Absolute Instinct Read online

  But when he tried to pet Archer, the cat slipped below the sofa and disappeared in one fluid motion. “Don't want nothing to do with me. Smart animal,” Giles muttered. Then he near shouted, “I've yanked out a few cat spines in my day!”

  Giles then turned his attention to the human spine in his left hand, Louisa's gruel-dripping backbone. He laid the spinal column across the dead woman's buttocks. As he busily collected her blood in small, empty honey jars he'd cleaned and brought with him—sample-size jars he'd pocketed from the hotel where he'd been staying the entire time he had staked out Louisa's place, having stalked her from her beloved park bench to her most private corner of the planet. He briefly flashed on Grendel, which he'd read as a child, and how touched he had been by the monster's cave. How cold and unhappy a place it was, and the creature's absolute aloneness—an Adam without an Eve. And so poorly misunderstood, the sad oversized hairy beast, and how very pathetic it all became, his story. How he had no choice but to attack and destroy those men who sat about the warm hearths chomping on their muttonchops and raising their ale glasses and whoring with their women. How he'd see the lights of men in the company of men, and how he must absolutely hate them for their happiness.

  Giles shook off the remembrance with a strange psychic shiver he little understood. Time to finish up with the blood collection and pack up the spine for transport, but then his stomach churned with a clawing hunger, a reminder of the deserted corned beef on rye that Louisa had made for him, left unattended in the kitchenette.

  From a kneeling position over the body, Giles pushed off the bloody carpet to stand over Louisa's remains. Her spine was as beautiful and intricate as he'd imagined all those days and weeks of stalking her. It reflected her beautiful soul, Giles thought before stepping over the mutilated body, going for the sandwich. Once in the kitchen area, he stood contemplating whether or not he had left behind any trace of himself when he saw the red footprints on the Italian marble tiles he'd just walked across.

  A small oval mirror—a homey Midwestern message stamped onto the glass—stared across at him where he leaned against the counter, chomping down large bites of the corned beef. He thought it odd how his reflected eyes formed little blue bull's-eyes in the final two O's in the of and of in the familiar, apropos message: Today Is The Last Day Of The Rest Of Your Life.

  Giles hadn't removed his hat or his tight-fitting gloves on entering her place, even when she offered to turn on the gas-driven fireplace. He'd argued it was unnecessary and that he'd only be a few minutes. So he had kept hat and gloves on, as they were now in the mirror. But he had also admitted that his fingers and toes remained numb from being outside, and that's when the mother in Louisa leapt out. She insisted he stay for a sandwich and a tumbler of whiskey “to warm his giblets,” as she'd put it.

  With the gloves on, he needn't worry about fingerprint evidence. The hairnet he wore below his winter knit cap would keep hairs from falling, but there was always fiber evidence, and now his footprints in blood. He had to consider everything. As he did so, his cobalt-blue eyes surveyed the kitchenette, which in its heyday surely must have been top of the line, fabulous even. As he looked about the small space, he heard the crunch of glass.

  “Damn me!” he cursed, lifting his shoe off the glass tumbler she'd earlier knocked from his hand in her panic at realizing that Giles had come for far more than money for the charcoal drawings he'd done of Louisa in the park. The broken glass underfoot lay shattered in countless pieces now, whereas it had been neatly shorn into three large, easy-to-dispose parts before he had clumsily stomped on it. Earlier her cheap whiskey had gone flying when she lashed out at him with a broomstick. Any minute amount of saliva on the shards of the glass would carry his DNA. He scooped all the larger pieces into his gloved hands and tossed them into the trash container. He then located broom and dustpan and swept up the residue of granular-sized glass, the sandy stuff mixing with hair, fiber, dust, all discarded into the plastic container lining the trash can.

  He next stared at the counter, littered with the paraphernalia of apartment living: obligatory spice rack, bottles, jars, can opener, skillets, dirty dishes—she'd not been expecting him so soon—nickel-plated silverware, used-up E. coli-infested sponges and dish towels. Amid this, he had located his half-bitten corned beef on rye piled high with tomato, lettuce, mayo and mustard that Louisa had lovingly prepared for him, remarking on how cooking for a man was tantamount to a gesture of true love, blushing as she said it, the old dear.

  A gnat-sized banana fly flit into and out of his peripheral vision as if lift off had come from the center of his sandwich. Louisa's lithe little soul in the guise of an insect—a black Tinkerbell perhaps? Highly doubtful, but the possibility the thing had been crawling on his sandwich the entire time he'd been taking bites from it disturbed him enough to make him toss it into the trash bin with the broken glass.

  Giles left the bag open to receive his bloody clothing and shoes. Naked now, he next lifted the broom from the floor. Firmly holding on to the broom, Giles painted his bloody shoe prints into swirls and eddies created by the nylon bristles. He stood back and studied the beauty of patterns he found unexpected. The patterns made the red circles look like giant fingerprints, but they'd be useless to authorities, these giant, mocking prints. The thought of it created a strange but welcome shiver along the length of his epidermis from scalp to toe.

  This finished, he stepped back into the cramped living area. He stepped over Louisa's body and placed the bag alongside his other two bags near the door, readying to leave once dressed. But first, seeing additional red shoe marks stamped and drying against the carpet, he quickly swiped at these with the broom. His finished product here created a river-stream effect of red against the thick pile to blot out his footprints as he worked his way backward toward the door and the bags he'd placed there.

  He looked down at his victim, the woman he thought an absolutely useless human being. Mousy brown hair just turning to gray, the first signs of old age beginning to crease her face, a woman tired of life, Giles imagined. Had never been with a man, he further imagined, never dared anything, never lived. The dash between the dates on her tombstone will stand for nothing, he told himself. Still, she had been sweet to him, kindly, motherly even. He hadn't expected the depth of her concern, and he'd felt ill at ease with it, though certainly he'd cultivated her trust. A double-edged sword; part of the game. While Louisa had, in effect, made things far easier for him as a result of her trusting kindness toward him, the end result was accompanied by a strange feeling in Giles, a twinge of remorse. Such regret surprised him.

  In a way, Louisa had shared with Giles a handful of similar, if not identical, characteristics, just as he shared with the monster Grendel. She was trusting, wanting to believe the best in human nature, even good-hearted. In another time, another place, another upbringing, with other parentage, Giles believed he'd have been as kindly, as good of heart as Louisa any day of the week. His mind tumbled over the notion that it could not wrap around, trying to form thoughts, the thoughts trying to form words, to get a fix, a hold on the facts and keep them in order. She got what was coming to her in the long run, her damnable, milksop, cookie-baking, Millbrook kindness notwithstanding, something he'd encouraged sure, but he'd wanted it to be false, not true, a kind of Midwestern traditional mask, all bullshit, her mewing at him like a kindly mother, her treating him as she did her precious damned Archer as if she meant it, as if it meant anything, when all it managed to do was cloud his determination, blur his purpose, and make things more difficult. The bitch'd made things easy only up to a point; even after death, she somehow managed to make things hard. Certainly harder than doing dogs and cats. In fact, thanks to her damnable sandwich and whiskey and doting, she'd made it the hardest thing Giles had ever had to do. Still, he congratulated himself on having stood his ground and having done the deed.

  Earlier he had visually scouted the walls and shelves, any surface for photographs but found no family pict
ures. After taking Louisa's spine, he'd searched drawers and boxes and beneath her mattress for any personal letters or envelopes lying about. Aside from bills, nothing. Apparently she had no ties, just as his intuition had led him to believe. No one to miss her passing.

  Giles had watched her go in and out of the building. Louisa only came out to cash checks, visit the corner grocery for birdseed, food and liquor. Her only recreation or joy at all appeared to be in feeding the birds across the street at that run-down children's park he stared at now through her apartment window. His artist's eye—studying the patterns of snow-laden November leaves—saw the mosaic of color, texture and line created about the dry earth, rendering ocher and orange amid patches still green with life alongside the blight of dirty snowdrifts piled high, each a counterpoint to the other like the tug of war between seasons.

  Giles had begun to frequent the park, and had begun to follow her to the grocery, carrying his art supplies on his back. At the grocery, he'd watched her pay with food stamps and guessed that she lived on disability checks. A miserable life, yet one she prized more highly than he'd imagined. For two weeks now, he'd watched and waited, approaching with great care and a foolproof plan to play on her vanity—what little she still possessed.

  Giles recalled how surreptitiously—how like old Archer still hidden somewhere nearby—he had encroached on Louisa's tree-lined territory there in the park to gain her attention. His sketchbook in hand, he set up at her favorite bench, where he busily replicated her birds. Giles suspected that her birds must be the only thing in life more prized than her drink. Certainly, she interacted far more with her birds than with anyone in the neighborhood.

  “You're drawing the birds,” she had said to him only this morning.

  “I find them fascinating.”

  “Really? Someone of your generation?”

  “My generation? I've read Conrad Deueval's books on bird behavior, how very much they are like—”

  “—like us,” she finished for him. “Deueval is marvelous. God what insight he has into people as well as birds.”

  Giles had read in the man's introduction that he had never known how to interact with his parents, was alienated all his school life, failed miserably at every endeavor, and could not stand working or living in the same environment with people. Giles easily empathized. But his interest here was in catching and dissecting Louisa Anne Childe for her spinal column with its sweet meats and juices. Still he got caught up in Deueval's musings. When the man came into money, he built a four-story house off Bird Cove Key on an island bird sanctuary in an apparent deal too good for the state of Florida to turn down. He had the house built with no doors and no glass in the hundreds of window frames, allowing free access to the bird population—video cameras everywhere, running twenty-four hours, seven days a week. The biggest birdhouse on the planet.

  Giles learned all he could, to intersperse his knowledge into the conversations he hoped to have with Louisa in order to wrangle an invitation to cross her threshold. Once inside, he knew he could proceed with his own fanaticism which did not include birds.

  “Conrad Deueval earned his doctorate in the natural sciences and with his Ph.D. and his books chronicling bird activity and behavior, he proved there is little difference in the working brain of a bird and that of people, especially promiscuous men!” she said and laughed, blushing red. Giles recognized the little girl in the aging face, amid the pudgy cheeks and crease of her smile from nose to chin.

  “Have you... did you read his last book?” Giles asked.

  “The Frightening Truth About Ourselves? I have it on order at the local bookstore.”

  “I could get it far more quickly for you.”

  “How?”

  “I know the author,” lied Giles.

  “No! You don't! How?”

  “My uncle's roommate in college knew him.”

  “But Conrad Deueval's never finished college. He bought his degree sometime later. He could not be confined and chained down by academic bureaucracy and ballyhoo. A great man, a brilliant mind.”

  “Do you want the book tomorrow?”

  “You have that kind of access to the man?”

  “Well, two days. Give me two days.”

  “All right, you're on, but I insist on paying for your troubles.”

  “Only one kind of payment I would accept from you,” Giles replied, knowing he had her in his grasp.

  “What... what exactly did you... that is... do you have... in mind, young man?”

  “Oh, oh, please, nothing like that, ma'am, no! No way.”

  She flushed, embarrassed. She pointed and spoke to cover her blushing cheeks in the frosty air. “Look at them.”

  He followed her finger to the begging birds.

  She added, “Watch how they play and fight among themselves.”

  “Just like people. Just as Deueval says.” He went back to his sketching of the birds as if he'd forgotten something he had to either touch up quickly or lose to memory. This invited her to come near, to stare over his shoulder at the sketch book, curious.

  In his ear, she made a sound with her teeth. “Is it for a book? A magazine?”

  “What? This, the picture? No, I'm really not that good. It's just practice. I'm taking classes, you see.”

  She examined the charcoal sketch he'd crafted.

  “How much?” she then asked.

  “Oh, I don't sell them. I'm not that good. Besides it's unfinished.”

  She pursued him. “Name your price. I want at least four.”

  “Four? One for each wall?” he'd asked, joking.

  “Yes as a matter of fact.”

  “Okay... Okay... I'll give you the bird sketches if you'll sit for me.”

  “Sit for you? You mean as... some sort of—”

  “As centerpiece to my homework, as an integral part of my getting a decent grade without having to hire some fake actor. I draw you, now, right here amid the—your birds.”

  “Oh, they're not my birds. They're free. No one owns these footloose feathers.”

  At that moment, she seemed to him more lonely than reclusive. “I've seen you out here before, feeding them.” He allowed her a closer look at the work. “It calls for you to be in it,” he added and smiled. “The final drawing... perhaps a painting to follow... you should be in it alongside the birds, really.”

  “But if I sit for you, and you give me your work free of charge... what's in it for you?”

  “I learn my craft. It's a... you know... a challenge.”

  They exchanged first names.

  Wasting no time, Giles had then speed-sketched her into the work in progress, having earlier left a space for her likeness. She fit perfectly, looking like St. Francis amid the birds. Louisa loved it, taking it to her breast and asking for three more pictures just of the park and the birds.

  “When and where can I bring the other sketches to you?”

  She pointed to her building. “One-oh-six is the number.”

  He had watched her walk off, the November wind tugging at her coattails.

  “She's the perfect choice, isn't she?” he asked the birds.

  HE had choked on the stuffy air in her hallway. When he'd knocked, she was careful to call through the door, asking who it might be—as if she had frequent visitors—a pretense born of pride and embarrassment, Giles imagined.

  “It's Giles... I have your finished drawings.”

  She cracked the door, and seeing him, she threw it open. “You can't possibly be finished already!”

  “But I am. They were easy.” He held out the charcoal sketches. “They weren't hard, really.”

  She looked at each one, praising each in turn. “Let me pay you something for these. They're beautiful.” She saw that he stared at her. “Oh, where are my manners? Come in... come in! It's become too cold out, hasn't it? I'll get you something that will warm your giblet. You must be hungry, too. It's so wonderful to be able to create like you do. It must be so fulfilling and reward
ing. Such a gift. Such talent. Were you born with it? Of course, you were, but you must have had to cultivate it as well. Like the seed into the flower, to see it flourish, you must see it nourished, as they say. I once tried my hand at watercolors... once... once was enough.” She twittered instead of laughing. “Everyone in the class was so good, and my stuff... it was... well, pitiful.”

  Giles gave the appearance of caring to listen to her non stop chatter. It'd been as if a floodgate were opened. Once inside, with the door closed, Giles heard a man's voice through the thin wall say, “Plumber, ma'am! You called for a plumber?”

  It registered with Giles that he mustn't give Louisa a chance to scream out.

  Giles had grown somewhat fond of the bird lady. While not decrepit or elderly, Louisa seemed far older than Giles's twenty-two years—perhaps by some fifteen or twenty years—he thought. She was neither pretty nor ugly, only plain—like her choice of clothes, her face a featureless sky, no life in her eyes until and unless she were speaking of or to her birds.

  She had turned her back to him and gone straight into the kitchen. Once there, she poured him a drink—Jack Daniel's, softening it with water from an Ice Mountain bottle. She immediately began building him the sandwich, and offered him breadsticks while he waited. In between she said, “Take your hat and gloves off. Stay awhile.”

  He patiently waited, biding his time, alert to the right moment when it came. The creation of the sandwich finished, and it handed to him, Giles took a couple of bites and swallowed down some whiskey.

  She went back to the sketches she'd laid on the kitchen table, glancing at them with admiration. “The sketches... I'm going to frame each and place each one up on the walls. Now you must take something for your troubles, Giles. I insist.”

  She gazed to her purse on the table, placed the sketches down and lifted the purse. Rifling through for cash, she turned toward him.

  “I don't want your money, Louisa.” His tone made her look up from the purse and into his eyes. From a darkened corner, her cat growled and hissed at him, and she said, “Now, Archer, bad cat! You stop that now. This is our guest—Giles. You remember, I told you all about Giles, and that he might be coming by to visit with us.”