Pure Instinct

22

Sincebaugh and deYampert uneasily stepped into a completely new yet familiar, expected nightmare at 34 East Canal Street, which was in an older section of the city where unkempt, weedy courtyards dominated along with boarded-up windows and going-out-of-business signs. The streets here were dirty and narrow, but quaint with cobblestone pathways. Here the old stone buildings had French windows that cranked by hand and hung out over the street, black wrought-iron gates in sad need of repair about each front and rusted-out terraces leaning out overhead. Sincebaugh thought that while it was not the loveliest area in the city, neither was it the most squalid. The racial mix here was predominantly black, Cajun and Spanish, and if you blinked you might see the ghost of a Conquistador standing in one of the dark courtyards.

Neighbors had heard nothing, seen nothing. The entire scene reminded Sincebaugh of the Murders in the Rue Morgue, down to the dapper little man with mustache and suspenders who called himself the superintendent and who had discovered the body when, after two days, he had not seen Miss Marie Dumond, a light-skinned mulatto/Cajun, in or out of the building. When he'd begun to notice a foul odor coming from within, he'd used his pass key and found the blood-spattered scene. Even then, perhaps due to the hysteria that overtook him, he still had no clue as to the true nature of his tenant.

Lying half on, half off the bed was a young man. Mademoiselle Dumond was no more a woman than deYampert, although he was far prettier and frailer. The corpse was a man whose fine features and torn underclothes marked him as extremely interested in his own feminine side: He was a cross-dresser.

Eyes closed in what seemed a peaceful sleep were at horrid odds with the mutilation played out over his body. The chest was splayed open as if some enormous bird of prey had settled atop him and begun ripping with talons, painting the bedclothes and walls with his blood. In fact, there was a message scrawled across one wall in blood, presumably in the victim's blood, presumably penned by the killer-a sure departure from the monster's earlier M.O. as he'd not left anything of himself behind before, save the now-familiar calling card.

The two cops stared at the blood message for some time before turning away, each recalling how the beheaded victim of two days before had turned out to be a copycat killing. Over the bedposts the letters, snaking trails of dripping blood, formed three words:

Queer of Heart

This was an absolute departure for the usually reserved, cautious killer, sending a warning signal that this again could be the work of a fiendish copycat killer, another mooncalf altogether. But peeking out from the victim's rib cage, deep in the heart cavity where the large red organ was missing, was the familiar doily card displaying a bloodied, fouled queen of hearts. It seemed to leer up at them in a mocking fashion as if miming a single word: Gotcha.

“ I thought you said she… he… was a woman?” Ben teasingly asked the superintendent, desperately seeking a way to lighten the moment when the super had crept in behind them, curious as a muskrat and about to lose his lunch.

The man was dumbfounded. “But she… she was a woman.”

“ Not anymore,” Ben said in his driest tone as he removed the bloodied sheet farther down the torso to reveal the young man's severed private parts.

“ Oh… my dearLordy God' n Heaven 'bove Jesus,” moaned the super.

“ Don't need to ask if the husband did it, do we?” Sincebaugh said to Ben, eliciting a belly laugh from his partner, further disturbing the superintendent. Others from the building had begun to jam the doorway, so Alex shouted for the uniformed officer there to keep everyone out.

“ Let's start the routine, Ben,” Alex said.

Both men knew the importance of the appearance of dedicated police work, even if they also knew that usually nothing came of the measures they took at the scene. Ben dispatched two uniformed officers to do a neighborhood search for any discarded knife or hatchet that might have been carelessly tossed away by the killer-doubtful since this had not occurred in any of the previous Queen of Hearts killings. This in essence meant the uniformed cops had to sift through trash cans and in sewer grates, a task few but rookies threw themselves into.

A second pair of uniforms were sent out to canvass the building, asking questions about the deceased and his relationships to others. Since he was a transvestite, Alex held out little hope that others in the building had much to do with him or that he actually had a family that kept in touch. Later, after all the canvassing, Ben and Alex would ask the officers who did the initial legwork if they had spoken to anyone who had seemed unusually rattled or nervous, or seemed to have known more about the victim's personal habits than the super obviously did. Such steps would build public confidence in the Department, if nothing else, to show that they were moving on the case.

Interviewing witnesses was a contradiction in terms on such a closed-door homicide as this, an oxymoron. If you interviewed a witness in a case of out-and-out brutal murder carried out in such a cold-blooded, calculated fashion behind closed doors or in a dark place, you were in effect interviewing the killer or killers, the only witness being the killer. Still, someone might have heard something, might have seen a stranger in the hallway, on the front doorstep. Dusting for prints would likely reveal nothing useful; even if a usable print were found, if it didn't match one on file with the Department or the FBI, it remained useless until an arrest match was made. Still, if a print were found to match one identified at an earlier scene, then it did tell them that they were dealing with the same beast. All such attempts and effort had to be made, so Detectives Sincebaugh and deYampert went about the business of evidence-gathering and note-taking and measuring.

At the door the police photographer waved his way in, a good man whom Alex and Ben had worked with on countless other cases. Yancy Rosswell was his name, and he'd photographed most of the handiwork of the Queen of Hearts killer. Whenever he was unavailable, Alex had done his own photos, which Rosswell had once called functionally okay but lacking in artistic merit. Rosswell's walls at home were hung with crime-scene photos dating back as early as the 1890s.

He was long and lean and his every bone was just below the surface, prepared to create an angle on his body somewhere. He had a Clint Eastwood edge to him and a Jack Palance profile. He was as tall as the two actors as well.

“ Damn…damn… damn.” He punctuated every shot with the expletive.

“ Get plenty of shots,” Alex instructed, unnecessarily, just wanting to hear himself, to see if his vocal cords were still operational after looking at the sight before him. “We make it the same bastard, Rosswell. Whataya think? From a cameraman's point of view, that is.”

“ The camera don't lie unless you lie to yourself,” he said with a philosophical wheeze.

As had been the case with all the Hearts victims found indoors, and those caught up in the confluence of river or lake, the body had been left in a “posed” position by the killer. All of his outdoor victims had been placed facedown, requiring police to turn the body to discover the hole cut into the chest, while those killed indoors were always laid unceremo-niously and indignantly across their beds, no matter what room they were killed in, with their faces and chests facing straight up, with a sheet or a blanket gently pulled up over the hideous wounds, hardly hiding them since blood matted the sheet to the wounds in an indigo pool. It was as if the killer held some sort of odd fetish about tucking them into their beddy-bys when he killed them indoors.

These were the few strands or patterns the killer had left them until now, with the blood message on the wall. It was indeed a departure from the killer's usual reserve and caution.

“ Queer of heart.” Alex curiously read the words aloud as if aloud would make more sense of them.

“ Bastard has a sense of play, doesn't he,” said Ben.

“ Yeah, maybe, but we've never seen this before.”

“ Must've really been pissed off by the copycat killing maybe, wouldn't you say?”

“ Maybe… yeah…” Alex considered this thoughtfully. “So perhaps, after all he's done, he wants us to know that he can laugh at himself? Or he just wants recognition for his handiwork? I don't know, partner.”

“ What aya saying, that it is another copycat? But there's the card. If it is another copy, Alex, it's far better than the Lennox Xerox. Nobody but us knows about the cards.”

“ Yeah, you're right… has to be the same freak. We've searched all over New Orleans for those kinda cards in every novelty shop. Has to be him.”

“ So, it just doesn't set well, the whole message-on-the-wall thing, huh?”

“ No, it doesn't. And if it is him, he's… evolving.”

“ Evolving?”

“ I read in the police bulletin once about how some killers' M.O. s evolve, change with the evolution of the fantasy that the guy's working out, you know. This could be something like that, Big.”

“ You think so, Sincy?”

Alex nodded. “Yeah, maybe, Ben.” Alex turned to the photographer and called for him to get the wall shot. “Can you get the whole thing in a wide lens?”

“ Sure, no problem, Lieutenant.” He coughed into a handkerchief he'd been holding against his nose. He was also wiping sweat from his brow. It was an ugly kill and he'd had to do his artistic best with it.

He worked like a pro, however, and soon had shot after shot of the message on the wall, from every angle.

“ How you doing, Rosswell?” asked a second cameraman who'd suddenly gotten past the police barricade at the door.

“ Who the hell're you?” Sincebaugh blocked the man's path, taking him for a reporter.

“ I'm with the FBI-Dr. Coran. She's right behind me, coming up the stairs.”

“ Really. What, she doesn't trust us to do the fuckin' job?” Sincebaugh shouted.

“ I got the call, was told to be here, guys. What can I say?”

“ One way or another, looks like Lew Meade's going to wrench this case loose,” said Ben. “Just waiting for us to fumble, Alex.”

The FBI photographer shrugged. “I only take orders, gentlemen.” He then went straightaway to work. He talked as he fired away over both the body and the wall, commenting on the grotesque nature of the crime, saying he'd thought that he'd seen everything until now. He seemed to need to talk in order to work; it seemed to be a way of calming his nerves.

The FBI fingerprint guy and Dr. Coran followed, and she went straight to the detectives, saying, “You were wearing gloves the whole time, I hope, so we don't pick up any unnecessary prints, gentlemen?” Satisfied, she went to work without looking at the body because she was stopped stone cold by the bloody writing on the wall. Alex watched her for a moment before he and Ben moved off, deciding to comb the little two-room apartment in the meantime, checking into cupboards, drawers, the refrigerator, staring at photos of friends, family, anything they could find.

Finding little of use, Sincebaugh returned to the bedroom to find a jittery Dr. Coran seemingly unable to concentrate on her work. She dropped a vial, swore and began a procedure over. From time to time, she stared up at the message on the wall. This seemed only to further upset her. Meanwhile, the fingerprint man said he'd done all he could, and so he began huddling with the two photographers, who knew one another from previous engagements. Each man promised to have prints of one sort or another to Sincebaugh before his shift was over tomorrow. The two photographers and the dust man left together, speaking of locating a watering hole after each dumped his evidence at lockup.

Alex went to Jessica Coran and asked if she were okay. She looked up into his eyes and said,”Nobody said anything about the writing on the wall. It took me by surprise.”

“ Yeah, us too.”

“ It's him, Alex… Matisak.”

“ What? Whataya mean?”

“ It's his new thing. He writes poetry in blood on walls after each of his kills.”

“ But his M.O. is completely different from this. He wasn't here, Jessica.” He tried his most reassuring tone.

“ You don't put anything past Matisak. He may've killed this boy just to get me here to see this!” She pointed to the blood message on the wall. “That's his doing, his handwrit-ing.”

“ You can't know that.”

“ It's his way of telling me that he's here, close by, watching me.”

“ You're jumping to conclusions not in evidence, Jessica.”

“ Get hold of myself, right?” She glared up at him. “He shadowed my every move on the Claw case in New York from his jail cell. This…this would be a cakewalk for him. I'm telling you he's been here, in this room. I can sense him. Hell, I can smell him.”

It was then Sincebaugh heard a clamor from outside in the hallway and going toward the noise, he saw Dr. Kim Desinor pushing forward through the crowded hallway, followed by Lew Meade and Captain Landry. Alex could only drop his gaze and shake his head in a gesture of defeat. He had one badly shaken M.E. working the scene, and now he'd be forced to deal with a psychic on the premises.

“ Stand aside, Alex,” ordered Carl Landry at the doorway, and Alex dutifully did so, casting a worried glance in Ben's direction. Kim Desinor followed his eyes for a moment before going toward the bed and body, noticing immediately the blood communique over the bed. When the psychic stepped away from the horrid scene at the bed, she went toward the kitchen, trying to come up for air. She came face-to-face with Alex instead. He hoarsely whispered into her ear, “Doesn't look like we'll need an exhumation now, Dr. Desinor. We got a body right here for you to psi over.”

She captured his gaze and drew it into her own for a millisecond, finding a firm strength in this man, some anchor for her reeling senses. This death scene wasn't like anything she'd ever faced before. It was so bloody, not at all like the body fished from the river the other day with its hideous wounds bathed and washed clean. Here the full horror of what the Queen of Hearts killer did was full in your face. Captain Landry pushed into the small kitchen, wondering what was going on. “Let Dr. Desinor do her job, Alex, without interference, please.”

Alex watched in dismay as Landry and Meade guided the psychic to the corpse for a second time like a couple of vultures to pick over found prey. Meade ushered the shaken Jessica Coran aside while Landry whispered some encouragement in Dr. Desinor's ear. Kim looked faint, forehead sweating, hands trembling and nose twitching with the stench of the two-day-old corpse. Even the seasoned, hardened Jessica Coran, who was making for the door, looked seriously rattled by the scene.

Alex took his boss aside. “Don't you think the crime scene's been trampled over enough today, Captain?”

“ Alex, we've got to accommodate Dr. Desinor, plain and simple. What part of that don't you understand?”

Landry ordered everyone except the two detectives, Dr. Desinor, Meade, Coran and himself out.

Alex said through grinding teeth, “If she's on the case, I'm off, Cap.”

“ You make that move, Alex, and I swear, I'll use the tape those IAD clowns brought to me.”

“ Not like you to threaten, Carl.”

“ My options aren't many, Alex. Now if you and deYampert had anything for me, maybe things would be different, but so far all you've managed to do is go around in circles trying to find that transvestite snitch of yours. Meanwhile, you don't have the slightest idea of the hounds on my back or how often I've taken shots for you.”

“ I'm telling you, Carl, there's something strange about Gil-reath's disappearance right after we got the first call, after the Kenny Stimpson killing, and I'd swear it was his disguised voice on that 9ll. And if he did find Stimpson's body, he either knew him or his killer. And now this victim, Captain, if you haven't heard yet, is a transvestite.”

“ You really think Gilreath knows something?”

“ I do.”

“ Then find the bastard.”

“ I've been working on it day and night.”

“

Obviously not good enough, Alex.”

“ Ben and I are busting asses on this-” Each man was alerted to a sudden keening cry of anguish and, looking up, they saw Dr. Desinor, her right hand on the body's forehead, her left in the open chest wound, her eyes closed, her cry of pain and terror turning Alex's blood into a thick oatmeal.

“ What the hell's she doing?” shouted Sincebaugh. “Get her out of here!”

Landry grabbed Sincebaugh and pushed him against one of the blood-spattered walls. “Shut up, Alex… shut up and let her do her thing.”

“ So”-Sincebaugh was fighting for breath-”to hell with protocol.”

“ Protocol hasn't gotten us anywhere. You find a door locked, you go round to the back.”

“ I don't need this shit, Carl.”

Ben deYampert was now beside Alex, telling him, “Give it a chance, Alex. If it fails, we've cleared the runway, and if it helps, more power to the lady. Got to admit, she's got guts.”

Meade placed a hand over his lips, silently asking for quiet. Frowning, Alex relented.

The three hardened police detectives and the FBI field chief all watched now in silence as the psychic did her work.

“ No… no…” she was moaning. “I never hurt you… Whyyyyy?”

Alex continued to frown at the show of histrionics, but no one else seemed to be bothered by the theatrical demonstration and obvious pretense.

Kim Desinor raised her arms in mock self-defense, and as she went to her knees after a flurry of self-defense moves, her fists clenched and doubled as if wielding a heavy object. She rose and seemed to score a hit with the ghostly weapon in her hand, but suddenly the phantom object was dropped from her grasp, and she stumbled backwards, clutching her chest as if fighting to keep her heart intact while fending off invisible blows.

Sincebaugh almost laughed at the display, but when he saw her falling, he reacted instinctively to catch her in his arms, but not before she grazed her head on the bedpost.

“ Get her outside, Alex. Get some water, Ben,” the captain was shouting.

Meade reacted nervously. “Good God, is she all right?”

The bruise weltered up in a dark ring over her eye, but this seemed the least of her worries. She'd gone into some sort of seizure, epileptic in nature, and she was shrill and pleading against an invisible attacker.

She lashed out at Alex, who raised an open hand and slapped her hard, bringing a red hue to one side of her face and startling her out of her vision.

Alex felt the reality of her fear, deep and lifting, an ocean of it running current-swift through the woman. Whether she was a fake or not, no one short of Meryl Streep could act this well. Had she locked onto something evil and unimaginable in the room? Alex momentarily and helplessly wondered, feeling the intensity of her struggle in his arms.

He held her against his chest, shouting, “It's all right, Kim… you're all right… you're among friends.”

His words sounded so banal to himself, but he could think of nothing more comforting to say; still, the words seemed to be working as she relaxed under his grip. He held her now with her eyes closed. She had shut down as if a control or safety mechanism had taken over.

Alex tore the looped black rosary beads from her twisted fingers, somehow knowing that only when her touch was severed from the strange crystal cross would she relax. This done, he shouted, “I think we'd better get her over to St. Luke's now!”

“ You do that, Alex,” said Landry. “Ben and I'll finish up here.”

“ That's all right, Sincebaugh. I'll take her to the hospital,” suggested Lew Meade. “Right, right,” Alex replied sarcastically before carrying her off, down the narrow corridor and steps and outside, where a mist shrouded the waiting crowd. He bolted toward his squad car, passing by other cops and reporters held at the ribbon, all of them very curious about the limp woman in Alex's arms, some of them recognizing her as the psychic called in by the NOPD to work the Hearts case.

“ First time on a crime scene,” he shouted. “Hey, what can I tell you. Happens to the best of us.” It was both a lie and a weak defense, but he bullied past them all.

He put her into the backseat of his squad car and drove the six blocks to St. Luke's Presbyterian Hospital.

In the rear, she was coming around, mumbling to herself, something about a bloody baseball bat. He paid little heed as he turned the car into the E.R. port.

Less than half an hour later, Kim Desinor was lying comfortably in an E.R. bed, her condition considered fair, and she was opening her eyes to find Alex standing over her, the glint of genuine concern steeling his gaze.

“ You okay, Doctor… Kim?” he asked.

“ Where…”

“ Hospital. You kinda went berserk back there. Went out. We kinda panicked, so here you are. Doctor says you're okay. He patched your forehead and…”

She reached up, touched the wide bandage and said, “Ouch! What happened?”

“ Sorry, but you fell against a bedpost. I caught you before you did any more harm to yourself.”

She shook off a cold chill that swept through her. “I saw something, didn't I?”

“ Hmmmph, you tell me.”

“ I can't… remember.”

“ Can't remember what? Being in the room, parading around, acting out the part of the victim, or what you saw while in trance?” How very convenient, he thought. So it was all a show that maybe got out of hand.

She saw the telling look in his eye. “Lieutenant, I'm only human. What I saw, my mind refused to accept. I saw myself-as someone else-being murdered.”

“ You saw yourself.”

“ As her, as him… as the Dumond woman. His real name… I know it, but it's sealed away with everything else I learned. I was her… him… for the duration.”

“ But you can't remember what you saw as Ms. Dumond?”

She detected the ripple of humor in his tone. “Nothing… a total blank, a protective measure. My subconscious has the negatives, though, and after hypnosis, I think I could piece together what I saw as Dumond.”

“ You'll have to forgive me, Doctor, but I'm just not convinced of any of this. Tell it to Captain Landry.”

“ Alex, what occurred was real.”

“ I think it's late. I'd like to get out of this hospital and go home. Can I drop you anywhere?” he asked, ignoring her now.

“ God, you're infuriating.”

“ Me? What do you think…” He hesitated and lowered his hands. “Look, how do you think I feel about you?”

“ You deny your own psychic abilities, repress them even, and you can't stand the thought of anyone else having any either, it would appear.”

“ That's the biggest load I've heard from you yet.”

“ You forget, I've seen the tape of you at the coffee shop. I've seen you in action.”

“ I claim no second sight.”

“ Claim it or not, you've got it.”

“ Listen, for the duration of this night, can we talk about anything other than this?”

“ I'd be happy to discuss any subject with you. Lieutenant- over dinner perhaps?”

“ Dinner?”

“ I still haven't eaten.”

“ Dinner? Okay, you're on.”

“ Good, then perhaps we can have a civil conversation?”

“ Perhaps.”

“ Have you all my things?”

“ Your handbag,” he said, lifting it from a nearby table.

“ Thank you.”

“ Shoes,” he said, handing these to her.

She took them and began placing them on. “Where's my gun?”

“ Right here. I suppose you have a permit for that. 38?”

“ I do.”

“ And what about these?” he asked, handing the rosary beads to her. “Got a permit for these?”

She gave him a mock look of disgust. “Where'd you get this?”

“ I've noticed you use 'em whenever you go into trance. What? Do the beads hold some special power or meaning for you?”

“ Haven't you seen these beads, this amulet before?” she asked, puzzled. “I mean, they must look familiar to you.”

“ No, Doctor, they don't.”

“ Stephens brought the rosary with him… I mean, sent it ahead for me to examine. Said he…said it was from one of the victims, Surette.”

“ Oh, yeah, I recall now. We found it where it'd fallen between his legs.”

“ I'll tell you what I told Stephens.”

“ Which is?”

“ The rosary beads belonged to the killer, not the victim.”

Alex measured this information carefully in his mind, testing it for meaning. “That's a remarkable leap.”

“ Are you willing to consider the possibility I'm right about the beads?”

“ Maybe. Like your gun, I didn't notice them until I picked you up and carried you down to my car. Told the people here you were a fellow cop, flashed my credentials.”

“ God, you didn't have to lie for me. The gun is registered.”

“ Guess I don't need to ask you why you carry one.”

“ Nowadays? With one fourth of the homes in this country touched by crime each year? No, no need to ask.”

“ I'll just let 'em know you're up and running; meanwhile, if you'd like a mirror and a sink, it's that way.”

She thanked him again and went to freshen up, the throbbing pain in her head reminding her to go slow.

In the mirror, she studied her image and tried to recapture what had been so shocking to her system; there'd been something unusual this time, something that didn't fit with the other attempts to see the killer. Something had changed and drastically, but she wasn't sure what it was, not yet, and the more she tried to revive the images, the more her head hurt.

She decided to sleep on it after a decent meal. Maybe it would return to her in time; maybe she'd need the help of a professional hypnotist. She'd never had to use a hypnotist before, but there was plenty of precedent for it in the literature when a vision was blocked by one's own mind, whether it was a simple memory or a psychic insight.

She would just have to be careful to instruct the hypnotist not to lead her in any way, but merely facilitate the process. She wondered if anyone on the case might suggest a competent person for the job, but she knew better than to ask Alex.

She did what she could with her hair and her face, fearing she could not do much. What little makeup she used about the eyes had run, giving her an Alice Cooper look that might easily scare Alex off. She rinsed her face of all makeup, opting for the natural look that shone through. She finished up just as he returned to the room for her.