Pure Instinct

27

Matthew Matisak pretended an aimless, wandering gait along the streets of New Orleans, a free man, his attention on the final steps that would bring him to the coming, decisive duel with her, Jessica Coran. He fully expected to take his due from her, after wrapping up a few loose ends, and this time he would be completely in control, all arrangements having been made- All systems a go and me aglow, he wickedly thought. This time her own blood would rise against her to become his absolutely and forever.

He had thoughtfully mapped out how they would meet, how he would lead her into his snare, what his final meal would be like, for it would be supplied by her and it would be his last. She would so fulfill him that he would have nowhere afterward to turn. He would have reached his personal zenith. So he would destroy himself while her blood was coursing through him, taking a part of her into eternity with him.

The means was at hand. He had already prepared and tested the equipment on a young girl he'd found wandering about the Greyhound bus station the night before. All was operational at the location he had paid well for.

He had paid top dollar for the portable dialysis machine which would remove Jessica's lifeblood in a controlled fashion and filter it into him in just as controlled a fashion. He planned to O.D. on her blood, to burst his own blood vessels with an overabundance of the good stuff. “What a way to go,” he told himself.

Not riddled with bullets, not electrocuted or gassed, not plummeting to his death during an escape or progressively rotting away in a cell, but to die in a fashion befitting such a demonic force as himself, in a manner which he would have chosen, master of his own fate. He intended to be literally imploded from within by her blood-at least all his arteries and veins would detonate, so full would they become with their commingling of blood.

It was so rare and evil an idea that it could not have been born overnight, but rather had crept up in inchworm fashion over his mind, coming on at first softly to tickle his psyche, a playful half-formed, seeking-cohesion, heat-seeking idea of a lifetime. At first slow to form and coalesce and live fully, the idea had in the past few months-since killing Dr. Gabriel Arnold with his own dialysis machine-begun to chase through Matisak's consciousness like a steam engine bound nonstop for Hades, and now… finally… years in the making… it was here in New Orleans that the complete beauty of this perfect notion had come to pure fruition like the blossom on a passionate flower. She must come to him now… come for him, unable to help herself any longer. She would do so alone. He knew that she would abandon all her training, that she knew, like him, that eternity was waiting for them to step into its waiting void together.

She would come for the same reason that he must beckon her: They were locked into meeting their death angels at the same instant in time. For all eternity hereafter they must grapple with one another. Besides, she was noble and nobles like her couldn't help themselves, not really, not after all the numbers who'd died in her place because she was so noble. She must feel great remorse for the others; it was not in her makeup to feel otherwise, especially with the last person to take her sacrificial place-this special agent named Sand whose cover as a pilot might have fooled Jessica but had not fooled him. The fool had led him directly to her.

He had learned of her relocation to New Orleans on temporary assignment through a series of phone calls, pretending an urgent message from her last tour of duty office in Honolulu. He had even learned the name of the Hawaii bureau chief, a man named James Parry, and he had used this name to gel information about her whereabouts and current operation, tracking down this Queen of Hearts pervert. Think of it, he told himself now, some sick bastard's going around ripping out the hearts, likely cannibalizing them. “And they call me sick,” he said aloud to the wind, a nearby doorman in a phony general's uniform giving him a dubious look, having overheard him.

Matisak moved on down the street. He wasn't surprised to leam that his Jessica had tackled the gruesome case that had all of New Orleans in turmoil. He'd been reading about the case, which had been making national headlines, and there had been talk of FBI involvement, and the moment he'd read ol it, he'd somehow known that Jessica would come here. This hunch, and a little fast talk with some lab technician he'd managed to reach inside Quantico after several other people had disconnected, had been enough to seal Jessica's fate. She'd come from hot, humid D.C. to the even steamier jazz capital of the world to party with a monster, do a little Mardi Gras of her own. But he was the monster that was going to get her, not this heart-eating bastard who went for gays and cross-dressers.

He needed now only to bide his time. Killing Special Agent Sand was his first calling card. Maybe now he'd take out another of her bodyguards, the guy who was in the car across the street from her hotel for the past two nights, the guy whom Ed Sand had shared a great deal of time with, another of Jessica's bodyguards.

Jessica must know by now that she was being watched by others ordered by the Bureau to protect her. She'd no doubt found a way out of the hotel and was on her way to Metairie Cemetery by now, but in the meantime, Matisak wanted to make her feel safe from all these prying eyes.

He moved toward the car and stepped behind and around it, to knock at the passenger-side window. The man inside rolled the window down, expecting his replacement perhaps.

“ Who the hell're you?”

Matisak's tongue pushed forth a miniature blowgun and he puffed once hard, sending the thin, deadly shard of a needle into the FBI agent's throat along with some spittle. The tiny dart brought on an instant seizure of the heart, respiratory paralysis, vomiting for a few agonizing moments, then full paralysis and death. It was a fine drug, this Jericho rose, and he'd read with amusement that if bees pollinated their honey with it, they would create poisonous honey. Nature's a wonderful thing, he thought.

Matisak got in beside the man and pulled forth a thick loop of wire attached to two small handles that fit nicely into his large hands. The wire, which he placed around the dying man's head, he began to twist, using the handles around one another in tourniquet fashion. Pressure against the throat was instantaneous, the blood careening forth from veins and arteries along the throat, all this before the man's bulging eyes popped completely.

Matisak now viciously twisted the wire until the man's head slumped forward, having nothing but the top of the spinal column to hold it on. A good pull, and the head came off in its entirety to land bowling-ball-fashion in Matisak's bloodied hands.

Lapping at the blood from time to time, much of it washing the dash and interior window, he was tempted to drink heavily from this fount, but he mustn't. The little darts with the concentrated poison had worked extremely well and effectively, so he knew that he mustn't consume very much of the man's blood. The fast-acting toxin would have worked its way through the man's system even as he'd severed the arteries.

He was pleased with his simple and crude decapitator. It was an effective way to deal with those who stood between him and her, and there were few killings more disturbing than decapitation murders, so he'd have the police looking for a serial killer whose patterns resembled anything but those of Matthew Matisak, while at the same time he'd be telling Jessica Coran exactly what he needed to tell her.

He was saving himself up for her like a virgin groom. He meant to feed on her alone now.

Having removed the head completely now, he balanced it back atop the agent's bloodied throat just long enough to snatch out the folded leather pouch he carried with him. He opened the small leather bag and now removed the man's head for a second time, placing it, dripping and spoiled with perspiration and blood, into the bag.

Checking his watch, he knew he had to hurry out to Metairie. He wanted to be there far in advance of the moon and long before his sweet Jessica might arrive. There were, after all, provisions to be made.

He placed the head-filled bag in the rear of the vehicle with a slight tossing movement. It hit the seat, bounced readily and came to rest on the floorboard, all quite neat, no blood rivulets and stringy matter clinging to the cushions. He next got out of the car and manfully dragged what was left of Fouintenac- whose cover likely disguised his true name-over to the passenger side of the black sedan. He then quickly got behind the wheel and turned on the ignition, and in a moment Matthew Matisak moved the death car into traffic, following the highway signs for Metairie.

Stepping from out of a black entryway at Orleans and Esplanade Avenues, a lifelong resident of New Orleans, Chester Lewis, wiped his forehead of sweat. He'd lived a long life at seventy-two years of age, and before tonight, before moments ago, he'd believed that he'd seen all things human and awful, but tonight he had witnessed the worst brutality in his experience.

He took several more pulls on his Red Label, gulping the liquid down as if life depended on it, wondering if he ought to tell somebody what he'd seen, wondering if his son would listen to him, or maybe Maybelle Saunders, his landlady and girlfriend. What should he do? He wondered if he'd just become the only witness to a Queen of Hearts murder, or more likely a murder by some new monster. Maybe he'd just tell his son and Maybelle… maybe…

“ Jesus, tell me, what is dis world coming to anyhow?” he asked the dark street and the handful of transients and pas-sersby, who just stared at him as if he were a freak. “What is yo world coming to, Jesus?” he drunkenly repeated.

He could be a good Boy Scout, play by the rules, but what could he tell anybody? He was near blind, and even nearer drunk when he saw what he saw, and who was going to listen to an old retired nigger bus driver anyhow? The governor? Sure. The mayor maybe, or perhaps the police commissioner? He laughed at the idea, but his nerves, his eyes and his conscience were already preying on him. Just a few years ago the city had finally begun to hire black cabdrivers in what was once an all-white profession. He had to do his duty. Maybe if somebody had just come forward and done their duty before now, lives would have been saved.

“ Christ-on-my-knee, what chance anybody gonna wanna hear what I gots to say,” he told himself aloud.

Still, he did know the license plate on the car. He'd been frozen in place by what he had witnessed from the doorway where he'd been resting and drinking; he'd been there long enough to memorize the license plate as he'd had a clear view of it, just as he'd had a clear view of the attack. He'd seen the man inside slouch over like he was shot by some silent bullet. He had seen the man's head cut clean away. Seen it all through the back window from where he sat, his feet against one doorjamb, his back to the other.

“ God, that killer-man waza mostest brazen human bein' I ever seen in all my days. Damned if he didn't move like the Devil hisself,” he quietly warned himself, ambling toward home, still debating with himself as to what he should do, still wondering why the hunched-over, bloated guy who did the killing had taken off the man's head to place it in a tote bag, wondering what the devil intended doing with the head.

He cautioned himself a last time to not get involved. “Nobody gonna b'lieve an ol' fool nigger anyway,” he rationalized aloud. “Leastways, not a liquored-up one.”

Just the same, he had to tell somebody. He'd tell his boy, if he could find him home. If not, he'd confide in Maybelle. Maybe she'd know what to do.

In the dark confines of the yellow cab Jessica Coran felt completely alone-as she should be, she told herself. No one else would come between Matisak and her, no one in harm's way. It was nearing midnight and the monster awaited.

She recalled her most important confidence to Kim, the one she'd wanted everyone to know: She didn't want to be responsible for another soul to pass from this world because of Matisak's sick obsession with her, and one way or another it had to end tonight.

And if Kim were like Ed Sand, here as one of Paul Zanek's carefully placed bodyguards, then Jessica would know that too before the night was over. But nothing must happen to Kim, she firmly told herself. No one could ever again fall victim to Matisak.

Jessica had earlier found a back way out of the hotel, and using a London Fog coat, a pair of dark glasses and a service elevator, she had quickly located the tunnels below street level. A few blocks from the hotel, she'd located a cab, which now bumped the curb and came to a sudden halt before an old stone and metal sign that read: “Metairie Cemetery.”

The cabdriver had been dubious, but after she'd slipped him a few bills he'd kept his concerns to himself. Now he said nothing, even as he stared out at the desolate location and the high gates to the cemetery. The place was closed and locked against the public this time of night.

This wasn't exactly the time and place she'd have chosen for an end to her life, and it wasn't that she particularly wanted to die here tonight, or that she felt suicidal, but she was determined that no one else on the periphery of the combat would die because of the indiscriminate, all-encompassing conflict that had become like some cosmic battle between her and Matisak.

“ You wan' I should wait, lady?” the Spanish driver finally asked, having no idea of the danger he was already in.

“ No, no, thanks…I'm… well, I'm expecting someone.”

“ I hope it ain't Dracula, lady,” joked the cabbie, unaware that he was so close to the truth.

“ Thanks for your concern, Mr… ahhh…” She scanned for his name on the dash I.D., but he supplied it with a flurry of his hand before she could eyeball it.

“ Santiago, Andreas Santiago… Andy for short. You sure you don' wan' me to wait round, lady?”

“ No, please…I'll be all right.”

“ Okay den, dat'll be fifteen-fifty for de trip, miss.”

She quickly paid the fare, thinking simultaneously of the job that lay ahead of her and of the neon lights of a Lil' Champall-night convenience store a block and a half back. If she needed assistance, she could go there, she reasoned, find a phone-if she should survive this encounter.

Stepping out of the cab, she felt a blanket of damp fog engulf her spirit. As the cab drove away, an eerie glow below the few street lamps in an area dominated by the cemetery made the darkness so much darker. Peering in through the gates, she saw a necropolis in the truest sense of the term. Staring back at her was an underworld turned inside out, an aboveground cemetery of bleak tombs and grim memorials. And somewhere crouching behind one of these burial stones, waiting for her to enter his chosen field of battle, was Mad Matthew Matisak.

He wasn't likely to be stepping out into the open or coming from behind those black wrought-iron gates, she told herself, a damp chill penetrating her bones, tickling like fingers across a piano up and down her spine. A disturbing uneasiness, creeping up from deep within, filled her every fiber, pore and cell all the way to the surface, the epidermal layer, with dread. Core fear, rising… climbing… mounting like mercury in a thermometer. Rising from inside her. Fear from the center of being… interrupted only by ugly, jolting flashes of the last time she was under “Teach” Matisak's control.

She stepped away from the gates, fully realizing that he was in there peering out at her from the fog-laden world of the dead. She could feel his eyes on her. She walked beside the high stone walls at a quick step, taking herself out of his view, seeking the comfort of stone walls thrown up between them, and seeking another way in, which appeared most likely to mean climbing over the walls.

This did little to reinforce the courage she'd started out with. She felt as if the eyes of the monster could easily see through the stone wall she now moved along. He could see through stone and straight into her private hell to her frightened heart, which was beating like a wounded bird's. How often had he read her mind; he certainly must know her thoughts now that she meant to destroy him at all costs.

She felt a sudden shameful yet overwhelming weakness take control of her limbs, fear robbing her of strength and resolve. Her lungs were hot lead in her chest, two pistons rising and falling with the falsetto voice of her startled heart. She was out of step, not herself, unsure, her hands trembling.

“ Damn him,” she cursed aloud, “damn him to hell and me with him if necessary.” She had to get a grip on herself and now.

A shaky, shady-looking character in rags came stumbling from nowhere and was coming directly toward Jessica, an outstretched hand running along the cemetery wall for balance. His face was shrouded in shadow as was his physique, but he appeared to favor his left-hand side as Matisak had always done, and there was a familiarity to this lumbering shadow's gait and that hunchbacked appearance. She flashed on the memory of how easily the fiend slipped into disguise. It was him. He had come out of the cemetery at some point up ahead of her and was coming straight for her.

She raised her weapon, about to fire when the ragman's face was suddenly tinted with a flood of light from a black wrought-iron New Orleans lamppost, revealing a wide-eyed wino with a toothless mouth the size of the Grand Canyon. “You… you Dr. Coran?” asked the strange, ugly man under the light. “Yes, I am.”

“ You're to go alone to Gatorland Storage, the old Jacobi warehouse district. That's alls I know.” He'd gone wide-eyed on seeing her. 38 leveled at his brain. Now he turned and stumbled away.

“ God, Jess,” she cursed herself. “Get hold.”

She'd imagined this moment for a long time now, and she had wondered how she would find the strength, the courage and the will to carry out her own deadly plan against the madman. Now that she was here, however, she only felt alone and weak and fearful and stupid; she'd almost gunned down an innocent, harmless man who had no notion he acted as Satan's messenger this night.

How was she going to cope with facing Matisak outside his cage if she couldn't make the simplest judgments with some accuracy? She began to question herself. Was she being foolish? Was she being suicidal, courting death coming here this way? What might happen if he were to survive their encounter but she were to die? Who would stop him after she was gone?

She heard every sound now as if it were in Dolby stereo, the creaking of a branch in the chill wind, the rustle of leaves as they skittered across graves on the other side of the wall, the humming of electricity through the veins of the city, a cat on paws sliding across a trash can and onto the stone fence overhead, its bulging green eyes glaring at her. A night bird keeping a wary eye on the cat while spying on Jessica. All accoutrements for the Halloween setting of this place.

She knew that he waited patiently within. Just like the old Buddy Holly song title, “True Love Waits.”

She could feel his eyes on her, the staring, unblinking, uncompromising sonofabitch. She was his easy prey now.

Matisak had every advantage. He knew where she was. He merely had to wait for her to step closer, to commit totally to his trap.