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…”
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