Pure Instinct (Instinct thriller series) Read online

  Zanek ran both hands through his thick mat of dark hair and shook his head. It was his turn to pace the room. “It's too damned risky, Jess. I care too much for you to knowingly put your life in danger.”

  “That's not what I want to hear from you, Paul!”

  He drummed his fingers on his desk and finally bellowed, “Damnit, Jess, I don't know. I've been promising Kim... Dr. Desinor a shot, you know, to put her theories into practice.”

  “If that's all you're worried about, don't be. Just send us both—as a team. How better to determine if science and psi can work together?”

  “You're so damned competitive, Jess.”

  “You wouldn't have it any other way. So, what do you say?”

  “I can't make this decision without input from above. You know that, Jess.”

  “But they'll go along with your recommendation. I also know that.”

  “Do you also know you've talked me into a goddamned corner? I guess you do.”

  She beamed, her eyes going wide. “Then you'll go to bat for me?”

  He gave her a pretended angry glare. “No guarantees but one, Jess.”

  “What's that?”

  “You travel down there with a guard. At least two specially trained agents.”

  “No, not Thatch and Waite; please, no one, Paul. It'd only defeat us. Matisak won't tip his hand if he smells a trap, and no way can those bozos avoid being spotted.”

  “You either go with a guard, or you don't go.”

  She breathed deeply, thinking that she could convince Santiva of the foolishness of this step later on. For now, she must allow Paul to play Marshal to her Saloon Girl.

  “Whatever,” she muttered. “But I want you to keep me posted on anything happening in Oklahoma,” she quickly added. “I can easily get there from New Orleans, if there's reason to.”

  “All right, then we're agreed. Now we just have to sell Santiva on the idea, and there's the little matter of selling the notion to Dr. Desinor as well.”

  “I thought you said she wanted to field-test her work? What's to sell?”

  “Let's just say she's not anxious to be proven wrong out of the gate, and now with you on board, she might be frightened off; besides, she's very selective about what cases she'll take on. Some, she says, leave her cold.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “You think what she does is a hoax?”

  “No, I didn't say that.”

  “What do you think of her work, honestly?”

  “The older I get, the longer I live, the more I see in this world... the more superstitious I get, I'm afraid to admit.”

  “But what Dr. Desinor does has nothing to do with superstition.”

  “I'm just speaking of my prejudices,” she continued, pacing the room again now. “And the older I get, the more sense I make of the old line that states there's more between heaven and earth than dreamt of in your little philosophy, or science, Jessica Coran. And”—she stopped short, seeing that he was concerned, that a crease had formed along his forehead—”and the older I get, Paul, the more limbs I crawl out on, saying things like, I think Paul Zanek's a man of vision for backing psychic detection in the agency, and—”

  “You've said that? To whom?”

  “And I also think you could take a great fall, Humpty-Dumpty, if she should fail, so I have to believe you're a courageous-type guy to back Desinor.”

  He smiled at this. “I didn't know you'd formed an opinion. But as I said, Dr. Desinor could be uncomfortable with the idea of working in tandem with you at this stage. We'll have to break it to her gently, in the best possible manner.”

  “Well, if she's unwilling, then she's unwilling. But I'm going to New Orleans with or without her, you got that?”

  “I used to think I made the decisions around here. Celebrity does not become you, Dr. Coran.”

  Jessica caught a look of deep concentration behind his otherwise smiling eyes. “Tell, me, Paul, is there something going on between you and Dr. Desinor I should know about?”

  “No, no... nothing between us but a professional relationship. How can you ask such a question? You know I'm a happily married man.”

  Rumor has it your marriage has been on the skids, she thought, and it was easy to believe that rumor. “Hasn't stopped you from hitting on me,” she said.

  “Well, Jess, that was at a low ebb in my life, and I've apologized how many times now?”

  “Sorry... shouldn't have brought it up.”

  “Don't mention it... ever again,” he joked, and led her from his office and back into the screening room. “Guess we'd better break the latest news to Stephens. I'm quite sure he'll be overjoyed you're going back with him.”

  “You're kinda taken now with the idea of our baiting Matisak, aren't you, Paul?”

  “Hey, what kind of thing is that to say to your boss and your friend, Jess?''

  “Come on, admit it.”

  “Admit it, hell. I'll admit to only one thing, Jess.”

  “What's zat?”

  “After the way you took out Archer from the top of this building two years ago, let's just say that I wouldn't want to be Matisak when you draw a bead on the bastard.”

  “Well, maybe it's time we turned the tables on him, the way that creep keeps baiting us, leaving those sick, blood-penned notes for us to find....”

  “I know it's got to be difficult for you,” he said, his mind racing on, “with a maniac like him pining for you like a lovesick calf, only this animal's bleeding others in some unholy exhibition of perverted love... delivering his prizes for your approval... giving you his twisted valentines.”

  She thought of the despicable notes, usually in verse, left at the scene of each killing now, written across a mirror, a tile floor or some other surface. All of them were different, but all were the same: Matisak wanted to again taste her blood, to drink her blood. No surrogate would do. It was an acquired taste—she'd heard the joke that was going around about her relationship to the convicted vampire killer.

  She momentarily thought of his victims, all butchered like swine only after he'd drained off their blood in a controlled fashion from the throat. The precious liquid of life was put up in mason jars like tomatoes, placed in a cooler brought for the task and carried off by the sadistic monster to feed on at his convenience. Jessica had lost self-esteem, confidence and the one man whom she'd loved without reservation up to that point, Otto Boutine, to this madman. Futilely, she had then fought from a wheelchair to see him placed on death row; she had even contemplated avenues of murdering the soulless son-ofabitch herself, but now all that was yesterday's remorse.

  While Matisak was incarcerated along with other criminally insane monsters, she had managed to regain not only her physical well-being, the scars from his attack on her healing, but also her mental stamina, and had since proven herself in New York on the Claw case with Alan Rychman, and in Hawaii on the Trade Winds killings with Jim Parry. But since Matisak's escape, her life had taken a different and ugly turn. The in-visible scars had come back like stigmata. And no matter where she was, who she was with or what she was engaged in doing, the signs of those ugly stigmata were always present, just below the surface, always pressing to get out again and overwhelm her again. Even now, standing in the corridor outside the screening room, shaking hands with Stephens from New Orleans again, she was uncomfortably aware of the scars others could not see. She wondered if Dr. Desinor, the psychic, would be able to see Jessica Coran's psychic scars, the thought frightening in itself, for she'd worked so long to keep them invisible to all but the man she loved, James Parry. And even he did not know what awful depths those scars had reached....

  New Orleans Police Commissioner Richard Stephens stood dumbfounded just outside the screening room door when he learned from Jessica of his good fortune, that not one FBI operative, but two, would be returning with him to his Crescent City. Both the famous Jessica Coran and Dr. Kim Desinor would each, from her own unique perspective, be looking square
ly at the most challenging case in the history of the city.

  “Splendid, splendid,” he repeatedly said, shaking Zanek's hand after releasing hers.

  Zanek glared at Jessica for her having released such information so soon. He still had as yet to speak to Santiva and the upper echelon of the Bureau. Zanek was trying to tell Stephens this now, but Jessica pretended it was merely a matter of protocol at this point, and after saying so to Stephens and catching Paul's unhidden fury, she asked Stephens, “How is New Orleans this time of year? Less crowded, now that Mardi Gras is over?”

  “Hot, just like the food, and plenty crowded. There're always parades, no matter what time of year. We celebrate life year-round in New Orleans,” he continued.

  “Celebrate life, huh.” I'm sure it's well-staged for the tourism industry, she thought.

  Stephens didn't miss a beat. “That's why this monster and these horrendous deaths must end and quickly.”

  Uh-huh, agreed, Jessica thought, her mind wandering back to Dr. Faith while Zanek escorted Stephens away from her, talking buddy-buddy to the other man, leaving her standing alone, the way Paul wanted it. He must be in control, even if it meant leaving Jessica Coran standing alone in a hallway.

  She only hoped that Santiva would have half the luck she'd had with him.

  Now Jessica made for her lab, having neglected work waiting for her there. As she went, she curiously wondered how the two of them, Desinor and she, would get on. She'd never worked with a psychic before, and at one time she would have thought Zanek a madman for starting such a program within the confines of the FBI. Otto Boutine certainly would not have allowed it in his division. Still, this woman Desinor seemed gifted, touched by some power both invisible and divine, something that Jessica would not mind exploiting, or at least understanding better and employing. Science had always been her strength, and yet there was a limit to what science could do, and there was always that line beyond which you needed a leap of faith, intuition, instinct. Maybe Dr. Desinor simply had more instinct and intuition than others. Either way, Jessica wondered if she could not learn from the other woman some vital information.

  No, Otto Boutine would not have championed a seer, an Edgar Cayce-type in his unit. Still, Otto wasn't here and the world was spinning as madly, or more so, than ever on its axis, and the number of brutal killings, serial murders, spree murders, rapes and other brands of evil in this world had hardly diminished; in fact, violent crime was up as never before, even among children. Maybe law-enforcement agencies needed the assistance of the supernatural and the supernormal if they were ever to stem the growing tide of murderous rage in America.

  Jessica had never been overly superstitious or concerned with matters of superstition, at least not until recently, but events and coincidence had played heavily in her life, and now with Matisak a werewolf on the prowl, capable of seducing people at his will, a Jeykll and Hyde of the first order, the more store she placed in fatalism and common-sense values born of experience, and the more she'd become interested in what she used to dismiss as superstition.

  Perhaps she'd just become more superstitious herself since Hawaii. The beautiful island world had had its effect on her; there she'd discovered a world founded on a faith most took for fairy-tale absurdity about the gods of the sea, the imps of the coral reefs, deities of the volcano and forests and mango trees. Yet as superstitious as that quaint faith was, it had become the real dragon-slayer when it came to ending the career of Hawaii's most notorious serial killer, Lopaka Kowona.

  Jessica had once believed that she had seen the future of police detection in DNA fingerprinting, serum and tissue matching. Maybe the real future lay instead in Dr. Desinor's psychic detection. Perhaps police agencies in the twenty-first century, on remote outposts in the galaxy, would be manned by psychics and empaths. Maybe the world would be a better place for it.

  Maybe... a big maybe, but no one was making any guarantees, and certainty was an illusion no one believed in any longer, not the holy men, not the community leaders, not the politicians, not the government and certainly not the criminologists or those who projected into the future of law enforcement.

  Arriving at her lab, she gave J.T. a big hug and a thank-you for putting Stephens and her together.

  6

  His heart is like a mountain of iron.

  —Pentaur

  New Orleans

  A few days' decay, the elements and the animals had conspired to create a grotesque tapestry over the corpse. Two, possibly three days in the Louisiana heat was enough to turn even the freshest meat into a wormy muck. Internal gases had been baked inside the decomposing corpse, had bloated the body, finally exploding through the skin at unaccountable locations: the cheek turned to the earth, the leg with the most lividity, the forearm where the boy-man had been gnawed at by raccoons or wild dogs.

  Degeneration to the once-fine features had created a hideous, repulsive mask which no Hollywood makeup artist could hope to capture. What lay here before Lieutenant Detective Alex Sincebaugh didn't seem human, or rather was a horrid mockery of a once-sentient, lively, active young person. What remained seemed more akin to soiled rags, discarded cardboard, leftovers—”toast,” as the MTV generation might more aptly put it.

  “You think it's Surette?” Ben asked.

  “Can't tell for sure, can you?” Alex replied to the hulking figure standing over him and the body. Sincebaugh hadn't remembered going to his knees over the victim, but now he found himself staring up at his partner. DeYampert's large eyes looked on the verge of tears, but that expression was one Big Ben carried with him everywhere: the sad, doughy eyes of a basset hound. And like the irises of a calf or a St. Bernard, the glistening, moist eyes meant to reveal no more than a resigned acceptance. Ben, like most cops, kept his feelings tightly balled up. Alex knew that his partner of so many years now had gone to the edge on this one, a missing persons case that had looked to be solved, only to become a murder case.

  Sincebaugh too had allowed himself a brief moment of hope that they would locate twenty-one-year-old Victor “Vicki” Surette—but not like this. They'd had every reason to believe they'd find the cross-dresser quite well, alive and unharmed, panhandling or doing johns along the dingy periphery of Bourbon Street. After all, they'd gotten a lead about “Vicki” from Gilreath, a transvestite and a snitch they often pulled over for a mock arrest and street news.

  “If this here do be Vic Surette,” Ben deYampert drawled in his native Louisiana tongue, “he ain't so much a looker no more.”

  “It's going to take some time to ID him; take prints, maybe get some dental records to match what's in his mouth—if we can get any records out of the family vault....”

  Some families of gay men, cross-dressers and transvestites were extremely reluctant to cooperate with police, even when they loved their offspring, despite the circumstances. And Victor Surette was rumored to have no family, or one so steeped in Old New Orleans values and traditions that no relative would come within speaking distance of him. Gilreath had hinted at old money and modern business holdings. Gilreath had also hinted at a deep-seated hatred there, and since most victims of crime were victims of family, friends and acquaintances, this could not be ignored. But a search of the missing man's apartment days before the location of his body had turned up not one scintilla of information about his family. Gilreath had said that Vicki, as he was known to his dearest friends, wanted it that way. Still, Alex could hardly believe how clean the kid's apartment had been of paper, and without paper, there was no trail back to family, unless one of them picked up a newspaper or heard about Surette's fate on the nightly news and then came forward to claim the body.

  “You think it's him, don't you, Sincy?” pressed Ben.

  “I'd say the clothes appear to match the last known description.” Sincebaugh breathed heavily, his stomach churning, his head reeling from the stench of the corpse, which lay sprawled on its stomach, limbs akimbo.

  No one had touched the body, knowing
it was Alex Sincebaugh's call since he was detective in charge on this rotation.

  He had waited long enough for the M.E., he decided. Wanting to know more now, he slipped on a pair of surgical gloves and turned the body over, his hands instinctively repulsed by the Jell-O-like pressure against his touch. Rigor had come and gone, the body now relaxed and rapidly emulsifying thanks to the heat of a record-breaking week in New Orleans.

  “Sincy, you sure we shouldn't wait for Wardlaw?”

  Sincebaugh slowed a bit at the use of the nickname his partner had saddled him with, but he bawled in response, “For Chris sake, Big... waited long enough for that damned souse.”

  “Miss Old Doc Whitaker, don't you?”

  “Sure as hell do.”

  They were in a wood on a clear, humid New Orleans night. Nearby, egrets silently stalked the shallows even in darkness, until one broke the silence by piercing the water, spiking a fish with its beak. Alex and Ben were working over a body lying beside the indigo waters of huge Lake Ponchartrain; they weren't in New Orleans proper anymore but had come all the way out to Slidell as soon as it was recognized that this was a murder victim. They'd been out of their jurisdiction, doing a routine rundown on a case involving a pair of high rollers who'd been pumping the area with a new, synthetic drug that was leaving users in various stages of paraplegia and vegetative comas, when the call came over, and since they were so close and Slidell was undermanned, they took it, swinging the car around just before entering the bridge traffic which would've taken them back to downtown New Orleans.

  Both men were feeling the tension on the streets in Slidell, where race relations hadn't been so grand lately, and where they felt ill at ease anyway because it was so far from their home jurisdiction and base of operations in New Orleans.