The Inca Prophecy

9 Caballo

Capt. Sanchez drove home, flabbergasted by Javier Mantara’s confession earlier in his office. In his twenty-five years of service, the captain had never once heard such an accusation, and that included eleven years in Madrid’s Aluche district security section, a non-profit protection service he worked for after hours. Aluche served him up back alley abortions gone wrong, incestuous drug runners keeping the plunger in the family, brutal gang killings, and underground organ trafficking. It made him realize that the saints revered by the spiritually desperate offered no protection and that most who got to the bottom of the bottle would be better off using it to slit their own throats.

As he turned into the highly fenced complex where he lived, he could not help but feel some truth lurking in Javier Mantara’s words. The captain was not well versed in the religion Javier spoke of, but he had heard of it before during a raid on a murder suspect’s house.

Santeria, he thought to himself as he opened his car door and stepped out into the humid night. It has similar roots to Voodoo, that I know, but it also has a Catholic flavor, I think? Slowly, as he considered the tiny shards of recollection about that old case, Sanchez gradually began to find validity in Javier’s claim.

He did not know the murder/kidnapping suspect personally; therefore he had to remain objective about the case. Sanchez took Javier’s warning into account, though, and as any diligent investigator would, he intended on at least looking into the young man’s accusation before continuing with his regular procedure.

Even though his wife was busy preparing dinner, the house was relatively quiet. However, the neighbors had a hideous habit of watching football loud enough to deafen anyone in a five-block radius.

“Hola, darling,” he said.

“How was your day, Pedro?” She smiled, looking at his reflection in the kitchen window.

Through the small maze of lobby meeting hallway and hallway meeting two doorways, he went straight for the fridge. Inside it was what beckoned Sanchez, and he suffered a mild scolding for the sake of that glass of jeropiga.

“No drinking before dinner!” she reprimanded playfully.

Sanchez slouched over and kissed her, begging in his best puppy-yelp, “Just one, por favor? I have a lot I have to research tonight and I’m going to need something to let me lose my troubles just a little. Por favor, Lira?”

“One,” she yielded.

“One,” he agreed.

His mind was racing as he tried to remember the details of the old case, but finally he was more interested in the robust beauty of the Portuguese wine he had poured.

“I promised a young man today that I would check something important out,” he said aloud as he strolled into his cramped living room to locate the house laptop. His wife heard her adorable husband babbling to an unseen guest in the other room, evoking a giggle from her.

“Javier, just let me have some mother’s milk and I’ll get right to your weird little story, my friend.” The police captain’s thick fingers made quick work of his shirt buttons and soon after he sank onto the couch, wine glass aloft. A mediocre gut was released from his prim posture, dressed in a white vest that divided his uniform shirt. With a glorious sigh, he took pause to find himself, sipping at the sweet wine before opening the lid of the laptop.

By the third glass he had downloaded several PDFs on the subject of Santeria. Although he was tipsy, the wine did not blunt the officer’s deductive powers at all. In fact, the alcohol loosened up his rigid logic a bit and allowed him to color outside the lines of the picture. His eyes raced across the countless lines of information as he mumbled the words that stood out to him.

“Afro-Cuban in origins… okay… little different from Voodoo,” he muttered in the unhealthy light of the screen.

His wife shook her head, amazed at his disobedience.

“How many have you had, Pedro?” she asked. “Dinner is almost ready.”

But he was deeply engrossed, whispering to himself about the religion, trying to find a connection between its practices and a shrink brainwashing a woman into becoming a witch. It sounded even more preposterous when he said it out loud, but his wife didn’t look as cynical as he had thought she would.

“Interesting,” she said, looking impressed with his efforts.

“Deals with the saints of Catholicism, right?” He took a sip of wine and kept reading over two different sites open on four tabs.

She sat down, wringing the dishcloth between her hands as she looked up in thought.

“I think so, but there is a twist, I think. Why are you…? Pedro, was there another homicide like the one in Madrid that time?” she sighed.

“Nope. Well, yes, but not like you think.” He carried on reading aloud. “Uses a similar system, but slaves were forced to observe Catholic saints instead of their own… Orichá…” Sanchez got stuck on the word. Clicking on one of the other pages he found something to elucidate. “Orichá. Here we go. These are the semi-divine beings, venerated as saints, which is where the name Santería originates from.”

“Sounds exactly like Voodoo to me,” she scoffed. “It just comes from another part of the world and has other names for the spirits they use.”

He looked at his wife. “Are you sure?”

“Sí. I don’t know Santería that well, but I know Voodoo from my theology seminars.” She shrugged indifferently. “What you’re reading sounds like a sister-religion. Both use spirits to communicate with their god, each with their own aspects.”

Nodding, he perused another tab’s information and read it under his breath. “They replaced the names of the beings they worship with the Catholic saints as not to be discovered practicing their own religion.” Sanchez shook his head. “It seems freedom is a lot of work. Not being free to worship your own god takes a lot of energy. People should leave other people alone and let them have their own gods and cultures, you know?” he said loud enough for her to hear him in the kitchen.

From there she answered, “Says a descendant of the Spanish Inquisition.” He heard her laughing at the irony. “Our ancestors explored so many lands and forced many of those very tribes into forced religion. How awful that Spain is known for such organized barbarism.”

Sanchez felt insulted. The tone of his voice conveyed his disapproval. “Well, I wasn’t there. I didn’t do those things. Their sins are not mine, no matter what the faith says.”

“Oh, relax,” she smiled. “Don’t get riled up over something that doesn’t even pertain to you. You’re looking into something for a friend, no?”

“Oh shit, yes!” he snapped out of his contemplative state. “I am supposed to find out if they have witchdoctors.”

“What?” she asked.

“This man wished me to believe that a well-known and respected psychiatrist or psychologist,” he waved away the confusion of the terms, “from Sagunto has been turning his sister into a witch. He says that he thinks this doctor was inducing trances in his sister by hypnosis and allowing spirits to possess her. Ghastly, don’t you think?”

She looked taken aback where she stood. “It is ghastly! My God, are such things still the norm these days? Scary to think that they still try that stuff here and now.”

“That is what I thought,” he replied, feeling way too relaxed to care that he was slurring his words a bit. “But you know, darling, you know… I don’t know why, because it doesn’t make sense, but I almost believe this young man. Something in my gut says that he is onto something.”

“Well, keep looking,” she suggested. “Truth be told, I’m curious myself now.”

He entered more keywords in the search bar, trying to type soberly. “And stop drinking so much!” she hollered from the kitchen, as if she could read his mind. He was about to give her a dismissive wave in the solitude of the living room, when he stumbled across a page that offered Santería terminology. The neat columns compelled him to scan the alien looking words and odd spellings for something useful. Suddenly his eyes grew wide. His discovery was so spot-on that he almost smashed the foot of the glass when he slammed it down.

“Caballo? Cab-ba-cabballo? Caballo!” he stammered. “Lira! Lira! I found something that could stretch to Javier’s claim!” he exclaimed as she rushed in. He held up a hand to announce what he was reading. “They call them caballo!”

“Horse?” she asked, looking perplexed. “Why horse?”

“Listen, listen,” he said, “During a trance, people are possessed by these Orichá, to communicate, they say.” He looked up suspiciously. “But possession is not always for words, hey? Sometimes they are…”

“For deeds,” she completed his theory. “So you think this could be true?”

“I do now. Look, I think this type of mumbo-jumbo is all horseshit, excuse the pun. But this, if he could induce trances in this woman, she could very well have been controlled and forced to commit that murder,” he declared.

“Alright, I get what you’re saying, Pedro, but how do you prove that in a court of law? And how do you think it will look if a renowned police captain comes out with witchcraft as a motive for the murder?” his wife reminded him carefully. “You will lose your goddamn job if you say things like that in your report, not to mention what the public and the media will do with your reputation.”

“I know, I know,” he moaned, grabbing at the empty glass with a look of abject defeat. “Unless I get proof from the horse’s mouth,” he said mysteriously.

“Darling, seriously, enough with the wordplay now,” she said. “You can’t get proof of witchcraft from a medical professional, and if it’s true that he can do these things, what if he gets to you?”

“He will not,” the well-quenched Sanchez professed. “I won’t let him know that I’m onto him. As head investigator and agent of the law, he is obligated to give me all records pertaining to his treatment of Madalina Mantara, Lira. And I will have another psychologist have a look at the hypnosis sessions so that they can tell me if anything was done unethically.”

“Just be careful,” she warned. “Witchcraft is just nefarious psycho-sex, and very easy to fall prey to without even knowing it.”

“Psycho-sex?” he asked, amused. His educated wife lifted her eyebrow, cradled his face snugly in her palms, and whispered, “The mindfuck.”