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 courses, you know, with the best European chefs, and she simply insisted until Daddy just had to give in!”
Jessica went tearing through shoe boxes and hat boxes found in the closet, and when she turned to face Kim and Mrs. Raveneaux, she frowned her annoyance and called after Alex to wait up for her, but he was gone down a back stairwell, descending quickly for the kitchen, where he hoped to find Ben's killer waiting for him.
“ Jess, slow down,”, pleaded Kim when Jessica rushed for the hallway. “Landry and the others are downstairs. Let Alex handle it from here.”
“ He may need backup.”
“ Back stairs'll take you down if you want to find Dommie,” said Mrs. Raveneaux. “Come along… I'll show you the way.”
Captain Carl Landry's questioning of the servants in the presence of General Raveneaux, P.C. Stephens and Lew Meade had also revealed the fact that Victor's sister, Dommie, had in effect become the chief cook in the house. Like Alex, Carl had put two and two together and gone to search the kitchen. He'd actually gotten to the kitchen a few minutes ahead of Alex, and had snatched open the walk-in freezer door, fully expecting to be greeted with what he now looked at-full slabs of meat, sides of beef and venison dangling from a series of hooks-when from somewhere behind him he heard or felt someone there. Half turning, he saw the glint of a huge carving knife as it dove into his upper left quadrant to the hilt, barely missing his heart, hitting the bone at the shoulder. Like a man watching a film from some distance away, he saw himself fall backward from the impact, the freezer door slamming and locking on cue in front of him.
Inside the chilled room, he staggered about, unsure of the wound's depth or the extent of blood loss. Since it was so cold in here and his body temperature was rapidly decreasing, the blood was quickly coagulating. In fact, the freezer temperature might save his life, up to a point.
He fought to regain his feet and his vision. Then he fought with the door, but there was no escape from this side. He began to scrape away at the frost covering the small window, and through the trails left by his broken fingernails he saw her, recognizing her from her picture and Alex's description. She was lying in wait, a cornered animal with a maniacal leer and a huge carving knife still painted with Landry's blood held against her ear. She seemed to be slobbering on the knife, talking to it, listening to its whisper. She was anxious for her next victim to step into her high-tech lair.
The kitchen had every modern convenience and was as large as many of the other rooms. She'd been hiding in one of the cupboards below the six-foot preparation table at the center of the room when Landry had poked his nose into the freezer.
Now she moved toward the front of the kitchen, having heard someone approaching from that direction. Landry had to do something and fast.
He tore out his gun, but his hands were already freezing and the heavy object slipped easily from his grasp. He went to his knees with much pain and trembling. Others were counting on him and this thought made him grasp the gun and hold firmly to it, despite the cramping in his hand and body. With his left hand, he pulled himself back up, using a shelf for counterweight, but suddenly the shelf gave way and objects began raining down on him, frozen food as heavy as bricks.
He opened his eyes where he lay propped against the wall now, and he saw several bulging, red eyes poking through the cakes of ice lying at his feet. From their fist-sized shape and hue, Landry knew he was looking at the evidence which would put Dominique Raveneaux into the gas chamber or an insanity ward for the rest of her life.