by Layton Green
“What is she? Some type of evil goddess?”
“Worshippers petition Santa Muerte for requests of all sorts. Her followers are typically the poor, the downtrodden, the denizens of the night. Santa Muerte is what some call a crisis cult. One that attracts those who feel little affinity to society or traditional religion. Those to whom death is an intimate part of their everyday existence.”
“I’m sure these three have no problem petitioning her to ensure their drug transactions go smoothly.”
Viktor eyed the men waiting sullenly on the floor. “These men are amateurs. I see no votive candles or incense, no sign of antagonistic ritual behavior. The police can question them, but I doubt they were involved with the D.A.’s murder.”
Grey frowned. “So it’s just a coincidence that someone locked us down here and that Queen of the Bones over there is connected to the Grim Reaper?”
“On the contrary. I think someone who works at the Charnel House knew these men were here, and that it could be a powder keg if we stumbled onto them. I also presume they knew I’d recognize the parallels to the Grim Reaper.”
“So a message, then.”
“I believe so,” Viktor said.
“Telling you to do what? Back off the investigation? Sebastian’s already in jail, so who has something to lose?” He eyed Elaine, standing by the door with her arms hugging her chest. “One of the Reapers, if we dig into Sebastian’s life?”
“I don’t know,” Viktor murmured. “But tonight’s little incident tells us we need to find out.”
– 5 –
The state penitentiary at Angola appeared like a concrete scab on the flat Louisiana horizon. Grey and Viktor were two hours northwest of New Orleans, nothing but swamp and forest for miles, dank humid air festering the breeze.
A guard at the gatehouse checked a ledger and waved them through. Clayton’s attorney had paved the way for the visit. As Grey and Viktor entered the grounds of the prison, Grey felt a heaviness descend, a coagulation of violence and curdled humanity.
A young, mustached guard with a sunburned forehead hustled Grey and Viktor into a white-walled room with padded folding chairs and a metal table bolted to the floor. A female guard with cropped blond hair was inside. She was built like a bodybuilder, arms and neck bulging out of her beige uniform.
“I’ll watch ’em, Frank,” the woman said to the first guard.
“You sure?”
“No offense, but you’re new, and I don’t like letting him out of my sight.” She glared at the other side of the table, where a handcuffed Sebastian Gichaud regarded the newcomers with an impassive gaze.
Handsome but effeminately thin, Sebastian sat with his hands folded on the table, his long and elegant fingers suggestive of the lashes eclipsing his hazel eyes when he blinked.
After the first guard left, Viktor addressed the female guard. “We’d prefer to speak with him alone. I have permission from the warden.”
“I know you’re law enforcement, but there’s always the chance—”
Grey turned to her. “I’ve got this.”
Annoyed at the interruption, the guard looked like she was about to give them an order. Instead she eyeballed Grey, seemed to come to a conclusion, and pointed at a camera above the door. “I’ll be right outside.”
The guard slipped out. Grey turned back to Sebastian, noticing that the soft hands he had seen in the pictures at the Gichaud home had hardened, probably from manual labor at Angola. Brown curls that had once spilled over his shoulders now pressed limply against his forehead, a face once devoid of blemishes had a bruised cheek and a pink scar below one eye. Grey could only imagine what this good-looking rich kid’s life was like on the inside.
“Thank you for meeting us,” Viktor said.
“It’s in my best interest, ain’t it?”
Grey started, jarred by Sebastian’s raspy voice. His rural Louisiana twang and use of the vernacular was completely unexpected, the opposite of how Grey imagined the son of a wealthy New Orleans businessman would speak.
“I guess y’all are some more P.I.’s that Daddy Warbucks rustled up?” His eyes focused on Grey and then Viktor. Sebastian’s twisted leer looked unnatural, not the natural expression of such a handsome kid. “You’re not shrinks, even I’m smart enough to know that.”
Over the years, Grey had encountered so many hardened men, from criminals to soldiers, world-class martial artists to nothing-to-lose street fighters, that he had developed a sixth sense for a dangerous aura. And the vibe he got from Sebastian Gichaud in person, like the rough voice, bore no relation to the delicate, privileged youth Grey had seen in the photos.
“Why’d you kill the district attorney, Sebastian?” Viktor asked.
Grey hadn’t been sure how his employer would approach the interview. It appeared blunt questioning was the game plan.
“Bitch had it coming. I told her I’d get her, and I did.”
“I would have expected more eloquence from Death Incarnate,” Viktor remarked.
Sebastian leaned forward, eyes gleaming. “I didn’t go to him. He came to me.”
“And is he still there? Inside you?”
Sebastian spread his hands. “He is I. I am He. Is that better? Who are you to say who Death is? What experience with Him do you have?”
“More than you,” Viktor said quietly. “And what about Sebastian Gichaud? Is he still in there somewhere, too?”
With a slow, chilling smile, Sebastian drew a finger across the underside of his throat. Then he laughed, harshly. “Wait, that’s not right.” His body started convulsing violently, flailing against the chair and table while his eyes rolled back in his head, tongue lolling and trails of spittle running down the sides of his mouth.
The guard rushed inside. As she approached, Sebastian stopped gyrating and leered at Viktor. “That’s more accurate, ain’t it? Twitchin’ on that chair?”
Viktor put a hand up, calming the guard. The guard pointed at Sebastian. “That’s enough out of you. I’ll stick you back in the hole.”
Sebastian blew her a kiss.
“I didn’t realize Death had such a sense of humor,” Viktor said, after the guard had left. “I’m confused, though—is it a dual possession? Are you possessed by both Death and John Cowell Samuelson?”
Sebastian slammed his handcuffed palms on the table, causing Grey to tense and rise on the balls of his feet.
“You’re not listening. Death tells me who to kill, and I do it. Nothing more.”
“So you’re his emissary?” Viktor asked.
“I am whatever He wants me to be.” He grinned. “Forever.”
“What do you mean?”
Sebastian’s voice pivoted once again, acquired the syrupy charm of a country preacher. “There is the death of the body, Professor, and then there is the death of the soul. The death of all deaths. They’re two very different things, with two very different masters. I fear the second death—every living thing should.” His smile was slow and deliberate. “But I no longer fear the first.”
Viktor sat back, amused. “Oh? Why not?”
“I know some things.”
“Such as?”
“Tsk tsk. That type of knowledge must be earned. I did Death’s bidding, and He rewarded me.”
“Rewarded you how?”
Sebastian leaned forward. “You’d like to know, wouldn’t you? You’re a seeker just like me, I sensed it as soon as you walked in here. It galls, don’t it? When you want something so bad but you ain’t figured anything out?”
Viktor’s face remained impassive, but Grey noticed a slight twitch of his thumb against the fabric of his suit.
“Who is Death, then?” Viktor said. “A spirit? A voice in your head?” His voice turned patronizing. “A childhood friend?”
Sebastian’s response came harsh and fast. “Don’t push me.”
“So Death told you to kill the D.A.?”
“Her time came.”
“As will yours. In here,
most likely. How does that make you feel, Sebastian?”
“I told you not to push me.”
“Why not? What could you possibly do to me from in here? To anyone? Why don’t you cease this nonsense of pretending to be some—”
Quick as a breath, Sebastian lunged across the table, reaching for Viktor’s throat with his conjoined hands.
But Grey was even quicker. He leapt forward, cuffing the side of Sebastian’s head and slamming it down on the table. Grey pressed his fingers against Sebastian’s right eye and into the mandibular angle of his jaw to control him, until the guard rushed in and hustled Sebastian away.
“You’re next,” Sebastian snarled at Viktor as the guard, now joined by two others, led the prisoner out of the room. “Mark it on your calendar, as soon as I get out of here. You’re next.”
Viktor rose calmly after Sebastian was out of sight. “Anger can be a good judge of character,” he said to Grey. “The reactions evoked are more pure.”
Boots pounded on the floor, a different guard coming to escort them out.
“So what did you learn?” Grey asked, still feeling the intensity of Sebastian’s stare.
“That Sebastian Gichaud is either the most remarkable actor I have ever come across, or he fully believes that he is now John Cowell Samuelson.”
Grey and Viktor moved to a larger, brown-paneled room just off the warden’s office. It had coffee-stained carpet and a wall full of monitors. One of the screens was set up to display a recording of the Halloween Killer’s execution. After starting the video, the same female guard from before handed the remote control to Viktor and then stood off to the side.
In the video, two guards led John Samuelson to the lethal injection chamber. Samuelson was a crude, thick man with a beer gut and muscular forearms. Head bowed, bald pate gleaming under the florescent lights, he shuffled to his death like an automaton.
The prisoner didn’t look up until he was placed on the gurney. When he finally lifted his head, he looked lost and bewildered, a little boy running through a department store after losing sight of his parents. The expression seemed incongruous on the craggy, fifty-year-old face of a mass murderer.
Samuelson blinked as he took in the guards and state officials assembled to watch the execution. He looked down in disbelief as they strapped his arms. After mumbling something inaudible, he said, more loudly, “He lied to me. He lied to me!”
Though John Samuelson had shouted the last statement, he sounded nothing like Grey imagined a burly plumber would sound. Instead his voice was docile, almost tremulous, with the odd mixture of Southern and New York City speech patterns distinctive to New Orleans.
It was a voice, Grey imagined, that sounded like the voice of Clayton Gichaud’s son.
Viktor stopped the video and turned to the muscular female guard.
“Do you know what’s he talking about?” Viktor asked.
The guard looked surprised by the question. “No idea.”
“Had you ever heard him speak before?”
“No, but isolation does funny things to you. So does facing the needle.”
Samuelson had fallen quiet again, seeming to accept his fate. Just before the button was pressed to initiate the lethal injection, his face lit with terror and he fought against his restraints, crying out for his mother.
“Probably drowned her in a bathtub,” the guard remarked.
The prisoner sobbed on the gurney. Grey stood riveted to the screen. Though he had killed plenty of men in the heat of battle, each one weighing on his conscience, he had never seen an execution before, and he thought it a disconcerting thing to witness. The law of the jungle wrapped in the transparent cloak of civility.
“I tried,” the prisoner said through his tears. He was looking at the ceiling. “I’m so sorry, Mother. He lied to me.”
The State of Louisiana sent a lethal dose of midazolam into the prisoner’s IV tube. John Cowell Samuelson spasmed until he died.
– 6 –
Grey and Viktor again sat across from Clayton Gichaud in his study. Outside the window, in the glow of the streetlamp, fallen maple leaves looked like flames trapped in amber.
“You said your son visited Samuelson in prison before he was executed,” Viktor said, “and that Sebastian came back . . . changed. How?”
Clayton rubbed his thumb along the rim of his cocktail glass. “Come with me.”
He led them to a living room with leather furniture and a ceiling fresco depicting cherubim drifting among the clouds. On the far wall, a camcorder was hooked up to a flat-screen television. Clayton started the video. A recent image of Sebastian appeared onscreen. Though a few pounds heavier than in prison, he carried his weight differently. Lighter, not as grounded to the earth. Someone who had never done a hard day’s work. Sebastian’s posture, his body language, everything about him screamed wealth and privilege.
The exact opposite of what Grey had seen at Angola.
“His niece’s third birthday party,” Clayton said.
Grey watched Sebastian throw his niece in the air while she squealed in glee. Other kids asked for a turn, and Sebastian accommodated them with a smile on his face.
Viktor folded his arms. “Besides the physiological changes and voice modulation—did you notice anything else? Variations to your son’s routine?”
Clayton looked down, as if seeking answers in the depths of his glass. “My son kept to himself the three days before he . . . before the D.A. was killed. He avoided me, avoided his friends. When I went to his apartment to check on him, I noticed he ate grits and bacon for breakfast. My son ate fruit and quinoa, all that New Age stuff. I found empty beer bottles as well—my son drank fruity cocktails. He seemed messier, cruder. Everything, Professor. He changed.”
“A good actor can fake all of those things.”
Clayton waved his drink in the air. “You went to the prison. I assume you watched the execution?”
“We did.”
“So what do you think?”
“I think we need more for court. Far more.”
Clayton narrowed his eyes and pointed at Viktor with his Scotch glass. “Goddamn right. So what do you have?”
“A few questions for you. Last time we met, you said your son couldn’t have committed the murder. Why not?”
“My son was a gentle boy. He wouldn’t even squash a cockroach. I tried to get him to play sports, to be more . . . .”
“Like you?” Grey suggested. His own father, an alcoholic Marine sergeant, had raised Grey on a steady diet of domestic violence, aphorisms, and misguided patriotism.
It’s us or them, son, us or them. The man with the biggest stick controls his house, his country, the world. Everything else is lies and bullshit.
“I suppose,” Clayton said, his expression grudging and then softening. “I suppose that’s right.”
Grey softened his own gaze. That was more remorse than Grey had ever gotten from his own father.
“Were there ever violent incidents,” Viktor asked, “at home or at school? Anomalies?”
“Never. My son was a painter, a poet, a dreamer.” Clayton winced as he said the last word, as if it was something to be ashamed of.
Grey cut in again. “I have to ask—why the preoccupation with death?”
Clayton released a deep sigh. “Sebastian used to be happy. Full of life. And then his mother committed suicide a year and a half ago, and everything changed.”
Grey remembered John Samuelson’s last words with a chill.
I’m sorry, Mother. He lied to me.
“He took it very poorly,” Clayton continued. “Shut me out. Blamed himself for not being able to reach her.” He took a moment to compose himself, then took a long drink. “His paintings after she died, the books I saw at his apartment, even before the Halloween Killer and the Reapers . . . they always concerned death.”
Viktor’s heavy brow furrowed. He nodded at Grey and then rose. “I’d like to speak to the psychiatrist who evaluated your son
.”
Clayton snorted. “Which one?”
“The best.”
“I’ll set it up.” Clayton rose as well, a cynical smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “Listen, that old boy is going to tell you that cases of true split personality are extremely rare, that this and that are missing, that Sebastian has no medical basis for an insanity defense.”
“He thinks your son is acting.”
Clayton gave his Scotch a frustrated shake. “What’s really going on is that every shrink and lawyer in town is afraid to make that argument on the stand and lose. They think it’s professional suicide because of who the victim was.”
“I can assure you that, should we uncover viable information, fear of reprisal won’t be an issue.”
Clayton’s smile turned calculating. “I know.”
“Before we leave, may we see your son’s room?”
“Of course. He left home years ago, though.”
“I assume you reclaimed his possessions after his arrest?”
“I did. Most of them are in his room.”
As he led them down a hallway and up a wide staircase, Viktor asked, “Did your wife work?”
“She was a part-time actress. A dreamer like Sebastian.”
Clayton opened the door to a large bedroom with black and gold New Orleans Saints wallpaper. A window overlooked an interior courtyard filled with banana trees and pebbled walkways.
Clayton pointed at a stack of boxes along the wall. “His personal items. Mostly books and clothes. I have the rest of his furniture in storage.” His voice trailed off at the end of the sentence, as if speaking the words was painful.
“Is that Sebastian’s?” Grey asked, eying a framed painting over the bed. It depicted a man standing at the foot of an oily river that wound through a blasted landscape before spilling into a cave. Inside the grotto, which had the grayish pallor of a corpse, was a nightmarish world of smoke, fire, and tormented souls.
“He painted it after his mother died. You’re aware of the meaning?”
Grey joined Viktor as he stepped forward for a closer look, realizing the entrance to the cave was in fact the open mouth of a stretched and ghoulish face. Grey eyed the notation in the bottom left corner.
