She must be careful. She must give Matisak the false sense of security that would give her an edge, give him the impression he had the upper hand, as if she were walking into his trap. But at the same time, she must also be prepared for anything.
She'd purposely not wanted to use the flashlight, only if absolutely necessary, as the beam would signal her exact location. But there was no help for it. The place was pitch black. The beam picked up an occasional shape, creating greater and bigger shadows that danced at every turn.
She then realized that the warehouse was enormous. Stretching into what seemed infinity were rows and rows of paraphernalia from the fourteen or so parades and the Mardi Gras presented each year for the sake of a good time in the Big Easy. It was by far one of the largest such storage houses for the dolls and balloons and life-size figures, a veritable garden for Alice to fall into Wonderland.
“ Appropriate to Matisak's witticisms,” she said aloud to the caricatures staring back at her. They ranged from Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner to enormous, complex dragons amid castles and costumes of knights, knaves, jesters, beggar-men, princes and princesses. She found staring back at her Indians in buckskin, aliens in metal, monstrous creations from Star Wars figures to Babylon 5 creatures with two and three heads. All of the costumes, porcelain figures and wire-mesh animals and papier-mache creations-any one of which might be Matisak-hung suspended in air overhead, while beautiful and elaborate floats littered the enormous corners of the hut, each float filled with its own assortment of gaily colored figures, both human and animal as well as fantastic. What's more, all their marble eyes, onyx and amber and blue, seemed to be watching her every move.
There were literally thousands of disguises the madman might take here, so caution had been thrown to the howling winds just outside the Quonset hut the very moment she'd entered this bizarre still life which had become Matisak's lair and her lure.
She uselessly pulled down on the huge arm that would trip on the light switch, but she found what she'd expected-the power had been conveniently denied her. Only her flashlight beam could pick along from one gargoyle's menacing eyes to the eerie grin of a clown to the sinister talons of a bird of prey, until the colorful phantasmagoria of this silent and individual screening of the Mardi Gras all became as one.
She could see no additional electrical box, and was unable to bring up the lights. Through the thick, enveloping darkness she moved, ever cautious of her prey. Instinctively, she kept her weapon raised and ready to fire; at the same time, she tried to recall what the psychic sleuth, Dr. Desinor, had told her to watch for, a falling sky. She might well have meant Hurricane Lois on its approach, making mincemeat of the sky and the world.
Still, she superstitiously clung to the notion that Kim Desinor might well have seen something other than a hurricane-force wind blowing about in her vision, and for this reason, Jessica kept her eyes on the overhead struts and beams and an artificial sky filled with ornamentals and caricatures and likenesses. A hundred clown faces stared back out of the darkness, faces meant to amuse and create laughter and lightheartedness during the debacle of Mardi Gras, but here, like this, they only engendered a sense of cold terror, their smiles turned to grimaces, their eyes as large and watchful as moons.
Amid them, Matisak lurked.
“ Show yourself, you cowardly demon! I've done as you asked! I'm here, now, alone… so come ahead.” Fuck with me, she silently seethed, her Scorpio ire up. She thought of her next birthday, November 17, 1996, a time when she was to revisit Hawaii and Jim Parry, a time when the whales came into the big harbor on Maui to breed there. She wondered if she'd ever see the spectacle.
Again her eyes scanned innumerable dummies and displays, costumes and Mardi Gras figures and figurines, most of which were dangling from the ceiling. Her flash lit on figure after figure, all of which grinned evilly back but all of which were lifeless, the eyes without depth or meaning. All except one, which she recognized as a mother recognizes her child in a crowd, knowing that this single body was real.
All in an instant her mind took in the simple and strange facts: The dangling man wore expensive Italian shoes-out of place here like something in a Dali painting-slick, pinstriped Brooks Brothers three-piece suit, the yuppie-thick suspenders, a Rolex on the arm. The light beam next revealed a thin-legged torso with deathly pale white hands. The beam could not find the face as it seemed buried in the darkness overhead.
Was it just as a prop to seduce her attention, to decoy her here to the very spot where he wanted her to stand? At the same time, her instincts screamed, “It's him,” and this made her fire, pumping several slugs into the body dangling overhead, her mind spinning with Kim's warning that the sky would fall in on her, and it did.
When her gunshots rang out, an ear-wrenching cacophony of sound screeched through the warehouse as the mechanical pulley device holding all the Mardi Gras figures and the dead man overhead began to carousel around the room. The moment it started up, the lifeless body gave up its head, the ugly, dismembered thing nearly hitting Jessica as it tumbled to the concrete floor with the sound of a ripe melon.
She instantly recognized the grimacing face as that of Deputy Mayor Fouintenac, killed in exactly the same manner as Ed Sand.
Jessica gasped and twirled away, the array of color and netting and fabric swishing by her eyes in dizzying succession. Matisak might have taken her at any given point, but he was showing extreme patience-toying with her-or was it out of caution that he'd not shown himself?
She instantly wheeled, her body, arm, hand and gun doing a 360-degree turn. Only after she was satisfied that he was not near did Jessica move the flashlight beam to the deadman's chest, seeing the sparkle of a half-hidden badge against the lifeless body, rising and dipping, as it came around on the carousel again. She instantly realized that Matisak had killed her last bodyguard, this one no doubt also taking orders from Meade.
Her flash next caught sight of a large upside-down garlanded banner of silver and blue, with words she made out as “HEAVEN'S DELIGHT'' printed across it, obviously a sponsor for one of the floats, perhaps a local restaurant or nightclub or ice cream parlor. And as she neared the banner, she saw the cause of the words: a swirling of moons, stars, planets all caught up in a huge bayou netting to create the illusion, once righted, of heavenly orbs floating above a nightscape of New Orleans.
Before she heard the clap of the metallic release that sent the float's netting hurling toward her, Jessica dove as far to her right as possible, catapulting herself into a row of standing dummies, sending them cascading in domino fashion as the heavens overhead came crashing down within inches of her, the netting dragging along her ankles, clawing at her. She'd avoided the heavy net filled with stars which was released to trap her. But outside, the wind was ripping over the warehouse so powerfully that she imagined the roof being taken apart piece by piece. She could hear both the howling and the tearing sounds as the vicious winds slammed into the enormous Quonset hut.
She'd lost her flashlight, and seeing that it lay under the netting, in Matisak's trap, she took perverse pleasure in waiting now for him to step out of the darkness to claim his prize. He might well think that she, along with the light, was beneath the net he had released over her.
She had slithered animal-like into a dark corner between a stack of colored doors leaning one against another and a pyramid of fallen mannequins. Now grateful for the cover of darkness, she waited to spring her own trap. A single indication of him, and she meant to fire.