Darkest Instinct Page 26

  The ancient monk Tauto meditated and prayed and after a lifetirfie of diligent study finally became one with his god, Eradinus. Young Warren Tauman was immediately taken by Tauto’s plight—both a solitary and a deformed figure, having by some accounts a hunched back and a club foot, he was banned by his order for “occult practices” and “perverse sacrifices” to his god.

  Tauto shared himself with his god, becoming his instru­ment on Earth. Warren was at peace and oneness with his god, as was Tauto so many years before; together, they shared so much. They shared the same symbols and icons such as the Tau cross, and even the same name: Tau(man)... Tau(to)... Tau(rus). Now, in the twentieth century and nearing the twenty-first century, the name Tauman, Warren decided, was but an extension of Taurus and Tauto, for he had so much in common with the historical Tauto and the god Taurus.

  He had read of how Tauto’s victims were repeatedly strangled at the altar erected for his god; he had learned that Tauto believed that anyone willing to make the ulti­mate sacrifice, as he had, of becoming the living instrument of his god on Earth, would one day become a significant part of that god’s being in the next life.

  Warren had read also about how Tauto himself had died, at the hands of commoners who stoned him to death out of fear and ignorance and revenge, for he had sacrificed a large number of lives to his god by then. Warren fully ex­pected to die at the hands of the ignorant masses who were currently provoked by what they termed a killing spree and what he called necessary sacrifices, offerings to his god on high.

  One of the few luxuries Warren managed to get from his mother’s newfound wealth upon marrying Sir William An­thony Kirlian of Grimsby was a telescope. She said she wished to “encourage the boy’s interest in the stars.” Many a night, he had used the telescope at the precipice over which he had thrown Mother, there in search of the con­stellations of Taurus and Tauto in particular. Warren be­lieved himself a reincarnation of the self-taught monk of the twelfth century. With his telescope, he had discovered the light of Era- dinus as if all over again. That light—Eradinus himself— began talking to Warren. First it was in a low, unintelligible voice in the tongue of a forgotten language, but soon, after Warren learned to open his mind, the gibberish became clear, the words concise, the voice in his head now a com­forting lull, a welcomed visitor from afar, from the stars. Warren easily, blissfully opened his mind, soul and heart to the godly voice that now spiraled about the convoluted corridors of his sometimes fevered brain. Once the voice of Tauto breached Warren’s inner mind, there was no question but that he had to seek out all the power denied him all the years of his life, and not surpris­ingly, he began his concerted effort at regaining power and control over his life within his new family. First old Kirlian must go, the voice told him, and then his mother.

  Laughter now wafted across the bay and into Warren’s mind, making him look toward the wharves, the harbor lights closer now, reflecting wild colors off the mirroring water of Naples, warming the darkness like some ancient campfire, and him just outside the light, beyond the human pall. These impressions and thoughts reached Warren’s mind now, making him blink and return to the present mo­ment. He had almost overshot the wharf where he wished to ease the Tau Cross into a slip owned by a restaurant, one that went unpatrolled by Coast Guard or city dock in­spectors. He worried little about someone with a clipboard asking for his port of origin, his background or the call numbers of the boat. It was one of the little things he loved about America, her many freedoms so taken for granted by people here. Besides, the boat had multiple papers made out on her, and he changed both her numbers and her names routinely to throw such agencies as the Florida Marine Pa­trol off his wake.

  As his boat neared, he heard more clearly the tinkle of glass and the sound of women’s voices amid the clatter and chatter of this place. How cunning they were, the female of the species, always hiding their satanic nature in garlands of sweet words, toothy smiles and lilting laughter. Few people knew just how much pure evil resided in their so-called purity and virtues. Women were snakes to be beheaded, so far as he and Tauto believed.

  There was little he detested more than false piety and false purity in women; these two qualities reminded him more of Mother than anything else, and it was with an eye to these qualities in a woman, along with their physical appearance—which must suit Mother’s—that he went hunting. Mother would wish to inhabit the vilest creature, the one with the most makeup and guile, the lewdest of them all, but she must also be beautiful, with trailing, au­burn hair like Mother’s own had always been.

  He moved the Tau Cross in closer, closer, inching it forward. The lights from the wharf reflected wildly, haunt- ingly off his masts and rigging, showing off the luxurious teakwood molding all round his ship. How could he help but attract Mother’s new body? His constant, perhaps ob­sessive polishing of the boat’s wood would pay off here.

  He had given fair warning by way of the newspaper, and if they hadn’t seen fit to print it, then by Eradinus, that wasn’t his deceit or his problem. He had warned that he was coming, and so he washed his hands of guilt in the coming and in the actions he contemplated on behalf of Tauto. Anyone accepting his invitation tonight could only have deceit for a heart, and that was precisely what he was looking for.

  No one here had seen him or his ship before. This was, as the Americans were fond of saying, “virgin turf.” He’d have to be careful, but given the level of intelligence of those in pursuit of him, he decided that he hadn’t that much to fear.

  Another reason Tauto had chosen the Naples area was because here Warren could and had indeed located Gordon Buckner, the most knowledgeable of men regarding trophy fish taxidermy. Warren had ingratiated himself with Buck­ner by telling him of his apprenticeship with Works of Art Taxidermy in Key West. Buckner respected the work that went on at Works of Art and had in fact founded it along with the current owner, the man who’d trained Warren before he’d caught him stealing supplies. But Buckner didn’t know about that.

  Warren had asked Buckner about doing a number on a game fish so that the internal organs might stay intact.

  Buckner had looked him over queerly and said, “It can’t be done without embalming the entire fish the way you would a... a corpse.” When Buckner wanted to know why Warren wanted to do such a thing, he quickly told the old man that it was to be a gag gift for a friend.

  “I get it,” Buckner had dubiously said. “When the guy goes to mount the thing, it’d be heavier’n hell, and it would begin to stink.” Buckner had laughed at the notion and wondered aloud why he hadn’t ever thought of it himself, and had then slapped Warren on the back and repeated, “I get it. You wanna present a pal with the thing and then gut and scale it, with a chain saw maybe?” Buckner’s laugh had become raucous by then, his laughter filling the trophy- making warehouse he oversaw in Naples.

  Now Warren knew he must embalm the entire body in the manner of the mortician, as he’d done with his last victim, but that he’d have to use chemicals beyond what the normal wake called for, to make the effect last not weeks or even months but years. He had been diligently studying the matter and had come to the conclusion that the most successfully preserved bodies had come about as a result of men who were obsessed with women, usually their wives; when the wife died, the husband would pre­serve her in the manner of mummies. This involved chem­icals of a highly potent variety, but it would mean that the corpse’s internal organs, along with the shell, could remain indefinitely, or at least until Mother was reincarnated.

  He began by gathering up the chemicals he would need. Ordinary formaldehyde would not be enough. He already had an IV drip, which he’d used on his last victim. What he hadn’t used was the new formula. Now all he needed was someone like Mother to try it on. The Sanibel girl might have to do if he could not find someone more suit­able, someone with a lot more fight in her...

  So now Warren and the Tau Cross cruised the Naples area shoreline for nightspots suitable for and frequen
ted by such tramps as his mother might appreciate. Gulls called out; the sunset sent up a shower of colors that ran the gamut from yellow-gold to bloodred; smatterings of lavender coated the underbelly of scattered clouds over the Gulf. Naples looked like an inviting community. The welcoming committee was a gaggle of pelicans soaring straight over the boat in a half-V formation. He’d cleaned himself up, making himself presentable, and was sporting a beard now, giving him a more dashing and distinguished appearance, he believed. He was hoping his prey would be in abundance here when he killed the engine completely and steered the now-floating Tau Cross tightly and neatly below the lights of a place called Bay- front Charlie’s. The Cross fit snugly into a wide slip on the end, begging him to take it. Warren was just in time for happy hour, the two-for-one drink deal ending at sunset at Bayfront Charlie’s. There was much to be grateful for; America had been good to Warren.

  Jessica had been to Key Largo once before, during a vacation. She’d flown into Miami with friends and they’d driven to Key Largo, where they’d dived the famous John Penneykamp underwater preserve and coral reef park. They’d taken two dives the first day, one beyond the barrier reef in rough, wild waters which were dangerous even for seasoned divers. She believed the sea captain who guzzled beer from the moment they boarded to the moment they returned to shore was not only a derelict but was derelict in his duties and responsibilities to the divers, most of whom had become too ill to dive in the waters beyond the barrier reef and did not enjoy themselves in the slightest. Jessica had ushered her party into the wild waters before seasickness could reach out and grab hold of her, and once in the water, everyone felt a hundred percent better, but diving was treacherous, the current a good thirty-plus miles an hour as seaweed and even sea life caught up in it went racing by Jessica’s mask, and the coral reefs were a hun­dred feet down.

  Returning to the boat had been an exercise in frustration. It was near impossible to get back aboard, the boat’s ladder shifting like a wild schoolyard swing. Each diver had to time his jump onto the ladder exactly right, and most were thrown clear of it repeatedly before they could get a foot­hold, especially with their ungainly flippers in the way. The first mate stood at the back of the boat, coaxing the divers back on, doling out advice and warning them to keep their fins on lest they drop them and lose them for good. Mean­while, the two-ton, bare-chested captain was on his ass at the bow, drinking more suds.

  When Jessica had boarded, she’d decided to throw a scare into the fat-assed captain. She went forward, flashed her badge and said, “Take us to where we can all enjoy our dive, Captain.”

  The bulging-eyed response had said it all. He tossed his beer into the big wastebasket and went straight to work. The second dive had been in calm, glass-clear waters, and everyone had a good time in a picture-perfect, thirty-foot- deep, magnificent coral reef. Reboarding, Jessica found that the captain had even donned a shirt for her. Looking back now on her last visit to Key Largo, Jessica had nothing but exciting memories of her earlier time here, but this after­noon, she was here for anything but a holiday. She and Quincey found the body dredged ashore in Key Largo at the local hospital morgue, where the pathologist friend of Dr. Coudriet’s, a colorful, stomach-protruding lit­tle man named Maury Oliver, led Jessica and Quincey past a handful of other corpses, old men and women from the look of them, people who’d lived a long life, retired to Florida and were now awaiting shipment “home”—wher­ever that destination might be. The pathologist joked, say­ing, “Here we have Florida’s largest export. You probably thought it was oranges and grapefruit, but no... it’s dead bodies. Ask any airport in the state.”

  Jessica spent only a couple of hours with the more bi­zarre, more morbid case of the girl who’d washed ashore here, her body stiff as though rigor mortis had clutched her and would not relax its grip—as is normal after a few hours. But this body was stiff due to preservatives, and they had preserved the floater’s facial features and body far bet­ter than those of her sisters in death farther to the north.

  The pathologist, a little man who resembled a gnome in a children’s storybook, smiled as he watched Jessica ex­amine the body, saying, “There’re a few more surprises on the other side.”

  “Roll her,” Jessica asked of two attendants who stood nearby.

  The men did so, each swallowing hard, still capable of some empathy with the hardened corpse.

  “Hell of a strange wound, wouldn’t you say?” asked Dr. Oliver, in his best Sherlock imitation, his hands rubbing, scrubbing over one another in teasing fashion. “Care to make any guesses?”She thought she saw slaver drip from the little man’s mouth, as if he found the wound a turn-on. Oliver continued, “It looks like some sort of hook, pierc­ing here and returning here. Maybe wrapped around the spinal cord? We could tell in a jiffy, if you’d like a look inside at the bones?”

  She conceded the ugly truth. “Right along the spine; just like he racked her to a wall.”

  “So, do you want a peek inside, at the spinal cord, or no?”

  “I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” she bluntly replied.

  “Coudriet said you were thorough, so I want to be sure we’re—”

  “I don’t think it’s necessary,” she repeated, losing her temper.

  The sight of the wound at the back, where obviously she’d been “hooked,” as it were, made Jessica think of Lopaka Kowona, the Hawaii serial killer she had run down and helped put an end to two years before. He had had a rack on the wall in his black hole of a bungalow over­looking Honolulu from the mountain foothills—his deadly killing ground. Kowona’s rack was made of bamboo, and his victims were tied by rope fashioned from hair taken off previous victims. Kowona had been a fetishist and a cutter, using blades of various sizes and shapes to carve his victims slowly, methodically and ritualistically while they helplessly dangled from his rack. The similarity was in the trophy-making. Kowona always’held on to something be­longing to his victim, and Jessica believed the same was true of Patric. His was the work of another trophy maker, and if what Dr. Oliver was surmising was true, then the body itself had become for Patric the ultimate trophy, so that now he sought to preserve his victim in her entirety. Obviously, he’d given up when the stench had become too overpowering and he’d realized he’d failed in the preser­vation attempt.

  “It reminded me of a mark I saw once made on a sailfish, one of those giants. It was done on the side turned to the wall, to create a hook to fasten it to the wall,” said the pathologist. “ ‘Course, it was a botched job, and ‘course this ain’t no fish... or is it?”

  “Have you taken photos of this wound?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’d like a full set, the wounds along with the woman’s features.”

  “Sure thing, Dr. Coran.”

  Something about the man reminded her of C. David Ed­dings; she wanted to get away from him as soon as possi­ble.

  “Will you be doing a complete post-autopsy? I under­stand you do a lot of that.”

  “And how long have you and Dr. Coudriet been friends?” Jessica countered.

  “We go on the occasional fishing trip when he blows through on his way to Key West or some such glamorous point. Key West... now that’s some place. You mustn’t miss it. Most expensive place in the nation to lay your head. Did you know that? On average, cost of a bed is a hundred fifty dollars a night if you figure year-round, so just imagine how astronomical it is during the height of tourist season.”

  “I don’t think we’ll be going to Key West,” she replied, thinking their next stop would be Lower Metacumbe Key. “That’s too bad. You’ll miss the Hemingway Festival, the Hemingway home, his cats!”

  God, this guy’s as annoying as Gilbert Gottfried, she thought.

  He pressed onward. “And the sunset street festival, per­formed every night as a kind of semipagan, almost tongue- in-cheek tribute to the sun god. And the place has such charm, if you can overlook the tackiness, the human misery and filth, and if you c
an stay focused on the cute trolley cars and the boutiques and street vendors and perform—”

  “Where on this island might we locate the electronic capability to get photographs of this new Jane Doe’s face, along with a detailed description, sent to authorities all along the coast, north and south?” she asked, ignoring his Key West chamber of anti-commerce prattle.

  “We’ve got a state-of-the-art scanner, fax and modem setup right here, just upstairs. Dr. Coran,” he countered with a rakish grin. “We’re not Miami or D.C., but we aren’t without our electronic gizmos and—”

  “That’s perfect.”

  “The pictures are in my files. I’ll get them for you.” Soon Jessica was sending a detailed photographic depic­tion of their latest Jane Doe to every law enforcement of­ficial in the state, asking Missing Persons departments across the state to seek a match. Given the condition of the body, Jessica had little doubt that this one would soon be identified.“Sad business,” said Quincey, sounding as if someone had let the air out of him.

  “You’ve been a rock throughout the investigation, Quince,” she volunteered.

  He managed a smile. “I’ve watched you, Dr. Coran. You ... now you’re a rock.”

  “Hardly. How far’s Matecumbe from here? Can we reach it tonight?” It was already dark out.

  “Sure, no problem.”

  “Then let’s push on.” When they arrived in Lower Matecumbe Key, it was pitch-black out, so dark in fact that the sheen of the waters all around the enormous Florida Bay to their west and the Atlantic on their east were brighter than the night sky. The darkness of the heavens was due to low-lying clouds, and not a star could be seen in the heavens. Water surrounded them on all sides as they made their way along U.S. 1, the Overseas Highway, spanning what seemed one intermina­ble bridge after another.

  The sand-laden land mass they drove across narrowed to a strip of ribbon fronted by an occasional gas station, a boat rental and sales office, a wharf surrounded by patient ves­sels of every size and type, a surprising number of beer joints and hidden homes, huddled amongst saw grass and giant palm fronds. Only the reflection from glowing orange vapor lights lining the bridges gave any respite to the bleak­ness, the building fog and the general feeling that they’d come to the end of the continent.