The restaurant's atmosphere was steeped in a French motif, a sidewalk cafe on a grander scale in a semi-casual and darkened series of rooms with quaint street-comer lamps posted every four feet, the windows overlooking the huge lake. It was in the heart of some smaller town outside the big city, far from Bourbon Street and the concerns of the French Quarter. It seemed a place where a different breed of people dined, natives not of New Orleans but elsewhere. Still, on the menu alongside the traditional French dishes were traditional New Orleans dishes from jambalaya to such specialties as shrimp Creole and Cajun gator tail. Alex was eating the gator, while she'd opted for vegetarian veal parisien.
He finally said, “I have every reason to suspect you're having us all on, Dr. Desinor.”
“ And you resent the implication that others, seeing me come in on the case, might construe you as a fool?”
“ I don't give a damn what others think, but think they do and the appearance of im-impropriety in a case is as bad as the real McCoy, Doctor. And we both know that your coming in on this high-profile case is going to feather your cap no matter the outcome while making the NOPD look like it's… well, jacking off.”
She bit back a snide smile and shook her head. “If the hand fits, Alex.”
“ Very clever, Doctor, but nothing's changed.”
“ Oh, I think a lot has changed. And it's about time you called me Kim.”
“ Such as what has changed, Kim?”
“ How we view one another for one, Alex. I think we can work together and not at odds, if you will just give me a chance. Your partner Ben's willing to, Jessica Coran, P.C. Stephens, your own Captain Landry.”
“ Yeah, so why do I get the feeling I'm the last holdout in The Invasion of the Body Switchers? Ben's got a wife and children to go home to. He can turn the case off when he wants, he's gotten so used to partitioning off the separate lives he leads. Me, I'm on my own, so maybe the case is a little more important to me than-”
“ Is it importance or self-importance and a little obsession thrown in for good measure?” she asked quickly, stopping him.
“ I'm no more obsessive about my work than most cops.”
“ Bullshit. You're as bad as… as… as Jessica Coran. You're a workaholic from what I can see.”
“ There are worse things in life.”
“ Your father's nearby. Why don't you spend more time with your family?”
The muscles of his jaw tightened. “That's really none of your business, now, is it?” He wondered from whom she had learned that tidbit of information with which she thought she could astonish him.
“ He's a former cop. Someone you could share your thoughts and feelings with on the case.”
“ I got Ben for that.”
“ And that's enough?”
“ It is.”
She nodded. “Your father hurt you very badly, didn't he.”
“ What the hell's with you, lady? I'm not in the market for psychoanalysis, not even your brand, so let it go.”
“ My father hurt me very badly too, when I was young. He pretty much destroyed all faith I had in him. Took me a long time to get over it, and I'm still not sure I am. Over it, I mean. He gave me up to the state for safekeeping. How do you like that?''
Alex dropped his gaze and said, “I'm sorry to hear it.”
“ You can rationally rid yourself of a thing like that, but emotionally it's like a growth or a virus that's still very much within, biding its time, waiting for you to slip and when you do, it'll be there to take you into the depths of pain stored up over the years. Out of sight but not out of mind, or is it stored in the human heart?”
“ My problem with my father is not the issue here, Kim, nor is it a matter for discussion, do you understand? And while we're on it, my every waking moment isn't predicated on how I view my relationship with him, understood?”
“ Perhaps…perhaps I do understand more than you know.”
He stared across at her and felt her eyes probing into and through him. “You don't understand anything about me.”
“ I understand your anger, your frustration and even your fear.”
Now he gritted his teeth and pulled back, as if physically severing the eye contact between them would help his cause, before he said, “I'm not afraid of a damned thing. Lightning doesn't scare me; dying doesn't scare me. So, what's left? I've faced death in a goddamned jungle a world away from home, and here on the streets as a cop. No, there's nothing I'm afraid of.”
'You're afraid of the small things.”
He shook his head and frowned, pushing away his plate.
“ Dark spaces from which you cannot retreat?”
“ You're crazy, you really are.”
“ Relationships from which you can't hide.”
Shut up-his thought leaped but did not cross the table, yet she caught it as if on some sort of telepathic tractor beajn, yanking it into her.
“ I'll shut up, Lieutenant, when you aecept me for what I am, and while you're at it, accept the fact there are black holes in everyone's mind.”
“ Exactly what you count on.”
“ Perhaps.”
“ Both as a shrink and as a snoop.”
“ Touche. If we could leave it at that. But the dark little holes into which you tumble and lose your way and all control, these need to be explored, not run from.”
Christ, he thought, she's been talking to Ben deYampert, but then he realized that not even Ben had knowledge of the exact nature or details of his recurring nightmares of recent months. He'd had nightmares for years as a child, and now again, awakened in him by the first Hearts victim, Surette. And here was this all-seeing, all-knowing being staring through him, revealing him to himself here over table scraps.
“ Waiter! Clear these dishes away, will you?” he called out, his thoughts tumbling on. It was as if Kim Desinor had climbed inside his head and had watched a film there, a film about his agony, as if it were being played over and over for her private screening. The feeling was one of invasion which sent a shiver through him, making him add one more item to his fears-fear of her.
The waiter rushed their dishes away, asking about dessert, which both of them declined, Alex calling for the bill. Then he turned to her and said, “How… how the hell could you-”
“ You're surrounded by parasites, Alex, on all sides. You even see me as a parasitic creature, someone or some thing that's come to chew away at you and your precious case, someone who will eat you alive if you're not careful. Then, of course, you've got Ben, Frank Wardlaw, Landry and IAD, Meade, every one trying to siphon off a piece of you in order to feed themselves.''
“ This is all nonsense. You don't know what the hell you're talking-”
“ But I do. Men like you, men who have so much strength bottled within, so powerful… people gravitate to your power, your confidence, wanting to touch it, Alex. They want to touch me too, all the time. People like you and me… we're appealing on many, many levels. Think of the old saying, Alex, how two separate people with differing worldviews look at a glass of water.” She placed a forefinger on the glass before him, which was half full.
“ People like you and me?” she said. “We see it as half full. Others who see it differently are also emptied by their unfulfilled relationships, and when they see people like you and me who are absolutely comfortable in who we are, they come to us for a drink, and they work to fill their empty souls with us. Because they never see our unfulfilled needs, the emptiness within us, because we guard that place like hell.”
“ Taking from us?”
“ All they can get, sure… why not? They must feed; it's their nature to feed, as it is in all living things, Alex. I see people every day siphoning off energy and emotion from me, but I gain from the encounter while most of them do not. It's because I gain in giving.”
“ You know, you could be quite scary if I didn't know better.”
“ Last thing I want is to scare you, Alex.”