Haiti Noir

Duermen en mi jardín
las blancas azucenas, los nardos y las rosas…

Inspector Zagribay’s mind began racing as he drove down the bumpy road. He was getting close, he was sure of it. He had managed to gather almost all the pieces of the puzzle. Another one or two pieces-which his informer and hopefully a search warrant would soon provide-and the case would be closed. When his boss had entrusted him with the assignment, he never would have thought a story of humans transformed into cattle would take him so far. To tell the truth, neither would his boss, who knew his quixotic nature and gave him only minor jobs. But as the weeks went by, the case kept expanding. Recently, he had reached the stage of “friendly” warnings. Which proved that he was on to something big. All those warnings came from people who claimed to wish him well: his boss, colleagues at the office, his childhood friend Fanfan (who he hadn’t even told anything to). Even that Maria Luz, an NGO executive he’d met at the Canadian embassy, thought she should warn him too. Far from dissuading him, all this advice had actually stimulated him. It would be such a waste to stop when things looked so good. Stopping meant being subjected to his colleagues’ sarcasm and the neighborhood kids taunting him. Hey Zagribay, how about solving the mystery of that radio journalist Jean Dominique’s murder? Also, at some point you had to show people that there was justice in this damned country. That nobody could come here and just do whatever, whenever. As if it were a jungle.

The inspector remembered exactly when the case had started to turn into something serious and go way beyond him and his boss. It was a month and half ago. He was just emerging from his sleep when his cell rang. It was close to five a.m. The everpresent crowing of roosters, the voices of early risers mixed with the sounds of a few cars backfiring, filled the air. As it did every day, the early-morning smell of coffee had jumped over the fence to tickle his nostrils. That smell was enough to justify his homecoming. The inspector stretched out his arm, groped toward the nightstand. His hand finally reached the phone. He was about to give the intruder a piece of his mind when his eyes, still foggy with sleep, recognized the number on the screen. He didn’t even have time to say hello.

His boss was screaming, beside himself. Zagribay was to go straight to the entrance of Cité Soleil. A seventh corpse in a state of interrupted metamorphosis in his sector. One or two, okay. A human being’s life is of little importance in this screwed-up country, but seven, that was really too much. The chief of police, a man very popular with the media, must have been afraid of losing his job and was waking him up in the middle of the night to box his ears. The problem had been brought up the day before at the cabinet meeting, yelled the chief. The president himself was upset about it. The story had already traveled around the globe, thanks to YouTube: in Haiti, “Christians” were being turned into cattle before being sacrificed during rituals honoring bloodthirsty gods from Africa. And it was easy to infer from this that Haitians were all cattle. The minister of the interior shared the president’s indignation. He had promised that the mystery would be quickly solved and the murderer arrested. And there! Just this morning he had another mutant dead body on his hands. Zagribay had better move his ass instead of wasting the government’s money listening to his maricón music. The boss was known as being someone who didn’t mince words. He wanted results. As soon as possible.

It’s easy to yell now, Zagribay was telling himself as he got up. If they’d asked for his services before, we wouldn’t be where we are now. His chances of finding useful clues would have been greater, especially as the murderer always proceeded the same way. Each time, the body was crushed as if by a steamroller, then burnt to such a point that it was impossible to identify its gender. It surely came from the same brain or criminal organization. But there you are, the bosses had to wait to have three corpses on their hands to take him on board. No wonder the bastard kept doing his grisly job. What were they thinking? That he could perform miracles?