The North Face of the Heart - Dolores Redondo Page 0,135

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.”

Bull took a more nuanced approach. “I always thought there might be some truth behind those stories. A lot of criminal networks operate in the shadows for years before we can prove they exist. I thought Samedi might be like that. I figured that the stuff about ghouls was just folklore.

“And then along came Jerome Lirette and told us that two nights before, some people broke into his house before dawn, right after a storm. Just like tonight. He and two of his associates were in the house along with his mother, his grandma, his sister Médora, and the two girlfriends. The power was out, and the phone wasn’t working, but they’d survived the storm just fine. Then they heard this huge crash. At first they thought a tornado had come along in the wake of the hurricane and busted down the door.

“The first thing the invaders did was grab his associates and kill them execution-style, a single shot to the head. Then Baron Samedi, his very self, walked into the house with three more people. Jerome said they looked ‘totally weird,’ but he wouldn’t give us any details. The thugs rounded up the girls and herded them out of the house. His mother and grandma were screaming their heads off. All this time, the baron, or at least whoever was dressed up as Baron Samedi, stood in the center of the room, enjoying the chaos like it was a show put on especially for him. The older women tried to grab the girls