Pure Instinct

18

Kim Desinor looked from one to the other of the men before her. Landry and Stephens were dissimilarly built, Landry being a short, stocky squared-off cop who hadn't lost the rough edges of his profession. With too much around the middle, his brown hair graying before Kim's eyes, she guessed him to be in his mid-fifties, and from the gnarled little hands to the way he walked, she surmised that his body was riddled with arthritic pains from fingertips to back and leg muscles, all of which he denied, even to himself. He had suffered some injury as a youth, something to do with being in a place he shouldn't have been, and he'd also suffered a knee injury in college, where he played a defensive linesman, no doubt, given his heft and size. She recalled some chance remark he had made with regard to Richard Stephens's ambitions and he'd served up a football metaphor, something to do with an end run that fooled no one.

As for Police Commissioner Stephens, while not so tall as Alex Sincebaugh, he stood extremely tall beside Landry, and while he was not a slim man by any stretch, against Landry's bulk he appeared so. Still, Stephens's single most distinguishing characteristic remained his obviously dyed full head of flaming red strands which entwined one another in a series of wild dance moves. Where Landry's jaw was set in what seemed a perpetual, teeth-gnashing, concrete half snarl, PC Stephens sported a painted grin, born of campaigning. Stephens's henna-colored temples and fine features marked him as the best choice for higher office-more politician than cop and obviously made for the office. It seemed he'd go to any length to protect his personal citadel. Maybe he'd long since made up his mind that he would sit out his last years in office, content yet ever watchful, ever fearful of events that might topple him, such as this case.

Stephens's tailored beige suit gave him the image of a modern-day Huey Long, replete with suspenders beneath the stylishly rumpled suit, in a breezy New Orleans way an expensive item in anyone's estimation, yet relaxed and loose-fitting. Stephens's nails were professionally done. But then, so were those of the guy from the mayor's office, who actually wore red suspenders and a checked tie with an angora-sweater poofiness to it which marked him as not only politically correct, but far more up on fashions, even down to the ridiculous sideburns. There was little else to distinguish the thin man named Leroy Fouintenac who'd been throwing his title-deputy mayor-around the room along with the hungry, darting eyes and the beaked and sniffing nose which led Kim to the image of a kind of malnourished buzzard, a sickly scavenger bird, as opposed to one who successfully hunted. He was thin and priggish, in imitation of a David Niven character she'd once seen in an old black-and-white movie.

Rounding out the foursome was the staid FBI bureau chief, Lew Meade, a stony observer who seemed detached from everything but the arrangements and connections, always at the ready with the introductions, however, and always anxious to know the latest. He'd obviously called in the mayor's man, since they shared many more whispers than P.C. Stephens enjoyed with Fouintenac. Meade had an army of agents to see that Dr. Coran was made comfortable for her stay, while he'd totally ignored Kim, in keeping with the incognito approach she was to take here, her detachment from the FBI seemingly complete.

She suspected that it had been Meade's idea to have Alex Sincebaugh pick her up at the airport, obviously to rub salt into Sincebaugh's wounded ego. She'd sensed the animosity Meade held for the lieutenant even at the crime scene the day before, but even more so here when Alex had entered the room.

Meade was an observer, a watchful man who kept his cards extremely close to his chest. And Kim had no notion of what Meade meant to accomplish with his presence here. But Lew Meade's closemouthed approach had already alienated Kim and only made his blandness of character the more bland.

Dr. Jessica Coran, by comparison, was a woman of color in every sense of the word, but her mysterious eyes held no warmth or clue at the moment as to what lay behind them. What did she think of all this talk of doing a psychometric reading of the last victim's body? It had been taken now from its refrigerated tomb by Wardlaw's young, female assistant, who'd wheeled the cadaver into the autopsy room and efficiently replaced the Lennox body with the nameless, hapless true victim of the New Orleans Mardi Gras Hearts Thief-as one newscaster that moming had called the killer.

Kim herself was immediately worried by the idea put forth by Fouintenac and heralded now by Stephens. In fact, she hadn't particularly cared for the idea of doing a hands-on reading of the other so-called latest victim of the Heartthrob Killer-as others in the press had dubbed the phantom monster.

She had to go along with it, she knew. Hell, Stephens and the others had taken a giant step forward with regard to her work. They accepted her “gift” unreservedly now, accepted the fact that extraordinary, extrasensory perceptions and detection were possible. Perhaps even Wardlaw and Coran had grudgingly accepted to some degree that some things which science had no answer for must be taken on faith alone, by sheer instinct alone. Kim was a purely instinctive individual, working out on a frontier which science might never fully comprehend or explore, a frontier of emotion and mind over matter which galled most scientists and pragmatists. Given their imperatives and natural liking only for that which proved empirical, she well understood why both the doctors in the room were far from convinced of her often startling and uncanny abilities.

She unnerved people, she knew. People in general feared her, which was a far cry from admiration or awe. She sensed fear in Wardlaw and something akin to fear in Jessica.

“ Perhaps we should allow Dr. Coran and Dr. Wardlaw time to prepare their findings on the victim before I-”

She was instantly cut off by Fouintenac. “If we wait for laboratory reports and findings, it could be weeks. Please, Dr. Desinor, do what it is you do.”

“ The deputy mayor came here to see you work, Doctor,” added Stephens. She read into his remark that he'd confided in Fouintenac exactly who she was and how he himself had witnessed firsthand what she was capable of. Obviously, due to her psychic hits on the Lennox body, she'd made believers out of some in the room. Still, Kim felt the air in the morgue close in on her; there was a stifling anger welling up from Wardlaw which Jessica perhaps contributed to.

But Fouintenac and the others waited with eager eyes and ears, with obvious disregard for the delicate nature of such an undertaking, without regard to the two M.E. s in the room, without concern for protocol, without fear of the concerns of family, friends of the deceased, without much thought given to possible negative outcomes-so dazzled had they become with her gifts, little suspecting that half or more of her insight came through normal means: intuition bom of education.

She'd had ready access to knowledge of the previous victims-enough to fake what she must-thanks in large measure to Alex Sincebaugh's absolutely thorough and meticulous examinations of the crime scenes and Wardlaw's forensic examination records and subsequent discussions she'd had with Jessica, Stephens and Landry. Jessica's detailed report on this victim in particular, and those earlier reports made by Detective Sincebaugh, had been invaluable, so much so that it was obvious to her, as it must be to coroner and cop, that the supposed victim with the severed head was out of the ordinary for the killer, possibly a setup of some sort.

As to the flashes of psychic insight, she didn't entirely know where they had come from. She sensed and heard and saw images which sometimes were letters, road signs, maps leading her from one sensory input to the next, from one intuitive leap to another, and sometimes each led her along a direct line and sometimes quite the opposite. In Lennox's case, it had been a straight arrow shot. She'd heard the mewing, clicking, hum-ming sounds of a barnyard, the distinct noises of a chicken ranch coming out of the muffled, mysterious soundings given off by Lennox's body, that meaningless, whale singsong; then images had grown from the more distinct sounds. She'd seen a child everyone called Billy or Beau chasing terrified chickens, grabbing one and wringing its neck until it was dead. This had led to ugly little scenes, the same faceless girl in a frayed frock playing cruel games with some of the animals, both carnal and unnatural. She'd next seen Billy as a large, awkward girl, and then as a gargantuan woman in her mid-twenties, hard-bitten and tough. As Kim's hands had moved over the dead man-in one time and place-her mind had moved across another time and place, to a wedding, to a fight in a bedroom, to a dark closet and a pair of scissors she'd failed to use on him, to a new honeymoon during which all seemed peaceful and harmonious.

Jessica and Wardlaw had proven that all the wounds were superfluous, even cosmetic, to ape the Hearts Killer, all fabricated to mask the barbital poisoning which might well have been overlooked had not Jessica Coran been asked in on the case. Even the severing of the head had come long after death, Kim had rightly guessed, as Jessica had confirmed.

Still, Sincebaugh and Jessica, even Frank Wardlaw, had gathered as much from a quick perusal of the body and the wounds. So Kim was not surprised that Jessica, like Alex Sincebaugh and most assuredly Frank Wardlaw, knew that she had simply picked up on the same immediate clues as they had when they'd first viewed the body. Just because she possessed psychic power, this was no reason to discard common sense as a tool either.

Still, she desperately wanted Jessica to remain on her side. As for the severing of the head, it'd been the result of a motor blade on a boat, the boat filled with drunken fishermen who'd found the body.

As for Mrs. Lennox in small-town Texas near Austin, and as to her husband's mysterious disappearance, reported weeks before, Kim knew that she might well have recalled some particulars of the case from the hundreds of such cases that crossed her path in the line of duty every working day, but how she knew this was Lennox, and that he had died in the fashion he had, she could only attribute to a power she herself had no control over, nor anywhere near a complete understanding of.

She had learned to live with the power, a power without definition, without boundaries, without reason, or rather outside of the realm of the normal meaning of such words as reason, rationality, sanity, normality. What was normal about speaking to the dead and having them speak back? Yet in a very real sense, it was precisely what Dr. Jessica Coran did with her probes, DNA tests and electron microscopes.

“ Will you do it, Doctor?” asked Stephens again.

“ I would like to see an exhibition of your… your laying on of hands,” added Fouintenac, curious, pressing.

“ I will do what I can,” she began. “I will do my best but can promise nothing, gentlemen…”

The laying on of hands over the last of the Heartthrob victims yielded very little that Kim Desinor didn't already know. Even clutching the killer's strange rosary beads brought little or no new information, although the attempt exhausted her, for in the vision she once again became the killer wielding the knife. She had to be pulled from the cadaver, and so savage did her attack on the corpse become that she broke several ribs that had managed to remain intact until now.

Still, the yield was slim. She tried to explain that while she was the killer, a part of her was not given over to the monster, and did not wish to be. Still, there was so much that remained blocked; so much was shut out.

None of the principals in the room wanted to hear this, however. She finally said in a moment of desperation, “The killer uses a disguise of some sort. It's one of the reasons I can't quite get a fix on what he looks like.”

“ What kind of disguise?”

“ I don't know… something frilly and elaborate, like a stage costume.”

“ Clown costume?”

“ Some sort of Mardi Gras outfit perhaps?” pressed Stephens.

“ That's enough!” Jessica boldly stopped their questions. She had been the one to move in and grab hold of Kim and soothingly talk her down from her vision. She now wrapped her arms around Kim again. “You've already pushed Dr. Desinor to limits no one should have to endure. Allow her time to recover, please.”

“ This just isn't enough,” said Meade, disappointed along with the others.

“ We need more specific details,” added Stephens.

“ There might be another way,” suggested Landry with a pained expression, but then he quickly corrected himself, adding, “No… forget it… too much of the taxpayers' money involved, not to mention the emotional costs.”

“ What?” asked Fouintenac.

“ Go on, Carl,” said Stephens. “Spit it out.”

Jessica knew what Landry was driving at, knew it from her readings of the files, from Alex Sincebaugh's earlier requests, and yet when she spoke Carl Landry's thoughts, no one thought she had mind-reading abilities as they might have if Dr. Desinor had spoken the same words. “Exhume the first body, the first victim.”

“ Oh, I don't know… no, I think exhumation's out of the question,” replied Stephens, suddenly animated. “Papers get hold of that one, the family learns of it… we're talking major lawsuits and legal crap up to our hips.”

“ We can get the family to agree,” countered Jessica, who knew the difficulties inherent in what she said. “And if they refuse, we go ahead anyway. This is a murder investigation. They can't interfere. Nor do they have grounds for legal action. Besides, from what I read, the first victim's body was never claimed.”

“ It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth,” replied the deputy mayor, halfheartedly agreeing with Stephens.

“ Then we'll leave you out of it, sir,” countered Landry, who now seemed hot on the idea he'd first posited before them.

Jessica took up the slack. “If the killer knew any of his victims, if he's closely connected to any of his victims, it'd most likely be his first victim. A likely hypothesis and one worth checking into.”

“ Then we do the first. What was his name?” asked Meade. “Stimpson… Kenny Stimpson, wasn't it?”

“ Some of us think Stimpson was the second,” countered Landry.

“ You're not seriously thinking of exhuming the Surette corpse,” replied Meade, his eyes going wide while Fouintenac chewed on his lower lip and Stephens's slack-jawed expression displayed his own surprise.

“ And why not?” Jessica said. “We have good reason to believe that there was missed evidence in the case which would have pointed to its being the first Queen of Hearts kill-ing, and that was over a year ago.” Jessica pushed the point. “What is it you're afraid of? That you might've saved some lives if you'd taken this step sooner?” Kim was slowly coming around to the meaning of the words being bandied about the room. All but Wardlaw, who stood stonily against one wall, were heatedly debating whom to exhume for her to psychometrically read, but Jessica wanted her shot at the Surette body also, while Wardlaw likely wanted his mistakes to remain buried.

“ Somebody want to ask me if I want to do this?” Kim finally asked.

“ You are getting paid well for your services,” said Landry with a grim poker face.

“ There would be very little disturbance to the grave or the coffin,” countered Jessica, “since we're talking New Orleans, where everyone's buried aboveground; we merely have to unseal the crypt, and I don't truly see that family would be involved since he was buried in a paupers' yard, right? Why would there be objection now, a year later?”

“ Dr. Coran is right,” added Landry, defending the move now with surprising enthusiasm, though Kim quickly realized he was happy with the consternation he was getting out of the other solid citizens in the room, including a nervous Dr. Ward-law.

Wardlaw cleared his throat and jumped into the fray, saying, “But also in New Orleans, Doctor Coran, death-the grave, rather-is viewed as final and sacred. You will find opposition, family or no.”

“ Either way, there's no guarantee,” said Kim.

“ I say we give it our best try, Dr. Desinor,” countered Landry, seemingly anxious for the event. Or was he simply enjoying himself now at the expense of Stephens and Meade before the mayor's man?

God, Kim thought, now they're calling for an exhumation of an earlier victim, long since deceased and decayed, and Jessica, along with a supporting cast of Stephens and Landry, was suggesting that Kim could perform her “magic” over the exhumed corpse. Was Jessica Coran being catty? Was she trying her best to undermine Kim, believing that a poor result in such an endeavor was virtually assured? Should Dr. Coran get her way, Kim might easily be sent packing, and Jessica could take over full rein on the case. Was that what she wanted? From what little Kim knew of Jessica Coran, she assumed that getting her own way was what had made her so invaluable to the FBI.

Kim tried to imagine the unimaginable, no doubt a first for psychic investigation: a psychometric reading over a body long since gone cold in every sense of the word. Could anything come of it? It was one hell of a lot of trouble and turmoil to go to for what might well be nada\ it was also one hell of a challenge engineered by Jessica, who obviously had thrown down the gauntlet.

Kim felt certain that such a “show” would result in nothing save a handful of theatrics she could call on. The results would be pitiful at best. Psychic impressions left in the wood of old haunted houses was one thing; psychic energy might linger for years where spirits roamed, but what sort of ghostly impressions might remain in a decayed and entombed body or the porous concrete of an aboveground tomb? It was the ultimate challenge, as when the famous Pierce Reeves had psychically “attacked” the mummified remains of Tutankhamen, the boy king of Egypt, never recovering from his encounter and dying a disheartened and shriveled man in his late thirties. That event, which had fueled the fire of the infamous curse of King Tut for yet another generation, was still fresh in Kim's mind as she considered the ultimate disturbance of a body in its grave.

She was hardly certain that she was up to such a task, nor had she had any idea that she'd be boxed into such a position.

It was one thing to read the body of the recently deceased, but to snatch a corpse from its long slumber… The very idea repulsed and unnerved her, and to some degree-old habits dying hard-went against the few teachings of the Church she yet believed in, about the sanctity and piety of the grave.

Jessica Coran, by comparison, was eager to go ahead with an exhumation. It was scientifically a logical step, to ensure that what the NOPD had perceived as indeed a series of killings by the same man was in fact correctly dated to its inception.

According to an inner logic which Jessica herself followed instinctively, seldom were things as they seemed on first glance. But for the moment, Kim almost believed that Jessica was delighting in the psychic's discomfort.

She hadn't had time to fully assess Dr. Coran, or why her own presence here in the coroner's domain should make her antsy and uncomfortable, but uncomfortable was precisely the word for Jessica now. She could see that Jessica's usual sea-blue aura-the fiery glow that encircled the cranium to flutter about all living forms-usually a serene moon-glow aquamarine around her, was now shooting off orange sparks of blood red, a sure sign Jessica was upset.

Still, Kim realized that her form of magic made a lot of people-most people, in fact-uncomfortable. In almost every case, she made men and women, and people with iron wills and concrete world views in particular, unsettled in their beliefs and generally unhappy as a result. It was the nature of the beast, as Detective Alex Sincebaugh so exemplified.

Sincebaugh was obviously threatened by her, and so too was Jessica, perhaps to a lesser degree. Paul Zanek, for a number of reasons, had been terrified of her, not that he would ever have admitted it, not even to himself. The other men in this room, while not particularly believers, were desperate, all save Landry, and they had already made up their minds that they would go to any lengths for a breakthrough in the Hearts case, so why not a seance over a corpse?

Apparently, she had stepped into a hotbed of political intrigue that P.C. Stephens and Lew Meade had conveniently not explained to either her or Jessica. Either man had had plenty of opportunity to catch them up on Wardlaw's flaws, for instance, and on Sincebaugh's reticence and reluctance, on the politically charged environment-the shaky situation with respect to the detectives working the case who were ready to explode. Even Meade, who was supposedly on their side- their FBI man in New Orleans-had failed to inform either of them, but why had he failed to do so?

Was it because Meade and Stephens didn't want her to know what kind of shit she was about to step into? Was Stephens or Meade fearful that she would pull out at the mention of any trouble? Or was it more basic than that? No doubt the duo of Stephens and Meade wanted her to stay focused on the case, and not the peripheral nonsense surrounding the case.

“ Will you do it, Dr. Desinor?” pressed Landry. “If we get the order to exhume? Will you do a… a reading?”

“ We'll be happy to meet your price,” added Jessica, like some cheerleader with ulterior motives now. “Whataya say?”

At that moment Wardlaw chose to leave the operating room, calling out that he wasn't feeling too well. The other men exchanged knowing looks, aware that Wardlaw was fighting off the d.t. s, doing all in his power to keep off the booze, and now was further upset by talk of an autopsy of the Surette body. No M.E. wanted to admit to a single oversight, much less the possibility of a series of errors.

No one stopped Wardlaw's retreat, which was followed by an assistant coming into the room to wheel the body of the latest victim away once more. Meanwhile, Captain Landry, who'd so recently become awed by Kim's insights over the Lennox affair, only stared across at her.

She swallowed hard, wondering how much she might trust Landry, remaining upset at his having earlier withheld the Lennox information from her. She realized now why the Lennox corpse on second reading had so abruptly ended communication with her. Its need to communicate had been ended long before, and they had all known this in advance of coming into the morgue today-Jessica included.

“ You've done very well here, so far, Dr. Desinor,” said Fouintenac. “What an enormous gift you have to offer law enforcement. Now you must do whatever's necessary”-he meant the exhumation, which he no doubt would skip-”to help us locate this maniac who's feeding on our city.”

“ All right,” she abruptly agreed. “If it can be done in a sterile, well-lit environment, okay?”

“ That's the only way to go with an exhumation,” Jessica commented.

“ We'll arrange everything,” assured Landry, who seemed suddenly to be in control, running the show.

Stephens quickly put in, “All you need do is be here.” It was, after all, Stephens's show.

“ Good… good,” agreed Landry, who seemed to have boxed Stephens into a corner. “Then I'll begin the paperwork for Victor Surette's exhumation.”

“ Surette?” countered Meade. “I still think we should do the Stimpson body or the Lawton body, at very least the Trent Fischer body, since…”

Stephens waved Meade down, took him aside and explained things to him in a whisper the others could not hear. Meade erupted once with: “Who the hell is Surette? We're not even sure his death is related to the case.”

“ Surette is very possibly the first victim, Chief,” Landry explained again. “First victim, says who? Alex Sincebaugh? I still say Kenny Stimpson was the first.”

“ New evidence on the Surette homicide has recently surfaced,” began Landry. “We have reason to believe that the killings date back at least as far as Surette.”

“ New evidence has surfaced regarding the Surette death?” asked a surprised Stephens.

“ What kind of new evidence?” Meade pressed.

“ We'll know more after the exhumation,” Landry assured the other two men. “Suffice to say that Surette was known by the other victims.”

Stephens and Meade exchanged a look of surprise before Stephens replied, “You'd better have something a hell of a lot more compelling than the fact these fags knew one another, Carl.”

Captain Landry nodded, his large jaw firmly set, allowing his cocksure expression to do the talking for him.

“ I know what's going on here,” Meade said. “Landry here seems to think that his Detective Sincebaugh has some sixth sense about this case, don't you, Carl?”

“ I'll take Alex Sincebaugh's instincts and stack them against anyone you've got in your whole damned agency, Lew.”

“ It's on then. Let us know when and where, Carl,” Stephens declared with little enthusiasm for the idea.

Meade gave Stephens a menacing look, and Stephens fired back a volley of words in reply. “I have other reasons to see this through, at least to determine if there ever was a…connection. Lew.”

Kim knew that Stephens had been made curious over the Surette case due to what he'd seen her do in Virginia when he'd placed the Surette case in as a decoy, only to learn it was, in her professional opinion, related. She wondered why he had chosen the Surette case to use as a decoy when he'd visited Zanek's office in Quantico; had it been merely coincidental, or had there been motivating circumstances that she was unaware of?

Jessica Coran stepped between the men and said, “From what I've examined of the Surette case file, one which Dr. Wardlaw only reluctantly revealed to me, I had the immediate impression that there was a connection which Dr. Wardlaw at the time, for whatever reasons, chose to overlook.”

“ Overlook?” Stephens was incredulous.

“ The report claimed that the heart had been dug out by animals and taken off, that the body had been in the woods for weeks and was maggot-infested, but other, more easily accessible organs and parts of the body showed little to no sign of animal contact, only the extremities where rats, field mice and — perhaps raccoons had got at the decaying fingers, hands and toes. It seemed odd to me that only the heart was removed from the viscera. That runs counter to logic.”

“ Since when are animals logical?” asked Meade. “But even if you're right, why? Why would a respected M.E. of Wardlaw's obvious, ahhh, caliber…” Meade was cut short by Stephens, who jokingly told him that his final argument would lose his case.

“ Perhaps the idea that someone cannibalized the heart, or took it off for some other perverted pleasure, simply got the best of Dr. Wardlaw,” Jessica replied. “Or Wardlaw had other reasons not yet before us.”

Kim quickly added, “There's no accounting for what turns a normally functioning adult human being into a child filled with fright-psychologically speaking, that is. For some of us it's the touch of a spider's leg along the ankle, the sight of a snake, a maggot pool. For others it can be an odor associated with some long-ago hurt. Or a few words which conjure up a reproaching parental voice threatening us with God's divine punishment.”

“ What're you saying, that Frank Wardlaw's ready for the funny farm?” asked Meade.

“ No, no… not at all,” Kim replied. “I'm telling you that for some people…well, the very idea of… of, say for instance, a murder victim's hands being severed at the wrists becomes a torture to contemplate, much less work over, examine and touch. Such a terrible trauma came for a colleague of mine in Chicago once, and perhaps… just perhaps the idea of a man's heart being ripped from his chest might not put you into an emotional tug-of-war, Chief Meade, but it may've found some long-protected chinks in Dr. Wardlaw's armor, possibly placing him in an emotional upheaval which you and I only can guess at by comparison.”

“ Well,” began Jessica, “suffice it to say that Dr. Wardlaw obviously was in no state of mind to want to deal with what his eyes were telling him at the autopsy. Call it human error, frailty, emotional turmoil, oversight if you like.”

“ Bullshit. The man's a cutter himself,” said Meade, obviously impatient with the psychoanalysis of a friend.

Stephens stepped in. “Just do whatever's necessary, Dr. Coran, to get that exhumation order on this…what's his name…”

“ Surette,” added Landry a bit impatiently, knowing full well that Stephens knew of the suspicions that had cropped up around the Surette case.

“ You run into any goddamned problems or red tape, Doctor,” Fouintenac said directly to Jessica, his eyes blazing now, “and you just have the asshole who gets in your way give me a call, or you may call me yourself at this number.” He extended another expensive-looking embossed card.

“ Carte blanche? I like doing business with you, Mr. Deputy Mayor, Commissioner Stephens, Chief Meade.”

The mayor's man made a feeble attempt to impress Jessica further, looking as if he were on the verge of asking her to dinner when he instead said, “You'll find us all here in New Orleans most cooperative, Dr. Coran… Dr. Desinor. If the FBI's best can't hel'p us, then God he'p us all.”

“ Just keep those good wishes flowing our way, Mr. Fouintenac,” Jessica said for both Kim and herself.

“ Will do… will do, ladies…”

Kim saw that Jessica's tone was mild but that her aura was a pulsating flare and her eyes, boring into Kim now, were driving home spiked shards, projectiles of uncertainty. Something was nagging at the other woman, something like a shadow that crawled up from inside Jess and took up a position along the wall, camouflaging itself there, waiting with infinite patience to snatch her whenever she might be alone.

And she was clumsily, awkwardly seeking help from Kim, yet unable to negotiate the uncharted waters, having no practice at asking for help from anyone, especially from a psychic, thanks most likely to her upbringing. Jess worked heroically, tirelessly at being the professional that she was, but she was also working overtime at keeping the shadow at bay, but it climbed up out of her at times-even here-casting a pall over her eyes, and deep within those shadow-cast eyes lay the most fathomless and nameless emotions Kim had ever seen.

Kim suddenly grabbed Meade by the arm, saying, “Let's have a private word, Chief Meade, now!”