as much a lawyer as a shrink, and his baritone voice filled a room.
Sincebaugh had had to deal with him on a few cases, but usually their contact was indirect, and while Sincebaugh found him to be quite capable and found his reports done with extreme care, the man made Alex nervous only to a small degree less than did Kim Desinor.
“ Can't die as Marie… can't!” she was saying now.
“ Can you see your attacker's face, Marie?” asked Longette.
“ No, not Marie… Thomas… my name is Thomas.”
“ Thomas? Really?” Longette sounded dubious, suspicious. Sincebaugh, watching, wondered exactly whom he was suspicious of, Marie Dumond or Dr. Desinor? Sincebaugh knew which one he was more suspicious of, but for test accuracy, Dr. Longette had been told nothing of the pending case.
“ Thom… Thommie…”
“ Thommie who?” pressed Longette.
“ Way… Ion… Wal… ley…”
“ Really?”
“ No… Whiley, yes, Whiley.”
Longette's voice was like the voice of God, or maybe James Earl Jones.
Outside, Landry told Ben deYampert, “Run a check on the name Thomas Whiley. See if we got anything on him.”
Ben deYampert's eyebrows arched in a V, and he stared for only a moment at his boss, glanced at Alex, raised his wide shoulders and said, “Alex, you know, I seem to recall we talked to a guy named Thommie Whiley after the Surette body was discovered.”
“ Yeah, I remember… one of the last guys to see Surette alive. He was a boyfriend for a time. Had a rap sheet for male prostitution, right?”
“ The guy hung out on Royal in the Quarter at the time. You don't suppose he and this Marie Dumond are one and the same, do you?”
“ That's what she's saying. She had to've read about Thommie on the police reports we filed. So she lifts his name. I'm telling you, the woman's dangerous. You know what they say, Captain… a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
“ So I've heard. So let's find out more about this Thommie Whiley just the same, Ben. Find out if it's the same guy as in the morgue, okay? Call it in; have 'em go to priority one on it,” Landry ordered.
Ben nodded and left.
On the other side of the glass, Dr. Longette continued in his mellow and soothing tones. “All right, Thomas…”
“ Thommie… I prefer Thommie… with a T-H…”
“ All right, Thommie… can you see your attacker's face?”
“ It's not his face anymore. Changed…distorted… was lovely but now filled with…rage, venom.”
“ Who, Thommie? Who killed you?”
Behind the mirrored wall, Sincebaugh dropped his gaze and muttered, “This is bullshit, Captain.”
Landry waved him off, listening for Dr. Desinor's answer.
“ I thought it was E. You know… said he liked me. Said he liked vulnerable things. But it wasn't E that killed me… what killed me was unusual, queer, demonic, insane. It wasn't E anymore… any more than I'm really me here now.”
“ What do you mean by that, Thommie?”
“ I know I'm being channeled through someone here now…”
“ What does E look like, Thommie, and what does E stand for?” Longette came closer now, leaning in over her unconscious form. “How tall is E?”
“ He's beautiful, really; can't recall real name… full name, but I liked calling him Easy or E. He didn't seem to mind, and he was easy… too easy as it happens… Lied to me… probably lied to me about his relationship with Vic…”
Outside Alex shook his head and repeated the name Vic, telling Landry, “This is just too pat to be real.”
Inside she continued. “What's it they say? If it looks too good to be true, it is! But fine-looking… in heels…”
“ Heels?” Dr. Longette repeated, looking through the glass and shaking his head at this.
There'd been a puncture in the dead boy's forehead at the temple that might match up to a spiked heel, according to Frank Wardlaw's report on 34 East Canal Street.
“ Tall, five-eleven to maybe six-one… two maybe,” continued Dr. Desinor as Thommie Whiley.
“ Weight, Thommie?”
“ Slim, well proportioned, thin but muscular and firm at the same time. A beautiful man, really. Always careful to keep his weight below one-forty, or so he told me on the way.
“ Color of eyes, Thommie?”
“ Usually blue, but green now… definitely green.”
“ Green or blue, Thommie?” Eyes don't change color, Longette was thinking.
“ Not a pretty green, a snake-scale green…when he killed me.”
Dr. Longette looked dubious. “Green eyes or blue, Thommie?” Eyes don 7 change but contacts do. Longette was thinking more and more like the policemen he worked alongside these days.
“ Green…green, insane eyes, but they'd changed.”
“ Any distinguishing marks, birthmarks, scars on E's body? Thommie? Thommie?”
“ E's makeup accentuated a… a strawberry red mark on her left cheek… but it changed too…”
“ Changed? Changed how?”
“ Disappeared. It wasn't there when she killed me.”
Makeup, Longette thought, could cover a strawberry mark, but a transvestite would want to make the most of such a mark. “How did he-she-kill you, Thommie?”
“ Butcher's knife… ran it to the hilt here…” She pointed to her sternum. “Blade was deflected to right of my sternum, sank deep as it would go; put all her weight against it; punctured my right lung and came out the back.”
“ Jot that down,” said the captain into Sincebaugh's ear. “We'll check it against Dr. Coran's report later.”
Sincebaugh reluctantly did as told.
“ Why did E murder you, Thommie? Can you tell me that? Why did he”-Longette paused to mutter a curse to himself- “she, why did she take your heart? What does she do with the hearts?” Longette's voice was melodious, soothing, at odds with his words, and his professional bearing was curtailed for the moment by his curiosity, a curiosity he shared with the entire population of New Orleans.
Desinor took a long time in answering.
“ E did it. She… she wanted my heart, even said so. Said she wanted to keep my heart close to her forever. Knife was in me; my eyes fixed on it; ears ringing, fever rising, but I heard her say, 'I just want your heart, hon… you… you can keep the rest.' “
Kim was writhing on the leather couch, the pain clearly etched in her features. It was hell having to relive Thommie's painful and bloody death all over again, but a small corner of Kim Desinor's mind remained hers, and this part of her looked on and listened as if from a comer of the room above, near the ceiling where her astral self stared down on her form, Dr. Longette and their ghoulish dialogue.
She knew that Dr. Longette was dubious, but she also knew that she'd shown herself to be a person of strong determination, moral fiber and old-fashioned grit, which nobody, not even Sincebaugh behind the glass, could deny.
“ Thommie,” she said now in the third person, “Thommie didn't know until the last moment that he was being killed.”
“ Is that you, Dr. Desinor?”
She didn't directly reply. “He believed that E was on something when he was first knocked to the floor beside the bed; Thommie's head struck the bedpost, but he was in such shock…didn't feel this blow. Instead, he managed to grab onto the baseball bat.”
