A boy, Anthony del Blanco would one day discover, born of violence.
15
The dead woman’s name was Fayette Martin.
At the time of her murder she was thirty years old, never married, no children. A graduate of Mayfield High School on Cleveland’s far east side, a real computer buff when she wasn’t raising prize-winning orchids in her spare time; this according to a phone interview Paris had conducted with her brother, Edgar, a resident of Milwaukee, her only living relative.
She had been identified through the Department of Motor Vehicles. Her late-model red Chevy had been parked a few blocks from the Reginald Building, where her body was found. Prints taken at the scene matched prints found in the car, and the ID was made. She had worked at a florist shop in suburban Chesterland for the past twelve years.
The official cause of her demise would be recorded as “blood loss due to severe head trauma,” but that would tell only part of the story. What really happened to Fayette Martin was that someone took a very large, very sharp knife-a machete, perhaps, or a hefty steel saber-and sliced off the top of her head. One clean blow. The coroner found no serration on the woman’s skull, no evidence of sawing. And there is a good chance that the woman was engaged in intercourse at some point either before or during the bloody event, but not after. Reuben says during, but has decided to keep that opinion unofficial for the time being.
Paris finds small solace in the fact that, on top of all this, they are not chasing a necrophiliac.
Generally, when there is evidence connecting the methodology, if not the motive, of two murders, there is some similarity in the victims: college girls, prostitutes, insurance salesmen. But this time, the two deceased could not be more disparate:
A dead black man found in a room at the Dream-A-Dream, robbed and castrated.
A dead white woman found in the Reginald Building on East Fortieth Street, the top of her head lopped off, her brain removed from the scene.
What makes them kin, in death, is that both victims had a strange symbol of a bow and arrow carved somewhere on their bodies. A symbol as yet unidentified.
As of two days before Christmas, the official position of the Cleveland Police department is that these killings are not related.
Three photographs are taped to the chalkboard in the common room on the sixth floor of the Justice Center. Around the trash and file-strewn conference table sit three police officers: Detective Jack Paris, Detective Greg Ebersole, and Sergeant Carla Davis of the Sex Crimes Unit.
Carla Davis is black, thirty-five, a stunning six-one, with broad shoulders and dark green eyes flecked with gold. Even if she wasn’t married, most of the guys in the department would be far too intimidated by Carla to have the guts to make a move on her. She looks like a big sexy forward in the WNBA, a woman who took no shit when she worked vice-where she was the undisputed queen of the prostitution sting-and takes even less now as second in command of the Sex Crimes Unit.
The past twenty-four hours have yielded a forming of this task force, as well as a shifting of assignments.
All police officers believe that there is something special about being the very first investigator to physically step into a crime scene. The smells, the sounds, the very feel of the air, the position of the body, the possibility that, in many cases, the last person to have stepped out of the room is the killer.
And while it is true that, if another detective takes over the investigation, and ninety-nine percent of the evidence is conveyed through witness reports and affidavits and photographs and videotaped interviews, there is still that one percent held dear by detectives everywhere, and having a case yanked is never pleasant.
Although, this time, Paris is clearly getting the better deal, if there is a better deal to be had here. He wasn’t anxious to poke around in Willis Walker’s life, any more than he was anxious to poke around the man’s pants.
The trade is not lost on Greg Ebersole. Or his demeanor. Greg’s vast array of drug connections were working against him. He’d take over the Walker investigation for the time being. Paris got Fayette Martin. Carla Davis will liaison with Sex Crimes.
At eight-fifty, Captain Elliott enters the room and the task force meeting begins.
Paris at the chalkboard, notebook in hand. “We have a dead male black, one Willis James Walker, forty-eight, a resident of East Boulevard. Mr. Walker’s body was found in Room 116 of the Dream-A-Dream Motel on East Seventy-ninth Street and St. Clair Avenue. The coroner’s office says Mr. Walker was struck on the back of the head by a heavy, flat object, but that is not what killed him. Nor did the large quantity of Rohypnol and alcohol in his system. The cause of death has been ruled to be loss of blood resulting from the removal of Mr. Walker’s penis and testicles, none of which were recovered at the scene.
“What was found was an unlicensed twenty-five-caliber semi auto, discharged twice. Both slugs were recovered. There is no evidence that anything human was struck.
“We also have one female white DOA, a woman named Fayette Martin, thirty, formerly residing in the Marsol Towers in Mayfield Heights. Ms. Martin’s body was discovered in an abandoned building at the corner of East Fortieth and Central. The coroner believes Ms. Martin was partially beheaded by a large knife or machete-type weapon. Her brain has not yet been recovered. In both cases a body part or parts was missing. In both cases a symbol, a carving, was left behind.”
Paris points to the first two pictures. One is of the symbol carved into Willis Walker’s tongue. The second one is of the symbol carved into Fayette Martin’s back.
“Reuben says that the mark may have something to do with the religion of Santeria, or one of its darker offshoots. I’m following up on that now. He believes that the mark on Mr. Walker’s tongue was made post-mortem. The mark on Fayette Martin’s back was made before she died. But minutes before she died.”
“Who found Willis Walker?” Carla asks.
“Cleaning woman,” Paris says.
“And the two kids who found the woman?”
“Neighborhood kid and his girlfriend. The girl is the one who called it in. Greg got their statements.”
“What do you have on Martin’s family, friends?” Elliott asks.
“Both parents deceased,” Paris says. “She had a brother in Milwaukee. He’s flying in to claim the body. She worked at a place called The Flower Shoppe in Chesterland ever since high school. According to her brother there was no boyfriend. As far as I can tell, Fayette Martin and Willis Walker did not know each other.”
Paris meets the eyes of everyone in the room, sees no further questions. He sits down.
“Greg?” Elliott says.
Greg Ebersole remains seated. To Paris, he looks like a man on the verge of physical collapse. “Willis Walker was married and had-are you ready for this? — eleven children. Five different women. Two of them had the brief privilege of being called Mrs. Willis Walker. Three of Willis’s progeny are doing hard time, one of them in the Ohio pen. Willis was co-owner of Kinsman Products, a print shop specializing in calendars, letterheads, business cards. He also fronted a record label called Black Alley Records. But mostly Willis Walker was in the business of getting away with petty crime. Twelve arrests, two convictions, both misdemeanors. Never spent more than forty-eight hours behind bars. No connection yet to anyone into voodoo or anything like that. Willis wheeled and dealed, so the possibility that he owed, or was owed, a large sum of money is extremely likely.”
Greg flips his notebook shut.
Elliott says: “Obviously, the last thing we want here is the FBI, people. Let’s try and clear these. Also, let’s look into the gangs, especially the Latino gangs, see if we can match this to some kind of initiation rites. Let’s check the index of gang tattoos, see if this mark means anything. Carla?”
Carla Davis sits up straight, crosses her legs. Today she is wearing a red wool skirt, cut just above the knee and a white silk blouse. All three men do their very best to look her straight in the eye. “Sex Crimes will lo
ok into the tattoo freaks, as well as the guys who like it in public. If Fayette Martin was having sex in that doorway, right before she was murdered, maybe this guy has done this before, and this time it got out of hand. Also, anybody who’s shown a propensity for recreational carving.”
“That happen a lot?” Paris asks.
“You’d be surprised,” Carla says.
“Doubt it.”
“Had a guy, few years ago,” Carla continues. “Creepy crawler. He used to prowl Tremont in summer, looking in windows, watching girls undress. His thing was sneaking in after the girls had gone to sleep, chloroforming them, then carving a series of numbers on their foreheads with a hat pin.”
Paris and Ebersole exchange a glance. “And that’s how he got off?” Greg asks.
“Well, he used to masturbate while he carved. Never raped any of them. Did it five times.”
“Please tell me he’s in Mansfield now,” Paris says.
“Oh yeah,” Carla says, standing, collecting her papers. “And are you ready for what the numbers meant?”
“What?”
“It was his locker combination,” Carla says. “His damn high school locker combination.”
“Jesus,” Greg says.
“The worst part is that he’ll be out in eighteen months and there are five women walking around Cleveland with this asshole’s locker combination written across their foreheads in scar tissue.”
No one in the room feels it would be appropriate to laugh, considering the serious nature of the crime. They are professionals and they take the violation of a citizen under their watch very seriously. Laughing would be unprofessional.
So, instead, they grab their papers and coffee and cigarettes and head for the door as fast as they can.
“Are you Detective Paris by any chance?”
They are in the Justice Center lobby. It is noontime, crowded. Paris turns to see a young man of his height, nice looking. A Nikon hangs around his neck.
“By every chance. You are?”
“Julian.”
Paris arches an eyebrow, waits for more.
The man continues. “I’m sorry. Mercedes Cruz is my sister.”
“Ah, yes, okay,” Paris says, extending his hand. “Jack Paris.”
“Julian Cruz,” he says, shaking hands.
Julian is clean-cut-khakis, suede hikers, leather flight jacket, tortoiseshell sunglasses, trimmed mustache-and perhaps a few years older than Mercedes.
“Nice to meet you,” Paris says.
“Same here. I called upstairs but they told me I just missed you.”
“Yeah. They have to let me out sometimes. Union thing.” Paris buttons his coat, smoothes his hair, anticipating having his picture taken with little notice. “How’d you know it was me, by the way?”
“Believe me, my sister described you to the last detail. She’s awfully good at detail.” He unsnaps the leather case around the Nikon and holds it up. “I’ll make this as quick and painless as I can.”
“Where do you want me?”
Julian gestures to the huge windows overlooking Ontario Street. “Light looks good there.”
They walk across the lobby. Julian positions Paris, steps away, focuses, says: “You know, I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but Mercedes is awfully taken with you.”
“Is that right?”
He snaps a picture. “Well, maybe taken is the wrong word. It’s just that this is the biggest assignment she’s ever had. She just is glad to be working with such a professional.”
“Well, it’s my pleasure.”
Snap. “I love her very much and I hope she sets the world afire. That’s all.”
“I have no doubt she will. I hope I can help,” Paris says.
“Don’t tell her I said anything, okay? I don’t know if you’ve gotten a taste of that temper yet. She’d kill me.”
“I understand.”
“A few more?”
“Sure.”
Julian snaps a third, fourth, and fifth picture, then caps the lens. “Thanks. All done. I’ll make sure you get copies.”
Paris lies: “I look forward to seeing them.” They are near the door to the parking garage. Paris points to the garage. “Can I give you a lift anywhere? I’m heading east.”
Julian holds up an RTA pass. “West. Thanks anyway. Nice meeting you.”
“My pleasure.” Paris pushes open the door, wondering-about twenty seconds too late-if his cowlick had been sticking up on the top of his head, a tonsorial battle against gravity he has waged with his hair, on a daily basis, since he was eight years old.
The Flower Shoppe is a tan, rough-cedar-and-glass building on Caves Road in semirural Chesterland, conveniently located across the street from the LaPuma-Gennaro Funeral Home.
The sky has brightened but the day is still cold enough to make the snow crunch beneath Paris’s feet as he approaches the garland-and-ribbon-bedecked building. His breath describes small cirrus clouds of vapor before him. He opens the door and is immediately enveloped by the humid fragrances of pine and spruce and balsam.
The interior of the store is packed with seasonal flora, every surface covered with snow-flocked wreaths or huge red and yellow poinsettias. Behind the counter stands a man wearing a green apron, starched white shirt, and raspberry red bow tie, just wrapping up a sale of two large wreaths to an even larger woman. When she leaves, he turns to Paris.
“Can I help you, sir?” the man asks.
Paris badges the man. Then he notices a name tag that identifies him as Gaston Burke.
“I’d like to ask you a few questions, Mr. Burke.”
“This is about Faye, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I haven’t slept since I heard,” Gaston says. He is fifty, pear shaped and well tended. His hair is a dyed copper, slicked back like that of a barber from the 1930s.
Paris takes out his notebook. “How long did you work with her?”
“Twelve years or so, on and off. She came to work here right out of high school, I think. This was my parents’ store then. I worked here part time, off and on, until five years ago, when I took over the shop.”
“Was she a good employee?”
“The best,” Gaston says, his voice breaking a little. “In early, out late, always willing to come in on her day off when we were busy or if we had some kind of emergency. Three weeks after my parents died in a car accident, I had an appendectomy. Faye slept in the back room for five days in order to run the shop. Faye wasn’t just an employee, detective.”
“What else can you tell me about her, Mr. Burke?”
“I can tell you that she was a true artist. Had a real talent for floral design. Had a natural ability with orchids. These are Faye’s,” he says, gesturing to a tall, narrow glass case behind the counter. Inside are a dozen extraordinarily delicate flowers of rose, lilac, and yellow. “I can’t believe her Ladies Tresses are still alive and she is not.”
“What can you tell me about her personal life?”
Gaston thinks for a moment. He smiles ruefully. “Only that she didn’t have one. Faye was the kind of sad woman you see all the time now. Pretty woman beaten by life. Guess she got burned once, then it was check please as far as romance goes.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she never really talked about it, but I always got the sense that she had had a pretty serious relationship once, and had been rather unceremoniously dumped. I guess she never got over it. Holidays would come around and I would see her usually pleasant demeanor start to slump and it would break my heart. Every year I invited her to spend Thanksgiving or Christmas with my family. Every year she begged off.”
Paris asks: “So no one ever came to pick her up after work some Friday or Saturday night?”
“No. Never.”
“She never came in on a Monday morning and talked about a date she might have had over the weekend?”
“Maybe once, years and years ago. But nothing in recent memory. She wa
s a lonely young woman, detective. I am going to miss her terribly. I loved her very much.”
“You loved her.”
“Yes.”
“Was there ever a time that you two…”
“Dated?”
“Yes.”
“I’m gay, detective.”
“I see,” Paris says, choosing not to jot that bit of information in his notebook. “I hope you didn’t expect me to just know that.”
“No,” Gaston says. “I suppose not. But I trust it answers your question.”
“It does. But only one of them.”
“Touche.”
“Did Fayette work on the twentieth of this month?”
Gaston checks the calendar blotter on his desk. “No. She was off that day.”
“Can I ask where you were on the twentieth?”
“I was here. I closed the shop at six-thirty, stopped at the CVS and bought every cold medication they had. I then went home, took said drugs, and curled up with The English Patient.”
Paris is going to assume he is talking about the book or the movie. “And you didn’t go out?”
“Ever take NyQuil, detective? No. I didn’t go out. I was comatose.”
Paris flips shut his notebook. “Anything else you can add, Mr. Burke?”
“Only that Faye was also very good with computers. She set up everything here. The accounting software, the database for our mailing lists.” Suddenly, Gaston brings his hand to his mouth. “I just realized something.”
“What’s that?”
Gaston Burke says: “I am absolutely dead without her.”
16
The dead live here.
The cauldron, the nganga, sits in the center of the room, a room decorated with black shag carpeting, black walls, black ceiling. Twelve feet by twelve feet. The sparse light from the half-dozen votive candles deployed in a loose six-foot circle seems to soak into the darkness like moon-silkened blood into virgin snow.
Outside, in the hallway, there are red and green lights strung along the crown molding; a pine-scented wreath between the elevators, just above the call buttons. In the lobby, there is a huge silver tree, ringed with multicolored lights and laden with dazzling ornaments.
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