He expected her at any moment to bite into the heart which had beat in Ben deYampert's chest only moments before, to cannibalize the organ, but she instead caressed the still-pumping muscle, and reverently placed it onto the glass table-top, which had miraculously escaped the kicking and fighting that'd been the death dance between Ben and Dominique.
The heart flapped like a fish there on the glass-topped table, and Alex's heart sank to see the awful sight, his grief for Ben almost overpowering the evil image of his own dislodged heart lying alongside Ben's.
She came closer with the knife, an elongated ratchet-toothed thing which could cut bone, shining swordlike in its sharp thin lines. Enjoying her self immensely, her tongue flicking about her lips, her animal appetite whetted, she plunged it at his exposed throat and upper torso, but he grabbed her wrist at the last moment, battling her for control. She placed both hands over the knife, shoving her whole weight against it, powerful with the strength given the mad.
Suddenly someone was pounding on the door, shouting from outside for the occupant to open up.
It was garbled, but it sounded like backup or at least the landlord. Someone had heard the disturbance and had called for help.
She glared at Alex and back at the door, which was now being pounded with great force, readying to buckle under the combined weight of at least two men on the outside who continued to shout and storm. She snatched up Ben's heart and rushed into the back room, slamming the door behind her.
Alex shouted for help as two uniformed policemen came crashing through the door, followed by the IAD detectives who'd been hounding Alex's heels since the incident at the cafe. “Get him off meeeee! Get me up!”
“ What in the name of Holy God!”
“ Jesus have mercy,” said one of the uniformed cops, his gun trained on Alex's forehead.
“ We're both detectives. His killer's in the next room, damn you! Tell them, Hirschenfeldt! Get me the hell up and use extreme caution over there!” he shouted to the second uniformed cop, who was trying to get into the other room, having heard noises coming from that quarter. “Damnit, man, it's the Queen of Hearts killer! She's locked herself inside there! Help me to my feet!”
She'd jammed a chair beneath the knob of the inner door, and it took them several minutes before they could break through, but she was gone through an open window where the sash flapped madly as if shouting her direction. Through the window a wild wind howled in on them like a ghostly warning not to follow, but Alex heeded only his rage and instinct, hurling himself toward the window. Half in and half out the window, he realized only now that a sudden storm had blotted out the sky with ominous and inky clouds, ready to burst forth with a heavy rain, the sweet, metallic smell of it insinuating as much, while all around him the wind swept in angry eddies, rattling the fire escape, a backlash of the hurricane.
The woman calling herself Michael Dominique had vanished with little trace of ever having been here, but she'd mercifully dropped or had decided to leave Ben's now-still heart on the wrought-iron fire escape two flights below, where it hadn't met with a gentle landing. Having obviously decided to race on without the organ she'd killed for, she had instead bounded acrobatically up or down the fire escape, and now like a vicious killer out of an Edgar Allan Poe story, the monster had been swallowed up in the stormy New Orleans night.
“ What in the name of God happened here, Detective?” asked Hanson, Hirschenfeldt's partner, in an accusatory tone, grabbing hold of Alex at the windowsill.
“ Never mind that! Beat hell back to your unit. Tell 'em what we have here. I want men scouring the area, including the roof and adjacent buildings. It's the Hearts killer, damn you, and he's a she… a she pretending to be a he, pretending to be a she.”
All the other policemen stared at him, wondering what he was babbling. “The killer's a woman pretending to be a transvestite,” he said, attempting to clarify, “and she gets them that way. Lulls them into a false sense of security and then lets fly with that damned knife of hers.”
He started out the window after the killer.
“ Where're you going?” asked the older of the two uniforms, his partner on the way to the unit, the two IAD guys useless, wide-eyed and gaping.
“ After her.” Alex yanked free of Hanson's grasp and climbed out onto the fire escape, trying to find any clue as to which direction she'd taken, up or down. From the look of the undisturbed dust below him, he opted for going straight up.
“ I think she's on the roof. Send backup as soon as you can!”
Alex raced for the roof, taking the steps two at a time until a powerful gust of wind threatened to lift him over the side. He held on more firmly, and once he'd made it to the top of the roof, he stared across at the expanse, having trouble standing, the powerful wind threatening to send him back over the side without aid of the fire escape. He hunkered down low to the black-tar roof, scanning in a 360-degree turn for every possible avenue of escape. There were hiding places everywhere, and the roof was closely aligned with another.
Something told him it was useless, that she was gone, and only then did he realize just how much blood covered his shirt. Both of his forearms were crisscrossed with knife wounds where he'd fended off the bitch's blows. His shirt and coat were caked with his and Big's blood. He felt a sudden light headedness, an inability to focus, and not even the wind could calm the stench of blood now in his nostrils. He felt an overwhelming sense of loss engulf him, realizing that when he went back down off this roof, he'd never again speak to Ben or be yelled at by the big goon.
A cold, bitter rain began to fall over Alex, drenching his hair, melting his tears and washing his wounds. It was the last thing he felt or remembered before blacking out.
32
Envy's a coal comes hissing hot from hell.
Alex, still wracked with pain from his own wounds, had cornered the sadistic Hearts killer, and he had destroyed the monster, at least in his fevered mind where he slept in hospital.
After the storm had subsided, after his wounds had stopped palpitating, he found himself chasing Thommie Whiley's E, alias Dominique, out that window in Surette's apartment. E leaped manfully from building to building, as if capable of flight, but Alex was also up to the challenge, despite the profuse bleeding from his wounds-stitches already in place and torn now. Regardless, his dream ego kept on the killer's heels, shadowing every move, every dodge.
The killer made one leap too many for a wall too far, landing on the other side and barely holding on with those ugly clawlike fingernails Alex so vividly recalled now. The bastard was a guy wearing fake nails and even a set of false breasts which dangled below his shirt.
“ Help! Help me!” screamed the bloody killer who had just brutalized Ben.
Alex backed up and made a prodigious leap across the crevasse between them, miraculously landing on the black-topped roof. He then crawled on his belly to where the SOB clung to his/her petty life there at the ledge.
The killer's pleading eyes were framed in fear, a cowardly creature with heavy makeup, rouge at the cheeks and thick, red lipstick, a kind of crazed clown.
“ Pull me up, damn you! Pull me up, now!” she/he cried in a falsetto voice.
Alex grabbed hold of the killer's flesh and found it soft to the touch, feminine and warm. This startled him, and he looked again into Dominique's eyes. He was a she, she was a he… and then back again. There was no earthly way to tell, save for the ferocity of his/her strength as she/he clung now to Alex, ripping into Alex's skin with those bird-of-prey claws of his/hers.
“ Let her fly, Sincy,” said Ben deYampert, standing alongside, having materialized from the cloud of dream. “Let's see how well the bitch flies.”