“Broken up?” Becca asked. She hadn’t expected that answer at all. “Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Neither one of us are going anywhere anytime soon,” she said. “So, try to un-complicate it for me.”
He exhaled, looking down at his fingernails with feigned interest.
“Mr. Blakely?”
“I had done something foolish,” he finally said. “Something I thought would help her. When she found out about it…”
The room suddenly erupted with banging from the two-way mirror. Someone—she assumed Silas—was pounding excitedly on it. She turned around and attempted to burn a laser-thin hole in the glass with her glare. The look had the desired effect. The banging stopped and she turned back to her suspect.
“And what exactly did you do, Mr. Blakely, that caused her to be that upset?”
The door to the interrogation burst open and Silas Mot dashed inside with Sergeant Tanner running after him.
“He placed a death curse on James Andrews!” Silas shouted.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Jeremy said to Becca.
She nodded and waved him away. “It’s okay. He can stay.”
Tanner glared at Silas a moment, then backed out of the room, closing the door behind him.
“Now, what were you saying, Mot?”
“That’s what his bilongo was doing in the print shop,” Silas continued. “We assumed it was made recently. After Ms. Alvarez’s death. We assumed that because he’d created bilongos for us, which would have only been done after we started snooping around.” He leaned in closer to Blakely, giving him a threatening glare. “You know, that wasn’t very nice, by the way.” He patted the suspect on the head as he said it. “Anyway, truth is, he had performed the death curse on James Andrews, thinking that if he died, Jamie would automatically go into her custody.”
Becca turned back to Blakely. “Is this true?”
He nodded. “Yes. She had tried so hard to get custody of Jamie back. She was devastated when that shyster of a car salesman refused. She tried to get legal help, but no one would give her the time of day and it was killing her a little inside every day she wasn’t in that boy’s life.”
“So, she found out about it and didn’t respond exactly how you thought she would?”
“No, not at all. She was furious with me. Broke things off right then and there.”
Silas, who seemed brimming with enthusiastic energy after figuring out how James’ bilongo fit into the case, sat down beside Becca with his chest puffed up. “And she went to work the next day and told her sister from another mister, Elaine Shepherd, about the breakup and she thought maybe you might just be mad enough at Andrea to perform the curse,” he said with a smug curl of his lips.
“Basically, yes,” Blakely said. “She came to me and told me what she wanted. I didn’t intend to go through with it, but considering Mrs. Shepherd wasn’t a believer herself, she wouldn’t know any better. So, we worked out a deal.”
“What kind of deal?” Becca asked.
“She would convince her firm to send advertisers to my newspaper and I would create a bilongo doll to make Andrea think she’d been cursed.” He looked up from his examination of his fingernails. “But there was no curse imbued with it. For all intents and purposes, it was nothing more than a rag doll. No power behind it at all.”
“Why would you do that to her?” Becca asked. “Even if you didn’t put your mojo into it, you knew how she would react to seeing it. You knew that she would believe in it and be terrified.”
He gave a sad nod. “I did. But I wanted her back. I thought if she thought she was cursed and that Omo Sango was the one who put it on her, she would have to come back to me. Figured she would need my help to break the curse and we could start fresh.”
“That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!” Silas barked. “And most cruel.”
Becca wanted to reprimand him for his outburst, but truth was, she was thinking the same thing. The man was the worst sort of parasite.
“And, of course, the curse and its implications couldn’t hurt any in raising circulation for your newspaper, right?”
“Yes.” His cheeks reddened as he said it. “It was a perfect opportunity. I could get Andrea back, sell papers, and, if I was lucky, get rid of Omo Sango in one fell swoop.” Blakely tried to clear his throat. “Could I have some water or something? My throat’s dry.”
Becca glanced back at the two-way mirror and nodded. She knew Jeremy would still be back there and would have heard the request. When she was confident her officer was going to get the water, she returned to her next thought.
“So, what went wrong in this plan of yours?”
“Pardon?”
“Well, if everything went well, there was no need to kill her. Yet, someone switched her medications out without her knowledge and killed her. Since you and she were dating, that gives you plenty of opportunity to do it without her catching on.”
“That’s how she died? Her medications?”
“Actually, someone else’s medications. They were switched, as I said.”
“Why on earth would I kill her? I wanted her back!”
“You just admitted to stabbing her and dragging her to the beach,” she said. “We’re recording this interrogation now. Do you want me to let you hear what you said?”
“No, I know what I said. And I’m telling the truth.” He fidgeted in his chair. “Look, I heard about her breakdown in Jacksonville. When I found out she was home from the hospital, I came over to check on her. When no one answered my knocks at the door, I let myself in using the key she’d given me.” Sweat glistened across his forehead, illuminated by the harsh overhead lights. “I went up to her room and found her in bed. She was already dead.”
“What time was this?”
“Around one in the morning.”
“Why so late?”
Blakely shrugged. “You know my schedule, Chief Cole. I went there on my way to run the morning edition.”
“And what did you see when you got to her place?”
“Exactly what I said. She was in bed.”
“Under or on top of her covers?”
“Under. But she was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, which I thought was kind of weird.”
Becca looked him up and down, weighing his words. He seemed pretty sincere, but a few things just weren’t adding up.
“Okay, so how did it go from finding her body to you putting a knife in her back and dumping her body on the beach.”
He coughed again, then cleared his throat. “Is that water coming?”
“Shouldn’t be long now.” She motioned for him to continue. “Go on.”
“I thought about calling the police, I really did,” he said. His voice was gravelly. Hoarse. “But then, I realized the opportunity I had.”
“To pin her death on Omo Sango and the rumor of the death curse you spread with your paper.”
“I wasn’t trying to frame him, Chief. I was trying to point you in the right direction.” He tried to throw up his hands in frustration but was hindered by his chains. “I still can’t believe you’ve ruled him out as your suspect. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s the one responsible for Andrea’s death.”
“What?” A lump began to swell in her throat. Had she miscalculated? She’d all but discarded Jacinto Garcia as the killer after meeting with him. “That doesn’t make any sense. We know he didn’t put the curse on her. Elaine Shepherd even admitted as much. The only motive he would have had to kill her was to ensure the public believed his curse actually worked. It was a matter of street cred. But if he publicly denied casting the spell, there was no reason for him to save face.”
Blakely laughed, shaking his head. “You’ve got it wrong, Chief Cole. He wouldn’t have murdered her for that. In his world, it’s up to the Orisha whether a curse works or not. If an Orisha chooses not to kill someone with one of his curses, that’s on the Orisha, not the Babalowa. It wouldn’t be a motive for…”
There was a knock on the door and Jeremy appeared with a bottle of water. He set it down at the table in front of Blakely and backed out of the room. The reporter unscrewed the bottle’s cap and downed half the bottle before he continued.
“It wouldn’t be a motive for murder.”
“So, why would he kill her?” Silas asked, suddenly intrigued.
Blakely shook his head. His hand shook as he set the water bottle down in front of him. “Uh-uh. I’ve said too much already.”
“But you’ve basically accused Garcia of murdering Andrea,” Becca said. “If you don’t give us a reason, we can’t take it seriously and you’re still our chief suspect.”
“So be it.”
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence in the room. This interview had taken a turn she hadn’t expected. Sure, she hadn’t thought Spenser Blakely would just roll over and admit to killing his girlfriend, but she’d never expected this twisted direction either.
“Esperanza,” Silas suddenly said.
Blakely’s eyes stretched wide at the mention of her name.
“Yeah, that’s it, isn’t it?” he continued. “You know Esperanza. She’s got you spooked. That’s why you’re trying so hard to get out of town. Why you were hiding.”
“Partially.” Blakely nodded. “But if you knew what that woman…that creature…really was, you’d go into hiding too.”
“Chuckles, I was married to that creature. Trust me. I feel your pain.”
The man reeled back in his chair. If it hadn’t been bolted down, Becca was certain it would have tipped over by his reaction. “Married to her? But…but…”
“Yeah, I know.” Silas’ grinned stretched wide. “You never can tell with some people, eh?”
Becca placed a hand on Silas’ arm to shut him up and addressed Blakely. “So, this has to do with Esperanza?”
His head nodded emphatically, but his gaze remained glued on Silas. “I…she…” He drank more from the water bottle and sighed. “Andrea overheard the two of them one night over a month ago. Although she didn’t quite know what they were talking about, she understood enough. Something about a powerful artifact that had the power…the power…”
“The power over life and death,” Silas said. His grin had disappeared. “The Hand of Cain.”
Blakely nodded.
“What did she overhear?” he asked, leaning forward in his seat.
“Like I said, she only overheard bits and pieces and even then, she didn’t understand half of what she’d heard. But something about it being hidden where someone would never find it.”
“Did they mention who this someone was?”
Blakely shook his head. “Problem is, she got caught eavesdropping. Omo Sango warned her not to tell anyone or he would unleash a bilongo on her like no one had ever seen before.”
“Which is why it was so easy to convince her Garcia had cursed her,” Becca chimed in.
“Yes. Of course, I had no idea about it, but when she discovered the doll, she’d told me everything she remembered about that night.”
Silas sat in his chair, staring past Blakely’s shoulder. Becca could almost hear the gears inside his head grinding as he worked to process it all.
“If what you’re saying is true and you thought Garcia or Esperanza—”
“Santa Muerte!” Blakely shouted, his terrified stare still fixed on Silas. “Let’s call her what she is.”
“Fine. If you thought Garcia and that woman had killed her…” Becca refused to call her Santa Muerte. “…why did you wait a few days after her death to start hiding out? I mean, you ran another story on her murder. You pointed a finger at Garcia in it. Heck, you even boldly proclaimed you were running for mayor to clean up the town of Santeria and its ilk.”
“He thought he was protected,” Silas said, still staring off into space. His voice had almost zero inflection in it, as if the statement was simply a matter of fact. “That’s what all that stuff in his sanctum was. He was pulling resources from every magico-religious system he could think of to create a protective ward around himself. But something must have happened to let him know he wasn’t nearly as safe as he thought.”
Blakely drank the last of the water and nodded again. “That witch showed up in my house one night. As easy as you please. One minute, I was alone, surrounded by my protective charms. The next, she was standing right in front of me, kissing me on the lips.”
Becca glanced over at Silas, but he didn’t respond.
“She then warned me not to say anything about what Andrea had told me.” The journalist pointed at Silas. “Especially to him. I didn’t understand why at the time, but I swore I wouldn’t say a word. As soon as she left, I went into hiding, hoping I could figure a way to get out of town without Omo Sango or that creature finding out.”
Silas’ eyes finally came into focus and he looked directly at suspect. “I’ve figured it out,” he said. “I know who killed Ms. Alvarez. Most importantly, I know why.” He looked over at Becca. “But you need to call an ambulance right now.”
“What? Why?”
He turned back to the man across the table from them. “Because Mr. Blakely is about to have a heart attack.”
Then, as if his very words made it happen, the middle-aged journalist clutched at his chest. His face, stricken with pain and terror, contorted into a ghastly grimace. Becca leapt from her seat and rushed to the door. “Someone get EMS here now!”