He needed now only to bide his time. Killing Special Agent Sand was his first calling card. Maybe now he'd take out another of her bodyguards, the guy who was in the car across the street from her hotel for the past two nights, the guy whom Ed Sand had shared a great deal of time with, another of Jessica's bodyguards.
Jessica must know by now that she was being watched by others ordered by the Bureau to protect her. She'd no doubt found a way out of the hotel and was on her way to Metairie Cemetery by now, but in the meantime, Matisak wanted to make her feel safe from all these prying eyes.
He moved toward the car and stepped behind and around it, to knock at the passenger-side window. The man inside rolled the window down, expecting his replacement perhaps.
“ Who the hell're you?”
Matisak's tongue pushed forth a miniature blowgun and he puffed once hard, sending the thin, deadly shard of a needle into the FBI agent's throat along with some spittle. The tiny dart brought on an instant seizure of the heart, respiratory paralysis, vomiting for a few agonizing moments, then full paralysis and death. It was a fine drug, this Jericho rose, and he'd read with amusement that if bees pollinated their honey with it, they would create poisonous honey. Nature's a wonderful thing, he thought.
Matisak got in beside the man and pulled forth a thick loop of wire attached to two small handles that fit nicely into his large hands. The wire, which he placed around the dying man's head, he began to twist, using the handles around one another in tourniquet fashion. Pressure against the throat was instantaneous, the blood careening forth from veins and arteries along the throat, all this before the man's bulging eyes popped completely.
Matisak now viciously twisted the wire until the man's head slumped forward, having nothing but the top of the spinal column to hold it on. A good pull, and the head came off in its entirety to land bowling-ball-fashion in Matisak's bloodied hands.
Lapping at the blood from time to time, much of it washing the dash and interior window, he was tempted to drink heavily from this fount, but he mustn't. The little darts with the concentrated poison had worked extremely well and effectively, so he knew that he mustn't consume very much of the man's blood. The fast-acting toxin would have worked its way through the man's system even as he'd severed the arteries.
He was pleased with his simple and crude decapitator. It was an effective way to deal with those who stood between him and her, and there were few killings more disturbing than decapitation murders, so he'd have the police looking for a serial killer whose patterns resembled anything but those of Matthew Matisak, while at the same time he'd be telling Jessica Coran exactly what he needed to tell her.
He was saving himself up for her like a virgin groom. He meant to feed on her alone now.
Having removed the head completely now, he balanced it back atop the agent's bloodied throat just long enough to snatch out the folded leather pouch he carried with him. He opened the small leather bag and now removed the man's head for a second time, placing it, dripping and spoiled with perspiration and blood, into the bag.
Checking his watch, he knew he had to hurry out to Metairie. He wanted to be there far in advance of the moon and long before his sweet Jessica might arrive. There were, after all, provisions to be made.
He placed the head-filled bag in the rear of the vehicle with a slight tossing movement. It hit the seat, bounced readily and came to rest on the floorboard, all quite neat, no blood rivulets and stringy matter clinging to the cushions. He next got out of the car and manfully dragged what was left of Fouintenac- whose cover likely disguised his true name-over to the passenger side of the black sedan. He then quickly got behind the wheel and turned on the ignition, and in a moment Matthew Matisak moved the death car into traffic, following the highway signs for Metairie.
Stepping from out of a black entryway at Orleans and Esplanade Avenues, a lifelong resident of New Orleans, Chester Lewis, wiped his forehead of sweat. He'd lived a long life at seventy-two years of age, and before tonight, before moments ago, he'd believed that he'd seen all things human and awful, but tonight he had witnessed the worst brutality in his experience.
He took several more pulls on his Red Label, gulping the liquid down as if life depended on it, wondering if he ought to tell somebody what he'd seen, wondering if his son would listen to him, or maybe Maybelle Saunders, his landlady and girlfriend. What should he do? He wondered if he'd just become the only witness to a Queen of Hearts murder, or more likely a murder by some new monster. Maybe he'd just tell his son and Maybelle… maybe…
“ Jesus, tell me, what is dis world coming to anyhow?” he asked the dark street and the handful of transients and pas-sersby, who just stared at him as if he were a freak. “What is yo world coming to, Jesus?” he drunkenly repeated.
He could be a good Boy Scout, play by the rules, but what could he tell anybody? He was near blind, and even nearer drunk when he saw what he saw, and who was going to listen to an old retired nigger bus driver anyhow? The governor? Sure. The mayor maybe, or perhaps the police commissioner? He laughed at the idea, but his nerves, his eyes and his conscience were already preying on him. Just a few years ago the city had finally begun to hire black cabdrivers in what was once an all-white profession. He had to do his duty. Maybe if somebody had just come forward and done their duty before now, lives would have been saved.
“ Christ-on-my-knee, what chance anybody gonna wanna hear what I gots to say,” he told himself aloud.
Still, he did know the license plate on the car. He'd been frozen in place by what he had witnessed from the doorway where he'd been resting and drinking; he'd been there long enough to memorize the license plate as he'd had a clear view of it, just as he'd had a clear view of the attack. He'd seen the man inside slouch over like he was shot by some silent bullet. He had seen the man's head cut clean away. Seen it all through the back window from where he sat, his feet against one doorjamb, his back to the other.
“ God, that killer-man waza mostest brazen human bein' I ever seen in all my days. Damned if he didn't move like the Devil hisself,” he quietly warned himself, ambling toward home, still debating with himself as to what he should do, still wondering why the hunched-over, bloated guy who did the killing had taken off the man's head to place it in a tote bag, wondering what the devil intended doing with the head.
He cautioned himself a last time to not get involved. “Nobody gonna b'lieve an ol' fool nigger anyway,” he rationalized aloud. “Leastways, not a liquored-up one.”
Just the same, he had to tell somebody. He'd tell his boy, if he could find him home. If not, he'd confide in Maybelle. Maybe she'd know what to do.
In the dark confines of the yellow cab Jessica Coran felt completely alone-as she should be, she told herself. No one else would come between Matisak and her, no one in harm's way. It was nearing midnight and the monster awaited.
She recalled her most important confidence to Kim, the one she'd wanted everyone to know: She didn't want to be responsible for another soul to pass from this world because of Matisak's sick obsession with her, and one way or another it had to end tonight.
And if Kim were like Ed Sand, here as one of Paul Zanek's carefully placed bodyguards, then Jessica would know that too before the night was over. But nothing must happen to Kim, she firmly told herself. No one could ever again fall victim to Matisak.
Jessica had earlier found a back way out of the hotel, and using a London Fog coat, a pair of dark glasses and a service elevator, she had quickly located the tunnels below street level. A few blocks from the hotel, she'd located a cab, which now bumped the curb and came to a sudden halt before an old stone and metal sign that read: “Metairie Cemetery.”