“ Color of eyes, Thommie?”
“ Usually blue, but green now… definitely green.”
“ Green or blue, Thommie?” Eyes don't change color, Longette was thinking.
“ Not a pretty green, a snake-scale green…when he killed me.”
Dr. Longette looked dubious. “Green eyes or blue, Thommie?” Eyes don 7 change but contacts do. Longette was thinking more and more like the policemen he worked alongside these days.
“ Green…green, insane eyes, but they'd changed.”
“ Any distinguishing marks, birthmarks, scars on E's body? Thommie? Thommie?”
“ E's makeup accentuated a… a strawberry red mark on her left cheek… but it changed too…”
“ Changed? Changed how?”
“ Disappeared. It wasn't there when she killed me.”
Makeup, Longette thought, could cover a strawberry mark, but a transvestite would want to make the most of such a mark. “How did he-she-kill you, Thommie?”
“ Butcher's knife… ran it to the hilt here…” She pointed to her sternum. “Blade was deflected to right of my sternum, sank deep as it would go; put all her weight against it; punctured my right lung and came out the back.”
“ Jot that down,” said the captain into Sincebaugh's ear. “We'll check it against Dr. Coran's report later.”
Sincebaugh reluctantly did as told.
“ Why did E murder you, Thommie? Can you tell me that? Why did he”-Longette paused to mutter a curse to himself- “she, why did she take your heart? What does she do with the hearts?” Longette's voice was melodious, soothing, at odds with his words, and his professional bearing was curtailed for the moment by his curiosity, a curiosity he shared with the entire population of New Orleans.
Desinor took a long time in answering.
“ E did it. She… she wanted my heart, even said so. Said she wanted to keep my heart close to her forever. Knife was in me; my eyes fixed on it; ears ringing, fever rising, but I heard her say, 'I just want your heart, hon… you… you can keep the rest.' “
Kim was writhing on the leather couch, the pain clearly etched in her features. It was hell having to relive Thommie's painful and bloody death all over again, but a small corner of Kim Desinor's mind remained hers, and this part of her looked on and listened as if from a comer of the room above, near the ceiling where her astral self stared down on her form, Dr. Longette and their ghoulish dialogue.
She knew that Dr. Longette was dubious, but she also knew that she'd shown herself to be a person of strong determination, moral fiber and old-fashioned grit, which nobody, not even Sincebaugh behind the glass, could deny.
“ Thommie,” she said now in the third person, “Thommie didn't know until the last moment that he was being killed.”
“ Is that you, Dr. Desinor?”
She didn't directly reply. “He believed that E was on something when he was first knocked to the floor beside the bed; Thommie's head struck the bedpost, but he was in such shock…didn't feel this blow. Instead, he managed to grab onto the baseball bat.”
“ The bat was discovered below the bed, fresh blood on it,” Landry whispered into Alex's ear as if afraid Kim could hear through walls. “We'd assumed it was the victim's blood, but now, maybe not.”
Alex recalled Kim's having mentioned a ball bat the night before. Had she seen it below the bed when she'd fallen? Not likely, since she'd been out cold before she hit the ground.
Kim continued speaking as Thomas Whiley. “Been beaten by my father most my life…” A distinct bayou dialect was beginning to filter into her voice. “Wasn't going to take no beatin' from nobody no more, ever… and when she come at me, I grabbed up that bat. Hit him good once't, but he was insane strong, didn't even feel it; jus' grabbed the bat from me. I tripped up and 'fore I hit the floor, she come down on me with a spiked heel to my head. Don't 'member him puttin' me 'cross the bed. Woke up with the knife in me…”
“ He, she, him, her, what's his real sex, Thommie?” pressed Dr. Longette. “Louisville slugger…”
“ What?”
“ The bat… it was my Louisville slugger. Didn't slow him up a hog's breath, though.”
There was a moment of silence as Dr. Longette turned to face the glass and raise his shoulders. Is she under? Yes. Is she faking this? Maybe, but to do so, she'd have to have one hell of a mind, he thought.
“ TTiomas is my real name. Thomas Peterson Whiley the Second. But now I'm a woman. I'm Marie… Marie Dumond. Died a woman and will be one in eternity. Please bury me as a woman.”
“ We'll… we'll do what we can to respect your wishes, Thommie.”
“ Marie…please, Marie.”
“ Yes, of course.”
“ No one'll claim my body anyways, like what come of poor Vic's body… I watched from my car. Guess I'll be buried by the state, another nobody.”
“ We're looking into your true identity, Thomas,” Dr. Longette assured the disembodied spirit. “We'll find your family. Your passing will not go unnoticed.”
“ Name on my driver's license purchased from a paper mill on Quincey.”
Sincebaugh had seen the beautiful job that someone had done on Marie Dumond's driver's license. He knew that for the right amount of cash, anything could be had on Quincey Street in New Orleans. Of course, Dr. Desinor would know that too, having grown up in the city.
“ I'll be dead…Marie'll be dead, and nobody'll know who she is, and nobody'll care…”
Sincebaugh, from behind the glass, muttered in Landry's ear, “Got that right…”
“ We care,” said Dr. Longette. “We really do.”
“ What about Marie? Do you care about Marie?”
“ Is there anything more, anything at all, that you want to tell us, Marie?” he asked, deflecting the question.
“ E… he… he really didn't mean it. He… E just wasn't himself.”
“ Wasn't himself how?”
“ Crazed… beside himself… I think in his right mind, he couldn't've done it. It was when he became she.”
“ E then is a cross-dresser too, you mean?”
Captain Landry turned to Sincebaugh. “I want a line on this E guy, where he hangs, what he does, where he goes, who he goes with, all of it.”
“ I've never heard of anyone on the street goes by that or Easy, but we'll certainly follow up.”
“ Looks like your instincts were good all along, Alex. The killings are not aimed at the gay community from outside forces, but rather from within the gay community itself; one of them is killing his own, and the key has to be this guy, E or Easy. Doesn't ring any bells, huh?”
“ You know how many of these guys are transient. They come and go like the pigeons. Still, thought I knew all the street names, but no… no, sir, it doesn't. We can run 'im through the computer, see what kicks out.”
“ Either way, Alex, you nailed it, gay community.”
“ Transvestite community, French Quarter.”
“ What's the difference?”
“ Big difference in their ranks. Not all transvestites are gay, not all gay men are cross-dressers.”
“ As in not all bats live in caves? Give me a break, Alex.”
“ As in not all gays are HIV positive, Captain. Look, I'll be at my phone, see what I can dig up on our man E. I've seen enough of this hocus-pocus.”
“ You've seen enough, but you're willing to investigate this E character based solely on a psychic's recall under hypnosis? I'll tell you what, Alex, if this E guy turns out to be our man, this hocus-pocus will have been worth every dime, my friend.”
“ And if it doesn't pan out? You gonna give her the heave-ho? You gonna bring the tent down on this… circus?”
“ I'll certainly try, Alex, but as you know, it's rather out of my hands…”
“ Do Stephens and Meade know about this session with Dr. Longette?''
“ No, thought we'd keep this among us for now, and Dr. Desinor was obliging.”
“ And Dr.
Coran?”
“ No FBI for now.”
With that news, Sincebaugh felt a bit relieved. Good move, Captain, he wanted to shout. Anything to ax Lew Meade from the new deal. “I'll go find Big, and we'll see what we can scrounge up on this Easy guy.” Alex knew that he'd combine the search for E with the search for Susie Socks, the alleged cousin to Davey “Pigsty” Gilreath.
27
May the light fade from your eyes, so you never see what you love. May your own blood rise against you. and the sweetest drink you take be the bitterest cup of sorrow. May you die without benefit of clergy; may there be none to shed a tear at your grave, and may the hearthstones of hell be your best bed forever.
— Traditional Wexford Curse
Matthew Matisak pretended an aimless, wandering gait along the streets of New Orleans, a free man, his attention on the final steps that would bring him to the coming, decisive duel with her, Jessica Coran. He fully expected to take his due from her, after wrapping up a few loose ends, and this time he would be completely in control, all arrangements having been made- All systems a go and me aglow, he wickedly thought. This time her own blood would rise against her to become his absolutely and forever.
He had thoughtfully mapped out how they would meet, how he would lead her into his snare, what his final meal would be like, for it would be supplied by her and it would be his last. She would so fulfill him that he would have nowhere afterward to turn. He would have reached his personal zenith. So he would destroy himself while her blood was coursing through him, taking a part of her into eternity with him.
The means was at hand. He had already prepared and tested the equipment on a young girl he'd found wandering about the Greyhound bus station the night before. All was operational at the location he had paid well for.
He had paid top dollar for the portable dialysis machine which would remove Jessica's lifeblood in a controlled fashion and filter it into him in just as controlled a fashion. He planned to O.D. on her blood, to burst his own blood vessels with an overabundance of the good stuff. “What a way to go,” he told himself.
Not riddled with bullets, not electrocuted or gassed, not plummeting to his death during an escape or progressively rotting away in a cell, but to die in a fashion befitting such a demonic force as himself, in a manner which he would have chosen, master of his own fate. He intended to be literally imploded from within by her blood-at least all his arteries and veins would detonate, so full would they become with their commingling of blood.
It was so rare and evil an idea that it could not have been born overnight, but rather had crept up in inchworm fashion over his mind, coming on at first softly to tickle his psyche, a playful half-formed, seeking-cohesion, heat-seeking idea of a lifetime. At first slow to form and coalesce and live fully, the idea had in the past few months-since killing Dr. Gabriel Arnold with his own dialysis machine-begun to chase through Matisak's consciousness like a steam engine bound nonstop for Hades, and now… finally… years in the making… it was here in New Orleans that the complete beauty of this perfect notion had come to pure fruition like the blossom on a passionate flower. She must come to him now… come for him, unable to help herself any longer. She would do so alone. He knew that she would abandon all her training, that she knew, like him, that eternity was waiting for them to step into its waiting void together.
She would come for the same reason that he must beckon her: They were locked into meeting their death angels at the same instant in time. For all eternity hereafter they must grapple with one another. Besides, she was noble and nobles like her couldn't help themselves, not really, not after all the numbers who'd died in her place because she was so noble. She must feel great remorse for the others; it was not in her makeup to feel otherwise, especially with the last person to take her sacrificial place-this special agent named Sand whose cover as a pilot might have fooled Jessica but had not fooled him. The fool had led him directly to her.
He had learned of her relocation to New Orleans on temporary assignment through a series of phone calls, pretending an urgent message from her last tour of duty office in Honolulu. He had even learned the name of the Hawaii bureau chief, a man named James Parry, and he had used this name to gel information about her whereabouts and current operation, tracking down this Queen of Hearts pervert. Think of it, he told himself now, some sick bastard's going around ripping out the hearts, likely cannibalizing them. “And they call me sick,” he said aloud to the wind, a nearby doorman in a phony general's uniform giving him a dubious look, having overheard him.
Matisak moved on down the street. He wasn't surprised to leam that his Jessica had tackled the gruesome case that had all of New Orleans in turmoil. He'd been reading about the case, which had been making national headlines, and there had been talk of FBI involvement, and the moment he'd read ol it, he'd somehow known that Jessica would come here. This hunch, and a little fast talk with some lab technician he'd managed to reach inside Quantico after several other people had disconnected, had been enough to seal Jessica's fate. She'd come from hot, humid D.C. to the even steamier jazz capital of the world to party with a monster, do a little Mardi Gras of her own. But he was the monster that was going to get her, not this heart-eating bastard who went for gays and cross-dressers.
He needed now only to bide his time. Killing Special Agent Sand was his first calling card. Maybe now he'd take out another of her bodyguards, the guy who was in the car across the street from her hotel for the past two nights, the guy whom Ed Sand had shared a great deal of time with, another of Jessica's bodyguards.
Jessica must know by now that she was being watched by others ordered by the Bureau to protect her. She'd no doubt found a way out of the hotel and was on her way to Metairie Cemetery by now, but in the meantime, Matisak wanted to make her feel safe from all these prying eyes.
He moved toward the car and stepped behind and around it, to knock at the passenger-side window. The man inside rolled the window down, expecting his replacement perhaps.
“ Who the hell're you?”
Matisak's tongue pushed forth a miniature blowgun and he puffed once hard, sending the thin, deadly shard of a needle into the FBI agent's throat along with some spittle. The tiny dart brought on an instant seizure of the heart, respiratory paralysis, vomiting for a few agonizing moments, then full paralysis and death. It was a fine drug, this Jericho rose, and he'd read with amusement that if bees pollinated their honey with it, they would create poisonous honey. Nature's a wonderful thing, he thought.
Matisak got in beside the man and pulled forth a thick loop of wire attached to two small handles that fit nicely into his large hands. The wire, which he placed around the dying man's head, he began to twist, using the handles around one another in tourniquet fashion. Pressure against the throat was instantaneous, the blood careening forth from veins and arteries along the throat, all this before the man's bulging eyes popped completely.
Matisak now viciously twisted the wire until the man's head slumped forward, having nothing but the top of the spinal column to hold it on. A good pull, and the head came off in its entirety to land bowling-ball-fashion in Matisak's bloodied hands.
Lapping at the blood from time to time, much of it washing the dash and interior window, he was tempted to drink heavily from this fount, but he mustn't. The little darts with the concentrated poison had worked extremely well and effectively, so he knew that he mustn't consume very much of the man's blood. The fast-acting toxin would have worked its way through the man's system even as he'd severed the arteries.
He was pleased with his simple and crude decapitator. It was an effective way to deal with those who stood between him and her, and there were few killings more disturbing than decapitation murders, so he'd have the police looking for a serial killer whose patterns resembled anything but those of Matthew Matisak, while at the same time he'd be telling Jessica Coran exactly what he needed to tell her.
He was saving himself up for her like a virgin groom. He meant
to feed on her alone now.
Having removed the head completely now, he balanced it back atop the agent's bloodied throat just long enough to snatch out the folded leather pouch he carried with him. He opened the small leather bag and now removed the man's head for a second time, placing it, dripping and spoiled with perspiration and blood, into the bag.
Checking his watch, he knew he had to hurry out to Metairie. He wanted to be there far in advance of the moon and long before his sweet Jessica might arrive. There were, after all, provisions to be made.
He placed the head-filled bag in the rear of the vehicle with a slight tossing movement. It hit the seat, bounced readily and came to rest on the floorboard, all quite neat, no blood rivulets and stringy matter clinging to the cushions. He next got out of the car and manfully dragged what was left of Fouintenac- whose cover likely disguised his true name-over to the passenger side of the black sedan. He then quickly got behind the wheel and turned on the ignition, and in a moment Matthew Matisak moved the death car into traffic, following the highway signs for Metairie.
Stepping from out of a black entryway at Orleans and Esplanade Avenues, a lifelong resident of New Orleans, Chester Lewis, wiped his forehead of sweat. He'd lived a long life at seventy-two years of age, and before tonight, before moments ago, he'd believed that he'd seen all things human and awful, but tonight he had witnessed the worst brutality in his experience.
He took several more pulls on his Red Label, gulping the liquid down as if life depended on it, wondering if he ought to tell somebody what he'd seen, wondering if his son would listen to him, or maybe Maybelle Saunders, his landlady and girlfriend. What should he do? He wondered if he'd just become the only witness to a Queen of Hearts murder, or more likely a murder by some new monster. Maybe he'd just tell his son and Maybelle… maybe…
“ Jesus, tell me, what is dis world coming to anyhow?” he asked the dark street and the handful of transients and pas-sersby, who just stared at him as if he were a freak. “What is yo world coming to, Jesus?” he drunkenly repeated.
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