Botanica Blues (2 page)

We sat outside. It was hot and if there's a hell and it's sandy, it's probably based on something like this. I was playing cards with Martin. Jackass from New Jersey. Always have a battle buddy and Martin was good enough. He liked Kung Fu movies. Like me, Martin had joined the Army after 9/11. I was in my sophomore year of college when it had happened, he was a freshman. A bunch of young guys who wanted to protect our country. By sweating in another one. Martin was so shitty at cards.

I was dealing a hand when someone shouted. We looked up and then the noises started. Not noises. Gun shots. Everyone started cursing and running around. Who the fuck was supposed to be on guard duty? I was just an Intel guy, writing reports, looking at the information. Bullets were flying. Where the fuck is my rifle?

Martin handed me my weapon and I remember thinking
Shit, when did it get so fucking dark
? Even darker were the figures in the distance. Their eyes glowed.

Pain overtook my brain, more than the fear and the shouting. I passed out.

The guy on the tape is tall, dark hair. He looks like one of those kids who hangs out on St. Antony's Place too much. He's got a tattoo on the inside of his wrist, like the girl. I can't tell if it's the same tattoo though. I'll give it to the tech guys to clean up. I’ve got a report in my in-box.

It lists the victims. Over half of them have been identified. Three of them are missing people; from New England. Fuck.

My phone beeps and I swipe my finger across it. Another text.

[U comin on Sunday? Frankie wants to see his tio.]

I sigh. Sunday's four days from now. I type, ‘Sorry, busy with case. Wouldn't miss it. What does he want?’ I think about the girl with the tattoo. I'll just head to the school library, find her in a yearbook. See what clubs she's in. NCU doesn't have yearbooks online yet. She and
El Maboyero
look the same age. Maybe they were a little more than whatever it was they were.

My phone beeps again.

[Hes really into skyriders.]

What the fuck is that?? I type back. I hit send and the phone rings. It scares the shit out of me and I jump, feeling my heart thump in my chest when I answer it. “Quintana here.”

“Quintana, did you get the report?” It's Yang. I turn in my seat, looking it over and nod though she can't see me.

“Yeah, I got it.” My stomach grumbles. After the scene I didn't have an appetite and now I'm hungry. I know my grandma has a plate of food for me waiting at home but I could grab something in the Village. “Any lead on the cause of the...uh...”

“The brains exploding?” Yang suggests. “No. The only thing that could liquefy the brain would be Ebola but it doesn’t cause damage to the skull like that. Plus, no cases have been found in the US. All the victims suffered severe head trauma from within the cranium itself.” I heard her whistle. “It’s a real head scratcher, for lack of a better term.”

“I'm sure there's a reason for it. Maybe some kind of gas or drug was used in the initiation. Did the tox screens come back with anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Anything in common?”

“They were all born in Puerto Rico,” she said. “The most recently relocated was a man, Emanuel Cordova-Colón, two weeks ago.”

“Any more of them have tattoos?” I ask, looking at the video. If there's some weird cult thing going on, I need to figure it out. That's my job. What the cult is, who the leader is, their practices, what they are capable of. I was pretty sure I knew the leader. But what the hell was this? And how do I stop them from doing this again?

“Did you even read the report?” she asks me. I grin.

“You called right when I was about to start it,” I confess. No need to lie. “You sound tired, Yang. When was the last time you took a vacation?”

“I'm going to California in two weeks for a family reunion,” she offers. She doesn't sound relieved. Being surrounded by family isn't exactly a break. “San Francisco. My sister just had a baby.”

“Boy or a girl?” I ask, looking over the report. All born in Puerto Rico, though not in the same towns. One of them had a birthday two days ago. Happy birthday.

“Girl. My mother is furious.” Yang sighs. “Hey, I got a guy here, I have to go. I'll let you know if I find anything else.”

“Sounds good,” I say and she hangs up. I check the text from my sister.

[A video game.]

I roll my eyes. Frankie has too many video games. I'll get him something else. I'll order something online, I have the two-day shipping.

Time to hit the library.

***

The library of New City University isn't the same as when I attended. They moved it when they brought all the branches together. It confuses the shit out of me but I find it after I ask the security guard. It’s below ground, where the old language building used to be. I studied Greek here.

The librarian is some work-study kid today. Short dark hair, thick glasses, pierced lip. I don’t have time to fuck around so I just ask her where the yearbooks are. She points them out and gives me a smile. I must look like I could use one. She has a nice smile. Her tag says her name is “River.” I find the yearbooks and look for the most recent one. They're a lot nicer than when I attended. I flip to the index. Montalvo, Gina. That’s the girl. She’s on a few pages. First picture of her is on page twenty-three.

I guess that’s what she looks like with the top of her head on. Dyed hair, too much make up. Wearing black. I look at the next page. Club photos. Urban Landscaping and Repurposing. Science Fiction Club. Spanish Club.

Shit.

It’s the guy from the video.

James Hernandez. He’s in the Urban Landscaping picture and the Spanish Club.

I flip to the back of the yearbook and look him up. Hernandez, James. He’s in a few pics. Upperclassman. James is in a film club, a political club. He makes Gina look like a lollipop princess. His hair appears greasy and his mouth like it hasn’t smiled in a long time. He looks angry. He looks familiar.

I pull out my phone and look around to make sure I’m not bothering anybody. I text Hunts.

[Incoming info. Positive ID on candle buyer. Connected to one of the victims.]

I snap a few pictures from the yearbook and save them, highlighting the two faces and the names before I save them. I fire off a quick email to Hunts and attach the photos.

I missed a call from my grandmother. I know she didn’t leave a message. That’s not how she is.

I put the yearbook away and go back to the front desk. River’s still there, reading something. I pull out my badge. It’s gotta be done.

“Hey, I was wondering if you could pull up the records on any books a Gina Montalvo or a James Hernandez might have borrowed?”

For a second I think she’s not going to help me out. If she’s a good NCU kid, she won’t trust cops.

“I’m not a cop,” I explain. “I’m a private investigator.”

“But you work with the cops,” she says and her eyes narrow at me. On cue.

“I work on special cases that have to do with abuses of religion,” I say. “And I don’t let people just trying to do their thing get lumped in with the crazies. I’m an alum,” I say. “Majored in Religious Studies.”

“Are these guys alright?” she asks. Her hands are already on the keyboard. I shrug. I’m not about to tell her the girl’s head is no more and the guy’s on the loose.

“They’re in a bit of trouble and I’m trying to help them out.” That’s the truth.

She clicks around a little bit and a page prints out. River hands it to me and I thank her, walking over to one of the tables. Let’s see what we got.

The Complete Works of Johann Most.

The Necronomicon.

Hymns to the Great Old Ones.

Art of Ancient Mesopotamia.

A few others. Art books, anarchy, myths.

My phone blinks. I have a message. I walk towards where the first book is supposed to be on the shelf and check out what it says.

[Garrett has a hold. On Hernandez. Clock’s ticking.]

I curse under my breath. Garrett. He’s the city official pushing for a tighter hold on the religious communities, for more regulation and less freedom. He’s a dickhead. As soon as he’s got all the details, he’ll pin it on someone and propose a law that’ll put out the candles on altars from here to the Sound.

Most of these guys are good guys, whether they follow Ellegua or Zeus. I don’t know what comes first. Is the person good, so they find the set of rules that fits best? Or do the rules make them good people? I pull a book off the shelf. It’s old as NCU itself, older. I go to find the next book. My phone blinks again.

[Hernandez. 445 168th St. No suspect.]

I find the next book. A few of them are still checked out. They make a nice ‘thud’ as I set them on the table and sit down.

[Be there ASAP] I text to Hunts and open the page to the hymn book. My blood goes cold.

I pull out my sketchbook and flip it open. The eyes are there. The shapes of the bodies are there. The circles. The symbols.

What the fuck? I’ve got my religious connection. I turn the page and the paper is brittle. I’m worried the book might fall apart right there on the table.

The book isn’t going to fall apart.

I might.

Ropes ate into my wrists and ankles and my head hurt. Not on one side, like it does when someone hits you in the head. Deep, at the core radiating out. It was hot. I didn’t know where my shirt was.

Martin sat tied up beside me. He was also naked from the waist up. He didn’t look hurt but he was moaning. Moaning. And they were chanting.

It was hot. Hot like always but it hurt. Like the air grated against my skin. The chanting. All I could think was,
this is it
. The terrorists. They got us. My
abuela
is going learn about this on CNN. I wanted to cry. Martin was moaning and they were chanting. I looked up to see who had attacked our base.

This.

These were not the people I learned about in training.

These were...my head throbbed as I looked them over and my eyes watered.

They danced naked in the hellish heat. Their eyes were...their skin...I didn’t want to look. I pulled my eyes away but even with my eyes screwed shut I saw them. It was the chanting. The terrible chanting. It wasn’t Arabic or Persian. I tried to tell myself it was a dialect of whatever terrible tribe this was but something laughed at me and forced my mind over the details of the scene. The terrible syllables. The naked skin. The wild gyrations. The scrawls on the wall. I tried to think about other things, I tried to focus. My baby cousin’s face, the sound of music on the radio, the kiss of my last girlfriend. The ropes scraped my wrists. A drum thudded again and again, erratically. I felt my heart in my chest, trying to keep time with it and sweat pouring like blood down my brow.

Martin was crying. His sobs were the only thing making sense. I hated hearing him but I needed him to keep crying. I heard him try to speak. I thought he was praying but I listened closely and he was saying the name of his wife and kid. My chest felt tight. He repeated them over and over like a mantra, till they lost their definition and became a phrase said over and over, punctuated with sobbing. I looked up at the sky.

My mouth fell open.

I had spent a lot of time staring up at the stars here, looking at the constellations.

These weren’t right.

Not just the constellations. I tried to tell myself they could have moved us so far, the sky was different but the fact chewed at my brain, devouring facts and leaving me with this. Stars glowing too bright in all the wrong places. And a dark gash across the sky, jagged. Like a mouthful of broken teeth, ripped across the sky in ebony. And the chanting. It sounded like terrible chewing.

Chewing and crying. Chaos.

One of the cultists came over and spit something in Martin’s face. I looked away. I couldn’t be there, wherever I was. It couldn’t be Earth. Martin shrieked. I wanted him to keep it together, I wanted to say something but I didn’t.

I felt afraid.

And then the orderly sound of machine gun fire, rattling off stone. The squelch of bullets into flesh and the crunch of bone were lost to the rest of us, swallowed by the order of battle. The drills. How to hold your weapon, colliding against the disorganization of emotions, of the adrenaline of liquid fear and liquid bravery excreted by your guts. I closed my eyes. I heard people shouting in Arabic.

The next thing I knew I was lying in a hospital bed. IV bag, bandages. A psychiatrist came a few times to ask me what happened. They thought I didn’t know he was a psychiatrist but I knew. I told him some terrorists got us, held us hostage. That was it. He asked me a few times. He asked me why I couldn’t sleep at night. He asked what I screamed about in the night. I said it was PTSD.

I asked about Martin. He wasn’t in the recovery room with me. A nurse told me he was sent back to the States. His wife sent me a letter, checking on me, asking me what happened. She told me Martin was in a mental hospital. I never wrote her back.

I was discharged from the Army. Went back to school. I busted my ass. Kept busy. Majored in theology with a concentration in indigenous religions, minored in criminology. My grandma asked if I was going to be a pastor. I would kiss her on forehead and shake my head and say no.

“You okay, Luis?” Yang slurps her noodles. It’s the way you’re supposed to eat them. I’m still wondering why she came out with me. Maybe she heard something in my voice when she called. I had just got the text from Hunt, pulling into traffic. I almost threw the phone out the damn window after I read it. I wasn’t needed anymore. What they found it Hernandez’ apartment made this a terrorist ordeal, not a religious one. The Mayor was holding a press conference about it. I didn’t bother to catch it but I know what he said, that smug asshole. More political rhetoric. More bullshit and lies for everyone. I poke at my bowl with my chopsticks. I want to cry, actually. Something about all this. The stress. How close. I feel raw.

I shrug and poke, stirring. Yang slurps her soup. “I know you must be pissed. It’s not Hunts’ call. But you know how shit is since 9/11. They get a whiff of terrorism, they don’t care about particulars.”