stuck with your kin and their sins, right? Victor, your son, is somehow at the heart of all these nasty deaths.”
“ Do you know of a man or a woman named Michael Emanuel Dominique?” Kim asked the general.
“ You're not obligated to answer any of these questions, General Raveneaux,” cautioned a gray-haired, three-piece suit, likely a lawyer.
“ Be that as it may, we have a court order here saying we can search the premises and all outbuildings and mobile units.” Landry informed the man, depositing the papers in his hands as he ascended the porch stairs.
Alex added, “And we're here to exercise that right tonight, before things go cold on us and people wash out their unmentionables.”
Raveneaux looked to his powerful friends for support. Meade took the court order from the lawyer, scanned it as the lawyer had and said, “Ridiculous… Judge Flint… that natty-haired neegra booze-hound's got some nerve. He won't be able to sit on a park bench after this.”
“ Let me have that,” added Stephens, tearing it from Meade, ripping it to shreds and throwing it at Landry's feet like a gauntlet. “That's what I think of a warrant from Judge Homer Flint.” Landry stared in disbelief at Stephens. “What the hell're you men covering up here?”
“ Stand down, Carl.”
“ No, Richard, I won't.”
“ You men,” shouted Stephens to the uniformed cops who'd come in behind the detectives. “Arrest Captain Landry and Detective Sincebaugh. They're trespassing here.”
Landry and Sincebaugh snatched out their weapons almost in unison, backing to each side, Alex tugging at Kim to stay close to him, Jessica siding with them, her own. 38 raised and poised. The uniformed deputies, confounded, not knowing what to do, looked to their sheriff, a man named Hodges, for a sign.
Hodges calmly presented Meade and Stephens with the federal warrant given him by Jessica then he just as calmly stepped off the porch and told his men, “Boys, we're here to uphold the law as I see it, and these fellas might be pricks and assholes with nothing worth a lick of sulfur to base their allegations on, but… they got a federal warrant, so they got a right to serve that warrant. We back 'em.”
Alex felt a sense of relief fill his chest, and Landry put his weapon away in a show of good faith, saying, “Thanks, Sheriff Hodges.” Jessica Coran was the last to holster her weapon.
Hodges looked up at the general and apologetically appealed to the others with a shrug. “Let's just get this damned search over, boys, so's these folks can go back to the peaceful business of their lives. Whataya say, Commissioner, Chief Meade?”
“ I'm giving the orders here,” countered Meade. “This is an official FBI matter now, so you men will do as I say!” Meade's eyes were surveying the situation, and as he spoke, he reached for his weapon.
Kim shouted, “Don't do it, Meade! You'll be dead before you hit the stairs.” She had a gun trained on him.
“ This is rank insubordination, Agent Desinor. I'll have you up on charges.”
Alex stared at her, his mouth open wide, finally repeating the word, “Agent?”
“ FBI,” she admitted, her mind's eye filling with an image of a raging Paul Zanek storming about his office, wanting to know why she'd drawn her weapon against the New Orleans bureau chief. “Are we going to get on with this search, General Raveneaux? Or will you be responsible for bloodshed on your lawn?”
“ Davis, Scully,” Captain Landry said to the two uniforms he'd gotten to know a bit. “Take Chief Meade's weapon and any that Commissioner Stephens is packing.”
The officers hesitated, staring at one another for the courage to take the first step.
“ Just do it!” shouted Hodges, startling his men into action to defuse the explosive standoff.
Now Jessica had joined Kim, the two of them holding guns on three of the most prominent citizens in New Orleans. “I sure hope we know what the hell we're doing, Kim,” Jessica whispered.
“ All right, do your blasted search,” the general announced. “Search all you want, but you won't find a thing, not a damned thing other than our son's body out there in the tomb where it belongs, and there's no law against that.”
“ There are laws against body-snatching even today, sir,” Jessica said, “and when you failed to come forward to announce the true identity of a murder victim, you were withholding vital information in a murder investigation. And that doesn't sit well with the courts, because you inadvertently contributed to the deaths of other victims of the Hearts killer, sir, and most judges don't take kindly to that sort of behavior, no matter who you are.”
“ Get on with it,” snarled Stephens.
“ We… we'll cooperate in any way we can,” squeaked Mrs. Raveneaux, who'd silently floated back out onto the porch, hoping to fend off trouble, though no one knew how. “Won't we, Maurice?”
“ Yes, I suppose we haven't a choice… not at gunpoint at any rate. Barney,” he spoke directly to his lawyer, “are you getting all this? We're going to have grounds for a hell of a suit against these hooligans.”
“ We quite understand your concerns, gentlemen. Please, do what you have come for,” the frail Mrs. Raveneaux cooed forth in the best tinkling tones of Southern hospitality, as if they'd come for tea or mint juleps.
Jessica sensed a childishness in the woman, perhaps a feeblemindedness, the sort that comes with having to bury one's only son. There was a warm exchange of looks between the old general and his wife. Jessica unaccountably made her own exchange of glances with Kim, Kim somehow telling her that she'd just had the same emotional response to Mrs. Raveneaux.
“ Then be done with it!” the general shouted. “And then you people, you included, Meade-Stephens, take your entire fucking circus and get the hell off my place!”
“ Why, Maurice, is that any way to speak to visitors!” Mrs. Raveneaux said, bringing him up soundly.
“ Get inside, Coretta. Get to your sitting room, dear. Go now, dear… go.”
She timidly did as told, leaving them all to stare after her.
“ Alzheimer's… can be so awful,” the general said “yet I must admit her lack of understanding has saved her from any disgrace in this sordid matter.”
Jessica wondered which matter he referred to, the search, the body-snatching, or the fact their son was gay and had lived under an assumed name. In a window overhead, Jessica thought she saw a sash move against the pane.
“ I think there's someone inside the house,” she muttered under her breath to Kim.
“ Could be servants; they've got to have a houseful to maintain a place of this size.”
“ In that case, maybe we should've come with a larger army.”
“ You kidding? All we need is one good psychic to point the way.”
Jessica, Landry, Alex and Kim went inside the enormous mansion, finding it lit with expensive Waterford crystal chandeliers in almost every room on the main floor. It was three stories high with sixty-four rooms, large enough for any suspect to hide in for days, if he or she so wished.
“ I want you to ring for all your servants, General,” Alex said. “We have a few questions for anyone in your employ.”
“ This is preposterous.”
“ Just do it now!”
The general nodded to a frail, thin man now standing beside him, the butler. “Right away, sir,” the butler said.
“ Tell me, General, did your son, Victor, spend much time in the servants' quarters?” Kim asked. “Did he play as a child with any of the servants' children?”
A slight hesitation preceded the general's response, “No… it was not permitted.”
“ Well, then, did he have any brothers or sisters to play with?”
“ You will not be questioning my entire household or family about these horrid matters,” he insisted.
“ We can do this here, sir, or at the precinct in downtown New Orleans,” Landry stated.
“ Then Victor did have a sister, didn't he? Is she the girl in this photograph?” Kim asked, handing the framed photo to Raveneaux. When Landry had pulled his car inside the gates of Raveneaux, Kim had had a dreamlike vision of children playing on the lawn here at the plantation, and there were more than several children in the vision. It was a peaceful spectral image, until one of the children began badly bleeding from a cut. It had occurred so quickly, even in the vision, that there was no telling where the cut had come from, but it had to do with one of the children.
