I, Michael Bennett (Michael Bennett 5)

I went back upstairs to the courtroom. The medical examiner team was just about to zip up the green body bag over the assassin when I noticed a ribbon of green tattoo ink on the man’s neck.

“Hold up a sec,” I said to the medical examiner’s people as I unbuttoned the man’s work shirt.

I nodded to myself as I squatted over the dead guy. The man had another tattoo, this one over his heart. It looked like a skull wearing a woman’s red shawl. I’d seen it before on the chests of both Perrine’s driver and the shooter I’d killed at Madison Square Garden.

The tattoo was a depiction of Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, a deity at the center of a religious cult that many of the cartels were involved in. The cult was a weird mix of Catholicism and Aztec religion, and Santa Muerte was a kind of evil Virgin Mary figure. Some of the cartel people would offer blood sacrifices to her in exchange for a peaceful death. Sometimes, Mexican drug dealers would even be found shot dead on altars dedicated to Santa Muerte. It was primitive, out there, very spooky stuff.

I was still squatting and staring at the tattoo when my phone rang.

“Bennett here,” I said.

“Hey, pig. How’s your morning? So far so good?” a woman said in Spanish-accented English.

No! I thought, immediately jumping to my feet. My heart started beating like crazy. Though I’d never heard her speak, I knew exactly who it was.

I was talking to the gold-eyed witch who had killed Hughie.

“Look around and take in your world now,” she said. “Death has come, and she is thirsty. She will not leave until you let him go.”

“Ma’am, that’s not how it works here in the good ol’ USA,” I said, trying to recover. “This is how it works. First, we’re going to catch every last one of you, and then we’re going to put you either in jai

l or the morgue. Got it? Jail or morgue.”

It put a chill down my spine when she laughed. I remembered the unhinged giggle from the moment before she killed Hughie.

“You think you have authority over him because we are in America? You think those bars and walls can actually contain him? You think you are teaching him a lesson, but it is you who will learn. You have offended him. Do you know what happens when you offend a living god?”

“Let me guess,” I said. “Um … floor seats for the Knicks games?”

“Laugh now. You will cry later, I assure you,” she said, and hung up.

“Unbelievable,” I mumbled as I closed my phone and my eyes.

CHAPTER 37

I MADE SOME calls and found out they were keeping Perrine in a maximum-security protective custody unit back at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, around the corner from the courthouse.

It was about two in the afternoon, after a lot of favor collecting, when I was allowed to conduct an interview with Perrine concerning the murdered judge.

In an interview room on the second floor, with a one-way mirror along one wall, we sat on plastic chairs on opposite sides of a table. As the guards brought him in, Perrine didn’t look concerned in the slightest about the bloodbath at the courthouse. In fact, he looked happy and at ease, as relaxed as a man who’d just gotten his hair cut.

“You wish to speak with me, Detective?” Perrine said in his weird, accented English as he was handcuffed to the cinder-block wall.

The guard left and closed the door.

“It’s so nice to have a visitor. What shall we talk about?” Perrine said, crossing his legs and leaning back.

“I don’t know. The usual,” I said. “Sports, the weather, your upcoming lethal injection.”

Perrine laughed.

“You think I ordered this hit of the judge, yes?” he said, rocking his chair back and forth. “But you are wrong. I had nothing to do with it. Some men get excited, and they do things. It is the same with a beautiful woman. People fight over her. Is she to blame if someone is hurt?”

“Interesting analogy,” I said, raising an eyebrow. “Since you’re such an insightful guy, maybe you could shed a little light on that skull chick you guys keep drawing on yourselves. She’s what? A cartoon? Like SpongeBob SquarePants?”

He looked at me hard, with a funny smile on his face.

“I would not take La Santa Muerte, or, more properly La Santisima Muerte, so lightly, my friend. Some say the old gods of Mexico are still alive. Who is anyone to dispute it? La Santisima Muerte may seem repulsive to your stale, modern mind, but she and her message and her protections are sound. Death is the only truth in life. Even Catholics believe this.”