The 5th Witch Read online

  There were shouts of shock and disgust from the media. The toad crouched on the carpet for a few seconds, blinking, and then it began to crawl scissor-legged toward the door. A police officer took two steps forward and stamped on it. It burst with an audible pop.

  The black officer gently lowered Chief O’Malley onto the floor, where he lay on his side, shivering violently, as if he were having an epileptic fit. His eyes were staring at nothing at all, and a long string of phlegm was sliding from the side of his mouth. The whole conference room was in chaos, with reporters shouting into their cell phones, cameras flashing, and police officers trying to hold everybody back.

  Ernie turned to Dan, and it was plain that he was stunned.

  “You want to give me a logical explanation for that?” Dan asked.

  Chapter Nine

  Dan managed to push his way through the crowds of reporters and TV cameramen outside the emergency room at Cedars-Sinai, and he eventually located Deputy Chief Days in a small side office.

  He had to tap on the window of the office door so that Captain Kromesky and Commissioner Philips could shuffle to one side and let him in. Captain Kromesky was bald and pugnacious, and looked like an attack dog in a sharply pressed uniform. Commissioner Philips, on the other hand, was willowy with bushy black eyebrows and could have been the minister of a particularly forgiving church.

  Dan maneuvered his way around them and approached Deputy Chief Days.

  “Detective Dan Fisher, sir, Homicide, West Hollywood.”

  “Sorry, Detective, I’m pretty much tied up at the moment, as you can imagine.”

  Deputy Chief Days was a tall, bony-shouldered man with a face like a grieving gundog. He spoke in a measured drone, his upper lip completely motionless, and when he laughed, which was rarely, it seemed as if whole minutes elapsed between one “ha” and the next. His subordinates, of course, called him Happy.

  “How’s the chief, sir?”

  “Still critical, or so I’m told.”

  Dan looked around. There were over a dozen people packed into the office—most of them senior police officers, although he recognized City Councilman George Zachariades from the 5th District and Jenna Forbes from the mayor’s office.

  Dan leaned close to Deputy Chief Days and said, “I wonder if I could have a private word with you, sir? What happened to Chief O’Malley—I have a good idea who could have been responsible.”

  “He regurgitated a live toad, Detective, on network television.”

  “I know, sir. But I think I know how it was done and who did it.”

  Deputy Chief Days blinked at him, as if Dan were speaking in a foreign language.

  Dan said, “At least two organized crime bosses in Los Angeles are using what you might call unnatural forces to keep the police from interfering in their activities.”

  “Detective, I think you would be better advised if you talked to your immediate superiors at West Hollywood.”

  “Sir—I can explain what they are, these unnatural forces. I know it’s not easy to get your head around any of this stuff, but as far as I can see, there’s no other explanation that makes any sense.”

  Deputy Chief Days was about to reply when there was another tap at the window. A wide-hipped black lady in a lilac suit edged her way into the office and said, “Deputy Chief Days? I’m Trudi Belafonte, senior ER administrator. I’ve just been talking to Dr. Kellogg about Chief O’Malley.”

  “What’s the latest?”

  “Dr. Kellogg has been treating Chief O’Malley since he was admitted, and he thinks there’s something urgent you should come see.”

  “It’s not serious, is it?”

  “Best if you take a look for yourself, sir.”

  “Sure. Yes. Excuse me, everybody.”

  Trudi Belafonte led the way along the corridor and Deputy Chief Days went after her, closely followed by Captain Kromesky and Commissioner Philips, their shoes all busily squeaking on the polished vinyl floor. Dan decided to go along, too, and Captain Kromesky must have assumed that he had the right to because he didn’t challenge him.

  They entered a dimly lit imaging room next to one of the ER operating theaters. A surgeon in blue scrubs was frowning at a series of CT scans on a fluorescent viewing screen, one hand clamped to the back of his neck. The surgeon was only in his mid-thirties, but he was already gray-haired and stooped, and his elbows were dry with eczema. As they came in, he turned around and said, “Damnedest, damnedest thing I ever saw. Ever.”

  “This is Dr. Sam Kellogg,” said Trudi Jackson. “Dr. Kellogg is our leading consultant in abdominal trauma. He specializes in any kind of insult to the human digestive system.”

  “That’s right,” said Dr. Kellogg. “And what we have here, believe me, is the biggest insult to the human digestive system that you can imagine.”

  Deputy Chief Days unfolded a pair of rimless spectacles and peered at the scans in bewilderment. “Can you explain to me what we’re supposed to be looking at here, Doctor?”

  Dr. Kellogg pointed to the shadowy outline of Chief O’Malley’s stomach. “You see these heart-shaped objects all crowded tightly together? Well—they look like hearts, don’t they?”

  “Yes, I see them. What are they? Something he’s been eating?”

  “If they are, I wish I knew how the hell he managed it. They’re not hearts, in fact. They’re toads, about fifteen of them, so far as we can tell. The trouble is they’re still alive and constantly clambering around, so it’s difficult to give you an accurate count.”

  “Live toads?” Deputy Chief Days stared at the scan in horror. “I don’t understand it. He couldn’t have swallowed fifteen live toads.”

  “He must have. There’s no other way they could have gotten into his stomach.”

  “Well, however they got in there—Christ almighty—you have to get them out!”

  Dr. Kellogg nodded. “He’s being prepped for surgery even as we speak. I just wanted to make you aware of his condition.”

  “What the hell am I going to tell the media? One toad dropping out of his mouth was bad enough. The religious channels are already saying it’s a punishment from God!”

  “There’s something else you have to know,” said Dr. Kellogg. “When toads are frightened or attacked, they give off a thick secretion called bufotenine. Depending on the species of toad, it can be highly toxic, and it can affect the brain. Some hippies used to lick toads to give them a psychedelic trip.

  “Chief O’Malley already has a dangerously high concentration of bufotenine in his bloodstream, and we have to be prepared for the possibility that he may not recover. Not mentally, anyhow.”

  “This is a nightmare,” said Deputy Chief Days.

  “Even more of a nightmare for Chief O’Malley than it is for us, I’m afraid. One of the effects of bufotenine on the brain is to make sufferers feel permanently terrified—whether they’re asleep or awake. It doesn’t wear off either. They feel terrified for the rest of their lives.”

  The swing door to the operating room opened, and a nurse in a mask appeared. “We’re ready for you, Dr. Kellogg.”

  “Okay, fine. You got the vivarium, to put the toads in?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Deputy Chief Days said, “Do your best for him, Dr. Kellogg—please. He’s a good friend and a very fine public servant.”

  Dr. Kellogg laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder, then followed the nurse through the swing door. Deputy Chief Days stood in silence for a while, then turned and looked at the scans again.

  “Live toads,” he repeated.

  Dan said, “What I was trying to tell you before, sir—about unnatural forces—”

  But Deputy Chief Days didn’t seem to hear him. He turned and walked out of the imaging room and back along the corridor, as erratically as if he had been drinking.

  Dan caught up with Captain Kromesky. “Sir, I think I know what’s happening here—and Deputy Chief Days really needs to hear me out.”

  “Go throug
h the recognized chain of command, Detective,” Captain Kromesky retorted. “Report to your lieutenant first, and then your lieutenant can assess the value of your information and pass it up to headquarters if it warrants it.”

  “If it warrants it? Chief O’Malley is lying on an operating table with a bellyful of live toads! And you know what happened at his reception when that hurricane got up and nobody could see? This shit is all connected, sir. It’s unnatural forces. Or supernatural forces.”

  “Detective, have you been drinking?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Captain. It’s black magic if that makes it any easier to understand.”

  Captain Kromesky stopped and stared at him, and Dan could see by the repetitious tic in his cheek that the man was grinding his teeth.

  “You’d be well advised to leave this hospital now, Detective, before I report you for insubordinate conduct.”

  “Captain, there are toads crawling around inside the chief’s stomach. Toads. If he didn’t swallow them deliberately, how do you think they got there?”

  “That’s up to the doctor to tell us, wouldn’t you say?”

  Dan took a deep breath. He was about to say something more, but he decided against it. There was absolutely no future in antagonizing a man like Captain Kromesky. You might just as well hit yourself in the face with a two-by-four.

  He left the hospital and drove back to Franklin Avenue. Even though it was early afternoon, the sky was a dark greenish color, rather than blue, like corroded copper. He switched on his SUV’s radio, and it was playing “Comfortably Numb.”

  “You are only coming through in waves…your lips move, but I can’t hear what you’re saying…”

  He had a feeling that something really bad was about to happen. Something even worse than Cusack and Fusco and Knudsen being burned to death, or Chief O’Malley vomiting a live toad. He felt as if he were back in his nightmare, the same nightmare in which Gayle had been killed, only this time he was awake.

  As he parked his SUV in the driveway, Annie arrived home, too, in her old red Volkswagen Beetle. She opened the trunk and took out three grocery bags. Dan said, “Hey, let me help you with that.”

  She opened the door of her apartment, and Dan carried the bags through to the kitchen. There was a strong smell of licorice around and a musty, herby undertone.

  “What are you cooking up now?” Dan asked.

  “It’s a cure for arthritis. My grandma gets it in her fingers, so bad that it makes her cry sometimes.”

  “Did you hear what happened to the chief of police?”

  “No. What was it?”

  “He was right in the middle of a press conference and he puked up a live toad.”

  “What?”

  “I was there. I saw it for myself. It came out his mouth and plopped right down on the floor. They took him to the ER and scanned him, and they found that his stomach was full of toads. Fifteen, maybe more.”

  Annie stopped unpacking her groceries. “That was your Haitian lady again, I’ll bet. My friend Véronique called me from Port-au-Prince this morning. She said that making your enemies sick—that’s a classic bokú technique.”

  “Bokú?”

  “Bokú …they’re like hired sorcerers. Families in Haiti usually call them in when they want to cast a bad spell on somebody who’s hurt them or upset them. Or maybe they pay them to break a spell that somebody else has put on them. President François Duvalier used to use bokú all the time when he was running the country.”

  Dan said, “You should have seen it. Well, to tell you the truth, you shouldn’t have seen it. It would have made you lose your Cheerios.”

  “Do the media know about the toads in his stomach?”

  “Not yet, but they’ve been going wild. Some of them are saying that it was an optical illusion or a magic trick. But most of them are saying it’s an act of God—you know, like the plague of locusts in the Bible, because Chief O’Malley is so intolerant toward ethnic minorities. He doesn’t think we should go easy on drug dealers when they happen to be Hispanic.”

  Annie stacked jars of herbs in her pantry. “Pretty funny, isn’t it, how people are always ready to believe in religious miracles but not in witches?

  “I tried to talk to Deputy Chief Days about it, but I didn’t get too far. I think he’s totally in denial.”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “I didn’t mention witches per se. I just said ‘unnatural forces.’”

  “Not strictly true, really. More like natural forces. This Haitian woman is simply using the power of her magic to change the world around her. She didn’t create those toads, anymore than she created the quarters that you brought up. All she did was move them out of their swamp, or wherever they came from, and into Chief O’Malley’s stomach.”

  “Like ‘beam me up, Scotty’?”

  “In a way. Almost all witches can move objects or animals from one place to another. Some of them can even move them from one day to another, or one year to another. And they can move themselves, too—incredible distances, sometimes miles. That’s how witches got the reputation of being able to fly, even though they can’t.”

  Dan said, “There’s something else. The doctor said that the toads in Chief O’Malley’s stomach had given off some kind of poison that might affect his brain. He said the chief might end up in a permanent state of terror.”

  “Bufotenine,” said Annie. “That pretty much proves that your Haitian woman was responsible.”

  “How come?”

  “Bufotenine is what the voodoo houngan use to create zombies. They poison their victims with it so that it numbs their souls, and they have all the characteristics of being dead, even though they’re not. It also makes them frightened of everything and everyone, especially the houngan who created them.”

  “Is there a cure?”

  “Only one that I’ve ever heard of. Cut the victim’s head off.”

  Chapter Ten

  Dan slid a frozen pepperoni pizza in the oven, opened a bottle of stout, then heaved his damp laundry out of his washing machine. He went out onto the narrow balcony outside his living room and started to pin the laundry onto the makeshift clothesline he had fixed up—a sheet, a couple of pillowcases, three T-shirts, and five pairs of striped boxers.

  He was just about to go back inside when he saw a pale shape flickering in the yard below under a wide-spreading fan palm. He went to the railing and peered downward, trying to make out what it was. He could see a light-colored triangle that could have been somebody’s shoulder, but the crisscross shadows of the palm fronds made it difficult for him to be sure.

  “Anybody down there?” he called. If there was somebody there, he had no compunction about challenging them to show themselves. In the past two or three weeks there had been a rash of petty thefts along Franklin Avenue—bicycles, sunbeds, swimming-pool cleaners—mostly taken by crystal-meth addicts.

  “I said, is anybody down there? Come out from under that tree and let’s take a look at you.”

  There was a long silence. A warm breeze stirred his washing, and a California quail landed on the railing at the far end of the balcony and cocked its head at him. Quail had a strange habit of flying down whenever he hung out washing, and sucking the water from it with their beaks.

  He thought: No, there’s nobody there. It’s just a stray sheet of newspaper that’s blown from somebody’s balcony or a trick of the light.

  But as he turned away, a figure stepped out from under the tree and stood beneath his balcony, staring up at him. His skin felt as if it were shrinking, and Dan almost lost his balance. It was Gayle. She was unharmed, her face as perfect as it had been in the split second before the scaffolding pole had struck her. Her blond hair was unbloodied, and she was wearing the same cream satin dress.

  He looked down at her, and he didn’t know whether he ought to say anything or not. After all, she couldn’t be real, could she? How could she be real when she was dead? Maybe he was suffering from t
he long-delayed effects of crucifying guilt. Maybe he was going mad. Or maybe Michelange DuPriz was trying to make him think that he was going mad.

  But he stood there staring at her, and she didn’t fade away. She cast a real shadow across the overgrown grass, and her hair was blowing in the breeze. The look in her eyes was distant and unfocused, but then she had always been dreamy.

  “Gayle?” he said, with a catch in his throat.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Gayle, are you for real?”

  Still she didn’t say anything.

  “Gayle…if you’re for real, I’m coming down. I need to talk to you.”

  She parted her lips a little, as if about to speak, but no words came out. All the same, Dan thought he saw her give him the faintest of smiles.

  He backed away from the railing, still watching her. Then he hurried through his living room, out his front door, and vaulted down the steps. As he was passing Annie’s apartment, she opened her door and said, “Dan? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing! I’m fine!”

  He ran around the side of the apartment building and into the yard. There was nobody there. No Gayle, nobody. No footprints in the grass either, to prove that somebody had been there.

  Annie came around the building behind him and touched him gently on the back.

  “Dan? Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “It’s nothing. I think I’m more stressed out than I thought I was. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken any time off. You know what they say. It’s only when the pressure’s taken off them that people go to pieces.”

  Annie looked around the yard. “Did you…expect somebody to be here?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “Who was it? Was it Gayle?”

  “You read me like a book, Annie Conjure.”