The hearts of her victims continued to wink up at him through the ice that covered them.
He snatched up his weapon again and from his prone position, began firing at the glass in the door.
34
All lovers live by longing, and endure: Summon a vision and declare it pure.
Alex crashed through the door on hearing shots fired from a direction he could not determine. He went directly for the stone tile floor, skidding across it and coming up on his knees, his own weapon extended and ready, when, from behind a metallic cupboard door, she suddenly appeared. He saw her too late.
Her knife embedded in him, caught up in the metallic web of the bullet proof Kevlar vest which Landry had insisted they all wear under their jackets emblazoned with the word POLICE. The vest allowed for little penetration. Still, the impact and shock from the sheer force his attacker put into it jolted Alex over and onto his back.
At the same instant, madly determined to finish what she'd started, she'd snatched the knife back, and it came flashing down at Alex again.
Alex's gun had fallen, and he was dazed when the knife entered his body a second time in his upper left quadrant, just shy of his heart, but the Kevlar vest again proved its worth.
Alex grabbed onto the knife hand and felt the enormity of Dominique's power as Emanuel. She was reaching for some other weapon even as she fought him, tearing at something above Alex on the oven. Her hands extended like the claws of a bird of prey, she only half-grasped the boiling pot above her, and it came crashing down around them, burning Alex's unprotected arm and sending spikes of hot liquid toward his eyes, but he instinctually arched away, the fiery brew bringing welts to his neck and chin instead.
Stewed tomatoes and mixed vegetables in a thick gumbo sauce had made the tiles beneath the killer slick, so now she was having trouble keeping a firm footing and a hold on him, but once again she was reaching upward for some hidden weapon atop the chopping block. The stench of the stew, which Mother Raveneaux had called bisque, filled Alex's nostrils, and he wondered if he'd die here with the unhealthy odor in his brain.
Now, suddenly, she had a huge meat cleaver in her left hand. Even as she held firm to the knife they continued to fight for control over, Dominique-having some demonic strength he had never known before-brought the shimmering cleaver blade at his face like a pendulum, missing. him by inches when he jerked to one side.
Alex could hear help on the way, Stephens and Meade, having heard the shots and the commotion, but the witch atop him wasn't waiting. Again the cleaver was over her head and about to descend when a single gunshot rang out and Dominique came crashing down over Alex's body, her dead weight slamming into him with a great thud.
From over the dead killer's shoulder, Alex saw Jessica Coran, her gun still raised, and beside her stood Kim and Mrs. Raveneaux, who was caught up in Kim's arms when she fell away in a faint.
Alex fought to extricate himself from the killer's dead weight while the others ran into the kitchen. Alex shouted for Stephens and Meade to help Landry who'd shouted from the freezer while he went to Jessica Coran, meeting her gaze. “Thanks… you saved my life just then.”
“ Is she dead?”
“ The way you shoot, you needn't ask.”
Jessica now sat on the stairs with Kim beside her, Kim holding onto the old woman. Kim squeezed Jessica's hand and said, “You did what you had to do.”
“ It's not as if I've never killed anyone before.”
“ But it is the first time you've shot and killed a woman.” Kim managed to place her free arm around Jessica.
“ All in the line of duty,” Jessica mused, “for the FBI
“ No, you did it for Alex.”
General Raveneaux, who had rushed in behind Stephens and Meade, went to his knees over his maniacal daughter, softly blubbering, his anguish deep-felt and eternal. “First my son… and now Dommie… oh, poor long-suffering, afflicted, imperfect child…Dommie…”
Mrs. Raveneaux had come to, and was now staring at the pitiful sight of her dead daughter and distraught husband. From her half-prone position on the stairwell, she spoke to her husband in a harsh whisper, saying, “I told you, Maurice… I told you it would come to this…told you we should've never let her come back from Europe, Maurice. I told you she wasn't ready… I told you so… “
“ But she was… acting so… normal…”
“ How… how long've you known, really known, about my connection with the FBI?” Kim asked Alex.
“ I didn't know for sure until tonight, when Meade gave you away, but I'd wondered about it last time I saw you and Dr. Coran together. Something about your relationship. The way the two of you worked together; maybe 'cause you were working too hard to appear to dislike one another. I don't know.”
“ She was cured, you know,” Mrs. Raveneaux said, “by her doctors in Stockholm. She even lived in Europe with one of her doctors, a man she claimed to love, and they were happy for a time… just before she showed up on our doorstep again.”
“ When was that, Mrs. Raveneaux?” asked Alex.
“ Ohh… ohhh…maybe a little over a year ago And you know Victor had been gone by then, and we… the general and I didn't have anyone else, you know, not really… not family, that is… and we did love her so. We loved both our children very, very much, but neither of them were ever completely… all right, you realize? Victor always seemed the feminine one and dear Dominique was so dastardly toward him, so mannish. We tried to break her of it, especially after the… the incident…”
“ When Dominique hurt Victor that first time, you mean?”
“ Sweet Victor, such a sweet-hearted boy, really… did the authorities ever find him? Completely disappeared. Isn't that right, Maurice?”
The general let go of his dead daughter, laying her gently down amid the spoiled bisque she'd earlier prepared, reaching up now for his infirm wife instead. The two older people held fast to one another.
“ She was doing so well,” he muttered into her ear before he continued sobbing.
Jessica surveyed the complete mess that had been made of the once-spotless kitchen. Landry was being helped from the freezer, but the frozen-handed cop wouldn't let go of something he had carried out with him. Jessica and Alex joined the captain and together they stared down at a solidly frozen human heart.
“ Thommie Whiley?” asked Kim from across the room, voicing all their thoughts.
A shivering Landry replied, “C-c-could be, but there're're two o-o-others inside.” His teeth still chattered on after his words were finished.
Jessica stared at the frozen heart, and then past it into the freezer. “Forensics'll have to match each one through DNA tests.”
“ What the hell was she doing with the hearts? Why keep 'em in the freezer?” Stephens's astounded question came out in tentative fashion.
“ Keepin”em on ice, obviously,” Jessica said, Meade staring now over her shoulder into the fog of the freezer.
“ But for what?” Meade asked.
“ Her secret ingredient in the gumbo bisque stew, would be my guess,” replied Jessica, who now turned and lifted a pointed stiletto kitchen knife, then bent and jabbed one of the chunks of meat from the stew which had discolored the tiles when Dominique had pulled the boiling liquid over onto herself and Alex during their struggle.
“ What is that?” asked Stephens, squinting.
Meade turned his attention to the red chunk of flesh as well.
Jessica simply replied, “It's nothing I've ever eaten.”
The general's eyes had widened on seeing the frozen heart come from his freezer, and now his eyes widened further. He softly pushed away from his wife, telling her to go upstairs now. “You don't want to hear any more of this, Cor-etta…Coretta dear, just go on ahead.”