“ Save me, you must… you must save me!” came the killer's plea, piercing and painful to his ear.
“ Kill it, Alex… whatever it is… kill it!” demanded Ben's vengeful spirit. “You owe me that much!”
Alex couldn't easily let go even though he wished to fulfill Big's last request. His struggle with himself was nothing compared to the struggle against her clawing, bloodletting grip; in fact the connection between them, killer and hunter, became so slick with blood that it was the red milk of life which soon and ironically made it impossible for the monster to hold onto Alex any longer.
She/he slid in minute increments, one lurch at a time, from Alex's grip. He was unsure whether he wanted the fiend to die so easily or not. He wanted to see the thing suffer as he had suffered the loss of his friend, and as he had seen Surette and Thommie Whiley and other victims of the Queen of Hearts killer suffer. He wanted to rip the bastard's heart out, make it a clean, even, full-circled kind of revenge, but too, amid all the rage and chaos of the moment, Alex also pleaded to have his curiosity quenched.
“ Tell me where the hearts are kept and what you do with them, and I'll save you!” he lied.
But the blood slick created from the gushing wounds and a handful of bloody human hearts the maniac clung to was too much, and the moment the monster sailed away into the oblivion of the pit below Alex's dream self, he awakened with one resolve.
Sweating, his wrists in pain from the imaginary rents and tears inflicted on him, Alex had recalled the one word the ugly demon had whispered to him when he'd asked where she kept the hearts: Raveneaux.
He opened his eyes to find that he was not at home but in a hospital room surrounded by Captain Landry, Kim Desinor and Dr. James Aubrey Longette, the hypnotist and shrink.
“ The regression therapy worked, Alex. You've told us everything that happened in that room,” Kim assured him.
Landry was staring out the hospital window, quietly cursing to himself and repeating the name Raveneaux.
Even Dr. Longette knew what the name stood for in New Orleans and Louisiana.
“ Just who or what is this Raveneaux?” asked Jessica, who looked on behind a concerned Kim Desinor.
“ Big plantation home north of the city,” replied Landry.
“ Home to Senator Raveneaux, retired General George Maurice Raveneaux,” added Dr. Longette with some bemused delight. “How could that old upstanding white cracker man know anything about these horrible killings? How could the killer be connected to one of the most powerful men in the state?” The doctor was awestruck, yet jaded enough to accept the possibility. “You know, to this day some people believe that Jack the Ripper was born of royal blood and lived in Windsor Castle.”
“ Unless the killer was having us on,” replied Landry. “Listen, doctors,” he said solemnly to Kim, Jessica and Dr. Longette, “I don't want a word of it, not a single word, going beyond this room. Do you understand? An accusation like this… well, it must be handled with all due caution and by the book.”
“ Yes, indeed, an important man like Raveneaux, a member of the white elite, a member of the old family guard. Be a different story if the man were black, though, wouldn't it, Captain Landry?” said the shrink and hypnotist, his eyes bulging with rage.
“ I'm surprised at you, Dr. Longette,” countered Kim in her most facetious voice. “Do you mean to say there's different laws for Cajun, Creole and black folks than there are for whites in New Orleans?”
Landry just gritted his teeth and pretended he'd heard no objections. “Alex and I'll have to pursue this by the book, and that will mean somehow, some way we're going to have to convince a judge in this town to give up a warrant on former Senator Raveneaux. You know what that's going to entail?” Alex attempted a laugh, which only hurt his bruised insides, and then he said, “Maybe by the time you get that warrant, I'll be ready to walk out of here, go up-country with you, Carl. Just be sure it covers all the Senator's dwellings and vehicles.”
Landry's usually deep worry lines had just sunk deeper into the folds of his skin. “Christ… it would have to be Raveneaux…”
Kim was worried about Alex, the wounds he'd suffered, and she was also worried about her associate and friend, Jessica Coran. Jessica had been subdued, like an exhausted swimmer just finished with the English Channel. She'd been on the phone all morning in an attempt to locate James Parry, wishing to send him news, but she'd been unable to reach him. Meanwhile, she'd refused to check in with Paul Zanek, who had become irrational about the whole matter, blaming Lew Meade for having bungled the whole operation.
Zanek had called Kim, shouting at her, but she hadn't taken any crap from Zanek either, telling him, “What operation's that, Paul? The bag-Matisak operation? Well, you can stop worrying about Matisak. Jessica bagged him just fine. Meade's got a report on the Matisak matter coming over your fax as we speak, and I'm sure you'll like the results.” She'd then briefly explained what had been found at the Gatorland Storage facility.
Paul had punctuated all she said by remarks such as, “Are you sure? Are you putting me on? Is that exactly how it went down? But that's damned good news, damned great!”
“ Yeah, sure it's great, but at what expense to Jessica, Paul? Have you given her any thought at all?”
“ What're you, crazy? She's all I've thought about. Damned straight I have. I put round-the-clock surveillance on her, despite the fact she didn't want it! I arranged everything through Lew Meade with clearance from Santiva.”
“ Well, congratulations, Paul. Hoist a glass for Jessica. In the meantime, she's surviving quite nicely.”
She'd hung up on Zanek, and turned and looked across the room at Jessica, who'd chosen to hide out at her place. Kim had realized that Jessica simply needed some time and emotional distance. She'd been consoling Jessica when she learned of Alex's brush with death and how poor Ben deYampert had met his end.
At that point, Kim had dropped everything and rushed to the hospital, Jessica chasing after. Moments after her arrival, Kim had learned of Landry's request that Alex undergo hypnosis so they could learn all they could about what had happened in the apartment where Ben deYampert was killed.
Alex was now insisting on getting up and going straight for this place called Raveneaux without a warrant, on probable cause alone, and he meant to do it with or without anyone's help, and he meant to do it this moment, disregarding his doctor's advice, disregarding his captain and Jessica's objections or Kim's concern for him. His attempt to get up, however, caused a flurry of dizziness and a tongue-biting pain searing up from his midsection where damaged, bruised ribs were still sending out shards of gnawing distress. His arms were both in bandages, but his hands were free. An orderly was called in by Landry and the hospital machine was put into motion, and in a few minutes Alex was being pumped with a sleep-inducing medication that calmed him into a stark white doze.
Just as Alex was going under, he mumbled to Landry, “I'm going… with you… to this place…Raveneaux.”
“ For now, you get some rest, Alex,” Landry said. But now he was speaking to an unconscious man.
Jessica took Landry aside and said, “Me too, Captain. I want to be with you when you go out to this Raveneaux place.”
“ Listen here, I want you to get some rest yourself, young lady. You've gone through a terrible trauma with that fiend Matisak, and both of you”-he included Kim with a ges-ture-”you've been up all night on this vigil over Alex, and I appreciate your concern for him, but you're not going to be any good to anyone if you collapse.”
“ I'll get some rest now, knowing he's okay,” Kim countered.“It's going to be a while before I get that warrant-if I can get it at all. As to probable cause, that's a long shot and not a very good long shot at that.”