Lethal Control, page 13
part #3 of The DuPage Parish Mysteries Series
“Can you please try not to antagonize her?” I asked as I started down the hall. “Since, you know, we need her to help us, and she’s your boss—”
“She’s not my boss. She’s my shift supervisor, which is, like, the person at McDonald’s who wears a different-colored hat. Wait, do the shift supervisors at McDonald’s wear the same hat? Does anyone at McDonald’s wear a hat?”
“Running away isn’t my only option. I could join the merchant-marines. I could probably still find a circus.”
“You’d hate the circus. You’d spend your whole day talking about animals and animal cruelty and cages, and then you’d probably get eaten by a lion. Here’s an idea: why don’t we stand out here and argue about the circus just to see how mad we can make Kennedy—”
I grabbed his arm and pulled him into the bookbinding room. It was small—too small for the three of us, in fact—with a table, two stools, and a wall of cabinets. It smelled like beeswax and binding glue and cardboard, and even with the door shut, the distant hum and lurch of a copier filled the silence. Someone had left a book mid-repair on the table: the cover lay to one side, next to an awl and a strip of leather.
“Why do you repair books?” Eli asked. “Why don’t you just throw them away and buy new ones? Oh, or you could be charitable—”
“Stop talking,” Kennedy said.
“—and give them to people who are homeless, and they could burn them in barrels to, um, stay warm.”
Kennedy’s eyes narrowed. Eli stepped back into me, and then we bumped the table, and the awl started to roll. The sound of it scraping against the wood was enormous in that tiny space. Kennedy caught the awl a moment before it fell, made that wild noise in her throat again, and slammed the awl back where it had started.
“It’s not my fault,” Eli whispered. “It’s Dag. He’s too big, and he takes up too much room.”
“Why haven’t you divorced him yet?” Kennedy asked.
“We’re actually not married,” I said. “We’ve talked about it, but then Eli cuts up all the window screens or puts the weed-eater under my back tires.”
“Then why are you still with him? You can still get away. You can still have a happy, safe, normal life.”
“It’s interesting that you think so highly of Dag,” Eli said, “because he was just saying in the hall that you’re basically the equivalent of a shift supervisor at McDonald’s, with the hat and everything—ah, Christ!”
“Stop trying to get under her skin.”
He muttered and grumped and checked the elastic waistband of his briefs, which I’d snapped. Then he bumped into me until I put an arm around him.
“He’s actually really happy to see you,” I told Kennedy. “This is his way of showing it.”
Kennedy stared at us for what might have been twenty seconds. It felt a lot longer.
“You said you know why people are looking for the rougarou?” I said. “For Reb, I mean.”
She gave us another twenty seconds. Then, letting out a controlled breath, she said, “Possibly.” She opened one of the cabinets, drew out a newspaper, and laid it on the desk. “Look familiar?”
It was the print edition of the Times-Picayune from the day before. I recognized the headline—VOODOO DOCTOR MURDERED!—and the photo and article; they were the ones that Posey had shown us the night he had come to ask for our help. “Ok,” I said. “I’ve seen this—”
“Here,” Kennedy said, pointing at the photograph.
I bent closer, bonked heads with Eli, and let his grumble become background noise. Marcel Le Doux looked how I remembered him: black, middle-aged, the fringe of white curls and the thick black glasses. But now I focused on where Kennedy had pointed. Something hung on a necklace, barely visible where it had slipped out from behind the placket of his shirt.
“What is it?” Eli asked. “A charm or something?”
“Have you ever heard of a veve?”
I shook my head, and Eli frowned.
“It’s a symbol,” Kennedy said. “It has two roles. At least two roles. I’m not exactly an expert on this, so bear with me; I’m doing my best. On the one hand, it’s a beacon for the lwa. On the other, it serves as their—proxy, I guess. In a ritual sense, anyway.”
The silence had a packed, insulated quality inside the tiny room, like we’d been boxed away from the rest of the world. When Eli spoke, his voice was tight. “What is a lwa?”
“Well,” Kennedy said with a strange smile, “funny you should ask.”
“What does that mean?” I said.
“What do you know about voodoo?”
Eli bit his lip and shook his head. I said, “Not much. I mean, I know it’s not how they make it look on TV, voodoo dolls and that nonsense.”
“In vodou or vodun religions, including New Orleans voodoo, a lwa is a spirit. A powerful spirit, actually, and an intermediary.”
“An intermediary like a saint?” I said.
“That’s a good comparison; Catholicism and African religions have intermingled and influenced each other for a long time, especially in places like Louisiana, where they coexisted. Like the saints, the lwa communicate with humans. They receive offerings. If they are propitiated, they might help.”
“Might?” Eli said.
“They have personalities, minds. In fact, all lwa were once people. That’s part of what makes them so complicated. It still happens, although not as often. The best-known example for people around here is Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. After her death, practitioners of New Orleans voodoo believe she ascended to become a lwa. You’ll find altars to her around the city, people who make offerings, invoke her aid. There are others—the Chicken Man is a recent one. Jean Petro is an older example; depending on who’s telling the story, he was either a slave or the owner of slaves in the New World.”
“I know that name,” Dag said. “Why do I know that name?”
“Because it’s in the title of the exhibit Le Doux was opening: Petwo Lwa, Jean Petro, Marie Leveau, and the Chicken Man: Ascent of the New World Lwa. From what I can tell, the exhibit focused on biographical details of these New World lwa. Before they ascended, obviously.”
“How do you go from being a person to a semidivine intercessory spirit?” I asked. “Because that would be a nice level-up for me. Oh, and maybe for Dag if he’s interested.”
“I don’t know,” Kennedy said. “But if half the stories are true, nobody makes that kind of transition without a lot of power. It doesn’t end there, either. They’re still…people in a way. Mortal would be a better way to say it. They need offerings and attention to survive, and without them, they wither away and die. That’s part of what’s going on here, I think.”
A silent heartbeat passed, and I asked, “How so?”
“This veve, the one Le Doux is wearing? It marks him as a houngan—a voodoo priest. And not just any priest. A priest of Kalfu. Kalfu must be his patron or his master—what a voodoo practitioner calls his met tet.”
“I’m going out on a limb here,” Eli said, “but Kalfu, is he the lwa of puppies and rainbows and the sappy stuff people write in greeting cards?”
“Eli, you might like Kalfu. Among other things, he’s the lwa of transformation—specifically, humans transforming into animals. He’d be the right one to ask if you wanted your werewolf porn—”
“FBI novels,” Eli said.
“—to come true. Although with Kalfu, the wolves would probably eat you alive at the end; he’s not exactly the most approachable lwa.”
“Could he turn Dag into a werewolf? Just, you know, when Dag wanted to change. Or if I wanted him to. Like if he’d been busy studying all week, and my, er, needs weren’t being met—”
“Tell us about him,” I said.
“Kalfu, Kafou, Carrefour.” Kennedy shivered. “You understand this isn’t really my area of expertise, but I did as much research as I could—”
“Oh, God, so nerdy,” Eli said, his voice too high, the words too fast. “Why couldn’t you be like that badass dom librarian with a whip? There’s a whole series. He whips everybody. He whips the circulation boy. He whips the facilities administrator. He whips this twink who only works at the library for one semester because he’s doing a practicum, and of course he’s in charge of the return chute.”
“Eli,” I said.
He bit his lip and nodded. Then he slid under my arm and pressed himself against me; he was shaking, and I thought about what he’d learned—what we’d both learned—only a couple of hours ago. Now, we were adding in a dangerous demigod. No wonder he couldn’t keep quiet.
I gave Kennedy a nod. “Go on.”
“Among other things,” she said, “Kalfu is the lwa of evil spirits, bad luck, misfortune, the moon, and darkness. Oh, and magic. Of all the lwa, he is supposed to be the strongest with charms and sorcery. Hence, his association with transformations. He is the lwa of the crossroads—in fact, if I’m understanding this correctly, he is the crossroads. But unlike Papa Legba, who is also associated with crossroads, Kalfu holds the in-between points, the off-center corners of the intersection. It’s all elaborately metaphorical, but at the same time—” She took a breath. “At the same time, I’m not sure it’s metaphorical at all.”
“He sounds bad.”
“I’m not sure he’s bad. Or at least, not in a cosmic-morality sense. Supposedly, he was a powerful sorcerer in life, before he ascended to become a lwa, and now he controls the flow of magic. The comparison people make is to a crossroads—good and evil people pass through the crossroads, and the crossroads isn’t good or evil because of it. Kalfu is dangerous, but he’s not evil simply because he is a—a channel for power that some people choose to misuse.”
“So—” I studied the picture. “—we’ve got a lwa connected to werewolves, and his dead voodoo priest, and a werewolf on the run, and a lot of nasty people trying to find that werewolf. That fills in some of the picture, but it still doesn’t tell us why.”
“Kalfu is not a popular lwa,” Kennedy said. “And a houngan with Kalfu as his met tet is not common.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“You’ve been spending too much time with this one; your brain is getting soft. Did you not hear the part about sorcery and bad luck and evil spirits?”
“People want power. And they want their enemies punished. And they want to avert bad luck. Those all sound like good reasons to make an offering to Kalfu.”
“Sure,” Kennedy said. “Unless you get the opposite result because you annoyed him, and Kalfu shows up and eats you. That’s not a metaphor, by the way. He is…hungry.”
Eli shuddered against me, and when he spoke, his voice cracked. “Nelda Pie wants power.”
After a moment, Kennedy rubbed her temples and nodded. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
I frowned down at my boyfriend. “You think Nelda Pie wants Reb—why? To offer him to Kalfu?”
“Think about it, Dag. Last year, someone walked into Nelda Pie’s stronghold and almost killed her. Would have killed her, actually, if we hadn’t showed up. For someone like Nelda Pie, that’s unacceptable. As soon as she recovered, she would have tried to find a way to make herself stronger, to prevent that from ever happening again.”
“Voodoo isn’t like hoodoo, though,” Kennedy said. “Hoodoo, any skinny mixed boy can pick up a book and follow the steps and get a result.”
“First of all,” Eli said, “rude.”
“And witchcraft is something else entirely. Voodoo, though, you have to be initiated. You have to have a guide. You have to build a relationship with the lwa, especially with your met tet. I suppose it’s possible Nelda Pie started that process last year, but it would have been rushed to say the least.”
Eli’s words picked up speed. “What if she’d been practicing for longer? What if she’s been a houngan, one of Kalfu’s houngan, for a long time?”
“A female priest is a mambo,” Kennedy said.
“Think about it. We know she’s fascinated with chimeras—collecting them, keeping them, even creating them. That’s Kalfu’s domain. What if she’s been doing this for a long time, offering him the occasional—will I get my hot stud muffin card pulled if I say ‘were-creature’?”
“Sometimes,” I told Kennedy. “It’s better to pretend you didn’t hear him.”
“Hey!”
“Is he right? Could that be the case?”
“Nelda Pie has always been ambitious,” Kennedy said slowly. “And the lwa are a path to power. I don’t know; I’ve tried to keep my distance from her. I suppose it’s possible.”
“She wants to offer Reb as a sacrifice,” Eli said slowly. “If Kalfu is the lwa of transformation, a rougarou would make sense as an offering, right? Maybe a very special offering. But we don’t know what she wants or why.”
“Whatever it is, knowing Nelda Pie, it won’t be good.” Kennedy swallowed. “There’s also the way Le Doux died. Did you read that?”
“They thought it was an animal.”
“No, they said he’d been torn up. It wasn’t an animal, trust me; it was torture. I’d put money on it. Le Doux knew something that someone else wanted, and he didn’t give it up easily. If I had to guess, it was a ritual—voodoo isn’t like hoodoo or even certain aspects of witchcraft. Nothing is written down; it’s all passed word of mouth. Whatever Le Doux knew, someone else wanted to know it too.”
“Nelda Pie,” I said. They both looked at me. “He was at the Stoplight the night he was killed; Posey said he was talking to Nelda Pie. Joey Jaws doesn’t know his head from a hole in the ground, and Fen’s whole purpose in life is to eradicate anything supernatural. That leaves Nelda Pie. She must have figured out Le Doux knew something she didn’t. She’s the one who tortured and killed him—put money on it.”
Kennedy made a face and nodded.
“Reb’s got a sixth sense for danger,” I said. “I bet he was out the door five seconds after Le Doux approached him; that’s why he ran. He didn’t just need to keep himself safe. He had to think about Dutch and Lurnice—they’d be targets too.”
“Then Fen gets wind of it,” Eli said, “because she keeps her ear to the ground. As soon as Le Doux turned up murdered, she must have started putting this together—a lot faster than we did, by the way. So, being Fen, she sets out to blow Reb’s head off. You know, because that is definitely one way to prevent him becoming a sacrifice.”
“And Joey Jaws is bumbling along the whole time, thinking he’s going to get a rougarou for his kennel.” I shook my head. “That guy doesn’t have any idea what he’s messing with.”
“Sounds about right,” Kennedy said sourly.
“What do we do now?” Eli asked. “I mean, it was bad enough when Nelda Pie was a witch with her own private army of—for lack of a polite word—monsters. Now, she’s got unholy powers as the cleric of a dark deity.”
I looked at Eli. I looked at Kennedy.
“We have a group that meets on the weekends,” Kennedy said with a dramatic roll of her eyes. “Dungeons and Dragons. He’s taken eight of their flyers, by my count.”
“It’s called nerd-baiting,” Eli said. “I invented it.”
“I think Fen has the right idea,” I said. “The way to stop Nelda Pie is to keep her from getting her hands on a rougarou. We’ve got two of the three—”
“What?” Kennedy said.
“Don’t ask,” Eli said. “Dag’s parents are so disappointed in me for not getting them pregnant, and they used all the hot water, and they took the best sweatshirts. I ended up with this one, which is so basic I want to stick my head in that paper cutter.”
“Here, let me get this out of your way.”
When Eli opened his mouth in outrage, I tightened my arm around his shoulders. “I mean, we need to find Reb, and then we need to get the three of them away from here. Whatever Nelda Pie wants, it must have some real specific requirements—otherwise, she wouldn’t have put out that bounty on Reb.”
“The timing matters too,” Kennedy said. “On Halloween, the barriers between worlds are thin.”
“We don’t know where Reb went,” I said. “He’s injured, so we could call hospitals and urgent care clinics, but if Posey is right, if he heals quickly, he might just hole up and wait.”
“Can’t you just, you know?” Eli twiddled his fingers in the air. “Please?”
“Not unless you have some of his blood,” Kennedy said drily. “You have to have the right blood, or there are consequences. In this case, the wrong blood would just lead you to the wrong person, but in a bigger ritual, it could have, well, disastrous effects.”
“We do have some of his blood, actually,” Eli looked at me and then at Kennedy. “Is it weird if I tell you we have a lot of it?”
ELI (7)
At the next intersection, Dag let the Escort roll to a stop. We were lucky it was night, and we were on the outskirts of Bragg. Traffic was minimal—well, it was nonexistent—and the streetlights were spaced far apart. On one side of us, Bragg huddled under the dome of its own light pollution, a gray skin stretched out over the night. On the other, the lake was an empty space, as though someone had cut out part of the world. And then, even farther, like neon brambles, New Orleans.
After a moment, the jack around my neck swung right, and I pointed.
Dag turned right.
Along with other valuable traits like finding really porny books for me and getting me a job and recommending a great hand lotion—ok, I found it in her purse, and then she refused to tell me where she’d bought it, but thank you, Internet—Miss Kennedy was apparently really good at hoodoo.
Like, really damn good.
All that whining and moaning about family legacies and not wanting to be involved, etcetera? When the rubber hit the road, it turned out that Miss Kennedy seriously knew her shit.
The jack was, she had explained, essentially a modified flannel. I’d had about as much as I wanted to do with flannels the year before, but I understood the general principle. Flannels—or mojo bags, as they were also called—were typically made out of flannel. Hence the name. You added the right items inside, and if you knew how to shape the energy, they could produce certain effects. How’s that for woo-woo? Of course, an all-around genius-slash-perfect-physical-specimen like me was also, it turned out, naturally good at woo-woo. Big surprise, right? It’s my curse, being able to—as my fellow bros would say—crush everything. Ask Dag. I’m so good at getting stains out of his shirts that sometimes the whole shirt disappears.
