“We've been running this through our Missing Persons Department since discovery yesterday, but nothing's come of it. As I said, I'll give it a push.”
“Widen your sweep. Include surrounding states—say, Texas. Something about Texas clicked in earlier, something about a lone star... steers... a Texas penal colony...”
“All right, will do, Dr. Desinor. Anything else you think I should know about?”
She could hear the skepticism in his voice even as he choked it back.
“Obviously, you weren't instrumental in getting me on board here, Captain,” she said.
He waved that off, saying, “Now hold on. I've extended you every courtesy.”
“Crazily enough, you've extended me far more courtesy than those who are paying my fee.”
He raised an eyebrow at this, but only repeated himself, asking, “Is there anything else you'd like to add to your... ahhhh...report, Doctor?''
“No, that's it, except when your men check, have them look for a Beau, someone answering to that name.”
“Gotcha, Doctor.”
“Could be a nickname, and as I said, I believe he was poisoned by a wife or live-in lover. Could be her nick name.”
He waved her out the door, nodding in an officious manner. She stepped out into the squad room, and instantly knew which vacant desk belonged to Alex Sincebaugh. It was far neater than any other in the room. When she raised her eyes, she found herself staring up at Jessica Coran, who was leaning against an entry way door jamb, looking exhausted but pleasantly pleased with herself. She must enjoy her work thoroughly, Kim thought.
“So, do you think we're all on the same wavelength, Dr. Faith?” asked Jessica.
“Yes, matter of fact we all are, including our reluctant Lieutenant Sincebaugh.”
“Really?”
“Want to get dinner and talk about it?” Kim offered. “I'm buying.”
“Frankly, I need to get away from it... altogether for a while. Besides, I have a date.”
“The pilot?”
“Yeah... so, maybe a rain check?”
“Jessica.” Kim stopped her colleague as she was about to go. Jessica turned and looked demurely back at her. “Yes?”
“We're not in any sort of... competition here, are we?”
“Why, no, of course not. We're on the same side, right?”
“I had hoped so, but I haven't felt so.”
“If I've seemed...distant... well, it's for the benefit of the charade actually, to keep your association with the Bureau our little secret, remember.”
She's lying... covering up her true feelings, Kim instantly realized.
Jessica continued, running a nervous hand through her hair. “What would it look like to the others if you and I were... chummy? Well, I've still got to freshen up, meet Ed by eight.”
Kim nodded and breathed deeply. “Yes, you're right, of course. But listen, any time you want, I'd be happy to handle those items you took from Matisak's cell, as a favor to you, Jess.”
“Maybe tomorrow. Good night, Kim.”
“Night, Jess.” Now she's so reluctant, Kim thought, when before, on the plane, she was so anxious.
It appeared that Wardlaw had beaten them both out the door, for he was nowhere to be found either, and Kim felt terribly hollow and unconditionally alone.
15
Egyptian Proverb:
The worst things:
To be in bed and sleep not.
To want for one who comes not.
To try to please and please not.
—From F. Scott Fitzgerald's Notebooks
Alex Sincebaugh felt the summer breeze cascading through his hair as his car sailed over great Lake Ponchartrain's shallow, brackish basin, the hum of the car in sync with Hank Williams's most melodic ballad, “I'm So Lonesome, I Could Cry,” the D.J. asking for callers to ring him up with the bluest blues they'd ever felt, something to top the line about the whippoorwill that “sounds too blue to fly.” Alex switched off the radio for the golden silence of the waters here, waters which served the city in countless ways. In winter, they warmed the frigid air coming in from the north before it chanced to the city's perimeter; in summer, the lake served as an ideal playground for boaters, fishermen and picnickers, although most of her waters were now too polluted to allow swimming, particularly along the southern rim by New Orleans. The northern area, however, remained a prime source for hefty trout, crab and shrimp any time of year. Named for Louis XIV's naval minister, the huge lake connected via narrow straits to the Gulf of Mexico, and little wonder it was a favorite dumping ground for mafia hits.
To clear his mind, Alex liked to drive, so he'd taken off early from his apartment and meandered about the city streets, gathering his thoughts, honest to himself about not wishing to be alone in his place. He'd become fearful of sleep, and to banish it and the creeping boredom, he'd even driven the twenty-four miles from the Jefferson Parish shoreline to Man-deville. The roadbed, perched just a few yards above the waters of Lake Ponchartrain, was blatantly advertised as the world's longest bridge, and at midpoint Sincebaugh could see neither shore from the famous causeway. However, the near-blinding, brilliant sunset was plain Southern beauty, like a fire in the sky, the light dancing arcade-fashion along the giant catfish scales created by low-lying, slow-moving vapor clouds which mirrored the bay waters. It was nearing eight P.M., and he was too exhausted and frustrated to sit around at his place.
Lake Ponchartrain, forming New Orleans's northern boundary, was in fact more of a bay than a lake; still, nobody— especially the tourists—had to know that, he told himself as he fished out his two dollars for the toll, reentering the city at the now-famous Lakefront-Bayou St. John district and City Park, where jazz and food spiced up life.
From there, Alex drove to a nearby coffee shop where he'd found the lights dim enough to go easy on his eyes but bright enough to read the Evening Star Gazette and the Times-Picayune. He didn't feel like going back to his place, at least not directly, and he knew that sleep would evade him, and he feared the recurrent dream he had been having since the death of the first Hearts victim, young Victor Surette. He also knew that he looked like hell, that he was not working on all four burners, and that soon his C.O. would call him in for a complete dressing down, now more than ever since he'd made a public spectacle of himself, infuriating Landry in the process at the Toulouse Street Wharf before the press moments after Dr. Desinor had left the scene.
They'd argued openly and loudly about the psychic, and Lew Meade's high-handed FBI forensics guru, Coran, as well.
Alex felt alone and confused and at odds with everyone. At the same time that he was glad to learn of Frank Wardlaw's dismissal, he found something about the self-assured Coran which equally rubbed him the wrong way. It wasn't anything he could put his finger on, just her officious manner, the way she conducted herself, maybe the way she took control and that emotionless exterior. Where had she put her feelings? Were they something she took out from that black bag of hers only when the occasion called for it?
Maybe he was just being foolish, childish and petty even; maybe none of it mattered; maybe Coran and maybe even the psychic detective could do a better job than he and deYampert. Fuck it all.
It wasn't that he hated women by any means, but maybe he did harbor a little fear of women who came on so bloody strong as Coran—and perhaps Kim Desinor as well. The two women had much in common, he surmised, and each was as talented or as crafty as the other—cunning folk, they'd have been called in the days of the witch trials. And each was alluringly attractive, each as beautiful in her way as the other.
Damn. He cursed the thought of feeling in the slightest attracted to Kim Desinor, though he knew he was. He'd felt something between them, some intangible and fairylike spark of intense desire that rose so quickly it was extinguished in its own rush to escape the moment he'd taken her in his arms there on the wharf. She too had to have felt it, despite her words and her coolness.
Yes, he was
physically drawn to her, but at the same time, for some goddamned unaccountable, unexplainable reason, this Dr. Desinor's very presence on the case had him recalling in glaring and vivid detail the Vietcong doctors in that hellhole of a concentration camp where torture and human experimentation were routine, daily occurrences. Why such horrors should return now so vividly, he did not know, but he felt that she was the catalyst, the one who let loose the horrors. He didn't know why she had this effect on him, and no doubt it was totally unintentional on her part, but she did, and it was unpleasant, and yet there was something so erotically appealing, seductive and charming about her that he wanted to pursue her, no matter the consequences. He wanted to learn more about her, and this strange paradox of feelings had had hold of him from the moment he saw her step off that Lear jet today.
Alex had managed to endure the gross indignities and suffering placed on him in Vietnam largely through the process of mind over matter. After a while, he was no longer present, freed from the pain and humiliation by mere will and a kind of mind control his captors had no notion of or cure for. It infuriated them, challenged them, took them to new heights of cruelty, but he was no fun for them any longer since he felt not a thing.
He looked down at his scarred hands where the nails had grown back, covering the now-tough tissue beneath. He seldom thought of those times nowadays, because the moment one such image came even remotely close to his consciousness, it was extinguished by a fail-safe mechanism which he didn't fully understand but did truly bless.
The tortures were beyond cruel and sadistic; his scars attested to that. His ex-girlfriend, Allie, was one of the few women he'd allowed close since Vietnam, and even then she'd only seen him in the dark. He was careful to be up and dressed before dawn whenever she stayed over, except for that last time when she'd gotten him drunk and talking and sleeping in the next day. She must have seen the scars, understanding for the first time his total sensitivity to her touch, for while she hadn't said a word about the ugly tattooed back, they'd never again slept together. And soon she'd disappeared altogether. Since then, he'd been unable to feel comfortable around any woman, until that moment when the eel had so frightened Kim Desinor and he'd instinctively taken her into his arms to comfort her.
He'd pulled over to the coffee shop, gathered his newspapers up, and stepped inside. The old friend behind the counter had his usual coffee waiting as he liked it the moment he walked through the bell-clanging door, having seen him park on the street out front. As Alex now read his newspaper and sipped the rich Peruvian black coffee, he grew increasingly depressed over the stories now beginning to appear in the press with lurid headlines about the “Thief of Hearts Circus” being conducted by the city, and the cops were the clowns. Speculation, theory and conjecture of every stripe filled the pages of the Times-Picayune alongside shots of Dr. Jessica Coran, whose purpose on the case was fully outlined. In a sidebar piece, there was a smaller photo of Kim Desinor and a story on the psychic “connection” citing the fact she was called in to help the bungling cops.
Sincebaugh scanned what he could stomach of the stories, gathering in what little information was released to the press about Desinor, his curiosity aroused. He went on to read the press versions of the killer's supposed motive and modus operandi, and most of what the press carried was nonsense verging on supposition about the heart-pounding case, little of it founded in fact. Still, Sincebaugh detected one truth: There were enough half-truths and twisted logic among the stories to know that the rumor mill was operating at peak efficiency, despite a gag order in the Department. Leaks were being fed to the press, and he placed blame for the unplugged hole at Frank Wardlaw's doorstep, for the few details that were true were all technical in nature, items that could only be gotten from the coroner's reports, items only he and deYampert and a handful of other cops working these cases knew about, all of whom were sworn to secrecy.
His blood boiled when he found details about the type of weapon used in the murders embedded in one story, details that were accurate: a cleaver-styled cutter in one murder, a specialized butcher's knife in another, a possible rib-cutter?
Such information was crucial to the case and should remain confidential; now that it was public knowledge, every butcher in the city was a target for his neighbor's fears, suppositions and allegations, and every nut case with a Swiss Army knife would want now to confess. They'd be showing up in droves tonight and tomorrow at every precinct sergeant's desk with cleavers in hand, stories well rehearsed about precisely how they did it, all chewing up valuable investigative hours.
True, every precinct in the city had at least two men working the case, separately and without task-force unity, and any one of these men might have spilled information to a shrewd reporter, but Sincebaugh wondered about Dr. Frank Wardlaw in this respect since he'd been under such fire from both above and below, and especially since the most vital information leaks had coincided with Wardlaw's being dismissed. The man certainly had more friends in the Fourth Estate than in the NOPD.
Sincebaugh felt like putting his hand through a window, felt like hitting or arresting someone, but he instead sat granite like and lowered the headlines just as the shop bell rang and two young punks dressed in natty, moth-eaten army fatigues stepped in. The fatigues were army-surplus issue.
Sincebaugh had never liked the wholesale wear of army fatigues, not since it had become the in thing; he believed a man should earn the right to wear them. Aside from this disgruntlement, he sensed trouble welling up from within the two punks the moment he saw their eyes.
One's eyes roamed about the place while the other's eyes fixed on Tully, the old man behind the counter, who'd started his shop here in 1962 after moving from New Jersey. He often told Alex he missed his family “but not a damn thing else there.”
Sincebaugh knew he'd have to time everything to the second to take out the two punks without anyone being hurt. He pretended to laugh at one of the comics and carried the paper over to Tully, saying, “Here, old man, you gotta read this. This Calvin and Hobbes kills me. Read this.”
“No time for papers,” Tully dourly replied. “I got customers, Alex.”
“Take a look. Will it kill you to take a fuckin' look?”
“Hey, Alex, easy, friend...” Tully eyed him suspiciously and ambled over. The old man had started to grab the paper when Sincebaugh brought it crosswise into the eyes of the closest kid. The other one, closer to the door, turned and ran without hesitation. Alex decked the first punk, still fighting with the newspaper, before he could bring his gun to bear.
“Call a cop, Tully!” Alex shouted over his shoulder, snatching free the punk's concealed weapon.
“What? What for? You are a cop! 'Sides, what'd they do, Alex?”
Alex pushed the kid's weapon into Tully's hand. “They tried to knock over your place! I'm going after the other one!” Sincebaugh had seen the direction the second young fool had taken, and he was now in his car, in pursuit, calling it in. His adrenaline rush was exactly the fix he'd needed. A good collar might do wonders for his sagging spirits, he thought now, his eyes scanning the urban jungle for his prey. He saw an army-green and brown blur dart down an alleyway just as his car passed. The kid's camouflaging fatigues blended into the cityscape. But Alex's twenty-twenty vision fixed on him. It was him. He just knew it.
He called in his location and the fact he was leaving his vehicle in pursuit of the kid felon. Behind him he heard sirens, other cops rushing to the scene, but he wanted this one all to himself. He wanted to bust somebody, anybody, maybe belt the creep around a little while he was at it.
He found himself rushing too fast through the alleyway and out the other side where he could have easily met with an ambush. Instead there was silence all around. He saw nothing, no one, only a deserted courtyard, a high, wooden fence badly in need of repair, still swaying from someone's having recently vaulted over it. There was a padlock on the gate.
He inched forward and pulled himself to the top of the fe
nce, eyes in windows following him now, a light Louisiana downpour, silver and fresh, cascading from nowhere and everywhere at once, drenching him in its warmth and calm, making him feel alive.
He now leapt over and onto the other side of the fence and into the alley. A cat scurried from behind some rubbish and pails.
“Toss the goddamn gun away, kid, and come outta there with your hands showing high! Now, goddamn you!”
No response.
“Do it, damnit, or I'll fire through the cans! So help me, punk!”
No response.
“Does this son a falow lifin' -bitch think I'm playing games with him?'' Alex shouted to the sky, his months of frustration bubbling dangerously to the surface. All his training as a police officer told him no, but his finger on the trigger said yes. He aimed at a can, pulled his aim to the bottom, fired and sent up a powerful thunder from his .38 which rocked the trash can, the bullet going harmlessly through the lowest point of the metal trash bin and into the earth below it, no doubt leaving a gaping hole through the bottom. Instantly, in response, a gun came flying out over the trash heap, landing at Alex's feet.
“That better be all you're packing, kid.”
He saw the boy's hands, white and pale, come trembling up over the top of the trash. Shaking, the kid stepped out into the open, pleading for mercy.
“What kind of mercy did you two have in mind for Old Tully back there, kid?”
“We... we needed the money.”
“Shut up and turn around and spread your legs.” He handcuffed the kid, who looked to be perhaps eighteen or nineteen, younger than the other kid. Then he Mirandized the boy, his anger subsiding.
The boy kept talking the entire time. “I didn't want to do it. It was Will's idea, all his. He's done time.”
Pure Instinct (Instinct thriller series) Page 19
