She now found herself thinking only of Alex Sincebaugh, half wishing he'd stayed, glad he'd gone all at once. She wondered what it was about him that so attracted her, despite everything.
18
Heartily know. When half-gods go. The gods arrive.
Kim Desinor looked from one to the other of the men before her. Landry and Stephens were dissimilarly built, Landry being a short, stocky squared-off cop who hadn't lost the rough edges of his profession. With too much around the middle, his brown hair graying before Kim's eyes, she guessed him to be in his mid-fifties, and from the gnarled little hands to the way he walked, she surmised that his body was riddled with arthritic pains from fingertips to back and leg muscles, all of which he denied, even to himself. He had suffered some injury as a youth, something to do with being in a place he shouldn't have been, and he'd also suffered a knee injury in college, where he played a defensive linesman, no doubt, given his heft and size. She recalled some chance remark he had made with regard to Richard Stephens's ambitions and he'd served up a football metaphor, something to do with an end run that fooled no one.
As for Police Commissioner Stephens, while not so tall as Alex Sincebaugh, he stood extremely tall beside Landry, and while he was not a slim man by any stretch, against Landry's bulk he appeared so. Still, Stephens's single most distinguishing characteristic remained his obviously dyed full head of flaming red strands which entwined one another in a series of wild dance moves. Where Landry's jaw was set in what seemed a perpetual, teeth-gnashing, concrete half snarl, PC Stephens sported a painted grin, born of campaigning. Stephens's henna-colored temples and fine features marked him as the best choice for higher office-more politician than cop and obviously made for the office. It seemed he'd go to any length to protect his personal citadel. Maybe he'd long since made up his mind that he would sit out his last years in office, content yet ever watchful, ever fearful of events that might topple him, such as this case.
Stephens's tailored beige suit gave him the image of a modern-day Huey Long, replete with suspenders beneath the stylishly rumpled suit, in a breezy New Orleans way an expensive item in anyone's estimation, yet relaxed and loose-fitting. Stephens's nails were professionally done. But then, so were those of the guy from the mayor's office, who actually wore red suspenders and a checked tie with an angora-sweater poofiness to it which marked him as not only politically correct, but far more up on fashions, even down to the ridiculous sideburns. There was little else to distinguish the thin man named Leroy Fouintenac who'd been throwing his title-deputy mayor-around the room along with the hungry, darting eyes and the beaked and sniffing nose which led Kim to the image of a kind of malnourished buzzard, a sickly scavenger bird, as opposed to one who successfully hunted. He was thin and priggish, in imitation of a David Niven character she'd once seen in an old black-and-white movie.
Rounding out the foursome was the staid FBI bureau chief, Lew Meade, a stony observer who seemed detached from everything but the arrangements and connections, always at the ready with the introductions, however, and always anxious to know the latest. He'd obviously called in the mayor's man, since they shared many more whispers than P.C. Stephens enjoyed with Fouintenac. Meade had an army of agents to see that Dr. Coran was made comfortable for her stay, while he'd totally ignored Kim, in keeping with the incognito approach she was to take here, her detachment from the FBI seemingly complete.
She suspected that it had been Meade's idea to have Alex Sincebaugh pick her up at the airport, obviously to rub salt into Sincebaugh's wounded ego. She'd sensed the animosity Meade held for the lieutenant even at the crime scene the day before, but even more so here when Alex had entered the room.
Meade was an observer, a watchful man who kept his cards extremely close to his chest. And Kim had no notion of what Meade meant to accomplish with his presence here. But Lew Meade's closemouthed approach had already alienated Kim and only made his blandness of character the more bland.
Dr. Jessica Coran, by comparison, was a woman of color in every sense of the word, but her mysterious eyes held no warmth or clue at the moment as to what lay behind them. What did she think of all this talk of doing a psychometric reading of the last victim's body? It had been taken now from its refrigerated tomb by Wardlaw's young, female assistant, who'd wheeled the cadaver into the autopsy room and efficiently replaced the Lennox body with the nameless, hapless true victim of the New Orleans Mardi Gras Hearts Thief-as one newscaster that moming had called the killer.
Kim herself was immediately worried by the idea put forth by Fouintenac and heralded now by Stephens. In fact, she hadn't particularly cared for the idea of doing a hands-on reading of the other so-called latest victim of the Heartthrob Killer-as others in the press had dubbed the phantom monster.
She had to go along with it, she knew. Hell, Stephens and the others had taken a giant step forward with regard to her work. They accepted her “gift” unreservedly now, accepted the fact that extraordinary, extrasensory perceptions and detection were possible. Perhaps even Wardlaw and Coran had grudgingly accepted to some degree that some things which science had no answer for must be taken on faith alone, by sheer instinct alone. Kim was a purely instinctive individual, working out on a frontier which science might never fully comprehend or explore, a frontier of emotion and mind over matter which galled most scientists and pragmatists. Given their imperatives and natural liking only for that which proved empirical, she well understood why both the doctors in the room were far from convinced of her often startling and uncanny abilities.
She unnerved people, she knew. People in general feared her, which was a far cry from admiration or awe. She sensed fear in Wardlaw and something akin to fear in Jessica.
“ Perhaps we should allow Dr. Coran and Dr. Wardlaw time to prepare their findings on the victim before I-”
She was instantly cut off by Fouintenac. “If we wait for laboratory reports and findings, it could be weeks. Please, Dr. Desinor, do what it is you do.”
“ The deputy mayor came here to see you work, Doctor,” added Stephens. She read into his remark that he'd confided in Fouintenac exactly who she was and how he himself had witnessed firsthand what she was capable of. Obviously, due to her psychic hits on the Lennox body, she'd made believers out of some in the room. Still, Kim felt the air in the morgue close in on her; there was a stifling anger welling up from Wardlaw which Jessica perhaps contributed to.
But Fouintenac and the others waited with eager eyes and ears, with obvious disregard for the delicate nature of such an undertaking, without regard to the two M.E. s in the room, without concern for protocol, without fear of the concerns of family, friends of the deceased, without much thought given to possible negative outcomes-so dazzled had they become with her gifts, little suspecting that half or more of her insight came through normal means: intuition bom of education.
She'd had ready access to knowledge of the previous victims-enough to fake what she must-thanks in large measure to Alex Sincebaugh's absolutely thorough and meticulous examinations of the crime scenes and Wardlaw's forensic examination records and subsequent discussions she'd had with Jessica, Stephens and Landry. Jessica's detailed report on this victim in particular, and those earlier reports made by Detective Sincebaugh, had been invaluable, so much so that it was obvious to her, as it must be to coroner and cop, that the supposed victim with the severed head was out of the ordinary for the killer, possibly a setup of some sort.