Landry nodded knowingly and muttered, “Battle scars.” Then his tone changed to one of accusation. “You never left this room, did you, Dr. Desinor?”
“ I've been in and out… for coffee and whatnot.”
“ Oh, leave her alone, Carl,” said Jessica, playfully shoving Landry. “Can't you see she's worried about Alex? Nothing wrong in that.”
Landry, a bit uncomfortable with the joviality, spoke directly to Alex. “Alex, I talked with Ben's wife while you were out… tough, tough business. Meanwhile, I've been busy. Got something here I pulled from Surette's apartment. I'm sure it belonged to the killer we're after, and he or she, as you suspect, would've worn it close to his… ahh, her body. Look familiar?”
“ She, Captain,” Alex said, sure of himself. “He-our killer-is a she. It's the same she that killed Thommie Whiley. Calls herself Michael Emanuel Dominique, Thommie's E for Easy… pretends to be a man who likes to dress as a woman, but those breasts of hers were real enough.”
“ Any rate, he or she likely wore these beads close to the skin, and in the scuffle with Ben, they were torn off.” Landry held a set of dark rosary beads up to Kim's eyes. “Look familiar?” This time there was a red-eyed gargoyle on the amulet along with a skull and crossbones, but the gargoyle had not been as cleanly fused to the rosary as the earlier crystal amulet had been. “This too.” He pulled forth a pair of lacy, round cards with the image of a queen of hearts on them, along with two brushes and eyeliners, a comb and a handheld mirror.
“ There weren't any convenient photos lying around with her picture on them by any chance?” asked Jessica.
“ We… I retrieved the damned cards, incidental items; nothing as useful as a photograph was in the place. It was as if it were being used as a dressing room only; nothing but water, Diet Pepsi, cheese and bread in the fridge.”
“ No, not a thing in the way of paper in that place,” Alex said, “I'd just been remarking about that to Ben when he saw the card below the couch, and that's when all hell broke loose. That's why it was so eerie, because the place was cleaned out after Surette was killed long before we got there that first time almost a year ago, and the place had remained almost exactly the same since. I should've known then how dangerous this wacko-creep was… I should've known; should've felt it and gone with my instincts, but not me… not this time… Still, she didn't look strong enough to hurt a fly, much less Big. Damn me… damn me, anyway…”
“ Beating up on yourselfs not going to accomplish anything, Alex.” Kim said, returning to him, her hands going to his shoulder in a consoling squeeze.
Landry cleared his throat and added, “The bad news is I'm still working on a court order for a search and seizure out at Raveneaux, but-”
“ Whataya mean? What's the flaming holdup, Captain?” asked Alex, his agitation showing clearly on his brow.
“ Even in the best of circumstances, Alex, you know how these things can take time, and this is hardly the best of circumstances. We don't have a whole hell of a lot to go on. We have the word of a cop who thinks he heard the killer shout the name Raveneaux as the place where he or she plants the victims' hearts, and we only have that through hypnosis, which doesn't always fly with the justices, as you also know. Now-”
“ Gotta be somebody over in the courthouse who'll listen to you, Carl.”
“ I'm working on it. Now let's do what we can to improve our chances. For that, we need your help, Dr. Desinor.”
Landry went to the blinds and drew them against the afternoon sun, darkening the room, knowing now how Kim preferred to work. Everyone became silent while she ran her fingertips gently over the items which Carl had brought her. She got nothing at first, the items cold and useless. The first card she held in her hand, like the rosary, yielded little, something about black birds, possibly crows or ravens filling in a night sky, yet fixed there as in a still life; they were large birds with evil eyes and worse intentions, but that was all she was getting. She picked up the second card, and got a disturbing wave of information.
“ The killer has no sense of compunction. He… she hates her victims with great intensity. They have all taken something precious from her and like a child, she is confused about her own identity…”
The two NOPD policemen and Jessica Coran listened for Kim's every word now.
“ She strikes out with the venom of a child that has been wronged.”
“ How can she be taking back what is hers by tearing out the hearts of others?” Jessica asked, puzzled.
“ If I were a clinical psychologist, I wouldn't have any problem with that, but I couldn't tell you for sure.”
“ Kim, is the killer… is she… are you saying that then killer is at this place called Raveneaux?” asked Jessica.
She was no fool. If she said yes, then Landry could take this information back to the right judge, the one who believed in the power of psychics and thereby assure his warrant.
If she said no, and she was by no means certain of it, they might not get the warrant which Alex was so certain would net them their strongest lead yet on the Hearts killer.
“ Yes or no, Doctor?” pressed Jessica.
“ Yes,” she lied.
“ All right, that tears it,” Landry gruffly replied.
“ You think you'll have any luck getting a judge to sign on this, Carl?” asked Alex, pulling up to his elbows.
“ I'm down to the bottom of the barrel, but yes, I believe so.”
“ So, you're taking it to Judge Flint then?”
“ 'Bout the size of it. Nobody but nobody wants to touch this with a ten-foot flagpole, pal.”
Alex didn't particularly care about how they got the warrant to search, so long as they got it, but Flint's reputation being what it was, he worried nonetheless about what might happen on the other side of it when, after they apprehended the Queen of Hearts killer, the legal loopholes started to work in favor of the fiend.
“ I see. A black judge to issue a warrant against a plantation home. Make good copy for the National Enquirer. Very good, Cap'n, but you know that going through so many judges and their clerks, you've tipped the entire legal community to unfolding events. Someone's sure to call out there.”
“ One stroke of fortune. The power lines up that way got hit by eighty-five-mile-an-hour winds. No phone calls going in or out thataway, and we get ourselves a legit warrant in the meantime.”
Alex laughed harshly. “Even if it's from a boozy old derelict who's up on child abuse charges-pending, of course.” Jessica began pacing the room. “How soon do you think we can get the warrant?” she asked. “Every moment we lose, the killer gains.”
“ How about right this moment?”
“ What?” Landry made the warrant materialize before them in magician fashion.
“ But… how'd you do that? I thought you needed Kim's added info about the items here,” Jessica said as Kim blinked.
“ I told Flint it'd already been done, and I told him the results. It's on file. I felt a need for speed too.”
“ Great. Then we'd best go now.” Alex got up from his hospital bed without any pain this time-or without enough to matter. He located his clothes, and was soon dressed and prepared to walk out with them. In ten minutes they were outside in Landry's squad car, headed across town for Rave-neaux's Georgetown home, the warrant actually covering all properties belonging to the distinguished former general and senator.
The servants, who hadn't seen the master in several months, were astonished and put out by the gestapo- like intrusion into their world, but a search revealed nothing save a framed photograph of a pair of children, a boy and a girl, the boy barely five or six, the girl a head taller, her arm draped protectively around him. When pressed for who the children were, the servants could only say that they were the senator's two children, Victor and Dominique.
Soon after, the squad car was turning off Interstate 10, darting through the countryside where Raveneaux stretched on for miles in the darkness beyond the windshield. Jessica and the others had seen the first sign on the first gate leading onto the property six or seven minutes before when the headlight beams had picked it up. Now they'd passed no less than six additional gates. Out on the meadows beyond the gates, cows lulled in the night. There were horses and sheep and pigs out there as well, and field upon field of sugarcane.
They were less than twenty miles northwest of the New Orleans city limits, on a rural road in Ascension Parish now, just down from Interstate 10. The countryside here was flat for the most part, but it had become so
