only his rage and instinct, hurling himself toward the window. Half in and half out the window, he realized only now that a sudden storm had blotted out the sky with ominous and inky clouds, ready to burst forth with a heavy rain, the sweet, metallic smell of it insinuating as much, while all around him the wind swept in angry eddies, rattling the fire escape, a backlash of the hurricane.
The woman calling herself Michael Dominique had vanished with little trace of ever having been here, but she'd mercifully dropped or had decided to leave Ben's now-still heart on the wrought-iron fire escape two flights below, where it hadn't met with a gentle landing. Having obviously decided to race on without the organ she'd killed for, she had instead bounded acrobatically up or down the fire escape, and now like a vicious killer out of an Edgar Allan Poe story, the monster had been swallowed up in the stormy New Orleans night.
“ What in the name of God happened here, Detective?” asked Hanson, Hirschenfeldt's partner, in an accusatory tone, grabbing hold of Alex at the windowsill.
“ Never mind that! Beat hell back to your unit. Tell 'em what we have here. I want men scouring the area, including the roof and adjacent buildings. It's the Hearts killer, damn you, and he's a she… a she pretending to be a he, pretending to be a she.”
All the other policemen stared at him, wondering what he was babbling. “The killer's a woman pretending to be a transvestite,” he said, attempting to clarify, “and she gets them that way. Lulls them into a false sense of security and then lets fly with that damned knife of hers.”
He started out the window after the killer.
“ Where're you going?” asked the older of the two uniforms, his partner on the way to the unit, the two IAD guys useless, wide-eyed and gaping.
“ After her.” Alex yanked free of Hanson's grasp and climbed out onto the fire escape, trying to find any clue as to which direction she'd taken, up or down. From the look of the undisturbed dust below him, he opted for going straight up.
“ I think she's on the roof. Send backup as soon as you can!”
Alex raced for the roof, taking the steps two at a time until a powerful gust of wind threatened to lift him over the side. He held on more firmly, and once he'd made it to the top of the roof, he stared across at the expanse, having trouble standing, the powerful wind threatening to send him back over the side without aid of the fire escape. He hunkered down low to the black-tar roof, scanning in a 360-degree turn for every possible avenue of escape. There were hiding places everywhere, and the roof was closely aligned with another.
Something told him it was useless, that she was gone, and only then did he realize just how much blood covered his shirt. Both of his forearms were crisscrossed with knife wounds where he'd fended off the bitch's blows. His shirt and coat were caked with his and Big's blood. He felt a sudden light headedness, an inability to focus, and not even the wind could calm the stench of blood now in his nostrils. He felt an overwhelming sense of loss engulf him, realizing that when he went back down off this roof, he'd never again speak to Ben or be yelled at by the big goon.
A cold, bitter rain began to fall over Alex, drenching his hair, melting his tears and washing his wounds. It was the last thing he felt or remembered before blacking out.
32
Envy's a coal comes hissing hot from hell.
Alex, still wracked with pain from his own wounds, had cornered the sadistic Hearts killer, and he had destroyed the monster, at least in his fevered mind where he slept in hospital.
After the storm had subsided, after his wounds had stopped palpitating, he found himself chasing Thommie Whiley's E, alias Dominique, out that window in Surette's apartment. E leaped manfully from building to building, as if capable of flight, but Alex was also up to the challenge, despite the profuse bleeding from his wounds-stitches already in place and torn now. Regardless, his dream ego kept on the killer's heels, shadowing every move, every dodge.
The killer made one leap too many for a wall too far, landing on the other side and barely holding on with those ugly clawlike fingernails Alex so vividly recalled now. The bastard was a guy wearing fake nails and even a set of false breasts which dangled below his shirt.
“ Help! Help me!” screamed the bloody killer who had just brutalized Ben.
Alex backed up and made a prodigious leap across the crevasse between them, miraculously landing on the black-topped roof. He then crawled on his belly to where the SOB clung to his/her petty life there at the ledge.
The killer's pleading eyes were framed in fear, a cowardly creature with heavy makeup, rouge at the cheeks and thick, red lipstick, a kind of crazed clown.
“ Pull me up, damn you! Pull me up, now!” she/he cried in a falsetto voice.
Alex grabbed hold of the killer's flesh and found it soft to the touch, feminine and warm. This startled him, and he looked again into Dominique's eyes. He was a she, she was a he… and then back again. There was no earthly way to tell, save for the ferocity of his/her strength as she/he clung now to Alex, ripping into Alex's skin with those bird-of-prey claws of his/hers.
“ Let her fly, Sincy,” said Ben deYampert, standing alongside, having materialized from the cloud of dream. “Let's see how well the bitch flies.”
“ Save me, you must… you must save me!” came the killer's plea, piercing and painful to his ear.
“ Kill it, Alex… whatever it is… kill it!” demanded Ben's vengeful spirit. “You owe me that much!”
Alex couldn't easily let go even though he wished to fulfill Big's last request. His struggle with himself was nothing compared to the struggle against her clawing, bloodletting grip; in fact the connection between them, killer and hunter, became so slick with blood that it was the red milk of life which soon and ironically made it impossible for the monster to hold onto Alex any longer.
She/he slid in minute increments, one lurch at a time, from Alex's grip. He was unsure whether he wanted the fiend to die so easily or not. He wanted to see the thing suffer as he had suffered the loss of his friend, and as he had seen Surette and Thommie Whiley and other victims of the Queen of Hearts killer suffer. He wanted to rip the bastard's heart out, make it a clean, even, full-circled kind of revenge, but too, amid all the rage and chaos of the moment, Alex also pleaded to have his curiosity quenched.
“ Tell me where the hearts are kept and what you do with them, and I'll save you!” he lied.
But the blood slick created from the gushing wounds and a handful of bloody human hearts the maniac clung to was too much, and the moment the monster sailed away into the oblivion of the pit below Alex's dream self, he awakened with one resolve.
Sweating, his wrists in pain from the imaginary rents and tears inflicted on him, Alex had recalled the one word the ugly demon had whispered to him when he'd asked where she kept the hearts: Raveneaux.
He opened his eyes to find that he was not at home but in a hospital room surrounded by Captain Landry, Kim Desinor and Dr. James Aubrey Longette, the hypnotist and shrink.
“ The regression therapy worked, Alex. You've told us everything that happened in that room,” Kim assured him.
Landry was staring out the hospital window, quietly cursing to himself and repeating the name Raveneaux.
Even Dr. Longette knew what the name stood for in New Orleans and Louisiana.
“ Just who or what is this Raveneaux?” asked Jessica, who looked on behind a concerned Kim Desinor.
“ Big plantation home north of the city,” replied Landry.
“ Home to Senator Raveneaux, retired General George Maurice Raveneaux,” added Dr. Longette with some bemused delight. “How could that old upstanding white cracker man know anything about these horrible killings? How could the killer be connected to one of the most powerful men in the state?” The doctor was awestruck, yet jaded enough to accept the possibility. “You know, to this day some people believe that Jack the Ripper was born of royal blood and lived in Windsor Castle.”
