She looked down along alleyway after alleyway of the necropolis peering into the black rows of funerary tombs, when suddenly she stopped cold. There was a howling of dogs in the distance and a light, misty rain came up from nowhere, as if it blanketed only the Metairie Cemetery. Without a moon or light, she could make out no definable shapes amid the purple and burnt sienna and umber-colored kaleidoscope of leaves flurrying in the night sky where an ancient oak resided.
“ I don't believe this, the balls of this guy Matisak. Look at this,” said Alex, drawing her attention to the sign and a message tacked to it bulletin-board fashion. “It's a message to us from him.”
Matisak figured Jessica would call in help; he figured there'd be backup, and so he'd come and gone before they arrived, Kim realized as she read the note Alex handed over to her. It merely read: “You're getting closer.”
“ How're we going to find her?” asked Alex.
“ Shhhhhh…” She tried desperately to get something out of the note, something extrasensory. “Do you know of a nearby warehouse, anything used for storage? A large industrial area?”
“ There are several within an hour's drive.”
“ Then let's get going.”
“ Come on.” They made their way back to the car and the strobing lights in the distance. The rain was pelting down around them now, soaking them.
Kim stopped, seeing a spiritual entity flit across her line of vision. She instinctively shouted, “Jessica! Jess! Damn her… damn her for taking so much on herself! Matisak's not just her problem; he's my problem, your problem, Alex, every decent policeman's problem!”
But Jessica was gone, skirting about the tombstones, a mere phantom, not wanting to be found. It was an illusion, and Kim knew it.
Alex took Kim into his outstretched arms to reassure her, but he was wondering just how long the two women had known each other. It was his understanding they'd only met since taking on the Queen of Hearts case, and since one was a scientist and the other a psychic empath, it made quite an impression on him when Kim had called claiming that Jessica Coran had confided her plans to her; it made another strong impression on him now to feel this woman's heart-wrenching sobs, to realize she was so openly weeping over Jessica's disappearance, and that she still called herself a cop.
Sincebaugh's natural curiosity had been aroused by their confidences, and Kim's recent remark, including herself in as a cop, but now wasn't the time to press for information.
Kim looked again off into the distant grounds of the sprawling cemetery, and there saw the rows upon rows of crosses, which in the fog and flashing lightning strikes and the whirling strobe light atop Alex's car looked aflame; in fact, the crosses seemed to rise and fall as if breathing, and they appeared to be moving in tandem to the strobe lights.
Little wonder she was having trouble pinpointing the Queen of Hearts killer; her psychic impressions had been distorted by the enormous duel between Matthew Matisak and Jessica Coran. She'd all along been picking up signals which belonged to the other case, and those symbols of crosses afire, marching like trees-Macbeth's enemies in disguise-began to bleed when pierced with arrows of light. All of it had come from Jessica's psyche. Jessica was a Macbeth now, an obsessed, tragic figure, and her only way out was to fell the one tree that marched at her.
“ Alex, I have a confession to make.”
Sincebaugh looked into her eyes, his hands firmly pressing into her flesh. “Really, and you want me to act as father confessor?”
“ These images.” She pointed at the shadow and light display across the tombs and crosses.
“ Yeah, kinda eerie, but what about them?”
“ They're the rosary images I've been getting right along, but they've got nothing whatever to do with the Queen of Hearts killer after all.”
“ Then what are they? What do they mean?”
“ They mean I've been a fool, and Jess is in danger because of me.” He shook his head and tugged at her to go with him to the car, get out of the rain. “It's not your fault she's come out here on this vendetta alone. You can't blame yourself, Kim.”
“ We've got to help her. We've got to find her.”
“ We will… we will,” he firmly lied, as unsure as he was wet.
“ Something to do with green… a large green beast…“Come on… back to the car… We'll locate her somehow.”
They returned to the dryness of the car, and once inside, the scavenger hunt was initiated when Alex got on the radio and put out an all-points bulletin to locate Dr. Coran.
“ How? How're we going to find her?” Kim pleaded.
“ Use some of that psychic power of yours. Meanwhile, I'm going to locate a phone book.”
29
And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison.
Jessica had brought two guns, one in a shoulder holster, a Browning automatic, and a. 38 police special strapped to her ankle. She tried to bolster her courage, lifting the automatic once again from its home, gritting her teeth and voicing a curse. “Come on, you bastard, just dare to show yourself…come on… come on…”
She'd located the dilapidated old warehouse teetering along a stretch of the wharf buffeted by the Mississippi River. The wind had blown up into a fury in the past few hours as if in collaboration with Matisak, but she knew better: The car radio in the cab had been blaring out warnings to residents all along the coast, warnings about a tropical disturbance that had become a hurricane; crossing the midsection of Florida, Hurricane Lois had recoiled for a second go at the U.S. mainland, experts predicting that it would likely hit in the vicinity of New Orleans. All available personnel were on alert and people were boarding up windows and stocking supplies. Landfall could be as early as dawn tomorrow if Lois so deemed it. But gale-force winds had already arrived ahead of her, some gusting up to sixty and seventy miles per hour, and some taking out telephone and electrical lines to parts of the city, including this area.
The warehouse was nothing more than a large Quonset hut-of World War II vintage, she guessed. The place was surrounded by black, sooty red-brick buildings, also ware-houses, all of which appeared a century old, and any one of which might fill in for a bleak Dickens backdrop or one of Hawthorne's ominous customs houses. The place was as dank, dismal and dark as the cemetery from which she'd just come.
An excellent shot on the firing range and proven in the field, Jessica only worried about the dense fog permeating the entire area and impairing her vision. If her theory regarding exactly how Ed Sand had met his end had any validity, the instant Matisak showed himself she must react, for he'd be sending a shardlike dart at her to immobilize her. He wouldn't use any fast-acting poison, just something with a paralyzing effect, to gain complete control. He didn't want her to die easily or quickly, so she must be vigilant and prepared to react instantaneously to the slightest sound or sight of him.
She recalled Kim's warning about an attack coming from up overhead. She readied her gun and moved ever closer toward the large overhanging sign with the tattered, faded shape of an enormous alligator staring back at her through the mist and fog.
She was soon standing at a side door left standing open, an invitation to enter a gaping, black maw. She reached into her purse for the flashlight she'd brought along with her and, taking a deep breath, entered. The place inside was strung with ropes and pulleys overhead, with a myriad of mechanical devices at every turn. Matisak liked to use ropes, chains, cords to tie his victims up and dangle them upside down, to bring all the blood rushing to the head, where he then released the pressure by relieving his victim of that blood.