Pure Instinct

24

Kim Desinor had seldom met a man so infuriating as Detective Lieutenant Alexander Sincebaugh, yet he posed an interesting challenge for her. What did it take with him? she wondered. A little more time perhaps? Perhaps not; it was quite possible that all the time in the world wouldn't change his obdurant, bullheaded and fearful notions about psychic investigators in general and her in particular. Still, for a brief while there in the restaurant, gazing over at him through the candlelight, she had sensed that deep, abiding need in him to confess and be consoled, to shout out his needs, his desires, his most intimate fears and wants. It was then she saw the bevy of human maggots clawing at him, the symbolic representation of an abiding agony which he'd unwittingly and psychically conveyed to her.

The symbolism was clear enough, she believed. And although she had wanted to come away a friend, this obviously wasn't to be, it appeared. He had made that much painfully clear.

She'd been attracted to him, had let down her own guard, revealed to him that she too had fears and anxieties and needs that daily went unfulfilled, the same sort of needs that had caused her to dig herself into a hole in which she found herself helplessly mired, thanks in large measure to Chief Paul Zanek. Though if she were totally honest with herself-one of life's impossibilities? — she knew that she alone was to blame for the Zanek affair regardless of Paul's role in it. Maybe it took coming to New Orleans and running into Alex Sincebaugh to reveal this much to herself.

She thought about her seemingly endless nightmare of days and nights and overwhelming loneliness at St. Domitilla's, wondered if she dared go see the damned dungeon sometime before leaving New Orleans, to manfully face down her fears as she always told others to do; wondered momentarily about her father's last days in an emphysema ward in some small town called Corinth in Mississippi, which had sent word to the school, the head nun breaking the news to her, explaining to her what the strange medical term meant, saying, “It's a defect in the lung system.”

“ Christ,” she moaned as she undressed and found her way into the shower, ignoring the phone messages left her by Zanek throughout the evening. “Now there's a real and not an imagined parasite,” she told herself, wondering what was on his mind.

The hot and pulsating spray of the shower was soothing to her aching muscles. It had been a taxing day in so many ways. If she could relax completely, she knew that her subconscious would play over the events of the day in a mysterious and subtle fashion, refashioning them, cutting and stitching and embroidering them into a whole cloth of meaning. She let the hot water play over her head, neck and shoulders, turning up the heat in increments until the room was filled with a velvety, warm and enveloping fog. She found herself thinking anew of Sincebaugh, even his name alluring, different, curious. He was a handsome man, filled with kinetic energy of his own, much of it left untapped. She'd felt it pulsating through him when she'd boldly taken his hand in hers, stared into his midnight-blue eyes and aura, which sent showers of silvery sparks out whenever he grew enraged; with no regrets now, she replayed the moment slowly in her head. He had been intrigued, glued to her, at that moment, and he had been frightened at the same time-afraid of what she might reveal about him to others? Or did he fear what she might reveal about him to Alex Sincebaugh? Her psychic eye had pierced him, peered beneath the layers and held for a brief moment his heart in her hands, and that touch had made him draw back even further than before. Had made him doubly, triply suspicious.

Even shaken and distraught, he remained handsome, a firm gentleness always kept at bay, just below the surface, despite his outward rancor. It was something about him being just the opposite of her father, a man who still dominated her own worst nightmares whenever she broke down and allowed nightmares back into her life, that drew her. For years now she'd somehow controlled her own night visions, dreams and excursions into the fears that had haunted her as a child. How she did it, she could not tell, not even to herself; however, at odd times of stress, a huge shadow descended over her like a living liquid cloud of tar, and in it she found her father's eyes, nose, mouth, ears and hands, all crushing her, taking the air from her, torturing her and beating her.

Her father had never once beaten her in the real world, not physically at least. The nightmares were symbolic, like Sincebaugh's, and they told of a more sinister torture that she had participated in with her father, one she had all these years hidden from herself. But more and more now the specter of that terrible and formless horror stalked her.

She might more readily face the old reform school into which he had cast her than face him, to learn exactly what kind of man he was. He'd been a failure in so many ways. That much she knew. He'd been a heavy drinker, and he wasn't a pleasant drunk who curled up on the couch, but one who lashed out at unseen, invisible demons that provoked him into violence. She remained very shady on precisely how her mother had died, but some corner of her brain kept a caged thought that said it was his fault and he knew it. Her mother's death was the beginning of the end for him and them.

She shook loose from the disturbing core of memories she'd so successfully locked away years and years before. She stepped from the hot shower, toweled herself off and pulled on her thick white robe. She found a dry bar and poured herself a glass of wine and nibbled on some crackers, trying desperately to think of anything other than her father when a knock at the door shook her.

Sincebaugh? she wondered, intrigued. As unable to get me out of his mind as I've been unable to get him from mine? It was a delightful thought that drove her to the door, causing some disappointment when she heard Jessica Coran's whiskey voice from the other side. “Open up. We've got to talk.” She pulled the latch and opened the door wide, allowing Jessica in, catching the perfume of alcohol as it wafted past with her. Jessica was filled with a nervous energy and her speech was nonstop. But she was more frightened than drunk.

“ He's here… he's in New Orleans. Crazy… isn't it? I bait him to get him here and now he's here and now I'm a walking mess, but I… I didn't expect him so bloody soon, yet somehow he's come and somehow he's following me- no, preceding me-to the damned crime scene on the Hearts case! How? How can he get there ahead of us, paint the wall in blood and disappear before anyone can know? Is he superhuman, super-inhuman? No way, the bastard set it up to look like a Hearts killing, but he's really the one. He's here… here, Kim…here and stalking me, taunting me.”

“ How do you know that, Jess? How can you possibly know that?”

“ I was at the scene, 34 East Canal Street, just like you. You saw the writing on the wall.”

“ I saw it, yes, but-”

“ I freaked… left… left the crime scene, Kim. Didn't follow proper protocol, just rushed out of there. I was standing on the street when Alex Sincebaugh carried you out of there and rushed you to the hospital. I was so distraught, I couldn't think straight, you know… after it dawned on me what I'd done, and I looked for him in the crowd, ready to kill him outright, but he never showed his goddamned face.”

“ How can you know for certain he's here, Jessica?” Kim didn't know how to console her.

“ Oh, God, it's his writing, his printing, identical, and he knew the moment I saw it that I'd know, don't you see? That killing was no Queen of Hearts killing. It was Matisak, pure and simple. Matisak leaves bloody messages on walls, not the Hearts guy.”

“ There's nothing says Matisak has a corner on it. There've been bloody messages left on walls in many serial killings.”

“ Damnit, Kim, I've seen enough of Teach Matisak's perverted poetry now to know how he spaces his letters, precisely how large his loops and swirls are. It was in Matisak's hand! I was so rattled, I couldn't do my job.”

“ Jesus, then who carried you out?” Kim asked, thinking of Sincebaugh. “I ran out.”

“ Unprotected, believing he'd just left the scene ahead of you?”

Jessica paced the room. “I know it sounds crazy. Maybe I am crazy.”

Kim was wondering as much. “So, you tore out into the street without anyone's help, knowing-fearing-that Matisak was nearby?”

“ Nobody can help me. Don't you see that? It's between him and me now.”

“ I'll make us some coffee. Let's talk this out, Jess.”

“ I'm telling you, it was him. He knows that I'll see through his despicable game, his disgusting message meant for me. God, how many others are going to die because he's after me?” Jessica had grabbed hold of Kim's wrist and now stared deeply into her eyes while Kim held firm to the coffeepot where they stood in the small kitchenette.

“ I'm not going crazy, Kim. For the last few days I've felt someone following me, watching me. Even on the way over here-”

“ Take it easy, Jess. We'll work this through. Did you bring any of Matisak's things with you?”

“ Yes, in my coat pocket.”

“ Good… good girl. Now, let's have that coffee, and we'll take it one step at a time. I take it you've talked with Lew Meade about your… suspicions, haven't you?”

“ Negative. He'd be more in the way than anything else.”

“ Oh, come on, Jess, you can't seriously expect to do this alone.”

“ I don't like Meade, nor do I particularly trust him.”

She laughed. “Neither do I, but he could be of help.”

“ Likely do the same as Paul did; put bodyguards on me and then go back to sleep. Got anything to drink?”

“ There's a dry bar here, but I really think we need to stay clear, Jess, and focused.”

“ You know about my bout with liquor, don't you, Kim? You know everything there is to know, don't you, and I… I know the rest, right? What a team.”

“ Tomorrow we move you, bag and baggage, to here, to stay with me.”

“ No… if you don't mind… tonight. Let's do it tonight.”

“ You have a seance in mind-Matisak items in your pos-ession.” Kim knowingly pointed.

Jessica's eyes did her pleading for her.

Sincebaugh went toward the French Quarter in search of a transvestite named Phyllis. By now most revelers and night people had ended their partying in a boozy brown daze-cloud of well-wishing and good nights, some club lights blinking off. Still others ran all night. He was amazed to see by the dash clock that it was nearly one in the morning.

Seeing a patrol car whose call numbers he knew, he pulled in alongside the officers. It was Ray Samson and his partner Calvin Toombs, a paired black team who liked it that way, and they were glad to have the company to break the monotony, but they were also a bit suspicious of Sincebaugh's showing up like this, alone and without his partner.

“ What the hell gives, Alex? Thought you went off at midnight, Detective,” asked Samson.

“ Where's your pal deYampert?” added Toombs.

“ Just doing a little moonlighting. Listen, guys, I'm putting out feelers for a transvestite in the area and-''

This made each of the other men break into laughter, Toombs saying, “Better watch how you wordin' that line, Sincy.” Alex mentally flashed back on what he'd said that was so funny, registered this and went on. “Someone calls himself Phyllis. You ever hear?” Samson pursed his lips and shook his head. “Not really.”

“ How 'bout you, Calvin?”

“ Wish I could help you, but only Phyllis I know is the legitimate item.”

“ Keep it in mind for me, will you?”

“ Sure, sure thing, Lieutenant.”

“ Important?” asked Samson. “Got to do with your Hearts-Afire case?”

“ Maybe… maybe nothing. Unreliable source for damned sure. Either of you guys've heard word one about the whereabouts of my usual snitch?”

“ Gilreath?”

“ Not a word, Lieutenant. Sorry.”

“ Seems that mother's gone to Alaska where things ain't so hot, maybe.”

“ Yeah, well, thanks anyway.”

The squad car, smelling of greasy Cajun fries and burgers, pulled away and Alex stared after it, wondering what the men in the ranks were saying about him these days.

It'd be sunrise in four or five hours and the exhumation would be well under way against all better judgment. Still, perhaps he ought to be on hand. He'd go to his apartment, freshen up and try to look like he was rested in any case. From there he'd call Landry, learn what was going on.

He drove back across the city, his depression overtaking him, making him wish that he'd played out the scene with Kim Desinor in a far smoother and more heroic manner than he'd opted for. She'd seen right through him, through his bitterness, through his evasiveness, through all his shields. She was scary in her precision, her accuracy and her focus.

Once at home, he was surprised to find Ben deYampert waiting half-asleep in the parking lot. It was just past one A.M. and the exhumation was scheduled for dawn, in order to disturb as few Joe Q. Publics as possible and so that the grave-diggers involved couldn't cry overtime.

“ There's no reason for you to be at the exhumation, Alex,” Ben told him.

“ I wanna be there.”

“ After what went on at 34 East Canal?”

“ I'm sorry about having disrupted things, Ben…honestly.”

“ I don't suppose you heard about what happened with Dr. Coran at 34 East Canal?” Ben cautioned.

“ No, I didn't. What gives?”

“ She just vanished on us. Left her bag there with her work half undone. Had to call Frank in to clean up after her.”

“ You're kidding. Dr. Coran just up and walked out, just like that?”

“ 'Fraid so. Meade's talking about disciplinary measures. Any case, I haven't a clue as to where she is at the moment, and no one else has heard from her. She may be a no-show at the cemetery.”

Alex recalled what Jessica Coran had said to him about her fear that Matisak had done the victim at 34 East Canal Street just to leave her a message on the wall. “Yeah, that's Cemetery Number 27, as I recall.”

“ That's the place.”

“ Yeah, we were there when they put Surette's body into that city crypt. Gay community is usually more supportive of its own, but he just had a handful turn out for his burial, a bag of losers. I figured at the time it had to do with the AIDS epidemic.”

“ How so?” asked Ben.

“ Well, not that the burial was well publicized or anything like that, but the grapevine sure had it. I just figured, they'd seen so much death in their ranks by then… well, you know our city motto and mentality.”

Ben dryly groaned under the street light. “Life is for the living.”

“ Enjoy it all while you may.”

“ Here's to the here and now.”

“ Don't waste time on bright tomorrows.”

“ Credo of the street punk, heh, Alex?”

“ Look, Ben… I've got a new lead. You want to play it out?”

“ I don't know, pal. Where to and for how long? You already look like you've been rode hard and put away wet.”

“ Just humor me, will you. Let's go see what's cooking on Bourbon Street.”

Ben nodded. “OK, but you're buying.”

Unable to sleep, Jessica now stacked the few items she'd brought with her onto the coffee table fronting the sofa in Kim's room. These consisted of a shredded patch off the prison shirt last worn by Matisak and left at the bloody dispensary where he'd killed Dr. Gabriel Arnold, some blood still adhering to it; a full set of the man's fingerprints; a strange tube which Jessica explained to Kim was part of the apparatus the monster used to drain his victims of their blood; a child's safety pencil said to have been used by Matisak while he was incarcerated, along with a diary he'd kept.

“ Are you getting anything, anything at all?” Jessica asked.

“ This may take time,” Kim assured her.

The tenor of his diary, a self-absorbed diatribe of madness in the handwriting of a disturbed man found below his mattress in the cell which had been his home for years, was at complete odds with the letters of contrition and self-awareness he'd written for Dr. Arnold's eyes. Kim spread her fingers just above these few items lying on the coffee table as she sat on the floor in the lotus position. Her hands slowly revolved in an ever-widening circle over the material possessions of the madman.

She tried desperately to get some reading from the scant objects. “You're right, Jessica. He is quite close, very near, definitely here in New Orleans.”

“ I told you “

“ Quite close. He's an animal, rabid now, with such a single-minded obsession that he must find you…”

“ I know all that. Give me something useful, Kim.”

“ He's biding his time; playing out his hand, so to speak.”

“ Then it was he who wrote that message across the wall at the murder scene last night. He somehow heard the call on a police band. He's very clever. And he somehow got inside with no one seeing him or noticing him. Or else he actually committed the murder to make it look like just another Hearts killing, knowing that I'd know better.”

“ I can't say… not for certain, but I don't believe so. The evil I felt in that room was different somehow.”

“ Somehow different… different?”

“ Matisak's energy is that of a strong, secure type, a man who has accepted his bloody nature; not any doubt in his mind that he's the heir apparent to Satan. The one who killed at 34 East Canal Street, he was not at all sure of his own identity. In fact, he was quite confused, even as to why he killed Dumond.”

“ What about Matisak?”

“ I don't believe he wrote the message on the wall. It… tonight's murderer had an insane attraction for the heart muscle. He was no blood drinker.”

“ What're you saying? That I'm imagining things now? That I imagined it was Matisak's handwriting on the wall?”

“ No, I'm just saying that I'm getting a very confused picture… very confused. It's highly improbable that Matisak was there, and a handwriting analysis would prove beyond doubt that the message left at 34 East Canal Street is not in Matisak's hand.”

“ What about these objects of his? They telling you anything?”

“ I'm sorry. It could be me. I'm extremely tired, having not slept.”

“ Try harder.”

Kim lifted the diary and held it between both hands, one below, the other above, feeling her body heat circulate through the object.

An impression of pure hatred slammed through her. “God, this man is more monster than human.”

Something else I already know, Jessica thought, becoming further frustrated. “I was being watched on the way here. I know he's out there, Kim… out there now. So, you've got to help me hone in on the beast.”

It was a macabre twist on an old theme, Kim thought as she stared across at Jessica: Beauty and the Beast. “I'm trying, but there's too much emotional energy between the two of you, the picture is completely muddled. I see the collapse of a roof, or is it a blanket, maybe a cage-something confining and utterly dangerous coming down over the top of you. You have to be wary. If he catches you up… wait… yes, a trap. He's laid a trap for you and-”

There was a loud drumming pounding at the door which silenced them both. It was after midnight.

“ Who the hell is that?” asked Jessica, whipping out her gun.

Kim went toward the door to stare out through the peephole. On doing so, she instantly drew back, screaming.

“ What is it?” Jessica pleaded, tearing the door open and staring into the dead eyes of Ed Sand. “Oh, no, noooo! God… it's Ed Sand…” Jessica crumpled under the weight of this sight, the massive image physically knocking her back against the dooijamb, where Kim rushed to her, trying to support her as she slid to the floor. The pilot's head dangled, slightly swaying, at the end of a rope coiled about his blood-smeared sandy hair. Jessica's eyes instinctively sought another direction, any other sight than the one before her, and she saw that the end of the rope was twisted about a light fixture in the ceiling. A mixture of bodily fluids, caught in gravity's pull, dripped from the open neck wound and onto the plush carpeting, dying the mild blue a deep indigo. Blood all around the enormous scar had congealed to a near-black scaly texture, telling her that Sand had been killed some hours earlier.

Not twenty-four hours earlier she and Ed had had a quarrel, and he had since sent flowers and a note of apology for being a complete ass, as he'd put it, pleading that she might give him another chance, see him again, claiming that he'd gone to great difficulty to arrange to stay on later in New Orleans so that he might see her again, to patch things up, as he'd put it. Now things-Ed Sand in particular-would never be patched up again. She had ignored Ed and his Humpty-Dumpty plea, knowing that she was not interested, that she wanted to remain faithful to Jim Parry. She had innocently used Ed to get a rise out of Kim that morning on the plane, but since then she had ignored Ed… until now. “The bastard killed Ed.”

Kim instinctively tugged at Jessica where she had slumped half in and half out the door. “Get back inside here, Jess. Your instincts were right, then. Matisak is stalking you.” Kim knew enough about the monster to understand the rising fear within her own being was a healthy one, one of self-preservation. She slammed the door behind them.

Jessica, however, suddenly did a 180-degree turn, pulling away from Kim, snatching the door wide open and pushing past the decapitated head, her. 38 raised and ready, all to a chorus of disagreement from Kim. Searching the hallway for any sign, any movement, she shouted in each direction, “Show yourself, you son of a bitch! Show yourself, Matisak!”

“ Jess, there's something here…my God… in the mouth.”

Jessica returned to see that Mad Matthew Matisak had sent her a note. She shakily reached for the paper that'd been plunged into Ed Sand's mouth.

Special delivery…“What is it? What does it say?” asked Kim, still shaking, disturbed to her core that such horror could be so easily and readily visited upon her doorstep. She wished now that she'd fought Zanek and had remained in her lab behind the safe confines of Quantico, but Jessica, she surmised, felt quite differently. Jessica wanted to race out into the street as she'd foolishly, recklessly, bravely done at 34 East Canal Street, find Matisak and do war with the demon.

Jessica peeled apart the paper and read the stained message:

Come midnight alone to join me at Metairie Necropolis to find eternity and bliss.

“ What the hell's he talking about? What's Metairie?” Jessica wanted to know.

“ It sounds like he's talking about the Metairie Cemetery.”

“ A cemetery?”

“ Yeah, aboveground cemetery; a rather large and easy place to hide, in fact. You can't go there, Jess. He's laying the trip we spoke of.”

“ But if I don't go… what's the result… where does it end? Poor Ed. He… he didn't deserve to get mixed up in this, and now… now he's dead. Everybody around me is in danger, Kim, including you, so long as that fiendish, satanic creature roams free. And I'm the only one who has a shot at stopping his crazed brain from hatching his sick plans, and this is one heart I intend to put an end to.”

“ It's too dangerous, Jess.”

“ It's more dangerous going on the way I have. Poor Ed; he must've seen Ed with me. Must've stalked Ed, then killed him, just to hurt me. Damn him… damn that evil bastard.”

“ We've got to call someone,” said Kim, going for the phone.

“ Didn't matter one damn to Matisak one way or another if Ed was a friend or just my pilot, did it? All that madman knows is that he wants to hurt me any way he can. Hell, he killed four others in Oklahoma for me-to send me a message. Now this…”

Jessica kept her gun and her eyes alert to the possibility that Matthew Matisak might materialize at any moment from any direction. Then she closed the door on the horrid sight of Sand's dangling head. She next went to the balcony and searched there for any sign of the killer, despite the fact they were some twelve stories up. She even looked overhead, in case the sky was falling. In the distance she saw lightning flashes and heard the rumble of a storm. The TV newscast had warned of possible high winds due to an approaching hurricane out in the Gulf of Mexico. But Jessica's concern was on another force of nature, Matisak.

Before anyone else arrived, Jessica gripped Kim by the wrist hard and exacted a promise from her. “You're not to tell anyone about the note Matisak left behind, do you understand? Do you? Promise me you won't. Just promise.”

“ I can't do that.”

“ Damnit, it's got to be kept between us. Damnit, Kim, I need your promise on this. If you say a word to anyone about it, our friendship is over before it's begun.”

Kim bit her lower lip, dropping her gaze and considered this and the state that Jessica Coran was in. “I wasn't aware we had a friendship.”

Jessica was still waving her. 38 around. “Please, promise me, Kim… promise me.”

“ All right… all right, Jess.”

“ All right, what?”

“ All right, I promise.”

Inside fifteen minutes the hallway was cordoned off as a crime scene, uniformed police and detectives everywhere, including Carl Landry and Lew Meade from the FBI. Word was buzzing that Alex Sincebaugh and Ben deYampert could not be located.

Ed Sand's head was bagged as evidence. Kim kept her promise about the note from Matisak. Frank Wardlaw did the forensics honors, and he kindly assured the two women that the perpetrator was nowhere to be found, but neither was the rest of Ed Sand's body.

A distraught Jessica Coran was told a half hour later that Sand's body was found in his hotel room at the Hilton, a floor up from her own room, blood everywhere from the decapitation. Jess had had no inkling that Sand even had a room at the Hilton. There was also found a briefcase in Sand's possession filled with surveillance devices, wiretaps, bugs. Jessica realized too late that Ed Sand had bugged her room and was shadowing her, and that his interest in her was part of his job as an FBI undercover man. He'd been handpicked by Zanek to protect Jessica.

Jessica and Kim had been followed from her room to Kim's by the stalking Matisak.

Landry confided that Lew Meade had led them to Sand's body, having known all about Sand. “When my men got there, they found a Do Not Disturb sign on Sand's doorknob outside. Inside, they found Sand's torso and limbs stretched across the bloody bedding.”