“ I used to think I made the decisions around here. Celebrity does not become you, Dr. Coran.”
Jessica caught a look of deep concentration behind his otherwise smiling eyes. “Tell, me, Paul, is there something going on between you and Dr. Desinor I should know about?”
“ No, no… nothing between us but a professional relationship. How can you ask such a question? You know I'm a happily married man.”
Rumor has it your marriage has been on the skids, she thought, and it was easy to believe that rumor. “Hasn't stopped you from hitting on me,” she said.
“ Well, Jess, that was at a low ebb in my life, and I've apologized how many times now?”
“ Sorry… shouldn't have brought it up.”
“ Don't mention it… ever again,” he joked, and led her from his office and back into the screening room. “Guess we'd better break the latest news to Stephens. I'm quite sure he'll be overjoyed you're going back with him.”
“ You're kinda taken now with the idea of our baiting Matisak, aren't you, Paul?”
“ Hey, what kind of thing is that to say to your boss and your friend, Jess?''
“ Come on, admit it.”
“ Admit it, hell. I'll admit to only one thing, Jess.”
“ What's zat?”
“ After the way you took out Archer from the top of this building two years ago, let's just say that I wouldn't want to be Matisak when you draw a bead on the bastard.”
“ Well, maybe it's time we turned the tables on him, the way that creep keeps baiting us, leaving those sick, blood-penned notes for us to find…”
“ I know it's got to be difficult for you,” he said, his mind racing on, “with a maniac like him pining for you like a lovesick calf, only this animal's bleeding others in some unholy exhibition of perverted love… delivering his prizes for your approval… giving you his twisted valentines.”
She thought of the despicable notes, usually in verse, left at the scene of each killing now, written across a mirror, a tile floor or some other surface. All of them were different, but all were the same: Matisak wanted to again taste her blood, to drink her blood. No surrogate would do. It was an acquired taste-she'd heard the joke that was going around about her relationship to the convicted vampire killer.
She momentarily thought of his victims, all butchered like swine only after he'd drained off their blood in a controlled fashion from the throat. The precious liquid of life was put up in mason jars like tomatoes, placed in a cooler brought for the task and carried off by the sadistic monster to feed on at his convenience. Jessica had lost self-esteem, confidence and the one man whom she'd loved without reservation up to that point, Otto Boutine, to this madman. Futilely, she had then fought from a wheelchair to see him placed on death row; she had even contemplated avenues of murdering the soulless son-ofabitch herself, but now all that was yesterday's remorse.
While Matisak was incarcerated along with other criminally insane monsters, she had managed to regain not only her physical well-being, the scars from his attack on her healing, but also her mental stamina, and had since proven herself in New York on the Claw case with Alan Rychman, and in Hawaii on the Trade Winds killings with Jim Parry. But since Matisak's escape, her life had taken a different and ugly turn. The in-visible scars had come back like stigmata. And no matter where she was, who she was with or what she was engaged in doing, the signs of those ugly stigmata were always present, just below the surface, always pressing to get out again and overwhelm her again. Even now, standing in the corridor outside the screening room, shaking hands with Stephens from New Orleans again, she was uncomfortably aware of the scars others could not see. She wondered if Dr. Desinor, the psychic, would be able to see Jessica Coran's psychic scars, the thought frightening in itself, for she'd worked so long to keep them invisible to all but the man she loved, James Parry. And even he did not know what awful depths those scars had reached…
New Orleans Police Commissioner Richard Stephens stood dumbfounded just outside the screening room door when he learned from Jessica of his good fortune, that not one FBI operative, but two, would be returning with him to his Crescent City. Both the famous Jessica Coran and Dr. Kim Desinor would each, from her own unique perspective, be looking squarely at the most challenging case in the history of the city.
“ Splendid, splendid,” he repeatedly said, shaking Zanek's hand after releasing hers.
Zanek glared at Jessica for her having released such information so soon. He still had as yet to speak to Santiva and the upper echelon of the Bureau. Zanek was trying to tell Stephens this now, but Jessica pretended it was merely a matter of protocol at this point, and after saying so to Stephens and catching Paul's unhidden fury, she asked Stephens, “How is New Orleans this time of year? Less crowded, now that Mardi Gras is over?”
“ Hot, just like the food, and plenty crowded. There're always parades, no matter what time of year. We celebrate life year-round in New Orleans,” he continued.
“ Celebrate life, huh.” I'm sure it's well-staged for the tourism industry, she thought.
Stephens didn't miss a beat. “That's why this monster and these horrendous deaths must end and quickly.”
Uh-huh, agreed, Jessica thought, her mind wandering back to Dr. Faith while Zanek escorted Stephens away from her, talking buddy-buddy to the other man, leaving her standing alone, the way Paul wanted it. He must be in control, even if it meant leaving Jessica Coran standing alone in a hallway.
She only hoped that Santiva would have half the luck she'd had with him.
Now Jessica made for her lab, having neglected work waiting for her there. As she went, she curiously wondered how the two of them, Desinor and she, would get on. She'd never worked with a psychic before, and at one time she would have thought Zanek a madman for starting such a program within the confines of the FBI. Otto Boutine certainly would not have allowed it in his division. Still, this woman Desinor seemed gifted, touched by some power both invisible and divine, something that Jessica would not mind exploiting, or at least understanding better and employing. Science had always been her strength, and yet there was a limit to what science could do, and there was always that line beyond which you needed a leap of faith, intuition, instinct. Maybe Dr. Desinor simply had more instinct and intuition than others. Either way, Jessica wondered if she could not learn from the other woman some vital information.
No, Otto Boutine would not have championed a seer, an Edgar Cayce-type in his unit. Still, Otto wasn't here and the world was spinning as madly, or more so, than ever on its axis, and the number of brutal killings, serial murders, spree murders, rapes and other brands of evil in this world had hardly diminished; in fact, violent crime was up as never before, even among children. Maybe law-enforcement agencies needed the assistance of the supernatural and the supernormal if they were ever to stem the growing tide of murderous rage in America.
Jessica had never been overly superstitious or concerned with matters of superstition, at least not until recently, but events and coincidence had played heavily in her life, and now with Matisak a werewolf on the prowl, capable of seducing people at his will, a Jeykll and Hyde of the first order, the more store she placed in fatalism and common-sense values born of experience, and the more she'd become interested in what she used to dismiss as superstition.
Perhaps she'd just become more superstitious herself since Hawaii. The beautiful island world had had its effect on her; there she'd discovered a world founded on a faith most took for fairy-tale absurdity about the gods of the sea, the imps of the coral reefs, deities of the volcano and forests and mango trees. Yet as superstitious as that quaint faith was, it had become the real dragon-slayer when it came to ending the career of Hawaii's most notorious serial killer, Lopaka Kowona.