of his on voodoo ritual. He could substantiate or discredit Duval’s story.”
Larson thought about it, before saying, “Go to it.”
Val phoned the university’s administration department and asked to speak with Bickford. The woman he was transferred to told him that the professor wasn’t expected on campus that day and she refused to pass on his private number. Val gave her his number and asked her to have Bickford ring him.
He rang Val back less than five minutes later and listened without interruption as Val explained at some length what he needed from him. Bickford seemed reluctant at first, then, as though a switch had been thrown he was full of enthusiasm and said that he would pick Val up at headquarters and they could drive to the Irish Channel in his car. He promised to be outside the building in twenty minutes and rang off.
Bickford’s car turned out to be a battered and mud-splashed British Land Rover with a canvas canopy and three rows of seats screwed to the flatbed. The university’s crest painted on the sides. They traded names and shook hands.
The professor's appearance hadn’t changed a lot, Val noticed, from the picture on the jacket of his book. His face, brown as a nut, was a little more lined than it had been then. His hairline had receded slightly, but he still had thick eyebrows and shoulder-length hair that he wore swept back in a neat ponytail. His arms were corded with sinew and muscle. He had on a T-shirt and shorts and his left leg was encased in a rigid leg brace. A set of elbow crutches was propped against the center seat.
“What happened?” Val asked, forced to raise his voice above the music blaring from the Land Rover’s cd player.
“Fell off an overhang in Utah. I’m a rock-jock. Only this time I came down the easy way. At my age bones take longer to heal. My leg is the reason I might have sounded less than willing when you rang. I can slide in and out of this baby, but saloon cars are out of the question. He nodded to Val’s hand. “You’ve been in the wars yourself.”
Val gave him a brief account of his climbing accident. Bickford found it hilarious and his laughter was infectious. For the first time since it had happened, Val found himself able to smile about it.
“This book of mine you’ve read,” he asked. “Where did you get your hands on a copy? It didn’t exactly make the best seller list.”
“City library.”
“Cheapskate. What do you make of the cd?”
“Loud. What is it?”
“Arabian Fantasy, an album recorded by David Fanshawe, an English ethnomusicologist. He had the ships passing through the Suez Canal blow their foghorns, which he taped, then he wrote and arranged accompanying music. Must have scared the crap out of every camel for fifty miles.”
“I don’t know about that. They can make some pretty scary noises themselves.”
Bickford laughed again, and then abruptly changed the subject. “Did this manbo of yours have a set of drums?”
“Yes, to induce the danse-lwa?”
He nodded and drifted off into the music. Val said nothing more, other than to give directions.
Daylight didn’t improve the appearance of Duval’s building. The stucco was cracked, the paint faded. They pulled up outside and Val waited on the sidewalk as Bickford eased himself out and slipped his arms into the crutches.
Yellow crime-scene tape sealed the door to the room. Val slid the blade of a penknife around the edges and pushed open the door. They were met by a swarm of large shiny flies and a stomach-turning stench, so thick it seemed to cling to their skin.
Bickford didn’t turn a hair. He hobbled in and, without having to be instructed, started to examine the room, his attention immediately drawn to the drums. He extricated an arm from its crutch and started to beat slowly on the largest of the three.
“Rada drums,” he announced eventually. “The drums of choice for initiation ceremonies. They honor the good spirits from Dahomey in West Africa.”
Not what Val wanted to hear. “What do you make of these?” he said, tapping the wall below the three veve sketches.
Bickford moved over and examined them closely. “The heart-shaped one represents Ezili, goddess of love — often portrayed by a Virgin Mary figure. The middle one is the veve for rebirth.”
“Would you expect it to be part of an initiation ceremony?”
“Absolutely.”
“And Ezili?”
He took another look at the heart-shaped veve before saying, “Not that I’ve heard about − the Ayizan veve is normally reserved for that ritual — but it’s impossible to rule it out.”
“What about the third veve?”
“Not one that I’m acquainted with. I’d say it’s derived from Masonic imagery. If you have no objection to my taking a picture of it, I might be able to run down some reference to it?”
“Go right ahead.”
Bickford slipped a pocket camera from his shorts and quickly snapped a couple of shots.
They went outside to the yard.
Bickford poked at the compacted earth with the rubber ferrule of one of his crutches. “If there had been a poteau-mitan in the center, I would have said this area had been designated a sacred place, delineated by the four cardinal points.”
“What’s a poteau-whatever?”
“A circular pillar that links heaven and earth. Most of the ceremonial dances take place around it.”
“Could an oil drum substitute?” Val pointed out the crushed remnants under the tree.
“Yeah, don’t see why not. Let’s have a closer look.” He grinned broadly as he said, “I take it that’s the tree you fell out of.”
Painted in faded red-oxide and barely visible on the concertinaed drum were two snakes that Bickford stated were the lwa Dambala and Ayida Wedo.
“Let me get this clear,” Val said. “Duval senior had the yard rigged as some sort of temple, and an initiation ceremony could have been conducted here.”
“It’s common enough practice. Voodoo has been driven underground so many times, its followers are well used to making do with whatever’s to hand. What way was the girl dressed when you found her?”
“She was near naked, though we found a white dress and scarf hidden in the tree.”
Bickford seemed almost apologetic. “Voodoo initiates are dressed in white. Catholic imagery again.”
“So the girl could be telling the truth?”
‘‘I guess so.”
“Wouldn’t there be a need for witnesses to the initiation ceremony?
”
“Certainly the early stages, not necessarily for the boule-zen. Without the distractions of others, an initiate could be expected to be more receptive to the lwa, and any manbo worth her salt wouldn’t want her secrets exposed for all to see.”
Val tried one last shot. “We have conclusive proof that the girl wasn’t confined for all the time she claims.”
Bickford shook his head. “I wouldn’t read much into that. Voodoo has survived countless attempts at eradication by constantly evolving, in contrast to the Christian or Islamic faiths that have changed very little over the years. The principal reason being that voodoo has no dogma to restrict it. The confinement might have been more symbolic than literal.”
On the drive back to the First District, Bickford pumped Val for information about life in the PD. He was in the midst of preparing a paper on subcultures found in law-enforcement agencies. According to him, they have their own language, their own beliefs and rituals, and their own taboos.
If the professor was expecting an argument from Val, he was disappointed. Though he had overlooked one thing, Val reckoned. They also have their dogma. Too damned much of it.
CHAPTER FOUR
It was after midnight when Val left Eadie’s bar, having squandered half a day brooding over a ten-year-old case. The outside air was still hot and full of ozone, thanks to an electrical storm winding itself up over the delta. Revelers thronged the narrow streets of the quarter. He hailed a cab to drive him home.
Home was a preservation-listed, timber-framed house off Magazine. Left to Marcus and Val equally by their mother in her will, it was the one thing that their father had never managed to lose on the ponies at the Fairgrounds’ track. A bedroom short of being worth serious money, it was one of very few on the street not earning its keep as a guesthouse. Six months after their mother had died, Val had bought out Marcus’s half. It had really burned him up to have to shell out yet another half its value to Angie on their separation, but he would do it a third time if it meant keeping the house.
Slumped in the back seat of the cab, his head spinning, Val made a conscious effort to expunge the Duval investigation from his mind. What was it to him that Marie Duval had not shown the slightest flicker of remorse and ended up spending just six months in a juvenile detention center? He had done all that was asked of him. So what if the assholes at the DA’s office couldn’t appreciate that Valerie Duval’s homicide had murder written all over it? Maybe if they had seen into the daughter’s eyes, as he had done for a split second before falling from the tree, they wouldn’t have been so quick to accept Wells’s deal. If he never heard her name again, it would be too soon,
Val didn’t go into work the following morning; not because of the jackhammer remodeling the inside of his head, but because he was expecting Angie. He woke an hour later than usual and struggled into the kitchen to make a pitcher of iced tea to rehydrate his insides. He drank one glass, then poured himself another and took it back to bed. It was gone ten when he heard her key turn in the lock.
Angie walked straight through the living room and into the bedroom, waving a hand in front of her face.
“This place smells like a distillery.”
Dressed in a simple wrap-around dress and wearing almost zero make-up, she still managed after all this time to take Val’s breath away and he wondered yet again what it was she had seen that persuaded her to invest six years of her life in him. Time that had added a new depth to her beauty. Burnished gold hair which she wore long and straight; eyes that sparkled like fireworks; NBA legs; great posture — all had appreciated with age. Angie possessed a radiant vigor that is commonplace in kids of nineteen, but rarely found in a woman in her late thirties.
Val was not blind to her imperfections, though, and she had plenty. He knew what a bitch she could be when it suited her. She could be manipulative and self-centered. A dedicated pursuer of social-advancement, who scorned her own blue-collar background. The break-up of their marriage did not come as a bolt out of the blue. They both knew within the first year that neither was giving the other what they had hoped. Angie’s affair with Marcus started three months before Val made his decision to leave the PD. When at last the marriage ended, they felt no need to apportion blame; instead, they agreed to do all they could to preserve the good memories and remain friends. They made plans to meet from time to time and talk as friends do. It was during the second of these encounters, three months after they had split up, that they surrendered to a mutual hunger and had gone to bed.
Val was still in love with his wife, and not for a moment since then, despite the damage it would do to his brother if he was ever to find out, had he considered calling a halt to their assignations.
She removed her dress, kicked off her shoes, and slipped under the sheet. They didn’t talk much for a while.
Afterwards, it was Angie who brought up the meeting between Val and his brother.
“He was in a foul mood for the rest of the day,” she said. “Couldn’t you have gone along with it — for his sake?”
“No way, even if he had had the balls to come straight out with it.”
Angie stood and wrapped a sheet around herself, toga style. “I warned him to be up front, but he’s always been a little in awe of you.”
“The only person Marcus is in awe of is anyone pulling down a larger salary,” Val protested, though her comment struck a rawer nerve than she could have possibly guessed. He recalled how his brother had often claimed to know him better than Val knew himself.
“I’m serious. If you two are ever going to patch it up, then you’ll have to be the one to make the first move. Brothers shouldn’t fall out.”
“You can choose your friends. You don’t have that luxury with your relatives or your enemies.”
“Damn you,” she said, picking up a pillow and throwing it at Val. “I’d dearly love to know where you acquired your sense of morality. The only enemy you have is yourself. You’re perfectly willing for us to cheat on Marcus, while he continues to blame himself for breaking up our marriage.”
“I was a cop,” Val said simply, as though that explained all. “If he wants a guilt trip, let him have one. I’m not cheating on anybody. You’re still my wife.”
“Don’t remind me,” Angie snarled. “I have something to tell you that concerns us both. Now I’m not sure that I want to.”
“What is it?” Val asked, but Angie had disappeared into the bathroom.
After a quick shower, and without saying another word, she gathered up her clothes and dressed in the living room. Most of their bi-monthly sessions ended with them rowing. Val switched off the ceiling fan and lay back in bed to catch the traces of her scent on the pillows. The sound of the front door closing surprised him. It wasn’t like Angie to leave without saying good-bye, no matter how mad she was at him. He stirred himself and went, bare-assed, in search of a third glass of iced tea.
He found Marie Duval standing in the center of his living room. It was a toss-up which of them was the most astonished. Duval recovered first.
“Your wife told me it would be okay to come in,” she said, allowing her gaze to sweep slowly over him.
Val barely caught her words as he spun around and sought sanctuary in his bedroom. He slipped on a robe and pulled the belt tight.
Duval had made herself at home and was sitting on the window seat flicking through a magazine. She was wearing a man’s shirt over a pair of faded 501s and had simple strap sandals on her feet. She had grown into an attractive woman. Not a classic beauty in Angie’s Anglo-Saxon manner, but with a grace and confidence that went way beyond her age. Tall and lean, she was considerably lighter in color than her mother, though her high, well-defined cheekbones still bore the nobility of her Dahomey ancestry. Her hair was shaved closed to her scalp in a checkerboard design.
Val’s immediate instinct was to throw her out, but first there was a question he needed answered.
“You have thirty seconds to explain what you are doi
ng in my house.”
“I want to ask you something. Face to face.”
“What did you mean when you said that my wife told you to come in?”
“Angie and I have become good friends in the last few weeks — she’s been very supportive. She explained about you and her and had me wait in the car.”
“She brought you with her?” Val said, incredulously, promising himself that he would call her as soon as he’d seen the girl off. He had a mental flash of the bemused smirk sure to have been on Angie’s face as she drove away.
Duval put down the magazine. “She seems to think that a personal appeal might succeed where your brother failed.”
“What’s it to you? As I understand it, your UNO acceptance has been more or less secured. Marcus wanted me installed as campus police chief to further his own aspirations.”
“You’re only partly correct. The university confirmed my acceptance this morning. But don’t go blaming your brother. Marcus is a charming man, though a little pompous at times. He means well. But it was my suggestion that he offer you the job. At first he wouldn’t hear of it, so I pointed out to him and Angie how it might prove advantageous to his career.”
She had had her thirty seconds and had left Val with a dilemma: throw her out now or let her stay and say her piece. He let her stay.
“I’d have thought the last person you would have wanted on campus was me,” he said.
“I have nothing against you.”
Val held up his left hand. “That wasn’t always the case.”
“That was a mistake. I honestly believed you were climbing up that tree to kill me. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
He pulled a face. “Splitting your mother’s skull with an axe can really screw up a kid’s day.”
Duval hesitated and for a second allowed her sassiness to slip, exposing a child-like vulnerability. “I didn’t kill my mother.”
“You signed a statement admitting that you did.”
She nodded.
“You stole the axe.”
Another nod.
An Evil Shadow - A Val Bosanquet Mystery Page 4
