“So someone managed to kill part of Miguel but not all of him. Then they somehow programmed him to kill his wife before finishing him off?” he asked incredulously.
“I’ve given you the science, and I’ve sent a sample of his brain matter out for toxin testing. The man wasn’t shot, but I believe he was injected with some type of toxin that killed just the part of the brain that made him who he was,” Kinny said. “I can give you a technical explanation, use medical terms like cerebral cortex, neurotoxins and the like, but I mentioned before that the brain is like a computer, so think of it this way. Miguel had no internet connection going. He was essentially dead from the time his brain was damaged. This is probably the most insidious murder I’ve ever come across, and I’m guessing it was some kind of experiment, since this isn’t something there’s a lot of medical documentation on.”
“Not your typical mob hit,” Diego said drily.
“Not a typical hit in any way,” Brett said. He hesitated. “I don’t know a lot about this, but what about voodoo or Santeria?”
“I know some people who practice Santeria,” Diego said. “They sacrifice chickens, but they don’t turn them into Mike the chickens.”
Brett shook his head. “I know that what we think of as voodoo comes mainly from Hollywood, but to many people—especially in New Orleans and Little Haiti here—it’s a very real religion. Papa Doc used it to support his regime of fear in Haiti. He had a devoted group of voodoo priests who could supposedly make the dead rise. From what I understand, they used poisons that caused their victims to appear to be dead, and yet they weren’t. Even physicians couldn’t tell the difference. Then the priests used mind control when they brought them back to ‘life’ as zombies. Many people believe that the Tonton Macoute, his private militia, was made up of those zombies.”
“It’s actually a crime to make a zombie in Haiti now,” Dr. Kinny said.
“From what I understand, Papa Doc and the voodoo priests use a powder made from the poison of a puffer fish,” Brett said.
Kinny nodded gravely. “It’s only really been about the past thirty years or so that science has begun to explore the creation of ‘zombies’ and admit that such things really are possible.”
“So we’re looking for a homicidal voodoo priest?” Diego asked.
“Or a mad scientist,” Kinny said.
“Funny,” Diego responded.
“I’m not trying to be funny. I’d say someone who has studied the human brain—and the creation of so-called zombies—is at least in on this. And I’ll pretty much guarantee you that the poison the tests find will be puffer fish toxin, whether real or synthetic,” Kinny said.
“We were never intended to find the body,” Brett said. “And if it hadn’t been for that dolphin, we never would have. We would have gone on believing that Miguel was burned to cinders in a fire and that his neighbor must have been mistaken about the date or hallucinating or something.” He let out a long breath and turned to Diego. “We have to find Mr. Randy Nicholson,” he told him.
“That will go a long way to proving my point,” Kinny said.
“And I’m betting Nicholson’s body ended up in the same condition—even if not the same place—as Miguel’s,” Brett said.
“Damn,” Diego said. “This is a big city and a hell of a long coastline.”
Brett looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “It’s curious. They kept Nicholson alive a long time. He was supposedly buried three months ago. Miguel only died recently.”
“Maybe the killer gets rid of his victims once they’re of no use to him anymore,” Kinny suggested.
Brett was silent for a minute and realized that Diego and Phil Kinny were looking at him, waiting. “Say you’re right, which you probably are. The question is, why? Why is he doing this? And why kill these particular people? It was easy for us to accept that someone wanted to murder Miguel Gomez, but why Maria, much less Arnold Wilhelm?”
“Maybe he killed them just because he could, testing how far he can push his...minions,” Kinny suggested.
Brett turned to Diego. “Time to see the good Dr. Robert Treme and find out why he signed a death certificate for a man who wasn’t dead.”
*