M Sellars: All acts of pleasure

“What’s even worse is that once again there was an overwhelming sense of female sexual arousal permeating the room. Almost to the point of being stifling-for me anyway. It was then that I was absolutely positive the killer was a woman and that she had literally gotten off on torturing this man to death.”

“You felt it deeply, didn’t you, Rowan?” Helen asked.

The tenor of her question told me she already knew the answer, but I gave it to her anyway. “Yeah. From both sides of the fence, actually.”

I paused and absently attempted a drag on my cigar only to find that it had gone out once again. Instead of relighting it, I simply fiddled with the band, twisting it in an endless circle.

“Anyhow,” I continued. “Felicity had a meeting with a client that morning, so she didn’t go to that crime scene with me. But, while I was standing there talking to Ben, she just suddenly showed up. The problem was, it wasn’t really her. She was acting haughty and abusive to everyone, calling herself Miranda, and had even started speaking with a heavy Southern drawl. That’s about the time I started doing the math and figured out she was being possessed by a Lwa.”

“Low-ahh?”

“Kind of a high ranking ancestral spirit in Voodoo culture. They are more or less the pantheon of Gods and Goddesses that Vodoun practitioners worship. During rituals they will invite Lwa into their bodies. They call it being ridden, and the practitioner is then called the horse for the particular spirit. That’s basically how the ancestors speak to them from the afterlife.

“The thing is, though, Lwa aren’t evil beings that run about torturing and killing. In a rudimentary sense they are messengers. Because of that, I figured that this particular spirit wasn’t a generally accepted Lwa but instead had to be one that this person elevated to Godhood in her own mind.”

“Thank you for the primer. However, I still do not understand what this spirit has to do with Felicity? Why would it choose to possess her?”

“That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question, Helen. I’m not sure either, but I can tell you that Felicity was being ridden by someone or something who wasn’t particularly friendly, and that’s when the so-called incident occurred.

“In a nutshell, after physically assaulting me and managing to twist the situation such that it got me arrested instead of her, my wife disappeared. Well, actually while Ben was getting me out of jail, she went home and changed clothes.”

“That seems to be an odd thing to do.”

“Normally, I’d agree, but given where she was heading, it actually made a bizarre kind of sense. So, anyhow, Ben called Agent Mandalay and asked her to stop by our house just on the off chance that Felicity went there. When she arrived, Felicity was in fact still in the house, but things went south. Felicity-actually at that point, Miranda-assaulted Agent Mandalay, somehow managed to get the upper hand then took her weapon and really did disappear for a while.

“Obviously, we managed to find her but only after several hours. And, this is why the change of clothes-she went over to a fetish nightclub on the East side, picked up a guy, and took him back to a motel.”

Helen looked at me, a note of concern in her face. “But, surely she did not kill him, did she?”

I shook my head. “No. The Lwa jumped ship before she got that far. She did manage to do a serious number on him with her high heels, though. Literally trampled him until he was bloody and unconscious.”

“Do you have any idea why the possession ended so suddenly?”

“Actually, that’s typical for a Lwa possession. They pop in and pop out. Although, I don’t have an answer for why this one didn’t complete its task before it left. I suppose it could be because taking over Felicity had to be some kind of accidental collateral possession-because she doesn’t practice Voodoo and certainly didn’t consciously invite it in, that I’m aware of.

“In fact, prior to showing up at the Hobbes crime scene, she would tend to fight it whenever she would realize an attack was happening. Of course, that was before I had a handle on what it actually was, so I wasn’t much help in that department. Anyway, I suspect she was still trying to fight it to some extent even then, so I guess it was kind of like a host rejecting a transplant or something of that sort. But, that’s only a pet theory. Either way, I’m just glad she didn’t kill the guy.”

“How serious did his injuries turn out to be?”

“She hurt him pretty bad,” I replied. “He spent a day in the hospital, which I’m sure I’ll end up getting a bill for. But, when the cops talked to him, he refused to press charges against her. Seems he actually liked getting stomped on by her so much he wants to ‘submit to Mistress Miranda’ again. He somehow even managed to make the connection between Felicity and the pseudonym. Probably from the cops would be my guess since he was actually being urged to press charges. Anyhow, he got her business number and has called several times.”

“I am sure that is disconcerting for Felicity.”

“Yeah. She was a bit freaked out at first. After the fifth or sixth time though, she just switched on a whole alpha female persona and ordered him to stop calling her. That seemed to do the trick, for now at least.”

“Obviously you think he will call again.”

“He seemed pretty fixated on her, so, no, I’m not going to rule it out.”

“Does this bother you?”

“Well yeah, stalkers are not something you take lightly. And, even if he isn’t dangerous it’s just plain annoying.”

“No, Rowan. What I mean is are you jealous?”

I thought about that for a moment. I hadn’t really considered jealousy as a possibility, consciously anyway, so I weighed it carefully before responding.

“I don’t know, to be honest. I don’t think I am. I mean, she was being ridden by a Lwa when the encounter happened, so it’s not like she was cheating on me. However, she did tell me that when she snapped back to reality, she was so aroused that she didn’t exactly stop right away.”

“And, naturally, that concerns you,” she remarked.

“Maybe a little. But, the sudden exit of a Lwa tends to leave the horse disoriented. Even if she thinks she knew what she was doing, she didn’t really know what she was doing. Does that make sense?”

“Of course. However, that was not the aspect of jealousy I was asking about.”

“Okay, so why else would I be jealous?’

“Because, in a sense this man is fulfilling your wife’s sexual fantasies and you are not.”

“Feeling a little direct today, Helen?”

“Am I not always direct?”

“Yeah, I suppose you are. For the most part.”

“So?”

“So, I really haven’t given it that much thought.”

“Yes, Rowan, you have.”

“Okay, so yeah. I have.”

“And?”

“And, yeah,” I shrugged. “Maybe I am a little jealous.”

“Have you spoken to Felicity about it?”

“No.”

“You need to.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. I will when things calm down a bit.”

“Good,” she offered with a nod then extracted a fresh cigarette and lit it before changing the subject. “So, what about Constance? Is she well? She seemed to be fine when she attended the funeral service with Benjamin.”

I hadn’t even given thought to calling Agent Mandalay, Constance, when I had spoken of her earlier, even though we certainly knew one another well enough. I suppose I was so caught up in the story that the informality hadn’t had a chance to creep in. Of course, it stood to reason that Helen would use her first name since the petite federal agent had been in an on-again, off-again relationship with her brother for more than a year.