"Aren't all religions?" Noah asked, provoking Jill's Catholic ire. She cut him a look, but Frank said, "Darcy?"
He sat back from the report he was typing and measured his answer.
"It's a complicated question. There are a lot of permutations to consider."
"Permutations? Johnnie said mincingly to Noah.
His old partner snickered, "You ignorant bastard. You probably think that's a fruit going bad."
"Like what?" Frank asked.
"Like whether you're talking about simple hoodoo, or something more complex. Like voodoo."
"What's the fucking difference?" Johnnie said. "It's all just ignorant dirt-water bullshit anyway."
"Not really," Darcy drawled, his accent faint. "There's a big difference, and both of them can be very complex."
"How so?" Frank pressed, intrigued as always by the man's incongruities. Barrel-chested, bandy-legged, and thick-armed, he drove a Harley, chewed Skoal, and had more tats than most of the bangers he locked up. He kept his own counsel, never joined his colleagues for drinks after work, and rarely joined in conversation unless asked. Off-duty he wore diamond studs in his ear and biker leathers. He looked like a Hell's Angel who'd rather stomp someone in the face than talk to them, but when he opened his mouth a blind man would think he was talking to a tweed-wearing, pipe-smoking professor. The biker facade concealed a man with a sharp eye for details and anomalies at a crime scene, a keen understanding of criminal predilection, and, if the incident with the hidden .44 was true, an uncanny instinct.
Darcy picked up an empty Dr Pepper can. He squirted a thin stream of tobacco juice into it before answering, "Hoodoo's basically folk medicine. Surprisingly effective medicine. It's based on Old World healing principles and incorporates a large botanical pharmacopoeia while working on the same principles as faith healing. The root doctors—that's what we called them in Louisiana— they have some repute for wizardry, but they're not true mambos or priests like you'll find in voodoo. They can make concoctions and juju's for practically every domestic malaise you can think of: How to keep a husband from straying, how to get him to leave, how to come into money, how to get pregnant. You name the problem and I guarantee there's a root doctor somewhere that will know the right combination of herbs and powders to produce satisfaction."
Darcy's audience was attentive, so he continued.
"Now voodoo, that's actually a religion. I guess I should say an American bastardization of a religion. It developed in this country when Haitian slaves were introduced into Louisiana. It was based on the vodun religion that the slaves practiced back in Africa. Haiti was a Catholic island and the slaves there were all ostensibly converted to Catholicism. What actually happened, was that they syncretized their African gods with the Catholic saints. When the slaves were praying in front of an altar to Saint Barbara they were actually worshipping one of their old gods that had a lot of Saint Barbara's attributes. The Catholic masters looked on approvingly and the slaves practiced idolatry right under their noses.
"American slaves didn't have that opportunity. Except for French Louisiana, most slave owners practiced some variation of Protestantism, so the slaves didn't have the opportunity to co-opt their gods to the dominant religion. American slaves were forced to take their religious practices underground, and as they splintered off among the various slave holders, they lost touch with their priests and priestesses. They practiced secretly—what they could remember—but as their old beliefs faded they were be replaced by the prevailing religion of the area. The use of the traditional herbs and medicines—and their faith in them—that remained. That's what we call hoodoo."
"How the fuck do you know all this shit?" Johnnie interrupted. "They teach you this in Coon-Ass 101?"
Darcy ignored him and Frank appreciated that that was how he had decided to deal with Johnnie's juvenile animosity.
"You know anything about a Saint Barbara's Spiritual Church of the Seven Powers?" Frank asked.
Stroking his longer-than-regulation moustache, he mused, "I'm not sure. Spiritual churches are big in the South. They're hard to define. Kind of an amalgamation of southern Baptist, Pentecostal, and spiritism, all rolled into one complicated ball. They use seances to call down the dead, all in the name of Jesus. And the Church of the Seven Powers. To the best of my knowledge it's an offshoot of the Church of the Lukumi. That was the first officially recognized church of santeria in the United States."
"Santeria," Lewis interjected. "That's Cuban, right? That's what those sickos in Matamoros believed in."
Darcy said, "Yes, they were sickos all right, but they weren't practicing true santeria any more than Timothy McVeigh was practicing true Christianity. They took a basically benign theology and ran riot with it. They twisted it to their own sick ends. And yes, it's an island religion. Remember how I said Haiti was predominantly Catholic so the slaves were allowed to syncretize their African gods? The same thing happened in Cuba and throughout the Caribbean. Brazil too. That's how santeria and palo mayombe, candomble, all the Afro/Latino religions came into existence."
"So Mother Love-Jones is practicing santeria?”
"Well, I couldn't say for sure," Darcy drawled. "I'd say with a 'spiritual' in the name of her church she's probably incorporating some form of ancestor worship in her services, and with the Seven Powers and Saint Barbara tacked on, it sounds like some derivative of santeria, yes."
Jill spoke as if she'd tasted something bad. "Don't they sacrifice animals?"
Darcy nodded, "That was one of the obstacles in legalizing their church, yes."
"What kind of animals?" Lewis asked.
"Usually fowl. Sometimes a pig or a goat if they need to make a particularly potent offering."
"Larger the sacrifice, the greater their power?" Frank asked.
"Something like that, yes. The animals are usually drawn over the supplicant's body to draw out whatever sickness or problem is plaguing him. The theory is the animal will absorb the trouble and then it's killed and offered to whichever god they're propitiating. And different gods have different preferences."
"What about people?" Noah asked. "They ever sacrifice people?"
Darcy spit into his can and shook his head.
"Only in Hollywood."
"And Matamoros," Jill added.
Following Noah's line of thought, Frank asked, "How do they kill the animals?"
All the detectives were silent while Darcy considered Frank's question. Holding her blue eyes with his own, he finally answered, "They slit their throats and bleed them. Then they offer the blood to the gods."
The squad was silent until Jill said, "That's it. I'm going home."
Jerking the sports coat off the back of his chair, Johnnie said, "I'm right behind you."
Frank looked at Lewis. The rookie hung her head and muttered, "Shit."
Noah cackled and clapped her on the back. "Better get some garlic and wooden stakes, partner."
"No, you need silver bullets," Johnnie said. "Or maybe a priest, like in The Exorcist."
Frank shot her rumpled detective a look. He was blithely ignorant, but the skin on Frank's arms rose as she pictured Father Merrin in front of his stone demon.
Johnnie went on, "Isn't that right, Swamp Boy? Isn't that what she needs? Or maybe one of those powders ya'll concoct out of snake skin and gator teeth."
Darcy didn't even bother looking up. Johnnie bent his big frame over the smaller detective.
"I'm talkin' to you, boy."
Darcy put his pen down, considering the face inches above his.