The 5th Witch (11 page)

They heard a hollow bang as the ram struck the heavy oak doors. Then another bang and another. Then shouting as the SWAT team poured into the house. Dan could see the lights from their guns rapier fencing with each other in the hallway.

They waited two or three minutes, but nothing happened. There was no more shouting, no more movement. Nobody came out of the house.

Dan looked at Ernie, and Ernie looked at Dan. “What the hell’s going on? It’s total silence.”

Dan waited a moment longer, then walked across the road to the lead SWAT van, where a young
communications officer with spiky hair was perched in front of his radio set. Dan showed him his badge and said, “What’s happening, officer? It’s all gone quiet in there.”

The officer lifted one of his headphones away from his ear. “Every channel suddenly went dead on me, sir. I can’t get nothing but static. It could have been that lightning.”

“Okay. Just keep trying.”

Dan looked along the police cordon. Fifteen or sixteen cops had gathered there now, most of the backup, including the dog handler and his German shepherd. They were standing around talking. The three ambulances had been called forward, too, and were waiting at the far end of Rosewood Avenue.

The crowd was very subdued, speaking in wavelike murmurs, as if they were already attending the funeral of the men who had been killed.

Dan went back to Ernie. “Still nothing?” he asked.

“Still nothing. Come on, it’s only been three or four minutes. They’re probably putting the bracelets on them right now.”

As they were standing there, though, a sergeant and a patrolman from Metro came up to them and said, “We lost radio contact. Did they collar Vasquez yet?”

“I have no idea.”

The sergeant was big and beefy with sandy hair and tangled eyebrows. He gave a sharp sniff, then he said, “Deputy Chief Days is in there. I think for the sake of our pensions we should make sure that he’s not in any trouble. Morales, let’s get a half dozen of the boys together. The worst they can do is accuse us of overreacting.”

He strode back to the police cordon to assemble his men. As he did so, Dan touched Ernie on the arm and said, “I’ll see you later, okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going back to take a look. I have to.”

“You’re not going in there by yourself?”

“I’ll be okay. Or maybe I
won’t
be okay. But I still have to go.”

“You’re loco! Wait for the backup!”

“Listen, Ernie, if that witch has done what I think she’s done, I can’t expect any of those other young guys to go in there. They have wives. They have girlfriends. They have children, most of them. What do I have? A recurring nightmare of Gayle.”

“Dan—this is one thing you shouldn’t do. It’s quiet, for sure, but maybe it’s quiet because the SWAT team has them all rounded up.”

Dan listened. Still nothing from the house. He looked across at Ernie and from the expression on his face, Ernie could see that Dan was going to go anyhow.

“I’ll cover you. Any sign that something’s gone wrong, you get out of there, pronto. And that’s an order.”

Dan didn’t stop to argue that
he
had seniority—at least as far as length of service and pay grades were concerned. He lifted his gun and entered the gardens, stepping through the ornamental flower beds with the rosebushes catching at his pants. He circled around the fishponds until he could see directly onto the porch.

The gardens were well lit, and the double doors were wide open, but inside the hallway it was unnaturally dark. Dan hesitated for a moment, then crossed the driveway, walking crabwise, his gun held in both hands. He climbed the steps of the porch, peering into the hallway, straining to see if there was anybody there.

“Anybody there?” he called. “Deputy Chief Days?”

He waited. Nothing.

“If there’s anybody there, you’d better come on out and show yourselves.”

Another long silence. Then he heard a hoarse voice shout, “Hey! Detective! What are you doing?” Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that the gingery police sergeant was stomping up the driveway toward him, accompanied by six or seven other officers, four of them carrying.223 carbines.

He lifted his hand to indicate that the police should stop where they were. When he turned back toward the house, he saw a tall, pale figure in the darkness of the hallway.

“Hey, come on out!” he shouted. “Come out where I can see you! And keep your hands up!”

“Please—it is not necessary to shoot!” called a Hispanic-accented voice, although it sounded amused more than frightened.

Out onto the porch like an actor playing Othello stepped Orestes Vasquez, with his hands half lifted. He was dressed in a white silk robe and white silk mules. His eyes, as usual, were dead and expressionless, but Dan could have sworn that—as Vasquez emerged from the shadows—he was wearing the ghost of a smile.

Vasquez was followed by Lida Siado. She was wrapped in a complicated arrangement of black loose-weave shawls, all overlapping and fastened together with decorative silver pins. Her hair was tied up in a black silk turban with a huge glittering brooch made of emerald and ruby crystals pinned to the prow of it. The brooch was fashioned to look like a green human skull with a red snake sliding through its eye sockets.

Dan could see four more figures behind them in the hallway—the bulky shapes of Vasquez’s bodyguards.

“I need all of you to step outside with your hands where we can see them,” he called out. “I need you to
do it in slo-mo, you understand me? Sergeant, let’s keep these clowns covered, shall we?”

The gingery sergeant had needed no telling. He had already fanned his men out around the driveway, with their carbines lifted. Dan thought:
Even a witch must be
aware what a 60-grain .223 TAP polymer-nosed bullet can
do to the human body
.

“All right, Mr. Vasquez,” he said, “you want to tell me what’s happened to our SWAT teams?”

Orestes Vasquez leaned toward Lida Siado and murmured something in Spanish. Lida Siado nodded and said, “
Accidente tragico
.”

Orestes Vasquez looked back at Dan and gave him a shrug. “You heard what Ms. Siado said? A most tragic accident.”

“
Accident?
What are you talking about?”

“I am very sorry. None of them survived.”

“They’re
dead?
Are you pulling my chain?”

Orestes Vasquez shrugged again. “It was most unfortunate. There was nothing at all that we could do.”

Dan lowered his gun. “Mr. Vasquez, there were twelve heavily armed men in those two SWAT teams. And the deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department was here, too, along with two of his senior officers.”

“I am very sorry, Detective. We were powerless. We had no idea that they were police—they came bursting in before we could warn them.”

“Warn them?” demanded the gingery police sergeant, harshly. “Warn them of what?”

“Tonight is a very special night in the mythical calendar of Colombia. Tonight we hold a ceremony to celebrate the creation of the world.”

“What is this shit?”

“You should not underestimate it, Detective, or insult it. It is the very power from which the world was first made. Unfortunately, it can be very dangerous to those who do not understand it.”

“Where are the SWAT teams, Mr. Vasquez? What have you done to them?”

“I will let you see for yourself. Please…follow me.”

Dan climbed the steps, and the gingery sergeant followed him with his officers close behind. Vasquez’s bodyguards stepped forward to block their way, but Vasquez said, “No…let them in. All are welcome to witness the terrible power of Father Naimuena.”

“Just keep your hands where we can see them,” Dan told him.

Vasquez and Lida Siado led them along the hallway, switching on the lights as they went, one chandelier after another. Like everything else in the house, the chandeliers were strikingly modern, like showers of shattered crystal. The floor was tiled in shiny white marble, and there were abstract paintings on each side in the styles of Pollock and Mondrian and Kandinsky.

By the time they reached the end of the hallway, it was glittering with light from one end to the other. Ahead of them was a pair of cream-painted doors with triangular gold handles. Orestes Vasquez turned around, and for the first time Dan noticed that there were fine speckles of blood on the lapels of his white silk robe.

“In here…this is my library,” said Vasquez. “In here, we were holding our celebration when your police officers came bursting in. You can see by the marks on the doors where they battered them open, although it wasn’t at all necessary. The doors were not locked.”

“They
surprised
you?” said Dan. “How the hell could you be surprised? You had two helicopters hovering right over your roof, your front gates were blown open with explosive, and your front doors were knocked open with a breaching ram.”

“I don’t think you understand,” said Lida Siado. “During the celebration of the creation of the world, none of us is aware of anything real.”

“Well, you’re absolutely right there. I
don’t
understand.”

“In the very beginning, when there was nothing, the world was created by an illusion. Father Naimuena attached the illusion to the thread of a dream and kept it there by nothing more than his own breath. It was a mirage, a mystery. For a while, we lose our consciousness of the physical world and become part of that mirage.”

“Where are the SWAT teams?” Dan demanded. “Where is Deputy Chief Days?”

“Listen. Before you see them, you must understand what has happened to them. When we are lost in the mirage, we are guarded from harm by the spirit of the Night Wind, and the
kukurpa
creatures that always follow in the Night Wind’s wake.”

“The
what?
” asked the gingery sergeant. “What the frig are you telling us, lady?”

“I have told you all you need to know. Now you can see for yourself. Open the doors.”

Without hesitation, one of Vasquez’s bodyguards opened the double doors. Inside, it was very gloomy, but Dan could make out a large hexagonal room with a high ceiling that reached right up to the second story. On the far side of the library was a tall window, which must have looked out over the gardens at the rear of the house. The night was still inky black, so Dan could see his own reflection, like an explorer looking into the mouth of a cave.

One of the officers said, “Jesus, what’s that smell?”

Dan sniffed. A thick, nauseating stench was rising out of the library, both metallic and sour.

“Let’s have some illumination on the subject, shall we?” said the gingery sergeant.

The bodyguard clicked the switches, and a huge chandelier flooded the library with light.

“Holy Christ,” said the gingery sergeant.

At first sight it looked as if somebody had emptied out a thousand cans of chopped tomatoes and used a shovel to spread them thickly across the carpet. But there were black flak jackets among the chopped tomatoes, and helmets and boots and bones.

Dan said, “This is
them?
”

“As I told you,” said Lida Siado. “When we are lost in Father Naimuena’s mirage, we have creatures that protect us. It was always so. Otherwise tribes in the Amazon could have waited until their enemies were celebrating the creation of the world and slaughtered them.”

“How the hell was this done?” Dan asked. Everywhere he looked there was crushed flesh with bones sticking out of it, glistening under the myriad lights of the chandelier in every conceivable shade of red. “It’s like these people went through a goddamned blender.”

The gingery sergeant turned away and spoke on his radio. His voice was low and expressionless. “A dozen officers down, at least. I need medical examiners, I need crime-scene specialists, I need a fire department cleanup crew. I need them
now
.”

To Orestes Vasquez, he said, “You’re under arrest, all of you, on suspicion of first-degree homicide. Taylor, Bryman—go search the rest of the house. Anybody you find, bring them down here.”

The White Ghost looked unperturbed. “I thought that this would be your reaction, Sergeant. But you can see that, logically, there is no way we could have been responsible. How did we do this and in such a short time? How come your people made no attempt to protect themselves?”

“I’ll let the crime-scene people work that out. Meanwhile, let’s get you out of here.”

Orestes Vasquez and Lida Siado went without any further protest. The bodyguards were quickly frisked for weapons, and then they were led away, too. Dan stood staring at the thick layer of human mush. It was horrifying beyond belief, but Orestes Vasquez was right. A hundred men with machetes in each hand couldn’t have reduced two SWAT teams to this condition, even if they had been hacking away for hours. And the police hadn’t fired a single shot in their own defense.

Ernie came in. He had obviously been warned by another officer what he would find, and he didn’t say a word. All the same, he took out a large green handkerchief and pressed it against his nose and mouth.

“You’re still going to tell me you don’t believe in black magic?” Dan asked.

“This is impossible,” said Ernie in a muffled voice. “How could anybody do this?”

“We’re not talking about
who
,” said Dan. “We’re talking about
what
. Come on, let’s get out of here. There’s nothing that we can do.”

They were just about to leave when Ernie caught hold of Dan’s sleeve and said, “
Ssh!
Did you hear something?”

Dan listened. At first he heard nothing, but then he thought he caught a faint whimpering noise, more like a stray cat than a human being.

“It’s coming from over there…behind that desk.”

“Sounds like somebody’s still alive.”

They looked at each other. The only way to the other side of the library was to wade ankle deep through flesh and blood and human entrails.

“Maybe we didn’t hear it,” said Ernie. “Like, who could have survived
this?
”

But then Dan distinctly heard somebody calling, “Help me…please! Help me!”

There was nothing else he could do. He hesitated for a moment, then stepped into the ankle-deep glutinous ocean of human remains. He took one step, then another, and he found that it was very difficult to keep his balance. Beneath the soles of his shoes, the lumps of flesh were impossibly slippery and strings of connective tissue caught around his ankles like seaweed. He felt bones beneath the soles of his shoes, too, and several times he almost slipped. Halfway across, he began to feel as if he would never get to the other side of the room.

The worst part about it, though, was the noise. Each step produced a thick, succulent squelch when his shoe went in and a hollow sucking sound when it came out again.

He thought:
I can’t do this. I have to get out of here
. Every breath filled his nostrils with the smell of blood and bile, and with every step the desk seemed to slide farther and farther away, like an optical illusion.

At last, however, he reached it. It was a large kneehole desk, made of some reddish South American hardwood, like abura.

“Help me,” said the voice, weakly, and it sounded hopeless. “
Help me, somebody, please!
”

“Where the hell are you?” asked Dan.

“Under the desk. Please—help me to get out.”

Dan made his way around the desk and peered underneath. There, in a fetal position, crouched Deputy Chief Days, his hair sticking up on end and his face smeared with blood.

“Are you hurt?” Dan asked him.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

Dan reached under the desk, took hold of the deputy chief’s wrists, and dragged him forcibly out of the kneehole. Once he had emerged, the deputy chief remained on his knees for a while, panting.

“Am I the only one left alive?”

“Looks like it, sir. Don’t know how the hell you managed it.”

“My God. My God, it was terrible. Those
things
.”

Dan helped him onto his feet. “What things, sir?”

Deputy Chief Days turned around and around, as if he were terrified that something was going to come running up behind him. “Those
things!
The SWAT team broke open the doors, and before we knew what was happening they came rushing at us, dozens of them. They started tearing those poor men to pieces. They didn’t even have time to scream.”

“Come on, sir. Let’s get you out of here. Careful where you’re walking—it’s very slippery.”

“Those things—I’ve never seen anything like them. I don’t know what they were.”

Dan took hold of the deputy chief’s arm and wrapped it around his shoulders to give him some support. “Come on, sir. The sooner we get out of here the better.”

But Deputy Chief Days stopped and stared at him. “They were huge—bigger than a man, and they were gray, and they were like insects, and they just came rushing at us, dozens of them.”

“Sir, we need to get out of here. You’re in shock.”

“They had eyes, Detective, and claws and hundreds of teeth. There was so much blood spraying everywhere, I couldn’t see anything.”

Dan helped the deputy chief across the last few feet of pulpy, tangled remains. The older man’s knees were beginning to give way, and when he reached the doorway he almost collapsed. Ernie grabbed his other arm, and between them, he and Dan half carried him into the corridor and sat him on a chair.

Three paramedics were just entering the house, and they immediately took over, wheeling in a gurney,
lifting him onto it, and covering him with a crinkly thermal blanket.

They were about to roll him away when Deputy Chief Days said, “Wait.”

He looked up at Dan. His face was ashy and his breathing was labored, but he managed to say, “I believe I was spared on purpose. That woman spared me.”

Dan didn’t know what to say. The paramedics started to push the gurney away again, but again Deputy Chief Days said, “
Wait!
”

He reached out for Dan’s hand and grasped it tightly. “You warned me about witches, didn’t you? Before we went in there, you warned me, and I didn’t believe you. But when the SWAT teams went in and those things attacked them, she was standing there, she and Vasquez, and she was holding up this stick with a little skull on the top of it.

“Whenever one of those things came rushing toward me, she made a pattern in the air, and the thing turned away and wouldn’t touch me. But there was so much blood. I tried to get out, but I went the wrong way, and that’s why I hid under the desk. I didn’t realize that I was the only one allowed to live.”

“Don’t worry about it, sir,” said Dan, trying to pull his hand free. “We’ll get them, Vasquez and that woman. They won’t get away with it.”

“No!” gasped Deputy Chief Days. “If you’d seen those things—you can’t! There’s no way that anybody can stop them. That’s why she spared me, don’t you see? I have to give the order!”

“Sir, we have to take you to the emergency room,” interrupted one of the paramedics.

But still Deputy Chief Days wouldn’t let go of Dan’s hand. “I have to give the order.”

“What order, sir?”

“To leave them alone. To turn a blind eye. Otherwise, it’s going to be a massacre! Give them a week, and the LAPD will cease to exist.” He finally released his grip, and the paramedics wheeled him away.

Ernie said, “He’s in shock, yes? People say pretty weird things when they’re in shock.”

“He’s in shock, sure. But I think he’s right. I think that the White Ghost was giving him a message, and he understood it loud and clear.”

“You mean—?”

“I mean that the mobsters and the racketeers in this town are telling us to leave them well alone, or else we’ll
all
end up like steak tartare.”

“And that’s why they spared his life, so that he could give the order?”

“For sure. The only thing is, it makes me wonder even more why that other witch spared
my
life.”