Alex stared for a moment at Ben, wondering if his big partner had figured out all the angles, and maybe he had. He thought of the boxes of cemetery ledgers, bills, balance sheets and registers they'd only skimmed so far, not having had time to thoroughly digest them as yet. They'd confiscated all the paper along with the men, but so far nothing out of the ordinary had jumped out at them. Still, Alex reasoned aloud, “Who puts this kind of 'transaction' into billable hours, Ben?”
“You kidding, partner? That guy Gwinn and his yak-yaks are certifiable idiots. Crime makes you stupid, remember?” Alex had earlier paused over the so-called record of internmerit on one Victor Surette, and he had noted the number on the crypt matching the time and date of internment as well as the location of the crypt on a cemetery map. It all fit. The grave they'd opened was, at least at one time, home to Victor Surette's remains.
“Besides,” added Landry, “Coran's preliminary report shows no match on fingerprints or hair, and so she fully expects that DNA'll show the same when those results are in.”
“Whataya saying, Cap, that just because you die your fingerprints don't change?” Alex's misplaced sarcasm made Landry heave a sigh. Alex continued in the same vein. “So, we get the records, the Feds get the caretakers? And what about Meade? Doesn't he want the goddamned records too? What's to say he won't yank them out of our hands too, Captain?”
“Ever heard of judicial delay? There's been a court order delaying anyone from looking into those records, including us, but it's going to take us some time to turn those records over to Harry Livingston.”
“Harry who?”
“Attorney for the caretaker, Gwinn. He moved on this thing very quickly. Now, if you want time with those records, I suggest you two get to work. Leave the interrogation to Meade for now.”
“Ben, you feel the same way?” asked Alex.
“I think... I think maybe we ought not to waste more valuable time on those yo-yos than necessary. Let Meade have the headache. It'll keep him busy while we work on the real case at hand. You remember, the Queen of Hearts killer? The SOB is still out there.”
The unspoken element in Ben's speech beat a laser-like path through Alex's brain: Let's do so while there's still time before we're taken off the case completely.
He stared through the one-way window to see Lew Meade throwing his weight around inside, shouting at the cemetery caretaker while he pounded Dr. Coran's reports on the table-top. Alex switched on the intercom, and Meade's voice came through from inside. “Confound it, man! You're responsible for what goes on out there. You've got to know something. Now, you may's well save all of us a lot of time and start talking; it'll go easier on you if you cooperate.”
“You got something to charge me with, then do it,” said the grimy man named Gwinn. “Otherwise, I know my rights, and you can't hold me without you got a charge.”
“Now, Mr. Gwinn, you're interfering with an ongoing investigation, and the more you fuck with me, the better your chances you won't ever screw with anyone else ever again! You got that?”
“Told you, I want my lawyer.”
Alex turned to Ben and Landry and asked, “How does this yo-yo afford a guy like Livingston?”
“He must have a bankroll someplace,” Ben dryly replied “The detectives did read you your rights, didn't they?” asked Meade now. “Rights? What rights? I ain't so sure I remember any rights being read to me, no.”
“Well, let me read them to you, now that you're going to be in FBI custody.” Meade began to read the man his Miranda rights.
Looking on at the one-way window, Alex said, “The little weasel is telling the chief of the FBI that we failed to Mi-randize him. You did Mirandize the creep, didn't you, Ben.”
“Well... perfectly honest with you, Alex... no.”
“What? You dumb ox! How could you miss a simple thing like that?”
“We just brought him in for questioning. We didn't at that time arrest him, if you recall. We didn't have anything but the word of that psychic.”
“Whom I thought you believed in at one time.”
“You convinced me otherwise, pal, remember?”
“Shit... shit...”
Landry grimaced at the two detectives and grunted, “You fools. Do you know what a lawyer can do with that?”
Landry stepped back into the interrogation room to stand and stare at the guilty man. From inside the interrogation room, Meade's raspy voice came over the intercom where the detectives stood watching. “You want to save yourself a lot of time and grief, Gwinn, give it up now. How did the body placed in that crypt a year ago get up and leave from that crypt?”
“And no records kept,” Landry said, pressing the sallow-faced, skinny little caretaker.
“Maybe the family showed up; maybe they just wanted to take him to another place.”
“What family? According to record, no one claimed the body, ever,” said Landry.
“Right move, Captain,” said Alex to himself. “Let the ferret sweat, knowing we're climbing all over those records.”
“Let's get to it then, Sincy,” suggested Ben.
“Right... right you are, Big. Let's get to it.”
“Kinda too bad about the autopsy being broken up.”
“Why's zat?”
“Might've cleared up a lot; might've led us in the right direction.”
“What's zat? I thought I just heard you say, Ben, that you don't believe in that woman's witchcraft anymore.”
“Well, I don't, not completely... but I wish it was so, and I wish we'd have found a new direction on this thing.”
“You and all of New Orleans, I guess. I'm still having trouble understanding why Landry asked Dr. Desinor in on the case to begin with.” Ben stopped him cold and angrily said, “Look, Alex, they were going to go ahead with Dr. Desinor's reading of one of the bodies anyway. Captain Landry, he pushed for going back as far as Surette, which, if you recall, was your idea, remember? So don't get down on Carl.”
With that Ben left Alex standing in the corridor. Ben had seemed not himself, as if something was eating at him, and maybe this was it. Maybe Ben was tired of bailing Alex out of one scrape with a higher official after another. He'd helped in the IAD matter, providing character props for Alex; he'd always backed Alex against Lew Meade's underhandedness, like the time Meade tried to exact information about Alex's so-called involvement with an underworld informant to the mob, inferring that Alex was on the take. Ben had always been a stand-up guy against such ridiculous allegations, and had in fact warned Alex about Meade early on.
Now the big guy was standing up for Carl Landry. All in a day's work for the veteran, older officer deYampert, the heart and soul of the NOPD detective bureau.
26
Pure instinct is as rare as musical genius, medical miracles, white tigers, an Einstein or a pure heart.
—From the Notebooks of Jessica Coran
With the exhumation now a bust, the investigation went grinding slowly forward at the precinct, deYampert and Sincebaugh meticulously going through the caretaker's damnably frustrating records for anything whatsoever that might explain the disappearance of the Surette body. But nothing was surfacing from the moldy, crumbling records, which in effect were eight-by-five cards in shoe boxes. The city sure knew where to spend its money; the computer age hadn't caught on in the cemetery game, at least not in the city cemeteries.
Sincebaugh's telephone rang amid the clutter, and he dove for it, delighted over the disturbance. Ben almost caught the call, but as always Alex was quicker on the draw. “Yeah, Detective Sincebaugh.”
“I know you're not Dr. Desinor's greatest fan, Alex, but—”
“Whataya talking about, Captain?” he said.
Landry started again. “I know you don't like Dr. Desinor or what she stands for, Alex, but you also, apparently, don't like to be left out of the loop.”
“What's going on now, Captain?”
“Why don't you meet me at Dr. Longette's office this afternoon
at two, and don't be late.”
“I've got these records to comb through, Captain, and last bloody thing I need right now is a shrink in my face.”
“Not past noon, you don't.”
“Come again?”
“The records, they're all gone bye-bye by then. The lawyer Livingston'll be here by then.”
“So much for that avenue; hell, it's eleven thirty-five now. When the hell do we get to do our jobs, Captain?”
“We don't have any choice, Alex. So, just be chill-civil, okay?”
Alex smiled at this Landryism. Carl had a way with words. “I'll be my chillin'-civil best, Carl. Now, what's this about Dr. Longette's office? What the hell's deYampert been telling you? Christ, Captain, I really don't have the friggin' time for a shrink, and I sure as hell don't need a shrink, and—”
“Longette's not going to be looking at you. The shrink's for her!”
“Her?”
“Dr. L for Dr. Desinor, yes.”
“Whataya mean?” Alex was confused. “He's going to examine Kim?”
“As an aside, without her knowledge, yes, but the main event which she's agreed to—”
“You've asked her to submit to what, a psychological evaluation? How'd you get her to submit to—”
“No, no! Will you just listen? She called me, asked if I could suggest a good hypnotist. She wants to be put under.”
“Under hypnosis...” He recalled her having said something about being hypnotized in order to recall what her own visions had been during her last trance, but he'd assumed she was just talking to hear herself or to impress him. She was full of surprises.
Landry continued to explain. “So she can reveal all that she saw last night at the Marie Dumond murder scene.”
“Are we still jacketing this guy as Marie Dumond?”
“It's all the name we have so far, unless you prefer John or Jane Doe. Take your pick.”
“So Dr. Longette's going to be operating when?”
“Operating,” Landry repeated with a laugh. “It's called regression therapy. Anyway, Dr. Longette's going to perform the... the surgery at two. Now, do you or don't you want to be on hand?”
He hesitated. Longette was good. Did Kim Desinor know what she was letting herself in for? If anyone could damage her credibility, it was Longette. Maybe now Alex would have an ally for his case against using psychics in police detection, particularly this psychic on this, his case, but at the same time, on an emotional level, he truly didn't want to see Kim hurt. Still, if she were a fraud...
“Okay, I'll be there. I'll bring Ben, if he wants to be on hand.”
“Fine... should prove interesting.”
“Yeah, maybe...”
“Alex, none of this psychic business was my idea, but I have to admit, the woman puts up one hell of a front. If you recall, it was she who first called into question the identity of the Surette body this morning at Number 27.”
“So she did and so she does... put up one hell of a front, I mean. But she told me you called her in on the case.”
“Not hardly; I argued against it. Stephens found her somewhere, rammed her down my throat. 'Fraid I wasn't much more polite with her than you at first. Well, see you at two, Alex.” Landry hung up, and Alex stared across the room while Ben stared back at him with a what-in-hell look on his horse face.
“She's going to go under regression therapy with Dr. Lon-gette.”
“Really? The psychoanalysts' answer to Michael Jordan? Talk about hang time...”
Alex only shrugged, knowing Ben was right. Dr. James Aubrey Longette wouldn't be so easily taken in by the cunning and chicanery of a phony psychic.
“A strange sensation...”
“What kind of sensation, Kim?”
“... has overtaken my mind...”
“Yes?”
“... know I'm going to die ... that I'm about to be killed... fear... the fear is like an enormous, pounding muscle inside me, exploding up through me.”
“Fear.” Dr. Longette's whisper was a penetrating knife that dug into Kim Desinor's unconscious mind.
“Not fear of dying ... fear of being forgotten ... wrong to die here, like this... as... as Marie Dumond. My family so far away...they don't know about Marie....”
Kim Desinor was perspiring profusely as she spoke in a hypnotically induced trance produced by Dr. James Aubrey Longette; her beautiful features distorted by some pain from deep within, she seemed to speak to the rhythmical hum of Longette's tape recorder alongside the couch where she lay. Longette worked out of two offices, practicing psychiatric medicine for St. Christopher's Episcopal Hospital in the heart of the city and here at NOPD headquarters, moonlighting as a police shrink, doing an in-depth study of police under stress which he hoped to see published in Scientific American or Psychology Today by the end of the year under the title “No More RoboCops.” Beyond his manuscript, he had definite plans for the Oprah TV show and the Montel Williams program, hosted by a person he much admired. From there, he decided, the sky was the limit. But the police work which he'd taken on with a mild interest had become a passion, and he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to completely walk away from it; not that it was glamorous—far from it. But it was gamesmanship, involving every level of the psyche and the emotions; it was Clue, only for real, three-dimensional Clue.
Longette was trained in hypnotism and regression therapy. He moved about the room as he spoke to and responded to Kim Desinor, ever aware that they were being watched by Captain Landry, Alex Sincebaugh and Ben deYampert through a one-way mirror he'd had installed on his arrival here. Longette was something of a showman himself, and for cases involving criminals, or for something like this, he wasn't about to pull the curtain over the portal. Longette was a tall, imposing man—living up to his name. Elegant in his mannerisms, and as handsome as he was black, he brought to mind a darker version of the singer/actor Harry Belafonte. Impeccably dressed, he looked as much a lawyer as a shrink, and his baritone voice filled a room.
Sincebaugh had had to deal with him on a few cases, but usually their contact was indirect, and while Sincebaugh found him to be quite capable and found his reports done with extreme care, the man made Alex nervous only to a small degree less than did Kim Desinor.
“Can't die as Marie... can't!” she was saying now.
“Can you see your attacker's face, Marie?” asked Longette.
“No, not Marie... Thomas... my name is Thomas.”
“Thomas? Really?” Longette sounded dubious, suspicious. Sincebaugh, watching, wondered exactly whom he was suspicious of, Marie Dumond or Dr. Desinor? Sincebaugh knew which one he was more suspicious of, but for test accuracy, Dr. Longette had been told nothing of the pending case.
“Thom... Thommie...”
“Thommie who?” pressed Longette.
“Way... Ion... Wal... ley...”
“Really?”
“No... Whiley, yes, Whiley.”
Longette's voice was like the voice of God, or maybe James Earl Jones.
Outside, Landry told Ben deYampert, “Run a check on the name Thomas Whiley. See if we got anything on him.”
Ben deYampert's eyebrows arched in a V, and he stared for only a moment at his boss, glanced at Alex, raised his wide shoulders and said, “Alex, you know, I seem to recall we talked to a guy named Thommie Whiley after the Surette body was discovered.”
“Yeah, I remember... one of the last guys to see Surette alive. He was a boyfriend for a time. Had a rap sheet for male prostitution, right?”
“The guy hung out on Royal in the Quarter at the time. You don't suppose he and this Marie Dumond are one and the same, do you?”
“That's what she's saying. She had to've read about Thommie on the police reports we filed. So she lifts his name. I'm telling you, the woman's dangerous. You know what they say, Captain... a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
“So I've heard. So let's find out more about this Thommie Whiley just the same, Ben. Find out if it's the
same guy as in the morgue, okay? Call it in; have 'em go to priority one on it,” Landry ordered.
Ben nodded and left.
On the other side of the glass, Dr. Longette continued in his mellow and soothing tones. “All right, Thomas...”
“Thommie... I prefer Thommie... with a T-H...”
“All right, Thommie... can you see your attacker's face?”
“It's not his face anymore. Changed...distorted... was lovely but now filled with...rage, venom.”
“Who , Thommie? Who killed you?”
Behind the mirrored wall, Sincebaugh dropped his gaze and muttered, “This is bullshit, Captain.”
Landry waved him off, listening for Dr. Desinor's answer.
“I thought it was E. You know... said he liked me. Said he liked vulnerable things. But it wasn't E that killed me... what killed me was unusual, queer, demonic, insane. It wasn't E anymore... any more than I'm really me here now.”
“What do you mean by that, Thommie?”
“I know I'm being channeled through someone here now....”
“What does E look like, Thommie, and what does E stand for?” Longette came closer now, leaning in over her unconscious form. “How tall is E?”
“He's beautiful, really; can't recall real name... full name, but I liked calling him Easy or E. He didn't seem to mind, and he was easy... too easy as it happens... Lied to me... probably lied to me about his relationship with Vic...”
Outside Alex shook his head and repeated the name Vic, telling Landry, “This is just too pat to be real.”
Inside she continued. “What's it they say? If it looks too good to be true, it is! But fine-looking... in heels...”
“Heels?” Dr. Longette repeated, looking through the glass and shaking his head at this.
There'd been a puncture in the dead boy's forehead at the temple that might match up to a spiked heel, according to Frank Wardlaw's report on 34 East Canal Street.
“Tall, five-eleven to maybe six-one... two maybe,” continued Dr. Desinor as Thommie Whiley.
Pure Instinct (Instinct thriller series) Page 35
