“What the hell was Frank Wardlaw thinking from the beginning? Just following orders?” asked Jessica, disgusted with Wardlaw.
“Meade had something on him, holding it over his head.”
“Black mail?”
“You never heard of a G-man who'd stoop to blackmail?”
“Blackmail for what?” Jessica asked.
“Frank had a wife and kids at the time of Surette's death; they've since left him, of course.”
“I hadn't heard.”
“Meade had him on a couple of things... gambling, skirtchasing... I never knew Meade could be so vicious, but for reasons of their own, he and Stephens wanted the Surette kid's death kept as John Doe as possible, you understand?”
“Hell, was Meade sleeping with the guy?” Alex sneered.
Landry smirked, and then laughed full-blown, which eased the electrified air inside the car. “Both the P.C. and Meade have powerful connections. That's all Frank needed to know. He wasn't going to trust his fate to a grand jury investigation into his alleged wrongdoings. Now, he'll be facing one anyway.”
Alex nodded grimly. “So you've deduced from the amount of pressure put on Frank that whoever Stephens and Meade were out to protect, these people have position and wealth and power—like Susie Socks tried to tell Ben and me, Ben already knowing. People with old-money connections in the highest circles, the mayor's office, the governor's office.”
“And we get squeezed by the mayor's office and the state to close out the Queen of Hearts killings so that Surette—with the same first name as Raveneaux's son—can be quietly forgotten as having had no relation to the crimes,” Carl concluded. Kim sat shaking her head in disbelief, fearful of the truth. “All nice and tidy for the people who took Surette's body, people who obviously don't give a damn about the whereabouts of either Surette's heart or his killer, or whom the butcher might choose next.”
“Hey, wealth and position can do that to a person, you know that, Kim,” replied Alex with a warm look over his shoulder for her.
“I guess we take this case to a higher level of inquiry then; we raise it out of the gutter and the gay ghetto of the French Quarter to here—a place the size of the governor's mansion?” Jessica said.
“The home of retired general and senator George Maurice Raveneaux, a friend of the governor's,” Landry declared.
“Now you tell me, Kim,” Alex said. “Are the missing hearts really at Raveneaux?”
“I can't honestly say....”
Landry pushed on, saying, “I checked the senator out thoroughly. His wife's maiden name is Surette.”
“Damn, and we put out a request for information if you recall,” Alex noted, “a televised plea for anyone who might know Surette to come forward, claim the body. All we got were a handful of his friends from the Quarter, all of whom have either disappeared or have themselves been killed by the Queen of Hearts killer. Some coincidences you can shirk off, but some cling to you like burrs on Velcro.” Alex's anger could not be checked.
Now they were pulling into the blacktopped drive at Raveneaux, and none of them knew whom they could trust any longer. The thought seemed to coalesce into a palpitating question that hung in the cab where they sat. Backup squad cars came careening along and pulling in behind them.
“I guess all that we can trust is one another,” Alex said, voicing his thoughts. “Can we trust you, Dr. Coran?”
“What?”
“Well, you were called in by Stephens, right? And you do work under Lew Meade's direction.”
“That's not entirely fair,” Kim declared. “I mean, just because she's FBI doesn't mean she agrees with or goes along with everything Lew Meade has to say, Alex.”
“I'm glad to hear that, because a showdown with Meade and Stephens is inevitable. You up for it, Dr. Coran?”
Jessica produced a document. “If I were in Meade's pocket, would I have served the sheriff of Ascension Parish with a federal warrant to back you guys up? I have a few connections of my own.”
33
Steady of heart, and steady of hand.
—Sir Walter Scott
The police party had arrived here at the plantation home of one of Louisiana's most honored and decorated citizens, having exhausted all other avenues, having moved the venue of their search from the squalor of the French Quarter's back-alley flophouses to this place of opulence and wealth; it seemed a contradiction, and nothing here spoke of murder or mayhem. The night air was fresh with the scent of blooming jasmine and old hickory trees that fluttered high above them in the wind, rows of them on either side of the long, expansive driveway ahead, just the other side of the huge, black gates.
Landry had halted the car at the gatekeeper's little watch booth, the gatekeeper long since replaced by electronic surveillance cameras and intercoms. Landry announced them, explaining their business and telling some butler or other servant at the other end to leave the gate open long enough for three trailing police units to follow him through.
“We'll see you up at the house,” Landry finally said to the disembodied voice at the other end. “Now buzz us through.”
“But this is so... highly irregular, sir. I must confer with the general, sir.”
“The hell you do, hoss! All you have to do is press a goddamned button or be charged with obstruction of justice, you got that? Now which is it to be? You can confer with your boss afterwards.”
Landry held his badge up to the camera again.
“How do I know you're really the police. Police never come out here. All the general's business is done in the city, and—”
“God damnit, man! If you don't open that gate in the next five seconds, we're going to blow a hole through the locking mechanism and you're the first SOB we're going to handcuff when we get up there to the house! You got that?”
The buzz came, and the gates rattled apart and opened wide for them to pass. Along the top of the gates, a series of ornate black ravens all in a row began to “dance” before their eyes, all the ravens' eyes like enormous stone receptacles, filled with secrets forever locked inside their wrought-iron hearts. The ravens adorned the black iron gates at intervals of two feet, large birds of prey with eyes that pierced the night.
Kim instantly recognized the ravens as those in her vision, and she imagined each taking flight after dark when no one was looking; they did seem to be flying now as the gates opened wide. A child might easily be frightened of the images. Kim had spoken of great black ravens in the air surrounding the killer, but here they were at Raveneaux, the only two-thousand-acre Southern plantation which had survived both the Civil War and Reconstruction, the possession of one of Louisiana's most honored and oldest of families. The Raveneaux family was at the top of the social register. Every major charitable organization across the state and many across the nation owed some allegiance to George Maurice Raveneaux.
Having two search warrants, one a federal document, the party entered the gate, closely followed by a trio of cars filled with sheriffs deputies, familiarized earlier with the FBI search warrant. All of the green-suited officers were filled to the brim of their Smokey-the-Bear hats with loathing and serious doubt directed at the NOPD cops who'd crashed their jurisdiction with a warrant to disturb the general and his family. They were also filled with a certainty that nothing untoward would come of the visit, that all Landry and Alex Sincebaugh would accomplish with their damned warrant was a loss of income and profession. At this point the deputies were more in Rave-neaux's camp than that of the city cops. Still, somehow Captain Landry had in fact gotten on a first-name basis with two of the deputies, who were worried sick about “making a 'raid' on the ol' gen'ral's home.”
General George Maurice Raveneaux had served his country with distinction during the Korean conflict, and had for the last three decades been a pillar of society and commerce in the region. In fact, a newspaper article of a few years past had credited him as being the single most powerful influence in rejuvenating the entire New Orleans region,
thanks to his influence in Washington and the years he'd served there as a distinguished senator.
Little wonder when they'd arrived at the sheriff s office with a request for assistance that the sheriff himself had laughed in their faces.
The deputies were understandably nervous about their mission, and Landry was not at all sure if they would carry out his orders. The sheriff himself had left ahead of them, presumably to warn the old general of their coming.
It was also little wonder that a court-ordered search warrant had been a damnably hard document to secure. George Maurice Raveneaux, a man whose money had secured the local economy during the oil debacle of the seventies, and more recently had secured the government jobs that would be coming into the region, was no paper tiger.
As they passed now along the black river of freshly coated road which formed a long, twisting drive up to the mansion, they were not surprised to see several vehicles ahead and men standing beside Raveneaux outside. He had been well warned of their arrival by the sheriff and others, it appeared.
They came up the circle drive to a building that might otherwise be a museum. Landry, Alex, Kim and Jessica were taken a little aback by the faces they saw on the expansive wraparound portico to the mansion, for beside the aged general, standing as erect as the Grecian pillars, were Chief Lew Meade and P.C. Richard Stephens, each man no doubt having learned of the proposed search from the buzz-eaters back at the courthouse in New Orleans. They were here, no doubt, to assure the prosperous, aging millionaire who'd built his kingdom on sugarcane that there was an obvious and idiotic blunder of monumental proportions being made, and that they at least would stand by him in any event.
“They all look guilty as hell of something,” Jessica commented.
In the backdrop stood Mrs. Raveneaux, looking ashen, pale and drawn, her gaunt figure hardly more than a stick. Kim believed she looked like she had been through an emotionally draining day. It was past dusk now, and the matriarch of this place watched as her plantation was being overrun with police vehicles. Jessica, Kim, Alex and Landry got out of the lead car and walked toward the waiting aggregate of power standing above them on the pure-white porch, the lights emanating from the house brilliantly bathing the mansion, spreading attenuated shadows out from each of the huge Grecian columns on either side.
“Mr. Raveneaux,” said Landry, taking the initiative, “I'm Captain Carl Landry of the—”
“I know very well who you are, and I'll thank you all to leave my property at once. This entire proceeding is without foundation, based on the word of some lunatic killer who has nothing whatever to do with Raveneaux.”
“Sir, isn't it true,” Jessica began, “that Victor Surette's stolen body was exhumed by your order and buried in your family plot here at Raveneaux?” She was bluffing, a thing she did well. “We have forensic evidence to prove as much. We don't need the testimony of the caretaker or his men. Now I asked myself, what interest would you have in Victor Surette's body, and naturally—”
“All right, Victor was my son, goddamn you—Victor Raveneaux, and as soon as we learned of his horrible death, we... we brought him home. Is there any crime in that?”
“Well, there could be, sir, yes,” Jessica said.
“You've got no evidence any crime has been committed by this man,” countered Lew Meade, standing as stiff and erect as his paunch would allow, carrying out his own bluff. Had he arranged for Jessica's earlier findings to somehow be lost or skewed? she wondered.
“Dr. Coran's findings tell us differently,” Alex countered.
“That's right,” Landry agreed.
“It's clear that the grave-robbing took place only in recent days,” Jessica added, “and that you let Victor's body stay in that paupers' cemetery all these months, Senator, until there was the threat of an exhumation.”
“That's a lie.” The general's voice was firm, steady, the voice of a man always in control.
His wife whispered some disturbing words to him, making the general turn and scowl at her, ordering her indoors.
“You know how microscopes have a way of pointing to the truth, General,” Jessica continued. “Microscopes don't lie about fresh striations against stone, sutures and that sort of thing, so I'd say you aren't being entirely forthcoming with us.”
“We only Learned recently that Victor Surette—the deceased going by that name—was our son,” the senator replied. “We moved the body on learning this. It's been quite enough strain on Mother... on us all, and in the meantime, you people've done nothing whatever to apprehend this fiend who viciously killed Victor and has wantonly destroyed others for...for their hearts.”
“We're going to look around, General Raveneaux—just to be thorough, you understand,” Landry said, playing the diplomat.
' The very idea that you men have come on such a preposterous mission, Captain Landry, jeopardizes your jobs. I hope you know that,” replied Stephens firmly, his eyes like dark, seething coals, the threat taking on a venomously slithering nature.
“Is that a threat, Richard?” asked Landry. “Or would you place that kind of talk under job harassment or maybe even blackmail, sir?”
Kim Desinor could see that Captain Landry was now too angry to suppress his emotions; not this time, she thought.
“It may interest you to know that we know you blackmailed Frank Wardlaw into this game, and you paid off Ben de Yam-pert,” he went on.
Meade erupted now. “Goddamn it, man, it was the general here who called in the FBI and financed Dr. Desinor's coming here! He wants New Orleans safe for everyone, you fool! And now you turn the investigation against him and his family?”
“This is absolute madness, Landry, and tomorrow morning you can damned well clean out your office.” Stephens's teeth were gnashing. “That goes for you too, Sincebaugh.”
“You can pick your friends, General,” Alex called out, his bandaged arms white against the night, “but you're stuck with your kin and their sins, right? Victor, your son, is somehow at the heart of all these nasty deaths.”
“Do you know of a man or a woman named Michael Emanuel Dominique?” Kim asked the general.
“You're not obligated to answer any of these questions, General Raveneaux,” cautioned a gray-haired, three-piece suit, likely a lawyer.
“Be that as it may, we have a court order here saying we can search the premises and all outbuildings and mobile units.” Landry informed the man, depositing the papers in his hands as he ascended the porch stairs.
Alex added, “And we're here to exercise that right tonight, before things go cold on us and people wash out their unmentionables.”
Raveneaux looked to his powerful friends for support. Meade took the court order from the lawyer, scanned it as the lawyer had and said, “Ridiculous... Judge Flint... that natty-haired neegra booze-hound's got some nerve. He won't be able to sit on a park bench after this.”
“Let me have that,” added Stephens, tearing it from Meade, ripping it to shreds and throwing it at Landry's feet like a gauntlet. “That's what I think of a warrant from Judge Homer Flint.” Landry stared in disbelief at Stephens. “What the hell're you men covering up here?”
“Stand down, Carl.”
“No, Richard, I won't.”
“You men,” shouted Stephens to the uniformed cops who'd come in behind the detectives. “Arrest Captain Landry and Detective Sincebaugh. They're trespassing here.”
Landry and Sincebaugh snatched out their weapons almost in unison, backing to each side, Alex tugging at Kim to stay close to him, Jessica siding with them, her own .38 raised and poised. The uniformed deputies, confounded, not knowing what to do, looked to their sheriff, a man named Hodges, for a sign.
Hodges calmly presented Meade and Stephens with the federal warrant given him by Jessica then he just as calmly stepped off the porch and told his men, “Boys, we're here to uphold the law as I see it, and these fellas might be pricks and assholes with nothing worth a lick of sulfur to base their allegations on, but..
. they got a federal warrant, so they got a right to serve that warrant. We back 'em.”
Alex felt a sense of relief fill his chest, and Landry put his weapon away in a show of good faith, saying, “Thanks, Sheriff Hodges.” Jessica Coran was the last to holster her weapon.
Hodges looked up at the general and apologetically appealed to the others with a shrug. “Let's just get this damned search over, boys, so's these folks can go back to the peaceful business of their lives. Whataya say, Commissioner, Chief Meade?”
“I'm giving the orders here,” countered Meade. “This is an official FBI matter now, so you men will do as I say!” Meade's eyes were surveying the situation, and as he spoke, he reached for his weapon.
Kim shouted, “Don't do it, Meade! You'll be dead before you hit the stairs.” She had a gun trained on him.
“This is rank insubordination, Agent Desinor. I'll have you up on charges.”
Alex stared at her, his mouth open wide, finally repeating the word, “Agent?”
“FBI,” she admitted, her mind's eye filling with an image of a raging Paul Zanek storming about his office, wanting to know why she'd drawn her weapon against the New Orleans bureau chief. “Are we going to get on with this search, General Raveneaux? Or will you be responsible for bloodshed on your lawn?”
“Davis, Scully,” Captain Landry said to the two uniforms he'd gotten to know a bit. “Take Chief Meade's weapon and any that Commissioner Stephens is packing.”
The officers hesitated, staring at one another for the courage to take the first step.
“Just do it!” shouted Hodges, startling his men into action to defuse the explosive standoff.
Now Jessica had joined Kim, the two of them holding guns on three of the most prominent citizens in New Orleans. “I sure hope we know what the hell we're doing, Kim,” Jessica whispered.
“All right, do your blasted search,” the general announced. “Search all you want, but you won't find a thing, not a damned thing other than our son's body out there in the tomb where it belongs, and there's no law against that.”
Pure Instinct (Instinct thriller series) Page 44
