Pure Instinct

13

Dr. Kim Desinor recalled the last time she'd come down to the Toulouse Street Wharf area, barely thirteen years old. She was in the company of a busload of others from the two schools at St. Domitilla's, the boys' and the girls' reformatories. It was a rare occasion, an event, a field trip. They had been given an opportunity to go aboard and take an excursion on a paddle wheeler like the one now over her shoulder, only hers was called the Creole River Princess and was far less elegant, and along with her was a young man whose features and sexual proclivities were not completely unlike those of the victim over which Jessica Coran was now working. The young man's name was Edward Mantleboro, and he had his sister in tow, a strange and silent girl who stared not at you but through you. Edward had introduced her as Edwina, a twin sister, although they didn't look very much alike. Edwina was unpleasantly swollen, her skin wrinkled badly for one so young, her eyes puffy, as if some fluid were below the surface, but it was her distant irises which seemed lacking soul that had most disturbed and intrigued the young Kim. She'd forgotten about the queer girl, along with so much else in this city, until now, and she wondered, why now? What brought such fragments of memory to the surface? Was it her surroundings. New Orleans, the wharf, the steamboat or the vacancy in the dead man's eyes? Perhaps it was a combination of them all.

Edward, the young boy, by contrast to his odd sister, seemed to possess all that his sister lacked: health, vitality, soul, charm, wit, sensitivity, and he liked and flirted with young Kim, in fact spending most of the trip hanging and hovering about her, often apologizing for having been saddled with his sister, while Edwina spent most of the trip either staring out at the river or at Kim, as if she'd like to set fire to her. Kim found it both disturbing and interesting that the other girl, without really knowing her, harbored such an unreasonable hatred for her. It had been a memory that Kim had successfully put away until now, but here it came galloping back at her like an angry Headless Horseman, like an indelible mark that had never gone from her memory at all.

She wondered what had ever become of Edward and the girl, who had both also attended St. Domitilla's, he in the boys' school, she in the girls' school. Kim had thought them both odd when Edward, perhaps fifteen at the time, had confided that they weren't parentless or abandoned, but that their parents had placed them into the orphanage to be “straightened out.” He'd muttered something about it all having been “bought and paid for.”

The memories were vague and confusing now, but the Toulouse Street Wharf brought back vivid images. She hadn't exactly been on a date with Edward Mantleboro. It had been more like two desperate young people looking for someone to be with and cling to. That was how their friendship had begun, before it turned into something bigger and more confusing, and before Edwina had attacked Kim with a broken bottle in the shower.

Kim still had the scar from the deepest wound to her upper back, which had required eight stitches. Edwina had later disappeared, no explanation given, and life at St. Domitilla's had gone grinding along without her, much to Kim's relief.

As for Edward, one day after her fourteenth birthday, she'd agreed to secretly meet him in the anteroom off the cafeteria located between the two buildings. Far into the night, refugees from a painful world, they'd lain in one another's arms, oblivious to the hardwood floor, and Edward had made love to her. But soon after, he too had vanished from the school, never to be seen or heard from again. She'd never told anyone about the incident except for her aunt, the only friend she could trust.

She had since had relationships with men, but most were frightened off by her powers of “darkness.” Men, for the most part, didn't want a complicated woman, and being gifted or cursed with psi energies was one hell of a complication in a relationship. Looking around the pier now, she recalled a similar romance and an excursion boat in Florida when she lived in the Miami-Dade area. John Keys was his name, and he was her watch commander when she was a police detective there, when she'd been fairly successful at masking her potent ESP. At first John was delightful, a real prince whose acerbic wit never failed to make her laugh, and he was so good to her and so very shy about asking her out that first time. Once they had arranged their schedules and gone out, it was necessarily a daylight cruise out and back in the cerulean waters leading toward the placid Caribbean, because neither of them could get an evening free. It had been one of those blindingly bright, brilliant days only found off the waters of Florida, a lingering ocean breeze sweeping over the blue calm, the only clouds far off to the east, menacingly aligned against the crystal clarity of blue on blue sky all around them, the huge army of clouds awaiting the call to battle, yet strangely holding back for them and them alone. The battle came later that night when a terrible tropical depression brought on a downpour the likes of which the city hadn't seen since Hurricane Andrew in '92. But that day, as they'd disappeared like a pair of Huckleberry Finns aboard the cruise ship Sun God's Dream, floating slowly beyond sight of Miami's crime-ridden streets and its golden skyline, she had felt closer to John Keys than anyone she had ever known, and his embrace had been so very warm and comforting. She had fallen deeply in love with Jack, as she'd come to call him, but rumors had started circulating about the Department after an unusual bust and collar-not rumors about them, but rumors about her; rumors about how she'd conducted herself, how she'd second-guessed her partner and how bloody accurate she'd been, and how she could read minds.

Jack began to wonder at first, and soon after he confronted her, and when she confided in him her strange, unexplainable power, he soon began a somber campaign to distance himself from her. It started slowly at first, like a rape victim's partner who was unable to cope with the situation, but step by painstaking step, he sure footedly waltzed away and into the background of her life without giving her the courtesy of an honest explanation. When she confronted him, it became achingly clear that he was unable to deal with the new reality that lay before them like a granite stone in a Dali desert vision. There was no reviving the lost life of their relationship. Put simply, he was frightened off.

It wasn't long after that she was unofficially drummed out of the Department and off the force, and this compelled her to go into private practice as a psychic while she finished up her doctorate in psychology. She'd gone from a member of the force, where she'd been accepted, to a lone wolf, called in on cases all over the country, but seldom if ever in Florida, and never in the Miami vicinity.

That was why Paul Zanek was so damned attractive to her when he'd first proposed that she go through FBI training and become an agent. He'd been in Miami on a case in which FBI assistance was needed, and somehow he'd gotten wind of the woman who, in cop circles, had come to be known variously as a Psi-co cop, a Private Psi, 3rd Eye Psi, Cop Hazel, Spooky K.D., Taro-Cop, Ol' Faithful or the Psi-clops cop.

Given the circumstances and the time element, Paul Zanek dared not speak of a psychic division being contemplated by the FBI, but it was obvious he both knew of her reputation and was not put off by it. Little wonder, a year later, she was in his arms.

Now this, she thought: New Orleans and a bloodthirsty killer feeding on hearts, and Paul thousands of miles away, getting his staid life back in order while her own was once again a shambles. Even before the plane had landed and the limousine filled with dignitaries sent for Jessica Coran, with Sincebaugh sent to bring her along as an afterthought, she'd sensed trouble in the air over New Orleans, that this bright morning would find a large and ugly stain upon the sun drenched mecca for party-goers.

“ Bastard seems insatiable and the guys at headquarters have placed odds on what the creep's doing with the hearts,” said Alex Sincebaugh, who'd drifted from Dr. Coran to her now. “Ten to one down at the precinct says he's doing a Jeffrey Dahmer thing with them, 'fry pan and biscuit gravy,' you know.”

“ I'm not so sure,” Kim managed, her mind elsewhere. She now forced herself to think about her first impression of the body. She'd had to lean far out over the dock to stare down at the cold spot in the water where-she'd been informed- the body had bobbed like a bloated cork for an hour before they could get a diving team prepped and in the water to place the halter over and around it. He was nude from the waist up, his chest cavity picked clean by feeding fish, the heart long since gone. The pasty, white skin had sloughed away, leaving only the dermis layer, which would make fingerprinting more difficult for Jessica, but thanks to new technology, not impossible. The body was in one piece, and the teeth also might help in identifying the victim.

No mean trick for the divers earlier in the water to handle the body with any gentility, even here in the Old South, Kim thought now, wondering how many of the psychic emanations had been bled off by both the watery environ and the earlier handling of the body. At the same time, she was wondering just how difficult it was going to be working with Jessica Coran, wondering what kind of miraculous expectations the woman anticipated from Kim, and if Kim's calls should fall short of Jessica's expectations what the other woman's reaction might be. And again Kim helplessly wondered if Jess'd be reporting daily back to Chief Paul Zanek.

Agent Coran had already said she'd become desperate, that Kim was something of a last resort. But Kim knew she had to shake loose from these constricting, petty concerns if she was to be of any use whatsoever here this morning. She worked hard now to mentally compose herself, to locate the necessary serenity required within her self to receive whatever slight message or messages she might from the corpse. Now that Jessica and the evidence-gatherers were out of her way, she came closer to the body.

The victim's features were larger than in life, as the facial skin had bloated to blowfish size, along with the fattened limbs. The torso was flat, not at all swollen, more in the man-ner of a deflated balloon, what with the huge gash there. While Kim hadn't been present at the time, she was receiving playback images of the body as it was removed from the river: The total effect when the body was raised on the crane's cables was that of a hideous, grotesque crab, a lifeless marionette.

The body was judged to be tall, rangy in life, and like the previous victims, he'd been young, early twenties, late teens maybe. He'd likely prove-once they learned who he'd been-a lively, vivacious and good-natured young man, liked by all who knew him, with family of one kind or another who loved him, either despite or because of his lifestyle. All previous victims, save yesterday's, had been identified as known gays living in and around the city.

It all reminded Kim of a case she'd worked some years before in Florida, where a madman had decided that seven women had to die to pay the price of his having been born a seventh son. In each case the heart had been removed, but jammed into the victim's mouth in a sinister twist on an old cliche about one's heart rising to one's throat.

Another psychic photo from the more recent past now rushed in at her: Envisioning the crane lowering the body too quickly onto the wharf, Kim felt a sudden wave of revulsion on a primal level sweep over her as the body slipped and came to rest with a splat, like a tarpon hauled off a boat and onto the dock.

“ Get some more photos, Lieutenant! Then I guess we can wrap him; call in the attendants when Dr. Desinor here's finished, okay?” Jessica Coran's resonant voice and the ever-present hum and throb of the awakening city, its heart at a full beat, no longer disturbed Kim. She'd reached that level of being in which she might hear or see only on a psychic level, in a realm closed off to most humans. Her every conscious, outward sense was turned down, the world around her tuned out, while simultaneously her subconscious or inner senses- which ancients called the third eye-were turned up and tuned in. Fortunately, Jessica and the others had moved off and had not called in the ambulance attendants just yet. Kim, now in a trancelike state over the body, kneeled, her pose strikingly similar to Jessica's before her; her eyelids half closed, eyes rolling back, hands closing over the rosary beads, she silently chanted a mantra to herself. She'd learned to do so silently so as to not put off those around her, or to give the appearance that she was some ordinary fortune-teller with a deck of tarot cards and a Ouija board. She looked to the outside world and to that part of her which hovered over the scene and her own body like a woman in supplication over the deceased. Her third eye and her second self also saw a wondering, curious crowd of onlookers, none more intent than Jessica Coran herself, staring on. Only Alex Sincebaugh seemed distressed and unforgivingly skeptical, pacing now like a cornered panther, occasionally glaring at the body and the soothsayer and back again at photographers on the bridge, who'd begun a new wave of snapshots at the strange behavior exhibited by the psychic. Kim easily sensed Alex's distress over what he felt to be a Bamum and Bailey atmosphere orchestrated by Stephens, Meade and other brass.

All around her, Kim had to fend off the remarks and taunts, both spoken and projected via thought, like piercing arrows directed at her but interfering with her procedure. There were no doors to close here, no shades to draw, no cushion between her and the public, no barriers to ward off the skeptical or the mental flares fired at her. The psychometric reading suffered in turn. She had come to find comfort in her props and in controlling the environment in which she worked. Maybe the lab had softened her.

She cursed herself deep within her soul to find a solution. But the seance was awash in a sea of disbelief and twisted emotional cinders coming in at her from various sources, including Jessica Coran and P.C. Stephens as well as Alex Sincebaugh. Stephens had never actually wanted her here; she'd been pushed on the bastard by Paul Zanek. Stephens's secret desire was simply to have Jessica Coran follow him back to New Orleans. He had no real desire to have Kim. At least that was the garbled message she now received over several others entwining themselves snakelike about one another.

Too damned many people here at odds with the situation, she told herself. She couldn't possibly focus, not here, not like this, and so she removed herself from trance, opened her eyes and stared down at a new horror awaiting her. Something's alive inside the corpse, her mind shouted.

She saw the odd, slick, reflecting ripple of movement first, like an unseen shadow out the side of the eye, odd but definitely there. It was a little glimmer of movement in the intestines deep within the body cavity. Maggots? Yes, a nest of them, swirling about now, covering the entire abyss before her. But these were psychic maggots, not real, nothing to be alarmed about. She didn't know what the image meant or why it had come to her, but she held firm to the real world, breathed a sigh of relief and saw that the maggots were indeed gone. There was no way maggots could've gotten at the body anyway, given that it was in the water all this time. So, just an illusion, part of her vision trying to take form? A symbolic representation, lingering on after her trance? But again she saw movement inside the corpse, making her start. Was this some easily explainable muscle spasm that would garner laughs all around from Dr. Coran and Sincebaugh and the others should Kim so much as twitch again in response? She maintained her stoic posture, but suddenly this snakelike movement shot to life, leaping from the body toward her. She started and fell back, tripping on the wet planks.

“ Jesus!” she shouted. “What is it?”

Everyone was instantly staring at her where she lay, the oozing, slick eel slithering over her legs, leaving a trail of gruel on her pants leg. The six-inch eel, a baby by Louisiana standards, which had embedded itself inside the body, now slapped furiously about the wharf until it found an escape, flailing itself back into the Mississippi and sinking quickly into the depths from which it had come.

Still startled and shivering, shaken to her core, Kim was suddenly grateful to feel someone's strong arms go round her; the sensation of warmth and caring that careened through her entire being from the man's helpful hands served to help her regain her composure along with her feet. With the forgotten rosary beads, cross and crystal amulet dangling loosely in her hand, she felt herself being turned like a toy top in the large, caring grip, fully expecting to meet Ben deYampert's brown eyes.

“ Are you all right, Dr. Desinor? Are you all right?”

It was Alex Sincebaugh's eyes she gazed into, and when her eyes found his, she realized how completely sincere and concerned Lt. Alex Sincebaugh was, although she was unsure just why.

She also realized how many eyes were on them, and so she quickly pulled away, saying, “Yes, yes… fine. I'm okay; rascal just caught me off guard's all.”

“ You shouldn'tve let yourself get talked into this case, Dr. Desinor.” His protest was almost a whisper, a confidence between them.

Alex, for his part, continued to stare deeply into her mysterious eyes, thinking how like his nightmares this scenario with the eel had been, except here it was one large, giant worm instead of thousands of small ones.

“ Oh?” she finally replied, breaking the bond created between their eyes. “I suppose I should check with you each time I decide to take on a case? Is that right?”

“ Someone like you… it's just-”

“ Best I stick to missing-persons cases? Dogs and cats up trees? People wishing to be reunited with their dear and dead departed? What?”

“ I'd think you'd want to spare yourself the… the discomfort of… of such a…”

“ Heart-wrenching case?” she quickly filled in for him, imagining he'd like the macabre humor as much as any cop might. “Don't worry yourself, Lieutenant. I can pluck at the old heartstrings with the best of 'em. Might even teach you a tune or two.” She worked up a smile for Sincebaugh.

He didn't return the smile, and he didn't care for the brand of humor she was doling out. “Yeah, something like that,” he sullenly replied.

“ Sorry if I don't live up to your image of the damsel in distress, Lieutenant, but there you have it. Thanks for the helping hand, but don't try to tell me how to run my business, okay?”

“ All right, if you're sure you're not hurt. Guess I was wrong to put myself out on your behalf, Doctor.”

“ As I said, I appreciated the hand up… “

“ Sure… whatever you say, Doctor.”

She felt his ire and frustration, and turning away from him, she also felt him leave. Her oval eyes now returned to the victim. Her hands clutching the rosary, she felt little or no psychical movement about the body, merely a handful of shrouded, dark flashes of energy, smoky images of the knife-wielding murderer, the monster's rage so strong and overpowering that all else was blotted out. The killer was striking out again and again at the victim, and she felt his presence. The monster was close, somewhere nearby, very much within the confines of the city. But the image was as momentary and as fleeting as Sincebaugh's moment of concern and compassion had been.

Nothing was forthcoming, and she knew that pressing it here and now would prove futile. The eel and Sincebaugh had taken the day. Unfortunately, she'd gleaned nothing of great import for P.C. Stephens and the others, and if things went as they appeared, Jessica Coran and scientific observation had won the first match.

Jessica came over to her now, not to gloat but simply to ask if she were finished, telling her that the morgue attendants were waiting and that the body would be at her disposal at the morgue later, should she wish to continue there. She even offered a consoling word, saying, “Perhaps in the solitude of the morgue, you know… without so much to distract or disturb you…”

Taking a deep breath, the sun glinting stonily in her eyes, Kim Desinor replaced her dark glasses on her face and backed away from Jessica with a swift nod, returning to the sanctuary of her escort's car, where Ben deYampert told her he'd be happy to see her to her hotel.

Sincebaugh had disappeared in the crowd, tugging someone away from Commissioner Stephens. Kim's eyes followed Sincebaugh out of curiosity, and now she realized that Alex was suddenly ensnared in what was a quiet but bitter discussion with an unknown man.

“ Sure, yes, Detective,” she replied to deYampert. “Say, who's that with your partner over there?”

“ Oh, that'd be Captain Landry, ma'am.”

“ I see. Maybe on the way to the hotel, you can tell me what you know about the previous victim found-where?”

“ At the Chantilly Pier in Gretna,” he replied. “Tell you all about it.”

“ How's your partner going to get back?”

“ Don't worry about Alex. Landry and him have some differences to iron out.”

“ Me, you mean?”

“ Hey, it's nothing personal with Sincy…Alex, ma'am. Just that he doesn't believe in changing horses midstream, if you get my drift.”

“ And what about you, Ben? You consider me a risk?”

“ Me? Well, ma'am, I told Alex that seems to me that we're not riding a horse but a two-humped camel at the moment, and if switching from a camel to a horse midstream has any merit, then by God… well, I'm willing to give it a try.”

She laughed lightly at this. Ben she liked instantly. “Tell me about Gretna, and after that tell me about Victor Surette.”

“ Surette? You know about Surette?” Ben's voice rose audibly, displaying his amazement on his sleeve.

“ I know a little about him, yes.”

“ Really? You thinking like Alex?”

“ I don't know. What's Alex thinking like?”

He hesitated, holding the door for her. “Ahh, maybe best not to discuss it just now with you; it's kinda between partners, you know.”

“ Sure… sure, I can respect that.”

“ Good… good…”

He marched around the car, grimacing at himself as he went, and in a moment they were pulling away from the wharf and all its excitement, heading for the bridge that would return them lakeside. To the locals, to simplify life, there were four directions in New Orleans: lakeside, riverside, uptown and downtown.

Once over the Mississippi again, a few blocks into the bustle of the city, she said to Ben deYampert, “Alex thinks that Surette was the first, doesn't he.”

“ What, huh?”

“ Alex believes that Surette was the first Queen of Hearts victim, doesn't he, Ben?”

“ Christ, Dr. Desinor, you're good. Got to hand you that. How'd you come to that reckoning when you've been in the city for what, less than two hours?”