“And why should I believe you?” Becca asked. “The whole town knows about this curse of yours.”
“I’m tellin’ ya…I didn’t curse her. She was one of my initiates. Why would I do somethin’ like that to one of my own?”
Becca glanced at Silas, who only shrugged in response.
“Everyone seems to think you did. Her friends. The Summer Haven Chronicler…”
“Blakely and that lousy paper.” Garcia spat on the floor. “Not exactly a trustworthy source there.”
“And if you did put a curse on her, wouldn’t it have looked bad for you if it didn’t work? I mean, what kind of power does a Babalowa have if his curses don’t actually do what they’re supposed to do?”
He glanced over at her, then quickly returned his gaze back to Death. “It would, but like I said, I didn’t do a bilongo on her. I didn’t perform no curse.”
“But the paper…”
“That paper is full of it, chica. Blakely’s got it in for me. Has for a long time. He’ll do or say whatever he can to spread those lies to anyone who’ll listen.”
Becca crossed her arms over her chest and smirked. “Spenser Blakely is one of the most respected men in Summer Haven. Why on earth would he have a vendetta against you personally?”
The gangster sniffed. “That’s somethin’ you should ask him.”
“She’s asking you,” Silas said, leering at the big man.
Garcia tensed. A vein began to bulge from his neck. Then he shook his head. “No matter what’s between us, I can’t tell you. Ain’t my place and the Orisha wouldn’t be pleased if I did. Lo siento, Senior Muerte, but I can’t. Not even for you.”
Becca nodded. “Okay. Then tell me…how is it everyone came to think you did place this hex on Alvarez?”
Garcia shrugged. “Don’t know. A few weeks back, I did have a lady try to pay me to lay the bilongo on her. Offered up two grand to do it. But I refused. Like I said, Andrea was one of mine and she’d not angered the Orisha. I had no reason to curse her.”
Silas and Becca looked at each other.
“And who was that?” They both asked at the same time.
The Babalowa shrugged. “Don’t know. Nice lookin’ white lady. Nice clothes. Expensive car. She just came to me and said she would pay me two grand to do the working.”
“Wait a minute,” Silas said. “You’re telling us that a well-off white lady in a nice car just drives up in your neighborhood—this neighborhood—finds you somehow, and asks you to place a curse on someone?”
“Yeah, that seems unlikely,” Becca agreed. “Even cops steer clear of Gruenwald Commons unless they can help it.”
Jacinto Garcia continued toying with the bones hanging from his necklace and shook his head. “Nah. That ain’t how it happened.” His eyes darted around the room, then to Esperanza, who gave him a nod of encouragement. He then returned his gaze back to Cole and Mot. “I met her at school.”
“Excuse me?” Silas’ eyes widened.
“Yeah, yeah. I know. Big bad drug dealer takin’ night classes at the state college. Go ahead and laugh it up.”
“You’re taking night classes?” Becca asked.
He nodded. “I don’t want to be doin’ this my whole life. If I do, I ain’t going to be around long enough to enjoy it. I want out. Military wouldn’t take me ‘cause of my record. School just seemed like my best bet.”
“And is this woman a student? A teacher?”
“I told ya. I don’t know. I seen her around campus a few times, but we ain’t ever had no classes together or anything.” He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. “One day, I’m walking to class and she comes up to me in the quad. Says she heard I was a Babalowa and that one of my initiates was Andrea. Said she’d pay me two grand to lay the working on her.”
“And you refused?” Becca asked.
“That’s what I said, isn’t it? Ain’t no way I was going to use the power of the Orisha—especially Sango’s power—to do something like that. It’d turn around on me so fast, I’d be dead within a week.”
Garcia took a long pull on his cigarette. Becca noticed his hands were shaking. Not exactly behavior she’d expect from a cold-blooded gangbanger.
“How did this woman respond when you refused her request?”
“Didn’t seem to have much of a reaction at all, to be honest.” He exhaled a plume of smoke. “She just smiled and walked away. Cool as an iceberg, if you ask me.”
“Like she had other options in mind,” Silas added.
“Exactly.”
“Did you ever see this woman again?” Becca asked.
Garcia shook his head. “Nope. But a few days later, Andrea came to one of our ceremonies freaked out. Got in my face in front of all the others and started accusing me of cursing her and that that creep reporter she’d been dating was going to find a way to stop it.”
“Wait,” Silas said. “You knew about their relationship?”
“Sure. Everyone did. She didn’t exactly keep it a secret. A matter of fact, several people warned her about that guy. He was an initiate of mine a few years back. But somethin’ was wrong with him. That dude was dark, man. I mean, yeah we’re drug dealers and gangbangers, but he even gave my hermanos the creeps.” The big man tossed the cigarette butt on the ground and stamped it out with a sandaled foot. “Andrea and Spenser met around the time his wife got sick. A few months later, Daphne Blakely was dead and Spenser was already tryin’ to get in Andrea’s pants. Took a few years, but he finally wore her down and they started hookin’ up.”
Becca and Silas gave each other sideways glances. “You could be right about him,” she said to Silas. She turned back to Omo Sango. “You’re saying that Spenser was into Santeria?”
“Yeah. An initiate working toward becoming Santero. Until I gave him the boot. Like I said, I won’t go into why, but let’s just say he was experimenting with some really weird stuff—death rituals and such—after his wife got sick. We already had a hard-enough time getting acceptance from the locals. We didn’t need someone like him being part of us.”
“Could Blakely have continued practicing without you?”
The big man nodded. “I ain’t Yoda and this ain’t like Jedi school. It’s sort of an individual thing. He couldn’t have received an Orisha without a Babalowa conveying it to him, which means he couldn’t ever become Santero. But he could certainly continue growing in the religion as much as he wanted.”
“And his wife?” Silas asked. “You said he started these strange death rituals around the time Mrs. Blakely got sick. Any chance he used one of those curses on her? Maybe he had his sights set on Andrea long before his wife died.”
Omo Sango shrugged. “Possible, but I doubt it. Need at least a Santero for a working strong enough for that. Woman got eaten up with cancer from what I hear. That’d take a lot of juju for something like that.”
“Getting back to this woman at your school,” Becca said after clearing her throat. “Think you could describe her to a sketch artist?”
He looked over at Silas again and gave a fearful little nod. “Sure.”
“Okay. Come to the station tomorrow morning, first thing. If you do, I won’t send the sheriff’s deputies and highway patrol out to come pick you up.” She paused, then shook her head. “No. Scratch that. Come to the station tomorrow morning and I won’t send him.”
She pointed at Silas.
Another nod.
Without another word, Becca turned and beckoned for Silas to follow. The two strode out of the gangster den as the Babalowa and the living embodiment of Santa Muerte looked on.
13
SUMMER HAVEN POLICE DEPARTMENT
WEDNESDAY, 3:48 PM
“Wait, I don’t understand,” Silas said, craning his neck as she drove past the newspaper office on her way to the police station. “Why aren’t we going there and arresting Blakely? He’s got to be our guy.”
She pulled up to a red light and stopped the car. It was after thre
e in the afternoon and traffic was unusually light for that time of day. No doubt, many of the residents of Summer Haven had heard of the strange death on the beach and rumors were probably already spreading like wildfire. To most of the people who called the town home, it was an invitation to stay indoors until the killer was caught.
“A,” she said. “We don’t even know how Andrea died yet. I haven’t heard anything about the autopsy. We don’t even know it’s a homicide. I can’t accuse the town’s newspaper owner of being a killer if we’re not even sure there’s been a murder.”
“Really? Found on the beach with a knife in her back and you don’t think it’s a homicide?”
“You’re the one who told me the knife isn’t what killed her,” she said, pulling forward the moment the light turned green again. “B. I got two and a half hours sleep last night. I’m exhausted. What we did today…all of it…was just preliminary. We were just looking into Alvarez’s life. We’ll get down to the nitty gritty of it tomorrow. Hopefully, the M.E. will have something for us by then.”
“In the meantime, a bloodthirsty killer is walking around just waiting to strike again.”
“Unlikely. If Alvarez was murdered, I think it was by someone she knows. She was killed for a reason. Not out of some random lust for killing.” Becca pulled into the parking lot of the police station and drove up into her designated spot. She put the vehicle in park but didn’t turn off the ignition just yet. “And C. I’m still freaking out a little about…well, you know…” She wiggled her finger at him.
“Oh, about that,” Silas said. “Yeah, you can’t tell anyone what you saw me do today. No one can know I’m really Death.”
“What? But you blabbed about it all over the station this morning. Everyone heard you.”
“Yeah, but everyone thought I was a crackpot too. No one believed me. In hindsight, it was a foolish move, but I was rather giddy with being alive…so to speak. I’ve never walked among mortals before…at least, not the way Esperanza has. No one had ever seen me…I mean, actually looked at me with physical eyes. The temptation to show off a little was a little too much. But the fact is, someone in this town is a threat to not just Summer Haven, but the world at large. If they find out I’m onto them, it could be a problem.”
“Okay,” Becca said, shifting in her car seat to look him straight in the face. “That brings us to my next question. You told me I’d get my answers after we spoke with Jacinto Garcia. What’s going on? I know you’re here because of these unscheduled deaths you keep talking about. But what were you and Esperanza talking about in regards to whether Garcia ‘had it’? Had what?”
Silas’ eyes drifted down to his hands in his lap, as if concentrating on what to say next. “It’s complicated.”
“Try me.”
He let out a breath, resigned. “Okay. Fine. But it may seem unbelievable to you.”
“More unbelievable than the fact that you’re the living manifestation of Death and that you have an ex-wife named Esperanza.”
He smiled at this. “Touché. But I was only giving you fair warning.”
“I’m a big girl.”
“There is an object, Chief Cole. An object of intense power. No one knows where it came from or when it came into being. Only mortals can use it. Immortals, such as myself and Esperanza, can’t even touch it—even while in material form such as I am right now.” He looked out his window, out toward the beach, and paused. “It’s called the Hand of Cain and it gives whoever wields it the power over life and death.”
“What do you mean ‘over life and death’?”
“Just as it sounds. Whoever wields it, in essence, becomes…well, me. The Grim Reaper. The being in charge of who lives and who dies.”
“And you think someone in Summer Haven has this…this thing?”
“I do. The largest concentration of unscheduled deaths has occurred in this area.”
“When you say ‘unscheduled’…”
“As I told you this morning, it means that it wasn’t their Time. The most troubling thing to me at the moment is that these deaths have been random. Hodge-podge. I believe whoever has the Hand of Cain is still learning how to use it. He or she has no real control over it and people are meeting their untimely end far too soon.”
Becca’s thoughts drifted to the death of her father. He’d been only fifty-seven when he died. Granted, he’d had some medical issues, but she didn’t think they’d been severe enough to lead to his death.
“My dad.” She couldn’t get the question out.
Silas shook his head. “I’m sorry. No. It was definitely Hank Cole’s Time. He wasn’t a victim of the Hand.”
A single tear ran down her cheek. She wiped it away with a brush of her hand and looked back over at him. “Well, if Andrea Alvarez was murdered, wouldn’t it have been her Time no matter what?”
“I honestly don’t know. The longer a mortal has possession of the Hand, the less I can see the fate of human beings. And in human form, my power is even more severely limited. Like you, I now see only the things in front of me with physical eyes. My understanding of the spiritual world enables me to perceive more than you might, but my access to knowledge is limited by the same restrictions as you.”
“So that’s why you are personally investigating Alvarez’s death? Because you honestly don’t know how she died.”
He nodded. “Precisely. Granted, because of my office, I have a little more insight into life and death than you do, but I’m not even omniscient in my spiritual form, much less this physical body. The cold reality is that the longer the one who controls the Hand remains in possession of it, the more control he’ll develop. He will slowly begin to usurp my place. He will, in essence, become Death himself.”
“Or herself.”
“Exactly.”
“What will all this do to the status quo?” she asked. “I mean, is this like that old movie, Death Takes a Holiday…where people discover they can no longer die?”
He smiled with a shake of his head. “No. It doesn’t work that way. The natural order of things is pretty much fixed, no matter what happens to me. I didn’t personally see to the death of every human in history. For the most part, things just happen naturally. In their own Time. However, there are some deaths I’m called to oversee in person. I can’t really explain the process, but trust me. It’s never random. And never without reason.” He glanced down at his watch. “Until now, that is.”
“Sounds to me like we need to find this Hand of Cain fast then.”
“Which is precisely why I’m here. Why I injected myself into this investigation. And why I think Elliot Newman would be so invaluable to us.” Silas popped in another piece of candy, but this time, didn’t make a face. “His knowledge of ancient artifacts would be an invaluable resource for us in tracking the Hand of Cain down.”
“Yeah, but he’s…he’s dead, so how…”
There was a sudden tapping on the driver’s side window, startling Becca. She spun around to see the sweaty, red face of an overweight man in a rumpled suit. He wiped at his brow with a yellow handkerchief.
“Chief Cole, I need to speak with you please.”
“Just a moment, Mayor Hardwick.” She glanced over at Silas. “It’s the mayor. Probably wants to know where we stand on the Alvarez investigation and it would probably be best if he doesn’t focus too much on you. Go inside and see if Linda has any new information for us. I’ll be inside shortly.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
The two of them slipped out of her patrol car. Silas sauntered back into the police station, leaving Becca at the mercy of the town’s sudorific mayor.
“People are getting spooked about this murder, Chief Cole,” Mayor Ray Hardwick told her the moment she got out of the car. “My phone’s been ringing off the hook all day. Tell me you have good news.”
“Sir, I’m not…”
“It’s an election year, Chief Cole. An election year! We can’t have murders happening around here. That
kind of thing happens in Jacksonville. Not Summer Haven. So, what’s being done about it?”
“Well, I’ve been…”
“I’m serious. You’ve got to handle this fast. People have got to feel safe here. They can’t feel safe as long as a murderer is walking the same streets as them.”
“I understand that, but…”
“You don’t understand. I was running unopposed this November.” He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a folded newspaper. He unfurled it and held it up for Becca to see. “Now I’m not.”
Becca took hold of the mayor’s wrists to hold the paper steady. It was the late edition of The Summer Haven Chronicler. The headline on the front page read:
‘Ghastly Murder Points to Santeria. Spenser Blakely Announces bid for Mayoral candidacy to Clean Up Summer Haven.’
“Whoa.” It was the only word that came to mind. Blakely hadn’t mentioned his plans for running against Mayor Hardwick when they interviewed him earlier. Hadn’t even hinted at it. And something like that should definitely have come up if the reporter had nothing to hide. Maybe Silas is right. Maybe Blakely did kill her. It would certainly get him points from the locals if her death could be pinned on Garcia.
“This has to be wrapped up quick, Chief.” The mayor was still rambling. The crisp collar of his dress shirt was now saturated in sweat. “The people have to feel safe. They have to see I’m doing a good job…”
Becca grabbed him by the shoulders and gave them a gentle squeeze. “Ray, calm down. Calm down. This isn’t good for your blood pressure.” The overweight man took a series of deep breaths as he collected his thoughts. “Listen. I’ve got some good leads. We’re still waiting for the M.E. to give us an official cause of death. But once we get it, I’ve got a couple of suspects in mind we’ll pick up ASAP.”
Hardwick’s eyes brightened. “Really? Suspects?”
She nodded in reply.
“Can I let the press know…”
“No. No way. You can’t tell anyone anything. Not yet. Not until we know more. I know you’re worried, but you’ve got to trust me. It’s why you hired me in the first place.” She gave his shoulders another reassuring squeeze. “We’ll catch whoever did this. I promise.”
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