deposition to that effect which might help in the daughter's defense.”
Zanek was unable to respond for a moment, trying to understand exactly what Kim was saying to him. “Parlen shared this information with you?”
“ No. It came to me in bits and pieces after the psychometric reading of the other day. It's information I could share with Parlen, if you're willing.”
He considered this a moment. “Well, we're not in the business of defending the guilty here, but… do you hear what she's saying here, Stephens? Isn't she everything I've said, Commissioner, and more?” He followed this pep rally up by coming from behind his desk and half-leaning, half-sitting against the edge in a show of friendliness, a kind of male peace offering. Once she pretended to accept the peace offering, he continued. “Kim, Dr. Desinor…”
“ Yes, Paul?” she insolently asked, forgoing his title.
“ P.C. Stephens and Dr. Coran both want you to accompany them to New Orleans.”
She looked hard across at Zanek, puzzlement and anger fighting for control within. “You mean to physically go there?”
“ That's right.”
“ I see.” She told herself, I really do see, Paul. Just farm me out to New Orleans, allow things to cool here while I'm working a field office as far from you as you can arrange. What's the matter, no murder sprees in Alaska this season? The bastard had found his solution. “But we're going to be too busy here, what with-”
“ Your duties in New Orleans will in no way curtail your work here, Dr. Desinor,” Paul began, “as it's only a… temporary assignment and while you're gone, we'll find a suitable replacement.”
“ But what about the move over to Santiva's division?”
“ Santiva's just getting accustomed himself. A big shake-up like that… well, let's just give it time, okay, Doctor?”
“ This has all been set up for some time now, hasn't it, Paul?” she said, challenging him.
Stephens opened his hands and waved, a gesture he felt awkward with, along with having to plead. “Dr. Desinor, please, we desperately need your help on an unusual and most important case.”
“ It's to be the test case, Dr. Desinor, for the future of psychic detection within this agency,” Zanek drove home his point.
Stephens's red hair was so thin it looked blond, but his scarlet eyebrows were thick. He looked of Irish descent. She knew by now that Stephens must surely have had a careful look at her background via Zanek's information on her, so he must know that her own olive skin and dark features were those of a Creole native of Louisiana. Abused and abandoned by a stepfather after the death of her mother, she'd been a product of a strict Catholic upbringing at St. Domitilla's School for Troubled Children. She'd long since renounced all formal religion as a result of her years there, calling herself a reformed and recovering Catholic. Others might call her an Indoctrinated Ingrate. Either way, she'd find her faith in her own way, and coming to this decision had felt right; it had felt as if the shackles of religion had been lifted from her with this decision made the year she graduated high school from St. Domitilla's in New Orleans.
She'd managed a state scholarship, had spent two years at Louisiana State, going on to Trinity College in New Orleans. From there she'd joined the Florida Department of Criminal Investigation as a psychologist. Unable to fit in “properly” there, she'd entered the police academy, and on graduation, she'd bounced around from one Florida police jurisdiction to the next as a working cop, before she'd returned to psychiatry. Her work had been somehow and almost fatefully noticed by Paul Zanek of the FBI, who'd encouraged her to apply for the FBI Academy. Zanek had brought her along ever since. Little wonder that, when he began to pay attention to her as a woman, she'd responded so completely, allowing her heart to be snared and lost and finally broken, all within the span of a few short years.
“ I suggested you for the case two weeks ago, Kim,” Zanek said, coming off the desk he'd been leaning on. “It's a chance for us… for you… to test your theories in an ongoing investigation, show everyone what psychic detection is capable of, including Santiva. It'll take it out of the realm of the laboratory. It'll be more than an exercise for a film. You've got to welcome that.”
She knew that Paul had been preparing a paper on the effective use of psychic investigation in the right hands, in the hands of the Bureau, and that she was his secret weapon. For his theories to work, he needed to go beyond research grant money and into mainstream budgeting, to put psychic detection on the FBI grid. These were all aims and goals she herself had wanted along with him, goals they had worked for side by side.
Dr. Coran's whiskey voice filled the room. “You'll have a perfect opportunity to help demonstrate in an ongoing investigation how effective collaboration might be between our usual scientific techniques and your own psychic techniques.”
Still suspicious of Zanek's motives, Kim wondered just how much of this show was a put-up job; were Dr. Coran and Paul Zanek close enough to have discussed his desire to rid himself of her for a time? Did Dr. Coran know about Paul's ultimate ambition to become head of the FBI someday? What did Jessica Coran think of Paul's dabbling in the “black arts” in order to get ahead? Was she among those who joked that Zanek was actually on the trail of how to turn ordinary tin into gold through the alchemy of Dr. Faith's mysterious laboratory?
When Kim failed to answer, Jessica Coran said, “No better place to prove a theory than in the field, Dr. Desinor.”
Or have you forgotten that you're an agent first? Kim flinched, filling in the trailing thought behind Jessica Coran's dare.
“ What's in it for me, Paul?” Kim asked. “Do I get that budget adjustment I've been requesting for the past year?”
He ignored this. “What's the alternative scenario, Kim?” Zanek now pressed the issue. “You sit here in Virginia, waiting for the case to go stale and cold like that damned Decatur mess? Then they bring it all to you in a shoe box? Come on, Kim, this is your big chance. Don't let petty concerns stand in your way.”
She took in a deep, long breath of air, still unsure of his motives and feeling slightly off balance with the others in the room. If he had made the suggestion to New Orleans brass two weeks before, then it was before Paul had decided to go back with his wife. Still, Paul could be lying about when he'd first contacted Stephens about her.
“ You're probably the best psychic detective working in America today, Dr. Desinor.” Stephens's attempt at flattery fell flat.
“ But nobody else of consequence outside the Bureau knows that, Kim, not yet,” Zanek continued. “And while we're determined here at the Bureau to keep our association with psychism a secret for the time being, there will come a day…” He turned to Stephens and explained. “The FBI isn't prepared to go on record as proponents of psychic detection just yet, you understand, so, sir, you'll have to honor our agreement on that score. She enters as a private citizen engaged by the NOPD to help shed light on the case.”
“ Maybe after the twenty-first century the Bureau will show some balls,” Jessica Coran snickered.
Zanek gritted his teeth, a glare slicing across at Jessica which he quickly covered. “Still, we don't deny the needs of law-enforcement agencies today,” Zanek continued in his most officious voice.
“ To help in your decision, Dr. Desinor,” Stephens countered, “please have a look at these items I brought for your… inspection.” Richard Stephens's well-manicured hands now reached for three brown metal-clasp envelopes. He laid them out on Zanek's desk. Two of the packs were neatly creased and lay flat, while the third bulged with what appeared to be and sounded like metallic objects-likely a junk collection from a New Orleans police property room, Kim decided.
Stephens then tore open the first envelope and displayed its flat contents: an array of horrid police photos, one after another, of murdered young men, boys really. Two of the photos displayed bodies in remote, heavily wooded areas, their backs to the lens, faces turned away, features lost. The additional two dead teens lay on brightly colored, silken sheets, lying on their backs, their torsos half covered in bloody bedding. The fifth and sixth victims had actually been beheaded.
“ Can you, from these photos, tell me anything at all about these cases?” pressed Stephens.
She inched closer, on the edge of her seat, staring down at the photos now, the others watching her intently. She lifted each photo one at a time, her eyes closing now while her fingers wandered lazily across the placid and glossy surfaces. Something about such crime-scene photos touched people in a mysterious, dark corner of the brain, giving the mind over to the same sensation as when viewing a supposed UFO photo or a so-called ghost captured
