The cabdriver had been dubious, but after she'd slipped him a few bills he'd kept his concerns to himself. Now he said nothing, even as he stared out at the desolate location and the high gates to the cemetery. The place was closed and locked against the public this time of night.
This wasn't exactly the time and place she'd have chosen for an end to her life, and it wasn't that she particularly wanted to die here tonight, or that she felt suicidal, but she was determined that no one else on the periphery of the combat would die because of the indiscriminate, all-encompassing conflict that had become like some cosmic battle between her and Matisak.
“ You wan' I should wait, lady?” the Spanish driver finally asked, having no idea of the danger he was already in.
“ No, no, thanks…I'm… well, I'm expecting someone.”
“ I hope it ain't Dracula, lady,” joked the cabbie, unaware that he was so close to the truth.
“ Thanks for your concern, Mr… ahhh…” She scanned for his name on the dash I.D., but he supplied it with a flurry of his hand before she could eyeball it.
“ Santiago, Andreas Santiago… Andy for short. You sure you don' wan' me to wait round, lady?”
“ No, please…I'll be all right.”
“ Okay den, dat'll be fifteen-fifty for de trip, miss.”
She quickly paid the fare, thinking simultaneously of the job that lay ahead of her and of the neon lights of a Lil' Champall-night convenience store a block and a half back. If she needed assistance, she could go there, she reasoned, find a phone-if she should survive this encounter.
Stepping out of the cab, she felt a blanket of damp fog engulf her spirit. As the cab drove away, an eerie glow below the few street lamps in an area dominated by the cemetery made the darkness so much darker. Peering in through the gates, she saw a necropolis in the truest sense of the term. Staring back at her was an underworld turned inside out, an aboveground cemetery of bleak tombs and grim memorials. And somewhere crouching behind one of these burial stones, waiting for her to enter his chosen field of battle, was Mad Matthew Matisak.
He wasn't likely to be stepping out into the open or coming from behind those black wrought-iron gates, she told herself, a damp chill penetrating her bones, tickling like fingers across a piano up and down her spine. A disturbing uneasiness, creeping up from deep within, filled her every fiber, pore and cell all the way to the surface, the epidermal layer, with dread. Core fear, rising… climbing… mounting like mercury in a thermometer. Rising from inside her. Fear from the center of being… interrupted only by ugly, jolting flashes of the last time she was under “Teach” Matisak's control.
She stepped away from the gates, fully realizing that he was in there peering out at her from the fog-laden world of the dead. She could feel his eyes on her. She walked beside the high stone walls at a quick step, taking herself out of his view, seeking the comfort of stone walls thrown up between them, and seeking another way in, which appeared most likely to mean climbing over the walls.
This did little to reinforce the courage she'd started out with. She felt as if the eyes of the monster could easily see through the stone wall she now moved along. He could see through stone and straight into her private hell to her frightened heart, which was beating like a wounded bird's. How often had he read her mind; he certainly must know her thoughts now that she meant to destroy him at all costs.
She felt a sudden shameful yet overwhelming weakness take control of her limbs, fear robbing her of strength and resolve. Her lungs were hot lead in her chest, two pistons rising and falling with the falsetto voice of her startled heart. She was out of step, not herself, unsure, her hands trembling.
“ Damn him,” she cursed aloud, “damn him to hell and me with him if necessary.” She had to get a grip on herself and now.
A shaky, shady-looking character in rags came stumbling from nowhere and was coming directly toward Jessica, an outstretched hand running along the cemetery wall for balance. His face was shrouded in shadow as was his physique, but he appeared to favor his left-hand side as Matisak had always done, and there was a familiarity to this lumbering shadow's gait and that hunchbacked appearance. She flashed on the memory of how easily the fiend slipped into disguise. It was him. He had come out of the cemetery at some point up ahead of her and was coming straight for her.
She raised her weapon, about to fire when the ragman's face was suddenly tinted with a flood of light from a black wrought-iron New Orleans lamppost, revealing a wide-eyed wino with a toothless mouth the size of the Grand Canyon. “You… you Dr. Coran?” asked the strange, ugly man under the light. “Yes, I am.”
“ You're to go alone to Gatorland Storage, the old Jacobi warehouse district. That's alls I know.” He'd gone wide-eyed on seeing her. 38 leveled at his brain. Now he turned and stumbled away.
“ God, Jess,” she cursed herself. “Get hold.”
She'd imagined this moment for a long time now, and she had wondered how she would find the strength, the courage and the will to carry out her own deadly plan against the madman. Now that she was here, however, she only felt alone and weak and fearful and stupid; she'd almost gunned down an innocent, harmless man who had no notion he acted as Satan's messenger this night.
How was she going to cope with facing Matisak outside his cage if she couldn't make the simplest judgments with some accuracy? She began to question herself. Was she being foolish? Was she being suicidal, courting death coming here this way? What might happen if he were to survive their encounter but she were to die? Who would stop him after she was gone?
She heard every sound now as if it were in Dolby stereo, the creaking of a branch in the chill wind, the rustle of leaves as they skittered across graves on the other side of the wall, the humming of electricity through the veins of the city, a cat on paws sliding across a trash can and onto the stone fence overhead, its bulging green eyes glaring at her. A night bird keeping a wary eye on the cat while spying on Jessica. All accoutrements for the Halloween setting of this place.
She knew that he waited patiently within. Just like the old Buddy Holly song title, “True Love Waits.”
She could feel his eyes on her, the staring, unblinking, uncompromising sonofabitch. She was his easy prey now.
Matisak had every advantage. He knew where she was. He merely had to wait for her to step closer, to commit totally to his trap.
28
Woman is like your shadow; follow her, she flies; fly from her, she follows.
Alex Sincebaugh had spent the entire evening in desperate pursuit of a line on a guy named Easy or Big Easy or any variant, such as E-Z. But none of those he came up with who used any of those aliases seemed a likely suspect. So Ben and he had spent a frustrating night-that is, until Alex talked Ben back into pursuing the Davey Gilreath angle. He wanted to put the touch on Gilreath's relative, this Susie Socks.
Ben didn't share Alex's single-minded determination, and they had some words when, after long hours, Ben began to moan, too fatigued, he said. Still, they drove for the Pink Anvil only five blocks riverside from the Blue Heron. At the club, Susie Socks-no doubt her name was an alias-wasn't on duty, but on her night off people were more inclined to talk about her. When Alex learned that she was in fact Gilreath's sister, he became doubly excited. She had been living and working in the area for a little over a year, having come on the scene at about the time of Victor Surette's death-also an interesting wrinkle, thought Detective Sincebaugh.