This Wicked City by Michael Walsh

Author:Michael Walsh [Walsh, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC022000 Fiction / Mystery & Detective / General
ISBN: 9781509252671
Published: 2023-09-22T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

At midnight, Conley and Emmanuel left the Voudou worshipers’ house and descended the porch steps to the dead-end street. They walked back to the woods, negotiated the trails by flashlight, and passed the makeshift Voudou temple, with its warped flooring and crooked sacrifice table. They negotiated the Wolf Pits, where the dug-out traps looked eerie and sinister in the glow of their lights. The sweet scent of honeysuckle followed them on their long, buggy hike until they hopped the chain that stretched across the entrance to Ocean Park Woods. Conley unlocked his car door, started the ignition, and turned down the scratchy dispatch radio.

“What did you learn from Yvonne and Daniella?” he said.

Emmanuel shrugged. “Not much, just personal information about Laurette Belcourt.”

“Personal. You mean gossip?”

“Mostly.”

Emmanuel opened one of his notebooks. He’d bought it at the beginning of the investigation into Joseph’s murder, and now the covers were dog-eared and frayed, and the pages had swelled with ink. Emmanuel was a meticulous scribe, always bent over his books, his tensed hands and fingers effortlessly filling every line. Diligence was an admirable trait, but the volume of interrogations and observations he'd collected made sifting clues difficult.

“Emmanuel, what’s the most important thing the girls said about Laurette?”

He turned pages and drew his finger down them as he read. “That she sought justice for her boy. She paid to have a spirit summoned to free him from prison.”

“Yes, but that happened weeks ago. Why’d she return tonight?”

“They said they didn’t know, but . . .”

“But what?”

Emmanuel looked up from his notebook and squinted. His eyes were bloodshot-tired, and his wispy moustache glistened with perspiration. His voice was low and icy. “I have a feeling that Laurette is up to something. She’s too desperate.”

“She’s a mother who’d do anything to free her son.”

“Yes, but she’s also smart. She seems to be . . . keeping us busy.”

They turned onto Walnut Street, the long, twisting avenue that led downtown. A nearly full moon hung in a starry sky. A sooty cloud of smoke passed over.

“Did the girls know about the dead cat in Gina’s van?” Conley said.

“They seemed genuinely surprised when I asked them. I’d say no.”

Emmanuel’s tone was somber, and his shoulders seemed to be sloping at angles from his neck as if they were supporting an unseen weight. Something was bothering him. Maybe he was having his first ‘dark night of the soul’, the trauma-related personal reckoning that affected all cops, trying to cope with the memory of his friend Joseph sprawled on the dew-covered railroad tracks on that dismal morning.

They rode in near silence, save for the sleepy voice of the police and fire dispatcher searching for a patrol to break up a loud party at the beach. Her monotonous drone sounded like a plaintive prayer, a tired, lonely voice in the middle of the night that captured the despair that had gripped Ocean Park lately, the hate, the angry words, the bitterness of a populace who had lost patience with the public servants they depended on.

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