Bull met Charbou’s stare with complete calm. “What does she look like to you?”
Not put off for an instant, Bull’s partner stepped in close and spit out his reply. “Whatever the hell it is, there’s no name for it, and if there is one, I’m sure as hell not going to say it!”
Bull nodded. “Well, that’s exactly what she is.”
Charbou gave a phony laugh. “Are you trying to tell me that it’s a fuckin’ zombie?”
“I’m just saying that some things are exactly what they appear to be,” Bull replied, still entirely calm. “Sometimes the simplest explanation is the best.”
Amaia cut in. “What is Samedi?”
Bull pressed his lips together. “I can’t answer that. It’s part of the investigation Agent Dupree and I are conducting. I’d need his permission.”
Johnson spoke. “His permission? Agent Dupree just had a coronary! Maybe you missed that? He’s in there with his life dangling by a thread. I have seniority here, and that makes me the next in command. Tell us! That’s an order!”
“You can’t order me. I’m not FBI. My cooperation with Agent Dupree is entirely—”
Charbou grabbed him by the throat and pushed him against the wall. Bull didn’t even raise his hands to resist. “I went to your wedding! I’m your son’s godfather, and you’re treating me like this?”
Johnson and Amaia pulled Charbou back.
“Okay,” Bull gave in, closing his eyes. Charbou released him and stepped back. “Her name’s Médora, Médora Lirette. She was kidnapped ten years ago, right after her sixteenth birthday, during Hurricane Casilda.”
Johnson nodded. “Go on.”
“I was in the unit that dealt with human trafficking. Médora was the little sister of Jerome Jay Lirette, a drug dealer in Terrebonne, down in the swampland about an hour from here. Jerome had been dealing since he was a little kid, and he was smart. He was never arrested, and he became a medium-sized dealer with a lot of people working for him. He took care of his mother and grandma, and he was particularly protective of his little sister. The same night that Casilda rolled across the marshes, people broke into his house and carried Médora off. The descriptions of the abductors were like those of the people who took Jacob’s sisters last night. The intruders took her and two girlfriends who were there for a sleepover, all of them minors.”
“Médora was kidnapped ten years ago? Are you sure?”
“Her name was tattooed on the back of her neck, a birthday gift from Jerome. And it was an abduction, not a kidnapping. The perpetrators didn’t ask for ransom, because they had no intention of giving her back. Drug dealers usually take care of their own problems, but Lirette notified the police when Médora disappeared. And not in Terrebonne, where he lived; he came to police headquarters in downtown New Orleans with three lawyers. They wanted to talk to the New Orleans police chief and the district attorney.
“They were sent to me first. Jerome was beside himself. He obviously hadn’t been sleeping at all, and all that, that . . . whatever . . . was completely beyond him. He didn’t say a word at first.
“He told us someone had ‘abducted’ his sister. That’s the word he used. He didn’t say ‘kidnapped,’ he said ‘abducted.’ He claimed he knew who had her, and he was ready to swap information about his drug trafficking business in exchange for immunity and help from the police and FBI in finding his sister. You can imagine what we thought. Lirette kept his mouth shut after that, but his lawyers laid it out in black and white. Mr. Lirette understood the seriousness of the matter, they said, but he would give us the goods on important aspects of the drug trade: distribution, methods of bringing the drugs into the country, the names of port officials on the take, and where the merchandise was stored. We knew most of the junk came via the canals or across the swamps, but even so, we couldn’t turn down an offer of inside information about the port. They said it was all written down already, and they’d turn it over if we agreed to a deal. They huddled in the chief’s office and gave the DA fifteen seconds to leaf through a twenty-page single-spaced statement. It took him only ten seconds. They signed the agreement, handed over the document, and the narc squad got to work right away.
“Jerome’s account said that a month earlier, he’d been exploring the possibility of collaborating with a Baton Rouge organization. That’s all he knew about them. But Jerome didn’t get where he was by being gullible. The questions they were asking made him suspect those people weren’t interested in a deal but intended to take over his networks. He broke off the talks. Two nights after that, while Casilda was at her worst, an armed group invaded his house, terrorized his mother and grandma, and carried off the sixteen-year-old sister and her two friends. Lirette wrote that Samedi had taken them.”
“That’s exactly what Jacob’s grandmother said,” Amaia commented. “The boy described two attackers with masks and another individual who looked like Médora. He described the attack to me in detail, and when I asked him who was in charge, he pointed to an anatomy poster on the wall, a picture of a human body with exposed muscles and no skin.”
“Good God!” Charbou protested. “The kid’s imagination is going wild over his grandmother’s story. Okay, I have to admit that the sight of our friend Médora would scare the shit out of anyone. And the kid’s only four years old.”
“Five,” Amaia corrected him. “He’s a bright little boy. One of the calmest and most credible witnesses I’ve ever interviewed.”
“Oh, great! Now you believe the story of a four-year-old, and that takes care of everything?”
“Five! He’s five years old, and I don’t see any reason not to believe him!” Amaia angrily spat at him. “Why do people always doubt children? I don’t see why Jacob should be any less credible than Jerome Lirette. They were more than happy to take the word of a drug dealer!”
Johnson had a feeling of déjà vu. He was sure Salazar was talking about her own past.
Charbou took her on. “Everybody in Louisiana knows Samedi’s a spirit. Baron Samedi is one of those voodoo loas, but he’s the loa of death, an evil spirit they blame for the worst kinds of crimes. We’ve seen him represented millions of times for Carnival and Halloween. He’s a skeleton with broken hips, wearing a sombrero and smoking a cigar; sometimes he wears a tuxedo or tailcoat . . . I’m sure any kid on the street could point him out. He’s part of our folklore, like the leprechauns are for Ireland.” He turned to look at Bull. “And there’s also the myth about the secret organization called Samedi. The Black House or Black Church, some people call it. There’s probably not a single Louisiana policeman who hasn’t heard Samedi blamed for cases that couldn’t be solved. The fact that there’ve been disappearances has made some folks think it’s a pedophile network trafficking in young girls. I don’t believe Samedi even exists. It’s just another version of the old wives’ tale repeated by frustrated cops. It’s like the boogeyman. No official investigation has ever turned up a scrap of evidence it exists.”