“ Did Matisak contact her directly?” he asked now. “How does she know where to meet him?”
“ I… I can't say. She didn't tell me,” Kim lied badly.
“ Where are you? Are you calling from your hotel room?”
“ Yes. I tried to talk her out of going out there alone, but she's… she's…”
“ Stubborn, bullheaded?” He sounded as if he were speaking of all women.
“ Determined.”
“ Determined to get herself killed?”
“ Determined that no one else should suffer at this fiend's hand so long as she lives. She's begun to blame herself whenever he kills, and he kills often.”
“ Which cemetery is it? I'm on my way there,” he said, getting to his feet.
“ Swing by here and pick me up first. I want to be with you.”
“ If there's a chance this bastard shows up, Doctor, I can't put you in jeopardy.”
“ You pick me up, or I don't tell you where she's gone, Lieutenant. Swing by and I'll be waiting out front.”
“ There's no time to argue, Doctor.”
“ Then don't waste time doing so!” She hung up and hung onto the information he so needed.
A half hour later, with Alex still replaying their one-sided last conversation in his head, he and Kim were racing toward Metairie Cemetery, Alex's dome light flashing. Kim was clearly upset and agitated, obviously tom between what was right and what was necessary. She'd made a promise and had had to renege on it, her conscience not allowing anything else.
“ God,” she moaned, “I should've called you earlier.”
“ What made you change your mind?”
“ No psychic visions or anything of that sort, I can assure you. Just old-fashioned remorse and fear. If anything's happened to her…”
“ We'll get there in time.”
“ Is that a good ol' New Orleans gaar-ron-tee?” she asked in a moment of jest.
He put the accelerator to the floor.
“ Are you going to level with me now, Doctor?” he suddenly asked.
A car pulled from the curb ahead and was planning to tum onto an adjacent, facing street. Alex laid on the horn and aswerved in one fluid motion, the other driver stomping his brakes and Alex weaving around to miss the other car by mere inches on the passenger side where she sat. Kim could feel the metal on her side suck in its breath and arch inward to avoid the impact; it was that close.
“ Stupid moron!” Alex uselessly shouted to the other driver, who, in the rearview mirror some fifty yards back now, sat frozen, likely in a state of shock.
Kim mentally agreed with Alex's assessment of the man who'd failed to signal, but she also thought Alex had only made the situation worse, that there was a streak of reckless-ness in him. They could hardly afford a collision at the moment.
But as Alex ignored the near-fatal lesson, they continued to soar along at sixty and seventy down the quiet backstreets he'd selected to reach the cemetery grounds, the strobe light atop the vehicle pulsating like a living heart, telling everyone to get out of the way.
Kim stared at Alex's determined profile. Obviously, to him, a guarantee was a guarantee.
“ Are you going to tell me the truth about what's going on here between Jessica Coran and this madman Matisak?''
“ The bastard's become obsessed with wanting to kill her and kill her slowly, by draining her of her blood.”
“ Damnit, I know all that. I want to know how Matisak contacted her, and what the hell's going on in her head that she'd be so goddamned foolish as to come out here alone Now, how did he contact her?”
“ By phone, I think…she wouldn't tell me.”
“ For a psychic, you sure have a problem telling lies, Dr. Desinor.”
She looked curiously over at him as the speed of the car rocked it against the impact of old brick streets in this district. “Am I to take that as a compliment? Coming from you, I would judge yes.”
“ Well, what you did with our police shrink, that was really something. My partner ran the names and numbers and you were right on about Thommie Marie Dumond Whiley.”
“ I'm only glad that I can be of help here, Alex, but you've got to know that by now. I never wanted to oust anyone from the investigation, and I hope you no longer feel threatened by my-”
“ Threatened? I never felt threatened by you, Doctor.”
“ Ahh, well… good then… good.”
“ And it's time we stopped feuding.”
“ Agreed.”
“ Or withholding information from one another.”
She nodded and replied, “How much further to the cemetery?”
“ Five, ten minutes tops.”
“ You mean if we don't run over somebody or into something?”
“ You let me worry about the driving.”
“ Always…” She hesitated saying more.
He glanced over, catching a glint of amusement in her eye. “What's that suppose to mean?”
“ Oh, nothing…just that you always seem to be in need of the wheel. A control freak.”
“ No, that isn't so. I just have to first trust in a guy or a lady who's at the wheel before I'll put my life in his or her hands. Is that asking so much?”
A stock cop answer, she thought, but she only replied, “No… no, I don't think so.”
Then they were at the cemetery, and Alex plowed through the gate, sending it in two directions, his headlights careening off the pale, staring tombstones and crypt walls, the strobe sending crazy shadows in all directions.
Alex ordered her to stay with the car as he leapt from the seat and tore out his. 38 police special. He rushed to the trunk and located a twelve-gauge shotgun, and then he headed out into the darkness beyond the headlights of the car-as if he were going down to the river to fish for bass, she thought.
She quickly exited the car and fell in behind him.
“ Damnit, do you ever do as told, Kim?”
“ I got lonely back there.”
“ I don't see or hear a thing,” he admitted. “Me neither.”
“ What does your… intuition tell you?”
“ It's not good.”
“ What?”
“ She's not here.”
“ Let's do a sweep. Call out to her, just in case.”But there was no answer to Kim's repeated calls.
They wandered through the densely populated necropolis, the city of dead giving up nothing now but silence, and yet Kim felt a thousand eyes upon them.
Many of the tombs appeared expensive, and Kim knew that the cemetery was filled with famous politicians and prominent businessmen dating back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She saw elaborate and grotesque architectural styles of all sorts here, from Egyptian to rococo, including medieval period pieces complete with monstrous, bug-eyed gargoyles on haunches with batlike wings and human features sewn together by demonic hands. Some of the statuary and bizarre examples of funerary art were on a monumental scale, further giving the impression of a skylined city of the dead within the city of frivolity, beer and jazz.
She searched the fog, searched the stones, cautious at every alleyway, byway and intersection, noting the well-kept, manicured grounds, so totally at odds with the city-owned paupers' cemetery where Surette's body had lain until they'd gone in search of it.
She felt like they were the only life on the planet when suddenly they came upon a sign which read: Free tape-recorded tour of the cemetery available at the Lake Lawn Metairie Funeral Home, 5100 Ponchartrain Blvd., or call 555-6331. Tacked to the sign were several notices which blew in the wind. A distant rumble of thunder threatened more storms from the lingering hurricane activity in the Gulf of Mexico.
Kim was wondering how Matisak had made off with Jessica. How had he chosen to materialize here? From the shroud of fog, from a tomb he'd broken into? What sort of a stand had he made? Had he taken her by complete surprise? Did he have her now in his power? Were they too late to save her? What sign could she hope for?