Pure instinct is as rare as musical genius, medical miracles, white tigers, an Einstein or a pure heart.
With the exhumation now a bust, the investigation went grinding slowly forward at the precinct, deYampert and Sincebaugh meticulously going through the caretaker's damnably frustrating records for anything whatsoever that might explain the disappearance of the Surette body. But nothing was surfacing from the moldy, crumbling records, which in effect were eight-by-five cards in shoe boxes. The city sure knew where to spend its money; the computer age hadn't caught on in the cemetery game, at least not in the city cemeteries.
Sincebaugh's telephone rang amid the clutter, and he dove for it, delighted over the disturbance. Ben almost caught the call, but as always Alex was quicker on the draw. “Yeah, Detective Sincebaugh.”
“ I know you're not Dr. Desinor's greatest fan, Alex, but-”
“ Whataya talking about, Captain?” he said.
Landry started again. “I know you don't like Dr. Desinor or what she stands for, Alex, but you also, apparently, don't like to be left out of the loop.”
“ What's going on now, Captain?”
“ Why don't you meet me at Dr. Longette's office this afternoon at two, and don't be late.”
“ I've got these records to comb through, Captain, and last bloody thing I need right now is a shrink in my face.”
“ Not past noon, you don't.”
“ Come again?”
“ The records, they're all gone bye-bye by then. The lawyer Livingston'll be here by then.”
“ So much for that avenue; hell, it's eleven thirty-five now. When the hell do we get to do our jobs, Captain?”
“ We don't have any choice, Alex. So, just be chill-civil, okay?”
Alex smiled at this Landryism. Carl had a way with words. “I'll be my chillin'-civil best, Carl. Now, what's this about Dr. Longette's office? What the hell's deYampert been telling you? Christ, Captain, I really don't have the friggin' time for a shrink, and I sure as hell don't need a shrink, and-”
“ Longette's not going to be looking at you. The shrink's for her!”
“ Her?”
“ Dr. L for Dr. Desinor, yes.”
“ Whataya mean?” Alex was confused. “He's going to examine Kim?”
“ As an aside, without her knowledge, yes, but the main event which she's agreed to-”
“ You've asked her to submit to what, a psychological evaluation? How'd you get her to submit to-”
“ No, no! Will you just listen? She called me, asked if I could suggest a good hypnotist. She wants to be put under.”
“ Under hypnosis…” He recalled her having said something about being hypnotized in order to recall what her own visions had been during her last trance, but he'd assumed she was just talking to hear herself or to impress him. She was full of surprises.
Landry continued to explain. “So she can reveal all that she saw last night at the Marie Dumond murder scene.”
“ Are we still jacketing this guy as Marie Dumond?”
“ It's all the name we have so far, unless you prefer John or Jane Doe. Take your pick.”
“ So Dr. Longette's going to be operating when?”
“ Operating,” Landry repeated with a laugh. “It's called regression therapy. Anyway, Dr. Longette's going to perform the… the surgery at two. Now, do you or don't you want to be on hand?”
He hesitated. Longette was good. Did Kim Desinor know what she was letting herself in for? If anyone could damage her credibility, it was Longette. Maybe now Alex would have an ally for his case against using psychics in police detection, particularly this psychic on this, his case, but at the same time, on an emotional level, he truly didn't want to see Kim hurt. Still, if she were a fraud…
“ Okay, I'll be there. I'll bring Ben, if he wants to be on hand.”
“ Fine… should prove interesting.”
“ Yeah, maybe…”
“ Alex, none of this psychic business was my idea, but I have to admit, the woman puts up one hell of a front. If you recall, it was she who first called into question the identity of the Surette body this morning at Number 27.”
“ So she did and so she does… put up one hell of a front, I mean. But she told me you called her in on the case.”
“ Not hardly; I argued against it. Stephens found her somewhere, rammed her down my throat. 'Fraid I wasn't much more polite with her than you at first. Well, see you at two, Alex.” Landry hung up, and Alex stared across the room while Ben stared back at him with a what-in-hell look on his horse face.
“ She's going to go under regression therapy with Dr. Lon-gette.”
“ Really? The psychoanalysts' answer to Michael Jordan? Talk about hang time…”
Alex only shrugged, knowing Ben was right. Dr. James Aubrey Longette wouldn't be so easily taken in by the cunning and chicanery of a phony psychic.
“ A strange sensation…”
“ What kind of sensation, Kim?”
“… has overtaken my mind…”
“ Yes?”
“… know I'm going to die… that I'm about to be killed… fear… the fear is like an enormous, pounding muscle inside me, exploding up through me.”
“ Fear.” Dr. Longette's whisper was a penetrating knife that dug into Kim Desinor's unconscious mind.
“ Not fear of dying… fear of being forgotten… wrong to die here, like this… as… as Marie Dumond. My family so far away…they don't know about Marie…”
Kim Desinor was perspiring profusely as she spoke in a hypnotically induced trance produced by Dr. James Aubrey Longette; her beautiful features distorted by some pain from deep within, she seemed to speak to the rhythmical hum of Longette's tape recorder alongside the couch where she lay. Longette worked out of two offices, practicing psychiatric medicine for St. Christopher's Episcopal Hospital in the heart of the city and here at NOPD headquarters, moonlighting as a police shrink, doing an in-depth study of police under stress which he hoped to see published in Scientific American or Psychology Today by the end of the year under the title “No More RoboCops.” Beyond his manuscript, he had definite plans for the Oprah TV show and the Montel Williams program, hosted by a person he much admired. From there, he decided, the sky was the limit. But the police work which he'd taken on with a mild interest had become a passion, and he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to completely walk away from it; not that it was glamorous-far from it. But it was gamesmanship, involving every level of the psyche and the emotions; it was Clue, only for real, three-dimensional Clue.
Longette was trained in hypnotism and regression therapy. He moved about the room as he spoke to and responded to Kim Desinor, ever aware that they were being watched by Captain Landry, Alex Sincebaugh and Ben deYampert through a one-way mirror he'd had installed on his arrival here. Longette was something of a showman himself, and for cases involving criminals, or for something like this, he wasn't about to pull the curtain over the portal. Longette was a tall, imposing man-living up to his name. Elegant in his mannerisms, and as handsome as he was black, he brought to mind a darker version of the singer/actor Harry Belafonte. Impeccably dressed, he looked as much a lawyer as a shrink, and his baritone voice filled a room.
Sincebaugh had had to deal with him on a few cases, but usually their contact was indirect, and while Sincebaugh found him to be quite capable and found his reports done with extreme care, the man made Alex nervous only to a small degree less than did Kim Desinor.
“ Can't die as Marie… can't!” she was saying now.
“ Can you see your attacker's face, Marie?” asked Longette.
“ No, not Marie… Thomas… my name is Thomas.”
“ Thomas? Really?” Longette sounded dubious, suspicious. Sincebaugh, watching, wondered exactly whom he was suspicious of, Marie Dumond or Dr. Desinor? Sincebaugh knew which one he was more suspicious of, but for test accuracy, Dr. Longette had been told nothing of the pending case.
“ Thom… Thommie…”
“ Thommie who?” pressed Longette.
“ Way… Ion… Wal… ley…”
“ Really?”
“ No… Whiley, yes, Whiley.”
Longette's voice was like the voice of God, or maybe James Earl Jones.
Outside, Landry told Ben deYampert, “Run a check on the name Thomas Whiley. See if we got anything on him.”
Ben deYampert's eyebrows arched in a V, and he stared for only a moment at his boss, glanced at Alex, raised his wide shoulders and said, “Alex, you know, I seem to recall we talked to a guy named Thommie Whiley after the Surette body was discovered.”
“ Yeah, I remember… one of the last guys to see Surette alive. He was a boyfriend for a time. Had a rap sheet for male prostitution, right?”
“ The guy hung out on Royal in the Quarter at the time. You don't suppose he and this Marie Dumond are one and the same, do you?”
“ That's what she's saying. She had to've read about Thommie on the police reports we filed. So she lifts his name. I'm telling you, the woman's dangerous. You know what they say, Captain… a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
“ So I've heard. So let's find out more about this Thommie Whiley just the same, Ben. Find out if it's the same guy as in the morgue, okay? Call it in; have 'em go to priority one on it,” Landry ordered.
Ben nodded and left.
On the other side of the glass, Dr. Longette continued in his mellow and soothing tones. “All right, Thomas…”
“ Thommie… I prefer Thommie… with a T-H…”
“ All right, Thommie… can you see your attacker's face?”
“ It's not his face anymore. Changed…distorted… was lovely but now filled with…rage, venom.”
“ Who, Thommie? Who killed you?”
Behind the mirrored wall, Sincebaugh dropped his gaze and muttered, “This is bullshit, Captain.”
Landry waved him off, listening for Dr. Desinor's answer.
“ I thought it was E. You know… said he liked me. Said he liked vulnerable things. But it wasn't E that killed me… what killed me was unusual, queer, demonic, insane. It wasn't E anymore… any more than I'm really me here now.”
“ What do you mean by that, Thommie?”
“ I know I'm being channeled through someone here now…”
“ What does E look like, Thommie, and what does E stand for?” Longette came closer now, leaning in over her unconscious form. “How tall is E?”
“ He's beautiful, really; can't recall real name… full name, but I liked calling him Easy or E. He didn't seem to mind, and he was easy… too easy as it happens… Lied to me… probably lied to me about his relationship with Vic…”
Outside Alex shook his head and repeated the name Vic, telling Landry, “This is just too pat to be real.”
Inside she continued. “What's it they say? If it looks too good to be true, it is! But fine-looking… in heels…”
“ Heels?” Dr. Longette repeated, looking through the glass and shaking his head at this.
There'd been a puncture in the dead boy's forehead at the temple that might match up to a spiked heel, according to Frank Wardlaw's report on 34 East Canal Street.
“ Tall, five-eleven to maybe six-one… two maybe,” continued Dr. Desinor as Thommie Whiley.
“ Weight, Thommie?”
“ Slim, well proportioned, thin but muscular and firm at the same time. A beautiful man, really. Always careful to keep his weight below one-forty, or so he told me on the way.
“ Color of eyes, Thommie?”
“ Usually blue, but green now… definitely green.”
“ Green or blue, Thommie?” Eyes don't change color, Longette was thinking.
“ Not a pretty green, a snake-scale green…when he killed me.”
Dr. Longette looked dubious. “Green eyes or blue, Thommie?” Eyes don 7 change but contacts do. Longette was thinking more and more like the policemen he worked alongside these days.
“ Green…green, insane eyes, but they'd changed.”
“ Any distinguishing marks, birthmarks, scars on E's body? Thommie? Thommie?”
“ E's makeup accentuated a… a strawberry red mark on her left cheek… but it changed too…”
“ Changed? Changed how?”
“ Disappeared. It wasn't there when she killed me.”
Makeup, Longette thought, could cover a strawberry mark, but a transvestite would want to make the most of such a mark. “How did he-she-kill you, Thommie?”
“ Butcher's knife… ran it to the hilt here…” She pointed to her sternum. “Blade was deflected to right of my sternum, sank deep as it would go; put all her weight against it; punctured my right lung and came out the back.”
“ Jot that down,” said the captain into Sincebaugh's ear. “We'll check it against Dr. Coran's report later.”
Sincebaugh reluctantly did as told.
“ Why did E murder you, Thommie? Can you tell me that? Why did he”-Longette paused to mutter a curse to himself- “she, why did she take your heart? What does she do with the hearts?” Longette's voice was melodious, soothing, at odds with his words, and his professional bearing was curtailed for the moment by his curiosity, a curiosity he shared with the entire population of New Orleans.
Desinor took a long time in answering.
“ E did it. She… she wanted my heart, even said so. Said she wanted to keep my heart close to her forever. Knife was in me; my eyes fixed on it; ears ringing, fever rising, but I heard her say, 'I just want your heart, hon… you… you can keep the rest.' “
Kim was writhing on the leather couch, the pain clearly etched in her features. It was hell having to relive Thommie's painful and bloody death all over again, but a small corner of Kim Desinor's mind remained hers, and this part of her looked on and listened as if from a comer of the room above, near the ceiling where her astral self stared down on her form, Dr. Longette and their ghoulish dialogue.
She knew that Dr. Longette was dubious, but she also knew that she'd shown herself to be a person of strong determination, moral fiber and old-fashioned grit, which nobody, not even Sincebaugh behind the glass, could deny.
“ Thommie,” she said now in the third person, “Thommie didn't know until the last moment that he was being killed.”
“ Is that you, Dr. Desinor?”
She didn't directly reply. “He believed that E was on something when he was first knocked to the floor beside the bed; Thommie's head struck the bedpost, but he was in such shock…didn't feel this blow. Instead, he managed to grab onto the baseball bat.”
“ The bat was discovered below the bed, fresh blood on it,” Landry whispered into Alex's ear as if afraid Kim could hear through walls. “We'd assumed it was the victim's blood, but now, maybe not.”
Alex recalled Kim's having mentioned a ball bat the night before. Had she seen it below the bed when she'd fallen? Not likely, since she'd been out cold before she hit the ground.
Kim continued speaking as Thomas Whiley. “Been beaten by my father most my life…” A distinct bayou dialect was beginning to filter into her voice. “Wasn't going to take no beatin' from nobody no more, ever… and when she come at me, I grabbed up that bat. Hit him good once't, but he was insane strong, didn't even feel it; jus' grabbed the bat from me. I tripped up and 'fore I hit the floor, she come down on me with a spiked heel to my head. Don't 'member him puttin' me 'cross the bed. Woke up with the knife in me…”
“ He, she, him, her, what's his real sex, Thommie?” pressed Dr. Longette. “Louisville slugger…”
“ What?”
“ The bat… it was my Louisville slugger. Didn't slow him up a hog's breath, though.”
There was a moment of silence as Dr. Longette turned to face the glass and raise his shoulders. Is she under? Yes. Is she faking this? Maybe, but to do so, she'd have to have one hell of a mind, he thought.
“ TTiomas is my real name. Thomas Peterson Whiley the Second. But now I'm a woman. I'm Marie… Marie Dumond. Died a woman and will be one in eternity. Please bury me as a woman.”
“ We'll… we'll do what we can to respect your wishes, Thommie.”
“ Marie…please, Marie.”
“ Yes, of course.”
“ No one'll claim my body anyways, like what come of poor Vic's body… I watched from my car. Guess I'll be buried by the state, another nobody.”
“ We're looking into your true identity, Thomas,” Dr. Longette assured the disembodied spirit. “We'll find your family. Your passing will not go unnoticed.”
“ Name on my driver's license purchased from a paper mill on Quincey.”
Sincebaugh had seen the beautiful job that someone had done on Marie Dumond's driver's license. He knew that for the right amount of cash, anything could be had on Quincey Street in New Orleans. Of course, Dr. Desinor would know that too, having grown up in the city.
“ I'll be dead…Marie'll be dead, and nobody'll know who she is, and nobody'll care…”
Sincebaugh, from behind the glass, muttered in Landry's ear, “Got that right…”
“ We care,” said Dr. Longette. “We really do.”
“ What about Marie? Do you care about Marie?”
“ Is there anything more, anything at all, that you want to tell us, Marie?” he asked, deflecting the question.
“ E… he… he really didn't mean it. He… E just wasn't himself.”
“ Wasn't himself how?”
“ Crazed… beside himself… I think in his right mind, he couldn't've done it. It was when he became she.”
“ E then is a cross-dresser too, you mean?”
Captain Landry turned to Sincebaugh. “I want a line on this E guy, where he hangs, what he does, where he goes, who he goes with, all of it.”
“ I've never heard of anyone on the street goes by that or Easy, but we'll certainly follow up.”
“ Looks like your instincts were good all along, Alex. The killings are not aimed at the gay community from outside forces, but rather from within the gay community itself; one of them is killing his own, and the key has to be this guy, E or Easy. Doesn't ring any bells, huh?”
“ You know how many of these guys are transient. They come and go like the pigeons. Still, thought I knew all the street names, but no… no, sir, it doesn't. We can run 'im through the computer, see what kicks out.”
“ Either way, Alex, you nailed it, gay community.”
“ Transvestite community, French Quarter.”
“ What's the difference?”
“ Big difference in their ranks. Not all transvestites are gay, not all gay men are cross-dressers.”
“ As in not all bats live in caves? Give me a break, Alex.”
“ As in not all gays are HIV positive, Captain. Look, I'll be at my phone, see what I can dig up on our man E. I've seen enough of this hocus-pocus.”
“ You've seen enough, but you're willing to investigate this E character based solely on a psychic's recall under hypnosis? I'll tell you what, Alex, if this E guy turns out to be our man, this hocus-pocus will have been worth every dime, my friend.”
“ And if it doesn't pan out? You gonna give her the heave-ho? You gonna bring the tent down on this… circus?”
“ I'll certainly try, Alex, but as you know, it's rather out of my hands…”
“ Do Stephens and Meade know about this session with Dr. Longette?''
“ No, thought we'd keep this among us for now, and Dr. Desinor was obliging.”
“ And Dr. Coran?”
“ No FBI for now.”
With that news, Sincebaugh felt a bit relieved. Good move, Captain, he wanted to shout. Anything to ax Lew Meade from the new deal. “I'll go find Big, and we'll see what we can scrounge up on this Easy guy.” Alex knew that he'd combine the search for E with the search for Susie Socks, the alleged cousin to Davey “Pigsty” Gilreath.