a terrible beauty Page 7

  But her assailant didn’t give her much time to catch her breath.

  He came at her again, this time swinging the shovel more wildly in a two-handed, over-the-head fashion, trying to finish her off all at once. Sara rolled, and the shovel’s blade thudded into the ground, sinking deeply into the fine soil covered by the cemetery’s green sward.

  Her assailant jerked the shovel head free. Sara kept rolling, hoping that her memory was accurate. He ran after her, winding up for another deathblow.

  Fortunately for Sara, her memory was accurate.

  She rolled over the implement dropped by her first assailant, and came up in a half crouch, the shovel’s handle

  planted firmly against the ground, the shovel head pointed outward like a spear braced against oncoming calvary.

  The graverobber ran into it, gut high, and gave himself an unexpected appendectomy.

  The voices In Sara’s head roared with delight.

  He screamed in agony, clutching his punctured abdomen, and fell writhing to the ground. Sara looked up. Gene was smiling, and pointing his pistol at her.

  “Police!” a familiar voice roared behind her. “Drop it! Drop it NOW!"

  She risked a glance over her shoulder and saw Jake standing braced in the approved shooter’s stance, gun aimed unwaveringly at Gene. Behind him stood Father Baltazar, consternation on his face.

  Her eyes went back to Gene, who made a small moue of disappointment as he slowly bent over and carefully placed his gun on the ground. The last of the grave-robbers had already flopped down in the open grave in an ultimately futile attempt to escape notice.

  “What the hell is going on here, Sara?” Jake asked.

  She stood, flinching a little as her ribcage twinged.

  “Arrest these mooks,” she said.

  “On what charge?”

  “Attempted murder of a police officer, assault with a deadly weapon, resisting arrest, graverobbing. Oh yeah, and corpse abuse,” Sara said. “I’m sure we’ll think of a few other counts when we get them down to the precinct.”

  Father Baltazar hurried up to her. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Sure. Perfectly fine.”

  His dark eyes caught hers and held. “No, you’re not.

  Something troubles you., Something beyond—” he gestured vaguely, implying the recent actions “-all this.” The voices snickered in her head.

  “No,” Sara said. “Really-”

  He laid a gentle hand on her arm. “We’ll talk later. Maybe we’ll finish the discussion we’d started when we first met.” •

  He went past her, to' minister to the man who’d impaled himself on the shovel, as Jake called for transport and an ambulance. Sara took a deep breath, winced, and started to fight off the shakes as they descended upon her.

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  V.. aptain Joe Siry was a big man with a gray-dusted mustache and severe male pattern baldness. He still had , most of the hair around the side of his head, but it was mostly gone from the top, save for a strip across the very crest of his skull running from front to back like a thin and tired Mohawk. He had a florid face that got even redder when he was angiy.

  Now it was very red indeed.

  “So.” Sara knew he was mad because his voice was so soft and low. “You didn’t identify yourself as a cop when you drew down on them?”

  Sara had her faults, she knew, but lying to her boss wasn’t among them, even if it came down to saving her butt. “There wasn’t time—”

  ’’Wasn’t time!” Siiy’s voice exploded. Jake, along for the little chat in Siiy’s office, gazed up at the ceiling, pretending to be somewhere else. Siry, sitting behind his disheveled desk in an uncomfortable chair that was old during the Lindsey administration, slammed his big hand down on the only slightly more recently acquired blotter, making stacks of paper, shift and slide as if they’d caught the edge of an extremely localized'earthquake.

  Siiy looked down at the open manila folder in front of him, again scanning Sara’s report. Sara stood at stiff attention, holding back her anger as the voices twitted at her in her brain/ *

  “Corpse abuse!” Siiy. said. “Corpse abuse! Jesus Tap-dancing Christ!” He looked up at Sara. “It’s a damn good thing the thugs you pistol-whipped and carved on with a shovel didn’t die. If that’d happened, we’d all be up to our asses in lawsuits. As it is ..

  His voice slipped into inaudible grumbling, and Jake cleared his throat.

  “Sir?” he said.

  Siiy fixed him with a stare. “Yes?”

  -, A lesser man might have wilted, but Jake plunged ahead. “There’s no doubt those perps are involved with the Machete Murderer. Somehow. Sara could have been killed-”

  Siry waved a beefy hand. “I know, I know.” He fixed them both his hard-edged stare. “That’s why Pezzini’s career is still hanging by a thread. And you’re both still on the case.” Siiy waved his hand again, indicating a dark form silhouetted on the shades that were drawn down upon the glass walls of his office. “I’ve spoken to the Padre. God knows why, but he seems to think highly of you two. He seems to think you’re making good progress on the case and are going to eventually get this Machete Murderer—hopefully before more bodies end up in either the East River or random Dumpsters.”

  “He-” Sara began.

  Siiy pointed a blunt forefinger at her and she stopped.

  “But this is my last gaming. No more cowboy stuff. No more lone wolfing around abandoned graveyards. And for Christ’s sake, try to let the Brooklyn people know what you’re doing. Every now and then, at least.” Siry glanced down at the report. “Lieutenant Dickey is being assigned to the case as a liaison. Do keep him informed.”

  Sara and Jake exchanged wary glaces.

  “Yes, sir,” they said in unison.

  “One last thing,” Siry said in a hard voice, stopping them as they turned to go. As they looked back his face softened, took on a worried expression. They could also hear concern in his words. “This isn’t a normal serial killer run amok. This case smells funny. Really funny. Just—be careful.”

  “Yes, sir,” they said again, and turned and left the of-.fice, Jake closing the door behind them, letting out his breath in a deep sigh as he did so. He turned to Sara.

  “What the hell do you think you’re up to?” he said in a low, insistent voice, so quietly that even people working at the nearby desks couldn’t hear him.

  “What?” Sara asked, confused.

  “Siry’s right. Partly, at least. I’m your partner, dammit You seem to conveniently forget that when you want to go haring off on one of your lone wolf adventures—”

  ”1 didn’t forget,” Sara said. “I thought of you immediately. I called you because I knew you’d be there, at my bach”

  “Oh.” Jake frowned, as if he only half-believed her.

  He should, Sara thought, since I’m telling only half the truth.

  She knew that Siiy and Jake were both right. She was too much of a loner, taking risks that were too great, rushing in where any other fool would dread to go. Part of it was her fault. She was reckless. She did sometimes act before thinking through the consequences of her actions.

  But part of it was the fault of the voices and the temptation of the Witchblade. They encouraged her recklessness. Their whispered promises played to her deepest desires, but as she well knew, their promises were sometimes lies. The Witchblade sometimes had an agenda of its own, one that didn’t always coincide with Sara’s interests or well-being.

  She knew that she’d be well-advised to keep that in mind, for she was certain that if she always gave in to the voices, one day they’d lead her to her death. Or worse, perhaps her damnation.

  She looked up and met the eyes of Father Baltazar, who was standing alone in the precinct room, watching her with compassion in his eyes.

  Did she see something else, she wondered, besides compassion? Was there a promise of release as well, release from what had become the curse
of the Witchblade?

  “Well,” Sara said, sitting back gingerly, all too aware of the pain in her ribs—which, thankfully, had been bruised but not broken, “that was a wasted day.”

  Sara, Jake, and Father Baltazar sat in a dark booth in a quiet bar on a placid street, far from the maddening crowds of Manhattan or even Cypress Hills. It was a time to regroup, for thought and quiet discussion, and, Sara hoped, for the sharing of secret knowledge on the Father’s part. It was evident that he knew more about what was happening in Cypress Hills than he’d told them. So far he’d tossed out some hints for them to investigate.

  Sara hoped that now he trusted them enough to open up and tell the story behind those hints.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Jake said in reply to Sara’s complaint, smiling as he took a long pull from his beer glass. “Why not?” Sara asked.

  “While you Were playing tiptoe through the tulips with our graverobbing friends,” Jake said, “I was getting some real information on our vie, Thomas T. Jackson.”

  Sara toyed with her own beer glass. She was too upset to drink, contenting herself with pushing the glass back and forth on the tabletop, spilling a little bit every now and then.

  “Like what?” she asked.

  Jake made a dramatic flourish out of consulting his pocket notebook. “Let’s see. He lived alone in a middle-elass four-room apartment in Forrest Hills. No surprise there. He was always on time with his alimony and child support. Maybe a surprise. Maybe he was just a good father. But here’s the fun stuff: he also owned a beach home in the Hamptons. Small, but pricey. His car was a midpriced Porsche.” McCarthy looked at Father Baltazar. “I don’t know what they pay priests nowadays, but midpriced Porsches are usually out of the price range of cops.” Father Baltazar took a small, precise sip of Ms beer and smiled. “Priests, too, I fear.”

  “Also, Jackson had a ‘cabin’ in the Adirondacks that was bigger than his Forrest Hills apartment. He also took three vacations this year. A luxury cruise to the Car-ribean, a long weekend in Paris via the Concorde, and ten days on some island in Micronesia for skindiving. First-class airline tickets, of course. I forgot to mention that he took a different honey to each exotic location.”

  Sara whistled. “Man, we should go to work for the. I.N.S.”

  “Yeah,” Jake said seriously. “They seem to be a lot more generous with their vacation time than N.Y.P.D.” “And their salary,” Sara pointed out. ,

  McCarthy shook his head. “Nope. According to Jackson’s tax returns he made a little over sixty thou last year.” :

  Father Baltazar took another precise sip of beer. “That’s more than I get.”

  Sara smiled. “Maybe. But is it enough for an apartment in Forest Hills, child support, a beach house, car payments, a mountain cabin, plane tickets, scuba diving, and three demanding girlfriends?”

  “What makes you think his girlfriends were demanding?” Jake asked. -Sara’s smile widened. “Just a guess.”

  Jake downed most of his beer. “Anyway, you’re right. Where did this guy come up with all the extra jack?” “What does Immigration and Naturalization have that’s all that valuable?” Sara asked.

  “Green cards, of course,” Father Baltazar said into the sudden silence. “One of the most valuable commodities in a community of recent immigrants. A green card can make all the difference in their lives. Without one you’re subject to what can be little more than the whims of elected, or even non-elected, officials. With one, you’re a citizen. There’s no one looking over your shoulder. You can breathe easy and live a real life in your new country.” “You knew this?” Sara asked.

  Father Baltazar shook his head. “Knew that someone was selling green cards? No. Suspected ..

  “For how long?” Jake asked.

  “Not long,” the priest said. “And we had no proof of it. We still have no proof. We had suspicions, and when the bodies started showing up our suspicions were somewhat confirmed.”

  “Who’s we?” Sara asked.

  “Paul Narcisse and I,” Father Baltazar said.

  “The bookstore owner?”f Jake asked.

  Father Baltazar smiled at him. “He’s more than that. Paul Narcisse and I are also brothers of the cloth. Unofficially, of course.”

  “He’s a priest, too?”

  “Of course. He is a houngan. A priest of voudon.”

  “Dude,” Jake said, “you mean, he’s a voodoo priest? Like with the dolls and pins and zombies and stuff like that.’,’

  “You watch too many Hollywood movies,” the priest said with mild reproof in his voice. “And that is not the best source to get your knowledge of historical or cultural matters.”

  Sara suppressed a smile. “Better than comic books.”

  “Perhaps,” Father Baltazar said. “In any event, voudon is an ancient, authentic religion. Now is not the time to give you a lesson in its history and theology, but I assure you that the business about the dolls and pins was grafted onto it by Hollywood to thrill credulous audiences.”

  “And the zombies, too, huh?” Jake said, quaffing the dregs of his beer.

  The priest looked at him. “Oh, no. Zombies are quite real.”

  Only the low level of beer in his glass prevented Jake from performing a classic spit-take. As it was, the remnants

  of brew swam up his sinus passages and trickled out of his nose and down his chin as he snorted first in disbelief, then in sudden, burning pain.

  “Gee—” Jake coughed as his eyes watered. He waved his hand under his nose. “Holy crap, Padre—”

  Father Baltazar held up his hand. “Let’s not get distracted from the matter at hand by a theological discussion. If you want tof learn about loa and zombies and zobops and such, I’ll tell you all I know later.”

  “And Guiriee?” Sara asked.

  “Yes,” the priest said, “and Guinee.”

  Sara nodded, and something of a promise passed between them.

  “What-” Jake began, but Sara cut him off.

  “The Father’s right. Voodoo later. Now, let’s try to fig, ure out how all these murders fit together.”

  “It seems fairly clear,” the priest said, “although, of course, this is all theoretical.”

  “You seem to know the situation better than we do,” Sara said. “Theorize away."

  “All right.” Father Baltazar took a deep breath. “One: Thomas Jackson. He had access to official documents. Two: Cladius Caradeuc. A doctor. Through his clinic he had access to the people who needed the green cards.” The priest paused to sigh. “His death, though, was a surprise. And a hurt. We always thought he was one of us.” “Us?” Jake inquired.

  Father Baltazar nodded. “An informal group of Cypress Hills citizens. Those in opposition to the bokor who is the source of most of the evil in the community.”

  “Paul Narcisse spoke of a 'bokor', ” Sara said, half-questioningly.

  “Yes. An evil sorcerer who walks the left-hand path.

  Who serves the dark loa for his own personal gain. Who preys on his own people like a loup-garou."

  “I don’t even want to ask what that is,” Jake said.

  Sara remembered some of her high school French. “That would be werewolf,” she said.

  “God,” Jake groaned. He looked at his empty glass. “I need another beer.”

  “Just a minute,” Father Baltazar said. “Two more people need to be tied into the web of killings.”

  “Achille de Petion,” Sara said. “He was just a thug, just a street criminal, wasn’t he?”

  “Not entirely,” the priest replied. “He was also a zobop.”

  Sara shook her head. “That, I don’t know the meaning of.”

  . Father Baltazar smiled. “A zobop is a low-level soldat, that is, initiate in the bokor’s secret society. I suspect he was the go-between between the I.N.S. man and the doctor.”

  “So what happened to cause the bloodbath?”

  The priest shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps someone got gre
edy and wanted a larger cut. Perhaps someone got scared, or got a conscience, and threatened to go to the authorities. The precise reason for the killings still needs to be uncovered, and in fact may never be known.”

  “How big a business are we talking about, to make it worth all these murders?”

  “A green card can go for three to five thousand dollars apiece on the street. If you sell a thousand a year—certainly a conservative figure-that’s three to five million dollars. Tax free, of course, with little cost to the seller. And these cards were real. Not counterfeit. Impeccable and unquestionable.”

  “But we’re forgetting one thing,” Sara said. “The fourth victim. Jean Pierre-Pierre, the restauranteur.” Father Baltazar shrugged. “No. I’m not forgetting him. But I don’t understand how he fits into this scenario.” “Was he one of your allies?” Sara asked.

  The priest nodded. “Yes. He was one of us.” He was silent for a moment. “The best I can figure is that his death was a warning fro«i the bokor, to all of us. Despite our best efforts, we’ve been little more than a thorn in his side. But we’ve been getting stronger. We’ve been unifying the community against him. Perhaps this was a warning to us to cease our activities, or suffer the same fate as poor Pierre-Pierre.” The priest took a drink from his glass, and put it back down on the table. “Of course, there is another explanation.”

  “What’s that?” Sara asked.

  “The bokor is playing with great forces. He has called something powerful and evil into the world.” “Bakula-baka,” Sara said in a low voice.

  Father Baltazar was startled. “Yes. That is what all the signs point to. How do you know?” he asked in a worried voice.

  “Apparently,” Sara said, twisting her beer glass as if trying to screw it down into the surface of the table, “I’ve met him. I’ve been to Guinee. Maybe in a dream.”

  “My child,” the priest said, placing his hands on hers. Sara flinched, as the voices roared in her head at the touch of the priest’s hands. Father Baltazar took them away, as if he sensed he caused her pain, and the voices went back to a background rumbling.