“ Where did you get this picture?” Raveneaux demanded.
The general's wife had reappeared, and she went to the photograph as if drawn by a powerful magnet.
“ Why, it's little Victor and Dommie,” she said.
“ Then Victor did have a sister. Dominique?” Kim pressed.
Jessica exchanged a knowing look with Kim, and an anxious Alex Sincebaugh was perched and ready to bound up the stairs, to tear open doors to locate Dominique, his heart still harboring a fiery desire to avenge Ben.
“ And is Dominique here now?” Jessica asked.
The general shushed his wife and answered, saying, “No, no, she's not at present, and even if she were… you see, we've shielded her all her life from any harshness. Even if she were here, gentlemen, she would be of no help to your search.”
“ Shielded her?” asked Kim. “That's right. She doesn't even know about her brother's death. Of… of course she knows of his absence, but we've… I've told her nothing of the nature of…just how Victor died. You see, she's a delicate creature, actually, quite easily disturbed.”
“ Are you telling us that your daughter is retarded?” asked Landry.
Alex stepped before Raveneaux. “Oh, no, General! No way's she getting off. She knows more than all of us put together. No way is she going to cop a…”
Kim pushed between Alex and the general. “What precisely do you mean, sir? With regard to your daughter?”
“ I beg of you, she's… she would be of no help whatever to your investigation, please.” The general took Captain Landry aside, whispering, “The girl has never been quite… well… quite right.”
Landry's piercing look needed no words.
“ She's been in and out of hospitals, has been seen by the best men in medicine. I wish you would not upset her with questions about her brother's death. We've not told her that Victor is dead. It… it could crush her. She loved…continues to love him so. We're… I, rather, I have been waiting for just the right time, but so far… things being so delicate with her condition…”
“ What is your daughter's age, sir?” asked Jessica, while Meade menacingly eyed her and Stephens swelled with zealous gasps.
Alex pressed in. “Do you have a current photo of her nearby?”
“ She's twenty-four, and of course we do,” replied the general's wife, going for the white baby grand piano on top of which perched a bevy of photos of Victor, the general and his wife, along with several of Dominique herself. Returning with one of the photos, she remarked, “Isn't she a lovely child?”
The girl in the photo had close-cropped hair, her appearance quite close to her brother's, save for the piercing, faraway, yet stern and angry serpent's look in her eyes.
“ Where is Dominique now?” Jessica pressed.
“ She's traveling,” the general said with a restraining hand on his wife's forearm, his body language giving his lie away to the trained detectives. “I couldn't quite say precisely where she is at the moment, since she's doing the Continent… in the company of a guardian, of course.”
“ Europe, you mean?” asked Landry.
“ Then you won't mind if we take a look at your daughter's room?” Jessica asked.
“ I see absolutely no reason why you should be the least inter-”
“ Oh, but we're very interested, General,” corrected Alex.
“ Why, it's a lovely room, Maurice. Let them see how we've decorated Dommie's room. Come…” Mrs. Raveneaux obviously enjoyed playing the hostess.
By now the servants had assembled, some six on duty tonight, along with the butler, so Landry said, “I'll talk to these folks, Alex, while you look around.” Landry also asked the deputies to fan out.
“ And look for what?” asked Hodges.
“ Anything out of the ordinary, anything unusual.”
Alex, Jessica and Kim followed behind Mrs. Raveneaux, taking the spiraling staircase for the next floor, the old woman twittering on like a social bird now, talking about Dommie's coming-out party, little Vic's first communion, the time when…
As they approached Dommie's room, the old woman pointed it out as the last at the end of a long corridor, but just before they got to it, Alex and the two FBI agents heard a strange whine. It sounded like a poorly oiled machine of some sort, like grinding gears or Jacob Marley's ethereal but clamoring chains.
“- I try to tell the children they mustn't play rough, that their little heads crack easily… but children are full of the devil and they will be-”
Alex jumped in and cut her off. “Pardon, Mrs. Raveneaux, but what is that noise?”
“ Noise? Noise?”
“ That mechanical grating sound.”
“ Irrrrrk, irrrrrrk, irrrrrrk,” it sounded again.
“ That noise,” Kim said.
The old woman was truly befuddled or deaf. “I don't hear any noise.”
“ Seems to be coming from behind Dom's door.” Alex imagined the bestial blond woman slicing up hearts in super-thin sheaths behind the pearly white door, using a butcher's electric cleaver.
Kim felt her own fear rising. “Why don't you step over here with me, Mrs. Raveneaux,” Kim suggested, seeing that Jessica and Alex were about to burst through the door.
“ It's the dumbwaiter,” Mrs. Raveneaux announced, as though on a TV game show. “Of course, it is.”
After a perfunctory knock, Alex barged through the door, followed immediately by Jessica, their guns drawn. Inside, they found a child's room, filled with frilly lace, white all around, with marching blue-and-red-suited soldiers on the wall, dressed in British colonial uniforms, beating out a cadence in the pattern with big, wide drums, each displaying a cross-like pattern about the chest where each wide white cross-belt met. Kim had seen the marching crossbelts in her visions.
The marching wood. The drummer boys were not real in appearance, but rather intentionally drawn by the artist as so many Pinocchio lookalikes.”Marching crosses, marching woods afire,” said Jessica, recalling Kim's prediction.
“ I don't see any fire,” replied Alex.
“ You'd have to be Dominique to see the fire,” answered Kim from the doorway, her arms protectively enfolding Mrs. Raveneaux. The drone of the dumbwaiter continued, alerting them to the adjoining room, where Alex easily located a small elevator meant to bring trays to and from the room, obviously connected to the kitchen below. The dumbwaiter was large enough for a person of Dominique's size to squeeze into.
“ Yeah, right, traveling the Continent,” muttered Jessica.
“ She's in the kitchen!” cried Alex.
“ Oh, Dommie loves the kitchen. She loves to cook,” replied Mrs. Raveneaux, her hands and arms waving. “Cooks for Daddy and me all the time; makes her own recipes, and she's got the best red bisque you'll ever want to taste, my dear.” She was speaking almost exclusively to Kim now, feeling uneasy with Jessica, who began wildly digging about the closets for anything incriminating, such as a heart in a jar atop a closet shelf, the weapon Dominique used in her attacks, anything. But nothing was forthcoming, not here.
“ What's the quickest way to the kitchen, Mrs. Raveneaux?” Alex pleaded.
“ Little Dommie used to take that dumbwaiter up and down when she was a child. Still is a child in my eyes… always will be…”
“ Stay here with her, Kim, Jessica,” ordered Alex. “I'm going to check out the kitchen.”
“ Not on your life,” replied Jessica over her shoulder. “I'm in this to the finish.”
“ Then find me some damned useful physical evidence here! Keep looking!”
Kim was speaking to Mrs. Raveneaux at the same time, asking, “Then Dommie uses the kitchen often?”
“ Why, yes… yes…”
“ But how does that make your cook feel? Isn't she underfoot, a nuisance?”
“ Oh, we fired the cook some time ago, after Dommie returned home from her… her travels.”
“ Really?”
“ Dommie just insists on preparing our meals. We tried to tell her how unseemly it was, but she'd taken
