Jack began to wonder at first, and soon after he confronted her, and when she confided in him her strange, unexplainable power, he soon began a somber campaign to distance himself from her. It started slowly at first, like a rape victim's partner who was unable to cope with the situation, but step by painstaking step, he sure footedly waltzed away and into the background of her life without giving her the courtesy of an honest explanation. When she confronted him, it became achingly clear that he was unable to deal with the new reality that lay before them like a granite stone in a Dali desert vision. There was no reviving the lost life of their relationship. Put simply, he was frightened off.
It wasn't long after that she was unofficially drummed out of the Department and off the force, and this compelled her to go into private practice as a psychic while she finished up her doctorate in psychology. She'd gone from a member of the force, where she'd been accepted, to a lone wolf, called in on cases all over the country, but seldom if ever in Florida, and never in the Miami vicinity.
That was why Paul Zanek was so damned attractive to her when he'd first proposed that she go through FBI training and become an agent. He'd been in Miami on a case in which FBI assistance was needed, and somehow he'd gotten wind of the woman who, in cop circles, had come to be known variously as a Psi-co cop, a Private Psi, 3rd Eye Psi, Cop Hazel, Spooky K.D., Taro-Cop, Ol' Faithful or the Psi-clops cop.
Given the circumstances and the time element, Paul Zanek dared not speak of a psychic division being contemplated by the FBI, but it was obvious he both knew of her reputation and was not put off by it. Little wonder, a year later, she was in his arms.
Now this, she thought: New Orleans and a bloodthirsty killer feeding on hearts, and Paul thousands of miles away, getting his staid life back in order while her own was once again a shambles. Even before the plane had landed and the limousine filled with dignitaries sent for Jessica Coran, with Sincebaugh sent to bring her along as an afterthought, she'd sensed trouble in the air over New Orleans, that this bright morning would find a large and ugly stain upon the sun drenched mecca for party-goers.
“ Bastard seems insatiable and the guys at headquarters have placed odds on what the creep's doing with the hearts,” said Alex Sincebaugh, who'd drifted from Dr. Coran to her now. “Ten to one down at the precinct says he's doing a Jeffrey Dahmer thing with them, 'fry pan and biscuit gravy,' you know.”
“ I'm not so sure,” Kim managed, her mind elsewhere. She now forced herself to think about her first impression of the body. She'd had to lean far out over the dock to stare down at the cold spot in the water where-she'd been informed- the body had bobbed like a bloated cork for an hour before they could get a diving team prepped and in the water to place the halter over and around it. He was nude from the waist up, his chest cavity picked clean by feeding fish, the heart long since gone. The pasty, white skin had sloughed away, leaving only the dermis layer, which would make fingerprinting more difficult for Jessica, but thanks to new technology, not impossible. The body was in one piece, and the teeth also might help in identifying the victim.
No mean trick for the divers earlier in the water to handle the body with any gentility, even here in the Old South, Kim thought now, wondering how many of the psychic emanations had been bled off by both the watery environ and the earlier handling of the body. At the same time, she was wondering just how difficult it was going to be working with Jessica Coran, wondering what kind of miraculous expectations the woman anticipated from Kim, and if Kim's calls should fall short of Jessica's expectations what the other woman's reaction might be. And again Kim helplessly wondered if Jess'd be reporting daily back to Chief Paul Zanek.
Agent Coran had already said she'd become desperate, that Kim was something of a last resort. But Kim knew she had to shake loose from these constricting, petty concerns if she was to be of any use whatsoever here this morning. She worked hard now to mentally compose herself, to locate the necessary serenity required within her self to receive whatever slight message or messages she might from the corpse. Now that Jessica and the evidence-gatherers were out of her way, she came closer to the body.
The victim's features were larger than in life, as the facial skin had bloated to blowfish size, along with the fattened limbs. The torso was flat, not at all swollen, more in the man-ner of a deflated balloon, what with the huge gash there. While Kim hadn't been present at the time, she was receiving playback images of the body as it was removed from the river: The total effect when the body was raised on the crane's cables was that of a hideous, grotesque crab, a lifeless marionette.
The body was judged to be tall, rangy in life, and like the previous victims, he'd been young, early twenties, late teens maybe. He'd likely prove-once they learned who he'd been-a lively, vivacious and good-natured young man, liked by all who knew him, with family of one kind or another who loved him, either despite or because of his lifestyle. All previous victims, save yesterday's, had been identified as known gays living in and around the city.
It all reminded Kim of a case she'd worked some years before in Florida, where a madman had decided that seven women had to die to pay the price of his having been born a seventh son. In each case the heart had been removed, but jammed into the victim's mouth in a sinister twist on an old cliche about one's heart rising to one's throat.
Another psychic photo from the more recent past now rushed in at her: Envisioning the crane lowering the body too quickly onto the wharf, Kim felt a sudden wave of revulsion on a primal level sweep over her as the body slipped and came to rest with a splat, like a tarpon hauled off a boat and onto the dock.
“ Get some more photos, Lieutenant! Then I guess we can wrap him; call in the attendants when Dr. Desinor here's finished, okay?” Jessica Coran's resonant voice and the ever-present hum and throb of the awakening city, its heart at a full beat, no longer disturbed Kim. She'd reached that level of being in which she might hear or see only on a psychic level, in a realm closed off to most humans. Her every conscious, outward sense was turned down, the world around her tuned out, while simultaneously her subconscious or inner senses- which ancients called the third eye-were turned up and tuned in. Fortunately, Jessica and the others had moved off and had not called in the ambulance attendants just yet. Kim, now in a trancelike state over the body, kneeled, her pose strikingly similar to Jessica's before her; her eyelids half closed, eyes rolling back, hands closing over the rosary beads, she silently chanted a mantra to herself. She'd learned to do so silently so as to not put off those around her, or to give the appearance that she was some ordinary fortune-teller with a deck of tarot cards and a Ouija board. She looked to the outside world and to that part of her which hovered over the scene and her own body like a woman in supplication over the deceased. Her third eye and her second self also saw a wondering, curious crowd of onlookers, none more intent than Jessica Coran herself, staring on. Only Alex Sincebaugh seemed distressed and unforgivingly skeptical, pacing now like a cornered panther, occasionally glaring at the body and the soothsayer and back again at photographers on the bridge, who'd begun a new wave of snapshots at the strange behavior exhibited by the psychic. Kim easily sensed Alex's distress over what he felt to be a Bamum and Bailey atmosphere orchestrated by Stephens, Meade and other brass.