Kiss of Evil (35 page)

“What do you mean?”

“To be a suspect. Even for a minute. How did it feel when people, people you’ve known for years, looked you straight in the eye and thought you were a fiend? Did the shame of it all make you want to kill yourself? Make you want to get drunk and set yourself afire?
Hmm?
Show the world that Paris is, indeed, burning?”

In his mind’s eye Paris sees Bobby’s face, and how only ninety-nine percent of it believed him. “I know who my friends are. They know the truth.”

“Truth,” Christian says, wistfully. He reaches out of frame, returns with a sterling flask, sips from it. “
Amanita muscaria
. Very potent. Have you ever tried it?”

Paris remains silent.

“Where did it take you on its brief, exhilarating voyage?”

Dad
, Paris thinks. “You wouldn’t begin to understand.”

“Oh, I bet I would. The Hinchi Indians say it invokes ancient memories. What are
your
ancient memories, detective?” Christian leans forward, taps a few keys. Instantly, in the lower-right-hand frame, a picture appears. A picture of Frank Paris. A picture that was in the newspaper next to his father’s obituary. The anger rises in Paris’s chest. His training pushes it back. Barely. He now knows what triggered his hallucination.

Christian says, “The first thing you should know is that I am in the very next room.” On-screen, Paris sees Christian walk out of frame. Then, faintly: “Hear this?”

Paris hears a muffled pounding from behind him. “Yes.”

Christian walks back into frame. “As I’m sure you know by now, you have only one bullet. In your life, right now, that bullet is currency. How will you spend it? The lock on the door? You could shoot it off, but then your gun would be empty and I would kill you.”

Before Paris can stop himself, he looks back at the picture of his father, thinks about the photograph in this butcher’s hands. He says: “Fuck
you
.”

Christian stares into the camera, motionless, as if a DVD had been put on freeze frame. Then, in a smear, he bolts out of frame, and, for twenty seconds the screen is a gray, out-of-focus blur. Then, the point of view changes to a longer shot, and Paris can now see that, in the bright white room next door there is an altar not unlike the chantry in Evangelina Cruz’s basement. But this one is larger, covered in a huge, brilliant white cloth. There seem to be candles everywhere, starring up the lens of the digital camera. On the steps of the altar Paris sees dried animal claws outlined against the cloud white sheet. He sees earthen cruets bearing ancient symbols. He sees a half-dozen brass plates bearing cones of incense, stacks of copper coins.

But it is what Jack Paris sees behind the altar that terrifies him.

There, against the white wall, behind the shimmering candles and mysterious pottery and vaporous urns, is a huge white crucifix. And on it hangs a figure.

A familiar figure.

The figure of Rebecca D’Angelo.

73

I remove my shirt, pants, underwear, shoes, and socks. I slip the long white caftan over my head, my skin now electric with the feel of the rayon. I have never felt more the
brujo
, so full of power.

I undress my
madrina
on the crucifix. Her skin looks soft, sepulchral, white. I take out my big claw hammer. “Have you ever witnessed a real sacrifice, detective?”

“Listen to me,” Paris says. “If she’s dead, there isn’t a rock big enough to hide under. Hear me?”

“She’s not dead.”

“Kill yourself.
Now
.”

“She is tied there,” I say. “But, if you don’t do exactly what I say, it can get worse.” I hold up the silver spikes, sharpened to a razor point. “Much worse.”

74

He has to keep the man talking. “How do we end this, Christian? Stop what you’re doing and let’s talk.”

“I want you to draw your weapon.”

Paris obeys. “Now what?”

“Put your bullet in the chamber.”

“It’s already loaded.”

“Of course,” Christian says. “Safety off?”

“Safety’s off.”

On-screen, in one of the four frames, is now a local news break-in. Paris can see a pair of Cleveland Heights zone cars in a Dairy Barn lot and thinks:

Christian says: “You will now place the barrel of the weapon against your forehead and pull the trigger.”

“If you do this within, let’s see, four minutes, I’ll let her go. If not, I am going to drive nails into her hands and feet. Which do you think our viewers would prefer? You or her?”

Viewers? Paris thinks. This is being
broadcast
? “What are you talking about?”

“You’re the main attraction on Cable99 right now. Dare I say, soon, worldwide.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“Perhaps. But seeing as you’re really not that much of a detective, I doubt seriously that you are qualified to make such a damning diagnosis. No
offense
.”

The lower-right-hand frame flickers with still pictures now. Christian, in front of a rusty old Bonneville. Christian and his sister at Cedar Point.

“She didn’t kill herself,” Paris says, knowing now that the real Sarah Weiss is dead. The woman in his apartment had been an impostor. “It wasn’t suicide.”

Christian freezes, his face contorting with rage. “Shut up.”

“It’s true. They’re reopening the case. They’re treating it as a homicide.”

“Shut up!”

“I know you blame me for prosecuting her, but I was doing my job. The evidence was there. But now there
is
evidence that she was not driven to suicide. It is much worse.”

“I don’t want to hear this.”

“Don’t you want to see whoever did this to your sister pay for it? Isn’t that what all this has been about?”

Christian steps away from the crucifix.

Yes
, Paris thinks.

Stall him.

“So, I can walk away from this?” Christian asks. “You and me’ll hit the trail and round up the bad guys, sheriff? Please.”

“Of course not. But you can get
help
. And I can see that justice is done for you.”

“Shut up,” Christian says. “Not a word.” He holds up a pair of spikes. In the other hand, he holds a crown of razor wire. “If you say—”

“No!”

“What did I just tell you?” Christian screams. “You
killed
her, you asshole.”

Christian does not wait. He crosses the room, walking right up to the camera. In an instant, Paris’s computer screen goes blue again.

But Paris can still hear. Christian has left the microphone on. Christian screams: “
The whole world is watching you!
”

Paris hears Christian’s footsteps storming around the room. He hears the music, which had been a faint, scratchy noise in the background, suddenly jump in volume.

“Christian!”

“Save her life!” Christian says.

But he does not stop. Paris hears the ugly, hateful sound. The icy clank of hammer on steel.

Then come the screams.

75

Furnell Braxton is bathed in sweat. For a single, crazy instant, he sees himself on stage in a huge ballroom at the Marriott picking up a local Emmy. He checks his levels. The audio level is dead center; the video, although lagging slightly, sometimes producing a series of still images, is clear. There are now four separate feeds. The lunatic in the white room with the girl. The looping video of all the old pictures. The cop in the black room with the gun. And the NBC live-news cam.

Furnell had taken the live network feed and inserted it into his cablecast like Harry Blackstone dovetailing two halves of a bridge deck. He hadn’t the slightest idea if he had any right whatsoever to grab the feed, but on the other hand, at the moment, he simply didn’t care.

This is Emmy time.

On-screen, in the upper-right-hand frame, the lunatic is poised, ready to slam home a nail he had begun to pound into the nude woman’s left hand. The nude woman is tied to a cross. The lunatic is watching his monitor, his hand over the woman’s mouth.

In the lower-left frame, now, a medium shot of the Cain Towers apartment shot from across the street. Cop cars everywhere. You can hear a helicopter, too.

The lower-right-hand frame is a video feed showing an old crime scene photo, a kitchen floor covered in blood.

But it is the frame in the upper left that has Furnell, and everyone else, watching, spellbound. In that frame sits the police officer, on the verge of suicide. He has a 9 mm pistol reversed in his hands, the barrel against the center of his forehead, his thumb is on the trigger, his face is corded with fear. At exactly midnight he says:

“I know you will see this one day, Missy. I hope you won’t, but I know you will.” His voice breaks. “I love you and your mother with all my heart.”

He pulls the trigger.

The sound is more of a muffled clap than a bang, but the body bucks and shakes, then Furnell sees the hole, dead center on the man’s forehead. The cop slumps into the chair, still and silent.

In the upper-right-hand frame the man in the white caftan steps away from the woman on the cross. He walks up to the camera, stares. He is looking at his monitor in disbelief. Then, he begins to laugh, high and loud and long, spinning in a circle, shouting in tongues.

Death
, Furnell Braxton thinks as he turns and deposits his Tony Roma’s dinner all over the control panel, his acceptance speech on hold for the moment.

He had broadcast death.

76

The
Amanita Muscaria
is in full, adolescent blossom in my brain, my muscles, my blood. I feel primally fit, cunning.

Jack Paris is dead.

The world might think he sacrificed himself to save the woman, that he is some kind of noble savage, but we know the real reason:

Guilt.

My
madrina
screams but I can barely hear her over the mad rumbling, the swelling chorus of the music. I select the machete, comforted by its heft, its balance.

I will behead her with one stroke of steel.

I look directly into the camera lens as the floor beneath me begins to quake and shudder, to shake the very foundation of the building.

To this world I say: “This is for Sarafina.
Mi hermana
.”

“And this is for Fayette Martin.”

The voice comes from right behind me.
Inches away
. I spin.

It is Paris. He has big hands, like my dad’s. For the first time in my life, everything goes quiet.

I spring.

Dad fires.

77

 

Cleveland (ap)—The man who killed his victims then mutilated their bodies with Santerian symbols pleaded guilty today to seven counts of aggravated murder, admitting that he had killed one victim by chopping off the top of her head; another, by castration.

The plea bargain promises Christian del Blanco, 30, a life sentence without the possibility of parole. He would have faced the death penalty if he had been convicted of first-degree murder on any of the counts.

After his arrest early New Year’s Day, Mr. del Blanco confessed to murdering Fayette M. Martin, 30, last December after luring her to an abandoned inner-city building, as well as Willis James Walker, 48. It is unclear as to how Mr. del Blanco knew Mr. Walker, or what drew the two men to the Dream-A-Dream Motel, a motel on Cleveland’s east side.

The other victims, Isaac C. Levertov, 79, and his wife Edith R., 81, were apparently victims of a sacrificial killing.

Another victim, Edward Moriceau, 60, was the proprietor of an herb shop that specializes in Santerian artifacts.

As he entered his plea, Mr. del Blanco shocked the prosecutors and his court-appointed defense attorney by mentioning two other victims. One, a female accomplice named Celeste L. Conroy, 26. Police found Ms. Conroy’s body in the basement of a building on East Eighty-fifth Street and Carnegie Avenue where they say she was strangled. The other, a shooting victim found in Cain Park in Cleveland Heights, a victim only recently identified as Jeremiah D. Cross, 29, a Cleveland Heights attorney who once represented the defendant’s sister on a murder charge of her own.

Due to injuries sustained during his arrest, Mr. del Blanco appeared in court in a wheelchair. Before being returned to his cell, he apologized to the victims’ families in fluent Spanish.

Sentencing is set for January 15.

78

The fallout from any case the size and weight of the Ochosi murders is always far-reaching. There are two books in progress. A four-part series is under way in the
Plain Dealer
.

Bobby Dietricht had suffered first-degree burns on his right arm and leg that night, as well as a fractured ulna in his left arm. Greg had taken three .22 caliber bullets to the left side of his vest, breaking two ribs. Both are scheduled to be back on the job within a few weeks.

After murdering Jeremiah Cross, Christian knew that eventually the Sarah Weiss connection would be made. It was then that Christian must have taken a few of his extra trinkets and set up a makeshift altar on the second floor of Jeremiah Cross’s house, rigging some plastique to a mercury switch.

Just in case.

Records at the Veterans Administration showed that a man named Jeremiah Cross had requested a file on Demetrius Salters around a week after Jeremiah Cross had been murdered. It explains where Jeremiah Cross’s ID had gone after he was killed, as well as the fact that Christian del Blanco was moving in on the old cop.