Black Magic Woman (16 page)

The line went silent, and Morris was about to hang up when Duval's voice continued, "Listen, man, don't bother to call back, and don't come over to the church any more, okay? In fact, if you're smart, you'll forget this whole witch hunt you're on and just go home. But either way, leave me out of it. I just dip my toe in these waters once in a while, but you—you're swimming with the fuckin' sharks, dude. Keep at it, and they are gonna eat you alive."

"It's from the Trenton field office," he told Van Dreenan. "Ever since you ID'd the killings as possible
muti
murders, I've asked our field offices, the ones that are closest to each of the four crime scenes, to go through the local law's incident reports for the periods before and after the murders, a week either way. I also asked them to keep an eye on current stuff as it came in."

"With a view toward accomplishing what?"

"Finding anything hinky that might connect up with our case." Fenton was rapidly opening the files that had been attached to the message.

"You did not, surely, use the word 'hinky' in your requests," Van Dreenan said with a tiny smile, his first in days.

"No, I believe I used words like 'unusual,' 'anomalous,' 'idiosyncratic,' and 'fucked-up.' Well, maybe not that last one." Fenton paused to read for a few seconds. "But this, my man, is some kind of seriously fucked-up." He turned the laptop around so that it faced Van Dreenan. "Check it out."

Van Dreenan read what was in front of him. A frown developed on his face and grew deeper as he continued. Finally, he looked up at Fenton.

"A woman apparently blunders into an armed robbery at a— " Van Dreenan glanced at the screen again, "convenience store. What is that, a 'convenience store?'"

"Small grocery store. Often attached to a gas station."

"Oh, of course. I know what you mean. So this woman, described as 'African-American'—how did the witness know that she was African? Or American, for that matter?"

"It's just a polite term for black people," Fenton said, with a small sigh. "Don't read any more into it."

"All right. The robber attempts to take the woman's purse away from her, and she blows some kind of powder into his face, blinding him."

"Blinding him, but good. Check out the ER doctor's report. The guy's eyeballs just about dissolved. He'll never see again."

"Yes, I read that part," Van Dreenan said. "But why is that of use to us? She blows some kind of caustic soda into the man's face, which has the expected effect. Good for her, I say. One less criminal on the streets."

"Yeah, I know," Fenton said. "I might even agree with you. But go a little further down."

Van Dreenan gave him a dubious look, but went back to the report, reading rapidly. Then he stopped. Scrolled back up. Read one part again, slowly. Then he looked at Fenton, and there was an odd expression on his face. "A chemical analysis of the blinding agent finds several kinds of herbs and some ground-up tree bark. That's all, nothing else." Van Dreenan shook his head a couple of times. "None of these ingredients should have done any harm to the man's eyes at all, beyond mild irritation—the kind you would have from any kind of dirt that gets in your eyes."

Fenton nodded slowly. "Yeah. Exactly."

"And this damage is rather too extreme to be considered a psychosomatic injury, even if the robber was a likely candidate for such, which he is not."

"Yeah," Fenton said again. "Told you this was fucked up."

Van Dreenan was looking at the screen again. "I recognize these herbs," he said slowly. "They are often used, in my country, in tribal magic rituals. One of them is even native to South Africa, I believe."

"Uh-huh."

Van Dreenan had long believed that "uh-huh" was one of the most useful terms in American English. It can express agreement, skepticism, indifference, or acknowledgment. It can also be used when you're so overwhelmed by circumstances that you can't think of anything else to say. Van Dreenan was betting that the last one of those applied to Fenton right now.

The two of them were silent for a while. "You know," Van Dreenan said finally, looking down at his hands, "of the many differences between your country and mine, one that I find most striking is the proliferation of surveillance cameras you have here, at least in the urban areas. I am not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, mind you. It can certainly make a policeman's job easier. But you have them everywhere, it seems. Office buildings, car parks, banks—" He paused then, and looked up at Fenton, "convenience stores…"

Fenton stared at him for a long moment. "You know," he said, "I would have figured that out for myself. Eventually."

"Of course you would have," Van Dreenan said graciously.

Fenton turned the laptop back so it was facing him and began to type quickly. After a minute or so, Van Dreenan asked, "What are you doing?"

"Getting us a road map." He clicked the mouse. "There. It's printing now." He gestured with his chin in the direction of the door. "Maybe you'd care to pick it up from the communal printer out there."

"Why do we need a road map?"

"So we don't get ourselves lost on the way to Glassboro, New Jersey."

"It's okay, no problem," Mulderig said. He was a big, untidy man with white hair and bushy eyebrows, with a gut that showed he hadn't had to pass a physical fitness test in a while. "Thing is," he went on, "I don't see why the FBI should give a shit about some two-bit gas station hold-up, especially since we already got the perp in custody."

"We're less interested in the perp than we are in the woman who blinded him," Fenton said.

"Yeah, wasn't that somethin'?" Mulderig said. "Last I heard, the docs still haven't figured what was in that powder she used on him. Kid's a fucking meth-head, name of Tommy Carmody. I've busted him twice, myself. What happened served the bastard right, you ask me." He stopped, looked at Fenton, than Van Dreenan, and back to Fenton. "This some kind of terrorism thing?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes it is," Van Dreenan told him.

"Damn," Mulderig said softly, as if to himself. He picked up the remote and pointed it at the monitor, which came to life immediately. Then he aimed at the videotape player and pressed another button. "Okay, this is the footage from inside the store when it all went down."

The tape began to play, producing an image, black and white but very sharply focused, of the interior of the convenience store. There was, of course, no audio.

They watched the clerk taking packs of cigarettes from a carton and stocking the shelves behind the register. They saw the twitchy young man in the dark jacket, whom they now knew to be Tommy Carmody, approach the counter. And they saw the squat black woman who came to stand a few feet behind Carmody, holding a small bag of some kind of snack food.

Fenton thought he heard a sharp intake of breath from Van Dreenan, but didn't say anything.

They watched as Carmody drew down on the terrified clerk, then turned to train his gun on the woman. They saw him speak to her, yelling probably, threatening her with the gun. They saw her hold out the bag, saw it fall just short of Carmody's grasp, saw him bend forward to pick it up, then the woman's other hand coming up quick as a striking snake, the small cloud of powder suddenly in the air between them, Carmody staggering as he clutched his ruined eyes.

Each of the three men was privately glad he could not hear the screams.

They watched as the woman picked up her bag and scurried out the door, seemingly oblivious to the chaos she was leaving in her wake.

Mulderig pointed the remote again and stopped the tape.

Fenton was tapping a couple of fingers on his knee, a frown creasing his face. He said to Mulderig, "Mind if we see it again?"

"Sure, whatever." Mulderig pressed the rewind button.

Fenton noticed that Van Dreenan was rubbing the bridge of his nose between two fingers. "You all right?" he asked.

"Fine," Van Dreenan said, his voice sounding a little husky. "By all means, let us watch it again."

Fenton looked at him for a moment longer, then turned back to the monitor. When the tape reached the point where the woman blew the powder into Carmody's eyes, he said, "Stop. Run it back a little bit, then play it again, will you?"

Mulderig did as he was asked. This time, as the scene played out, Fenton said, "See that? The bag didn't slip out of her hand, she's letting it fall, deliberately. It's a sucker play. She wants what's-his-name, Carmody, to lean forward and get it."

"Why the fuck would she do that?" Mulderig asked.

"To decrease the range," Van Dreenan said quietly. "She wanted to make absolutely certain of her aim."

Mulderig's eyebrows went up, then he looked back at the video monitor. "Jesus. That is one cold, calculating bitch."

"Ja,"
Van Dreenan said. "That is exactly what she is."

As Mulderig ejected that tape, Fenton said thoughtfully, "The price of gas being what it is these days, they've gotta have a camera aimed right at the pumps, to get the license number of anybody who fills up and just drives away. Kind of like that guy did."

'Figured you'd wanna see that one," Mulderig said, as he slipped another tape into the VCR. "This is it right here."

This time, the camera gave them a good shot of the car from the rear. They watched as the tall, thin man approached and began to pump gas.

"Wonder where he just came from?" Fenton said.

"The John," Mulderig told him. "It's on another tape, if you wanna see it."

The camera angle gave them a clear shot of the Lincoln's license plate: PCL 976. Fenton squinted at the screen. "What state is that plate from? Can you tell?"

"Yeah, it's Mississippi," Mulderig said. "Guy's a long way from home."

"Assuming it's his car, and he didn't boost it someplace," Fenton said. "Have you got a registration?"

Mulderig shook his head. "Not yet. We put in a request to the Mississippi DMV, haven't heard back. Even with computers, they still tend to be a little slow down there."

"We'll see if they move a little faster when the request comes from the FBI," Fenton said. "I assume you've got a BOLO out on the car?"

"Bolo? What is that?" Van Dreenan asked.

"Acronym for 'be on the lookout,'" Fenton told him. "Kind of a general alert to area law enforcement."

"Yeah, we BOLO'd him this morning," Mulderig said. "We'd kinda like to talk to the woman, since what she did in that store was technically assault and battery. And the guy drove off with thirty-eight bucks' worth of hi-test unleaded he didn't pay for."

"If it's all right with you," Fenton said, "I'm going to have somebody from the FBI field office stop by for these tapes. He'll have them copied and brought right back to you. I want to see if I can get some blow-ups made of their faces."

"Yeah, sure, if you think it'll help." Mulderig chewed his lower lip for a moment. "Terrorism, huh? Those Al Qaeda bastards again?"

"Could be," Fenton said. "You understand, I can't talk about the investigation, not at this stage."

"Sure, I gotcha." Mulderig's face had taken on a grim cast. "I had a cousin, died when the twin towers went down. Knew him since we were both snotnose kids together. You get a chance, stick it to those motherfuckers good, will you?"

"Count on it," Fenton said.