A/N: I love a good murder mystery. Even more, I love the southern set up for it allowing me to include the Baker Plantation as the basis for my tale here. Heavily inspired by Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and even Agatha Christie for pacing as this progresses in terms of tone and concept, I hope to play around with familiar faces in an AU world. I actually have several concepts for this version of Leon laid out if this story does what I want.
If you aren't a fan of murder mystery, voodoo, the New Orleans culture I'm bringing or the concept of Claire and Leon as an alternate version of Mulder and Scully, this is probably not where the wind blows you. I'll try to keep everybody as in character as possible, personality wise, while playing with a world linked to but not directly related to BioTerror. Thank you, as always for reading, and take a look at post notes for referenced works within this chapter. All are great resources for voodoo.
Day One:
Chapter Three:
"And from the dark the voices sang - oh merrily and well,
A generous and fearful thing - a symphony from hell-"
The wavering heat turned the air into a wet shimmer. Where you walked, your feet sank into the soggy sand beneath you.
The bayou was ripe with bugs and fetid water and rich plant life. A bayou, often mistakenly thought to simply be a swamp, was actually taken from a Cajun French term of similar distinction. It was typically a low-lying body of water found in flat areas and adjacent to either extremely negligently flowing rivers or marshy lakes and wetlands. It was often, as well, used to describe a creek that changes directions daily with the tide while maintaining brackish water perfect for fish life and plankton. Bayous were often boggy and stagnant and filled with all the good things found in quaint Cajun cooking: crawfish, shrimp, shellfish and catish. Snakes and leeches were often found in the murky waters and plenty of turtles and gators and crocs.
Often, the plethora of natural predators made it a frequent spot to dump a body. Nature had a way of cleaning up the mess left behind after a sloppy kill.
Kennedy's property encompassed such a huge expanse of land that pinning the murder of Costas on him was simply a matter of having no one better. What was circumstantial about all of it? This wasn't the first murder like this. The reason the FBI was here was really quite simple: Marianne Costas was the grand daughter of an important man. She was also the third in a series of similar murders crossing state lines.
When things went multi-state, homicide became a federal issue. Usually, something this minor - a series of seemingly unconnected murders, wouldn't even have fallen in the same column as being linked but for one very, very distinctive link: voodoo.
No study of ghostly tales or strangeness in New Orleans would be complete without mention of Marie Laveau, the unchallenged "Queen of Voodoo" in New Orleans. This mystical religion was as big a tourist interest in New Orleans as jazz, Cajun food and Mardi Gras. Laveau, often rumored to be either immortal or having been reincarnated into the daughter of a daughter of a daughter, was never far from being linked to anything remotely similar to voodoo practice in the south.
The layman assumed all voodoo was dark magic and that all voodoo was the same when, in fact, there were so many sects of it, in practice and across the globe, that pinpointing the certain kind you were chasing could take days and weeks and meant sitting in countless lecture halls learning from the nerds who studied it.
Claire had spent many a lovely day in dusty amphitheaters from Harvard to Tulane learning everything about what she was hunting here. She paced the crime scene in her simple suit, studying the blood stains and the left over chicken feathers, the scales of the snakes, the symbols on the trees and what was left of the circle they'd made upon the ground. She went over the details in her head as she knelt, paying close attention to the details of the etchings still left in the soggy sand.
The first body had been graced with gris-gris - or a small cloth sack filled with "magic". Gris-gris, pronounced gree-gree, would take a range of forms, with some practitioners including minerals, roots, herbs, seals written on paper, and even graveyard dust into a small bag to be placed on the body of the person they were made for. There were many purposes for them - from love to loss to wealth and prosperity. But some were made, as well, to court evil (*1*).
The one found on the victim before Costas had led her to believe this voodoo was Louisiana in origin. This gris-gris had contained graveyard dust from Lafayette Cemetery No. 1. The connection was still loose on why and what and where. Was it an homage to the victim? To the killer? To someone buried there? It was impossible to know without digging deeper into the voodoo behind the death (*2*).
Slave ships from West Africa first brought Voodoo to Louisiana. Practitioners knew which plants and herbs could heal and which could bring about hallucinations, sickness, and death.
Louisiana Voodoo, also known as New Orleans Voodoo, described a set of spiritual folkways developed from the traditions of the African diaspora. It is a cultural form of the Afro-American religions developed by West and Central Africans populations of the U.S. state of Louisiana. Voodoo was one of many incarnations of African-based spiritual folkways rooted in West African Dahomeyan Vodun. Its liturgical language was Louisiana Creole French.
Voodoo became synchronized with the Catholic and Francophone culture of New Orleans as a result of the African cultural oppression in the region resulting from the Atlantic slave trade. Louisiana Voodoo was often confused with—but not completely separable from—Haitian Vodou and Deep Southern Hoodoo. It differed from Haitian Vodou in its emphasis upon gris-gris, Voodoo queens, use of Hoodoo paraphernalia, and Li Grand Zombi. It was through Louisiana Voodoo that such terms as gris-gris and Voodoo dolls were introduced into the American lexicon (*3*). Now any urban dictionary in the world would host a variety of plays on the meaning behind the words. Hell - gift shops dealt in the trade of voodoo with apparent aplomb and majesty, offering Laveau and her craft up to the world like a goddess of her own faith.
Voodoo, the true practice of it, was hard to discern from the butchery of the bastardized american version of it among those who studied the occult and the fantastic.
Claire Redfield was rapidly becoming a leading authority on Voodoo. She'd taken the scholars path to learn it. She'd never spent more time than tits deep in literature in the library; at seminars and lectures, at the knee of some "expert." She was obsessed and it was culminating quickly for her here in this pitiful swamp.
Costas' body had possessed a gris-gris around her savaged neck. Inside the little bag was all manner of bad luck juju - including a dried lizard, a rooster's heart and the little finger of a person who, Claire discovered upon running the prints, had committed suicide. Costas was being cursed.
The question was why?
What and who had she known and what connection did she have to two other college girls in New York and Florida? What was the killer doing crossing state lines? Did it originate here, in the hotbed of the home of the greatest voodoo practioner of all time? If so, why the wrong cemetary? And what was the connection to Laveau and the gris-gris on the victims?
Was it all circumstantial?
And what was the connection to Kennedy? Was it, again, just situational? He'd bought a property that had been the center of a mystery involving alot of unsolved deaths and a lot of murky cover up. He was, again, the Indiana Jones of weird - so the purchase wasn't all that surprising. She was betting Doctor Strange was enjoying the hell out of a possibly haunted stomping ground. But what did it mean that Costas was found on land that was, allegedly, stained in the blood of those known as "hornless goats" - or human sacrifices?
Nothing. Again. Maybe. Maybe nothing.
Maybe a fantastic cover. Maybe he was a killer pretending to be a hero. Maybe he was murdering people because exploring all the freaks in the world had turned him into a one himself. Maybe his perfect body was spending it's nights in a mask made from the skin of an animal while he sacrificed virgins to the loa for power.
She stopped, picturing it - and it just didn't wash. It was stupid, entirely, to use instinct to judge a man. It was. But she felt wrong about it. It felt wrong to picture him slaughtering women. She knew, through researching him, that he was a killer. That part was true. Before he'd become the Doctor of Strange Shit, he'd been a pretty bad ass up and comer. He'd retired, unceremoniously, from the field without an explanation. The files were all sealed up and protected. Why? Why leave at the height of a promising career?
Lots of questions.
No answers.
She jotted in her notebook, copying down the symbols she could make out in the bloody sand. It was a veve, clearly, a representation of whatever loa had been the heart of this ritual where Costas had been sacrificed. In the others, no same loa had been used. This one, as well, was different. It would take some digging to find out which one.
She snapped pictures with her phone and logged. She jotted a sketch of it in her notebook.
She was penning down her thoughts on the feathers and the left over candles and positioning of the chalk outline from Costas body when the voice had her jumping in the air.
"...Baron Samedi."
Claire dropped her pen and squeaked.
She glanced up to find Leon Kennedy standing over her shoulder. He wasn't looking charming or flirtatious or adorable, he looked a little concerned. He looked, somehow, reflective. She watched his face as he crouched beside her. He picked up her pen and gestured to the symbol as he spoke.
"Baron Samedi is the loa of sex and resurrection. He's the white faced guy in the top hat you see in all the gift shops. He stands at the crossroads, where the souls of dead humans pass on their way to the underworld. He digs your grave and meets your risen soul to guide you to the darkness. As well as being the all-knowing loa of death, he is a sexual loa, frequently represented by phallic symbols. He is noted for disruption, obscenity, debauchery, and for having a particular fondness for tobacco and fucking."
Claire watched his face, enraptured by the flashing intelligence there. Was that the kicker here? Was it the brains under the beauty?
She followed the line of the pen as he gestured to it. "He is notorious for his outrageous behavior, swearing continuously and making filthy jokes to the other spirits. He loves smoking and drinking and is rarely seen without a cigar in his mouth or a glass of rum in his bony fingers."
Claire studied the veve as he connected the pieces in the bloody sand. She watched the whole of it start to emerge. It was clearly a gesture of a joke played at Christianity as it started to form a cross in the connotation of it. And she asked, softly, "Why him? Why that loa?"
Kennedy laughed, but there was no humor on his face, "I don't know. But it's interesting. And a little scary."
"Why?"
He glanced at her face and shook his head, sighing, "The running joke down here is that I'm always channeling Samedi. Flirting, fucking girls, drinking and smoking - straddling life and death with what I do. The bad language, the messing around, the perpetual Peter Pan syndrome..."
"The bad boy of loas?"
He laughed a little, lightly, "Apparently."
"Why would someone aim this at you, Mr. Kennedy? You fuck the wrong guys wife?"
He lifted a brow, volleying his gaze over her pretty face. Nothing on it that said she was implying. She was just asking. It was her job to ask questions after all.
He'd made a career out of asking them.
So he answered her, "Not recently. But I rub people wrong in my business, Agent Redfield. All the time. I debunk the fakers, I expose the liars, I reveal the truth. It doesn't make me popular. And I'm not the poster child for chastity or good behavior. I am, however, honest about who I am."
"And who's that?"
He glanced at her mouth and back at her face, " A guy who likes a good mystery, a stiff drink, and a willing woman."
Yep, Claire thought, sounded about right. But there was something refreshing about the honesty of it. He was charming because he was, literally, not hiding anything.
And so she asked, "You wanna tell me about your enemies?"
He tilted his head a little, looking at her, "Not yet. You accusing me?"
She laughed, shaking her head, "Not yet. The day isn't over though, Mr. Kennedy."
"...story of my life."
His voice trailed off. He glanced back at her face. What was interesting? She didn't appear to be judging him. She was thinking. Like he was thinking. And they were both thinking the same thing: it was either a stab at him here - or a really scary coincidence.
And it wasn't helping him look innocent.
He held her gaze for a long moment and finally, intoned, "I didn't kill her."
Claire said nothing.
And finally? She mused, "Why do you sound so unsure about that?"
Somewhere, a yellow billed cuckoo set up a musical cry. It punctuated their stare down. Kennedy responded, softly, "If you think I did it, why haven't you arrested me?"
"...because I don't know what I think. And I can't prove anything. If you didn't kill her, why are you here?"
He held her gaze, unflinching. "To find out who did."
Sweat slid over his brow. It lingered at his left eye and trembled in the heavy hair of his left eyebrow. She watched it, waited, and it slid toward his eye. Her hand shot out and slid over it, flicking it away.
He jerked when she touched him, amusing her. Claire said, softly, "It would have burned if it got in your eye."
He lifted a brow and his mouth twitched, "My hero."
They were really too close, Claire thought fuzzily, they really were. Crouched together in the boiling heat with maybe a foot between them. Too close. But she didn't back off. She felt her glasses get a little foggy in the muggy air looking at him...but she didn't back off.
Interesting.
And very telling for her. One thing she knew? He was the first person she'd met here with knowledge of this loa on the ground and she needed to know what he knew. As of now? He wasn't just a suspect - he was an expert consultant.
She opened her notebook and took out the photo. It was Costas, a crime scene photo, clearly. It showed the pretty girl in the license from before but she wasn't pretty anymore. She was naked and disemboweled. She lay on an altar of some kind, surrounded by the chalk and the powder and the feathers of the chickens. She was flecked in blood that was likely not hers, and coated in the pool of her own from when she'd died. She'd died painfully, probably bound and afraid, and bleeding to death before they'd taken her heart.
It was carved, carefully and brutally, from her chest.
Claire said, quietly, "The heart was missing as well as the intestines. What's the symbolism of that in relation to Samedi?"
Leon studied the photo, the imagery, and the feeling of it. It hurt him. Why? Why did it coil snakes of fear and pain in his guts? Was it the dreams? Was it the nightmares?
Why fear them?
He'd had them all his life.
"First guess?"
Claire nodded, "Sure. First guess."
"Sorcery of some kind." He considered it and the context of the girl and the missing pieces of her, "Sorcery is within the power of Baron and the spirits of the Geude Family which he heads. The efficacy of evil spirits and magic poisons depends on him. If he declines the ritual calling for him, for instance, invocations and rites...they're useless. They took her heart - why? I can't answer that for you. But it was an offering. The question is - what were they offering it for?"
Claire met his eyes over the photo. She said nothing again, studying him like a suspect in an interrogation, "You tell me."
He shook his head, face cool and collected, "I don't know. I wish I did."
She considered things and went with her gut here, "...it wasn't Samedi at the other murders."
There. THERE. That's what she'd been fishing for. That reaction. He flinched around the eyes. He looked sick. He looked a little angry. And he said, "There were others?"
She nodded, watching him quietly, "Two. Both in heavy Haitian populated cities. That's why I'm here. That's what makes this Federal territory Mr. Kennedy. It's all connected. The thing I need to find out, is what connects them."
He watched a bead of sweat slide down her nose in the murky summer heat. "Who were the other two?"
Claire said, gently, "A coed at NYU. And a waitress in Miami."
Kennedy studied the photo again, brow furrowed, "No connection with the status of them?"
Claire shook her head, "The coed was straight A's, good girl type - boyfriend was a highschool sweetheart. Daddy was a preacher. The waitress ran with the wrong crowd in Little Haiti, she wasn't on the best of terms with her single mother who frequented lock up and left her pretty shitty poverty most of her life. There's no connection I can find between them. None. But for the fucking gris-gris and the way they died. Even the loas are different."
Leon looked up at her, head tilted, "So why are they connected? Voodoo happens. You said yourself, it's heavily Haitian - the areas where you find them. So that's reasonable for voodoo. So why the same killer? Where's the proof?"
Claire tossed the gris-gris in her hand between them. It landed on his boot. He picked up the little leather pouch and studied it. It had symbols carved into it. Inside, it had herbs and various pieces of bone and dust.
He lifted his brwos at her.
And she said, "The dust is from the Lafayette Cemetery No. 1. The symbolism of the gris-gris is classic Laveau. The problem with that?"
Leon filled in the answer, "She wasn't buried there."
"Right. Marie Laveau is generally believed to have been buried in plot 347, the Glapion family crypt in Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1."
Leon shrugged a little, considering it, "It's all speculation, Agent Redfield. No one can prove that."
"Right." She sighed, dramatically, "But clearly the killer has a connection to Lafayette. Why? I need to find the link."
Leon rolled the gris-gris in his hand. He studied her. She studied him in return. Finally, he mused, "I can help you."
She'd considered that too. She knew he was the best suspect she had. She knew she felt, in her guts, that he was innocent. She knew, she couldn't prove it either way. She also knew he was the fucking best at what he did.
And so she replied, "We need to track the family of the bones in that bag. The first gris-gris had bones from a source I couldn't identify. The second body is still processing...but it's gonna come up the same as this one."
He tilted his head at her, "Why?"
"It will. The first one...it was processed before the prints were in the system. I guarantee it. When I rerun it, it's gonna come up the suicide. The same suicide. The same one. Why the same person? The answer starts there. I can feel it."
Kennedy nodded and rose. She stood as well and took the gris-gris he handed back to her.
He said, quietly, "I'll get in touch with my guy to find us some sources for local voodoo. My suggestion? You get in touch with Ryman to start hunting up info on the suicide."
He moved through the boggy marsh and Claire called after him, gently, "What about the cemetary?"
He turned back, smiling wryly and paced backward, watching her, "What else? I'll see you there tonight. How about a little twilight grave walking, Agent Redfield? I promised you the real N'Orleans. What better way to kick off the grand tour than a little sojourn with the dead?"
He winked. He turned.
She watched his ass in those faded jeans as he moved back through the swamp toward his motorcycle.
And finally, she called after him, forgetting the one important thing she'd let slip this whole time, "Hey!"
He turned back, threw his leg over his bike and cocked his head at her.
She called, hands on her hips, "How the hell did you find the location of a restricted crime scene!?"
He laughed. He shrugged. And he gunned the engine on his bike.
With a chuckle, he called, "What can I say? That's the other thing about N'Orleans you'll get used to."
She tilted her head at him, "What's that?"
"What else, chere? Magic."
Claire watched him zip off into the dying sun. She sighed, shaking her head. Magic.
She didn't believe in magic. She didn't believe in conjuring ancient voodoo loa either.
But she was letting a suspect into her case to help her. She was letting big blue eyes and killer cheekbones distract her from flawless purpose here. She was eager to stand around with him and find out what he knew.
It was the case. Sure. But it was him.
She didn't believe in magic.
But she was rapidly coming to believe in the power of Leon Kennedy.
Post Note:
*1*. The New Orleans Voodoo Handbook - by Kenaz Filan
*2*. Charms, Spells, and Formulas: For the Making and Use of Gris Gris Bags, Herb Candles, Doll Magic, Incenses, Oils, and Powders-by Ray T. Malbrough
*3*. The Mystica