There, against the white wall, behind the shimmering candles and mysterious pottery and vaporous urns, is a huge white crucifix. And on it hangs a figure.
A familiar figure.
The figure of Rebecca D’Angelo.
73
I remove my shirt, pants, underwear, shoes, and socks. I slip the long white caftan over my head, my skin now electric with the feel of the rayon. I have never felt more the brujo, so full of power.
I undress my madrina on the crucifix. Her skin looks soft, sepulchral, white. I take out my big claw hammer. “Have you ever witnessed a real sacrifice, detective?”
“Listen to me,” Paris says. “If she’s dead, there isn’t a rock big enough to hide under. Hear me?”
“She’s not dead.”
“Kill yourself. Now.”
“She is tied there,” I say. “But, if you don’t do exactly what I say, it can get worse.” I hold up the silver spikes, sharpened to a razor point. “Much worse.”
74
He has to keep the man talking. “How do we end this, Christian? Stop what you’re doing and let’s talk.”
“I want you to draw your weapon.”
Paris obeys. “Now what?”
“Put your bullet in the chamber.”
“It’s already loaded.”
“Of course,” Christian says. “Safety off?”
“Safety’s off.”
On-screen, in one of the four frames, is now a local news break-in. Paris can see a pair of Cleveland Heights zone cars in a Dairy Barn lot and thinks:
We are in the Cain Towers apartments.
Christian says: “You will now place the barrel of the weapon against your forehead and pull the trigger.”
“What?”
“If you do this within, let’s see, four minutes, I’ll let her go. If not, I am going to drive nails into her hands and feet. Which do you think our viewers would prefer? You or her?”
Viewers? Paris thinks. This is being broadcast? “What are you talking about?”
“You’re the main attraction on Cable99 right now. Dare I say, soon, worldwide.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“Perhaps. But seeing as you’re really not that much of a detective, I doubt seriously that you are qualified to make such a damning diagnosis. No offense.”
The lower-right-hand frame flickers with still pictures now. Christian, in front of a rusty old Bonneville. Christian and his sister at Cedar Point.
You’ve got to know what breaks his heart.
“She didn’t kill herself,” Paris says, knowing now that the real Sarah Weiss is dead. The woman in his apartment had been an impostor. “It wasn’t suicide.”
Christian freezes, his face contorting with rage. “Shut up.”
“It’s true. They’re reopening the case. They’re treating it as a homicide.”
“Shut up!”
“I know you blame me for prosecuting her, but I was doing my job. The evidence was there. But now there is evidence that she was not driven to suicide. It is much worse.”
“I don’t want to hear this.”
“Don’t you want to see whoever did this to your sister pay for it? Isn’t that what all this has been about?”
Christian steps away from the crucifix.
Yes, Paris thinks.
Stall him.
“So, I can walk away from this?” Christian asks. “You and me’ll hit the trail and round up the bad guys, sheriff? Please.”
“Of course not. But you can get help. And I can see that justice is done for you.”
“Shut up,” Christian says. “Not a word.” He holds up a pair of spikes. In the other hand, he holds a crown of razor wire. “If you say—”
“No!”
“What did I just tell you?” Christian screams. “You killed her, you asshole.”
“Wait!”
Christian does not wait. He crosses the room, walking right up to the camera. In an instant, Paris’s computer screen goes blue again.
But Paris can still hear. Christian has left the microphone on. Christian screams: “The whole world is watching you!”
Paris hears Christian’s footsteps storming around the room. He hears the music, which had been a faint, scratchy noise in the background, suddenly jump in volume.
“Christian!”
“Save her life!” Christian says.
“Stop!”
But he does not stop. Paris hears the ugly, hateful sound. The icy clank of hammer on steel.
Then come the screams.
75
Furnell Braxton is bathed in sweat. For a single, crazy instant, he sees himself on stage in a huge ballroom at the Marriott picking up a local Emmy. He checks his levels. The audio level is dead center; the video, although lagging slightly, sometimes producing a series of still images, is clear. There are now four separate feeds. The lunatic in the white room with the girl. The looping video of all the old pictures. The cop in the black room with the gun. And the NBC live-news cam.
Furnell had taken the live network feed and inserted it into his cablecast like Harry Blackstone dovetailing two halves of a bridge deck. He hadn’t the slightest idea if he had any right whatsoever to grab the feed, but on the other hand, at the moment, he simply didn’t care.
This is Emmy time.
On-screen, in the upper-right-hand frame, the lunatic is poised, ready to slam home a nail he had begun to pound into the nude woman’s left hand. The nude woman is tied to a cross. The lunatic is watching his monitor, his hand over the woman’s mouth.
In the lower-left frame, now, a medium shot of the Cain Towers apartment shot from across the street. Cop cars everywhere. You can hear a helicopter, too.
The lower-right-hand frame is a video feed showing an old crime scene photo, a kitchen floor covered in blood.
But it is the frame in the upper left that has Furnell, and everyone else, watching, spellbound. In that frame sits the police officer, on the verge of suicide. He has a 9 mm pistol reversed in his hands, the barrel against the center of his forehead, his thumb is on the trigger, his face is corded with fear. At exactly midnight he says:
“I know you will see this one day, Missy. I hope you won’t, but I know you will.” His voice breaks. “I love you and your mother with all my heart.”
He pulls the trigger.
The sound is more of a muffled clap than a bang, but the body bucks and shakes, then Furnell sees the hole, dead center on the man’s forehead. The cop slumps into the chair, still and silent.
In the upper-right-hand frame the man in the white caftan steps away from the woman on the cross. He walks up to the camera, stares. He is looking at his monitor in disbelief. Then, he begins to laugh, high and loud and long, spinning in a circle, shouting in tongues.
Death, Furnell Braxton thinks as he turns and deposits his Tony Roma’s dinner all over the control panel, his acceptance speech on hold for the moment.
He had broadcast death.
Live.
76
The Amanita Muscaria is in full, adolescent blossom in my brain, my muscles, my blood. I feel primally fit, cunning.
Jack Paris is dead.
The world might think he sacrificed himself to save the woman, that he is some kind of noble savage, but we know the real reason:
Guilt.
My very first spell.
My madrina screams but I can barely hear her over the mad rumbling, the swelling chorus of the music. I select the machete, comforted by its heft, its balance.
I will behead her with one stroke of steel.
I look directly into the camera lens as the floor beneath me begins to quake and shudder, to shake the very foundation of the building.
To this world I say: “This is for Sarafina. Mi hermana.”
“And this is for Fayette Martin.”
The voice comes from right behind me. Inches away. I spin.
It is Paris. He has big hands, like my dad’s. For the first time in my life, everything goes quiet.
I spring.
Dad fires.
77
VOODOO KILLER PLEADS GUILTY
BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:31 PM