Homemade Sin (25 page)

“Now what's he doing?” the woman said, before polishing off her beer and reaching for another. “He won already, first time I ever seen Rebel Buford win a race, but it looks like he's still racing.”

“Oh shit, we gotta tell him to stop,” Dee Dee said to Cutter, remembering the dog.

“Stop racing Rebel!” Dee Dee shouted, but the roar of the car engines drowned out her directive.

“Stop! Stop!” she yelled as Rebel's car streaked into the first turn. Continuing to accelerate, the car missed the turn by inches, slammed into the wall and burst into flames.

“Get out of the car Rebel!” screamed Dee Dee. “Run!”

In moments the flames found the fuel tank and the car exploded into a ball of fire sending bits of metal, rubber and fiberglass raining down on the track. Dee Dee saw Rebel emerge from the inferno covered in flames and walk mechanically toward the infield.

“Oh my God!” shouted Dee Dee. “He's on fire!”

“Why isn't he rolling on the ground, putting the fire out?” shrieked the big-haired woman.

At that moment a team of men in white, flame-resistant jumpsuits ran up to Rebel and began spraying him with fire extinguishers. Rebel never broke stride as he lurched toward the infield.

“I don't think he's gonna survive that,” the woman said.

“Shit!” Dee Dee shouted. “There goes my wedding in the infield.”

“Well, let's go back to St. Pete and get our winnings,” Cutter said.

Cutter and Dee Dee traveled west on Route 4 in silence for the first hour. Cutter finally broke the silence. “Do you think he's dead?”

“He's gotta be. He was covered in fire, nobody could survive that.”

“We killed him,” Cutter said. “If we hadn't made him a zombie he wouldn't have crashed and died. We are murderers.”

“No, we're not. He was just a racer who missed a turn, that's it, so forget about it. What are you going to do with your winnings?” Dee Dee changed the subject.

“I'm going to deposit all of it in Hussey's account. It will almost pay her back all of her money I lost at poker. I just have to pick a good time to tell her about it. This is really going to surprise her.”

Deputy Ignatius Jones ran his hand across his face. He was staring at a forensic report from the vet's office on the toxin found in the cats' brains. His eyes drifted to the other report on his desk, a medical report from Daytona General Hospital. “This can't be right,” he muttered under his breath as he held up one report in each hand and compared the two. Carrying the medical report he knocked on the sheriff's office door. “What is this?” he said waving the report at the sheriff.

“We got a request from Daytona PD to do a follow up on the crash at the Daytona 500,” said the sheriff. “Remember that NASCAR driver who crashed a couple of days ago at Daytona. He's banged up pretty bad but they think he'll live. The doctors found some weird toxins in his blood and some other strange things, things they couldn't identify, so they sent out a general information request to all police and sheriffs' departments to see if anybody had ever found anything similar. The toxin report matched what the vet turned up on those dead kitties so I sent them the autopsy reports. It turns out that the driver had stayed at the Santeria Hotel here in St. Pete Beach, right before the race, so the Daytona PD figured it was worth a look. They asked me to do a little digging at the hotel, so I'm assigning the digging to you. Poke around the hotel, interview some folks. They don't think there's any real connection but we need to cover all the bases.”

Jones wondered if the toxins in the race car driver's system had anything to do with the crazy cat he had found in the alley behind the Santeria. “Why is Daytona PD interested in a NASCAR accident? Do they think somebody messed with the car?”

“Too early to tell but I've set up a conference call with the lab guy at Daytona General. His report is pretty strange. Go out to the Santeria and check it out. And don't bring me a report that says a pussy cat poisoned him, or a chipmunk.” The sheriff checked at his watch. “Have a seat, it's time to talk to the lab guy,” he said as he punched in the numbers on his phone.

“Frank East,” said a voice on the line. From the background noise Jones could tell that both parties were on speaker phone.

“I read your report,” said the sheriff into the phone speaker, “but I don't understand it. You said Buford was technically dead when his car blew up? Was he dead or alive?”

Jones was straining from his chair across the sheriff's desk to hear the lab technician's voice.

“The report didn't say he was dead exactly,” the lab technician said. “He was in a kind of walking coma, so he was undead.”

“Undead?” the sheriff said.

“Well, there's dead, semi-dead and undead,” Frank said. “Dead is permanent, the spirit has left the body and moved on to a different plane; dead folks are basically spiritually bereft. Then there's semi-dead, that would be spiritually confused … the spirit has left the body but hasn't moved on; that would be your ghosts, poltergeists and such. Finally, there is undead. This is spiritually challenged. The spirit is still in the body but is no longer in charge. That would be your coma patients, zombies, and golfers. This guy is undead, there was evidence that his brain wasn't functioning normally, like parts of his brain were numb. The guy wasn't thinking, he was functioning on auto-pilot.”

“How could he win Daytona without thinking? I mean, doesn't it takes some thinking to win a race?” said the sheriff.

“Like I said,” Frank said, “he was functioning on autopilot, racing came naturally to him, so he could do it without thinking by sheer muscle memory. It's called being unconsciously conscious.”

“Unconsciously conscious?” Jones said.

“Yeah, there are different states of consciousness. First there is unconsciously unconscious: say you are a kid and you watch your parents driving a car, you have no idea how to do it yourself, but you don't know how much you don't know. Then there is consciously unconscious: as you get older, you're more aware of how your parents turn the key in the ignition, put the car in gear, turn the steering wheel, step on the gas, and now you know how it's possible for you to drive, you just haven't done it and you're aware there's more to it. You know that you don't know. Then there's consciously conscious. You take Driver's Ed in school and you learn how to drive on the street. You are acutely aware of every turn of the wheel. You hit the brake too hard or too often. You know that you know and are very aware of doing it. The last stage is being unconsciously conscious. You've been driving for years, and one day you realize you don't remember the last thirty miles. Your mind was focused on something else. You drive by rote. It's a form of self-hypnosis. That is how it was with Mr. Buford, except parts of his mind were actually non-functioning. He was organically unconsciously conscious and physically undead when he won that race. He'd been that way for a couple of days.”

“Do you know what caused parts of his brain not to function?” Jones said.

“I found traces of tetrodotoxin in his system, it's a neurotoxin. He was poisoned.”

“Would that explain the dead parts of the brain?” said the sheriff.

“Not dead,” corrected Frank, “just numb and a little atrophied. Tetrodotoxin slows down the metabolism, heart rate, lung function, shuts off oxygen to the brain. It destroys the autonomic parts of the brain – but not the conscious parts – the seat of personality, and the source of psychological and neurological disorders. It causes permanent brain damage. We found some other unusual compounds in his blood, some organic material we haven't been able to identify. It looks to be some compound comprised mostly of vulture DNA and a fungus nobody has ever seen before, some kind of hallucinogen. It looks like someone poisoned him with tetrodotoxin; just enough to switch off his consciousness, then re-stimulated the brain with this compound so he was walking around like a zombie.”

“The man was a zombie?” Jones said. “I've seen zombies before, back in New Orleans. They walk around in a daze all the time. It's scary as hell when you bump into one of those living dead people in a dark alley at night.”

The sheriff squinted at Jones.

“Yep,” Frank said, “It's not exactly a technical term, but I'd say the man was a zombie.”

The sheriff stared at the telephone. “Frank, what are you talking about? There are no such things as zombies.”

“Call it whatever you want,” Frank said. “The man's brain was turned off and he was technically dead but that strange compound stimulated his brain enough that he could still walk around, drive race cars, function almost normally. The man was undead. There is a medical explanation for it, but there is no real medical term. The closest terminology I can use to describe it is that somebody turned the man into a zombie.”

“Why would someone turn him into a zombie?” the sheriff said.

“Voodoo,” Jones said, “the only person who can make a zombie is a voodun. Someone at the Santeria Hotel is a genuine voodun and I'll lay you odds it ain't that pussy cat.”

“What did you break this time?” Mama called out from her bed to Bella Donna. Mama pulled up the sheets to her neck and held the voodoo doll in front of her face. As she looked at the little stitches that cinched the doll's eyes closed she heard another loud crash in the kitchen.

“Just that new glass pitcher, Mama,” Bella said.

“God.” Mama Wati sighed and dropped the voodoo doll on the bedcovers. “That girl is one long train wreck.”

“Bella,” Mama called out. “Bring me some aspirin, I'm feeling poorly.”

“I know, it was something you ate,” Bella said, appearing at the foot of Mama's bed.

“I ain't surprised, the way you cook, but I feel worse than usual this time.”

Bella cocked her head and listened intently. She heard the faint sound of fingernails running across tightly stretched fabric, like a stuffed doll. “It wasn't what I cooked, or how I cooked it. It was what I put in it.” Bella smiled. “Might be the hemlock I put in your oatmeal this morning.”

“Hemlock!” Mama Wati sat bolt upright in bed. Immediately the room became blurry and she fell back down on the pillow. “You poisoned me? Why?”

Bella heard the fabric scrape again and this time felt the scrape of a fingernail across her face. Mama had to be holding the doll. “I'm tired of being your servant,” Bella said, flatly. “You took me on to be your apprentice, then I started going blind and you made me your maid. Then you went and gave the voodoo book you promised me to Hussey. That book should have been mine. I was supposed to take your place as the voodun of Cassandra when you die.”

“But you're blind, girl. It's tough to practice voodoo when you're blind. I took you to all the best specialists in Orlando. They said nothing could be done.”

“Maybe there wasn't anything they could do but that doesn't mean there isn't something that can be done.” Bella felt around the bed, found the doll in Mama Wati's lap and snatched from her hands.

“Give that back, it's mine!” Mama shouted, grabbing for the doll.

Bella passed her hand over the doll until she found the doll's face. Her fingernail came to rest on one of the stitches on the left eye; she dug her nail under the stitch and snapped the thread, she pulled and the stitch came free.

Slowly Bella's vision returned to her left eye, first, shades of light and shadows, then blurred images. In seconds she could see perfectly from that eye. She sliced a stitch open on the right eye and unlaced the crisscrossed threads; slowly her sight returned to her right eye. She turned to Mama Wati. “Why?” she asked. “Why did you make me blind? And why did you give the conjure book you promised me to Hussey?”

“I knew you were evil, child,” Mama said. “Soon after I took you in to be my apprentice I could see you would only use the power for your own self gain. I could see the seeds of evil in your soul. I couldn't pass on that kind of power to someone like you and you already knew enough to be dangerous, so I gave the book to Hussey. You ain't Hussey, and you ain't never going to be. I had to protect the world from you, so I made this doll and stitched one stitch at a time over the eyes until you slowly went blind. I knew if you were blind you wouldn't leave here. How did you find out?”

“Back in New Orleans I did a little voodoo too. I've cast some spells here and there and I know what voodoo feels like. And this blindness of mine felt more like a conjure than a natural malady.”

Bella left the room briefly and returned with a paper shopping bag. She crossed to the shelves in Mama's room and started selecting potions and powders and putting them in the bag. Behind a row of potions for attracting money, Bella came upon a metal cash box. “What do we have here?” she whispered as she flipped the lid open. Inside Bella found stacks of ten- and twenty-dollar bills. “I guess the voodoo business pays OK,” Bella said as she stuffed the wads of cash into the bag