Absolute Instinct (Instinct thriller series) Page 11

  “And, as we know, removing the entire damn thing causes death!” he scoldingly added. “Come on, Dr. Coran. We don't have time for a science lesson.”

  Jessica ignored his tirade and sipped more wine between revelations found in Holcraft's account of the ancient religious symbolism of the backbone. “ 'The spine has been called a road, a ladder, a serpent, a rod, a tree. The spine is for many millions on the globe a replica in the human body of the primal cosmic tree, and the brain, as its efflorescence, corresponds to the expanse of heaven.'“

  She had to stop to take all this in, and she tried to imagine some maniac who may or may not have read a similar description of the spinal cord in some arcane book on early rituals and beliefs of mankind.

  “Can you imagine that,” Darwin commented, leaning now over the edge of the terrace railing, staring down at various late night crawlers on the street below.

  She found her place and continued to scan Holcraft's words, reading aloud, “ 'In ancient Thrace and Macedonia, people thought that the backbone of a dead person in time turned into a snake. The Egyptians believed that the sperm came from the spine, and the hieroglyph “ded” stood, among other things, for the spinal column or the sacrum of the god Osiris. In the mystery cult of Abydos, the sacral bone was set up on a pillar, and upon this the head of Osiris was placed, after which the god declared, “I have made myself whole and complete.”'“

  Darwin wheeled, his face a mask of anger. “Is 'at what this guy goes home and does? Lifts the bones over his head and chants, 'I am whole and fucking complete now'? Bastard. We gotta catch this guy, Doctor!”

  “It's possible, and it's just as possible that he feeds on his victim's vertebral marrow. I get an image of a beast gnawing on a bone.”

  He gritted his teeth, the image coming full in his own mind. She lifted his wineglass back to his hand. “Drink up. Become him, Detective, and you may just have a chance at catching him. Cerebral pursuit, I call it. For this kind of monster, I know of no other way.”

  Darwin grasped the glass and downed the remainder of the dark burgundy in one fell swoop as if to take her challenge.

  She gave him a look of approval. “But beware the journey into the inferno. Put on all your armor and arm yourself with every weapon at your disposal.”

  “You're talking about emotional armor.”

  “Body armor and emotional armor.”

  “Teach me, Dr. Coran.”

  “You're sure?”

  “I'm putting myself in your hands.”

  “You're talking about going into an abyss like none you've ever seen before, Darwin.”

  “I have my reasons.”

  “I'm sure you must.”

  # # #

  GILES slept soundly and deeply now that he believed a showing of his work was inevitable, that Lucinda's money could and would make it happen. But Lucinda lay awake, making plans for exactly how they must proceed. She didn't want a repeat of the Orion disaster. She pulled herself from Giles's embracing arm and stood. Naked, she slipped out into the studio and returned to the sculptures, admiring them from every angle. Beside the tub with the incredible likeness of a human backbone lying in it, sat a jar of red paint. She reached down and stared at the jar. It had a strange label, simply marked JO. He'd said he made his own paint.

  Perhaps the paint could be merchandized, she thought. Curiosity told her to test it out. She found one of his brushes sitting in a can of linseed oil. Wiping it clean, Lucinda returned to the bloodred paint and opened the jar. She was immediately struck by the odor, and it lay thick on the brush. She tried to place the odor. The slightly metallic smell brought back a memory of a childhood injury. Then it hit her full force. Blood. It was blood. Blood labeled JO with which he meant to color the spinal cord lying in the solution.

  She set the jar aside with the brush in it just as a shiver rippled over her skin. All the same, she crept on hand and knee nearer the spinal column in the wash tub. Reaching out to touch it, she realized her hand was trembling as it went into the solution.

  Her fingers lightly touched bone. She immediately realized that the backbone, like the blood, was real.

  “Don't touch it!” he shouted from behind her.

  She pulled back, the words It's real... the damned thing is real repeating in her head. Hadn't she overheard someone at the gallery say a woman had been murdered in Midtown? Hadn't something been said about missing bones? At the time, she hadn't paid attention.

  Naked and vulnerable, her back to him, she replied, “Giles, you startled me.”

  “Couldn't sleep?”

  “Just so excited about our collaborating. Your work is so... so beautiful, so unique.” She then slowly rose and turned. Giles stood naked as well, leaning against the door-jamb twirling her panties. Lucinda glanced at the hallway door and quickly back at him, wondering if he had followed her gaze.

  I'm closer to the door than him, but can I get past the lock before he grabs me? she wondered.

  Giles Gahran had struck her as peculiar from the day she'd met him. Now her brain put him together with a mutilation killing, robbing someone of her spine—three spines, in fact—and creating some kind of sick, twisted evil thing he called art, and she had for a time swallowed it as art. His so-called art was actually murder, and he had the positive arrogance to want to display it in a public gallery.

  His eyes widened with a congenial smile. “I'm excited, too, Lucinda, but it's three in the morning.” Shit, she's ruined everything. First Cameron in Millbrook, and now her. Fucking art dealers. How many of them do I have to kill to get my showing? “Are you coming back to bed?” He must calmly entice her back into that sense of security she'd felt with him before now, but how?

  “This thing in the tub, it just looks so real.... I can't get over it, baby. What an artist you are! It's so lifelike, so real,” she repeated. “You really must consider leaving it un-painted. At least on one of your sculptures.” Sculpture hell. This is a damn nightmare.

  He stepped deeper into the room, his arms welcoming her back. She watched his gaze go past her for a brief second. She knew that he'd seen the blood jar, and that she'd tampered with it. Again, she glanced at the exit door.

  He dropped one arm and extended the other out to her. “Come on, Lucinda, I see you opened a jar of paint. Now you know one of my secrets, that there's ox blood mixed in the paint. You know, blood, sweat, and tears.”

  “Giles, I'm sorry for snooping, but... but you gotta know this... well, it's all so—”

  “In fact, you're finding out all my secrets tonight. The bones in the solution are real. I'm sure that's fueled your imagination.”

  “I'm sure there's a perfectly good... ahhh... explanation for... I mean a reason for...”

  “Exactly, let me explain. People never understand artistic creation that is in the least foreign to their parochial thinking.”

  “I know... I know... like the guy that did the Pieta in elephant dung. Talk about thinking outside the box!”

  He glanced back into the bedroom to make certain she'd not also tampered with the box he kept secure below his bed. Untouched. “Ahhh... good, exactly,” he said. “The true artist does not have to explain himself, not to anyone. I'm glad you understand that.”

  “I do... I wouldn't be in this business if I didn't understand the... the artistic mind. Hell, I'm the only one I know that got Being John Malkovich, you know? The movie... about the artistic mind?”

  “Good, that tells me you do understand what I'm doing here. You know, scatological art, art with a grounding in the arcane, down to earth, gritty, real. You knew from the moment you looked at the sculptures that my work stands out... stands above... that it's important.”

  “Yes, Giles, I do understand, and... and I want to help you succeed on...' on every level you wish, to overcome all obstacles and to reach your ultimate goals.”

  “I'm glad we're able to talk... about this, Lucinda. I've kept this secret for a long time. Never had anyone I could really open up to
and just talk about my work. Not even Mother, I guess especially not Mother.”

  “It's a new vision, Giles. I see that. A new way of portraying the mother and child. I can see that clearly now.”

  “You have to know that acquiring the bones is difficult and time-consuming...”

  “How... how do you acquire them?”

  “Allow me to keep at least one secret for now. Look, Loose... Can I call you Loose for short?”

  “Of course, yes. Cute the way it... rolls off your lips, sweetie.”

  He sensed she hated being called Loose or Lucy or anything short of Lucinda, but that she'd tolerate it for the moment. “What matters most in the world to me, Loose, is the gallery showing that will lead to a museum showing and maybe Chicago.”

  “Me, too. Me, too.”

  “Great, then we're on the same wavelength.” He watched her every movement.

  “Giles, honey, if we're to get a showing like we want— and I don't mean some raunchy little neighborhood cafe on Chicago's northside—we'll need more to exhibit.”

  “More?”

  “I'll need far more to work with. More spinal sculptures. I just know they'll be so outrageously popular. The way you've got them floating there like dragons.”

  “You want to exhibit my work badly, don't you?”

  “Yes, I want that Giles, so let me help you. The bones must be extremely expensive. I can help with that. It's some sort of black-market thing, isn't it?”

  She sounds so sincere, he thought. For a moment he almost believed her. It would be wonderful to share my art with her. But he knew better.

  “Yeah, you could call it a black-market thing, and you can help, of course.” He stood rigid, pacing about her now, going from side to side. She realized his zigzag steps had shortened the space between them. The exit looked farther away than before. “After all, anything in the name of art,” she added, forcing as normal a smile as ever she'd faked.

  She backed farther from him. “You could have told me the truth from the start, Giles. I got a little sophistication, even though I am just a Milwaukee kinda girl, you know? Gave me a little shock sure... when I learned the truth, that's all, Giles.”

  “Sorry I frightened you, Loose.” Her words sounded one bell, but her body language another. “Why do you keep moving away, sweetheart? I want to hold you, touch you, make love again.”

  “I... I need to find the bathroom, Giles. You go back to bed, and I'll join you in a few moments.” She continued backpedaling until she slipped on the blood jar, spilling it over the hardwood floor, doing a dance in the blood and paint mixture, pirouetting to stay afoot as he watched and laughed. Her attempt to recover sent her falling and grasping the lip of the wash tub, spilling its contents, sending the spine slithering toward Giles.

  Giles swore and attempted to catch the slithering spine but instead, he slipped on the water soft crunch as one or more of the vertebrae snapped to the pain in his now-bleeding back.

  Lucinda got up and raced for the door, while he got to his knees and held up the one end of the violated cord. He lunged at Lucinda with it, swinging it like a club, striking her in the back of the head.

  Lucinda had managed to unlatch the door, but just as she'd opened it, she felt the body-numbing blow to her head. She slid down the door, her weight shutting it tight. As she fell into unconsciousness, she heard him say, “You wanted to be a part of my success story, Lucky Lucy... . Well now you can be. How's the old proverb fit here, Loose? Success is getting what you want... but happiness, ah, happiness is wanting what you get. I hope you like statuary immortality.”

  SEVEN

  . . hung upon the face of the unknown.”

  —GERALD MESSADIE, A HISTORY OF THE DEVIL

  Millbrook Police Evidence Lockup

  RICHARD Sharpe stood outside the cage in the basement of the one-story Millbrook police station, eye to eye with a bored officer in a two-tone brown uniform who had unhappily searched down evidence in the case of Louisa Childe, box number 1479/RJ6. The noisy, ticking overhead clock read 1:22 A.M. and the lockup guy couldn't hide his annoyance at not being alone, his body language signaling the fact in no uncertain terms. He'd been on the phone with someone as well, and Sharpe had heard the words “Federal Bureau” come up more than once.

  Sharpe's tall frame made him uncomfortable in the cramped, damp quarters here. His time at the New Scotland Yard had enamored him to policemen like Sergeant Pyle of the Millbrook Police Department's evidence room. Richard tried to ignore it, but he wanted to tell Officer Pyle that if he so hated his work, then he should put in for any other duty or get out of the uniform altogether.

  Instead, Richard quietly took the box to a nearby table, sat down with it and opened the lid, placing it to act as a catchall for anything he might quickly discard. The evidence box was the size of a file box, and it had been stuffed with a pair of bloody overalls and an equally bloodied shirt. Beneath this, he found some shards of broken glass, and nothing more. This confused him.

  “What's become of the bag itself?” he muttered. “Officer Pyle, tell me, is it common practice to discard the trash bag the items were found in?”

  “A bag's a bag, Agent Sharpe, whether you're from D.C. or Millbrook.”

  “Was it a plastic bag, as in a grocery store bag, or was it unique?” he pressed Pyle.

  Pyle replied, “That label dates the case back two years. How the hell do I know about some bag?”

  “Yes, I see.”

  He looked again on the manifest of evidence brought in as a result of Louisa Childe's murder.

  It listed four fingertips and a half eaten corned beef on rye. Alongside each of these items a small square marked M.E. 's Office had been checked in faded red. He realized such perishable items could not possibly keep for two years in a box in a warm, humidity-drenched basement. If they were findable at all, it would have to be with the Millbrook M.E.

  He spread the denim overalls and the shirt out across the table, and seeing this, Sergeant Pyle said, “Hey, we eat lunch on that table.”

  Before Sharpe could answer, someone barreled through the door and replied to Pyle, “Come on, Sergeant, when's the last time you guys washed that table?” He went to Sharpe and introduced himself as Lieutenant Daniel Brannan.

  “Yes, Irish are you?” Richard guessed that Pyle had gotten Brannan out of bed.

  “American Irish. All Paddy and proud of it. Understand you're with the FBI, former Scotland Yard man. I suppose I should be impressed, a man of your caliber snooping about a two-year-old case in this fucking hole. My case, by the way.”

  “I'm quite aware of that much. There've been two similar killings since Louisa Childe, and we're attempting to determine—”

  “If they be related, sure. It's that Milwaukee business, isn't it? What's his name? That black guy, Darwin Reynolds? He put you up to this, didn't he?”

  “In a round-robin way, yes. I got it through an FBI medical examiner, an associate.”

  “Does Reynolds really have anything? I mean, if I thought there was something to it... Well, does he?”

  “Quite possibly, yes.” Richard turned back to examine the blood spatters on the overalls. “These blood spatters have a story to tell,” he said to Brannan.

  “The M.E. didn't think it helpful since all the blood belonged to the victim.”

  “Look here.” Sharpe carefully tucked the shirt into the overalls, recreating how they were worn. He then pointed with a pen to an area about the chest and the overall straps. “From what I know of blood spatter evidence, it appears that a spray of blood on the shirt matches up with blood along the straps, all about the chest area.”

  “Yeah, I see what you mean.”

  “The size of the shirt and pants give us some indication of the killer's size.”

  “That much is in both my report and the M.E.'s protocol.” Brannan shrugged to emphasize this point.

  “If these spatters had come as a result of the first blow to the victim's head, it means th
e victim had been facing her killer at the time, and that he stood over her, a taller person by at least a head. How tall was Louisa Childe?”

  “I don't recall.”

  “Perhaps your partner, George Freeman, would know.”

  “George died in the line of fire a year ago come October. A drug bust.”

  “In sleepy little Millbrook? Sorry... I know how it is... losing a partner.”

  Sharpe rifled through the paperwork and found the answer to his question. “Five-seven, so that puts her killer at perhaps six or six-two if I'm right about the trajectory of the blood.”

  “Six, six-two... Wow, Agent Sharpe, that really narrows the search,” Brannan said with a smile.

  “Death-row inmate Robert Towne in Oregon is five-eleven.”

  “Reynolds did put you up to this.”

  Sharpe ignored this. “Look here,” he said, pointing at the overalls again. “From the matted blood on the legs and stomach area, her killer appears to have straddled her backside when he cut into her and she bled out, the jeans absorbing it at the crotch.”

  “You're pretty sure of yourself, Sharpe, but that was all determined years ago, and it didn't help us then anymore than it helps us now. And it's not going to get Robert Let's-All-Cry-Tears-For-Towne gettin' off death row.”

  Sharpe understood Brannan. No cop wanted a cold case of his reopened, because it also reopened wounds in him. Every detective who could not solve a case went away from it limping inwardly and invisibly scarred. Brannan was more than merely touchy on the subject; he was defensive.

  Sharpe asked point-blank, “I'd like to know if the glass fragments yielded any DNA evidence whatsoever.”

  “You think they'd be dumped in Pyle's dungeon in this box if they had anything to tell us? M.E. found no usable sample, not even a partial print, all wiped clean.”

  “What about the other evidence found in the trash bag? Where do I go to have a look at it, and who do I talk to?”

  “Perishable evidence is at the crime lab, across town. I'll get you there.”