One Blood (6 page)

“
He killed my mother. In a car accident when I was twelve. Tried to say it was some kind of accident, but I know he’s happy she’s dead…”

* * * * *

After his mother’s funeral, Randy was often dragged to meetings his father had with a group of men that Joseph referred to as his brethren. Even at the age of twelve, Randy was well aware of what his father and his friends did to pass the time. After getting drunk, they’d pull out their white robes and hoods and head into North Lake City to “maintain the order of things,” as Joseph liked to call it. Randy once asked his father why they had to patrol the area if that was the police’s job.

Joseph snorted laughter and replied, “Look around the room, son. The police are right here. We just wear different uniforms at night.”

One such night, the brethren were drinking heavily, their pores oozing the rotting oak aroma of Kentucky’s finest bourbon. Joseph, three sheets to the wind, began recounting the accident that took his mother’s life, looking Randy right in the eyes while doing so, as if daring his son to shut him up.

According to Joseph, he and Rita were returning to Lake City from Shreveport on US-151, just outside of Deridder, when a stupid black child chased a ball or something into the middle of the highway, right into their path.

“
When I saw that niglet, I had a mind to do one thing and one thing only.”

“
What was that, Joe?” the brethren asked as one.

“
To jam down on the gas and run ‘im down!”

The brethren howled like hyenas before the kill.

“
But then my stupid cunt of a wife grabbed the wheel and instead of hittin’ that niglet we hit a ditch. Well…I hit the ditch. Poor Rita flew out the windshield like a witch on a broomstick! Ha! Good riddance, I say.”

* * * * *

“
It was supposed to be me,” Randy whispered to Madame Deveaux. “It’s my fault she’s dead.”

“
How is it your fault?” Madame Deveaux asked.

“
On trips, I was the navigator, so I always got to sit up front with my father. But I was sick this time and couldn’t go, and she died because of it…”

* * * * *

Randy began two different lives in the wake of his mother’s death.

In public, he played the part of the grieving only son of the affluent businessman. He attended school, studied hard, and hung out with friends. But he never shed a tear. That would have brought on a severe beating from Joseph for certain.

In private, he was in agony. He didn’t sleep, eat, or pray. His brain was on a never-ending doom loop. Before long, he fell apart like a long buried skeleton.

One day, while desperately searching for some way, any way, to relieve himself of the crushing grief, guilt, fear, and shame, he took a steak knife in one unstable hand. Before he knew what he was doing, he slashed his upper forearm in a swift motion, reminiscent of a violinist with a bow. After nearly fainting from the sight of his own blood bubbling up to the surface of his pale skin like lava, the sensation of vertigo was quickly replaced by a surge of adrenaline and release.

Eventually, he graduated to butcher knives and long precise cuts to his upper thighs. He even grew accustomed to the additional sting from the sour-smelling vinegar he used to cauterize his self-inflicted wounds. Nothing compared to the merger of pain and exuberance he experienced whenever he plunged a knife into his flesh.

* * * * *

“
So you wish to curse your father to punish him for killing your mother, correct?” Madame Deveaux recapped.

He nodded.

“
Why a curse?” Madame Deveaux asked after a moment’s reflection. “Are you afraid to get your hands bloody?”

Randy stared at her over the shimmering globe. “No. I’m not afraid. But there is a certain symmetry to doing it this way. You interrupted me before I could finish my story…”

* * * * *

One afternoon after the cutting started, Randy was wandering deep in the stacks of the Lake City Public Library, planning more self-inflicted incisions, when a book spine caught his attention. He pulled out the book called
The History of Magic
and cracked it open. Hope whispered to him from between the dusty pages.

He devoured the tome, chock-f of true stories about apparitions, divination, witchcraft, and spirit-rapping. Afterward, he became obsessed with all things occult, reading everything he could get his hands on. Most of the books dealt with the homegrown magic of Hoodoo and the religion of Voodoo. They described New Orleans as the epicenter of American magic.

Randy began daydreaming of one day possessing the power to bring his mother back from the dead. But those plans got derailed when their maid found his stash of bloody rags and damning books, prompting Joseph to ship him off to a boarding school in France.

While exiled, Randy had the opportunity to meet distant relatives and learn more about his origins. His father had always expressed extreme pride for their ancestor Luc Lafitte, a French buccaneer famous for many things, including the founding of their hometown, Lake City, in 1802. However, Randy quickly learned that his French kin didn’t share the same affection for Luc. To them, Luc and his direct descendants were decayed branches that had thankfully rotted off the family tree.

After weeks of searching the library of his boarding school for the French version of Luc’s story, Randy uncovered
Le Roi des Pirates
,
(The Pirate King)
, which described the beginnings of the Lafitte lineage in America. Apparently Luc had made his fortune hijacking Spanish ships in the Gulf of Mexico, eventually settling down in Lake City. The Lafitte’s had always been an opportunistic clan, and Luc possessed the foresight to open a French trading outpost in Lake City that became a strategic center for French military operations. He married the daughter of a French aristocrat who eventually gave him a daughter and two sons.

Luc’s life then became very unremarkable until his apparent suicide three days after his oldest child and only daughter, Melinda, threw herself from the roof of the Lafitte mansion on her eighteenth birthday. Randy combed through account after account of who was born to whom, who married who, and who died when. A dark trend emerged; Melinda’s suicide had started something.

The more he read, the more he became convinced that fate put this knowledge into his hands at the precise moment when he could appreciate its significance. It was as if his mother were reaching out to him from behind death’s curtain and pointing the way.

* * * * *

“
Today is my eighteenth birthday,” Randy concluded.

“
And you want your father to die three days from now, just like Luc Lafitte, am I right?” Madame Deveaux asked.

Randy nodded.

“
What if you’re wrong? What if the curse doesn’t work that way?”

Randy hadn’t considered this, but couldn’t let her know that. “Well…if it doesn’t work…I expect a full refund.”

Madame Deveaux laughed. “You really have no idea what you’re getting yourself into, do you?”

Randy suppressed the urge to lunge across the table and choke her laughs quiet. “Look, there are a hundred so-called fortune tellers in this town. Are you going to help me or not?”

Madame Deveaux straightened. At once, she appeared taller and more present. Randy felt her essence envelop him from all sides, even though she never moved.

“
I am no fortune teller, boy,” she said. “I am
mambo
…ahh, I see you know this word, yes?”

He nodded slowly. “So…you are a voodoo priestess?”

“
Yes. Now you know what and who you are dealing with. Do you still wish to proceed?”

“
Yea-yes,” he stammered.

“
Very well, Randy,” she replied after a moment. “Come back tomorrow afternoon and I will have everything you need.”

Plodding down the stairs, Randy couldn’t remember when he had told her his name.

“
Oh man, am I glad to see you!” Bill exclaimed as Randy stepped out of the building. “What the hell took you so long?”

Randy’s head buzzed. Madame Deveaux’s incense had done a number on him. “What do you mean? How long was I gone?”

“
Nearly two hours!”

That long?

“
Well? What did she say?” Bill asked.

“
She said that I should get rid of any and all chicken shit friends.”

“
Come on, man. What did she really say?”

In three days, Joseph is a dead man.

“
Ran? You with me buddy?”

Randy looked over at Bill. “I need a drink. Then I’ll tell you all about it.” Randy stared back at the sign – GOOD FORTUNES.

Am I really going to go through with this?

He visualized his mother’s kind face and felt his jaw muscles clench painfully. For the first time in years he felt the compulsion to bleed himself.

“
Okay, no problem,” Bill replied. “Hey, cheer up…it’s still your day for another coupla’ hours. Let’s make the most of it.”

Randy allowed Bill to wrap his arm around his shoulder and lead him back into the lights of the French Quarter.

* * * * *

Over the next three days, Randy followed Madame Deveaux’s instructions without exception. She told him that sometime after midnight on the third day, Joseph would do something completely out of character. That would be Randy’s cue that the curse was in effect. Just when he’d convinced himself that he’d been swindled, his father burst out of the front door of their hotel, a drunken, disheveled mess.

Randy suppressed his impulse to call the whole thing off and followed his father instead.

Joseph was clearly scared out of his mind. The stench of his fear hung in the air like a trail of breadcrumbs as Randy lagged behind him.

Before long, Joseph reached Jackson Square.

Randy found a spot where he could observe without being seen. He watched as his father knelt next to Andrew Jackson’s statue and placed a revolver in his mouth.

It’s working. He’s really going to do it.

Joseph looked up as if in prayer and a tall, black man emerged from the shadows.

Randy stood. This wasn’t part of the plan.

Joseph removed the revolver from his mouth at the sight of the black man and offered it to him.

Randy ran across the square.

Joseph sat in rapt attention as the black man spoke to him. Then the black man shoved the barrel of the weapon back into Joseph’s mouth and pulled the trigger.

Randy watched the back of his father’s head torn apart by the bullet. He stopped in the middle of the square like he was the one who’d been shot. Finally, he found his voice and screamed, “Stop right there!”

Randy broke into a run, but arrived at his father’s side too late.

The murderer was gone.

* * * * *

Chapter Seven

September 28, 2002

Saturday

Lake City, LA

Coral Lafitte shot straight up in the bed like she had a lever attached; Randy moaned loudly in his sleep beside her. Frightened and a bit peeved at having been awakened, Coral tried to shake Randy out of his nightmare—with no results. She hadn’t seen her normally stoic husband in this condition since before Kristopher died.

Thoughts of Kristopher brought her daughter’s image to the fore. Coral was desperate to speak to Karen. Karen was her baby, and she’d give anything to see her roll over and smile her father’s brilliant smile as she tried to retract her feet from her mother’s tickling. But her baby was in Cancun.
Cancun?
Coral was still amazed Randy actually permitted Karen to go so far away, on today of all days. Maybe he was learning some new tricks.

Randy was finally still. She reached for his cell phone and punched in Karen’s number. Karen would answer Randy’s call for sure.

Except she didn’t. The line went directly to voicemail, just like it did with the thirty or so calls she’d made over the last twelve hours.

Coral glared at her husband’s motionless form. Being married to Randy Lafitte was an exasperating existence. She was used to his controlling nature, but his behavior of late was just...strange. Not only had he refused to give her Karen’s hotel information (explaining they needed to “respect her privacy”), but he’d also left the house at 10:30 p.m. to go God knows where. He’d returned sometime after midnight without a word about where he’d been, leaving her in the dark, tossing and turning, unable to shake the feeling that something was very, very wrong.

Now her anxiety was back and worse than ever. To rid herself of the
Girls Gone Wild
commercials playing on repeat in her mind, she went to the bathroom to take a Xanax. Then she headed down the hall to the spiral staircase.