Kim was slowly coming around to the meaning of the words being bandied about the room. All but Wardlaw, who stood stonily against one wall, were heatedly debating whom to exhume for her to psychometrically read, but Jessica wanted her shot at the Surette body also, while Wardlaw likely wanted his mistakes to remain buried.
“ Somebody want to ask me if I want to do this?” Kim finally asked.
“ You are getting paid well for your services,” said Landry with a grim poker face.
“ There would be very little disturbance to the grave or the coffin,” countered Jessica, “since we're talking New Orleans, where everyone's buried aboveground; we merely have to unseal the crypt, and I don't truly see that family would be involved since he was buried in a paupers' yard, right? Why would there be objection now, a year later?”
“ Dr. Coran is right,” added Landry, defending the move now with surprising enthusiasm, though Kim quickly realized he was happy with the consternation he was getting out of the other solid citizens in the room, including a nervous Dr. Ward-law.
Wardlaw cleared his throat and jumped into the fray, saying, “But also in New Orleans, Doctor Coran, death- the grave, rather-is viewed as final and sacred. You will find opposition, family or no.”
“ Either way, there's no guarantee,” said Kim.
“ I say we give it our best try, Dr. Desinor,” countered Landry, seemingly anxious for the event. Or was he simply enjoying himself now at the expense of Stephens and Meade before the mayor's man?
God, Kim thought, now they're calling for an exhumation of an earlier victim, long since deceased and decayed, and Jessica, along with a supporting cast of Stephens and Landry, was suggesting that Kim could perform her “magic” over the exhumed corpse. Was Jessica Coran being catty? Was she trying her best to undermine Kim, believing that a poor result in such an endeavor was virtually assured? Should Dr. Coran get her way, Kim might easily be sent packing, and Jessica could take over full rein on the case. Was that what she wanted? From what little Kim knew of Jessica Coran, she assumed that getting her own way was what had made her so invaluable to the FBI.
Kim tried to imagine the unimaginable, no doubt a first for psychic investigation: a psychometric reading over a body long since gone cold in every sense of the word. Could anything come of it? It was one hell of a lot of trouble and turmoil to go to for what might well be nada it was also one hell of a challenge engineered by Jessica, who obviously had thrown down the gauntlet.
Kim felt certain that such a “show” would result in nothing save a handful of theatrics she could call on. The results would be pitiful at best. Psychic impressions left in the wood of old haunted houses was one thing; psychic energy might linger for years where spirits roamed, but what sort of ghostly impressions might remain in a decayed and entombed body or the porous concrete of an aboveground tomb? It was the ultimate challenge, as when the famous Pierce Reeves had psychically “attacked” the mummified remains of Tutankhamen, the boy king of Egypt, never recovering from his encounter and dying a disheartened and shriveled man in his late thirties. That event, which had fueled the fire of the infamous curse of King Tut for yet another generation, was still fresh in Kim's mind as she considered the ultimate disturbance of a body in its grave.
She was hardly certain that she was up to such a task, nor had she had any idea that she'd be boxed into such a position.
It was one thing to read the body of the recently deceased, but to snatch a corpse from its long slumber… The very idea repulsed and unnerved her, and to some degree-old habits dying hard-went against the few teachings of the Church she yet believed in, about the sanctity and piety of the grave.
Jessica Coran, by comparison, was eager to go ahead with an exhumation. It was scientifically a logical step, to ensure that what the NOPD had perceived as indeed a series of killings by the same man was in fact correctly dated to its inception.
According to an inner logic which Jessica herself followed instinctively, seldom were things as they seemed on first glance. But for the moment, Kim almost believed that Jessica was delighting in the psychic's discomfort.
She hadn't had time to fully assess Dr. Coran, or why her own presence here in the coroner's domain should make her antsy and uncomfortable, but uncomfortable was precisely the word for Jessica now. She could see that Jessica's usual sea-blue aura-the fiery glow that encircled the cranium to flutter about all living forms-usually a serene moon-glow aquamarine around her, was now shooting off orange sparks of blood red, a sure sign Jessica was upset.
Still, Kim realized that her form of magic made a lot of people-most people, in fact-uncomfortable. In almost every case, she made men and women, and people with iron wills and concrete world views in particular, unsettled in their beliefs and generally unhappy as a result. It was the nature of the beast, as Detective Alex Sincebaugh so exemplified.
Sincebaugh was obviously threatened by her, and so too was Jessica, perhaps to a lesser degree. Paul Zanek, for a number of reasons, had been terrified of her, not that he would ever have admitted it, not even to himself. The other men in this room, while not particularly believers, were desperate, all save Landry, and they had already made up their minds that they would go to any lengths for a breakthrough in the Hearts case, so why not a seance over a corpse?
Apparently, she had stepped into a hotbed of political intrigue that P.C. Stephens and Lew Meade had conveniently not explained to either her or Jessica. Either man had had plenty of opportunity to catch them up on Wardlaw's flaws, for instance, and on Sincebaugh's reticence and reluctance, on the politically charged environment-the shaky situation with respect to the detectives working the case who were ready to explode. Even Meade, who was supposedly on their side- their FBI man in New Orleans-had failed to inform either of them, but why had he failed to do so?
Was it because Meade and Stephens didn't want her to know what kind of shit she was about to step into? Was Stephens or Meade fearful that she would pull out at the mention of any trouble? Or was it more basic than that? No doubt the duo of Stephens and Meade wanted her to stay focused on the case, and not the peripheral nonsense surrounding the case.
“ Will you do it, Dr. Desinor?” pressed Landry. “If we get the order to exhume? Will you do a… a reading?”
“ We'll be happy to meet your price,” added Jessica, like some cheerleader with ulterior motives now. “Whataya say?”
At that moment Wardlaw chose to leave the operating room, calling out that he wasn't feeling too well. The other men exchanged knowing looks, aware that Wardlaw was fighting off the d.t. s, doing all in his power to keep off the booze, and now was further upset by talk of an autopsy of the Surette body. No M.E. wanted to admit to a single oversight, much less the possibility of a series of errors.
No one stopped Wardlaw's retreat, which was followed by an assistant coming into the room to wheel the body of the latest victim away once more. Meanwhile, Captain Landry, who'd so recently become awed by Kim's insights over the Lennox affair, only stared across at her.
She swallowed hard, wondering how much she might trust Landry, remaining upset at his having earlier withheld the Lennox information from her. She realized now why the Lennox corpse on second reading had so abruptly ended communication with her. Its need to communicate had been ended long before, and they had all known this in advance of coming into the morgue today-Jessica included.
“ You've done very well here, so far, Dr. Desinor,” said Fouintenac. “What an enormous gift you have to offer law enforcement. Now you must do whatever's necessary”-he meant the exhumation, which he no doubt would skip-”to help us locate this maniac who's feeding on our city.”
“ All right,” she abruptly agreed. “If it can be done in a sterile, well-lit environment, okay?”
“ That's the only way to go with an exhumation,” Jessica commented.
“ We'll arrange everything,” assured Landry, who seemed suddenly to be in control, running the show.
Stephens quickly put in, “All you need do is be here.” It was, after all, Stephens's show.
“ Good… good,” agreed Landry, who seemed to have boxed Stephens into a corner. “Then I'll begin the paperwork for Victor Surette's exhumation.”
“ Surette?” countered Meade. “I still think we should do the Stimpson body or the Lawton body, at very least the Trent Fischer body, since…”
Stephens waved Meade down, took him aside and explained things to him in a whisper the others could not hear. Meade erupted once with: “Who the hell is Surette? We're not even sure his death is related to the
