The End Of Desire: A Rowan Gant Investigation Read online

  “F’true. Doin’ okay so far?”

  “Pretty much. Although, there have been a few times when I thought I was going to need a translator,” Fairbanks sighed.

  “Like jus’ now?” Bailey replied. His own voice had the clipped affectations of the region but was nowhere near as thick as the uniformed officer where his dialect was concerned. He grinned at Fairbanks then momentarily poured it on for effect. “Ya’ get used ta’ it. Ya’ jus’ stick ‘round awhile dere, cap, an’ ya’ learn how ta’ tawk rite like us.”

  “Yeah,” Detective Fairbanks chuckled. “So I’ve been told.”

  The two men shuffled around to get out of the way as a crime scene technician excused himself with a grunt and skirted past them. After a moment, Detective Bailey shook his head and let out a low whistle as he inspected the scene.

  “Gawd. Ya’ evuh seen such a thing, cheef?”

  The question hung waiting in the thick air. It almost seemed as if it was held aloft by the cloying odor of sweet watermelon, cigarette smoke, and burnt flesh that still permeated the motel room even though the door had been wide open for some time. While Bailey’s tone was more rhetorical than anything, the query still seemed to beg an answer.

  Fairbanks grunted, “You mean this week, or ever?”

  Detective Bailey chuckled.

  “Actually, I was serious,” Fairbanks offered.

  “F’true?”

  “Yeah,” he continued with a nod. “I’ve seen something a lot like it. Of course, there wasn’t any blood and the guy wasn’t dead.”

  “Ya’ lyin’?”

  “No.” He gave his head a shake. “True story.”

  Bailey whistled again. “Where ya’ see dat?”

  “A few years back when I worked a vice detail, we raided a sex club. I hit my assigned door, and when I came through it, this hooker had a buck-naked john all trussed up to the bed. Pretty much just like this guy is.” He dipped his head toward the scene in front of them. “The pro was all dolled up like a Catholic schoolgirl, and she was beatin’ the hell out of him with a yardstick.”

  “No way. F’true?”

  “Yeah,” he nodded again. “Trust me, I’m pretty vanilla. I couldn’t even begin to make up something like that. I have to say, it appeared that they were havin’ a pretty good time of it too—before I interrupted them, of course. Especially him, from the looks of things, if you know what I mean.”

  The younger cop shook his head slowly and grinned. “Gawd! Dressed like a Catlick schoolgirl, huh? Sick bastuhd liked dat did ‘e?” After a short pause he nodded toward the victim. “F’sure, I don’t think dis one here enjoyed it so much.”

  Fairbanks bobbed his head. “Yeah, I’m inclined to agree with you.”

  “Well,” Bailey began, “I sure don’t think we’re talkin’ about jus’ your av’rage hooker did dis though.”

  “That was my thought too, what with the level of torture and all. Are you thinking maybe gang retribution or something on that order?”

  “Naw, I doubt dat. Not da’ kinda gang you mean, anyway. Dere’s more goin’ on here than ya’ think.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Lookit ‘is chest,” he offered, pointing.

  Detective Fairbanks pushed his glasses up on his nose and leaned in to look. After a moment of inspection, an intricate pattern became obvious even through the wide swath of dried blood and random burn marks covering the dead man’s skin. The longer he looked, the more it revealed itself, until it formed what appeared to be a crosshatched heart pierced by a long dagger or sword.

  “So our killer is a bit of an artist, then?”

  Bailey let out another of his trademark whistles. “Cheef, dat’s not jus’ art. Dat dere is a veve. Air-zoo-LEE Don-toe. Whoever done dis did more than jus’ kill dis guy. Dey put a gris-gris on ‘im.”

  Fairbanks looked closer at the intricate incisions then leaned back and sighed. Shaking his head he muttered, “Yeah. Okay. I’m definitely gonna need a translator.”

  Thursday, December 1

  1:12 A.M.

  Room 16

  Airline Courts Motel

  Metairie, Louisiana

  CHAPTER 1:

  The last time I had been to New Orleans I was with Felicity, and we had come here on vacation… Well, it was actually a working vacation on her part, as she had been hired by an architectural magazine to shoot pictures for an upcoming layout featuring several of the more artful buildings in the city. Still, there had been plenty of time for relaxation, which was more than I could say for my current visit.

  Back then, we had stayed at a plush hotel in the French Quarter on someone else’s tab and spent our days doing what amounted to sightseeing, even though my wife had a camera to her eye most of the time. Of course, that wasn’t particularly unusual for her whether she was working or not. It was more or less a by-product of her reputation as one of the top freelance photographers in the country. But, in the end the only real difference between us and the other tourists snapping pictures was that Felicity knew what she was doing and was being well paid to do it.

  Me, on the other hand, I was just along for the ride. Still, she didn’t let me off the hook too easily. This meant that I spent a good part of the time playing the role of her pack mule—tirelessly plodding through the streets behind her, toting her padded, lens-laden bags, and at her demand, handing over a freshly loaded camera body or switching out the optics. But, I didn’t mind. We were together, which was the most important thing to me; and besides, I was getting to see the sights with both eyes.

  Just as our days were spent wearing down the soles on our walking shoes, our evenings generally consisted of tossing back hurricanes of all varieties. Frozen, on the rocks, in fishbowls…pretty much any way the restaurants and bars served them. Okay, to be honest the hurricanes actually started around midday with a trip to a random bar, but who was watching a clock? This was New Orleans, and that is how things were done in The Quarter.

  But, like I said. That was then. This was now, and now was very different—on many levels.

  I shook off the memory and gave myself a mental shove back into the here and now, a process easier imagined than done. My brain stumbled a bit, regained its footing in the present but refused to fully surface from the pleasant remembrance. Of course, I’m sure that as much as I needed the normalcy of the thought, it was also being fueled by a simple mnemonic.

  Hurricanes.

  Hurricanes in a glass…

  Hurricanes on the gulf…

  I’m certain the residents of the area would agree that the former were certainly preferred to the latter. Especially after the three seemingly back-to-back storms that had so recently rained destruction down upon this magickal city, Katrina being the worst of all.

  Even though the sun had already set, gazing out the windows of my rental car as I drove from the airport to my motel in Metairie a few miles outside the city proper, the aftermath had been evident. In fact, the motel itself might have even seen its own share of damage. Looking around, I couldn’t be entirely sure if that was the case or if the Airline Courts had always been in such sad shape.

  Storm damage or not, the accommodations certainly wouldn’t garner a rating in the Michelin guide. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that a large amount of work would have been required to simply bring them up to standard with the most basic building codes. However, under the circumstances, I suppose I had no right to complain. The room was mine, and there didn’t appear to be any leaks over the bed. The bathroom was a different story, but I could work around that. I hoped.

  Given the short notice, I was actually surprised that I had found a room at all. After my first few calls, it seemed that anything with four walls and a roof was occupied by someone holding a Federal Emergency Management Agency ID card. They had been crawling all over the city in response to the disaster, though if you asked around, the opinion was that they hadn’t arrived soon enough and were accomplishing even less now that they wer
e here.

  Upon making it to the Airline Courts however, I was more than just a little amazed that they had accepted a reservation at all. Especially once I saw the sign in the smallish lobby that advertised their hourly rate, as well as individual condoms for a dollar apiece. Of course, profiteering knew no bounds, and the price I was paying for the all but condemned space definitely spoke to that fact.

  Again, I shook off the thought and tried to keep my mind from wandering. I was tired. Actually, no, I was exhausted, and on top of everything else that was happening in my life at the moment, I’m sure the fatigue had a lot to do with the sluggishness of my brain. I was fully aware that I was having trouble staying focused, and that was something I couldn’t afford right now. The problem was, whether I could afford it or not, I was too worn out to do anything about it.

  I padded over to the side table in the corner and picked up my bottle of water. The mere removal of those few ounces of weight caused the piece of furniture to shift and rock onto one of the back legs, making the lamp that adorned its surface thump against the wall. It was obvious that not only was the rickety hunk of pressboard and chipped laminate unbalanced, but also the room itself wasn’t even close to level. I pressed on the surface of the table with a very slight touch of my fingers. It rocked forward and then back as soon as I removed my hand, causing the tassels—those that remained anyway—on the torn and discolored lampshade to swing back and forth. Why I had bothered with the exercise to begin with I couldn’t say—nervous boredom I suppose or maybe just my mind wandering yet again. Whatever the case, I did it twice more but didn’t find enough amusement in it to continue past that.

  As if in reply to the clunk of the lamp, a somewhat spastic thump began against the opposite side of the wall, random at first, then falling into an increasing, though halting, rhythm. It was accompanied by muffled words of encouragement—of the x-rated variety—as well as some thoroughly unconvincing moans.

  I glanced at my watch. A few minutes from now the disharmonic symphony would stop, and shortly after that would be punctuated by the sound of the toilet, followed by the room door opening and closing. The flushing toilet would follow that once again, and then the whole process would start over. If I was lucky, there might be fifteen minutes of semi-peace in between.

  Of course, there was no mystery at all about what was going on. In fact, my room was probably the only one in the complex not seeing that sort of action tonight, though I’m sure it normally did. It definitely smelled like it.

  Letting out a heavy sigh, I looked down at the overpriced bottle of water in my hand, then twisted the cap from it and took a swig. Wandering back around to the end of the bed, I rooted through my carry-on and extracted a container of aspirin. Popping the cap, I poured some into my palm, nudged the excess back into the neck of the bottle, then tilted it and allowed a couple of them to fall back into the pile again. I didn’t count them so much as look at the size of the heap resting in my hand to judge the self-prescribed dosage accordingly.

  The exercise was probably futile in and of itself. I knew the pain in my head wasn’t one that could be remedied with over-the-counter medications—or prescription drugs either for that matter. It was born of an ethereal source and for the most part would remain staunchly unaffected by the pharmaceuticals of the mundane world.

  I also knew my stomach was going to hate me—fact is, it already did since I’d been more or less living on the bitter analgesic and coffee for close to a week. Now that I thought about it, I would probably need to avoid any serious injuries as well, lest I bleed out, given the amount of salicylate coursing through my system and thinning my blood. Still, aspirin itself seemed to be the only thing that would at least take the edge off, and I had to do something in that respect. Right now my head was pounding just as it had been ever since the plane touched down. Actually, it had been for the past few weeks, but arriving here had made it thud even harder. If I was going to stem my exhaustion, I was going to need to dull the pain enough to get some sleep. Something else of which I was severely lacking.

  Of course, that might not even be possible with the continuous traffic next door. I suppose I should be grateful that this room was at the end of the complex. Otherwise there was no doubt in my mind that the strictly adult soundtrack would have been in stereo.

  I popped the handful of pills into my mouth, gave them a quick chew and then took a swig of water and swished them around before swallowing. My hope was to get them into my system a bit faster than they would by simply swallowing them whole. The acrid bitterness caused my mouth to pucker involuntarily, so I took a fresh pull from the water bottle and swished again, trying to rinse the residue if not the taste from my tongue.

  Replacing the cap, I regarded the drink silently and wondered to myself if I should have picked up a bottle or two of antacid to use as a chaser instead. I didn’t get much time to ponder the thought, however, as my cell phone began to trill, softly at first then ramping up in volume as it continued its quest for my attention.

  Turning, I wandered back to the dumpster refugee that was masquerading as the side table and scooped the device from its surface, making the piece of furniture rock yet again. Glancing quickly at the incoming number on the LCD, I flipped open the phone and put it up to my ear.

  “Yeah, Ben,” I grunted.

  “Your goddamn finger broken?” he replied, more annoyance than concern bolding his words.

  “Do what?”

  “You were s’posed ta’ call when ya’ got there. I been sittin’ here waitin’ all friggin’ night.”

  I glanced at my watch again. It was definitely after midnight, so I couldn’t logically dispute what he’d just said, on either count. Technically it was morning, and besides, he was correct. I had in fact made that very promise.

  “Oh, yeah,” I replied as I reached up and rubbed my forehead. “Sorry about that.”

  “Yeah, well, ya’ oughta be,” he countered.

  “I’m a grownup, Ben. I can ride an airplane all by myself. I’ve done it several times, believe it or not.”

  “Don’t be an ass, Row. That’s not what I’m talkin’ about. It’s not like this is a normal trip, an’ you know it.”

  He was correct yet again. There’s very little one can consider normal about catching a last minute flight bound for a distant city to go in search of a serial killer. Especially one who has most likely been dead for better than 150 years but just happens to be up to her old tricks again because the wrong person decided to play with the wrong kind of magick for all the wrong reasons. It wasn’t as if I was with the FBI, or even a cop. But, I did have a vested interest because that “wrong kind of magick” had been deeply affecting my life and, more importantly, my wife’s for almost a month now. It was time for it to stop, and I was willing to do whatever it would take to make that happen.

  “Yeah, Ben, I know…” I muttered in reply. “But when is the last time you recall anything being normal in my life?”

  He answered without missing a beat, “Nineteen seventy-two.”

  “I’m pretty sure you didn’t even know me in nineteen seventy-two.”

  “You’re right. Anyway, I was just guessin’. Actually, I’m bettin’ you’ve prob’ly never had a normal day in your life, period.”

  “It feels that way,” I sighed. “But, there was a time…”

  “Yeah, Row, I know there was…” he agreed, his voice trailing off as it lost some of its edge.

  My friend was agreeing because he had been around when things were sane. While 1972 was pushing the limit, we truly had been friends for more years than I could remember. So he was well aware it wasn’t until I started hearing the voices of the dead that things began to get weird. And, while it seemed like a lifetime, especially to me, that affliction had only come upon me somewhere around a half dozen years ago.

  What with me being a Witch, I suppose that most would think I should be used to such things as communicating with the departed. After all, that’s exactly th
e sort of thing Witches were “supposed to do,” right along with riding brooms and sprinkling bat wings into bubbling cauldrons. To be honest, I sometimes thought that the Hollywood myth about WitchCraft would be a much easier way to live than I did at present. Riding a broom would definitely save me the aggravation of traffic.

  Of course, while the “double, double, toil and trouble” aspect is a disproportionate fiction, Witches do tend to be more open to accepting the unexplained without going to great lengths to debunk it. Magick is certainly a part of our lives, and we know that it is very real. But, by the same token, we also know that real magick isn’t what you see in the movies and on television.

  So, while I wasn’t particularly surprised by the fact that I could hear the dead, or even that they sometimes chose radical measures such as stigmata with which to communicate their distress to me, it definitely didn’t make me see it as the norm. No, I knew for a fact that I was the odd man out. Very few people, Witches or not, get stuck dealing with this sort of thing. I just happened to be one of the unlucky ones and, because of me, so was my wife.

  And there, in the proverbial nutshell, was the root of the whole problem I faced at this moment in time. My wife. Even as I stood here, she was back in Saint Louis, warming a bed in the psych ward of a hospital—which I suppose was better than the jail cell she had occupied only a few days before, after being accused of at least two brutal murders. Those charges had been dropped, but the nightmare was far from over.

  In truth, it was only just beginning because it turned out the thing that went bump in the night was a half sister that, up until a few days ago, my wife didn’t even know she had. And that sister was up to her eyeballs in Voodoo and hoodoo. Of course, that wouldn’t be such a big deal, except for the fact that she had apparently taken a perfectly acceptable religion along with its associated magickal practice and perverted both of them into something vile and grotesque. While her take on that was probably 180° opposite mine, I’m betting that her victims would probably agree with me. In fact, judging from the pain in my skull, I knew for certain they did.