Pure Instinct

21

Sincebaugh looked up from his unofficial desk-the end corner booth at the Old Remorse-to see that it was Dr. Kim Desinor casting an intrusive shadow over the dossier he was reading, information on a drug case he had been working off and on now for the past several weeks in addition to the Hearts case.

“ Well…” he began, sizing her up. “So, Doctor, is it? Whatever you were peddling back at the morgue to the yoyos won't wash here, so don't waste your time or mine.”

The place was fairly well filled with cops, both uniformed and plainclothes-obviously a favored watering hole of the NOPD, she'd surmised the moment she had entered.

“ Joseph Wambaugh could do a story about this place, no doubt. Call it the Onion Room, maybe.”

“ It doesn't smell that bad.” Alex momentarily reflected on how he had himself said to Ben before Ben had left to return to the precinct that there was so much deceit and mendacity in the air that it had to be peeled away like an onion. But he didn't dwell on the coincidence. “Like I said, what're you selling here, Doctor?”

He made his final word sound like a racial slur. She asked if she could take a seat across from him.

“ Yeah, sure… sit down.”

“ Look,” she began as she slid into the booth, “I can understand your reluctance to accept me-or any psychic-here on your case, but why not at least give it a try? What can it hurt?”

“ Nothing ventured, nothing gained, you mean? Isn't that what you so-called psychic detectives count on? So long's you get paid?”

“ You know, Detective, I see no reason for your hostility or your judgmental-''

“ I've been a cop for over twelve years, Doctor, and I've worked some pretty bizarre shit that would curl your pretty hair.”

“ Is that right?”

“ And I've worked with your kind before, and you're all alike.”

“ Is that right?”

They were becoming loud; others around the room were staring.

“ You throw up a smoke screen of predictions and clairvoyant visions, virtually all vague and self-fulfilling prophecies any high-IQ Mensa type might count on to come true, and you squeeze all you can from these so-called pre-”

“ You mean like when I named Lennox and his killer?”

“ Give me a break, lady. Odds-on guesswork, the significance of which is only colored in later by gullible cops, ESP advocates and a public only too willing to believe. In this case Stephens and Meade and that clown from the mayor's office.”

“ Funny you don't include your captain in that group.”

He sat in stony silence.

“ Naturally,” she continued, “we all have a built-in wish to believe, fed by the media, which has a tendency to exaggerate psychic claims.” She sounded as if she agreed with him and this threw his timing off.

“ Yeah, right, the press so sensationalizes you people that you're made saints, heroes, because sensational sells. You think the NOPD hasn't used psychics in the past? In every department in the country there's at least one cop wasting his time and the taxpayers' money by remaining in touch with a psychic… ahhh…” He hesitated.

“ Go on!”

“ A psychic dick.”

“ Maybe I need you to talk to my…” She stopped herself from saying boss, angry she'd almost revealed the fact she was working for Paul Zanek. “My shrink.”

“ That's a good one, a psychic who goes to a shrink.”

“ Just like cops,” she said coyly. “Psychics have problems in their relationships too.” Her eyes were beautiful, lustrous, and they glistened even as they bore into him like two small harpoons. “I know how important this case is to you, that it's consumed your life, your every waking moment, not to mention your subconscious.”

She saw him tense before she felt the rising wall around him come back up like an ascending shield or cloaking device. She'd come a little too close in her assessment of Alex Sincebaugh, and this understandably made him uneasy. Any normal person would be a bit paranoid as a result, but a cop was doubly so. A cop was trained to reveal deceit, and who could blame him. She tried to counter what she'd said by adding, “All cops can be obsessive; it's the nature of the beast, isn't it?”

“ You're smooth; I'll give you that much, Dr. Desinor.”

“ Check with Miami-Dade. I was once a cop myself before I became a professional psychic. Check my record. Ask about the Hughes case. I knew the killer-a failed medical student- had cut off the little boy's ears after the boy was dead and that his kidnap ransom request would only yield a corpse. Ask about how I pinpointed the identity of the mad doctor who kidnapped the kid, not for ransom but for vengeance against his father, who'd been chiefly responsible for keeping the killer out of medical practice.”

“ All hits an ordinary cop like myself could have made, no doubt.”

“ No doubt…” She took in a deep breath of air. “All right, okay… agreed, but none of the other cops made the connections.”

“ So, now you take yourself seriously, and you figure there's more money in being a psychic consultant than in being a cop. I get it. Now, if you don't mind-”

“ Do you have some hang-up against making money?”

“ Only when it corrupts.”

“ Cops… you're all alike.”

“ What's that supposed to mean?”

Stubby came to the table and asked, “Alex, you going to buy somethin' for the lady or what?”

Sincebaugh asked her what she'd like.

“ Tea, if you have any.”

“ Tea… lady, this is a bar.”

“ Glass of chablis, then.”

Stubby nodded, jotted down the item on a notepad as if it were the U.S. Constitution he was putting down and finally stepped away.

As soon as he left, she leaned in over the table and said to Alex, “When a psychic succeeds, you guys are unwilling to admit that any psychic guidance is responsible, but the moment a psychic fails, you abuse her with ridicule and blame.”

“ Oh, I'm sorry if I've offended your delicate sensibilities, Doctor.” He laughed a bit mirthlessly at his own response.

She bit back her anger and let his sarcasm pass. “As for quitting Miami-Dade, well, that's a long story.”

“ I've got time and Stubby's going to take all day with that wine you ordered.”

“ All right. My leaving had to do with Florida's gung-ho, fundamentalist-Christian, hell-and-brimstone state's attorney, Don Q. Weaver-Weavil, we called him. Guy announced his own personal belief regarding psychic powers and denounced them as coming from the Evil One.”

“ Satan?”

“ Weaver almost single-handedly pushed through an order to prohibit all law enforcement in the state to refrain from doing the Devil's work, forbidding any future consultation with psychic detectives.”

He'd been trying not to laugh, holding it back as Stubby arrived with the wine. “Anything on the menu you'd like, miss?” Stubby asked.

“ No, nothing for now… thank you.”

The greasy little man ambled away with a pronounced limp, and she continued. “Anyway, Weaver started to invoke scripture, since he was a part-time Baptist minister.”

“ You're kidding. The state's attorney was a part-time minister?”

“ Baptist. And in his faxes to the department, he began quoting from Deuteronomy eighteen, verses ten and eleven. To paraphrase: God's followers are forbidden from using divination, or an observer of times-that's me-or an enchanter, or a witch, a charmer, a consulter with familiar spirits or a wizard or necromancer.”

“ Maybe the Reverend Weaver was right. You do have an enchanting way about you. Doctor.”

“ Are you kidding? He went on to tell us we shouldn't be dabblin' or experimentin' or doin' nothin' on the fringe of occult powers. 'Ultimately nothin' good ever came of it,' he said.”

Alex laughed, and his smile was infectious.

She smiled in return, sipping at her wine. “Weaver finished his fax with, 'I feel the success of my office in the courtrooms across this fair state of ours is the direct result of the Holy Spirit working His word through me, and I don't want any other spirits to undo that good work.' “

“ You quit being a cop on account of that double-talking bozo?”

“ Not exactly, and I'm glad you don't object to me on religious or moral grounds. You see, Weaver had heard about me. Some of the other cops called me the psychic cop; you know, good record, strangely successful, all that, not unlike you, Alex. Anyway, Weaver made it a vendetta to get rid of me.”

“ Jesus, sounds like a hard-ass.”

“ More to the point, he was a real prick,” she corrected him. “Anyway, he went so far as to contact the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.”

“ Yeah, I've heard of them. Somewhere in Ohio?”

She hesitated. It wasn't everyone who knew of the infamous committee. “Buffalo, New York, but they have centers all over, and they don't take any claims of the paranormal lightly. They're a dogmatic Scientism group that some call the New Inquisition. They made life hell for me. Still do from time to time. Imagine, a fundamentalist in the Bible Belt calls on a Yankee science group to sic them on a lone psychic-me.”

“ I guess it comes with the territory if you're going to make supernatural gestures like hanging out a shingle that tells people you can speak to the dead, Doctor.”

“ Supernatural is a theological term; refers to all those miraculous intrusions into the material world: deities, spirits, ail that. Paranormal is processes and laws observable in nature, but which have not yet been scientifically explained.”

“ There's a significant difference?” He did find her fascinating and beautiful to look at.

“ Damn straight there's a difference. The paranormal is no more scientifically unexplainable than a certain disease or area of the brain we lack knowledge of. The fact we can't explain something doesn't mean that it's invalid.”

“ So far I'm with you, Doctor, but remember you are dealing with a cop, so let's take it slow.”

“ Psychic functioning is merely an unexplained biological sense, rather than necessarily a communication with a spirit world, you see.”

“ Aha, I think. Does it go something like this? A psychic doesn't perform miracles, she just does the miraculous?”

She frowned but went on. “Critics and people like Weaver, and perhaps you, have intentionally blurred the distinction between what is truly supernatural and what is purely paranormal.”

“ I see,” he said without conviction, sipping at a light beer.

“ Anyway, I returned to school, got my degree in psychology, parapsychology, and psychic research-some call it psi.” She pronounced the word like sigh, and his thoughts lingered over her lovely intonations.

“ And I'm presently a member of the Parapsychological Association of Amer-”

“ So you've since legitimized your telepathy, your clairvoyance and your precognition through the accumulation of doctorates… I see.”

She let the remark go by, sipping again at her wine while he finished his beer.

“ Actually, I'm primarily into retro-cognition, dredging up images out of the past, although I get flashes of the future, and PK and psychometric observa-”

“ Peee Kayyy,” he said, repeating the letters. “Don't tell me. Psychokinesis.”

“ That's right.”

“ What State's Attorney Weaver would call laying on of hands?”

She laughed now, and he enjoyed her smile, allowing his eyes to linger.

She felt a definite attraction for him, and what now seemed a permanent half-smile or cocky snicker on the parted hps seemed both natural and boyish. She sensed his interest in her was growing.

“ Tell me this,” he said. “How do you know when you're actually seeing some so-called truth come out of this fifth dimension you people speak of, and when you're just maybe reading the mind of the cop or the M.E. who's standing alongside you? You know that Wardlaw and Jessica Coran were already thinking the Lennox man was no victim of the Bleeding Heart killer, same as me, and it may well be that Frank or Dr. Coran knew of the disappearance of a man named Lennox long before you arrived here. Maybe, Doctor, you'd better leave for home while the gettin' is good. We po' boys in the NOPD may not be's dumb as them what's in Dade County, Miami.”

“ Either way, whether I read the M.E.'s thoughts or was truly clairvoyant in that room, Lieutenant, I got it right, and that's what's bothering you, isn't it?”

“ I know it's got to bother Frank, and for that I'd pay your fee out of pocket, but going for the real killer isn't going to be fun and parlor games, Doctor. I know New Orleans, and when the collective they find out what you really are, you'll be looking at an old-fashioned witch hunt. Superstitions die hard here.”

“ I know all about New Orleans, and as for going home, Lieutenant… well, I am home. I grew up not far from here.”

He was momentarily taken aback by this. “Really?”

“ That's right.”

Now he saw the Cajun blood clearly, and he wondered why he'd missed it before. She'd done a great deal to conceal it, he now realized. Maybe there was more to her than he'd previously thought.

“ Where'd you attend school?”

She recognized it as the prying cop question it was. “None of your damned business.”

“ Okay.” He guessed it to be St. Luke's or Mark's, where the parish was made up of the poor. She didn't want to be reminded of it, he mentally noted. That was her business, as she said, but if it had a bearing on her being here with her nose in his case, it was his business as well, and maybe he'd look into it on his own time.

She seemed to be reading his thoughts, so he superstitiously cut them off, asking if she'd like another glass of wine.

“ Oh, no, no, thank you. One's sufficient for this time of day, and having had no lunch, well…”

“ No lunch? We'll have to remedy that. Stubby!” he called. “A menu, please.”

“ No, please, it's a bit late to eat anyway, and I really have to be going.”

She got up, preparing to leave, and he politely stood across from her now. “I'm sorry if I come on strong. Dr. Desinor, but that's the only way I know how. Landry's going to regret ever calling your hotline. They're already calling him Captain of the Kook Squad, and you're already front-page news, and by tomorrow who knows what the press'll be saying about you, me, the Department. Either way, when the circus comes to town, the media is first at the center ring.”

“ I didn't expect to remain hidden here.”

“ Well, no, I should expect you'd want all the publicity you could get, right alongside Dr. Coran. I heard about her press conference through the grapevine. Another reason I was against you and her… your coming in on the case, rather. More publicity is one thing this case doesn't need, despite the arguments you no doubt have heard on the other side, that the public should be warned. Hell, the public has been warned!”

“ I think you should know we're conducting an exhumation of the Surette body at dawn.”

“ What? Whose idea was this?”

She bit her lip. “I'm not a hundred percent on who first suggested it, but I'd hazard a guess it was your Captain Landry. The P.C., Meade and Fouintenac were reluctant, but Jessica and Landry pushed hard for it and got their way.”

“ And what about Frank?”

“ Dr. Wardlaw left somewhat abruptly when the discussion turned to exhuming Surette. As I said, Chief Meade wasn't too keen on the idea either, but your Captain Landry fought for it. Said your investigation keeps leading back to Surette, that is. He gave you due credit.”

“ So what will Dr. Coran be looking for on exhumation?”

“ Not her… well, not her alone anyway…”

“ Wardlaw?”

“ No… me.”

“ You?” He stared so hard she felt it like a blow. “You're telling me you've talked those idiots into an exhumation for the purpose of a fuc-a blasted seance?''

“ Well, honestly… it really wasn't my idea, and neither is it technically a seance, but rather a psi reading. In a seance-”

“ Wasn't your idea? And I suppose it wasn't your idea to psycho-feel and psychobabble your way across Lennox's body either? That you were just an innocent bystander who happened to be drafted by Stephens, Lew Meade and the others to perform?”

“ Wait just a minute, Lieutenant! I'm doing my job. And the reason I came looking for you was so that-''

“ Yeah, I'm not so clear on that. Why did you come looking for me, and wait just a minute, lady! You're not doing your job. You're trying to do my job.”

“ That's nonsense. I wouldn't have your job for the world.”

“ Oh, really?”

“ Really! Now, if you've got a legitimate complaint or a problem with this exhumation tomorrow morning, take it up with your captain, Lieutenant!”

“ Damn straight I will.”

She gracefully turned on her heels and exited, momentarily bathing the place in light as she pushed angrily through the door, muttering a curse under her breath.

Alex started for the door, stopping halfway, and from the corner of his eye he saw Dr. Jessica Coran staring fixedly at him, something smoldering within her which he could not here and now fathom. He realized only now that he'd rushed toward the retreating Dr. Desinor like a schoolboy in pursuit and was left standing in the middle of the room and rooted there for the moment, with everyone's eyes on him, but none so piercing as Dr. Coran's.

“ Just who in hell does that woman think she is?” Alex asked Jessica Coran as he approached her darkened booth.

“ She's quite amazing, really,” replied Jessica in a calm born of a double whiskey sour. “If you'd stop fighting her long enough to look clearly through to what's right for your- this case, Lieutenant, you'd see that she's far more an asset than a liability. She was right on with the Lennox case, and I've seen amazing footage on her back at Quantico. You hear about the kidnapping and murder of that banker in Decatur, Georgia, name of Sendak?”

“ You telling me that Kim Desinor was instrumental in solving the case?”

“ And she did it long-distance. Never left her lab…” Jessica hesitated, realizing what she was saying. “In Florida… where she works out of an old, remolded lab…” God, that sounded lame, she thought.

He considered this in silence, sliding into the seat opposite Jessica. “You're a scientist, a reasonable person, Dr. Coran.”

“ I like to think so.”

“ God. I mean, an exhumation of the Surette corpse, followed by a seance. What the hell's next, Doctor?”

“ I don't see that it'd be much different than what went on today.”

“ But how can you, a person of science, possibly go for this kind of theatrical display?”

He'd noticed Jessica's ongoing interest in Dr. Desinor, and he wondered if they'd arrived at the bar together, and if so, why Coran hadn't joined them from the outset. Had she been watching their conversation from here, how much Kim Desinor and he had had to drink together, the length of the other woman's stay? Obviously, she'd witnessed the blowup.

Jessica's eyes were sending pinched little darts in his direction, but now her head dropped, and she pretended to have seen and heard nothing. Just like a woman, he thought, wondering if he should not make a hasty retreat back to the false security of his booth.

“ Well, are you going to answer me?” he said. “How can you stand aside and allow a body to be exhumed for such purposes?”

“ My reasoning's simple enough, Lieutenant. If the body is exhumed, I'll have an opportunity at it as well, and we'll know for certain if this Surette character was in fact our killer's first victim or not. That's where my interest lies, and if getting it done via Kim Desinor works, then so be it.”

“ You're smarter than I thought.”

“ So's your captain.”

“ Landry's running with the foxes at the moment.”

This instantly angered her. “Is it me, Sincebaugh, or does everybody rub you the wrong way lately?”

“ You got no idea what you're talking about, Dr. Coran, so don't start on me, okay?”

“ We've got a lot in common, you and me.”

“ Jesus God,” he moaned.

She downed what remained of her double and stared hard across at him. “You're a walking raw nerve, Alex, but you can't treat everyone like… like…”

“ Look, if I want a dressing-down, I'll call Ben back in here.” Ben had put it to him much in the same way as she was doing now. “What I don't need at this point is another wife” His icy glare was unmistakable. He wanted to be left alone. When she held her ground, he got up, returned to his own booth and snatched open one of the files he'd been look-ing through earlier, tilting it toward what little light he could find and leaning back in pretended peace.

But something told him that Coran wasn't going to go away, and in fact he felt the dagger of her stare penetrating deeper and deeper into him, twisting just enough to make him squirm. He looked up to find her standing over him.

“ What?” he asked.

“ I saw the way you two were looking at one another. You could work well together, if you gave her a chance.”

“ Are you kidding? She knows I have no regard for the black arts and no respect for the way she earns a living.”

Jessica tensed visibly, the veins in her neck throbbing. She wanted to set him straight about Kim; she wanted to tell Sincebaugh the truth about their relationship. Perhaps it would bring him around if he knew that they both worked out of Quantico. And since Paul Zanek had lied to her, she wanted to hurt the bastard too, and this might be a way, but it could also backfire and hurt Kim as well.

“ That's bullshit, Alex. She does the same kind of work as you. I know about that tape of you in the diner and frankly-”

“ Damn that Landry. What's he doing, holding a daily screening for everybody at the precinct?”

“ He had Kim look it over. She was impressed by your psychic guesswork prior to the robbery attempt. She wants to work with you, not against you… and she's…”

“ She's what?”

“ Sincere.”

“ Sincere… sincere? What're we playing at here, Dr. Coran? Is sincerity supposed to make everything in New Orleans all right tonight?”

“ You are insufferable, aren't you? Meade tried to warn me.”

He tossed aside the file and raised his hands as if shot through the heart, apologizing all at once. “It's me, I guess. It's my life right now… it's an unholy mess and…”

“ You're maybe letting this case overtake your life?”

He declined to answer, granting her a brooding stare instead.

“ Listen,” she said, “I happen to know how that goes, and trust me. Somewhere, somehow, you've got to hold onto some corner where you can get away from it.”

“ So, you ever take your own advice, Dr. Coran?”

“ Sometimes… not often enough, but sometimes.”

“ As with this Matisak thing? That's what the press conference was all about, wasn't it?”

“ The press conference was on the Hearts Killer, and I'd like you to be present at my next conference for questions.”

“ Everybody wants me around and for what? Window dressing?”

“ No one knows this case like you do. We both… we all know that from just looking over your meticulous case file notes.”

“ Look, Dr. Coran, you know the score; you've been to hell and back; you know what it's like to be given a case, to get involved in it heavily only to see it snatched away. It's my case, they tell me, my responsibility from the outset, right? But every time I turn around someone else's nose is in it and her nose… this ridiculous miracle approach… well…”

“ I pushed for the Surrette exhumation, and so did Landry. Kim was against it.” She slipped into the dark booth.

“ Yeah, Carl's a great one for going along with whichever way the wind blows these days.”

“ Look, if nothing else, it'll give me an opportunity to compare the scars on the Surette corpse with the more recent ones. You may well be vindicated in your own hunch that Surette was the first victim.”

He nodded, conceding the point. “Maybe something good could come of it. I just hope the press doesn't get wind of it.”

“ They will. But there's no foundation to your belief that Kim Desinor is a charlatan, now is there? What're you basing your opinion on? Past experience? Kim's not like anyone I've ever known or met.”

“ What, you think because someone puts the word psychic after her name that she's automatically directed by some divine light?”

“ No, I'm thinking you've got a hell of a lot to learn about women, and one woman in particular.”

“ Ask Ben, my partner.”

“ Ask him what?”

“ He'll tell you straight. I haven't been fit company for anyone since… since…”

“ Since the first Hearts victim, I know. But together we can help you get through this, Alex, if you'll let us.”

“ You've been talking to that damned deYampert, haven't you?”

“ Yes, about you,” she confessed. “He's very-”

“ Nosy, an old washerwoman, I know.”

“ Concerned is what he is.”

“ I know. The big bastard.”

“ Ben's your friend and so am I. What's so wrong about accepting help where it's offered, Alex? No one… no one should be in this… alone.”

“ Is that how it is with you, Dr. Coran? You feel out there… alone?''

She forced a phony smile and lied. “No, not really. I have the backing of the entire FBI, remember?”

“ Yeah, right… the entire FBI.”

“ Thanks Alex,” she said, getting up. “I'm glad we had this little talk. Thanks for listening.”

He thought he saw a tear drop, but she turned her head away as she made for the door. He started to call her back, but she was bent on racing out. Stubby frowned from behind the bar and shook his head in wonderment.

“ No luck with the ladies today, huh, Lieutenant?” he called out. This made others in the room laugh. “What gives?”

“ None of your goddamned business, Stubby.”

“ Sure, sure… Lieutenant.”

“ Thanks for understanding, Stubby.”

“ Hey, Alex, no problemo, sure…” Stubby went back to wiping glasses and picking up loose change and refilling the pretzel dishes while humming “Achy-Breaky Heart.”

Alex thought about how he'd alienated Dr. Desinor; he thought about how he'd alienated others recently, including, to some degree, his partner, Ben, whom he hadn't wanted to trust with the truth about his nightmares-and now he knew why he'd waited so long to even mention them.

“ See the Department shrink,” Ben had advised.

He had told Ben to go to hell, so Ben, being the wise guy that he was, took his partner's problems to Jessica Coran!

Christ, everything was scfewed around. He thought about pulling himself off the Hearts case, putting in for some time off, getting the hell out of New Orleans altogether, taking his father up on the offer of a fishing expedition, renting a house boat maybe, lying in the sun for days on end.

“ Where would you go if you did?” Ben had earlier asked.

“ Don't know… maybe the peninsula. Anyplace with lots of water, sand, sun, someplace where they've got only one cop, and he rides a bicycle.”

“ No cops, huh?”

“ No cops.”

“ You trying to tell me something, pard?”

“ No cops.”

Maybe the notion wasn't so wild after all, he now thought.

Just then Big Ben rushed into the bar, his eyes darting in every direction until he nailed his partner at the phone, where he was about to dial his father, make plans. “We got a call, Alex. Could be another vie.”

“ Oh, Christ… where? “East Canal Street apartment, just above Robert E. Lee Boulevard.”

“ Indoors, you mean?”

“ Indoors.”

“ Thank God for small favors. The usual M.O.?”

“ That's the message received, yeah.”

“ Better get the hell over there.”

“ I brought the squad around.”

Stubby, watching and listening from behind the bar, shouted to the retreating figures as they barged out, “See ya later, fellas. Don't go wearin' your hearts on your sleeves.”