The scene had an inauthentic quality, as if it had been staged in imitation of true voodoo, to establish a narrative explaining the murder to come. This suspicion was confirmed when four men entered, dressed not in what voodoo priests would wear, but clad in black and hooded to maintain anonymity. At the center of all, a pale and naked man lay chained to a sacrificial altar formed by three concentric circles of stepped stone around a center post carved as a pair of twining snakes.
Speaking to himself as Anabel had spoken to him, Hendrickson said, “There he is, the gutless wonder, the worthless piece of shit who fathered you. You’ll hear him beg. You’ll hear him beg me. You listen to him beg, boy, and learn never to beg for anything from anyone. See here what begging gets you.”
The camera panned across a battalion of conical blue and green drums, and as it returned to the naked man, the silence gave way to the rhythmic beating of the drums, though neither the instruments nor those who played them were shown again. Stafford Hendrickson did indeed beg Anabel by name, his pleas desperate and then hysterical as the four black-garbed executioners began to effect a prolonged act of murder. Tourniquets to stem the bleeding, preventing the victim’s quick demise. A razor-sharp machete. They began with his right hand.
Jane used the remote, and the screen went blank.
Booth Hendrickson said, “Your daddy was a pencil-neck history geek. He loved the past in all its barbaric splendor. He loved his crooked staircase, his private archeological treasure. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of adding any part of his body to that collection. They left him to the Jamaican lizards and cockroaches until the police found the worthless bastard.”
12
Although Carter Jergen wants a turn driving the VelociRaptor, and although there are occasions when his partner appalls him, he has to admit there are also times when he greatly enjoys watching Radley Dubose at work, as now. In numerous subtle ways, the big man builds an air of menace, akin to how a thunderstorm builds a charge leading up to that sudden first flash of lightning. Poor Fennel Martin. The mechanic is profoundly intimidated.
Dubose gets up from his chair and paces the small living room, seeming even bigger than usual by comparison with the humble space he occupies, the floor creaking under him. “When a car is sold in California, the seller is required by law to file a Notice of Transfer and Release of Liability with the DMV, providing among other things the new owner’s name. You never did that, Mr. Martin.”
“He didn’t want me to. Part of the deal was I wouldn’t file a notice of transfer.”
“You’re talking now of the mysterious Asian buyer—who never filed for a new registration, either.”
“He was an Asian guy. I wasn’t lying about that.”
“What was his name, Mr. Martin?”
“He never gave me a name. He didn’t even speak English.”
Dubose stopped pacing and turned and stared down at Fennel.
“It’s true,” the mechanic insists. “He had it all typed out.”
“Had what typed out?”
“The deal he wanted to make for the Honda, the terms.”
“He couldn’t speak English, but he could type it?”
“Somebody typed it for him. Whoever was really buying the car. I don’t know who. I really don’t.”
“So somebody wanted a car that couldn’t be traced back to him. Didn’t you worry about liability, Mr. Martin? Like if they used the car in a bank robbery?”
“He wouldn’t do that. He was a very nice man, very respectful.”
“Who was?”
“The Asian guy.”
“But he wasn’t the actual buyer. The actual buyer could have been some damn terrorist going to use it as a car bomb.”
The mechanic bends forward in the armchair, hands on his thighs, head between his knees, as if nauseated and about to spew.
“It wasn’t used as a car bomb,” Dubose says. Fennel shudders with relief. “But we damn well have to find whoever bought it and find him fast. What aren’t you telling me, Mr. Martin? There needs to be one more piece to this story of yours if it’s to make sense.”
In his misery, Fennel Martin speaks to the floor between his feet. “You know what it is.”
“I know what it has to be, but I need to hear it.”
“The guy comes to me with the terms typed out and a sort of briefcase full of cash. The Honda’s six years old then. It’s got some serious miles on it. Maybe it’s worth six thousand. There’s sixty thousand in the bag.”
“Tax free,” Dubose says.
“Well, shit, I guess not now.”
After a silence, looming over Fennel, Dubose says, “So you figured, if the car was used for a crime, then you’d act surprised to find it missing, say it was stolen.”
“Seemed like it would work. I really needed the money.”
“Did you ever see anyone driving that car around town?”
“Not in years. Two, maybe three times back then, I saw it parked. Never saw anyone with it. I didn’t want to see anyone. I didn’t want to know who or why.”
“You didn’t want to risk him asking for his money back.”
The mechanic says nothing.
“Look at me, Mr. Martin.”
The mechanic doesn’t raise his head. “I don’t want to.”
“Look at me.”
“You’ll hurt me.”
“Even worse if you don’t look at me.”
Reluctantly, Fennel Martin turns his head, looks up, terrified.
Dubose says, “I’m in a mood to bust your balls. I mean that literally. You made me pull the details out of you one by one. So now you better hope there’s something useful you’ve not yet told me. Because if there isn’t, then you’ll be useless to women when I’m done with you.”
Fennel Martin is a poster boy for pathos. “There isn’t anything more. I’m not hiding anything more. There’s nothing more.”
“There better be.”
“But there isn’t.”
“Get up, Mr. Martin.”
“I can’t.”
“Get up.”
“Maybe…”
“I’m waiting.”
“Maybe one thing. It was kind of funny. Those typed-up deal terms. They were done as bullet points. And after each bullet point, whoever he was, he typed ‘please and thank you.’ Like it said, ‘Purchase price will be sixty thousand dollars, please and thank you.’ And ‘Neither of us will report the sale, please and thank you.’?”
Dubose stares down at him with contempt and after a long silence wonders, “What am I supposed to do with that idiot tidbit?”
“It’s all I have. I didn’t even know I had that.”
“Did you save that paper you were given?”
“No.”
After another silence during which the mechanic looks as if he will die from suspense, Dubose says, “Hell, you’re not worth the effort.” He walks out of the trailer.
13
It was one thing to see the aftermath of such brutality, another thing altogether to watch even a minute of it in progress.
Sickened, Jane returned the DVD to its cardboard sleeve and then put it in the plastic box with the fifteen others. She trusted Booth Hendrickson’s word that two discs featured other of Anabel’s divorced husbands. One would show he who supposedly hung himself with a noose of barbed wire, except that he begged for his life before hooded men did the hanging for him. And perhaps it was the same hooded men, well paid and eager to accommodate, who videoed the other husband pleading for mercy before they set the house on fire—or in fact set him on fire and let him carry the flames through the house.
Among the other DVDs were more recent videos that recorded the injection and enslavement of a United States senator, a governor who was thought to have a future in national politics, a Supreme Court justice, the president of a major television network, the publisher of a highly respected magazine of opinion, and others who were now adjusted people. Anabel nurtured a particular animus against each; she wanted videos of their conversion for the historical record and for her own entertainment.
With this evidence and all the additional names and details that Hendrickson had revealed, Jane would find a way to bring the Techno Arcadians to ruin, every last one of them.