inchworm fashion over his mind, coming on at first softly to tickle his psyche, a playful half-formed, seeking- cohesion, heat-seeking idea of a lifetime. At first slow to form and coalesce and live fully, the idea had in the past few months-since killing Dr. Gabriel Arnold with his own dialysis machine-begun to chase through Matisak's consciousness like a steam engine bound nonstop for Hades, and now… finally… years in the making… it was here in New Orleans that the complete beauty of this perfect notion had come to pure fruition like the blossom on a passionate flower. She must come to him now… come for him, unable to help herself any longer. She would do so alone. He knew that she would abandon all her training, that she knew, like him, that eternity was waiting for them to step into its waiting void together.
She would come for the same reason that he must beckon her: They were locked into meeting their death angels at the same instant in time. For all eternity hereafter they must grapple with one another. Besides, she was noble and nobles like her couldn't help themselves, not really, not after all the numbers who'd died in her place because she was so noble. She must feel great remorse for the others; it was not in her makeup to feel otherwise, especially with the last person to take her sacrificial place-this special agent named Sand whose cover as a pilot might have fooled Jessica but had not fooled him. The fool had led him directly to her.
He had learned of her relocation to New Orleans on temporary assignment through a series of phone calls, pretending an urgent message from her last tour of duty office in Honolulu. He had even learned the name of the Hawaii bureau chief, a man named James Parry, and he had used this name to gel information about her whereabouts and current operation, tracking down this Queen of Hearts pervert. Think of it, he told himself now, some sick bastard's going around ripping out the hearts, likely cannibalizing them. “And they call me sick,” he said aloud to the wind, a nearby doorman in a phony general's uniform giving him a dubious look, having overheard him.
Matisak moved on down the street. He wasn't surprised to leam that his Jessica had tackled the gruesome case that had all of New Orleans in turmoil. He'd been reading about the case, which had been making national headlines, and there had been talk of FBI involvement, and the moment he'd read ol it, he'd somehow known that Jessica would come here. This hunch, and a little fast talk with some lab technician he'd managed to reach inside Quantico after several other people had disconnected, had been enough to seal Jessica's fate. She'd come from hot, humid D.C. to the even steamier jazz capital of the world to party with a monster, do a little Mardi Gras of her own. But he was the monster that was going to get her, not this heart-eating bastard who went for gays and cross- dressers.
He needed now only to bide his time. Killing Special Agent Sand was his first calling card. Maybe now he'd take out another of her bodyguards, the guy who was in the car across the street from her hotel for the past two nights, the guy whom Ed Sand had shared a great deal of time with, another of Jessica's bodyguards.
Jessica must know by now that she was being watched by others ordered by the Bureau to protect her. She'd no doubt found a way out of the hotel and was on her way to Metairie Cemetery by now, but in the meantime, Matisak wanted to make her feel safe from all these prying eyes.
He moved toward the car and stepped behind and around it, to knock at the passenger-side window. The man inside rolled the window down, expecting his replacement perhaps.
“ Who the hell're you?”
Matisak's tongue pushed forth a miniature blowgun and he puffed once hard, sending the thin, deadly shard of a needle into the FBI agent's throat along with some spittle. The tiny dart brought on an instant seizure of the heart, respiratory paralysis, vomiting for a few agonizing moments, then full paralysis and death. It was a fine drug, this Jericho rose, and he'd read with amusement that if bees pollinated their honey with it, they would create poisonous honey. Nature's a wonderful thing, he thought.
Matisak got in beside the man and pulled forth a thick loop of wire attached to two small handles that fit nicely into his large hands. The wire, which he placed around the dying man's head, he began to twist, using the handles around one another in tourniquet fashion. Pressure against the throat was instantaneous, the blood careening forth from veins and arteries along the throat, all this before the man's bulging eyes popped completely.
Matisak now viciously twisted the wire until the man's head slumped forward, having nothing but the top of the spinal column to hold it on. A good pull, and the head came off in its entirety to land bowling-ball-fashion in Matisak's bloodied hands.
Lapping at the blood from time to time, much of it washing the dash and interior window, he was tempted to drink heavily from this fount, but he mustn't. The little darts with the concentrated poison had worked extremely well and effectively, so he knew that he mustn't consume very much of the man's blood. The fast-acting toxin would have worked its way through the man's system even as he'd severed the arteries.
He was pleased with his simple and crude decapitator. It was an effective way to deal with those who stood between him and her, and there were few killings more disturbing than decapitation murders, so he'd have the police looking for a serial killer whose patterns resembled anything but those of Matthew Matisak, while at the same time he'd be telling Jessica Coran exactly what he needed to tell her.
He was saving himself up for her like a virgin groom. He meant to feed on her alone now.
Having removed the head completely now, he balanced it back atop the agent's bloodied throat just long enough to snatch out the folded leather pouch he carried with him. He opened the small leather bag and now removed the man's head for a second time, placing it, dripping and spoiled with perspiration and blood, into the bag.
Checking his watch, he knew he had to hurry out to Metairie. He wanted to be there far in advance of the moon and long before his sweet Jessica might arrive. There were, after all, provisions to be made.
He placed the head-filled bag in the rear of the vehicle with a slight tossing movement. It hit the seat, bounced readily and came to rest on the floorboard, all quite neat, no blood rivulets and stringy matter clinging to the cushions. He next got out of the car and manfully dragged what was left of Fouintenac- whose cover likely disguised his true name-over to the passenger side of the black sedan. He then quickly got behind the wheel and turned on the ignition, and in a moment Matthew Matisak moved the death car into traffic, following the highway signs for Metairie.
Stepping from out of a black entryway at Orleans and Esplanade Avenues, a lifelong resident of New Orleans, Chester Lewis, wiped his forehead of sweat. He'd lived a long life at seventy-two years of age, and before tonight, before moments ago, he'd believed that he'd seen all things human and awful, but tonight he had witnessed the worst brutality in his experience.
He took several more pulls on his Red Label, gulping the liquid down as if life depended on it, wondering if he ought to tell somebody what he'd seen, wondering if his son would listen to him, or maybe Maybelle Saunders, his landlady and girlfriend. What should he do? He wondered if he'd just become the only witness to a Queen of Hearts murder, or more likely a murder by some new monster. Maybe he'd just tell his son and Maybelle… maybe…
“ Jesus, tell me, what is dis world coming to anyhow?” he asked the dark street and the handful of transients and pas-sersby, who just stared at him as if he were a freak. “What is yo world coming to, Jesus?” he drunkenly repeated.
He could be a good Boy Scout, play by the rules, but what could he tell anybody? He was near blind, and even nearer drunk when he saw what he saw, and who was going to listen to an old retired nigger bus driver anyhow? The governor? Sure. The mayor maybe, or perhaps the police commissioner? He laughed at the idea, but his nerves, his eyes and his conscience were already preying on him. Just a few years ago the city had finally begun to hire black cabdrivers in what was once an all-white profession. He had to do his duty. Maybe if somebody had just come forward and done their duty before now, lives would have been saved.
“ Christ-on-my-knee, what chance anybody gonna wanna hear what I gots to say,” he told himself aloud.
Still, he did know the license plate on the car. He'd been frozen in place by what he had witnessed from the doorway where he'd been resting and drinking; he'd been there long enough to memorize the license plate as he'd had a clear view of it, just as he'd had a clear view of the attack. He'd seen the man inside slouch over like he was shot by some silent bullet. He had seen the man's head cut clean away. Seen it all through the back window from where he sat, his feet against one doorjamb, his back to the other.
“ God, that killer-man waza mostest brazen human bein' I ever seen in all my days. Damned if he didn't move like the Devil hisself,” he quietly warned himself, ambling toward home, still debating with himself as to what he should do, still wondering why the hunched-over, bloated guy who did the killing had taken off the man's head to
