Pure Instinct

7

Quantico, Virginia

People watched her as Dr. Kim Desinor rushed along the busy corridor, young Benton pushing a note in her face. Heads turned, tongues clicked, eyes assessed her with some trepidation, as if she were a freak. News had already gotten around.

“ There's been a major breakthrough in the Sendak case in Georgia.”

“ Really?” she asked.

“ And it came as a direct result of your intervention. Doctor.”

She stopped in her tracks and stared at the note from Parlen. Back in Decatur, Georgia, Parlen had only had to flash his badge at the right door, and Viola, the long-lost daughter, had crumpled before him, confessing on the way down because the entire enterprise was built on a rickety foundation, a house of emotional cards. Sendak's body had been recovered, and the daughter had fingered the live-in boyfriend, who remained at large, somewhere he felt comfortable and safe, she supposed, like his mamma's place. All Parlen and his men needed to do now was to stake out his known haunts. He'd likely be picked up in twenty-four hours, a few days at the outside.

“ Parlen also sent a dozen roses for you, Doctor,” Tom Benton said with a smile. “I suppose it's his way of apologizing for the doubts.”

“ At least the man knows how to apologize,” she replied, staring up at the elevator lights now. The car was two stories above, someone holding it. “How did Sendak die?”

“ Heat exhaustion and heart attack, they surmise. He was locked in a goddamned storage facility, inside a wooden box built to secure him. You were right on. Doctor.”

She imagined the suffering of both victim and daughter, not to mention the wife. “I'm on my way to Zanek's office again, so we'll have to talk this out later, okay, Tom?”

“ Sure, sure…what's it now? He doesn't like the brand of tape recorders we're using? The film, the budget overruns?”

“ Leave Zanek to me, okay, Tom? You've got enough to worry about with that test you're running. How's it coming? Am I going to see anything on paper soon?”

“ Sure made a mess of it the first go-round. I'm determined to get it right this time, Doctor.”

“ Don't be so hard on yourself. How could you know about the Y-factor variable? I should've been over your shoulder sooner.”

“ What you did, Doctor, with the Sendak case… well, it must give you a great sense of accomplishment.”

“ Some, yes… but it also gives me a great deal of misery. It's not easy looking into the heart of evil, Tom. And not everyone's suited to doing so.” She stared for a moment at her gung-ho assistant, knowing that he wanted to be able to pull off that kind of psychic hocus-pocus, that he admired her a great deal for what she'd done and that he was proud to be a part of her team, but had little idea of the emotional costs involved, despite all her warnings.

“ Look here, Tom. Someday, you're going to do psychic loops around me. Just give it time and throw in a healthy dose of patience, and don't forget self-protective measures, all right?” She secretly feared that one day he'd scar himself so badly that he'd leave psychic detection completely. It happened to a lot of beginners.

The elevator arrived and she boarded, Tom waving her off like a dutiful son. Upstairs, she found Zanek's familiar office and pushed through the outer door, her steady gaze meeting Betty's, the secretary another familiar here.

“ They're waiting for you, Dr. Desinor.”

“ They?” Who the hell were they? she wondered. Yesterday she and Zanek had come to something of a Mexican standoff, a way to sever ties in an amenable fashion. She had proposed that her minor and inconvenient little shop of horrors, as he'd angrily referred to it, could be relocated under the Psychological Profiling Division. She'd be a step removed from him, he'd be on safer ground with the powers that be and they'd both see less and less of one another since she'd be reporting directly to Jack Santiva, the new head of the entire umbrella division. She thought he'd agreed and that all was worked out, and she was happy with the proposed arrangement. So what was up now? Was Santiva in Zanek's office now? Had Zanek arranged things?

“ Chief?” she asked, coming through the door. “You want to see me?”

She assumed the tall man in the tailored suit near the window was Santiva, whom she had never met, but Santiva was supposedly of Spanish origin, and this guy looked anything but Spanish. His hair was red, his face sprinkled with crimson flecks, his skin otherwise a pasty white.

In another corner, like a boxer waiting to be announced, stood a strikingly tall, auburn-haired woman in a beautiful blue serge suit, her gleaming tan marking her as either a model or a princess, her eyes filled with both a keen sense of awareness and a sadness that seemed beyond her years. Neither of them looked like Santiva.

“ What's going on, Paul?” Kim asked.

Zanek, a tall, well-built man some years her senior, was showing silver streaks through his dark hair. He cleared his throat, pointed toward the pasty-skinned stranger and began introducing everyone.

“ Dr. Desinor, this is New Orleans Police Commissioner Richard Stephens, up from Louisiana.”

Surprised, she lifted a hand to Stephens and they shook, her eyes never leaving his, her mind still wondering where Santiva was and what this meeting had to do with her. Outside the window behind Stephens, she could hear a man barking orders at recruits who were doing their morning calisthenics on the parade ground.

Zanek continued the introductions. “Mr. Stephens came here specifically to see you, Doctor, and this”-he indicated the tall woman now extending a hand to her-”well, this is our own famous Dr. Jessica Coran, pathologist in the Psychological Profiling Division, you know, the division you're aspiring to join.”

“ Jessica Coran… I mean, Dr. Jessica Coran?” she asked, astounded, while images of Coran diving in Maui and bringing an end to a killer in Hawaii swirled amid visions of Richard Stephens's New Orleans that came racing in at her boulder like, knocking her off balance. New Orleans had been home to her in a childhood she'd tried desperately to put out of her mind, and what she knew of Dr. Jessica Coran could fill a textbook on forensic science and investigation.

She felt foolish, and tried to recoup the words even as she repeated herself. “What's… going on here?”

After shaking her hand vigorously, Dr. Coran offered her a seat, which she accepted. “I read Bulletin 131, FBI Protocol, your monograph on the use of psychology and psychic tools in law enforcement, Dr. Desinor, as has Commissioner Stephens here, and I was greatly impressed in how you related psychic ability to this thing you call the blue sense, the talent most investigators possess. Anyway, it struck me immediately that we need your help in New Orleans.”

“ You no doubt have read about our Queen of Hearts murders,” Stephens added.

“ Is that what this is about?” She looked across at Zanek as she asked the question.

“ Right… yes, it is.”

“ I was impressed with your record for psychic hits,” Jessica Coran said.

“ She made a real believer outta this guy Parlen in Georgia I told you about,” declared Zanek, fingering a photo of his wife and kids atop the large steel and glass desk. “Converted him to her religion, you might say. Led him right to the culprits-the ones who killed Sendak.”

Kim Desinor, staring directly at Zanek now, said, “She- the daughter-Paul, was just a frightened and cornered kid. She was in a desperate no-win situation that got out of control, and she didn't know how to fix it.”

Zanek nodded. “You've heard then from Parlen?” Zanek had had the information the day before, but had chosen to withhold it at the time.

“ He sent flowers. Anyway, Sendak's illegitimate daughter-despite all the evidence-agonized over what she'd gotten her biological father-a stranger to her-into. The boyfriend had a powerful control over her; he was the domi-nating force in her life. But it was through her overwhelming remorse, guilt and agony that I was able to perceive the events in the manner I had. And if we weren't working with a KGB/ CIA mentality, I could give Parlen a deposition to that effect which might help in the daughter's defense.”

Zanek was unable to respond for a moment, trying to understand exactly what Kim was saying to him. “Parlen shared this information with you?”

“ No. It came to me in bits and pieces after the psychometric reading of the other day. It's information I could share with Parlen, if you're willing.”

He considered this a moment. “Well, we're not in the business of defending the guilty here, but… do you hear what she's saying here, Stephens? Isn't she everything I've said, Commissioner, and more?” He followed this pep rally up by coming from behind his desk and half-leaning, half-sitting against the edge in a show of friendliness, a kind of male peace offering. Once she pretended to accept the peace offering, he continued. “Kim, Dr. Desinor…”

“ Yes, Paul?” she insolently asked, forgoing his title.

“ P.C. Stephens and Dr. Coran both want you to accompany them to New Orleans.”

She looked hard across at Zanek, puzzlement and anger fighting for control within. “You mean to physically go there?”

“ That's right.”

“ I see.” She told herself, I really do see, Paul. Just farm me out to New Orleans, allow things to cool here while I'm working a field office as far from you as you can arrange. What's the matter, no murder sprees in Alaska this season? The bastard had found his solution. “But we're going to be too busy here, what with-”

“ Your duties in New Orleans will in no way curtail your work here, Dr. Desinor,” Paul began, “as it's only a…temporary assignment and while you're gone, we'll find a suitable replacement.”

“ But what about the move over to Santiva's division?”

“ Santiva's just getting accustomed himself. A big shake-up like that… well, let's just give it time, okay, Doctor?”

“ This has all been set up for some time now, hasn't it, Paul?” she said, challenging him.

Stephens opened his hands and waved, a gesture he felt awkward with, along with having to plead. “Dr. Desinor, please, we desperately need your help on an unusual and most important case.”

“ It's to be the test case, Dr. Desinor, for the future of psychic detection within this agency,” Zanek drove home his point.

Stephens's red hair was so thin it looked blond, but his scarlet eyebrows were thick. He looked of Irish descent. She knew by now that Stephens must surely have had a careful look at her background via Zanek's information on her, so he must know that her own olive skin and dark features were those of a Creole native of Louisiana. Abused and abandoned by a stepfather after the death of her mother, she'd been a product of a strict Catholic upbringing at St. Domitilla's School for Troubled Children. She'd long since renounced all formal religion as a result of her years there, calling herself a reformed and recovering Catholic. Others might call her an Indoctrinated Ingrate. Either way, she'd find her faith in her own way, and coming to this decision had felt right; it had felt as if the shackles of religion had been lifted from her with this decision made the year she graduated high school from St. Domitilla's in New Orleans.

She'd managed a state scholarship, had spent two years at Louisiana State, going on to Trinity College in New Orleans. From there she'd joined the Florida Department of Criminal Investigation as a psychologist. Unable to fit in “properly” there, she'd entered the police academy, and on graduation, she'd bounced around from one Florida police jurisdiction to the next as a working cop, before she'd returned to psychiatry. Her work had been somehow and almost fatefully noticed by Paul Zanek of the FBI, who'd encouraged her to apply for the FBI Academy. Zanek had brought her along ever since. Little wonder that, when he began to pay attention to her as a woman, she'd responded so completely, allowing her heart to be snared and lost and finally broken, all within the span of a few short years.

“ I suggested you for the case two weeks ago, Kim,” Zanek said, coming off the desk he'd been leaning on. “It's a chance for us… for you… to test your theories in an ongoing investigation, show everyone what psychic detection is capable of, including Santiva. It'll take it out of the realm of the laboratory. It'll be more than an exercise for a film. You've got to welcome that.”

She knew that Paul had been preparing a paper on the effective use of psychic investigation in the right hands, in the hands of the Bureau, and that she was his secret weapon. For his theories to work, he needed to go beyond research grant money and into mainstream budgeting, to put psychic detection on the FBI grid. These were all aims and goals she herself had wanted along with him, goals they had worked for side by side.

Dr. Coran's whiskey voice filled the room. “You'll have a perfect opportunity to help demonstrate in an ongoing investigation how effective collaboration might be between our usual scientific techniques and your own psychic techniques.”

Still suspicious of Zanek's motives, Kim wondered just how much of this show was a put-up job; were Dr. Coran and Paul Zanek close enough to have discussed his desire to rid himself of her for a time? Did Dr. Coran know about Paul's ultimate ambition to become head of the FBI someday? What did Jessica Coran think of Paul's dabbling in the “black arts” in order to get ahead? Was she among those who joked that Zanek was actually on the trail of how to turn ordinary tin into gold through the alchemy of Dr. Faith's mysterious laboratory?

When Kim failed to answer, Jessica Coran said, “No better place to prove a theory than in the field, Dr. Desinor.”

Or have you forgotten that you're an agent first? Kim flinched, filling in the trailing thought behind Jessica Coran's dare.

“ What's in it for me, Paul?” Kim asked. “Do I get that budget adjustment I've been requesting for the past year?”

He ignored this. “What's the alternative scenario, Kim?” Zanek now pressed the issue. “You sit here in Virginia, waiting for the case to go stale and cold like that damned Decatur mess? Then they bring it all to you in a shoe box? Come on, Kim, this is your big chance. Don't let petty concerns stand in your way.”

She took in a deep, long breath of air, still unsure of his motives and feeling slightly off balance with the others in the room. If he had made the suggestion to New Orleans brass two weeks before, then it was before Paul had decided to go back with his wife. Still, Paul could be lying about when he'd first contacted Stephens about her.

“ You're probably the best psychic detective working in America today, Dr. Desinor.” Stephens's attempt at flattery fell flat.

“ But nobody else of consequence outside the Bureau knows that, Kim, not yet,” Zanek continued. “And while we're determined here at the Bureau to keep our association with psychism a secret for the time being, there will come a day…” He turned to Stephens and explained. “The FBI isn't prepared to go on record as proponents of psychic detection just yet, you understand, so, sir, you'll have to honor our agreement on that score. She enters as a private citizen engaged by the NOPD to help shed light on the case.”

“ Maybe after the twenty-first century the Bureau will show some balls,” Jessica Coran snickered.

Zanek gritted his teeth, a glare slicing across at Jessica which he quickly covered. “Still, we don't deny the needs of law-enforcement agencies today,” Zanek continued in his most officious voice.

“ To help in your decision, Dr. Desinor,” Stephens countered, “please have a look at these items I brought for your… inspection.” Richard Stephens's well-manicured hands now reached for three brown metal-clasp envelopes. He laid them out on Zanek's desk. Two of the packs were neatly creased and lay flat, while the third bulged with what appeared to be and sounded like metallic objects-likely a junk collection from a New Orleans police property room, Kim decided.

Stephens then tore open the first envelope and displayed its flat contents: an array of horrid police photos, one after another, of murdered young men, boys really. Two of the photos displayed bodies in remote, heavily wooded areas, their backs to the lens, faces turned away, features lost. The additional two dead teens lay on brightly colored, silken sheets, lying on their backs, their torsos half covered in bloody bedding. The fifth and sixth victims had actually been beheaded.

“ Can you, from these photos, tell me anything at all about these cases?” pressed Stephens.

She inched closer, on the edge of her seat, staring down at the photos now, the others watching her intently. She lifted each photo one at a time, her eyes closing now while her fingers wandered lazily across the placid and glossy surfaces. Something about such crime-scene photos touched people in a mysterious, dark corner of the brain, giving the mind over to the same sensation as when viewing a supposed UFO photo or a so-called ghost captured on film, but here, in a real photo shot of a real victim of violent crime, there seemed to be an aura about the corpse.

“ They are all victims of the same killer… except this one.” She discarded one of the two photos of boys found beheaded and lying in a forested area. Stephens's bushy eye-brows danced in response.

Jessica caught the unconscious body language and saw that Kim didn't miss it either. She quickly grabbed the second photo of the other beheaded boy and tossed it aside as well, saying, “This one too.”

“ Parlor tricks,” remarked Zanek. “Now try her on something substantial.”

“ The others are all related. At least the NOPD believes they are all victims of the same killer,” Kim continued, her eyes closing now, her fingers still reading the photos. “There is some awful common denominator which ties these victims and their killer together. He takes their vitality… their energy… identity… eats from their wounds… if not literally, figuratively feeds on them. I see strange crosses… black, rising birds…”

“ Then he's cannibalizing them?” asked Stephens.

“ Crosses?” asked Jessica.

“ I see large crosses, marching crosses… living crosses ablaze with fire.”

Stephens's eyes lit up. “What're you saying? That the KKK has something to do with the Queen of Hearts slayings?”

“ I just know what I see… crosses marching.”

“ Anything else?” asked Jessica.

“ These four were brutalized… sex organs amputated, and their hearts were cut out. Killer left his calling card, a queen of hearts.”

“ All information known to the public,” Stephens said, a little disappointed.

“ It's an unusual playing card, however,” she added. “Not plastic or paper product, something… softer, even… lacy?”

Information on the nature of the killer's calling card was not generally known, and had purposely been kept from the press and public, held back along with a few other particulars in order that a confession might more easily be dismissed or taken seriously.

Kim looked squarely into Stephens's eyes, reaching into his soul, and asked, “Does the killer make the cards? Does he stitch them out of yarn or silken string?”

Stephens was visibly unnerved. Swallowing became his preoccupation now, but to regroup, he quickly busied himself by placing aside the second flat envelope and going directly to the rumpled third, the lumpy one.

“ Well, Stephens?” Zanek pressed. “Is she onto something or not?”

Stephens breathed deeply and exhaled his answer. “Yes, remarkably accurate. Investigators have theorized that the uniqueness of the cards left in the cadavers marks them as personally handmade by the killer. They've been unable to locate their like in any novelty shop in the city. But you missed on one of the victims. He wasn't among the victims of the card-carrying killer, since no card was left with his body.”

This left Kim Desinor shaking her head, doubtful.

With fingers growing thicker by the moment, Stephens now shakily opened the unkempt brown envelope, spilling out its contents over the photos. A cascade of seemingly unrelated items skittered across Paul Zanek's desk: trinkets, keys and key rings, bracelets and swatches, rosary beads and necklaces, rings and earrings-one pair a set of crosses, another a purposeful mismatch or mishmash of satanic amulets-New Wave trinkets, skulls and crossbones; added to this were vials of makeup and lipstick, compact mirrors, assorted colorful combs, brushes, cigarette packs, colorful metal cigarette holders, intricate and delicate lighters, matchboxes, a broken pair of pumps, eyeglasses, a grip purse and feminine watches. Rounding out this montage now littering Paul's desktop were theater stubs, crumpled granola wrappers and several plastic playing cards, all the queen of hearts, all fakes, which Stephens now quickly scooped up and put away in a show of good grace under fire. Many of the items looked to belong to females.

“ More parlor games?” an exasperated Paul Zanek asked.

But Kim Desinor put up a hand to Paul's objections, stepping up to the littered desk and lightly sifting through the debris of wasted human lives. She picked over it, saying, “All the victims liked dressing up as women, didn't they?” Still, she browsed the flea-market items on Paul's desk, trying to find something that might speak to her. She discarded the grip purse and several of the jewelry items almost immediately, saying they were “not genuine.”

“ Did you bring any of the cards? The genuine ones, I mean?”

“ I didn't have time to get the real ones from the M.E. Crime lab's still running tests on 'em, but that all seems rather hopeless at this point,” Stephens explained.

“ Wait a minute, back up there,” said Jessica. “Do you mean you couldn't get hold of any of the cards?”

“ No, sorry. I couldn't.”

“ You've got problems in your lab then,” she assured him.

“ We… we are aware of some problems in the M.E.'s office, yes, and we're working to rectify them immediately, I assure you. Dr. Coran.”

“ I can understand why it'd be impossible to get one of the recent cards, but why can't you put your hands on one of the earlier ones?” Jessica continued.

“ Let's just say that the evidence hasn't always been handled with the care that it deserved… at the time.”

Jessica blanched and nodded, understanding only too well, recalling the intricacies of such problems in the New York crime lab when she was there, as well as the more recent political roadblocks she'd faced in Honolulu. She shouldn't expect less from New Orleans, she silently cautioned herself. Meanwhile, Dr. Desinor had discarded more than half the additional items before she touched a unique handmade rosary. It held a stunning unusual cross with an inlaid crystal, something your usual Catholic wouldn't wear since crystals were normally associated with mysticism, going counter to Catholic teaching, despite the indoctrinated and institutionalized superstitions of the Church itself. At any rate, the crystal made the cross and beads an interesting, eye-catching piece for Kim. It made the rosary something of an oddity, a maverick piece amid the typical clutter of a victim's pockets turned inside out.

Jessica also wondered about its owner.

Kim found the crystal nicely weighted and warm to the touch, either the mineral stone or her own body temperature the source. Either way, it sent out emanations. She held firmly to it and concentrated.

“ Only some of this clutter comes from the victims. This rosary came from the very first victim's neck.”

Stephens filled his lungs now and puffed up, feeling relieved that the woman was human, that she was capable of a mistake. After all he'd seen and heard so far, he had almost begun to believe in wizards and witchcraft, and now suddenly he was not so uncomfortable as before. He now rocked on the balls of his feet as if winning a point.

Jessica noticed the unconscious clue, and wasn't surprised to hear Dr. Desinor correct herself. “No… not his neck. Found near the body, between the legs perhaps.”

“ That's very good, Dr. Desinor, but sorry, you're wrong this time. Nobody bats a thousand, as they say. This particular piece belongs to the unrelated, unsolved murder case. The case I mentioned before? Wherein there was no playing card left at the scene?”

She continued. “Crosses. It says look for the cross or crosses, flaming crosses.”

“ More with the crosses,” Zanek mentioned. “That could be significant.”

“ But I told you,” Stephens continued, “that this piece is unrelated, that it's a control piece.”

“ Crosses that madly march on,” Kim repeated. Not hearing him? wondered Jessica. Or not wanting to hear him?

“ What kind of crosses?” Zanek pressed on as if he expected to solve the baffling case here and now.

“ I would assume New Orleans is full of crosses,” said Jessica, unsure of Dr. Desinor now. “Church towers, graveyards, any number of windmill-type displays, crossroads even.”

“ What kind of crosses are you talking about, Doctor?” Zanek pressed now, as if on a scent, acting as a facilitator, leading her on.

“ Living crosses, burning crosses, crosses of blood and bile and tissue…”

“ Jesus, that sounds like KKK from where I come from,” repeated Stephens. “And the KKK are known gay-bashers, but as I said…”

“ Can't be sure…don't know for certain… unclear…” Kim Desinor was now saying. Suddenly she felt a sharp pang of fear and terror that sent her body into a paroxysm of rigidity. “Oh, Christ… God… help me! I'm cutting…he's… he's bleeding… I'm cutting and he's bleeding everywhere, God! God's blood everywhere!”

Jessica at first thought she saw Kim Desinor acting out the part of a helpless victim, warding off blows and trying desperately to defend herself with her bare hands against her psychic attacker, but on second look, Jessica saw a much different image: Dr. Desinor had become the attacker now, and she was raining blows with two clenched fists over some imagined victim at her feet. She went to her knees to better destroy her enemy, wielding the rosary still entwined in her grasp as if it were an enormous and powerful weapon in her hands.

The psychic's blows against Zanek's carpeting were so filled with rage, enmity and energy that Jessica was mesmerized by the powerful image that Kim Desinor now presented.

The woman's hands repeatedly flew skyward, and with the power of a U.S. Open tennis player, using both hands, she continued to maniacally stab at some unseen object before her. Then she suddenly collapsed and writhed, until a shocked Jessica rushed to her and worked feverishly to pry loose her grasp on the black rosary beads and the crystal cross.

Stephens, while both overawed and afraid, cried out, “What's happening?”

“ Who do you see? What does he look like? Can you make out his features?” Zanek pleaded, having gone to his knees alongside Kim and Jessica now he'd wrapped his arms about Kim, forcing her to end it as he rocked her there in his arms, telling her she was safe, that he had her, that they were in his office and nothing could harm her here.

Kim went limp in his embrace, and for a moment Jessica thought they looked like lovers.

“ God,” Zanek said to Jessica, “I've never seen her react like this before. Something evil about that thing.” He indicated the black rosary beads attached to the crystal, dangling now from Jessica's hand.

“ Is she all right? My God, I had no idea…”

“ She's all right,” said Zanek. “She's all right.”

Kim was coming back, but her mouth hung open, slack with fear and gasping.

“ It… it doesn't make sense…” Stephens began, wide-eyed, licking his lips. “The damned rosary came from a murder scene over a year old. Belonged to the victim according to the manifest, a separate unrelated case.”

“ Well, maybe you better look at it again,” suggested Zanek, angry with the other man's reaction.

“ No…” muttered Kim.

“ What?” asked Zanek.

“ No what?” added Stephens, hovering now.

“ No… no,” she countered. “It… the rosary belongs to the killer.”

“ Christ, are you sure?” Stephens asked.

“ Yes, I'm… quite sure.” Stephens's skepticism remained intact, as did Jessica's. Even if Kim were right about the rosary, she might simply have gotten vibes about a separate killer on the earlier case. It was highly improbable that such a killer, so filled with hatred for gay men, would go on a one-year hiatus, unless he'd gone to another territory and returned. And suggesting an actual link between cases on the basis of a psychic seizure didn't seem to Jessica what a detective or a court of law might call concrete evidence.

Jessica and Zanek helped Kim to the nearby divan, where she lay quietly for a moment, trying to regain her strength and composure. “The knife… the knife, big as a bloody sword,” she gasped aloud. “And…and what he… what he did with it… awful.”

Jessica saw a deep concern had come over P.C. Stephens, a shadow about the brow that spoke of disbelief. Was he having serious second thoughts about importing Dr. Desinor to his city? Was he wondering about the circus like atmosphere that bringing in any psychic was apt to create, or this psychic in particular? Jessica watched the thin-lipped man as he spoke. “That's… that's about it with regard to the weapon. Our for-ensics expert had maintained all along that it's near as big as a machete.” He seemed to stare down at Kim with a new and burning sense of wonder. “But… but how? How could you know that just from… from holding a rosary?”

“ I held the knife too. Look… look at my arms.”

Her hands and arms were red with a crimson hue as if bloodstained.

True stigmata, Jessica thought, amazed, never before seeing such a display. Kim Desinor's skin at the forearms and hands had unaccountably taken on the look of unwashed fresh blood. Jessica could even make out the spatter trails. She wanted to get a photo of this bizarre effect, but almost in a blink, the red hues, stains and stringlets of ghostly blood were gone.

Zanek and Jessica looked for cuts, but there were none, not so much as a bruise, just the red hue against the skin that had evaporated in a ghostly fade-out. Staged trick or real? Jessica wondered.

“ I had my hands in the boy's chest… reached in and cut out his heart…”

“ My God, she was acting out the killer's part,” Stephens raggedly whispered.

“ Get her some water, Stephens, now!” shouted Paul, sending the other man out.

He then held Kim for a moment, Jessica backing into a corner, silently looking on before asking again, “Is she going to be all right?”

But it was as if Zanek had forgotten Jessica's presence.

Jessica stared at the sight of a softer Paul Zanek, who was allowing his emotions sway as he caressed first Kim's cheek and next her shining, sun-dappled hair. The other woman had ither gone unconscious or was simply enjoying the attention Paul was giving her.

A spasm of nostalgia wafted over Jessica's mind as she looked on from her corner, her thoughts drifting back to the man she loved, the man she'd left in Hawaii, James Parry, whom she'd phoned the night before, assuring him that she was safe and that all was right in her world, lying through her teeth to him even as she wanted him to race to her.

From somewhere far away, Kim heard Paul asking after her well-being in a tone he'd not used since their breakup. She imagined a moment when they were first in love, or at least making love, and he'd been so gentle with her. She enjoyed the feel of his touch again, the sheer strength of it. She felt secure, out of harm's way, if only for this brief, single moment. Relaxing now, her skin tone returning to its normal olive, she opened her eyes on his and found their deep, blue pools filled with a rippling concern.

Jessica sensed the measure of her feelings, the depth of emotion in Kim Desinor, just by carefully watching her, the way she clung to Paul. Jessica could easily empathize with her desire to feel that wonderful sense of being protected, something she herself hadn't felt for a very long time, not since she'd left James in Honolulu.

Jessica thought about her last moments in the airport with Jim, how he'd cleared a room of stewardesses and pilots so they might have a moment of privacy and passion. They had parted vowing to remain in touch, and true to his word, he had called almost daily since she'd left. His phone bill must look like the national debt, she imagined.

Jessica saw that poor Kim was still unable to control her shivering. The fear was tenfold whenever a killer managed to touch the investigator in private places she seldom visited herself, and what was more private than one's own psyche? Jessica had no small measure of experience in that department herself, so she easily slid into sync and empathy with her new acquaintance. Something ugly had leapt into Kim Desinor's psyche, something evil and dominating, and the malignancy had bled her soul and body, not unlike the effect Matisak had had all these years on Jessica herself. Only Dr. Desinor got it all at once, in one fell swoop, like a giant vulture descending over her.

Kim valiantly tried to put into words the images, telling Paul she had to try. “Flashes of metallic light, a long knife dancing over flesh, maniacal thrusts.”

It sounded like Lopaka Kowona, the Trade Winds Killer whom Jessica had helped to corner in Hawaii. Jessica wondered if Kim was not somehow picking up subconscious psychic clues flaring off her, such as the burning, human cross. The image certainly brought to mind how Kowona had died, crucified by his own people. Perhaps Jessica's presence in the room had caused Stephens's little test to go woefully awry, the clutched rosary beads notwithstanding.

Jessica glanced over at the now-clear olive skin along each of Kim's arms, amazed still at the psychic discoloration she'd earlier witnessed now washed into oblivion. If it were some sort of disappearing ink, Jessica's laboratory tests could easily detect as much. She had to know that. And if it were honestly some sort of crime-scene negative played out over her tissues, what then? What did that say for scientific detection? And if it were for real, God, the woman must be nearly as fearful of her own psyche as that of the madman she'd briefly encountered, if she had actually done so. Still, as far as it having all been a staged hoax, in her soul Jessica knew better. She was an expert at detecting lies and the behavior of liars; she could detect fraud in all its various guises, and there was no duplicity in this room save what she sensed in Paul Zanek and P.C. Stephens, the two men both dancing around a bit, for reasons unknown. But in Kim Desinor, Jessica saw no guile, sensed no hidden agenda.

Stephens now rushed back in with a paper cup overflowing with water, quite unaccustomed to the task, slopping it onto Paul's beige carpeting. The spell between Paul and Kim was at once vanquished.

“ You got one hell of a jolt from that rosary,” Stephens said, handing the water to Paul, who immediately helped Kim to drink. “But it was placed in as a control item, not a…”

Zanek, gritting his teeth, waved the other man off.

After drinking her fill, taking in a deep breath of air and allowing Zanek to help her to the couch, Kim said to Stephens,

“ The rosary is hot. I'll want to keep it in my custody for…future…explorations.”

“ Hot?” he asked.

“ Psychic term,” said Jessica, giving herself away a bit, coming closer, taking Kim's hand and asking if she were all right.

“ What's it mean, hot?” asked Stephens.

“ Psychically hot… still warm with psychic emanations,” Kim explained. “I think I saw someone named Vic or Victor under attack. In fact, I was attacking him.”

“ If what you're saying is true, then Victor Surette, who was killed over a year ago, was the first victim in the Heart-Snatcher's series of killings,” replied Stephens, who'd had time to think about it. “Strangely enough, one of our detectives mentioned the same possibility; at least, it was kicked over, according to my people. But Surette never surfaced as a serious contender… never seriously, you know, linked with the others… before now, that is. This… this is… could change a lot of minds, the entire direction of the investigation, in fact, if…”

“ Killer didn't leave the rosary intentionally,” Kim said. “Wore it around the neck. Surette, as you call him, snatched it off in a scuffle. The killer didn't know it was lost until it was too late to retrieve it.”

“ Jesus, you got all that from those beads?” Stephens asked, his eyes popping.

“ I used to be Catholic,” she joked.

“ What about the killer?” Stephens asked. “Anything?”

“ Nothing clear… disjointed feelings… I wasn't actually in a position to see him.”

“ What do you mean, not in a position? Are there positions in this invisible world you go into?” asked a curious Jessica.

“ I was the killer for a moment, and there weren't any mirrors.”

“ You were seeing things through the killer's eyes?” Jessica pressed, flashing on Matisak, wondering at this moment what his eyes were surveying.

“ Precisely.” Kim drank deeply of the water now.

“ Can you tell us anything-anything at all about being him?” Jessica asked.

“ He's embittered, jealous, vengeful and full of rage all the time. Whoever he is, he's self-conscious…”

“ About what?” Jessica pressed.

“ His looks, his skin… some mark on his skin. And so he wears heavy makeup. It's the only time he goes to a mirror. Self-conscious about his weight and height and general ap-pearance, and he's got a mind full of bubbling hatred and emotional turmoil.”

“ Anything else?” asked Zanek.

“ No…nothing else, except for one thing.”

“ Yes?”

“ He intends to kill again.”

“ Why, and for how long?”

“ He doesn't know himself.”

“ Does he have any remorse?”

“ None of consequence, no; the pleasure overtakes him.”

“ The pleasure?” asked Stephens.

“ He derives great emotional release in controlling others.”

“ Controlling others?”

“ The ultimate power trip, complete control,” said Paul Zanek knowingly.

Jessica added, “This creep's like that bastard Matisak. A freaked-out maniac who gets high on controlling life and death. He gets his rocks off when he gets to play God, when he gets to decide.”

“ Gets to decide,” muttered Stephens, trying to follow Jessica's train of thought.

“ On whether or not you get to live or to die, Mr. Stephens.”

“ And the taking of the heart?” asked Stephens.

“ The ultimate warrior's prize, like eating the heart of the buffalo maybe,” Jessica suggested.

“ Could be any number of whys for the heart thefts,” Kim interjected. “Maybe he's a hopeless romantic, and maybe he enshrines the hearts like so many trophies, signs of his conquests.”

“ Agreed,” replied Jessica, “but it's much more likely the bastard's eating his trophies, that he's a cannibal like the Claw in New York a couple of years ago.”

“ You've dealt with more of these monsters than I have, Dr. Coran, so I bow to your judgment,” Kim said. “But isn't it also true that each one, while similar in many regards and while despicable and capable of inhuman and unholy acts, is uniquely twisted? That is, perverted in a fashion that is almost surely private and born of a unique fantasy world whose rules only the individual knows?”

Jessica bit her lower lip and considered the inherent warning that Kim was passing along: You don't catch one maniac by presupposing him to be the same as the last. She knew that, had always known that and had proven it time and again, both in the lab and in the field. But lately all the monsters roaming the black patches of the planet had converged into a single satanic creature for Jessica, and as with everything else in her life, her professional acumen had fallen serious prey to the Matisak syndrome she was under. And somehow Kim Desinor both knew this and understood, acknowledging Jessica's painful response.

“ Well, it appears we have much work to do,” Zanek said, having regained his professional distance on matters. “I believe, Commissioner Stephens, that you will be pleased with the team of Coran and Desinor.”

The two women exchanged a final look before Stephens and Zanek shook on it.