he's doing a Jeffrey Dahmer thing with them, 'fry pan and biscuit gravy,' you know.”
“ I'm not so sure,” Kim managed, her mind elsewhere. She now forced herself to think about her first impression of the body. She'd had to lean far out over the dock to stare down at the cold spot in the water where- she'd been informed- the body had bobbed like a bloated cork for an hour before they could get a diving team prepped and in the water to place the halter over and around it. He was nude from the waist up, his chest cavity picked clean by feeding fish, the heart long since gone. The pasty, white skin had sloughed away, leaving only the dermis layer, which would make fingerprinting more difficult for Jessica, but thanks to new technology, not impossible. The body was in one piece, and the teeth also might help in identifying the victim.
No mean trick for the divers earlier in the water to handle the body with any gentility, even here in the Old South, Kim thought now, wondering how many of the psychic emanations had been bled off by both the watery environ and the earlier handling of the body. At the same time, she was wondering just how difficult it was going to be working with Jessica Coran, wondering what kind of miraculous expectations the woman anticipated from Kim, and if Kim's calls should fall short of Jessica's expectations what the other woman's reaction might be. And again Kim helplessly wondered if Jess'd be reporting daily back to Chief Paul Zanek.
Agent Coran had already said she'd become desperate, that Kim was something of a last resort. But Kim knew she had to shake loose from these constricting, petty concerns if she was to be of any use whatsoever here this morning. She worked hard now to mentally compose herself, to locate the necessary serenity required within her self to receive whatever slight message or messages she might from the corpse. Now that Jessica and the evidence-gatherers were out of her way, she came closer to the body.
The victim's features were larger than in life, as the facial skin had bloated to blowfish size, along with the fattened limbs. The torso was flat, not at all swollen, more in the man-ner of a deflated balloon, what with the huge gash there. While Kim hadn't been present at the time, she was receiving playback images of the body as it was removed from the river: The total effect when the body was raised on the crane's cables was that of a hideous, grotesque crab, a lifeless marionette.
The body was judged to be tall, rangy in life, and like the previous victims, he'd been young, early twenties, late teens maybe. He'd likely prove-once they learned who he'd been-a lively, vivacious and good-natured young man, liked by all who knew him, with family of one kind or another who loved him, either despite or because of his lifestyle. All previous victims, save yesterday's, had been identified as known gays living in and around the city.
It all reminded Kim of a case she'd worked some years before in Florida, where a madman had decided that seven women had to die to pay the price of his having been born a seventh son. In each case the heart had been removed, but jammed into the victim's mouth in a sinister twist on an old cliche about one's heart rising to one's throat.
Another psychic photo from the more recent past now rushed in at her: Envisioning the crane lowering the body too quickly onto the wharf, Kim felt a sudden wave of revulsion on a primal level sweep over her as the body slipped and came to rest with a splat, like a tarpon hauled off a boat and onto the dock.
“ Get some more photos, Lieutenant! Then I guess we can wrap him; call in the attendants when Dr. Desinor here's finished, okay?” Jessica Coran's resonant voice and the ever-present hum and throb of the awakening city, its heart at a full beat, no longer disturbed Kim. She'd reached that level of being in which she might hear or see only on a psychic level, in a realm closed off to most humans. Her every conscious, outward sense was turned down, the world around her tuned out, while simultaneously her subconscious or inner senses- which ancients called the third eye-were turned up and tuned in. Fortunately, Jessica and the others had moved off and had not called in the ambulance attendants just yet. Kim, now in a trancelike state over the body, kneeled, her pose strikingly similar to Jessica's before her; her eyelids half closed, eyes rolling back, hands closing over the rosary beads, she silently chanted a mantra to herself. She'd learned to do so silently so as to not put off those around her, or to give the appearance that she was some ordinary fortune-teller with a deck of tarot cards and a Ouija board. She looked to the outside world and to that part of her which hovered over the scene and her own body like a woman in supplication over the deceased. Her third eye and her second self also saw a wondering, curious crowd of onlookers, none more intent than Jessica Coran herself, staring on. Only Alex Sincebaugh seemed distressed and unforgivingly skeptical, pacing now like a cornered panther, occasionally glaring at the body and the soothsayer and back again at photographers on the bridge, who'd begun a new wave of snapshots at the strange behavior exhibited by the psychic. Kim easily sensed Alex's distress over what he felt to be a Bamum and Bailey atmosphere orchestrated by Stephens, Meade and other brass.
All around her, Kim had to fend off the remarks and taunts, both spoken and projected via thought, like piercing arrows directed at her but interfering with her procedure. There were no doors to close here, no shades to draw, no cushion between her and the public, no barriers to ward off the skeptical or the mental flares fired at her. The psychometric reading suffered in turn. She had come to find comfort in her props and in controlling the environment in which she worked. Maybe the lab had softened her.
She cursed herself deep within her soul to find a solution. But the seance was awash in a sea of disbelief and twisted emotional cinders coming in at her from various sources, including Jessica Coran and P.C. Stephens as well as Alex Sincebaugh. Stephens had never actually wanted her here; she'd been pushed on the bastard by Paul Zanek. Stephens's secret desire was simply to have Jessica Coran follow him back to New Orleans. He had no real desire to have Kim. At least that was the garbled message she now received over several others entwining themselves snakelike about one another.
Too damned many people here at odds with the situation, she told herself. She couldn't possibly focus, not here, not like this, and so she removed herself from trance, opened her eyes and stared down at a new horror awaiting her. Something's alive inside the corpse, her mind shouted.
She saw the odd, slick, reflecting ripple of movement first, like an unseen shadow out the side of the eye, odd but definitely there. It was a little glimmer of movement in the intestines deep within the body cavity. Maggots? Yes, a nest of them, swirling about now, covering the entire abyss before her. But these were psychic maggots, not real, nothing to be alarmed about. She didn't know what the image meant or why it had come to her, but she held firm to the real world, breathed a sigh of relief and saw that the maggots were indeed gone. There was no way maggots could've gotten at the body anyway, given that it was in the water all this time. So, just an illusion, part of her vision trying to take form? A symbolic representation, lingering on after her trance? But again she saw movement inside the corpse, making her start. Was this some easily explainable muscle spasm that would garner laughs all around from Dr. Coran and Sincebaugh and the others should Kim so much as twitch again in response? She maintained her stoic posture, but suddenly this snakelike movement shot to life, leaping from the body toward her. She started and fell back, tripping on the wet planks.
“ Jesus!” she shouted. “What is it?”
Everyone was instantly staring at her where she lay, the oozing, slick eel slithering over her legs, leaving a trail of gruel on her pants leg. The six-inch eel, a baby by Louisiana standards, which had embedded itself inside the body, now slapped furiously about the wharf until it found an escape, flailing itself back into the Mississippi and sinking quickly into the depths from which it had come.
Still startled and shivering, shaken to her core, Kim was suddenly grateful to feel someone's strong arms go round her; the sensation of warmth and caring that careened through her entire being from the man's helpful hands served to help her regain her composure along with her feet. With the forgotten rosary beads, cross and crystal amulet dangling loosely in her hand, she felt herself being turned like a toy top in the large, caring grip, fully expecting to meet Ben deYampert's brown eyes.
“ Are you all right, Dr. Desinor? Are you all right?”
It was Alex Sincebaugh's eyes she gazed into, and when her eyes found his, she realized how completely sincere and concerned Lt. Alex Sincebaugh was, although she was unsure just why.
She also realized how many eyes were on them, and so she quickly pulled away, saying, “Yes, yes… fine. I'm okay; rascal just caught me off guard's all.”
“ You shouldn'tve let yourself get talked into this case, Dr. Desinor.” His protest was almost a whisper, a confidence between them.
Alex, for his part, continued to stare deeply into her mysterious eyes, thinking how like his nightmares this scenario with the eel had been, except here it was one large, giant worm instead of thousands of small ones.
“ Oh?” she finally replied, breaking the bond created between their eyes. “I suppose I should check with you each time I decide to take on a case? Is that right?”
“ Someone like you… it's just-”
