Black Magic Woman (Morris and Chastain Investigations)

by Justin Gustainis

  Cooper’s gaze suddenly focused on two people walking together, a man and a woman. He’d never set eyes on either one before, but somehow looking at them now set his teeth on edge. He couldn’t have said what it was—they were probably just a couple of wage slaves on their way to work, a tall guy and a woman who was almost the same height.

  But there was something about them that just pissed Arch Tracy off.

  As they drew closer to where the SUV sat stuck in traffic, Tracy’s irritation quickly progressed to anger, and then rage. He found himself consumed with irrational hatred for that tall asshole and the bitch with him, and they were suddenly all the people who had ever hurt him, scared him, embarrassed him, made him feel like nothing more than a dog turd fit only to be scraped off your shoes.

  Tracy was staring at the couple now, seeing them as if through a red haze. His breath was coming in short gasps, his pulse pounding like a crazed drummer in his ears.

  Suddenly, without any conscious decision on his part, Arch Tracy wrenched the wheel of the SUV hard to the right, making the power steering scream with the strain. A moment later his foot, seemingly of its own volition, moved from the brake pedal to the gas.

  And then he floored it.

  IT WAS THE screech of overburdened power steering that caused Quincey Morris to glance toward the street, and that was the only thing that saved him. He saw the blue SUV suddenly pull out of the line of idling cars and make a screaming beeline for the sidewalk, picking up speed alarmingly fast.

  It was headed right at him and Libby.

  Even Morris’s hair-trigger reactions gave him precious little time to do anything. As the SUV bore down on them, he yelled “Libby!” and shoved her hard to his left, an instant before making his own desperate dive to the right. In the midst of this flurry of movement he got a fraction of a second’s glimpse of the SUV’s driver, whose face was distorted into a mask full of the kind of rage and pain that you rarely see outside of an asylum.

  Morris tried to turn his dive into a tuck and roll, but the small suitcase hanging on his shoulder made that impossible. He hit the pavement with the suitcase underneath him, bounced off it, and slid several feet—until he was abruptly stopped by the impact of his head against the base of a lamppost.

  After that, things got kind of hazy for a while.

  He was vaguely aware of the sounds of impact as the SUV smashed headlong through the front of Del Floria’s Tailor Shop, which lay just beyond where Morris and Libby had been walking. He could hear the SUV’s horn then, a blaring monotone that went on and on until somebody must have pulled the driver’s body off the steering wheel. A while after that, Morris couldn’t have said how long it was, came the peal of sirens which gradually grew louder before suddenly ceasing altogether, to be replaced by a hurly-burly of flashing lights, slamming doors, and shouted orders.

  And, semiconscious though he was, Morris lay there on the pavement and grieved. Because from the section of sidewalk where he had desperately shoved Libby Chastain, there was silence. And silence. And silence, still.

  IT HAD JUST gone one in the afternoon when Fenton and Van Dreenan followed Route 1 through Peterborough, Massachusetts. The pointer on Van Dreenan’s magical device was aimed straight ahead, so they assumed they were still on the right track.

  “I don’t know where our friends are headed,” Fenton said, “but they sure as hell don’t seem to be in any big hurry to get there. We haven’t hit anything bigger than a two-lane road since we left Cranston.”

  “It is curious,” Van Dreenan said. “Regardless of where their rendezvous is, there are surely faster ways to get there than the route they are following. One assumes they would be in a hurry.”

  “I don’t suppose this would be a good time for me to wonder aloud whether that magical doohickey is doing what it’s supposed to?”

  Van Dreenan shrugged his big shoulders. “You either believe, or you don’t,” he said. “Me, I believe—perhaps because I have nothing else left. In any case, my friend, we are surely committed now.”

  “I just hope somebody in the upper echelons of the Bureau doesn’t end up deciding that we ought to be committed.” Fenton had a shrug of his own. “You’re right, though. Fuck it. The cards’ve been dealt, and we put down our bets. All we can do now is play them.”

  A few minutes later, Van Dreenan’s stomach made a noise like a small building collapsing. “Excuse me,” he said with a grimace.

  “Hungry?” Fenton asked. “Me, too. I haven’t eaten since dinner yesterday, which was—” he checked the dashboard clock, “about seventeen hours ago.”

  “I don’t think that stopping for food is a good idea, considering the circumstances. I imagine you have been hungry before, as have I. We survived it. We will this time, too.”

  “Yeah, but hunger equals low blood sugar, which equals loss of concentration and slower reaction time. And if we do catch up to these motherfuckers, we had damn well better bring our ‘A’ game, ’cause from what I’ve seen we are sure gonna need it.”

  “I did not understand that in all its particulars,” Van Dreenan said, “but I believe I grasp your meaning. And I do not disagree. But I still do not think we can spare—”

  “Tell you what,” Fenton said. “Let’s keep our eyes open for a fast food place that doesn’t look busy. We stop, run in—well, maybe I run in, while you stay here and babysit that thing—I buy a bunch of food to go and bring it back here. Since eating while driving isn’t real safe, you eat while I drive, then I pull over someplace, we switch places, and I eat while you drive. Total time lost, five minutes, tops. What do you think?”

  “I think I want you at the table the next time my police union is negotiating its contract with the government,” Van Dreenan said. “You’re right, it’s a good idea. Let us, as you say, keep our eyes open for a likely place.”

  A few minutes later, Fenton was stopped for a red light at an intersection and peering ahead through the windshield. “That looks like a Wendy’s, up there on the right. See it? I’ll cruise the parking lot, and you take a look inside, see how crowded it is.”

  “Fine with me,” Van Dreenan said. He began to stow the magical tracker back inside his briefcase.

  The light changed, and Fenton eased into the intersection. Perhaps his blood sugar really was low, or it may have been that thoughts of a double cheeseburger and large fries had him distracted.

  For whatever reason, he reacted slowly, far too slowly, when the teenage boy in the pimped-out Camaro ran the red light and came streaking right toward them.

  THE SMALL, BRIGHT light shined into Morris’s right eye, went away, then came back. A moment later, the same procedure was repeated with his left eye.

  “You’re a lucky man, Mr. Morris,” the doctor said, replacing the penlight in the pocket of his starched lab coat. “There’s no sign of concussion, your reflexive responses are normal, and the EEG results are negative. How’s the head feeling?”

  Morris rubbed the back of his skull, where he could feel a lump the size of a ping-pong ball. “I’ve had a few hangovers that were worse,” he said. “Although not recently.”

  The doctor nodded without smiling. He was a short, freckled redhead who reminded Morris of a leprechaun. His name-tag read “Rosenbloom.”

  “Lucky, as I said.” Rosenbloom glanced at the file he was holding. “I understand you’ve been asking about the woman who was with you, Elizabeth Chastain.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m afraid Miss Chastain was not so fortunate.”

  Morris felt a tight, hard knot form in the pit of his stomach. Trying to hold his voice steady he asked, “Dead?”

  “No, she’s alive, although I’m told it was touch and go there for a while.”

  The knot loosened, a little. “Is she going to make it?”

  “She’s not my patient, you understand. Doctor Stanhope headed the team that treated her, and he’s currently in the middle of treating a gunshot victim. But I was able to get a look at Miss C
hastain’s chart before I came in here. She sustained severe injuries, but they’ve got her stabilized now. I’d say the prognosis is... fair.”

  “You said ‘severe injuries.’ How severe?”

  Rosenbloom frowned with concentration. “The chart mentioned a ruptured spleen, perforated large bowel, and some kidney damage. Internal bleeding, but that’s under control. Plus two, no, three cracked ribs and a fractured right fibula.”

  “Come again on that last one?”

  Rosenbloom made a face. “Sorry. Broken arm.”

  “Can I see her?”

  “She’s in the ICU. Normally, they don’t admit visitors who aren’t members of the immediate family. They’re pretty anal about it.”

  Morris closed his eyes for a moment. Through clenched teeth, he began, “Doctor—”

  “Of course, since Miss Chastain was unconscious when admitted, they were unable to ask the usual questions about marital status, and so on. Lots of women keep their last names when they get married. If you were her husband, I could get you into the ICU to see her.”

  Rosenbloom looked at Morris for a long moment. “Tell me, Mr. Morris, are you Elizabeth Chastain’s husband?”

  Morris nodded, his face expressionless. “Yes, Doctor. Yes, I am.”

  “All right, then.” He made a note in the file. “I’ll see that you’re informed as soon as she comes out of the anesthesia. In the meantime, I believe there are some people waiting to talk to you.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “A couple of detectives from the NYPD.”

  “YOU SURE YOU don’t want to go to the hospital? Either of you?” Sheriff’s Deputy Tom Bernardi’s eyes went from Fenton to Van Dreenan and back again. “You guys don’t look so great.”

  “You should’ve seen the other guy,” Fenton said, then remembered what the teenager had looked like when the emergency rescue crew had peeled him out of the wreck of his Camaro. The kid had not, apparently, been wearing his seatbelt, nor did he have the protection of airbags. “Sorry,” he said. “Bad joke. No, Deputy, we’re all right. Really.”

  Fenton had developed a bloody nose from the car’s air bag exploding in his face, but the bleeding had just about stopped now. Van Dreenan, who was sitting next to him in the back of the deputy’s cruiser, had a welt on the side of his face from slamming into the side window, but the ice pack provided by one of the EMTs was helping to reduce the swelling, and the South African was not exhibiting any signs of concussion. Their car, however, was likely headed for the junkyard.

  “Well, if you gentlemen are going to decline transportation to the nearest medical facility, I’ll need to get some information from you for the accident report.”

  Bernardi produced a clipboard with a number of forms clipped to it. Long, complicated-looking forms.

  “Deputy, I would be really grateful if you would let us get back in touch with you later to complete the paperwork,” Fenton said. “I understand that you have rules and procedures to follow, and I’m not disrespecting those. But as I told you, we’re on official business, and Detective Sergeant Van Dreenan and I really need to get going.”

  “Are you claiming the existence of an emergency, Agent Fenton? Keeping in mind that I will be obligated to ask you for the nature of that emergency, which I will later have to verify with your superiors?”

  Fenton thought about trying to explain that he and Van Dreenan were pursuing a couple of serial killers using a magical device made by a white witch, and then he thought about asking his boss at Behavioral Sciences to back him up on it.

  Fenton dabbed at his nose, which no longer needed his attentions. “Can we at least expedite this as much as possible?”

  “Yes, sir,” Deputy Bernardi said impassively. “I’ll sure do my best.”

  CHAPTER 28

  THE YOUNG DETECTIVE with dirty-blond hair said that his name was Clark. He was tall, with the wiry build of someone whose idea of weekend fun is running in 10k races. Morris didn’t quite catch the other detective’s name, except that it ended in “witz.” He had receding brown hair, mean-looking eyes, and a potato nose above a broad, untidy mustache. He looked twenty years older than his partner, and fifty pounds heavier.

  “So, you’ve never met Archie Tracy, the driver of the Bronco?” Clark was consulting his notes.

  “No, never,” Morris told him.

  “What about your friend, Miss Chastain? Did she know him?”

  “Can’t say for certain, but I have no reason to believe she did.”

  “But she lives here in the city, right? So she could have known him and just never mentioned it?”

  “I reckon that’s possible, yeah,” Morris said.

  Something-witz had been prowling the room impatiently, but now he stopped and faced Morris. “Was there any kind of interaction between you and this Tracy just before he pulled out of traffic and decided to take that shortcut on the sidewalk?”

  “No, I didn’t even notice him until he was heading right for us.”

  “Uh-huh. He didn’t maybe say something through the car window when you two walked by? Something insulting to your lady friend, maybe? Something that you might’ve responded to by flipping him off, or saying, ‘Hey, fuck you, asshole.’ Something like that?”

  “No, he didn’t say anything,” Morris said. “There was no communication at all. He just headed right for us.”

  Something-witz nodded, as if he found all this about as credible as the Easter Bunny. “So this hump just decides to run down a couple of people chosen at random, for no reason at all?”

  “I suppose he had a reason that made sense to him, Detective, even if to nobody else. Why don’t you ask him?”

  “Yeah, well, we would,” Something-witz said with a scowl, “except the son of a bitch is in a coma.”

  “From the crash?” Morris asked.

  “They don’t think so,” Clark said. “The air bag deployed the way it was supposed to, and he had his seat belt and shoulder harness on, too. The guy’s brain seems to be just—fried.”

  “Could be the result of a drug overdose,” Morris said. “The same one that might have caused his homicidal impulse.”

  “Gosh, we never woulda thought of that.” Something-witz’s sarcasm was as ponderous as his belly.

  Clark sent a long-suffering look in his partner’s direction. “The toxicology reports haven’t come back yet,” he said to Morris. “In the meantime, we’re checking to see if Tracy had any kind of mental health history. Could be that today was the day the voices in his head told him to come home to Jesus, and you and your friend were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Voices in his head,” Morris said thoughtfully. “Could’ve been something like that, couldn’t it? Well, good luck with finding out.”

  As the two detectives left, Something-witz looked back toward Morris, saying, “Yeah, and thanks for all your help, pal.”

  FENTON WAS IN a fury as he drove the rented Ford Focus out of the Hertz lot, the tires screeching. It was 4:12pm.

  “Deputy Dawg can’t even loan us an official car,” Fenton snarled. “All in use, he says. On official business, he says, every fucking one.”

  He made an abrupt left turn without signaling, cutting off two other cars and prompting much blaring of horns.

  “Providence field office can’t give us a car because we’re outside of their area of operations. We’re Boston’s problem now, they say. Boston field office says they’ll be happy to have someone bring us over a car—tomorrow, or maybe the day after.”

  “It will not help our situation if you marry this vehicle to a light pole by driving like a maniac,” Van Dreenan said mildly. “Besides, I believe I have good news.”

  “Well thank God and Sonny Jesus for that, because I could sure as shit use me some good news right about now!”

  Van Dreenan said nothing, and it was quiet in the car for a few moments. Then Fenton carefully reduced the speed to something more reasonable, and took a couple of deliberate dee
p breaths.

  “Sorry,” he said. “You’re the last person in the world who deserves to get a bunch of shit from me. I’m sorry, man.”

  “Entirely understandable,” Van Dreenan said. “Forget it. Now as to the good news, there are actually two items.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “The first is that Elizabeth’s locator was protected by my briefcase and undamaged in the accident. I have checked it, very carefully.”

  “That’s good, although I don’t know what fucking difference it makes now.”

  “The other item is in the context of what you Yanks call ‘good news and bad news.’ The bad news is that you and I are idiots.”

  “I’ve been suspecting that about us, especially lately.”

  “The good news is that I think we might still be able to catch up with Cecelia Mbwato and her companion.”

  MORRIS STOOD WATCHING Libby Chastain for what seemed like a long time. Her bed in the Intensive Care Unit was surrounded on three sides by expensive-looking machines that peeped and beeped and traced wavy lines on a series of small screens. An IV drip slowly fed some kind of clear liquid into her left arm.

  Libby’s blackened eyes were so prominent they made her look like a raccoon, or a burglar out of some old animated cartoon. A large gauze bandage covered much of the left side of her face. Her right arm was in a cast, and Morris could only speculate on the other damage that was hidden underneath the thin hospital blanket.

  The nurses had vowed to chuck him out instantly if he tried to wake Libby up. And so he waited.

  Then he noticed the pattern on one of the electronic monitors changing. The shallow curves it had been tracing gradually became deeper. Morris was wondering what it meant, and whether he should call for somebody, when Libby said softly, “How you doing, kiddo?”