Black Magic Woman (18 page)

Morris grabbed Libby's arm. "Come on." They crossed the street, walking rapidly.

"Where are we going?" Libby asked.

"Anywhere there's lights and people, the more the better."

"Then let's take the next left, if it looks safe. That's the quickest way to the center of the Quarter."

Less than three minutes later they were on Bourbon Street, surrounded by music and neon and drunken tourists. Libby noticed that Morris was still clutching the empty jar. "Let me see that, will you?"

"What? Oh, sure. Here."

She looked at the label, gothic black letters printed over a green background. "St. Louis Cemetery Black Banishing Oil?"

Morris nodded, looking pleased with himself. "Yep. Guaranteed to confuse, frustrate, and repel your enemies, whoever they may be, living, dead, or undead."

"I thought all that stuff was just a shuck. You know, like rabbits' feet and four-leaf clovers."

Morris took the jar back and tossed it in a nearby trashcan. "What, you don't think rabbits' feet are lucky?"

"Weren't too lucky for the rabbit, were they?"

"Good point. Well, a lot of those voodoo charms and potions
are
worthless, but not all of them. Obviously."

"Obviously
is right. It's good you know what works and what doesn't."

"Most important thing is those zombies think it works."

"Is that what they were? I wondered."

They stepped into the street to avoid a group of fundamentalists who were handing out leaflets protesting against nude dancing in Bourbon Street bars. They would have done just as well to protest against the movement of the tides.

"Yeah, they were zombies, all right," Morris said. "The eyes are always a dead giveaway. So to speak."

"Wait a second," Libby said, frowning. "You picked that jar off the shelf
before
we ever saw what was waiting for us."

"Readiness is all, as somebody once said. Remember that stuff that Queen Esther rattled off to what's-her-name, Martha, when we first went into the back room?"

"Yes, vaguely."

"I don't really speak Creole, not well enough to carry on a conversation or anything, but I was able to pick the word for 'zombie' out of what she was saying. I didn't figure old Esther was dictating her Christmas list."

"She was lying to us, you know. About not knowing the current descendant of Sarah Carter."

"Yeah, I kind of tumbled to that, myself," Morris said. "But what the hell are we going to do about it?"

"As it happens," Libby told him, "I may have an idea."

"That's the one. I wasn't sure how much help it was going to be. Figured either the car or the plate had been stolen, but it looks like I was wrong, since the driver's license photo that they sent matches up pretty well with the guy's face that we can see on that surveillance tape. There's something else kind of interesting, too." Fenton worked his laptop's keyboard for a few seconds, then turned the computer around to face Van Dreenan. "See for yourself."

Van Dreenan sat down and peered at the screen. "Snake Perkins?" He looked at Fenton. "That sounds like an alias, but apparently it's his given name."

"Yeah, just a good ol' boy from Hattiesburg, Mississippi."

Van Dreenan thought he heard an off note in Fenton's voice. "Is there something about this town, Hattiesburg? Something I should know?"

Fenton made a dismissive gesture. "No, nothing important. I spent six weeks there, one night, a while back. Never mind. Read on."

"Um. Perkins was sent to reform school for auto theft at fifteen." He looked up again. "Reform school?"

"It's where we send juvenile criminals, instead of prison," Fenton told him. "Although with some of these places, there isn't much difference. The one Snake went to wasn't bad, though. I checked. More like a home for wayward boys."

"Wayward, indeed. And while he was at this reform school, I see, someone murdered his parents. Cut their throats while they slept, then set fire to the house. And in the charred ruins of the home, the authorities found—"

"Evidence that Mom and Dad had been in the kiddie porn business. Had a little studio in the basement, and everything. According to the arson investigators, that's where the fire started, with the help of about five gallons of gasoline. Looks like somebody wanted to wipe out every trace of their product."

Van Dreenan read on. "Ummm. But someone, whoever it was, did not succeed. The parents had a large fireproof safe, whose contents survived the conflagration." A few seconds later, he shook his head in disgust. "They used their own son in some of the… performances."

"Yeah," Fenton said with a grimace. "Wish I could say I've never heard of that being done before, but apparently it's pretty common in the kiddie porn biz. Fucking scumbags. Give me serial killers any day."

"It hardly matters now, but do you happen to know the distance between this reform school the boy was in and the family home?"

"About forty miles, I looked it up," Fenton said. "Looks like you and I are thinking along the same lines."

"And this school was not a high-security facility?"

"Not that kind of place, no. Not impossible for the kid to sneak out, rip off a car, pay a visit to Mom and Dad with a sharp knife and a five-gallon can of gas, then sneak back into the school before he was missed."

"Well, if he did, one can hardly blame him," Van Dreenan said. He shook his head again. "Fifteen years old."

"The start of an active, if not illustrious, career," Fenton said. "How many arrests as an adult? Nine?"

Van Dreenan checked the screen. "Eight. Of those, two convictions—one for manslaughter and another for sexual assault. He served a total of, let me see… six years."

"Involved with the occult, too, it looks like. Hooked up with some voodoo coven, or whatever they call it, down in Louisiana. A New Orleans bunch headed by somebody called Queen Esther."

"Yes, so I see. That led to one of his arrests, on suspicion of murder. Apparently, the
voudoun
cult was believed to have engaged in human sacrifice during some of their rituals." Van Dreenan looked at Fenton. "That is very rare. Most practitioners of
voudoun
never sacrifice anything bigger than a chicken, or maybe a goat. They are law-abiding people, not killers. Although…"

"Although what?"

"Every religion seems to develop its own lunatic fringe. There have been reports, from here and there around the world, of
voudoun
cults devoted to gods who demand sacrifice of 'the goat without horns.'"

"The—oh, right, I get it."

Van Dreenan scratched his cheek pensively. "A very interesting chap, this Mister Perkins. At first glance, he would seem an unlikely traveling companion for Cecelia Mbwato. But the more I think about it, the better it sounds."

"A marriage made in Heaven," Fenton said with a sour smile.

"No, Fenton, not in Heaven," Van Dreenan said. "Not there."

She made a face. "I know what you mean. My subconscious seemed to spend most of the night in the middle of a George Romero film festival.
Not
a good time."

Morris took a sip of coffee and said, "You mentioned something last night about a plan for dealing with Queen Esther."

Libby nodded. "I think that, with proper preparation, I can cast a truth spell which should compel her to tell us what she knows about the witch we're after."

"Will it work on somebody like Esther? She's got pretty good mojo of her own, as we have reason to know."

"It shouldn't matter, as long as she's not ready for me," Libby said. "If she had time to put together a counterspell, that might well make a difference." She smiled tightly. "Which is why I'm not going to give her time."

"In other words, you're going to overwhelm her before she has time to set up a defense."

"Something like that."

"How long will you need to get ready?"

"I did some of the preliminary work last night. So, from this point, I figure I'll need—" she thought briefly, "another three hours, more or less."

"So, if you get started right after breakfast, everything should be set to go by early afternoon?"

"Most likely. And a good thing, too."

Morris looked a question at her.

"I mean, it's good we're going to do this during daylight," Libby said. "That's when white magic is strongest."

"And Queen Esther, being one of the bad guys, has the edge after dark."

"Exactly."

Their order arrived, and Morris dug into his eggs. "Good thing we got up early."

Libby's brow wrinkled. "I don't know. I'm not sensing her the way I was able to last night, but there's something…" She shook her head uncertainly.

"Well, guess we may as well go on in and find out."

"But carefully."

"Don't have to tell me. I'm the fella who was driving off zombies last night, remember?"

There was no point in trying to sneak in. They knew that the steps would creak under their weight, and the spring in the screen door could be counted on to make a noise loud enough to wake the dead.

No one stood behind the counter. The shop appeared as deserted as when they had left it the night before.

But something was different, and it took Morris only a moment to realize what it was. "You smell that?"

Libby sniffed audibly. "Yes," she said quietly. "Yes, I do." The coppery odor was one they had each encountered before, and they recognized it instantly.

Fresh blood smells like nothing else in the world.

"Better let me go first," Libby said. "I've got a few things ready this time, just in case." She took a couple of small vials out of her purse and twisted off the lids. "Come on."

Morris followed, a tight feeling in his chest and stomach.

Moving slowly, carefully, Libby walked behind the counter and pushed through the beaded curtain. She turned to the right, then stopped suddenly. Morris could hear the sharp intake of her breath, and as he looked over her shoulder he saw the reason.

The young woman called Martha lay face down in the corridor, her head toward the room where Queen Esther had held court the night before. Martha's skull was split open, cut so deeply that gray brain tissue was clearly visible amidst the blood and bone and hair. Morris, who knew a thing or two about knife wounds, figured that you'd need something both heavy and very sharp to do that kind of damage.

Something like a machete.

Libby knelt and touched the back of her hand to one of the dead girl's legs. "Cold." she said quietly. "It's been several hours." Standing, she stepped gingerly over the body, careful to avoid the blood on the floor. There wasn't a lot of it; corpses don't bleed much.

Morris followed Libby down the short corridor to another beaded curtain—the one that marked the entrance to Queen Esther's chamber. He could see light coming from inside, but it was softer than he remembered from last night.

Libby used one hand to push some of the beads aside, but she did not enter the room. Instead, she stood in the doorway peering inside, and it seemed to Morris that she stood there for a long time before giving vent to a sigh that seemed to come from deep within her. "It's safe to go in," she said bleakly. "There nothing here to hurt us."

Morris followed Libby into the windowless room. More than half the candles had either burned out or been knocked over, and in the gloom he almost tripped over a body on the floor. Looking closer, he saw that it was one of the zombies who'd accosted them the night before. Unlike Martha, this corpse bore no obvious wound. Ten feet away lay another dead man, and Morris thought that one looked familiar from the night before, too.

In front of the altar, next to the overturned rocking chair, lay the bloody remains of Queen Esther. It was clear that, unlike Martha, the old woman had not died of a single, devastating wound. She must have tried to fight them. And so they had cut her to pieces. Literally.

The windowless room reeked of blood and shit and decaying flesh. The climate of New Orleans is not kind to the dead under the best of circumstances. Martha and Queen Esther were already becoming ripe, and the two zombies appeared to be in an advanced state of decomposition—their bodies probably making up for lost time since their natural deaths. Morris knew he was going to have to get out of there soon or puke.

Libby appeared to be having similar difficulties. She held a handkerchief over her mouth with one hand, then knelt over the body of Queen Esther. She seemed especially interested in the old woman's severed right hand, which lay some distance away from the rest of her. Morris wondered if she was going to take it for use as a Hand of Glory—a powerful talisman, when prepared properly. You need to start with the hand of a murderer, and Queen Esther almost certainly qualified. But Libby appeared to be focused on something clutched in the dead fingers, a piece of paper or cardboard that she pried loose, glanced at, then stuffed in her voluminous purse.

Standing, she put away the handkerchief and said, "Let's get the hell out of here, before I lose my breakfast."

Once they were back on the sidewalk, Morris said, "We'd better leave the area before some tourist looking for a love potion wanders in and starts screaming for the cops."

Libby nodded. "Let's walk back to Bourbon Street and find a bar, which shouldn't be difficult to do. I need a drink, maybe a couple of them. Then we need to talk."

They had gone less than a block when Morris asked, "What was that you took from Queen Esther's hand?"

"That's one of the things we need to talk about."