Play Dead

Chapter 14

"What'11 it be next?" Gould asked as the light turned green and Elise eased the unmarked police car through the intersection. "A flight to Roswell, New Mexico, to check out the aliens?"

Elise was getting tired of having to constantly defend and explain local culture to her partner. "You have to be more open-minded if you're going to live around here."

"I just think we could focus in a more… practical direction." Gould fiddled with the radio, getting nothing but static. "Damn," he said, shutting it off. "Why do we always end up with the car with no tunes? And today of all days?"

"Because somebody else always beats us to the only car with a decent radio. And anyway, I don't think the police department considers music a priority."

Before heading out of town, she stopped at Parker's Market, a combination gas station and deli, where they picked up sandwiches.

"I'll drive," Gould offered as they returned to the car.

"That's okay," Elise said. "I know the road."

He shrugged. "Suit yourself."

"So what's the deal with this village we're going to?" Gould asked once they were on their way. "Want my pickle?"

She shook her head. "Chips?"

He accepted the offer.

"There's a rumor about a young man living there who's said to have shown up at his home eight months after his burial," she told him.

"Ah. A rumor. I love rumors," he said in a voice that went along with the rolling of eyes.

"Never discredit rumors."

"Not around here, right?"

Was he being a smart-ass? With Gould, it was often impossible to tell.

"The village we're visiting considers itself a sovereign state," she explained. "It's self-supporting. They have a king. They even have a Web site. And lucky for us, they welcome tourists."

They finished eating.

Gould balled up the wrappers and stuck everything into a brown paper bag. When the conversation lulled, he tried the radio again, apparently hoping for better reception now that they were out of the city. It was worse. He sighed, shut it off, and leaned back in the seat to enjoy the view.

After several turns and dead ends, they finally came to a sign that read: you are now leaving the u.s. and

ENTERING THE YORUBA KINGDOM, BUILT BY THE PRIESTS OF THE ORISKA VOODOO CULT.

Gould stared at the sign. "This is just weird as hell," he said with a combination of hushed awe and annoyance.

They passed a shack that marked the entrance to the village. Barefoot, dark-skinned children ran across dirt-packed streets. Old men sat in chairs under the shade of corrugated steel porch roofs, watching the day go by.

People were friendly, and it didn't take Elise and Gould long to get directions to the shanty they were interested in. Like all of the others, it looked unable to withstand a stiff breeze.

The sound of the car announced their arrival, and a man and a woman came out to greet them.

"For six days, he was in a cold morgue," the black islander told them from under the brim of his tattered, sweat-stained straw hat. "Then we buried him. Eight months later, he comes shuffling home. Like that-"

He pointed to a young man of about seventeen sitting outside his parents' house. His feet were bare and dust-covered, his hair was matted, and his shoulder bones protruded sharply under the thin fabric of his T-shirt.

"He can't even feed or wash hisself," the mother said, not with sorrow but acceptance. "And our friends-they don't come round here no more. Because of Angel. Say he's cursed. Say he's evil."

"Do you mind if we talk to him?" Gould asked.

"Won't do no good. Can't talk. I don't think he even knows who we are. He just came back here from habit… See how he holds his head like that? All bent?"

"Zombie posture," Elise said.

The mother nodded. "Can't lift it no further. Not even to eat. But he's a good boy. If I tell him to go in the house, he goes in the house. If I tell him to go to bed, he goes to bed. He's a good boy. Nobody would ever have reason to hurt him."

"Any idea who could have done this to him? And why?" Elise asked.

A look of fear passed between the man and wife. She and Gould were outsiders, and Angel's parents were afraid of angering whoever had done such a terrible thing to their son. If they had an idea, they weren't eager to divulge it.

The detectives attempted a brief conversation with the emaciated young man, but nothing they said brought about any kind of response. He was a shell with nothing inside.

"They seem especially adamant about their son being a good boy," Gould said to Elise while the parents stood out of earshot.

"Are you thinking that perhaps he hadn't been such a good boy before?"

"Exactly."

"Vodun society has its own methods of dealing with criminals," Elise said. "Turning someone into a mindless puppet is an effective way to harness them."

"No jails. No expense to anyone but the family."

"What could he have done that was bad enough to deserve such a life sentence?"

Gould reached inside his jacket. "Maybe we can find out."

He approached the couple again. "Does your son happen to have one of these anywhere on his body?" he asked, presenting the parents with the body art photo.

The parents looked at each other, then back to Gould. "You must go now." It was obvious that they recognized the emblem. And that they were afraid.

"Does your son have this mark on him?" Gould persisted.

"Go!" The old man got to his feet and pointed toward their car. Elise began moving away. Gould followed.

"It's possible that Angel was a prostitute at Black Tupelo," Gould said as he and Elise made their way through loose sand to the car.

"The parents were too effusive about their son's innocence," Elise agreed. "If that's the case, then we have three prostitutes."

"Two of them dead, one a vegetable."

"One may have died of an unconnected heroin overdose."

"It's also possible Angel is being punished by his own society. Could also be an unconnected coincidence."

At the car, Elise paused with her hand on the door handle and looked at Gould. "And then we have Mr. Harrison. Where does he fit in?"

"He doesn't. I'm not saying there isn't a connection. I'm just saying he doesn't fit."

"The victimology is all over the place."

"Which takes us back to the possibility of unrelated crimes," Gould said.

"Could Harrison have been an accident?" Elise added. "Did he get poison meant for someone else?"

"For the moment, let's say they are connected. Then we have to ask ourselves what the killer was trying to accomplish by stepping outside his MO. It could be one of several things: The perpetrator could be doing it for attention. He could also be doing it to confuse us. Or he could be escalating."

Inside the car, Gould removed the plastic lid from his drink. "Here's another angle." He shook the cup, ice rattling. "Remember how Jeffrey Dahmer drilled holes in the skulls of his victims while they were still alive?"

"Oh, yeah." How could Elise have forgotten such a horror? But now that Gould had brought it up, memories of what she'd read about the case came back. "Then he shot them full of battery acid. Yikes."

"In an attempt to create zombies," Gould said around a mouthful of ice.

Of course. "Is that what's going on? Is somebody trying to create mindless playthings? Is this all about absolute control?"

Elise's phone rang.

John Casper.

"I checked out every prostitute we've had through the morgue in the past two years," he told her. "Guess how many came up?"

"I'd think the norm would be around one or two a year," Elise said.

"We've had twelve in two years."

"Wow."

Gould perked up, listening intently to Elise's side of the conversation.

The figure Casper had given her was hard to absorb. And even more astounding was that no one had noticed. "Causes of death?" Elise asked.

"All drug related. And we're talking street drugs like heroin. Cocaine."

"At least that's what it says on the death certificate. Which is why nobody looked into the deaths," Elise guessed.

"Exactly," Casper said.

She adjusted the air conditioner while the car idled. "What about exhuming some of the bodies?"

"That's where we run into a problem. Most of them were cremated."

"Makes sense," Elise said. "It's the cheapest way to go."

"Especially when the state's picking up the tab," Casper added. "A lot of these kids were probably runaways, with no family, no money."

"Perfect targets no one would miss. I'm wondering how long this would have gone unnoticed if Harrison hadn't been poisoned," Elise said. "But what about the bodies that weren't cremated?"

She heard keys clicking. "Three of them were shipped back to their families in different parts of the country. Another one went to Charleston." Some more clicking. "Here it is. One guy, named Gary Turello, is buried in Savannah 's Laurel Grove Cemetery. We have all of his identifiable scars and tattoos on file. Just give me a second while I look it up…"

More clicking followed by silence.

"Let me guess," Elise said. "Black Tupelo."

"Yep." That one syllable held tremendous satisfaction.

She looked at Gould, whose eyebrows were raised in question. She nodded.

"If we get him exhumed, what are our chances of finding tetrodotoxin at this point?" Elise asked.

"You can encounter a lot of problems when trying to analyze samples obtained from embalmed bodies," Casper said. "It makes a difference how much embalming fluid the funeral director used. And whether or not the casket leaked. I've seen organs that had to have the water literally wrung out of them."

"Thanks for that nice visual."

"You're welcome. Turello was buried a year and a half ago, but I'd say it's definitely worth a shot."

"Is there any way to rush this through the approval process?" Elise asked.

"I'll put in a call to the state medical examiner at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in Decatur," Casper told her. "She's the one who'll have to sign off on it, but considering the gravity of the situation, that shouldn't be a problem."

"How long will it take?"

"I'm guessing one or two days. Sometimes we run into people who don't want their loved one disturbed. That's understandable. If that happens, then we have to petition the court for disinterment, which could take a whole lot longer."

"Let's just hope the family complies," Elise said. She thanked him and disconnected.

In her room above Black Tupelo, Flora assembled all of the items Strata Luna had told her she would need for a love-drawing spell: High John the Conqueror root and goofer dust, along with a piece of brown paper torn from a bag. Waterproof red and black pens, a new spool of red thread, a small red flannel bag, and a sharp knife.

From the other side of the wall, in the room adjacent to hers, came sounds of sex.

Hushed voices. Laughter. The frantic squeaking of a mattress.

Flora should be working too, but she had more important things to do.

On the brown paper, she wrote the name David Gould seven times in black ink. She rotated the paper a quarter of a turn and printed LOVE ME OR DIE over his name seven times in red ink.

She immersed the name paper in a bowl of her own urine, then wrapped and shaped the soaked paper around the root. That was followed by the goofer dust and red thread.

She wound it round and round until the paper was entirely covered, then tied it off with several large knots, leaving a length of thread for hanging.

Strata Luna had told her the secret was to store the root in the red flannel and keep it wet with urine.

With her finger wedged between two knots, Flora swung the covered root back and forth.

"David Gould, love me or die. David Gould, love me or die."