courses, you know, with the best European chefs, and she simply insisted until Daddy just had to give in!”
Jessica went tearing through shoe boxes and hat boxes found in the closet, and when she turned to face Kim and Mrs. Raveneaux, she frowned her annoyance and called after Alex to wait up for her, but he was gone down a back stairwell, descending quickly for the kitchen, where he hoped to find Ben's killer waiting for him.
“ Jess, slow down,”, pleaded Kim when Jessica rushed for the hallway. “Landry and the others are downstairs. Let Alex handle it from here.”
“ He may need backup.”
“ Back stairs'll take you down if you want to find Dommie,” said Mrs. Raveneaux. “Come along… I'll show you the way.”
Captain Carl Landry's questioning of the servants in the presence of General Raveneaux, P.C. Stephens and Lew Meade had also revealed the fact that Victor's sister, Dommie, had in effect become the chief cook in the house. Like Alex, Carl had put two and two together and gone to search the kitchen. He'd actually gotten to the kitchen a few minutes ahead of Alex, and had snatched open the walk-in freezer door, fully expecting to be greeted with what he now looked at-full slabs of meat, sides of beef and venison dangling from a series of hooks-when from somewhere behind him he heard or felt someone there. Half turning, he saw the glint of a huge carving knife as it dove into his upper left quadrant to the hilt, barely missing his heart, hitting the bone at the shoulder. Like a man watching a film from some distance away, he saw himself fall backward from the impact, the freezer door slamming and locking on cue in front of him.
Inside the chilled room, he staggered about, unsure of the wound's depth or the extent of blood loss. Since it was so cold in here and his body temperature was rapidly decreasing, the blood was quickly coagulating. In fact, the freezer temperature might save his life, up to a point.
He fought to regain his feet and his vision. Then he fought with the door, but there was no escape from this side. He began to scrape away at the frost covering the small window, and through the trails left by his broken fingernails he saw her, recognizing her from her picture and Alex's description. She was lying in wait, a cornered animal with a maniacal leer and a huge carving knife still painted with Landry's blood held against her ear. She seemed to be slobbering on the knife, talking to it, listening to its whisper. She was anxious for her next victim to step into her high-tech lair.
The kitchen had every modern convenience and was as large as many of the other rooms. She'd been hiding in one of the cupboards below the six-foot preparation table at the center of the room when Landry had poked his nose into the freezer.
Now she moved toward the front of the kitchen, having heard someone approaching from that direction. Landry had to do something and fast.
He tore out his gun, but his hands were already freezing and the heavy object slipped easily from his grasp. He went to his knees with much pain and trembling. Others were counting on him and this thought made him grasp the gun and hold firmly to it, despite the cramping in his hand and body. With his left hand, he pulled himself back up, using a shelf for counterweight, but suddenly the shelf gave way and objects began raining down on him, frozen food as heavy as bricks.
He opened his eyes where he lay propped against the wall now, and he saw several bulging, red eyes poking through the cakes of ice lying at his feet. From their fist-sized shape and hue, Landry knew he was looking at the evidence which would put Dominique Raveneaux into the gas chamber or an insanity ward for the rest of her life.
The hearts of her victims continued to wink up at him through the ice that covered them.
He snatched up his weapon again and from his prone position, began firing at the glass in the door.
34
All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
Alex crashed through the door on hearing shots fired from a direction he could not determine. He went directly for the stone tile floor, skidding across it and coming up on his knees, his own weapon extended and ready, when, from behind a metallic cupboard door, she suddenly appeared. He saw her too late.
Her knife embedded in him, caught up in the metallic web of the bullet proof Kevlar vest which Landry had insisted they all wear under their jackets emblazoned with the word POLICE. The vest allowed for little penetration. Still, the impact and shock from the sheer force his attacker put into it jolted Alex over and onto his back.
At the same instant, madly determined to finish what she'd started, she'd snatched the knife back, and it came flashing down at Alex again.
Alex's gun had fallen, and he was dazed when the knife entered his body a second time in his upper left quadrant, just shy of his heart, but the Kevlar vest again proved its worth.
Alex grabbed onto the knife hand and felt the enormity of Dominique's power as Emanuel. She was reaching for some other weapon even as she fought him, tearing at something above Alex on the oven. Her hands extended like the claws of a bird of prey, she only half-grasped the boiling pot above her, and it came crashing down around them, burning Alex's unprotected arm and sending spikes of hot liquid toward his eyes, but he instinctually arched away, the fiery brew bringing welts to his neck and chin instead.
Stewed tomatoes and mixed vegetables in a thick gumbo sauce had made the tiles beneath the killer slick, so now she was having trouble keeping a firm footing and a hold on him, but once again she was reaching upward for some hidden weapon atop the chopping block. The stench of the stew, which Mother Raveneaux had called bisque, filled Alex's nostrils, and he wondered if he'd die here with the unhealthy odor in his brain.
Now, suddenly, she had a huge meat cleaver in her left hand. Even as she held firm to the knife they continued to fight for control over, Dominique-having some demonic strength he had never known before-brought the shimmering cleaver blade at his face like a pendulum, missing. him by inches when he jerked to one side.
Alex could hear help on the way, Stephens and Meade, having heard the shots and the commotion, but the witch atop him wasn't waiting. Again the cleaver was over her head and about to descend when a single gunshot rang out and Dominique came crashing down over Alex's body, her dead weight slamming into him with a great thud.
From over the dead killer's shoulder, Alex saw Jessica Coran, her gun still raised, and beside her stood Kim and Mrs. Raveneaux, who was caught up in Kim's arms when she fell away in a faint.
Alex fought to extricate himself from the killer's dead weight while the others ran into the kitchen. Alex shouted for Stephens and Meade to help Landry who'd shouted from the freezer while he went to Jessica Coran, meeting her gaze. “Thanks… you saved my life just then.”
“ Is she dead?”
“ The way you shoot, you needn't ask.”
Jessica now sat on the stairs with Kim beside her, Kim holding onto the old woman. Kim squeezed Jessica's hand and said, “You did what you had to do.”
“ It's not as if I've never killed anyone before.”
“ But it is the first time you've shot and killed a woman.” Kim managed to place her free arm around Jessica.
“ All in the line of duty,” Jessica mused, “for the FBI
“ No, you did it for Alex.”
General Raveneaux, who had rushed in behind Stephens and Meade, went to his knees over his maniacal daughter, softly blubbering, his anguish deep-felt and eternal. “First my son… and now Dommie… oh, poor long- suffering, afflicted, imperfect child…Dommie…”
Mrs. Raveneaux had come to, and was now staring at the pitiful sight of her dead daughter and distraught husband. From her half-prone position on the stairwell, she spoke to her husband in a harsh whisper, saying, “I told you, Maurice… I told you it would come to this…told you we should've never let her come back from Europe, Maurice. I told you she wasn't ready… I told you so… “
