An Evil Shadow (3 page)

“Move the light off her,” Val barked at the young
officer “She’s terrified enough as it is and may drop if we frighten her any
further.”

“I’ve already tried talking to her,” he said
defensively. “She won’t answer and hasn’t budged an inch since I first found
her.”

Williams suggested that they call the firehouse.

“No,” Val said. “She could fall before they arrive. If
she’s a witness to what happened inside, she has to be on the verge of
catatonia.”

Val took the flashlight and shone it at the base of
the tree. Several wire nails had been driven into the trunk. Each one had three
inches left protruding out from the bark. The girl would have used them to
reach the lowermost branches, but it was unlikely they would bear his weight.
He lifted his left foot onto one and exerted some pressure. It bent as easily
as rubber.

“No use.”

“There’s something we could use,” the crime scene tech
said, pointing back up the yard to a rusty oil drum lying on its side against
the wooden wall of Duval’s shack.

The drum was half full of rainwater, which sloshed
from the plughole, soaking their shoes as they rolled it across the compacted
earth. It took them less than a minute to get the drum upended at the base of
the tree.

Nixon would have been President the last time Sergeant
Williams climbed a tree, and his partner was four inches shorter than Val. The
crime scene tech held Val’s jacket and gun while he slipped his ID and the
flashlight into a trouser pocket. Williams steadied the drum as Val climbed on
top. Expecting the rusty metal to give way at any moment, he stood up shakily.
A desiccated turkey hen carcass knocked against his face. Snapping the cord
that was holding it, he tossed the stinking, maggot-infested bundle to the
ground. Val reached above his head and felt for a branch he could wrap his
hands around. Grabbing hold of one and kicking his legs in the air, he managed
to haul himself up. He found a stout branch to sit on.

The girl was three branches further up. Val called out
to her, trying to sound reassuring. “It’s okay, Marie. I’m a police officer.
Nobody’s going to hurt you, but we have to help you down, so we can have a
talk.”

The girl’s head turned towards him, but in the gloom
it was impossible for him to see her eyes. What light there was in the yard
came from a three-quarters moon, but little of it penetrated the leaf canopy.
He levered himself up onto a higher branch pulled out his shield, and shone the
flashlights beam on it.

She didn’t react.

“Don’t be afraid,” Val reassured her. “I’m going to
climb up beside you and bring you down. You’ll be safe soon.”

As slowly as he could, Val reached across with his
left hand and grasped the branch she was on. He didn’t want to risk startling
her with any sudden movement.

As it turned out, it was the girl who made the sudden
movement. The flashlight’s beam accidentally caught her face and for a split
second her eyes, like those of a cat, reflected back the light. She produced a
camping axe from somewhere and swung it at Val’s left hand. He pulled away, but
not quickly enough. The head of the axe buried itself into the branch, removing
his middle finger at the first joint.

He dropped through the tree like a lead weight,
landing on the small of his beck across top of the oil drum, crushing it as
though it was a milk carton. For a brief instant before passing out, he caught
sight of the bloody stump and knew that he now had another reason never to
forget the Duval investigation.

New Orleans General detained Val for two days. The
surgeon tried his best, but was unable to sew his finger back on. He patched
him up and made lewd comments over what the loss would mean to him.

Marie Duval was being held under protective custody in
a secure room at the same hospital. Immediately after Val’s fall, Sergeant
Williams radioed for the paramedics and the fire department. A fire fighter,
using a ladder to climb the tree, had succeeded in bringing Duval down after a
brief but fierce struggle. The axe was embedded that deeply in the branch, the
girl had been unable to pull it free. It didn’t stop her sinking her teeth into
the fire fighter’s shoulder and she would have drawn blood if the man hadn’t
been wearing his thick bunking jacket.

She had yet to say a single word about her mother’s
killing, or anything else for that matter. She was unharmed, but had lost the
power of speech. The doctors who examined her couldn’t find any physiological
explanation for her muteness and had called in a child psychologist.

Forensic tests had been carried out on the bloodstains
found on the axe. The lab identified two types. They were a match for Valerie
Duval and Val.

The chromed-steel axe, still coated with the light
film of oil the manufacturer had applied prior to distribution, was a near
perfect surface from which to lift fingerprints. The only prints found were
Marie Duval’s. A child’s white cotton dress and scarf had been found hanging in
the tree. Both were heavily spattered with the mother’s blood.

Val was hearing all this from Captain Paul Larson, a
great bear of a man with a ruddy face, sleepy eyes, and a mop of wiry, gray
hair. Contrary to the somnambulistic state his eyes would have you believe him
constantly in, he was by far the most intuitive police officer Val had worked
with. He was slouched comfortably in an armchair next to Val’s hospital bed,
drinking from a paper cup the Chivas Regal that he had brought for him. Angie
had insisted on remaining at his bedside since his injury, but half an hour
earlier had finally been persuaded to return home to catch up some sleep. She
had gone reluctantly, promising to be back in a few hours with some fresh
clothes for him. The shirt and trousers he had been wearing the night he had
been brought in were torn and bloodied.

“Between the doctors, Child Protection and the
psychologist, we can’t get anywhere near the girl,” Larson explained. “They’ve
circled the wagons around her and have retained a specialist lawyer from the
children’s court to ensure she receives the kid-glove treatment from us. Though
it she has genuinely lost the ability to speak, it’s debatable what benefit
will come from interviewing her.”

Val grunted unsympathetically. “We know she can hear.
Can she read and write?”

Larson poured himself another shot of Chivas. “The kid
took an axe to her mother and has maimed a detective. She’s hardly in any rush
to put it on paper.”

“Has she been placed under arrest?”

“Not yet. She’s not going anyplace and I thought you
should be the one to do it.”

Val
brooded over it for a few moments
and realized that he had no strong feelings either way. Duval was a killer and
it was his job to uncover enough evidence for the DA’s office to successfully
prosecute her. The fact that she was a child didn’t really come into it. “Why
not?”

“You’re positive you’re fit enough? I could assign
another detective. All the evidence points to her having acted on her own, but with
the media attention the killing has attracted, I want to make sure that nothing
is overlooked.”

Val held up his left hand with the heavily bandaged
stump. “I may be incapable of saluting the press in a fit and proper manner but
I can still do my job. As soon as Angie returns with my clothes, I start back
to work.”

Larson grinned and looked at Val’s injured hand. “If
it helps improve your keyboard skills, maybe some good will come of it.”

Less than four hours later Val walked into the city
morgue in search of the assistant medical examiner. He found him in the autopsy
suite, halfway through a post-mortem on a Jane Doe floater. He was whistling
Old Man River.

Val told him that he wanted a word, but that it could
wait until he was finished. He knew it wouldn’t be long.

Before witnessing his first post-mortem, Val’s
impression of an autopsy had been gleaned from television shows like Quincy. He
had imagined that the autopsy suite would be similar to an operating theatre,
spotlessly clean, equipped with lots of delicate, shiny surgical instruments
laid out in rows. It came as quite a shock to discover that the majority of a
medical examiner’s tools appeared more fitted to pruning pecan trees than to
fine surgical procedures. That discovery and the rapidity of a typical
post-mortem were the indelible recollections he had of that first procedure —
not the offensive stenches or the gore that had been retained by the majority
of his fellow probationers.

“How’s the hand, Detective Bosanquet?” the ME asked,
when he finished and was peeling off his surgical gloves.

“Throbbing.”

“You were lucky. It could have been a lot worse.”

Val nodded. He had been thinking the same thing. It
was part of cop folklore that a newly married officer would react differently
to a threatening situation than a single officer, especially if a child was
involved. He didn’t believe he would have handled the tree incident any
differently if it had happened three weeks earlier. “I guess so, if losing a
finger can be described as lucky.”

“I didn’t mean in that way. Valerie Duval tested
negative for HIV. The incidence of AIDS amongst Haitians has reached epidemic
proportions, exacerbated by the island’s extreme poverty and almost zero health
education. Traces of the victim’s blood on the axe could easily have
transferred to your wound.”

Val said nothing, but suddenly the throbbing did not
feel so bad.

“You want the report on the Duval post?” the ME asked.

“Yeah, and I’d better take another look at the body.
I’m still the primary investigating officer.”

The ME brought him through to the mortuary storage
facility, located the relevant drawer and slid it out on its rollers. He took
hold of the zip and pulled it open along the body bag’s full length. Val helped
him ease back the plastic so he could better examine Valerie Duval’s body.

The flesh of her face had been rinsed and loosely
reassembled, the eyeball inserted back in its socket. It would have been a
gaunt face even before the attack; now it was concave, the cartilage and bone
structure of her nasal septum having been destroyed. Val allowed his eyes to
descend slowly along her body, following the mid-line of broad sutures that ran
from her neck to her pubic mound. She was severely undernourished; her pelvic
bones seemed to be trying to burst through her skin.

“Take a look at her hands and arms,” the ME said,
extracting her right arm from the bag and rotating it. “No defense wounds. No
cuts or lesions, no bruises or scratches.”

“She wasn’t expecting the attack?”

“That would be the obvious inference, though how
exactly can you take someone by surprise when you re holding an axe?”

Not difficult, Val thought, if the attacker was the
victim’s nine-year-old daughter.

“What about the angle of the blows? Can you tell me
anything about the height of the assailant?”

The ME tucked the arm back inside the body bag.
“Unfortunately not. The victim was five foot two inches tall and was struck
three times from above with considerable downward force. A tall killer would
have no need to raise his or her arm above shoulder height, while a short
person could have inflicted the same type of injury by swinging the axe in an
arc above their head. Any one of the three blows would have been sufficient to
cause death.”

“Can you speculate as to the first blow?”

The ME shook his head. “That’s all it would be I’m
afraid
—
speculation — and I’m not
prepared to do that.”

Val questioned him for another quarter of an hour, but
nothing of any significance came from it. He returned to his car and drove to
the Irish Channel. The camping axe used in the killing had been brand new and
how many camping and hardware stores could there be in that part of the city?

CHAPTER THREE

Val spent the rest of that day and the morning of the
next questioning the owners and employees of stores within a ten-block radius
of the Duval building. With the river to the south, it meant he had a
semi-circular section of the city to cover. He worked east to west and
eventually struck lucky with a camping and bait shop on Annunciation Street.

“I was meaning to ring in about it,” the manager
explained. “But you know how it is. The store gets busy and you put it to the
back of your mind. By the time business quietens down, it’s slipped your
memory.”

“What exactly are you talking about? What slipped you memory?”
Val asked patiently.

“The camping axe. I read about the Creole woman’s
murder in the
Times-Picayune
and I
said to Joe — that’s Joe Walsh, he works for me part-time, helps out at the
weekends. Weekends is our busiest time, especially coming into---”

“What was it you said to Joe?”

“I told him there was a good chance that the axe was
one of ours. I have a rack of them over here.”

The manager came out from behind his counter and
crossed the well-stocked floor to a display of camping equipment. He lifted an
axe and handed it to Val. Val didn’t fish and hadn’t been on a camping trip
since he was twelve years old, but the paraphernalia to be found in stores like
this had always held a fascination. He hefted the chrome axe in his hand to
gauge its weight, rubbing his thumb along the rubber grip.

“Is that anything like what you’re searching for?” the
manager asked.

It was a twin of the one that Marie Duval had used to
sever his finger, though Val wasn’t about to confirm that just yet.

“What makes you think it was one of yours?”

The manager grinned. “A young coffee-skinned kid
hoisted it from right under our noses. She walked in bold as brass, lifted it
and walked straight out. I shouted for her to stop. She didn’t, and the store
was full of people so I couldn’t chase after her. They do that — wait ‘til the
place is busy before they do their thieving.”

“Did you get a good look at her?”

“Sure did. She must have been around nine or ten; had
the face of an angel. A real cute kid.”

“Do you think you would recognize her again if you saw
her?”

“Don’t know ‘bout that. Don’t know as though I would
need to.”

“What do you mean?”

The manager rolled his eyes. ‘That’s what I’ve been
trying to tell you. I have it on a security tape and was intending to phone the
station. Come through to the back and I’ll show you.”

The office was a mess. Catalogues, fishing magazines
and invoices were piled high on his desk. The floor was covered in cardboard
boxes with lengths of fishing rods protruding from them like porcupine quills.
The manager lifted a game-fishing reel off a seat and told Val to sit down
while he sorted through the tapes.

He surprised Val by finding the correct one on his
first attempt. He inserted it into the player and switched on. The viewing
screen was mounted against the wall above a filing chest. He wound the tape on
until he found the relevant section.

It was just as he had described. The store was busy as
Marie Duval came in and headed straight over to the camping axes. She lifted
one and made no attempt to conceal it as she hurried out the door. The faces of
several customers turned towards the door, presumably in reaction to the
manager’s shouted command for her to come back. Val had to take his word on
that because the tape had no audio track.

The quality of the black and white picture was
excellent. There was no doubt that the young thief had indeed been Marie Duval.

“Is the date on the tape correct?”

“Yeah, I always set it myself.”

Marie Duval had stolen the axe three days before the
murder. Val scribbled the shop manager a receipt
for the tape and drove to homicide headquarters. After Lieutenant
Larson had watched the tape a couple of times, he gave him authorization to
prepare an arrest warrant for Marie Duval. Murder one.

Dave Wells was the lawyer the Child Protection
department had called in to act on Duval’s behalf. He was a lightly built man
in his early thirties and came across as a well-intentioned and responsible
member of his profession. Behind the lenses of wire-framed glasses, his eyes
sparkled with intelligence and good humor. He would have great need of both in
his chosen career, since much of his work involved arguing child custody cases.
Cases where there were few winners. Val had caught up with him outside Duval’s
room at the General and, taking him to one side, had explained what he was
there to do.

“I’ve been expecting it,” Wells said, his voice full
of regret.

“Has she spoken yet?”

“Not a word. She communicates with a pencil and a pad.
Her spelling and grammar are below average for a nine-year-old, though her mind
seems quick enough.”

“Have you questioned her?”

“Not about her mother’s death specifically. I have
explained to her that I am here to represent her. She is happy for me to do so.
I want to be there when you Miranda her.”

“I have no problem with that. What does the
psychologist have to say?”

“Nothing much so far. She’s diagnosed temporary
muteness brought on by the incident — classic post-traumatic stress syndrome.
There’s been no bed-wetting, rage or breathing problems. Speech could return in
a day, a month, a year. Being grilled by you is not going to help.”

“It can’t be put off any longer,” Val said, walking
over to the door and reaching for the handle.

Duval was dressed in a hospital robe and was curled up
in an armchair watching an episode of The Simpsons. She hadn’t heard the door
opening or the footsteps as they entered the room.

Wells cleared his throat. “Marie.”

The kid turned to face them. Her eyes flicked from the
lawyer to Val, then widened in alarm. She opened her mouth and screamed.

Captain Larson had one credo in life: a smart cop
never takes anything for granted. Val knew it, the other homicide detectives
knew it, and even the civilian clerks would have known it. The very moment you
think you have an investigation down pat, it will turn around and bite you in
the ass. This time it was Dave Wells doing the biting.

Duval’s piercing reaction to Val’s appearance at the
hospital the afternoon before had set in motion a train of events. He was
unceremoniously bundled out of her room by a couple of interns, who then sent
for the pediatric resident. Val had hung around for an hour watching a series
of white-coated specialists come and go, hoping that one of them would
eventually permit him access to Duval. Wells was having none of it. Now knowing
the seriousness of the charge, and with his client having regained her voice,
he insisted on being given reasonable time to consult with her. Duval needed to
be treated with understanding and consideration, Wells argued, if a further
bout of speech loss was to be prevented, and he had a squad of doctors ready to
back him.

Duval must have talked all night.

Captain Larson had called Val into his office early
the following morning to break the news. He didn’t try to sugarcoat it.

“Wells has broached a deal with the DA’s office. His
client will plead no contest to a charge of voluntary manslaughter if we drop
the charge of assault against you.”

Val stared at him bug-eyed, not believing what he was
hearing. Duval was prepared to admit the unlawful killing of her mother, but
that it had not been murder. She would end up serving a year, maybe two, in a
juvenile detention center. The assault charge on a police officer would have
carried a minimum four years.

“That’s ridiculous. The DA’s office will never buy
it.”

“I have a feeling they will. They’re not convinced
that a grand jury would indict the child on a murder charge — not once they
listen to the story Wells has come up with.”

“Let’s hear it.”

Larson pushed back in his chair. “According to a statement
that the girl dictated, her mother had been initiating her as a manbo. She was
confined without food for nine days and instructed in the rituals that a voodoo
priestess uses to call upon the spirits. Voodoo initiation is seen as a
rebirth. The neophyte dies —
metaphorically
— to be reborn as a permanent host for the lwa spirits. Duval’s hand was to be
immersed into boiling water during the concluding ceremony. It’s known as a
boule-zen. Apparently, the more severe the ordeal, the stronger the bond between
the lwa and its host. The greater the manbo’s asson, or power.”

Val had heard enough. “This is bullshit. Duval wasn’t
confined. We have a security tape of her stealing the axe three days before the
killing.”

Larson shrugged. He was sympathetic, but saw the PD’s
job as the apprehension of the law-breakers. What happened to them after that
was on somebody else’s conscience. “We have no way of knowing how strict the
confinement was supposed to be.”

‘To claim voluntary manslaughter, there has to be
adequate provocation. The doctor who examined Duval found no evidence of abuse.
She was malnourished, but so was the mother. There was no pot of boiling water
at the scene. The victim had no defense wounds on her arms. It was
premeditated, cold-blooded murder.”

The captain pulled a wry face. “I’m not saying it
wasn’t, but can you imagine a jury’s response to Wells’s version of events?
He’s a genius at tugging on heartstrings. And he’ll have a
beautiful young girl at his side in the courtroom, while we're
stuck with policemen and forensic experts. He’ll tell them how the girl’s
father and brother died, about their perilous refugee flight from Haiti, the
struggle for survival here, living from day to day, knowing that at any time
they could be repatriated. The confusion created in the child’s mind as what
she sees in America collides with her own culture. He’ll have the judge and
jury in tears. And then he’ll start on you. You’ll be portrayed as the
vindictive, heartless bastard who insisted on a murder charge being brought in
retaliation for the girl’s assault on you.”

“Couldn’t whacking your mother with an axe be
considered just a little bit vindictive as well?” Val said, standing up.

“Where are you going? I haven’t finished with you.”

“We’ve only the girl’s testimony on this initiation
story. I want to check it out.”

Larson relaxed. “How do you plan to do that?”

“Professor Richard Bickford is chair of anthropology
at my brother’s university. I once read a book of his on voodoo ritual. He
could substantiate or discredit Duval’s story.”

Larson thought about it, before saying, “Go to it.”

 
Val phoned the
university’s administration department and asked to speak with Bickford. The
woman he was transferred to told him that the professor wasn’t expected on
campus that day and she refused to pass on his private number. Val gave her his
number and asked her to have Bickford ring him.

He rang Val back less than five minutes later and
listened without interruption as Val explained at some length what he needed
from him. Bickford seemed reluctant at first, then, as though a switch had been
thrown he was full of enthusiasm and said that he would pick Val up at
headquarters and they could drive to the Irish Channel in his car. He promised
to be outside the building in twenty minutes and rang off.

Bickford’s car turned out to be a battered and
mud-splashed British Land Rover with a canvas canopy and three rows of seats
screwed to the flatbed. The university’s crest was painted on the sides. They
traded names and shook hands.

The professor's appearance hadn’t changed a lot, Val
noticed, from the picture on the jacket of his book. His face, brown as a nut,
was a little more lined than it had been then. His hairline had receded
slightly, but he still had thick eyebrows and shoulder-length hair that he wore
swept back in a neat ponytail. His arms were corded with sinew and muscle. He
had on a T-shirt and shorts and his left leg was encased in a rigid leg brace.
A set of elbow crutches was propped against the center seat.

“What happened?” Val asked, forced to raise his voice
above the music blaring from the Land Rover’s cd player.

“Fell off an overhang in Utah. I’m a rock-jock. Only
this time I came down the easy way. At my age bones take longer to heal. My leg
is the reason I might have sounded less than willing when you rang. I can slide
in and out of this baby, but saloon cars are out of the question. He nodded to
Val’s hand. “You’ve been in the wars yourself.”

Val gave him a brief account of his climbing accident.
Bickford found it hilarious and his laughter was infectious. For the first time
since it had happened, Val found himself able to smile about it.