DANGEROUS CROSROADS BY LOUIS-PHILIPPE DALEMBERT
Inspector Zagribay was about to turn the computer off when his cell phone told him he had a text message. Lulled by Ibrahim Ferrer’s voice, the inspector had been on the brink of losing consciousness. Only someone he knew well could text him at such a late hour. All around him the city was sleeping in complete darkness. In the last week, partial electricity rationing had turned into total blackout. In the meantime, converters were beginning to die and his own was soon to be part of the group. Owners of generators and solar panels were the last to enjoy the coveted energy. The inspector had to resort to charging his cell in his office to save a little electricity. But there was no way he was going to give up listening to his boleros once he was in bed. The boleros had the triple function of helping him untangle the threads of a current case, taking him back to his childhood, and coaxing him to sleep. And the last had become more and more of a problem. Instinctively, Zagribay turned down the music before he grabbed the phone. He might have even been waiting for that message on some level, as he hadn’t even bothered to get undressed before going to bed. The sender’s number, then the message, appeared on the screen. The inspector got up, picked up his service revolver, and stepped out into the heart of the night.
The car started right away and he pulled out into the street. The thick darkness reduced visibility to the immediate range of the headlights. The inspector turned right, drove a few hundred yards further, and when he reached the precinct- which was also shrouded in complete darkness-and the Baptist church, he turned left. At this hour, he could take Delmas, the long artery to Petionville, without fear of getting caught in traffic jams. He would reach the meeting place soon after that. Though he was reluctant to inform too many people, he took the precaution of waking up a young colleague-who didn’t seem particularly happy about this show of trust-and asked to meet him at Place Boyer. After he hung up, he pushed the button of the CD player. Ibrahim Ferrer’s voice filled the car, leaving a melodious trail in the silent night that blended with the barking of roaming dogs and the buzz of the generators he passed.
Inspector Zagribay’s mind began racing as he drove down the bumpy road. He was getting close, he was sure of it. He had managed to gather almost all the pieces of the puzzle. Another one or two pieces-which his informer and hopefully a search warrant would soon provide-and the case would be closed. When his boss had entrusted him with the assignment, he never would have thought a story of humans transformed into cattle would take him so far. To tell the truth, neither would his boss, who knew his quixotic nature and gave him only minor jobs. But as the weeks went by, the case kept expanding. Recently, he had reached the stage of “friendly” warnings. Which proved that he was on to something big. All those warnings came from people who claimed to wish him well: his boss, colleagues at the office, his childhood friend Fanfan (who he hadn’t even told anything to). Even that Maria Luz, an NGO executive he’d met at the Canadian embassy, thought she should warn him too. Far from dissuading him, all this advice had actually stimulated him. It would be such a waste to stop when things looked so good. Stopping meant being subjected to his colleagues’ sarcasm and the neighborhood kids taunting him.
The inspector remembered exactly when the case had started to turn into something serious and go way beyond him and his boss. It was a month and half ago. He was just emerging from his sleep when his cell rang. It was close to five a.m. The everpresent crowing of roosters, the voices of early risers mixed with the sounds of a few cars backfiring, filled the air. As it did every day, the early-morning smell of coffee had jumped over the fence to tickle his nostrils. That smell was enough to justify his homecoming. The inspector stretched out his arm, groped toward the nightstand. His hand finally reached the phone. He was about to give the intruder a piece of his mind when his eyes, still foggy with sleep, recognized the number on the screen. He didn’t even have time to say hello.
His boss was screaming, beside himself. Zagribay was to go straight to the entrance of Cite Soleil. A seventh corpse in a state of interrupted metamorphosis in his sector. One or two, okay. A human being’s life is of little importance in this screwed-up country, but seven, that was really too much. The chief of police, a man very popular with the media, must have been afraid of losing his job and was waking him up in the middle of the night to box his ears. The problem had been brought up the day before at the cabinet meeting, yelled the chief. The president himself was upset about it. The story had already traveled around the globe, thanks to YouTube: in Haiti, “Christians” were being turned into cattle before being sacrificed during rituals honoring bloodthirsty gods from Africa. And it was easy to infer from this that Haitians were all cattle. The minister of the interior shared the president’s indignation. He had promised that the mystery would be quickly solved and the murderer arrested. And there! Just this morning he had another mutant dead body on his hands. Zagribay had better move his ass instead of wasting the government’s money listening to his maricon music. The boss was known as being someone who didn’t mince words. He wanted results. As soon as possible.
It’s easy to yell now, Zagribay was telling himself as he got up. If they’d asked for his services before, we wouldn’t be where we are now. His chances of finding useful clues would have been greater, especially as the murderer always proceeded the same way. Each time, the body was crushed as if by a steamroller, then burnt to such a point that it was impossible to identify its gender. It surely came from the same brain or criminal organization. But there you are, the bosses had to wait to have three corpses on their hands to take him on board. No wonder the bastard kept doing his grisly job. What were they thinking? That he could perform miracles?
Meanwhile, the opposition was quick to claim on TV and the airwaves of dozens of radio stations that the government was incapable of ensuring the safety of its citizens. For all you know, the inspector said to himself, maybe one of the big guns of the opposition is behind this sinister show. Just to destabilize the government and indulge in the favorite game of this country’s politicians: musical chairs. These people have no scruples. They’d sell their mothers to get a position in the cabinet or a seat in the national assembly. The lead was worth pursuing. But after a week of investigation, Inspector Zagribay had to face facts: there was no connection between the logorrhea of the members of the opposition and the carbonized bodies found on the streets of the capital.
His informers found nothing worth mentioning on the drug lords or kidnappers either. It didn’t match the modus operandi of the drug traffickers. They were used to benefiting from efficient complicity at all levels of the state and had no need to resort to such conspicuous acts to punish people who crossed the line. As for the kidnappers, they would have ended up giving themselves away if they proceeded in this manner. This research had required two extra weeks. And in the interim, three more corpses had been added to the first three, making the front page of the local press. Same method, applied with diabolical regularity, the stiff exposed at a crossroads. He was left with the option of a serial killer, even though, as far as he knew, no case of this type had ever been reported in Haiti. In this field, no lead can be ignored, he repeated like a seasoned professor of criminology. Who knows, with all those deportees the United States have been sending back to us recently…
Zagribay had reached this point in his investigation when that seventh corpse fell on his hands. Seven murders in seven weeks! This was no small case. He quickly got rid of the tank top and underwear he usually slept in. He didn’t have time this morning to feel bad about his visibly broadening waistline. The chief’s voice was still booming in his ear. He slipped into the bathroom: a good shower, even a fast one, would wake him up for good. He turned on the faucet. The pipe produced a weird gurgling noise, the sign of an empty tank. He had forgotten to tell the cleaning lady to have it filled by the tank truck. He went over to the drum installed in the kitchen. Armed with a jug, he set out to fill the basin he had brought with him. As he was washing up, the phone rang again. Probably his boss, anxious to know if he was already on the premises. He finished washing in record time, grabbed the first pieces of
