worst thing? I keep thinking it’s my fault.”
“He doesn’t seem like such a bargain.”
“You didn’t know him,” she said with a snap to her voice, and then let out a startled laugh. “Christ! I’m still defending him. Yeah, sure, he’s a demon and a serial killer, but aside from that, when you really get to know him, deep inside he’s … I wonder if he has any inside left. You know what real love is, Detective? It’s not what you think. It’s not loving the virtues of the beloved. Anyone can love you for your virtues, that’s no trick. I mean, that’s what virtues are?lovable qualities. It’s the unlovely stuff that makes love. We all have a little nasty wounded place in us, and if you can get someone to find that and love it, then you really have something. And I thought I did. I thought I really saw him, how he saw himself at the core, the baby in the garbage can, the son of the junkie nigger whore and her white trick. I know he saw me. I certainly opened myself enough.”
“What’s your nasty wounded place, Jane?”
She gave him one of her sharp looks. “Is this part of the official interrogation, Detective?”
“No, but I told you mine.”
“Fair enough. Okay, my mother hated me. Boo-hoo. From the cradle. A staple of cheap pop psychology, so banal I can’t even take it seriously myself, but Witt Moore did. He thought I was beautiful, and smart, and perfect. He may still, God help me.” She turned then and looked backward over the rail, to where the creamy wake vanished into the black waters. Paz let her stare for the remainder of the ride.
He dropped the anchor in the shallow waters of Bear Cut and switched off the motor. In the ringing silence afterward they could hear the swishing of the mangroves and the plash of wavelets on the nearby beach. The air was clean and smelled of salt and marshes. The moon was nearly full, frosting each billow, out to the horizon, row on row. They could see the lights of the city, although some parts of it were oddly dark. There was a red glow north of the river, sign of a major fire.
Paz went below and came back with a bottle of Bacardi Anejo rum and a couple of paper cups. They sat on a cushioned bench at the stern and he poured a generous slug into each cup.
“Happy days,” said Paz, lifting his cup. She smiled faintly and drank. She coughed and pulled a vial from her bag and took a couple of pills.
“So what I don’t get is why the two single killings, if he needs four. I mean that woman in Africa, and your sister.”
“The Olo must have stopped him in Africa. Ulune isn’t the only sorcerer they have. That’s why he came home is my guess. No one believes in that stuff here. My sister … I told you, he wants me to watch him. I’m his audience. He used to tell me that about his writing. Jane, it’s all for you, I think of what you’ll say when you see it. You keep me honest.”
“But he thought you were dead.”
“So I believed. But maybe he wasn’t fooled. Or maybe he was trying to bring me back from the dead.”
Paz drank a big swallow of rum. “Can he do that?”
“Maybe. It’s not unknown. Usually you need the body, though.” She shuddered. “I’m going to have to stay up,” she said. “But feel free to get some rest yourself.”
“No, I’ll stay up with you,” he said. Five minutes later he was snoring softly. She took the cup from his lax hand and went into the cabin. She checked to see that Luz was all right, and then went back on deck. She sat in the swivel chair behind the helm and tried not to think, occasionally taking a sip of rum. Something about Witt leaving Africa buzzed around in her mind, a connection she wasn’t making. They stopped the witch in Africa, and then let the witch’s apprentice come over to the land of the dik, and … and what? Did they mean for him to wreak havoc among the dik? No, the okunikua was forbidden, so they couldn’t have … she shook her head in frustration. It wouldn’t come. She let it fade and let the sounds of wind and water provide a temporary peace.
She was still sitting there when the sky went violent pink and the sun rose out of the sea. Paz got up a little later and, without comment, went into the cabin. Before long the smell of strong coffee issued from the hatch. He brought her a cup. They had just started to drink it when Paz’s cell phone buzzed.
He hesitated. “Answer it,” she said. “It could be important.”
He held it to his ear, and she saw his face pale. He said, “What!” then “Yeah” a few times, then, “I’m on my boat. No, it’s a long story. No, I’ll be there, ninety minutes tops. Have a car at Northwest Seventh and the river.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“Another disaster. Barlow’s barricaded in the police chief’s office, with his shotgun, the chief, and a secretary. He says the end times are coming and he wants to preach on TV. I have to go in. Shit! What do we do, Jane?”
“There’s some stuff at my place that could help. We could drop Luz off with Polly, too.”
“Will we have to go through another … you know, like last night?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think we have a choice, though.”
As if in answer, Paz started the motor. They headed back to Miami at top speed, barely slapping the waves. Ahead, they saw the pall of smoke, with the white skyline poking through it like stiffened fingers.
Headquarters, when they arrived, was a media zoo. A dozen vans were in place, each one supplied with a handsome person filling the voracious maw of live airtime by talking nonsense in a pool of harsh circus light to a camera and the watching world. Their arrival caused a great stir; the police car escorts, with their sirens uttering short whoops, and Jane’s Buick moved slowly through a lane preserved by cops in riot gear, behind whom jostled and shouted several hundred reporters and photographers.
“Care to make a statement?” asked Paz as they rolled into the underground garage. “Explain on national TV what’s going on in the Magic City?”
She had her head down, and seemed to be mumbling something, a chant of some kind, low and rhythmic. In her hand was a dusty plastic baggie containing an ounce or so of some brown powder. She had her fingers in it, stirring, rubbing. She put two brown-stained fingers in her mouth.
Lieutenant Posada grabbed Paz at the elevator when they got off at the sixth floor. His normally tan face was grayed out like old concrete, and his ordinary expression of genial stupidity was now the mask of a trapped rodent.
“What the fuck is going on, Paz? Where the fuck have you been?”
“Dinner and a boat ride,” said Paz. “With this nice lady. This nice lady says she can solve our problem.”
Posada gaped at Jane. He had clearly been briefed over the radio by the cops he had sent to pick up Paz, but he was paralyzed by the thought of sending a civilian in, someone who could provide another hostage.
“What are you gonna do?” he asked her.
Jane said, “I believe Detective Barlow has been affected by an African psychotropic poison. I believe I have the antidote here. I need to get close to him, though.”
Posada said, “He asked for bread and wine. He’s Jesus or some shit. Maybe you could bring it in to him.” He paused, ass-covering thoughts transparent on his face. “Can we put the … um, antidote in the wine?”
“No, I have to be there.”
“You got to sign a release.”
“I’d be happy to,” said Jane.
It took some time to get the release signed and prepare a tray and to explain to the protesting hostage negotiators that they were going to let this civilian woman walk into an office with an armed madman. While all this was going on, underneath the rustle and hum of the hallway they could hear another sound, muffled by the doors that separated the voice from them, but comprehensible nevertheless: “… and the kings of the earth and the great men and the rich men and the chief captains, Christ fucking son of a bitch, goddamn you all to hell, black bastards, the Lamb, they said, the Lamb, they said to the mountains and the rocks fall on us and hide us from the face of us who sitteth, who sitteth on the fucking throne and from the wrath of the Lamb for the great day of his wrath has come and who shall be able to abide it …”
“He’s been going nonstop like that for hours,” said the chief negotiator. “Take a look at this monitor.” They had run a hair-thin cable in through a ceiling fixture, and the tiny fish-eye lens at the tip of it gave a good view of the chief’s office. Horton was in his chair, behind his desk, his arms taped to the armrests with white medical tape, and the same tape had been used to affix the muzzle of a shotgun to his neck and to seal his mouth. His eyes were closed. Barlow was behind him, holding the shotgun’s stock and waving a revolver around as he ranted. The secretary was not in sight.
Jane refused a bulletproof vest. The chief negotiator started talking at her, telling her what she mustn’t do,
