Pure Instinct

33

The police party had arrived here at the plantation home of one of Louisiana's most honored and decorated citizens, having exhausted all other avenues, having moved the venue of their search from the squalor of the French Quarter's back-alley flophouses to this place of opulence and wealth; it seemed a contradiction, and nothing here spoke of murder or mayhem. The night air was fresh with the scent of blooming jasmine and old hickory trees that fluttered high above them in the wind, rows of them on either side of the long, expansive driveway ahead, just the other side of the huge, black gates.

Landry had halted the car at the gatekeeper's little watch booth, the gatekeeper long since replaced by electronic surveillance cameras and intercoms. Landry announced them, explaining their business and telling some butler or other servant at the other end to leave the gate open long enough for three trailing police units to follow him through.

“ We'll see you up at the house,” Landry finally said to the disembodied voice at the other end. “Now buzz us through.”

“ But this is so… highly irregular, sir. I must confer with the general, sir.”

“ The hell you do, hoss! All you have to do is press a goddamned button or be charged with obstruction of justice, you got that? Now which is it to be? You can confer with your boss afterwards.”

Landry held his badge up to the camera again.

“ How do I know you're really the police. Police never come out here. All the general's business is done in the city, and-”

“ God damnit, man! If you don't open that gate in the next five seconds, we're going to blow a hole through the locking mechanism and you're the first SOB we're going to handcuff when we get up there to the house! You got that?”

The buzz came, and the gates rattled apart and opened wide for them to pass. Along the top of the gates, a series of ornate black ravens all in a row began to “dance” before their eyes, all the ravens' eyes like enormous stone receptacles, filled with secrets forever locked inside their wrought-iron hearts. The ravens adorned the black iron gates at intervals of two feet, large birds of prey with eyes that pierced the night.

Kim instantly recognized the ravens as those in her vision, and she imagined each taking flight after dark when no one was looking; they did seem to be flying now as the gates opened wide. A child might easily be frightened of the images. Kim had spoken of great black ravens in the air surrounding the killer, but here they were at Raveneaux, the only two-thousand-acre Southern plantation which had survived both the Civil War and Reconstruction, the possession of one of Louisiana's most honored and oldest of families. The Raveneaux family was at the top of the social register. Every major charitable organization across the state and many across the nation owed some allegiance to George Maurice Raveneaux.

Having two search warrants, one a federal document, the party entered the gate, closely followed by a trio of cars filled with sheriffs deputies, familiarized earlier with the FBI search warrant. All of the green-suited officers were filled to the brim of their Smokey-the-Bear hats with loathing and serious doubt directed at the NOPD cops who'd crashed their jurisdiction with a warrant to disturb the general and his family. They were also filled with a certainty that nothing untoward would come of the visit, that all Landry and Alex Sincebaugh would accomplish with their damned warrant was a loss of income and profession. At this point the deputies were more in Rave-neaux's camp than that of the city cops. Still, somehow Captain Landry had in fact gotten on a first-name basis with two of the deputies, who were worried sick about “making a 'raid' on the ol' gen'ral's home.”

General George Maurice Raveneaux had served his country with distinction during the Korean conflict, and had for the last three decades been a pillar of society and commerce in the region. In fact, a newspaper article of a few years past had credited him as being the single most powerful influence in rejuvenating the entire New Orleans region, thanks to his influence in Washington and the years he'd served there as a distinguished senator.

Little wonder when they'd arrived at the sheriff s office with a request for assistance that the sheriff himself had laughed in their faces.

The deputies were understandably nervous about their mission, and Landry was not at all sure if they would carry out his orders. The sheriff himself had left ahead of them, presumably to warn the old general of their coming.

It was also little wonder that a court-ordered search warrant had been a damnably hard document to secure. George Maurice Raveneaux, a man whose money had secured the local economy during the oil debacle of the seventies, and more recently had secured the government jobs that would be coming into the region, was no paper tiger.

As they passed now along the black river of freshly coated road which formed a long, twisting drive up to the mansion, they were not surprised to see several vehicles ahead and men standing beside Raveneaux outside. He had been well warned of their arrival by the sheriff and others, it appeared.

They came up the circle drive to a building that might otherwise be a museum. Landry, Alex, Kim and Jessica were taken a little aback by the faces they saw on the expansive wraparound portico to the mansion, for beside the aged general, standing as erect as the Grecian pillars, were Chief Lew Meade and P.C. Richard Stephens, each man no doubt having learned of the proposed search from the buzz-eaters back at the courthouse in New Orleans. They were here, no doubt, to assure the prosperous, aging millionaire who'd built his kingdom on sugarcane that there was an obvious and idiotic blunder of monumental proportions being made, and that they at least would stand by him in any event.

“ They all look guilty as hell of something,” Jessica commented.

In the backdrop stood Mrs. Raveneaux, looking ashen, pale and drawn, her gaunt figure hardly more than a stick. Kim believed she looked like she had been through an emotionally draining day. It was past dusk now, and the matriarch of this place watched as her plantation was being overrun with police vehicles. Jessica, Kim, Alex and Landry got out of the lead car and walked toward the waiting aggregate of power standing above them on the pure-white porch, the lights emanating from the house brilliantly bathing the mansion, spreading attenuated shadows out from each of the huge Grecian columns on either side.

“ Mr. Raveneaux,” said Landry, taking the initiative, “I'm Captain Carl Landry of the-”

“ I know very well who you are, and I'll thank you all to leave my property at once. This entire proceeding is without foundation, based on the word of some lunatic killer who has nothing whatever to do with Raveneaux.”

“ Sir, isn't it true,” Jessica began, “that Victor Surette's stolen body was exhumed by your order and buried in your family plot here at Raveneaux?” She was bluffing, a thing she did well. “We have forensic evidence to prove as much. We don't need the testimony of the caretaker or his men. Now I asked myself, what interest would you have in Victor Surette's body, and naturally-”

“ All right, Victor was my son, goddamn you-Victor Raveneaux, and as soon as we learned of his horrible death, we… we brought him home. Is there any crime in that?”

“ Well, there could be, sir, yes,” Jessica said.

“ You've got no evidence any crime has been committed by this man,” countered Lew Meade, standing as stiff and erect as his paunch would allow, carrying out his own bluff. Had he arranged for Jessica's earlier findings to somehow be lost or skewed? she wondered.

“ Dr. Coran's findings tell us differently,” Alex countered.

“ That's right,” Landry agreed.

“ It's clear that the grave-robbing took place only in recent days,” Jessica added, “and that you let Victor's body stay in that paupers' cemetery all these months, Senator, until there was the threat of an exhumation.”

“ That's a lie.” The general's voice was firm, steady, the voice of a man always in control.

His wife whispered some disturbing words to him, making the general turn and scowl at her, ordering her indoors.

“ You know how microscopes have a way of pointing to the truth, General,” Jessica continued. “Microscopes don't lie about fresh striations against stone, sutures and that sort of thing, so I'd say you aren't being entirely forthcoming with us.”

“ We only Learned recently that Victor Surette-the deceased going by that name-was our son,” the senator replied. “We moved the body on learning this. It's been quite enough strain on Mother… on us all, and in the meantime, you people've done nothing whatever to apprehend this fiend who viciously killed Victor and has wantonly destroyed others for…for their hearts.”

“ We're going to look around, General Raveneaux-just to be thorough, you understand,” Landry said, playing the diplomat.

' The very idea that you men have come on such a preposterous mission, Captain Landry, jeopardizes your jobs. I hope you know that,” replied Stephens firmly, his eyes like dark, seething coals, the threat taking on a venomously slithering nature.

“ Is that a threat, Richard?” asked Landry. “Or would you place that kind of talk under job harassment or maybe even blackmail, sir?”

Kim Desinor could see that Captain Landry was now too angry to suppress his emotions; not this time, she thought.

“ It may interest you to know that we know you blackmailed Frank Wardlaw into this game, and you paid off Ben de Yam-pert,” he went on.

Meade erupted now. “Goddamn it, man, it was the general here who called in the FBI and financed Dr. Desinor's coming here! He wants New Orleans safe for everyone, you fool! And now you turn the investigation against him and his family?”

“ This is absolute madness, Landry, and tomorrow morning you can damned well clean out your office.” Stephens's teeth were gnashing. “That goes for you too, Sincebaugh.”

“ You can pick your friends, General,” Alex called out, his bandaged arms white against the night, “but you're stuck with your kin and their sins, right? Victor, your son, is somehow at the heart of all these nasty deaths.”

“ Do you know of a man or a woman named Michael Emanuel Dominique?” Kim asked the general.

“ You're not obligated to answer any of these questions, General Raveneaux,” cautioned a gray-haired, three-piece suit, likely a lawyer.

“ Be that as it may, we have a court order here saying we can search the premises and all outbuildings and mobile units.” Landry informed the man, depositing the papers in his hands as he ascended the porch stairs.

Alex added, “And we're here to exercise that right tonight, before things go cold on us and people wash out their unmentionables.”

Raveneaux looked to his powerful friends for support. Meade took the court order from the lawyer, scanned it as the lawyer had and said, “Ridiculous… Judge Flint… that natty-haired neegra booze-hound's got some nerve. He won't be able to sit on a park bench after this.”

“ Let me have that,” added Stephens, tearing it from Meade, ripping it to shreds and throwing it at Landry's feet like a gauntlet. “That's what I think of a warrant from Judge Homer Flint.” Landry stared in disbelief at Stephens. “What the hell're you men covering up here?”

“ Stand down, Carl.”

“ No, Richard, I won't.”

“ You men,” shouted Stephens to the uniformed cops who'd come in behind the detectives. “Arrest Captain Landry and Detective Sincebaugh. They're trespassing here.”

Landry and Sincebaugh snatched out their weapons almost in unison, backing to each side, Alex tugging at Kim to stay close to him, Jessica siding with them, her own. 38 raised and poised. The uniformed deputies, confounded, not knowing what to do, looked to their sheriff, a man named Hodges, for a sign.

Hodges calmly presented Meade and Stephens with the federal warrant given him by Jessica then he just as calmly stepped off the porch and told his men, “Boys, we're here to uphold the law as I see it, and these fellas might be pricks and assholes with nothing worth a lick of sulfur to base their allegations on, but… they got a federal warrant, so they got a right to serve that warrant. We back 'em.”

Alex felt a sense of relief fill his chest, and Landry put his weapon away in a show of good faith, saying, “Thanks, Sheriff Hodges.” Jessica Coran was the last to holster her weapon.

Hodges looked up at the general and apologetically appealed to the others with a shrug. “Let's just get this damned search over, boys, so's these folks can go back to the peaceful business of their lives. Whataya say, Commissioner, Chief Meade?”

“ I'm giving the orders here,” countered Meade. “This is an official FBI matter now, so you men will do as I say!” Meade's eyes were surveying the situation, and as he spoke, he reached for his weapon.

Kim shouted, “Don't do it, Meade! You'll be dead before you hit the stairs.” She had a gun trained on him.

“ This is rank insubordination, Agent Desinor. I'll have you up on charges.”

Alex stared at her, his mouth open wide, finally repeating the word, “Agent?”

“ FBI,” she admitted, her mind's eye filling with an image of a raging Paul Zanek storming about his office, wanting to know why she'd drawn her weapon against the New Orleans bureau chief. “Are we going to get on with this search, General Raveneaux? Or will you be responsible for bloodshed on your lawn?”

“ Davis, Scully,” Captain Landry said to the two uniforms he'd gotten to know a bit. “Take Chief Meade's weapon and any that Commissioner Stephens is packing.”

The officers hesitated, staring at one another for the courage to take the first step.

“ Just do it!” shouted Hodges, startling his men into action to defuse the explosive standoff.

Now Jessica had joined Kim, the two of them holding guns on three of the most prominent citizens in New Orleans. “I sure hope we know what the hell we're doing, Kim,” Jessica whispered.

“ All right, do your blasted search,” the general announced. “Search all you want, but you won't find a thing, not a damned thing other than our son's body out there in the tomb where it belongs, and there's no law against that.”

“ There are laws against body-snatching even today, sir,” Jessica said, “and when you failed to come forward to announce the true identity of a murder victim, you were withholding vital information in a murder investigation. And that doesn't sit well with the courts, because you inadvertently contributed to the deaths of other victims of the Hearts killer, sir, and most judges don't take kindly to that sort of behavior, no matter who you are.”

“ Get on with it,” snarled Stephens.

“ We… we'll cooperate in any way we can,” squeaked Mrs. Raveneaux, who'd silently floated back out onto the porch, hoping to fend off trouble, though no one knew how. “Won't we, Maurice?”

“ Yes, I suppose we haven't a choice… not at gunpoint at any rate. Barney,” he spoke directly to his lawyer, “are you getting all this? We're going to have grounds for a hell of a suit against these hooligans.”

“ We quite understand your concerns, gentlemen. Please, do what you have come for,” the frail Mrs. Raveneaux cooed forth in the best tinkling tones of Southern hospitality, as if they'd come for tea or mint juleps.

Jessica sensed a childishness in the woman, perhaps a feeblemindedness, the sort that comes with having to bury one's only son. There was a warm exchange of looks between the old general and his wife. Jessica unaccountably made her own exchange of glances with Kim, Kim somehow telling her that she'd just had the same emotional response to Mrs. Raveneaux.

“ Then be done with it!” the general shouted. “And then you people, you included, Meade-Stephens, take your entire fucking circus and get the hell off my place!”

“ Why, Maurice, is that any way to speak to visitors!” Mrs. Raveneaux said, bringing him up soundly.

“ Get inside, Coretta. Get to your sitting room, dear. Go now, dear… go.”

She timidly did as told, leaving them all to stare after her.

“ Alzheimer's… can be so awful,” the general said “yet I must admit her lack of understanding has saved her from any disgrace in this sordid matter.”

Jessica wondered which matter he referred to, the search, the body-snatching, or the fact their son was gay and had lived under an assumed name. In a window overhead, Jessica thought she saw a sash move against the pane.

“ I think there's someone inside the house,” she muttered under her breath to Kim.

“ Could be servants; they've got to have a houseful to maintain a place of this size.”

“ In that case, maybe we should've come with a larger army.”

“ You kidding? All we need is one good psychic to point the way.”

Jessica, Landry, Alex and Kim went inside the enormous mansion, finding it lit with expensive Waterford crystal chandeliers in almost every room on the main floor. It was three stories high with sixty-four rooms, large enough for any suspect to hide in for days, if he or she so wished.

“ I want you to ring for all your servants, General,” Alex said. “We have a few questions for anyone in your employ.”

“ This is preposterous.”

“ Just do it now!”

The general nodded to a frail, thin man now standing beside him, the butler. “Right away, sir,” the butler said.

“ Tell me, General, did your son, Victor, spend much time in the servants' quarters?” Kim asked. “Did he play as a child with any of the servants' children?”

A slight hesitation preceded the general's response, “No… it was not permitted.”

“ Well, then, did he have any brothers or sisters to play with?”

“ You will not be questioning my entire household or family about these horrid matters,” he insisted.

“ We can do this here, sir, or at the precinct in downtown New Orleans,” Landry stated.

“ Then Victor did have a sister, didn't he? Is she the girl in this photograph?” Kim asked, handing the framed photo to Raveneaux. When Landry had pulled his car inside the gates of Raveneaux, Kim had had a dreamlike vision of children playing on the lawn here at the plantation, and there were more than several children in the vision. It was a peaceful spectral image, until one of the children began badly bleeding from a cut. It had occurred so quickly, even in the vision, that there was no telling where the cut had come from, but it had to do with one of the children.

“ Where did you get this picture?” Raveneaux demanded.

The general's wife had reappeared, and she went to the photograph as if drawn by a powerful magnet.

“ Why, it's little Victor and Dommie,” she said.

“ Then Victor did have a sister. Dominique?” Kim pressed.

Jessica exchanged a knowing look with Kim, and an anxious Alex Sincebaugh was perched and ready to bound up the stairs, to tear open doors to locate Dominique, his heart still harboring a fiery desire to avenge Ben.

“ And is Dominique here now?” Jessica asked.

The general shushed his wife and answered, saying, “No, no, she's not at present, and even if she were… you see, we've shielded her all her life from any harshness. Even if she were here, gentlemen, she would be of no help to your search.”

“ Shielded her?” asked Kim. “That's right. She doesn't even know about her brother's death. Of… of course she knows of his absence, but we've… I've told her nothing of the nature of…just how Victor died. You see, she's a delicate creature, actually, quite easily disturbed.”

“ Are you telling us that your daughter is retarded?” asked Landry.

Alex stepped before Raveneaux. “Oh, no, General! No way's she getting off. She knows more than all of us put together. No way is she going to cop a…”

Kim pushed between Alex and the general. “What precisely do you mean, sir? With regard to your daughter?”

“ I beg of you, she's… she would be of no help whatever to your investigation, please.” The general took Captain Landry aside, whispering, “The girl has never been quite… well… quite right.”

Landry's piercing look needed no words.

“ She's been in and out of hospitals, has been seen by the best men in medicine. I wish you would not upset her with questions about her brother's death. We've not told her that Victor is dead. It… it could crush her. She loved…continues to love him so. We're… I, rather, I have been waiting for just the right time, but so far… things being so delicate with her condition…”

“ What is your daughter's age, sir?” asked Jessica, while Meade menacingly eyed her and Stephens swelled with zealous gasps.

Alex pressed in. “Do you have a current photo of her nearby?”

“ She's twenty-four, and of course we do,” replied the general's wife, going for the white baby grand piano on top of which perched a bevy of photos of Victor, the general and his wife, along with several of Dominique herself. Returning with one of the photos, she remarked, “Isn't she a lovely child?”

The girl in the photo had close-cropped hair, her appearance quite close to her brother's, save for the piercing, faraway, yet stern and angry serpent's look in her eyes.

“ Where is Dominique now?” Jessica pressed.

“ She's traveling,” the general said with a restraining hand on his wife's forearm, his body language giving his lie away to the trained detectives. “I couldn't quite say precisely where she is at the moment, since she's doing the Continent… in the company of a guardian, of course.”

“ Europe, you mean?” asked Landry.

“ Then you won't mind if we take a look at your daughter's room?” Jessica asked.

“ I see absolutely no reason why you should be the least inter-”

“ Oh, but we're very interested, General,” corrected Alex.

“ Why, it's a lovely room, Maurice. Let them see how we've decorated Dommie's room. Come…” Mrs. Raveneaux obviously enjoyed playing the hostess.

By now the servants had assembled, some six on duty tonight, along with the butler, so Landry said, “I'll talk to these folks, Alex, while you look around.” Landry also asked the deputies to fan out.

“ And look for what?” asked Hodges.

“ Anything out of the ordinary, anything unusual.”

Alex, Jessica and Kim followed behind Mrs. Raveneaux, taking the spiraling staircase for the next floor, the old woman twittering on like a social bird now, talking about Dommie's coming-out party, little Vic's first communion, the time when…

As they approached Dommie's room, the old woman pointed it out as the last at the end of a long corridor, but just before they got to it, Alex and the two FBI agents heard a strange whine. It sounded like a poorly oiled machine of some sort, like grinding gears or Jacob Marley's ethereal but clamoring chains.

“- I try to tell the children they mustn't play rough, that their little heads crack easily… but children are full of the devil and they will be-”

Alex jumped in and cut her off. “Pardon, Mrs. Raveneaux, but what is that noise?”

“ Noise? Noise?”

“ That mechanical grating sound.”

“ Irrrrrk, irrrrrrk, irrrrrrk,” it sounded again.

“ That noise,” Kim said.

The old woman was truly befuddled or deaf. “I don't hear any noise.”

“ Seems to be coming from behind Dom's door.” Alex imagined the bestial blond woman slicing up hearts in super-thin sheaths behind the pearly white door, using a butcher's electric cleaver.

Kim felt her own fear rising. “Why don't you step over here with me, Mrs. Raveneaux,” Kim suggested, seeing that Jessica and Alex were about to burst through the door.

“ It's the dumbwaiter,” Mrs. Raveneaux announced, as though on a TV game show. “Of course, it is.”

After a perfunctory knock, Alex barged through the door, followed immediately by Jessica, their guns drawn. Inside, they found a child's room, filled with frilly lace, white all around, with marching blue-and-red-suited soldiers on the wall, dressed in British colonial uniforms, beating out a cadence in the pattern with big, wide drums, each displaying a cross-like pattern about the chest where each wide white cross-belt met. Kim had seen the marching crossbelts in her visions.

The marching wood. The drummer boys were not real in appearance, but rather intentionally drawn by the artist as so many Pinocchio lookalikes.”Marching crosses, marching woods afire,” said Jessica, recalling Kim's prediction.

“ I don't see any fire,” replied Alex.

“ You'd have to be Dominique to see the fire,” answered Kim from the doorway, her arms protectively enfolding Mrs. Raveneaux. The drone of the dumbwaiter continued, alerting them to the adjoining room, where Alex easily located a small elevator meant to bring trays to and from the room, obviously connected to the kitchen below. The dumbwaiter was large enough for a person of Dominique's size to squeeze into.

“ Yeah, right, traveling the Continent,” muttered Jessica.

“ She's in the kitchen!” cried Alex.

“ Oh, Dommie loves the kitchen. She loves to cook,” replied Mrs. Raveneaux, her hands and arms waving. “Cooks for Daddy and me all the time; makes her own recipes, and she's got the best red bisque you'll ever want to taste, my dear.” She was speaking almost exclusively to Kim now, feeling uneasy with Jessica, who began wildly digging about the closets for anything incriminating, such as a heart in a jar atop a closet shelf, the weapon Dominique used in her attacks, anything. But nothing was forthcoming, not here.

“ What's the quickest way to the kitchen, Mrs. Raveneaux?” Alex pleaded.

“ Little Dommie used to take that dumbwaiter up and down when she was a child. Still is a child in my eyes… always will be…”

“ Stay here with her, Kim, Jessica,” ordered Alex. “I'm going to check out the kitchen.”

“ Not on your life,” replied Jessica over her shoulder. “I'm in this to the finish.”

“ Then find me some damned useful physical evidence here! Keep looking!”

Kim was speaking to Mrs. Raveneaux at the same time, asking, “Then Dommie uses the kitchen often?”

“ Why, yes… yes…”

“ But how does that make your cook feel? Isn't she underfoot, a nuisance?”

“ Oh, we fired the cook some time ago, after Dommie returned home from her… her travels.”

“ Really?”

“ Dommie just insists on preparing our meals. We tried to tell her how unseemly it was, but she'd taken courses, you know, with the best European chefs, and she simply insisted until Daddy just had to give in!”

Jessica went tearing through shoe boxes and hat boxes found in the closet, and when she turned to face Kim and Mrs. Raveneaux, she frowned her annoyance and called after Alex to wait up for her, but he was gone down a back stairwell, descending quickly for the kitchen, where he hoped to find Ben's killer waiting for him.

“ Jess, slow down,”, pleaded Kim when Jessica rushed for the hallway. “Landry and the others are downstairs. Let Alex handle it from here.”

“ He may need backup.”

“ Back stairs'll take you down if you want to find Dommie,” said Mrs. Raveneaux. “Come along… I'll show you the way.”

Captain Carl Landry's questioning of the servants in the presence of General Raveneaux, P.C. Stephens and Lew Meade had also revealed the fact that Victor's sister, Dommie, had in effect become the chief cook in the house. Like Alex, Carl had put two and two together and gone to search the kitchen. He'd actually gotten to the kitchen a few minutes ahead of Alex, and had snatched open the walk-in freezer door, fully expecting to be greeted with what he now looked at-full slabs of meat, sides of beef and venison dangling from a series of hooks-when from somewhere behind him he heard or felt someone there. Half turning, he saw the glint of a huge carving knife as it dove into his upper left quadrant to the hilt, barely missing his heart, hitting the bone at the shoulder. Like a man watching a film from some distance away, he saw himself fall backward from the impact, the freezer door slamming and locking on cue in front of him.

Inside the chilled room, he staggered about, unsure of the wound's depth or the extent of blood loss. Since it was so cold in here and his body temperature was rapidly decreasing, the blood was quickly coagulating. In fact, the freezer temperature might save his life, up to a point.

He fought to regain his feet and his vision. Then he fought with the door, but there was no escape from this side. He began to scrape away at the frost covering the small window, and through the trails left by his broken fingernails he saw her, recognizing her from her picture and Alex's description. She was lying in wait, a cornered animal with a maniacal leer and a huge carving knife still painted with Landry's blood held against her ear. She seemed to be slobbering on the knife, talking to it, listening to its whisper. She was anxious for her next victim to step into her high-tech lair.

The kitchen had every modern convenience and was as large as many of the other rooms. She'd been hiding in one of the cupboards below the six-foot preparation table at the center of the room when Landry had poked his nose into the freezer.

Now she moved toward the front of the kitchen, having heard someone approaching from that direction. Landry had to do something and fast.

He tore out his gun, but his hands were already freezing and the heavy object slipped easily from his grasp. He went to his knees with much pain and trembling. Others were counting on him and this thought made him grasp the gun and hold firmly to it, despite the cramping in his hand and body. With his left hand, he pulled himself back up, using a shelf for counterweight, but suddenly the shelf gave way and objects began raining down on him, frozen food as heavy as bricks.

He opened his eyes where he lay propped against the wall now, and he saw several bulging, red eyes poking through the cakes of ice lying at his feet. From their fist-sized shape and hue, Landry knew he was looking at the evidence which would put Dominique Raveneaux into the gas chamber or an insanity ward for the rest of her life.

The hearts of her victims continued to wink up at him through the ice that covered them.

He snatched up his weapon again and from his prone position, began firing at the glass in the door.