Barlow said, “Well, what would you recommend we do? Give him a free pass?” She mumbled something. Paz snapped, “Speak up! What’s the answer? Holy water?”
“Jiladoul.”
“What the fuck is that?” snapped Paz. He saw Barlow’s mouth tighten.
There was a knock on the door and a harassed-looking policewoman burst in and told them that Ms. Doe’s lawyer had arrived, demanding to speak to her immediately, and that Captain Mendes wanted to see both of the detectives, also immediately. The two detectives looked at each other. Paz snarled something under his breath and stomped out. Barlow turned off the tape machine and walked out with it, leaving the cop with the detainee.
Mendes was not in good shape. Paz thought he was on the edge of collapse and he felt a tremor of fear. The captain had always been a neat, even dapper, man, a cool manipulator of people and situations. Now he had his tie halfway down his chest, the first two buttons of his silk shirt open, and the shirt had a large coffee stain at the belt line. The ashtray on his desk was filthy with cigarette and cigar butts. Paz and Barlow sat down, but Mendes continued to pace. The phone was buzzing, but he made no effort to pick it up.
“The mayor got a call from the governor’s office about that bitch you picked up,” Mendes began, “that rich bitch. You got any idea who the fuck she is? The fucking archbishop was on the horn, too. You talk to her lawyer?”
“No, boss, the guy just got here, and then …”
“Did she do it? Do you have evidence to charge her?”
“No,” said Barlow, “and no. She says her husband did it. Witt Moore.”
Mendes stopped his pacing. “Did he?”
“If she ain’t completely crazy, it looks like he might’ve. The problem is, there’s no physical evidence, and he’s going to be alibied up to the neckbone for all the murders. And he’s no homeboy. He’s a famous black writer.”
“I don’t care who he is. I need someone to show here. You got any idea what’s going on out there? Half the goddamn reporters in the country are outside the building right now. It’s not local anymore. There’s network TV people here now. They want to know how some maniac slipped into a building guarded by the police and chopped up a woman in her own room, without waking up the woman sleeping next to her. I’d like to know, too. I got to go down and talk to those people. I got to explain to Horton and the mayor. So what do I say? You’re the fucking detectives?what do I say? “
Mendes’s eyes bulged and his face grew dark. Paz said, “He used drugs, psychedelic powders from Africa. He confused the guards and did it.”
Mendes stared at him. “Who, Moore? You know this?”
“It’s the only explanation that makes sense,” offered Paz, carefully. “He can confuse people, put them to sleep temporarily. That’s how he does it.”
Barlow said, “It’s a theory, Arnie. We got no evidence for …”
“Then fucking find some! Concoct some! I don’t give a nickel shit. But I got to have something. I can’t go up there naked with my dick waving. Go pick up this guy. Use the whole SWAT team, gas masks, disaster suits, whatever you need. I’ll clear it. Go!”
They got up. Paz said, “And about Jane Doe?”
Mendes made a dismissive gesture. “Oh, cut her loose! That’s all I need, the archbishop on my ass in the middle of all this.”
They went back to the interview room, Barlow marching ahead, silent, his back stiff. Paz could tell he was angry, although whether at Mendes or himself he didn’t know. In the room, Jane Doe was speaking with a large, balding man wearing gold-rimmed glasses and a gray suit of marvelous silkiness and cut: the lawyer, Thomas P. Finnegan. He informed them that Ms. Doe was through talking for the day.
“I don’t think so,” said Paz. He did not wish to let go of the woman. “Ms. Doe is in possession of essential information on a extremely important serial murder case. We haven’t finished questioning her.”
“Yes, you have,” said Finnegan.
“Plus, we can charge her with impersonation.”
“Go ahead,” said Finnegan. “In which case, she will definitely not say anything.”
Some stereotypical glaring here. Jane broke the tense silence. “They don’t believe me anyway. They think I’m crazy.”
“Is that true, Detective?” asked Finnegan, gently.
Paz realized it showed in his face. He did think she was a nutcase. But … He felt blood rushing to his cheeks, and considered bringing up the little girl as leverage, but found he could not do it. Barlow said, “You can take her away, Counselor. I guess you know not to go anywhere we can’t find you.”
The lawyer made the obligatory rumblings about false arrest and harassment. As she left, Paz touched her arm.
“What’s a jillado?” he asked.
“Jiladoul,”she corrected. “A sorcerer’s war. Good luck, Detective Paz. Be careful.”
When they had gone, Barlow said, “Well, Jimmy, you got us into it now. You feel like calling the SWATs and getting into a gas mask?”
“I had to say something.”
“A fool’s mouth is his destruction and his lips are the snare of his soul, Proverbs 18:7. You got no evidence at all the man’s spraying drug powders around the city.”
“Okay, great! Why don’t you waltz back in there and give Arnie the Jane version? He can go on national TV with it. Miami police baffled by witch doctor, film at eleven.” He walked away.
Barlow caught up with him and grabbed his shoulder. “Where’re you running off to?”
Paz shrugged him off. “I’m going to pick up Moore.”
“What about them drugs of yours?”
“I’ll hold my breath.”
“This is wrong. We should think this through, calm down a little.”
“I’m calm. I’m not scared, though. That your problem? You really believe this witchcraft crap, don’t you?”
Barlow had the kind of white eyes that get harder than any other kind. “Listen, boy: Captain said take a team, and we’re going to take a team. You want to come along, fine; you don’t want to play that way, I’ll turn around and march into Arnie’s office and get you pulled off this case. I mean it.”
Paz let out a breath and said, “Fine. What do you want me to do?”
They got to the Poinciana Suites a little after seven. It was a four-story, cream-colored stucco building full of small apartments for well-off transients, set back from the street across from Brickell Park. They parked on the street out front, Barlow and Paz in Paz’s car, a big van full of SWAT guys in white plastic suits and gas masks, and a crime-scene-unit van. Barlow told the SWATs to stay put while he and Paz made the arrest. The SWAT commander, Lieutenant Dickson, objected strenuously to this plan; the whole point of his unit was to go in first and overwhelm the suspect. And what about this gas?
“They ain’t no gas, son,” said Barlow. “It’s something else, what our man’s got, and I think we can handle it. Now look here: that’s why they call y’all backup. Back up! We’re going in, me and Jimmy here, and we’re coming out with the guy. You do what you have to do to secure the building, the back exits and such. If we ain’t out in half an hour, you mask up and go in shooting. But it ain’t going to come to that.”
Dickson relented and started to dispose his troops. Paz and Barlow rode the elevator to the top floor in silence. Paz pushed the buzzer at the door of number 303. The door opened. Moore was standing there, dressed in a yellow T-shirt and baggy gray cotton pants, with leather sandals on his feet. They showed him their ID.
“Malcolm DeWitt Moore?” Barlow asked.
“That’s me.” He looked straight at Paz, ignoring Barlow. Paz saw a man of about his own size, with a lighter build and eyes that were hazel rather than brown. Paz said, “We’d like to talk to you.”
Moore backed away from the door. “Sure, come in. I’m in the middle of something. Just let me put it away.”
They followed him into the apartment, which consisted of one large room, furnished in modern light woods and Haitian cotton rugs and upholstery, high-class motel equipage, and a smaller bedroom, which they could see through an open door. Moore went to a desk, bent over it, and wrote something in a notebook. Then he sat down in a straight chair that stood in front of the desk.
