and he didn't find it too amusing when he got her-him-into bed.” Ben chuckled even louder, pleased with himself.
“ Maybe. Then again, maybe he's just ignorant.”
They worked by the book, the tight-fitting surgical gloves masking their palms. Ben watched his partner's painstaking, careful work. Sincebaugh was officer in charge of the investigation the press had dubbed variously as the “Have-a-Heart,” the “Heartthrob” and the “Queen of Hearts” murders. The first two victims had lived in the French Quarter, in the heart of New Orleans, just around the corner from Bourbon Street. An earlier homicide, nearly a year old now, might possibly be linked with the same killer, since the victim too had been a male with a decidedly homosexual lifestyle. No heart had been found in the boy's chest there either, but as the decomposition of the body had progressed and maggots had gotten into the open chest cavity, the illustrious Dr. Frank Wardlaw had proclaimed that the heart had been devoured by maggots. Alex no longer thought so.
The first two acknowledged Hearts victims had actually known one another, and this newest soft-skinned youth looked like the others in all salient features: long, unkempt, blond to sandy hair, big eyes, powdery flecks of freckles about the cheeks, small-boned, perhaps five-nine or ten, weighing in at a mere 130 or 135 pounds. Not much of a match for the assailant, Alex was sure.
Bruises about the face and forearms and lacerations to the same areas spoke of a beating and a knifing, defensive wounds everywhere. The awful carnage had come clear when they'd rolled the body onto its back. The private parts had been butchered. The chest was splayed open, carved up surgically, and missing from the cavity was the boy's heart, replaced by an unusual diamond-shaped playing card made of a lacy material. Even blood- soaked, the card looked like something found only in a world long gone, at a time when people made lace doilies and lace trinkets, very Old World, European-looking workmanship in the weaving of it. The queen's ornate costume and lurid features would be found stitched in a rainbow of colorful twine after the thing was soaked and cleaned of impurities, marking it as the same as those before it. Nowhere, not even in New Orleans, had either detective seen anything like it. The killer's “calling card,” had been wedged below the ribs. As before, the bold single eye of the queen of hearts stared back at them.
Was the card a message or a plea? If the bastard wanted to send a message, why didn't he use Western Union? If a message, what message was the son of a bitch sending? That hearts were meant to be broken? That gay men had no right to life, no right to their own heartbeats? That their being gay gave the killer a genuine rationale, that he was somehow warranted in stealing the warm hearts from other human beings? That he had a justifiable right to be heartless? And why the queen of hearts? Queen suggested that the killer himself might well be gay-a drag queen-and that he hated himself for the hand fate had dealt him, and so he was striking out at other gay men in rage and uncontrolled fury. Certainly, enough rage was played out on the bodies to warrant this theory, as well as half a dozen other “hate crime” scenarios, such as perhaps that the killer was a neo-Nazi who hated gay men so much that he had to vent his anger.
Then again, if leaving the playing card was some sort of plea and not a message, what was the killer pleading for? What did he want Alex-or the NOPD in general-to know? What significance did the queen of hearts hold for the bastard? And just how damned arcane could he remain and for how goddamned long?
After photoing close ups on the grisly wounds-bodily sites of destruction-and the blood-spattered playing card, both familiar and unusual at once, Sincebaugh carefully lifted the killer's notice-or was it a receipt? — with tweezers. He held the drooping card up to his perplexed eyes for a silent moment, Ben looking on, frowning, no doubt wondering what was going on behind Alex's eyes.
Alex studied the curled and soiled card front and back without touching it or wiping any of the blood away. “It's the same as the others, unique, as if tailor-made for the victim, like the others before.”
“ Embroidered playing cards. Thought I'd seen it all till now,” Ben replied.
“ Nothing like you're going to find at the corner dime store or cigar stand.”
It was the fourth queen of hearts found in the open chest of victims in as many months. It clinched the fact that this boy was done by the same sadistic killer.
“ Damned spooky, Alex… damned spooky.”
“ Son of a bitch's got it bad for young gay men, that's for sure.”
“ He's also got four spoilt decks of cards by my calculation,” Ben dryly pointed out. “And hey, what the hell's he doing with the other fifty-one, or the hearts for that matter? That's what I'd like to know, Alex. No evidence the guy hung around long after, so he must be taking the hearts off with him. Why's he taking the hearts, Alex? And why's he cutting out their hearts to begin with? And why's he chopping off their balls and dongs and leaving these damned beer coasters behind? You think he's eatin' the hearts, Alex? You think he's some kinda fuckin' cannibal or something? You think we're going to find a Frigidaire somewhere that's been stocked with human hearts or what, Sincy?”
“ Don't go squirrelly on me, Ben. I think this guy just does queens. He's not buying the cards in decks or in coaster sets. I think he makes 'em.”
Ben considered this for a moment, each detective aware of what the suggestion meant. The guy selects someone to kill, creates the lacy card and stalks his prey. Ben cleared his throat and said, “Squirrelly, me? What's that s'pose to mean?”
“ Means we don't sweat the whys and wherefores, remember? We go after how. How does he choose his victim? How does the victim fall into his trap? How'd they come together? How'd this kid get here? What was he doing during the last hours of his life to lead him to this dump site? Who was he with and what'd they talk about? Where'd he have his last meal and with whom? And what'd he eat and where'd he eat it?”
“ Sure, sure, I know the routine, Alex, but this… this isn't in any way your routine homicide. These mutilations… they're… they're…”
“ Hate killings? Lust murders? You going to tell me why before you tell me how, Ben? You're already off track.”
“ But Alex, if we understood why, then maybe it'd be easier to investigate-”
“ And sleep at night?”
“- and we could come up with a faster solution in these particular cases.”
“ You want to go after it that way? All right, then take a good look at the boy's crotch, Ben. Go ahead, take a closer look.”
Ben shuddered even as his eyes went a second time to the area where the boy's sexual organs had been cleaved off, the discarded items lying bloody between his legs like the remains of a gutted chicken. Sincebaugh snapped another picture, this time with Ben in the foreground.
“ Something you can show your grandkids, Ben.”
“ You sick son of a bitch, Sincy. You got a real mean streak in you too.”
“ Comes of serving with you.”
“ Let's get outta here.”
“ Can't, not till Wardlaw or one of his stooges arrive.”
“ Where in hell're those guys? We called 'em an hour ago.”
An ambulance from the NOPD morgue had arrived, but Dr. Franklin T. Wardlaw, M.E. for New Orleans, was nowhere to be seen.
“ Call the bastard again. He probably fell asleep somewhere.”
Journalists were arriving on the scene now and were being held at bay by the uniformed officers. They wanted all the dirt, and they wanted to know what the NOPD was going to do about the Queen of Hearts killer, and they wanted to know- as always-now. Sincebaugh squarely reckoned that if the killings were ordinary slayings of gay men-without the extraordinary high profile due to the missing hearts-the press would be asleep on the case.
For now, however, the Fourth Estate had cornered Sincebaugh's captain, Carl Landry, along with Lew Meade, the local FBI chief, who'd been dragged from their beds to come down to have a look. All for the sake of the press. What they could accomplish here was zip, save for public relations, but even saving face and saving grace were unlikely at this point with nothing whatever to go on.
“ Here comes the circus,” said Ben.
“ Where the fuck's that drunken coroner?” asked Sincebaugh.
