They exchanged pleasantries. Her boy was well, as was her husband. She understood he was in a hurry and cut to the chase.
What can I do for you?'
ŚYou know the samples you took out of the courtroom shooter's stomach? What've you isolated and IDed so far?'
'The tarot card everyone remembers.' Raquel stood up and went over to a filing cabinet and opened a drawer marked 'Ongoing'. She ran her finger along a series of hanging files, then pulled out an orange wallet folder, which she riffled through to find a list. She then stooped down to the 'Links' drawer and pulled out a grey folder.
'Some meal he had!' she quipped, sitting down and looking through it. 'Shooter's first course was a soup of Kool Aid, sand, crushed sea shell and bone we're fairly sure it's human, that's still tbt to be tested. Next, diced sirloin of tarot card. The card was high-quality cardboard and coated with a plastic seal, making it harder to digest. He had that with a tasty side salad of cashew leaves, bressilet poison ivy two kinds of stinging netde, mandrake and a bean, also tbt. Not common. His third course consisted of a side order of choice creepy crawlies: a tbt snake, a few millipedes, tarantula legs, bouga toad and '
'A what toad?'
'Bouga toad. B-O-U-G-A. Their gland secretions are toxic. Cause catatonia in large doses. Shooter's liver and
kidneys contained traces of tetrodoxin. Tetrodoxin's another toxic substance commonly found in puffer fish. A large enough dose can put you in a coma or plain kill you.
'This was all in some kind of potion designed to render the person who took it incapable of controlling his own actions,' Raquel said, tapping at the grey files. 'I've seen this kinda stuff before. Look at this.' She slid over the grey file.
It was an autopsy report on a black man, aged thirty five, who had wandered into incoming traffic on USi on 13 February 1979. He'd been hit and killed by a Buick, which had turned over, killing the driver and his passenger. The contents of the collision victim's stomach were almost identical to those in Moyez's killer except for the bean and the tarot card.
And then he noticed something else - the man had been registered deceased on 8 July 1977. He was called Louis-Juste Gregoire, a Haitian resident, who'd lived in Overtown. His grave was in the City of Miami Cemetery. His first death certificate stated he'd died of natural causes.
'I'm sure you've heard of zombies,' Raquel said.
'Sure.'
'Forget what you think you know - Night of the Living Dead and all that. In Haiti, Louisiana, certain parts of West Africa and South America they practise two kinds of voodoo.
There's the traditional kind called rada, which is peaceful and harmless, and there's the Hollywood-movie kind the dark variant called petro or hoodoo. This is all about worshipping evil spirits, putting death spells on people, human sacrifice, orgies. Zombies stem from hoodoo.
'What basically happens is a witchdoctor will administer a potion on a person either orally or topically. This paralyses them and shuts down key parts of the brain. They look clinically dead. No breathing, really weak pulse, slow heartbeat.
They get buried.
'A few days later, the witchdoctor digs them up and brings
them back to life with an antidote. Except they don't fully return to the land of the living. They're very much alive, but their minds are gone. They don't recognize anyone they know: friends, family, whoever.
'You see, the potions they've been given also contain powerful hallucinogens which make the person believe they're dead. The zombie then becomes the witchdoctor's personal slave, doing everything their master orders.'
'Like killing someone in a courtroom?' Max asked.
'Sure. It's highly possible. A mixture of hallucinogens and hypnosis alone could turn a person into a killer. In fact, the levels of scopolamine found in the brain and blood of the shooter indicate that he was tripping when he killed Moyez.
'Scopolamine is found in mandrake, which was in his stomach. Mandrake belongs to a class of plants called deliriants
very powerful hallucinogens. Under their influence people have been known to talk to themselves, believing they're addressing someone else. Except that there'll be dialogue instead of monologue, because people under the influence take on the characteristics of the person they're talking to accent, patterns of speech, you name it.'
'Like schizos?'
'Deliriants induce a kind of schizophrenia, yes, but one which comes with a propensity for violence too. I've seen people beat the shit out of themselves, thinking they're attacking an enemy. Most of the time, once the deliriant wears off, a person will have absolutely no recollection of what happened.'
'Like sleepwalkers?'
'lixactly like a sleepwalker,' Raquel agreed.
'How common's the stuff you found in the stomach?'
'Garden variety. Except the bean.'
'How soon can you get a result?'
'That's a piece of string question, Max. It's a full house
in the morgue today. And one of them's a cop. A DEA sting got stung on the east side. You hear about that?'
'On the way in, yeah.'
'We think he got shot by one of his own.'
'On purpose?'
'We won't know until the results are in. Cocaine's turned this city inside out and upside down.'
'Tell me about it,' Max said. 'We're in a blizzard, walking blind.' He paused, lowered his voice and leant across the desk a little, 'Raquel, I don't wanna put any pressure on you, but I really do need to know what that bean is.'
Raquel looked at him hard for a moment, then leant over the desk towards him and winked. 'This another of your off-the-books crusades, Max?'
'I'd appreciate your discretion, yeah.'
T should've known when you showed up right at the start of my shift. You normally come in when I'm, you know, right in the middle of something important.'
'I know you're real busy . . .' Max began.
'Eldon know about this one?'
Max shook his head. Raquel drew breath mock dramatically and mimicked his headshake.
'Let's keep this between us, huh?'
'Sure. What do I get out of it?'
'What can I do for you?'
'Well, what can you do for me, Max . . . ?'
'You still drink mojitos?'
'When I get the time.'
'Then the next time's on me. If you can stand my company.'
You know attempting to bribe an officer of the law is a federal crime?'
'You started it.' Max grinned.
'Deal,' she said.