87 - The Case of the Mandrake Root

"Fertility," Roberta said, as she held a candle in both hands. "Reminds me of a strange case I had. Unusual. Detective Oldman called me in during the investigation. I call it

THE CASE OF THE MANDRAKE ROOT

The bloodstained mattress was the centerpiece of the **** scene. The bodies had been removed, and the mattress hung half off the boxspring. The smell remained, heady and cloying, and I held a perfumed handkerchief to my nose. Behind me, Detective Oldman narrated the details of the case.

"...neighbors reported shouting, then screams, and finally gunshots. Patrol car came on the scene and found Penny Richardson, 29, screaming and pinned underneath the body of Gerald "Jerry" Weiss, 38. The body of her husband, Richard "Dickie" Richardson III, 36, over here. Bullets from his body match the gun in Penny's hand; the gun is registered to Mr. Richardson and was in a holster behind the headboard. Weiss died from blood loss, one of the wounds on his back nicked his aorta. Mr. Richardson's prints on the scissors," he said. "But the three bullets in his head at point-blank range were fired from the same gun."

I was looking under the overhanging mattress. There was something wedged there, dry and brown.

"When did Mrs. Richardson find out she was pregnant?" I asked.

Oldman paused.

"How the fuck did you know that?"

With gloves on, I pulled the small brown thing out. It was small brown root with five forks, in vaguely humanoid shape. The two "legs" were twined together.

"Get with child a mandrake root," I quoted. "It's an old charm, to treat infertility."

"Huh," Oldman grunted. "Anyway, the reason we called you in is...ah...Mrs. Richardson's statement. She claimed her husband was dead before he stabbed Weiss, and that Weiss continued to, uh, perform for several minutes, and she shot him in self-defense because he wasn't wearing a condom. Still waiting for the coroner's report on Weiss, but the time of **** estimate for Mr. Richardson was six hours before she shot him."

I took the mandrake root to a woman I know. Calling her a witch is, I think, a misclassification. Rootworker. She doesn't dress in black, except for funerals, and has nothing to do with covens or Wicca. Yet she has long helped members of the Black and white communities with simples, cures, and charms.

"Yes. I remember this one. I should not have sold it to Dickie," she admitted, wrinkled hands carefully folded on her kitchen table. "He said his wife was having trouble conceiving. That she wanted a child so very badly. That was not true. She had come to me, separately, for bitter tea, you see. This woman, she was very vain of her body, her figure. Did not want a baby. Yet he offered me two thousand dollars for a guarantee, so...so I sold him the root."

The Richardsons' lawyers were also very forthcoming. They were a husband and wife, Harry Betram and Miriam Wolff, but they kept their practices separate.

"Dickie approached me for the divorce," Betram admitted. "He wanted to leave her with nothing, but he needed ironclad proof of infidelity. There was a pre-nup involved. A very good one."

"I wrote it," Wolff said. "Basically, she'd need to have a child that clearly wasn't his. As neither Richard or Penny expressed any intention of ever having children, that didn't seem like a major problem at the time of the marriage."

We stopped at the diner for coffee and eggs.

"So," Oldman summarized. "Penny is having an affair with Weiss. Dickie finds out. Wants a divorce. Buys the mandrake so she gets pregnant. So how does that lead to ****?"

Mrs. Richardson wouldn't speak to Oldman. But she spoke to me, when I showed her the mandrake root. They had her in a straitjacket, in a padded cell. Her eyes were crazed, and she paced back and forth.

"Bastard," she muttered. "Utter asshole. We had a good thing. Sure, I fucked Weiss. Why not? I was careful. Took my pills, wore condoms. Even when there was a little accident, I took care of it. Not like the son of a bitch wanted kids anyway. He didn't have to fucking hoodoo me."

"Penny," I said. "I'm not with the police department. Nothing you say here is admissible in court. I just want to know. How did your husband die? What animated Weiss' corpse?"

For a moment, her jaw worked. She was a small woman, high-strung. Looked very badly like she wanted a cigarette, not that she could have any in her condition.

"It was them," she whispered. "I've always been a little sensitive, you know? And each time I...when I missed a period, and I went to get the bitter tea...I could feel them hover over my shoulder. Except it was stronger now. Maybe it was the mandrake root, silly as it sounds. I could feel them hovering around me."

She shuddered, then seemed to come around once more.

"Jerry didn't want kids any more than I did. We had a good thing going; he was coming over for a visit. Except Dickie got home early. I came in and found Dickie poking holes in his condoms. We started shouting at each other. It wasn't even a fight, it was just a shoving match, and Dickie went down the wrong way, hit his head. Just an accident, right? But think of how it would look! So I rolled him up in a tarp, stuck him in the garage, bleached the kitchen. I would have my little fun with Jerry and then dispose of the body. No problem."

Her face twitched.

"Except we're right in the middle of it, Jerry's riding me hard and fast and deep, and he whispers something like 'I think the condom broke,' and I'm screaming at him to pull out, I don't want a baby, then over his shoulder I see Dickie! Standing there with his head caved in, and he's still got the scissors and he...he starts to stab Jerry..."

Penny shook uncontrollably, shoulders straining in the straitjacket.

"I got the gun from behind the headboard. Put a couple bullets in him, and he goes down. Except I can feel them. They were there, hovering all around, and Jerry's still humping away on top of me, rock hard, even though his face has gone idiot slack, and I'm telling him to stop, his fat fucking cock pistoning in and out of me, ready to cream and...and then I emptied the revolver in his brains. The fucker still came in me! I could feel that dead weight pin me down as his dick throbbed. I was trapped underneath him for four hours, until someone heard me scream for help."

She was almost screaming now, thighs pressed hard together.

"You see? It was them! The ghosts! They want to be born! There was nothing I could fucking do. It was self-defense. I didn't want...I don't want...my fucking belly and tits to bloat up, you don't understand, I saw my mother, and she was always pregnant, this fucking hump of lard, just a stupid slut that couldn't keep her legs closed or remember her pill, and I spent so much of my life growing up watching younger siblings and I never wanted that ever, ever..."

I nodded. Then, perhaps, I did something cruel. I took out the mandrake root and slipped it into her straitjacket. She began to scream and rave. The orderly had to come in and sedate her.

"Octuplets," Roberta said. "You may think what I did was cruel, but ultimately I saved her life. They had the evidence to convict her of two murders. Instead, she was deemed not guilty by reason of insanity. Gave birth while incarcerated. There was a scandal, later, one of the orderlies took advantage of her, and she got pregnant again...but that's another story."

She blew out the candle. The world was a dark place, and it grew darker.