Alex studied the curled and soiled card front and back without touching it or wiping any of the blood away. “It's the same as the others, unique, as if tailor-made for the victim, like the others before.”
“ Embroidered playing cards. Thought I'd seen it all till now,” Ben replied.
“ Nothing like you're going to find at the corner dime store or cigar stand.”
It was the fourth queen of hearts found in the open chest of victims in as many months. It clinched the fact that this boy was done by the same sadistic killer.
“ Damned spooky, Alex… damned spooky.”
“ Son of a bitch's got it bad for young gay men, that's for sure.”
“ He's also got four spoilt decks of cards by my calculation,” Ben dryly pointed out. “And hey, what the hell's he doing with the other fifty-one, or the hearts for that matter? That's what I'd like to know, Alex. No evidence the guy hung around long after, so he must be taking the hearts off with him. Why's he taking the hearts, Alex? And why's he cutting out their hearts to begin with? And why's he chopping off their balls and dongs and leaving these damned beer coasters behind? You think he's eatin' the hearts, Alex? You think he's some kinda fuckin' cannibal or something? You think we're going to find a Frigidaire somewhere that's been stocked with human hearts or what, Sincy?”
“ Don't go squirrelly on me, Ben. I think this guy just does queens. He's not buying the cards in decks or in coaster sets. I think he makes 'em.”
Ben considered this for a moment, each detective aware of what the suggestion meant. The guy selects someone to kill, creates the lacy card and stalks his prey. Ben cleared his throat and said, “Squirrelly, me? What's that s'pose to mean?”
“ Means we don't sweat the whys and wherefores, remember? We go after how. How does he choose his victim? How does the victim fall into his trap? How'd they come together? How'd this kid get here? What was he doing during the last hours of his life to lead him to this dump site? Who was he with and what'd they talk about? Where'd he have his last meal and with whom? And what'd he eat and where'd he eat it?”
“ Sure, sure, I know the routine, Alex, but this… this isn't in any way your routine homicide. These mutilations… they're… they're…”
“ Hate killings? Lust murders? You going to tell me why before you tell me how, Ben? You're already off track.”
“ But Alex, if we understood why, then maybe it'd be easier to investigate-”
“ And sleep at night?”
“- and we could come up with a faster solution in these particular cases.”
“ You want to go after it that way? All right, then take a good look at the boy's crotch, Ben. Go ahead, take a closer look.”
Ben shuddered even as his eyes went a second time to the area where the boy's sexual organs had been cleaved off, the discarded items lying bloody between his legs like the remains of a gutted chicken. Sincebaugh snapped another picture, this time with Ben in the foreground.
“ Something you can show your grandkids, Ben.”
“ You sick son of a bitch, Sincy. You got a real mean streak in you too.”
“ Comes of serving with you.”
“ Let's get outta here.”
“ Can't, not till Wardlaw or one of his stooges arrive.”
“ Where in hell're those guys? We called 'em an hour ago.”
An ambulance from the NOPD morgue had arrived, but Dr. Franklin T. Wardlaw, M.E. for New Orleans, was nowhere to be seen.
“ Call the bastard again. He probably fell asleep somewhere.”
Journalists were arriving on the scene now and were being held at bay by the uniformed officers. They wanted all the dirt, and they wanted to know what the NOPD was going to do about the Queen of Hearts killer, and they wanted to know- as always-now. Sincebaugh squarely reckoned that if the killings were ordinary slayings of gay men-without the extraordinary high profile due to the missing hearts-the press would be asleep on the case.
For now, however, the Fourth Estate had cornered Sincebaugh's captain, Carl Landry, along with Lew Meade, the local FBI chief, who'd been dragged from their beds to come down to have a look. All for the sake of the press. What they could accomplish here was zip, save for public relations, but even saving face and saving grace were unlikely at this point with nothing whatever to go on.
“ Here comes the circus,” said Ben.
“ Where the fuck's that drunken coroner?” asked Sincebaugh.
4
A flinty heart within a snowy breast
Is like base mold lock'd in a golden chest.
Quantico, Virginia
Dr. Jessica Coran, Medical Examiner for the tactical field unit of the Psychological amp; Pathological Profiling sector of the Behavioral Sciences Division of the FBI, was on twenty-four-hour call to drop everything and go anywhere Chief Paul Zanek sent her at a moment's notice. For this reason, she had a ready bag packed and waiting in her closet at all times. But for the past six months, she hadn't gone anywhere, and obviously she wasn't going anywhere so long as Paul Zanek was the one making the decision.
She had awakened after fitful sleep to her own decision, and first thing after showering and dressing in her most businesslike manner, her lab glasses on the end of her nose, she had sought out Eriq Santiva, Zanek's boss.
She found Santiva surprisingly clear on her point of view, understanding her position, nodding throughout and finally agreeing with her. He still wanted special agents with her- to watch her back, as he said-but she argued passionately that this would only harm any chance at luring Matisak back out into the open.
Santiva wanted Matisak badly. He'd just come on as new head of the division when Matisak had escaped.
“ Will you clear New Orleans for me?” she asked. “Will you make the whole idea palatable to Paul Zanek? If not, I'm walking out of here, resigning and going back into private practice.”
Her threat was taken seriously along with her concerns. She liked, admired and trusted Santiva, who had a sparkling record in the Bureau. He was a lean, tall man with striking dark features.
Santiva shook on it with her. “You'll have New Orleans. Zanek has kept me informed about their wishes, and I think they'll be happy to have you, but you're one hundred percent right about Paul. He'll need to think it's his idea. Keep leaning on him, pressuring him from where you're at, and I'll put it to him from where I sit. Between us, I think we can win Paul over.”
She thanked Santiva and left with a sense of accomplishment, a sense that she was finally taking a step in the right direction. She followed this up with a visit to Paul Zanek's office, but there she learned that Paul was as adamant as ever about her staying close to home plate, Quantico.
Zanek, and the others in a position to make choices for her, had stonewalled her since Oklahoma, where the trail for Mad Matthew Matisak had gone cold. Since then, she had been in a kind of “protective custody,” bodyguards surrounding her and friends like Zanek shielding her by keeping her cloaked at Quantico. Meanwhile, her life was no longer her own.
Not a single word on Matisak since Oklahoma, no leads, not a clue. The few possibilities had turned out to be false. It was as if the lunatic had disappeared off the face of the earth, and thank God if he had gone down in the light plane he had commandeered at a small Oklahoma airport. Neither plane nor pilot had ever been found again, no wreckage reported, nothing. If they'd run out of fuel somewhere in the southwestern desert, it was possible the monster had died a slow and torturous death, the sort he was famous for inflicting on his own victims. Revenge is mine, sayeth the Lord, and more power to You, she thought now.
She had more than once reveled in the idea of Matisak's dying of slow dehydration, so fitting for a killer that craved the liquid of life, blood. If it had happened, it had not likely occurred before the fiend had fed on the blood of the unfortunate pilot.