The Resurrector (The Dominic Grey Series)

by Layton Green

  “I don’t suppose. I’m not sure I would have noticed.”

  An emotion had shadowed the sergeant’s eyes since they had entered the slum. A distant sadness, he thought. Not for the condition of the slum but for a memory evoked. “Do you investigate here often?”

  She gave him a sharp look, her eyes neutral once again. “Of course. Poverty breeds crime, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

  “And institutionalized inequality breeds poverty.”

  She didn’t take the bait, still leaving Viktor in the dark as to where her sympathies stood. Instead she led him across a wooden plank spanning a sewage-filled canal running through the middle of the township. Thickets of reeds with yellow flowers resembling corncobs flanked the canal. The stench of fetid water rocked Viktor.

  “Almost there,” Sergeant Linde murmured.

  They passed beneath a pair of dolls with faces covered in white paste, sightless eyes watching the road, hanging by shoestrings from a low-lying power line. Viktor grimaced as he ducked the ward. The village was rife with superstition. Reeking of it.

  Near the end of the path, Sergeant Linde approached a rusting storage container painted green and sprayed with fresh graffiti. It did not take an anthropologist to interpret the lurid images.

  A middle-aged woman, once attractive but saddled with malnutrition and a world-weary expression, answered the sergeant’s knock. The woman crossed her arms over her gray sweater with a shiver that belied the sunny, mild weather. “Is there news?” she asked, in a thick but educated accent.

  The woman spoke directly to Sergeant Linde and didn’t seem to notice Viktor. Which was odd. People noticed Viktor.

  “There is,” the sergeant said, “but I’m afraid it’s not good. Is your husband home?”

  “No.”

  “Would you like to call him?”

  The woman waved a hand in dismissal. “If you haven’t come to tell me who did this, what is there to say?”

  Sergeant Linde pressed her lips together. “I’m sorry to report that someone has taken your son’s body.”

  At first the woman seemed not to have heard her, standing still and gazing dully at the ground. Then she put her hands against the sides of her head and wailed.

  Viktor flinched.

  “When will this stop! Who is doing this to my boy? He’ll come back again, won’t he?” She fell to her knees and cried out again, then began speaking in rapid Xhosa, as if praying. Neighbors stared from windows with distrustful eyes.

  Not at Viktor and the sergeant, but at the woman.

  Sergeant Linde started to put a hand on the woman’s shoulder, then withdrew it. “I’ll do everything I can to apprehend the culprit.”

  The woman rose and jabbed an accusatory finger at the sergeant. “You’ll do everything you can?” she mocked. “The body was stolen from the morgue. At the police station. You probably opened the door for them.”

  Sergeant Linde pressed her lips together. “Who did this to your home? It wasn’t here the last time.”

  The woman’s eyes flicked to the graffiti, and she rasped a chuckle. “Some of my neighbors blame us. Us. They think we summoned a tokoloshe.”

  “A what?”

  “A tokoloshe,” Viktor repeated. “An evil spirit or undead being, a sort of zombie or gremlin, that does the bidding of its master.”

  The woman raised her eyes to Viktor for the first time.

  “I don’t understand,” the sergeant said. “They think Akhona was one of these?”

  Viktor grimaced. “A tokoloshe is a domestic servant summoned by witchcraft, often to do harm. Many who believe in such a thing believe the price of creating this abomination is extracted from the living. More specifically, the sacrifice of a relative within one year.”

  The sergeant struggled to conceal her disgust, and Viktor saw a struggle he recognized in the mother’s tortured eyes, an intelligent person dealing with something she could not explain.

  “As if I would harm my son,” she said, yelling as she turned in a slow circle. “My only child!”

  Sergeant Linde was silent. The woman pointed a finger at her again. “You know who did this. We all know.” She flung her finger toward a line of undulating hills, awash in the soft light of wine country that seemed to last forever, backed in the distance by the mist-covered Langebergs.

  Akhona’s mother appeared to be singling out a fortress-like manor surrounded by a high stone wall, straddling a hill not far from the township. She snarled. “He did it.”

  “There’s no need to accuse innocent citizens.”

  The woman threw back her head and guffawed. “Innocent? Go!” she screamed. “Away from my house! He took my son and you’re protecting him! Again! Why did you even come here? To mock me? Go!”

  Viktor heard muttered curses from a crowd that had started to form behind Viktor and the sergeant. Someone threw a rock that clanged off the side of the storage container.

  The sergeant whirled. “Who threw that?”

  No one responded. More people gathered as Akhona’s mother continued to shout at them to leave. Some of the men held sticks and broken bottles in their hands.

  “Best if we leave,” the sergeant said in a low voice to Viktor.

  “I have more questions.”

  “Good luck asking them.”

  Viktor found the eyes of Akhona’s mother and saw nothing but grief and anger and confusion. She glanced at the manor on the hill again and spat on the ground, then entered her home and slammed the door behind her.

  Head high, wishing Grey were with him, the professor’s long stride quickly caught up with the sergeant’s. A crowd of people strangled the road ahead, forcing them to shoulder their way through. He wondered why Naomi didn’t pull her gun and realized that could backfire. Someone tossed a handful of something on Viktor’s suit, a white substance. Salt. A ward against evil.

  A gunshot sounded from somewhere behind them. The sergeant gripped the hilt of her baton, whirled and saw nothing, then kept walking. For a few tense moments, Viktor worried their lives were in danger, but the crowd thinned once they crossed the canal. Gunshots continued off and on in the background all the way until they reached the sergeant’s car.

  The sergeant’s knuckles gripped the wheel as she pulled onto the highway. Viktor stared into the rearview, not at the township but at the secluded manor on the hill. “You let them shoot around police officers?” he asked.

  “Emotions are high these days. They’re just releasing tension. Unless you’d like to spend the rest of the day conducting pointless interviews?”

  “Who was she talking about? The man she thinks took her son?”

  The sergeant paused a beat before she spoke. “Jans van Draker. A retired neurosurgeon. His family has occupied the manor on the hill above the township for generations.”

  Viktor waited for a further explanation that never came.

  “I see,” he said finally. “I assume you have no idea why she might blame him for what happened to her son?”

  “Superstitious nonsense,” she said. “That is all.”

  “Deriving from what?”

  She sighed. “Over the years, the township has experienced an unusual number of . . . oddities. Tragedies. Stillborn children with gross deformities. Wild animals and fish that resemble crossbreeds.”

  “How have these been explained?”

  She frowned. “You saw the canal. Contaminants, bacteria, the ravages of disease.”

  “The people in the township believe otherwise.”

  “They’re looking for someone to blame.”

  As they entered the town, Viktor decided to push. “Yesterday, when you said you had no knowledge of a nearby medical facility, I noticed hesitation in your answer.”

  “And?”

  “Could Akhona’s disappearance involve Jans van Draker?”

  Naomi compressed her lips. “A rumor persists in the township that he still practices medicine, in an illicit laboratory in the manor. Forbidden knowledge an
d arcane secrets, of course. Worthy of Dr. Frankenstein himself.”

  “You don’t believe the rumors.”

  “To be honest, I almost wish they were true. It’s a harsh and mysterious world, Professor. Nature is a cruel mother. I sometimes wish there were better explanations.”

  “You could have told me.”

  “What could van Draker possibly have to do with the other two victims?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “I don’t engage in rumors and hearsay about our citizens,” she said.

  “Have you ever been inside the manor?”

  “No.”

  As she pulled into the police station, Viktor drummed his fingers on his thigh. “I’d like to meet Jans van Draker. Will you arrange an interview?”

  “Ach. On what grounds?”

  “Did Akhona approach the village from the direction of the manor?”

  “I believe so, yes. But he could have come from anywhere.”

  Viktor smiled without showing any teeth. “Exactly.”

  -8-

  Sergeant Linde watched Professor Radek step into a hired sedan outside the police station, wondering what sort of professor chauffeured around in a top-of-the-line Mercedes. For that matter, what kind of professor traveled the world investigating crimes?

  Not only that, Viktor had looked less nervous than she had—a seasoned police officer—when the township crowd had closed on them.

  There was obviously more to his involvement than he was letting on. So what was he doing in her town?

  At first, she berated herself for not telling him the true history of Jans van Draker. Or at least the one that was common knowledge.

  Then again, let the professor do his own legwork. If he wanted to play coy, then she felt no duty to aid his investigation. This was her home, and the rural Western Cape was not a place easily penetrated or understood by outsiders.

  Naomi finished up her duties and stepped into her personal vehicle: a battered, beige, three-door 1984 Land Cruiser J70 closing in on four hundred thousand kilometers. Her baby. Before driving off, she spent a moment in contemplation with her hands on the wheel, staring at the front of the police station.

  The fact that Professor Radek was an outsider wasn’t the issue. He seemed a decent enough man, if a little haughty.

  The problem was the investigation.

  The potential subject of it.

  She drove to a bakery-café on the eastern edge of town and strolled into the lush back garden. After inhaling the aroma of baked cinnamon, she spotted a slim Xhosa woman waiting at a secluded table beneath a trellis wrapped in hibiscus.

  Thato, the sergeant’s oldest friend in Bonniecombe, greeted her with a warm smile. Thato had come of age in the township, a rare success story, and both she and Naomi had been surprised when, after meeting in a study group at the University of Cape Town, they realized they had both grown up in the same small town, though in very different circumstances.

  Not that Naomi was privileged—far from it. She came from a family of liberal educators with very little land and a strong sense of social justice, all of which rendered them virtual lepers among the Boers.

  Still, even the poorest white communities were much better off than the townships during Apartheid. Naomi had gone where she pleased and had access to the best schools and doctors.

  During that first meeting, Thato had leveled a challenging stare at Naomi, expecting awkward questions of class and privilege, but Naomi had simply hugged her and asked if she had wanted to escape the small-minded confines of Bonniecombe as much as she had. Thato invited her to a progressive café in the Bo-Kaap, Naomi went, and they had been best friends ever since.

  After spending the decade after college pursuing very different lives—Thato had married and divorced an accountant, and Naomi had worked two jobs in the city to pay off her student debt—they both returned to their hometown, appreciating its quiet beauty with new eyes and for new reasons.

  Thato fidgeted. “So? You’re not going to say a thing?”

  Naomi swirled her wine. Thato was the lead journalist at the local paper, the Bonniecombe Herald. The two shared information freely. “About what?”

  “Really?” Thato waited until Naomi met her gaze. “About the tall one you escorted to the township this morning?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Come, Nae. It’s a small town.”

  Thato looked hurt, and Naomi gave her a distracted smile. “I just haven’t had time to catch you up. The last twenty-four hours have been a little . . . strange.” She told her about the disappearance of the body from the morgue.

  Thato’s eyes widened. “Can I go with that?”

  “Yes. But not yet.”

  “Why not?” She leaned forward. “There’s something bigger?”

  Naomi crossed her legs and smoothed her pants. “The man I was with is Professor Viktor Radek,” she said quietly, glancing around to ensure no one else was within earshot. Van Draker had many eyes and ears. “He’s not a typical professor. He works with police around the world and has been in the news on a few high profile cases—weird ones, to be honest. He’s some sort of expert on religion and mysterious phenomena.”

  “And seven feet tall with broad shoulders?”

  Naomi rolled her eyes. “He’s got to be nearing sixty.”

  “So? You’ve rejected every eligible male in the district, hey?”

  “You mean the Boertjies who want me to quit my job and make potjie all day?”

  “If you don’t want an outsider, or anyone around here, then who do you want?”

  Naomi leaned forward. “I need you to focus. Something’s happening, something serious enough that Interpol sent him down here. I have no idea what that is, but you and I both know who’s involved.”

  Thato’s grin faded. “How can I help?”

  The Bonniecombe police department did not have the most modern resources, and Sergeant Linde was not very Internet savvy. She often relied on Thato for research projects that would benefit them both.

  “First, I want you to find out what Professor Radek is doing here. Then learn as much as you can about van Draker’s movements over the last few weeks.”

  Thato made a face. “You know he never leaves the manor.”

  “Still. Just check.”

  The reporter shrugged. “Okay.”

  Naomi’s blue eyes burned into those of her old friend. As did most blacks in town, Thato hated Jans van Draker, though not as much as Naomi did.

  No one hated him like she did.

  “And then,” the sergeant said, leaning over her wine, “we’ll go from there.”

  Naomi drove home deep in thought, turning off the highway a few kilometers outside of town and taking a dirt road twelve more kilometers to her home, a flat-topped bungalow on a half-acre of scrub and windblown fynbos. Along with other reasons, she had kept the house for its solitude. Naomi was an amateur astrophotographer, and the clear Western Cape skies provided some of the best stargazing in the world.

  On edge from the day’s events, she greeted Max, her boisterous Rhodesian Ridgeback, and then poured herself another glass of wine. She was eager for her rooftop patio and the velvet arms of the South African night, sipping her pinotage as she marveled at the constellations.

  First things first. She stepped into her study, a small room off the kitchen filled with a sad collection of brown seventies furniture inherited from her parents. The room resembled a war room more than an office. Photos and newspaper clippings covered the walls, stacks of papers and handwritten notes littered the desk and bulletin boards.

  At a glance, the office appeared to belong to an ambitious detective, someone who couldn’t leave her work at the office.

  On closer inspection, all of the photos and notes and clippings, everything in the entire room, pertained to one man alone.

  Jans van Draker.

  Naomi didn’t trust home computers. She had seen too many stolen or hacked. Everything of importance, sh
e wrote down by hand.

  She sat at her desk and made a note of the day’s events. Just before she rose, her eyes fell on the middle desk drawer. A drawer that contained a triangular silver ear tag a ten-year-old boy had found attached to a dead cane rat floating in the filthy township canal over a year ago.

  A cane rat with two heads, each bearing a set of curved incisors as long as those of a jackal, in absurd proportion to the size of the craniums.

  Horrified, the boy’s mother informed the police. At the morning meeting the next day, the captain had presented the call as a joke, laughing off the event and wondering how many township families a two-headed rat would feed. On a hunch, Naomi had gone to the township herself, off-duty, and taken a look at the abomination.

  The rat, kept by the parents under a bucket outside their shack, had horrified the sergeant. But the ear tag—not reported in the call—had intrigued her.

  A bit of quick research told her that the tag, made of a nickel-copper alloy with excellent strength and ductility, was typical of those used for lab research on mice and other small animals.

  Even more intriguing, and unseen by the boy or his parents because they were too superstitious of the two-headed monstrosity to peer closer, was the odd marking the sergeant found engraved onto the back of the metal ear tag. A circle pierced by a T, formed by a double helix and a symbol the sergeant had discovered was called an unalome.

  Enlightenment. As if.

  Snapping back to the present, Naomi clenched her fists as she strode out of the room. She could, of course, have denied Viktor’s request to interview Jans van Draker, or at least impeded the process.

  But she had waited a long time for a reason to peer behind those walls.

  -9-

  The worldwide headquarters of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention was a sprawling campus of glass, steel, and trees in a semi-residential neighborhood adjacent to Emory University, just a few miles from the center of Atlanta. Except for the giant fence and the guards and the specter of hazmat suits and zombie-inducing pandemics stored inside, it could have been any other semi-urban office park in the South.