“ If I were a clinical psychologist, I wouldn't have any problem with that, but I couldn't tell you for sure.”
“ Kim, is the killer… is she… are you saying that then killer is at this place called Raveneaux?” asked Jessica.
She was no fool. If she said yes, then Landry could take this information back to the right judge, the one who believed in the power of psychics and thereby assure his warrant.
If she said no, and she was by no means certain of it, they might not get the warrant which Alex was so certain would net them their strongest lead yet on the Hearts killer.
“ Yes or no, Doctor?” pressed Jessica.
“ Yes,” she lied.
“ All right, that tears it,” Landry gruffly replied.
“ You think you'll have any luck getting a judge to sign on this, Carl?” asked Alex, pulling up to his elbows.
“ I'm down to the bottom of the barrel, but yes, I believe so.”
“ So, you're taking it to Judge Flint then?”
“ 'Bout the size of it. Nobody but nobody wants to touch this with a ten-foot flagpole, pal.”
Alex didn't particularly care about how they got the warrant to search, so long as they got it, but Flint's reputation being what it was, he worried nonetheless about what might happen on the other side of it when, after they apprehended the Queen of Hearts killer, the legal loopholes started to work in favor of the fiend.
“ I see. A black judge to issue a warrant against a plantation home. Make good copy for the National Enquirer. Very good, Cap'n, but you know that going through so many judges and their clerks, you've tipped the entire legal community to unfolding events. Someone's sure to call out there.”
“ One stroke of fortune. The power lines up that way got hit by eighty-five-mile-an-hour winds. No phone calls going in or out thataway, and we get ourselves a legit warrant in the meantime.”
Alex laughed harshly. “Even if it's from a boozy old derelict who's up on child abuse charges-pending, of course.” Jessica began pacing the room. “How soon do you think we can get the warrant?” she asked. “Every moment we lose, the killer gains.”
“ How about right this moment?”
“ What?” Landry made the warrant materialize before them in magician fashion.
“ But… how'd you do that? I thought you needed Kim's added info about the items here,” Jessica said as Kim blinked.
“ I told Flint it'd already been done, and I told him the results. It's on file. I felt a need for speed too.”
“ Great. Then we'd best go now.” Alex got up from his hospital bed without any pain this time-or without enough to matter. He located his clothes, and was soon dressed and prepared to walk out with them. In ten minutes they were outside in Landry's squad car, headed across town for Rave-neaux's Georgetown home, the warrant actually covering all properties belonging to the distinguished former general and senator.
The servants, who hadn't seen the master in several months, were astonished and put out by the gestapo-like intrusion into their world, but a search revealed nothing save a framed photograph of a pair of children, a boy and a girl, the boy barely five or six, the girl a head taller, her arm draped protectively around him. When pressed for who the children were, the servants could only say that they were the senator's two children, Victor and Dominique.
Soon after, the squad car was turning off Interstate 10, darting through the countryside where Raveneaux stretched on for miles in the darkness beyond the windshield. Jessica and the others had seen the first sign on the first gate leading onto the property six or seven minutes before when the headlight beams had picked it up. Now they'd passed no less than six additional gates. Out on the meadows beyond the gates, cows lulled in the night. There were horses and sheep and pigs out there as well, and field upon field of sugarcane.
They were less than twenty miles northwest of the New Orleans city limits, on a rural road in Ascension Parish now, just down from Interstate 10. The countryside here was flat for the most part, but it had become so solidly pitch-black out here, where the insects now reigned and rang with noise, that little of the land could be seen.
Raveneaux played home to a large stable of racehorses, some first-class winners, but most of the old man's money and wealth had been achieved through a clever mix of sugarcane and politics. In daylight the lush black earth and green fields seemed a far removed world from that of New Orleans' teeming French Quarter; even at night it seemed a world without malice or hatred, envy or greed, bitterness or remorse, deceit or wounds either healed or weeping. So Captain Landry, sitting in the driver's seat beside Alex, looked as skeptical as Jessica, whose frown he had caught in his rearview.
Beside Jessica in the backseat, Kim kept her own silent counsel.
Jessica thought about the road which had led them here. Raveneaux was the one clue left Alex Sincebaugh by the murdering Michael Emanuel “E” Dominique, quite likely the same E as in Kim's uncanny vision after Thommie Whiley's death. Alex had admitted, with some conviction, to having been impressed by Dr. Desinor's near-magical abilities; he'd even admitted a possible connection between her mysterious E and the murdering Dominique, who'd readily used the middle name of Emanuel. Alex had admitted that Dr. Desinor had miraculously unveiled the killer to some degree; unfortunately it hadn't been enough to save Ben, perhaps in large measure due to Alex's own stubborn blindness. What was it about hindsight and 20/20 vision? And what had Kierkegaard said? Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
As they drove on, Carl Landry told Alex how he'd had to break the news of Ben's death to Ben's wife, Fiona. Alex fought to control himself. Ben's family, his children, were like Alex's own.
“ Anyway, Fiona told me some disturbing news about Ben, Alex,” Landry said by way of preparation. “You may's well hear it now and from me.”
“ What're you talking about, Captain?”
Jessica and Kim, sitting behind them, were also curious.
“ Fiona told me that deYampert was upset and worried… that he had… well, taken some money…”
“ That's bullshit. Ben wasn't on anyone's take!”
“ Said that Ben had been paid off to keep quiet about the case involving Victor Surette, and…”
“ What?”
“ And to doctor some items in the reports.”
“ Christ, that's… that's crazy. Captain, just crazy. Nobody approached me to doctor any damned records, and…”
“ Said he was most upset not about the money so much as having lied to you, Alex, to steer you away from any serious investigation into Surette's past. And obviously it was working, up until your nightmares began and you began to put two and two together.”
“ Money? Who, Carl? Who offered him money to stomp all over the case?” Alex was still disbelieving, but at the same time his mind raced over moments when Ben had wanted to go in another direction, as when they'd gone looking for Gilreath, and later when they'd returned to Surette's apartment.
“ You gotta understand,” Landry said. “He never felt Surette was connected-you know, to the string of murders- least not at first. He was like me, hell… like everyone else…”
“ Who offered deYampert the bribe?”
“ She didn't want to tell me, but I made her.”
“ Who?”
“ It came through Dr. Wardlaw, Frank Wardlaw.”
“ That son of a bitch. I knew it… knew all along that he was covering something. Christ, can't believe Ben'd turn over like that. And why?”
“ Ben was hurting financially. Made him an easy target. Anyway, Ben rationalized it all out for himself and was living with it just fine, but for the lies he told you. According to Fiona, Ben just thought he and Frank were protecting someone high up from any public embarrassment-about Surette, I mean.”
“ One of Surette's regulars in high office, you mean?”