“ You need my help?” Alex was sounding flip, but he was mostly curious. Why in God's name was she telephoning him at this hour? Insomnia, inability to sleep knowing someone on the NOPD hadn't fallen for her psychic scam maybe?
“ It's… well, it's… Dr. Coran.” The hesitancy in her voice made Alex sit up in bed.
“ Exactly what's the problem, Dr. Desinor?”
“ She's… Jessica's gone from her hotel room.”
“ Well, she is a big girl, and I'm sure Meade's got someone watching her night and day, so…”
“ You don't understand. She's gone out to one of the cemeteries tonight, and… and…”
“ What, another exhumation?”
“ No, no… nothing of the sort.”
He was getting impatient now. “What then?”
“ I promised her I would tell no one, but I'm terribly worried about her safety, and-”
“ Tell no one what?” He yawned again.
“ That she's meeting with that madman Matisak at the cemetery, to… to have it out with him… alone… do you understand, Alex?”
He went silent, piecing all of it together. The pilot's headless body, the gruesome head dangling at Kim Desinor's hotel room door, the whole, bloody incident hushed up, kept off the police band, the press kept out of it entirely. The murdered pilot turning out to be FBI, a bodyguard assigned to Dr. Coran in the event she fell into peril. Lot of good that had done. He also recalled the strange, thin, tubular little shard of glass which Dr. Coran had plucked from Ed Sand's cheek. Coran had said that she'd have the lab test it for poisonous substances, believing that Sand had been too easily and quickly overpowered for his size and build.
“ Did Matisak contact her directly?” he asked now. “How does she know where to meet him?”
“ I… I can't say. She didn't tell me,” Kim lied badly.
“ Where are you? Are you calling from your hotel room?”
“ Yes. I tried to talk her out of going out there alone, but she's… she's…”
“ Stubborn, bullheaded?” He sounded as if he were speaking of all women.
“ Determined.”
“ Determined to get herself killed?”
“ Determined that no one else should suffer at this fiend's hand so long as she lives. She's begun to blame herself whenever he kills, and he kills often.”
“ Which cemetery is it? I'm on my way there,” he said, getting to his feet.
“ Swing by here and pick me up first. I want to be with you.”
“ If there's a chance this bastard shows up, Doctor, I can't put you in jeopardy.”
“ You pick me up, or I don't tell you where she's gone, Lieutenant. Swing by and I'll be waiting out front.”
“ There's no time to argue, Doctor.”
“ Then don't waste time doing so!” She hung up and hung onto the information he so needed.
A half hour later, with Alex still replaying their one-sided last conversation in his head, he and Kim were racing toward Metairie Cemetery, Alex's dome light flashing. Kim was clearly upset and agitated, obviously tom between what was right and what was necessary. She'd made a promise and had had to renege on it, her conscience not allowing anything else.
“ God,” she moaned, “I should've called you earlier.”
“ What made you change your mind?”
“ No psychic visions or anything of that sort, I can assure you. Just old-fashioned remorse and fear. If anything's happened to her…”
“ We'll get there in time.”
“ Is that a good ol' New Orleans gaar-ron-tee?” she asked in a moment of jest.
He put the accelerator to the floor.
“ Are you going to level with me now, Doctor?” he suddenly asked.
A car pulled from the curb ahead and was planning to tum onto an adjacent, facing street. Alex laid on the horn and aswerved in one fluid motion, the other driver stomping his brakes and Alex weaving around to miss the other car by mere inches on the passenger side where she sat. Kim could feel the metal on her side suck in its breath and arch inward to avoid the impact; it was that close.
“ Stupid moron!” Alex uselessly shouted to the other driver, who, in the rearview mirror some fifty yards back now, sat frozen, likely in a state of shock.
Kim mentally agreed with Alex's assessment of the man who'd failed to signal, but she also thought Alex had only made the situation worse, that there was a streak of reckless-ness in him. They could hardly afford a collision at the moment.
But as Alex ignored the near-fatal lesson, they continued to soar along at sixty and seventy down the quiet backstreets he'd selected to reach the cemetery grounds, the strobe light atop the vehicle pulsating like a living heart, telling everyone to get out of the way.
Kim stared at Alex's determined profile. Obviously, to him, a guarantee was a guarantee.
“ Are you going to tell me the truth about what's going on here between Jessica Coran and this madman Matisak?''
“ The bastard's become obsessed with wanting to kill her and kill her slowly, by draining her of her blood.”
“ Damnit, I know all that. I want to know how Matisak contacted her, and what the hell's going on in her head that she'd be so goddamned foolish as to come out here alone Now, how did he contact her?”
“ By phone, I think…she wouldn't tell me.”
“ For a psychic, you sure have a problem telling lies, Dr. Desinor.”
She looked curiously over at him as the speed of the car rocked it against the impact of old brick streets in this district. “Am I to take that as a compliment? Coming from you, I would judge yes.”
“ Well, what you did with our police shrink, that was really something. My partner ran the names and numbers and you were right on about Thommie Marie Dumond Whiley.”
“ I'm only glad that I can be of help here, Alex, but you've got to know that by now. I never wanted to oust anyone from the investigation, and I hope you no longer feel threatened by my-”
“ Threatened? I never felt threatened by you, Doctor.”
“ Ahh, well… good then… good.”
“ And it's time we stopped feuding.”
“ Agreed.”
“ Or withholding information from one another.”
She nodded and replied, “How much further to the cemetery?”
“ Five, ten minutes tops.”
“ You mean if we don't run over somebody or into something?”
“ You let me worry about the driving.”
“ Always…” She hesitated saying more.
He glanced over, catching a glint of amusement in her eye. “What's that suppose to mean?”
“ Oh, nothing…just that you always seem to be in need of the wheel. A control freak.”
“ No, that isn't so. I just have to first trust in a guy or a lady who's at the wheel before I'll put my life in his or her hands. Is that asking so much?”
A stock cop answer, she thought, but she only replied, “No… no, I don't think so.”
Then they were at the cemetery, and Alex plowed through the gate, sending it in two directions, his headlights careening off the pale, staring tombstones and crypt walls, the strobe sending crazy shadows in all directions.
Alex ordered her to stay with the car as he leapt from the seat and tore out his. 38 police special. He rushed to the trunk and located a twelve-gauge shotgun, and then he headed out into the darkness beyond the headlights of the car-as if he were going down to the river to fish for bass, she thought.
She quickly exited the car and fell in behind him.
“ Damnit, do you ever do as told, Kim?”
