folk medicines. As for the rest, the divination, the orishas … let’s just say that for a certain social class it provides a relatively inexpensive form of therapy and psychological security. If a bunch of uneducated people want to believe that they can call gods down to earth and interest them in Aunt Emilia’s bronchitis and Uncle Augusto’s sandwich shop, then who am I to say no?” Meaning, people like you.
Paz stood and put his notebook away. “Thank you very much, Dr. Herrera,” he said. “You’ve been very helpful.” He walked out, with the patronizing smile burning on his back.
Back in his car, with the A/C roaring, Paz called the university locator number and demanded, with the authority of the police, the home address and phone number of Dr. Maria Salazar. The operator hesitated, he bullied, she gave in. A Coral Gables address. But he did not wish to have another interview with another upper-class Cuban lady just yet, although he did not bring this reluctance fully to mind. Instead, he imagined a more important appointment. He called Barlow, got the beeper, left a message. He sat in the car, burned gas to make cool air, watched the fountain play on Lake Osceola, watched the students stroll languorously in and out of the cafeteria, the bookstore, the immense outdoor swimming pool. There was not much evidence of heavy intellectual activity to be observed. Most of the students were dressed as for a day at the beach. A young man walked by the car, stooped over, taking tiny steps. Paz craned his neck and saw that he was following a toddler, a little goldenheaded boy. The kid started toward the roadway, and the father scooped his son up in his arms, embraced him, tickled him until the child crowed with delight. Paz turned his face away, and did not feel what most normal people feel when they see paternal love. His stomach tightened and he took several deep breaths.
Paz refocused his attention, and did some light ogling of the undergraduate girls gliding by. Suntan U. He was not a big fan of the suntan. He preferred wiry women with red hair or blond hair, milky, silky skin and pale eyes, a cliche, he well knew, but there it was. Exogamous, a word he enjoyed. Either like Mom, or not like Mom, one of his girlfriends, a sociologist, had said of male tastes in women. Paz had at the moment three girlfriends in the steady- squeeze category: that sociologist, a child psychologist, and a poet working as a library clerk. He had always had several relationships going on, never more than four, never less than two. Women drifted in and out of this skein at their will. He did not press them to stay, nor did he insist on an exclusivity he was not ready to submit to himself. He was frank with them all about this arrangement, and was rather proud of himself that he never (or almost never) lied to get laid.
His cell phone rang: Barlow. Paz learned that the autopsy was done and also that Barlow had rammed the toxicity screens through as well, which was remarkable. Barlow said, “Yeah, I pushed them boys some. I figured it was going to be worth it.”
“Was it?”
“Un-huh, I guess so.” This was Barlow-talk for spectacular revelation.
“What?”
“Not on the line. I reckon y’all ought to get back here, though.”
Homicide is on the fifth floor of the Miami PD fortress, a small suite of modern rooms accessible via a card- eating lock. Only homicide detectives have cards. Inside there is industrial carpeting and a bay with steel desks at which the worker bees sit, and there are private offices for the brass, the captain in charge of the unit and the shift lieutenants. No one was in the bay when Paz walked in but Barlow and the two secretaries.
Barlow nodded to Paz and pointed at a thick manila folder sitting on the corner of his desk. Barlow always had the neatest desk in the bay. It was devoid of decoration, unlike those of the other homicide cops, nor did Barlow have little yellow Post-it notes stuck all over his desk surface and lamp. Barlow kept everything in his head, said the legend, or under lock and key.
Paz went back to his own desk and read the medical examiner’s report. First surprise: Deandra Wallace had not died of massive exsanguination resulting from the butchery that had been done on her. Her heart had ceased beating before blood loss would have stopped it. The baby, called Baby Boy Wallace in the report, had been withdrawn alive and operated upon shortly thereafter. The cuts on both mother and infant had been precise, with no hesitation marks observed. Tissue had been removed?here followed a short list?from the heart, liver, and spleen of the mother, and from the heart and brain of the infant. Unlike the mother, the infant had expired from its wounds. The instrument used had been extremely sharp, a short, wide, curved blade, much larger than a surgical scalpel, but smaller than a typical hunting knife. Both mother and infant had been healthy before the events under consideration. The infant was full term and?here another interesting surprise?labor had begun just before death intervened.
Next, the toxicology report. List of organs examined. Findings: negative for a whole list of recreational drugs, including alcohol and nicotine. Positive for: here followed a list of substances Paz had never heard of: tetrahydroharmaline, ibogaine, yohimbine, ouabane, 6-methoxytetrahydroharman, tetrahydra-?-carboline, 6- methoxyharmalan, plus “several alkaloids of undetermined structure” for which the chemical formulas were given. He sighed, went over to Barlow’s desk.
“Any thoughts?”
“None worth a dern until we find out more about what was in that poor girl’s body. I can’t hardly get to the end of some of them words, and I’m a high-school graduate. You have any luck?”
“Some,” said Paz, and related the results of his recent visits to the two scientists.
After a pause, Barlow said, “Well. I figured all that’d be something y’all’d know about.”
“Oh, come on, Cletis! Why, because I’m Cuban? Where do your people come from? England, way back there, right? You know a lot about Stonehenge? We get some druid dancing around town whacking people with a flint dagger, you’re gonna be all over his butt.”
“Y’all a lot fresher off the boat than that.”
Paz rolled his eyes. “Look: you know my mom, right?”
“I do. A fine Christian woman.”
“Uh-huh. Not your brand of Christian, but yeah. Think about it. You think my mom would give the time of day to that kind of sh … cow patty? As far as she’s concerned, Cuba is the Spanish language and food, period. That’s how I was raised. I know as much about Santeria as you know about European satanism.”
“Still. Somebody got to talk Spanish to a bunch of witch doctors …”
“Santeros.”
“See? Y’all’s the expert.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake! Cut it out!”
Ordinarily, Paz did not mind this sort of teasing from Barlow. But Dr. Herrera had gotten under his skin, the incurable wound prickled, or maybe it was that this case was turning in directions he did not like. The notion that he was going to be some kind of ethnic front man exploring mambo babalou-ay-yay penetrated the armor, as no amount of teasing could. Did Barlow know this? No, Paz was not going to pursue this line.
“What did the tox guy make of all this stuff?” he asked, waving the report.
“Oh, well, they had all the books out, jabbering like a bunch of monkeys. It was hard to get a straight answer out of them, or anyhow, one I could understand, being a country boy. Your ethnowhatdyacallit lady’d probably know. What I got out of it was a bunch of plant poisons. That one with the jawbreaker name’s a hallucinogen, and the others are too, mostly. Plus a narcotic. She might’ve thought she was at the junior prom while he was cutting her.”
“What about cause of death? One of the drugs?”
“Not that they could tell,” Barlow replied, “but like it says there, they found stuff they never seen before. Could’ve stopped her heart with them, or it could’ve been the shock, but her heart was full of blood when it turned off.”
“Well, I’ll go back and show this to Herrera,” said Paz valiantly, suppressing the repugnance, “and see if she can match these chemicals up with some plants. Meanwhile, we should go have a talk with Youghans. Maybe we’ll wrap it up with him.”
Barlow gave him a sidelong look. “What, you think a homeboy trucker could come up with a bunch a poisons nobody ever heard of?”
“Heck, he don’t have to be a pharmacologist. There’s two hundred herb joints in this town. He could’ve just walked into one with a stack of cash and said, ‘Hey, I’ll take a pound of the worst knockout stuff you got.’ “
“Read it again.”
“Read what?”
“That report. No drugs in the stomach contents. Found ‘em in her liver and her brain and lungs. Probable
