Haiti Noir

A small crowd told him he had reached the crime scene. A swarm of chattering people was gathered around the corpse planted in the middle of the intersection. A TV camera and three journalists from a few of the many radio stations of the capital were already there. Who had informed them? He heard a witness answer the question of a journalist with another question that was more a statement than a question. “When you see something like this, human beings turned into animals, wouldn’t you say that the reign of Christ is near?” And the guy added: “It is indeed an individual who was being transformed into an ox, but the criminal’s dirty work must have been interrupted by someone showing up unexpectedly.” He pointed. “Look here, you can see that the feet haven’t been completely transformed into hoofs. Same for the toes there…”

Actually, since the discovery of these strange corpses, the rumor that a bòkò had lost a bunch of zombies he had started to turn into cattle and was chasing them through the streets of the capital to dispose of them had spread very quickly. And then people started praying, reciting psalms and singing hymns even more fervently than in the Protestant churches that were proliferating in the country, almost as fast as the NGOs.

Haitians believe in all kinds of crap, Zagribay said to himself. To me, there’s only one truth. What my eyes didn’t see and my hands didn’t touch does not exist.

Meanwhile, he asked the two policemen on duty to clear out the chicken coop. So far, the two cops had confined themselves to the role of amused onlookers, but they were happy to carry out the orders. The journalists grumbled that this was a democracy and they had the right to do their job.

“To hell with your democracy,” said the youngest cop. “Go on, scat!”

The small crowd finally dispersed and the inspector started to examine the corpse. The body, as expected, was crushed as if a steamroller or a truck weighing several tons had rumbled over it. Impossible to identify its gender. No trace of blood: the dead person had been carbonized. The inspector made a discovery nonetheless: no gas stain on the ground. Yet the body reeked of gas. He had obviously been brought from somewhere else. No shred of carbonized flesh around either. No matches, no lighter, not even a cigarette butt left on the premises. Absolutely nothing. For what kind of audience were they putting on this kind of show? wondered Zagribay. If he could answer this question, he was certain he would get closer to the murderers or to those behind the murders.

The inspector lingered there for another hour. Just to be on the safe side, he questioned some residents of the slum in the vain hope that someone might provide information that would put him on the right track. But all he got was a jumble of contradictory statements. The blazing sun put an end to the investigation. He asked the policemen to take the necessary steps to dispose of the dead body, climbed back in his old Toyota which acted out a little before starting, and drove off, his mind tormented by a number of questions. He had hardly gone three hundred yards when he made a U-turn right in the middle of the street, enraging some other drivers. He had the distinct feeling of having seen the “witness” questioned by the journalist somewhere before. But when he was back on the scene, the man had already vanished and no one knew where he lived or where he could be reached.

Five minutes later, he remembered. He’d seen that “witness” in one of the news stories he had watched when he started working on the case. He was ready to bet a month’s pay on this. From behind the steering wheel of his car-he was stuck in a huge traffic jam with a broken air conditioner and no siren to weave his way out-he made a call to a journalist friend. The journalist had several stories about the case of the corpses changed into cattle but happened to be working on an assignment just outside the city and couldn’t free himself at that moment. Zagribay explained that it was extremely urgent. The journalist promised to have the stories to him on DVD by the middle of the afternoon. Which turned out to be convenient, as the inspector also had to attend a reception at the Canadian embassy for the national holiday of the neighboring country. He finally had something that looked like the beginning of a lead. He slipped the Ibrahim Ferrer CD in the stereo and turned up the volume to cover the incessant honking.

Zagribay made a detour by the precinct and ran into his boss, who seemed in a better mood than in the morning. He was greeted with a “Hi, Messiah,” a nickname that emphasized his muckraking tendencies. He answered right back that it wasn’t his fault if corruption made him furious.