“ Been reading your reports on the Queen of Hearts killer.”
“ There's nothing in those reports to tell you a thing about me.”
“ Oh, but that's not true. They told me a lot about you.”
Ben deYampert had leapt from his side of the car, and was now opening the back door of the sedan to her and taking her handbag, a leather Gucci satchel, which he placed on her lap after she climbed in. With a smile, he said, “Welcome to New Orleans, ma'am.”
“ And you must be Sergeant Detective Ben deYampert?”
“ That'd be me, yes, Miss… ahhh, Dr. Desinor.”
“ What're you, the welcome wagon, Ben?” Sincebaugh snapped. “Time's wasting, Big, so let's have at it. Climb in. We got police business to attend to.” Sincebaugh sounded as annoyed as a delivery man whose time schedule had been thrown off, and the officious use of the phrase “police business” was a sure sign of his ire. It was highly unlikely that he'd wanted to make the detour to pick her up.
“ What can you tell me about the latest death?” she asked from the rear.
“ Today's?” asked Sincebaugh with a rough laugh. “Nothing yet. Yesterday's? You can read the report. Bastard's escalating' all I know.”
Ben, half turning to look into the rear and meet her eyes now, cleared his throat and added, “Escalating his mutilation technique too.”
“ Meaning?” she asked.
“ Severed yesterday's guy's head near clean off 'long with his… everything else, ma'am.”
“ And today's discovery, also headless?”
“ No, don't reckon this one's missing his head,” said Ben. “If that were the case, it'd be all over the police band by now.”
“ On top of all the other atrocities,” she mused aloud, “he's now added to his repertoire of mutilation?”
“ Is that supposed to be a joke?” Alex muttered. “On top?”
She didn't think Sincebaugh's remark was funny, and Ben seemed not to get it, and now Ben had become strangely reserved as though Sincebaugh had jabbed him in the ribs and into silence.
“ We've got another body… washed up out of Big Muddy this morning… looks like the work of the Hearts guy,” said Stephens to Jessica Coran as the motorcade moved over an enormous bridge spanning the Mississippi, the dappled light and shadow of the bridge cables creating a mosaic of fleeting images through the tinted glass windows. “Thought you may's well set right to work, Dr. Coran. You should've come ahead with me yesterday,” he finished, chastising like the polite headmaster of a boarding school.
“ We heard you had another yesterday as well. Kinda getting crowded in the morgue, no doubt. Deja vu for Dr. Ward-law, I'm sure.”
Stephens was silent for a moment. “Wardlaw'll be around for a week or so, hand over the baton, all that, but he's officially off the case.”
“ Off the case?”
“ We felt it best that you take complete control at this point, Doctor… for the time being at least, and he… well, he didn't like the arrangement, so we severed ties with the man.”
“ Whew…what happened, Stephens? What really happened? Out with it. You don't fire an M.E. for no cause.”
Stephens ran a hand through his thinning red hair and sighed in exasperation, echoing her words. “What happened… quite…”
“ I'm a big girl, Commissioner. Tell me straight out.”
“ Look, suffice it to say that the man's become unglued, and it's spilled over into his work and, well… having the eyes of the nation bearing down on us, thanks to this case, we just can't have any slipups at this point.”
“ Unglued? As in a nervous breakdown?”
“ Not precisely. Perhaps you might call it a drug dependency.”
“ Alcohol?”
“ You are perceptive, Doctor.”
“ It comes with the territory, sometimes. The drug dependency, I mean…” She felt for this faceless, unknown Dr. Wardlaw. Many good M.E. s, and doctors in general, had faced the same problem he faced now, she included- although hers was of a short duration, exacerbated by two men in her life, Matisak and Jim Parry, the one she feared and hated, the other she feared and loved.
What difference would it have made had she stayed in Hawaii, she told herself. If she'd remained, she would have found a way to destroy what she and Jim had anyway. Dr. Lemonte had told her as much. Not until she could rid herself of the damage caused by Matisak could she be fully free of her crippling fears, which included a fear of commitment and a fear of happiness.
“ We're here to assist in any way we can, Dr. Coran,” said Lew Meade, introducing himself and shaking hands with Jessica. “Frankly, I long before lost all faith in Frank Wardlaw, and I also place little store in psychics, even if they do work for us, so I was more than pleased when I learned of your coming.”
Stephens quickly countered with: “But we are at our wit's end here, and the local police have exhausted their leads, so…”The limo ride was like glass over a silken pond. “So, why not give hocus-pocus a chance?” Jessica asked.
“ Thought you'd appreciate my candor, Dr. Coran,” said Meade, a thick man whose girth spread across the limo. “Sorry, I don't mean to offend in any way.”
Jessica wondered why she'd felt compelled to defend Dr. Desinor in her absence. “No offense taken,” she lied, taking an instant and irrational dislike to the man, feeling uncomfortable with the way in which he and Stephens had chosen to handle matters, waving a red flag at the press. And yet isn't that what she'd wanted, to signal to Matisak her whereabouts, to lure him out?
“ Tell me more about the specific reasons for taking Ward-law off the case,” she said.
Stephens ran down the particulars, citing numerous lab errors which Wardlaw had made, finishing with: “Really not much more to tell. The man simply couldn't cope with it any longer-emotionally, I mean. In any case,” he continued, “you're pretty much in charge at the NOPD crime lab for the moment, Dr. Coran.”
It was a thought that made her happy to some degree, to be in charge, not to have to tiptoe around the local chieftain at the crime lab, to be able to simply plunge in without the usual bowing, scraping and posturing, to just have everyone in the place following her orders. The idea held out great charm and possibilities to her. Maybe Wardlaw's loss was her gain; maybe Wardlaw's alcoholism was her redemption… maybe now that she had a handle, she believed, on her own problems…
The motorcade had drawn onlookers and a crowd of reporters, just as it was intended to do. Some had snapped off shots at the airport, but this wasn't enough for many who'd followed on their heels, and now as they pulled in under the enormous, rusting metal bridge spanning the Mississippi, reporters were not only taking snapshots of Dr. Jessica Coran but of the crime scene itself. Stephens and Meade had, for their own reasons, staged a media circus, and Jessica found herself in the center ring.
“ You got public-relations problems with this case big time, don't you, Commissioner?” she asked as she climbed from the limo, dragging her hefty black valise with her. The two men in the limo admired her legs before following her out.
A suspendered politician with a young and hungry look rushed to them and took her hand, shaking it like a pump, saying, “I'm second deputy mayor of the city, Leroy David Fouintenac, Dr. Coran, and anything-I mean anything the city can do to make your stay more comfortable-please, please don't hesitate to contact me. Call me at this number, day or night, you got the least problem, understood?” He slipped her his card, which she took with a heavy dose of salt.
“ I'd like to get to work over here,” she told the men, stepping away from them, allowing them to roost here at a safe distance where they might posture for the public all they wished. She went straight for the body. It felt good to be back…
She was soon over the corpse, standing, sizing up things from afar. The body, which had already been disturbed by others, was now draped with a policeman's sheet, one that could've been cleaner-old blood smears from previous cases staining it. The coverlet was meant to protect the deceased's integrity, but it did very little to protect the integrity of the crime scene, most likely having come from somewhere in the back of a squad car.
From her black valise, Jessica pulled forth a full-length white lab coat and placed it over her shoulders to
