“ And I showed the tape to Dr. Desinor in there.”
“ What? You had no right to-”
“ And she was as impressed as I was with your… your foresight about those punks. She wants very much to work with you, Alex, and I think you ought to graciously accept her invitation to do so.”
“ Or else?”
“ Or else, damnit, that's right.”
“ You'd sic those snot-nosed IAD punks on my ass? You'd see to it I was forcibly yanked from this case, and maybe from the Department?”
Landry's fists were balled up now, and he breathed heavily through dragonlike nostrils. “I hope it won't come to that, but yes… if I have to… yes.”
“ This case has blown a lot of relationships to hell, Landry. I guess one more is just one more.”
“ Hold on, Alex. Just think about it, damnit. And give Dr. Desinor a chance. She's good…she's damned good,” Landry self-consciously admitted.
“ Real good, huh? Is she really telling you any more than what Wardlaw has already leaked to the press?”
“ Considerably more.”
“ Is that right?” Alex countered.
“ That's right.”
“ She's just snowing you, the commissioner, Meade, all of you.”
“ She's revealed to us that the Gretna victim was, like you said, a copycat killing.”
“ Information circulating about since I suggested it, yes.”
“ That the heart was taken only after the man was poisoned, which has now been confirmed by Dr. Coran's preliminary tissue and blood tests.”
“ A wild guess, maybe.”
“ She even gave us a name this morning, said it came to her in her sleep afterward.”
“ A name… came to her in her sleep…”
“ Lennox, she said, and it checks out with Missing Persons in Texas where a Marie B. Lennox reported her husband as missing six weeks ago. According to Dr. Coran, the body was between six and eight weeks dead, kept in a frozen state for some time and only recently dumped in our territory in an attempt to make it look like one of the Hearts killings. The killer, Dr. Desinor says, knew the victim well. The victim knew his killer as either Billy or Beau. The wife's middle name is Bolinda with two nicknames, Beau or Billie. Kansas police this morning confronted her with the fact a psychic identified her as her husband's killer, and guess what?”
“ She crumpled, no doubt.”
“ She was told his body had been fished from the Mississippi in New Orleans.”
“ And I suppose she confessed on the spot?”
“ She did, and interviews subsequently place her in our area, driving a van, about the time the body would have been disposed of here. Hell, she sent postcards to the folks back home, the cards dating her trip, placing her extremely close to the Toulouse Wharf area. Photos have given us a definite I.D. on the victim as one Samuel Wayne Lennox, who had some heavy-duty insurance policies taken out on him in the past year. Asked about the beheading, she told authorities in Kansas that she hadn't cut off her husband's head, only his penis, in keeping with what she knew of the ruthless Heart-Taker in New Orleans; she claimed not to know how his head was severed from the body.”
“ Then how the hell did his head get separated from his body?” Alex had listened intently, unsure where to attack next.
Captain Landry informed him of how Wardlaw and Jessica Coran had put that piece of information to bed.
“ Sounds like the interlocking pieces of the puzzle fell very neatly into place then.”
“ Yes, yes, they did.”
“ And you're satisfied with this Lennox woman's confession?”
“ Completely, and it all tied in with your theory, Alex, that the Gretna victim didn't fit. I tell you, it gave me the shivers. Desinor's… well… uncanny.”
“ So was my prediction, based on what my eyes and my gut told me, only I couldn't prove it.”
“ Maybe your reading up on those Headless Horseman murders in New York last year had your nose twitching.”
“ So Mrs. Lennox took the heart and the private parts to simulate the Queen of Hearts killings, not knowing that some drunken fishermen would hit the corpse with their propeller. She poisoned and butchered her husband for the insurance bucks.”
“ And because she could no longer stand the wimp, or so she says,” Landry added.
“ Impressive of Desinor and Coran to put this all together,” Alex admitted with a heavy release of air.
“ Frank played a large hand in it too. He figured out how the head was severed.”
“ I thought Frank was out of the picture, Captain.”
“ Ever hear of an injunction? He won't go quietly.” Landry walked Alex a little way down the institutional-green cinder-block hallway. “But you're still skeptical, aren't you, Alex?”
“ Nature of the beast, I guess…”
“ Seems Mr. and Mrs. Lennox had vacationed here when she first read of the Queen of Hearts cases, and later when she saw the latest Hearts case break into print back in Texas, she began to concoct a copycat killing. She'd read Canon's piece, the one that speculated there would be more killings, remember?”
“ Who could forget that piece of journalistic masturbation.”
“ Anyway, this tough old Texas babe gets it into her head that she could kill hubby, remove the heart and privates with no flinching, and when the serial killer was caught, she'd be home free with a hell of an inheritance in insurance bucks.”
“ If it was so well planned, why'd she fold so quickly when confronted with the information?”
“ Who knows… crime makes you stupid. The word psychic to some people is instant truth and enlightenment… who knows?”
“ So, you're impressed by Desinor.”
“ I damned sure am, and Coran for that matter.”
Alex wanted to argue, to tell his captain that there was more to it than met the eye, that perhaps Jessica Coran and Wardlaw and Desinor were cohorts, in some magic show together now. Maybe Coran had studied Wardlaw's files on each case from top to bottom, seen the oversights and the sloppy work, talked with Desinor, and the two of them had cut Wardlaw in. Then they had all conjured up Samuel Wayne Lennox, whose name had most likely surfaced some time before, since the killer herself had put out a missing-persons report on the man she had killed. Somehow Alex had to put a rational spin on the scenario, as he had with the incident at Tully's.
“ What's so hard for you to accept, Alex?” Landry finally said.
“ Look, the business of the body's not having been destroyed in quite the fashion of the other victims… the rib cage intact, the fact it was a different sort of weapon used to open Lennox's chest, all pointed to another perp. Hell, even I knew that. As to the Beau Lennox story, Kim Desinor could easily have read about the disappearance of the Texas man, in a state right next door, and from the general description put two and two together. As any good detective might, she bluffed and won.”
“ She's on the case, Alex. Get used to it.”
“ I'm out of here for now. Maybe I'll just take that time off that IAD suggested. I'm beginning to feel unnecessary. Besides, all this has got me feeling like I need to find the closest bar.”
“ I'm conducting a meeting this evening, my office. Be there at six.”
Alex didn't reply, and Landry's leathery face creased into a look of concern and worry, the wrinkles dancing across his forehead. He wondered if Alex, whose instincts were better than excellent, could be right about Dr. Desinor after all. He'd never believed in psychic hocus-pocus himself before Desinor's recent revelations, which Alex had somewhat effectively fired silver bullets through.
Still, Bolinda Lennox was behind bars in Kansas thanks to Kim Desinor, and so far, in New Orleans, Alex had made no score with respect to the Heart-Taker. Results were what City Hall and P.C. Stephens were now after, results before the next Mardi Gras season, results that would reassure a nation of potential tourists that New Orleans was a safe fantasy land into which they might securely snuggle for a while, long enough to unload their ready cash; that it was a wondrous place to spend their money and enjoy the local pleasures with complete peace of mind, a commodity that seemed all too rare in the city these days.