Darkest Instinct Read online

  Jessica began to see the pattern Eriq called the maniac D. “Oh, yeah... I see what you mean by the Ds now. Each D leans or points directly across at the word following?”

  “Like a spear, an attack, isn’t it?”

  “ ‘Maniac D.’ Just how scientific is that term, Chief?”

  “Jack the Ripper, in his notes to the White Chapel Vig­ilante Committee and authorities in 1888, used clubs and the maniac D. That’s how scientific it is. And we see it time and again with violent offenders behind bars.”

  She looked again at the clubbed ends and the strange, violent Ds. “I take your point. What else does his hand­writing tell you, Eriq?”

  “Tells me he’s a jumble, a complex SOB. Creative, in­genious perhaps, certainly an above-average IQ, which—”

  “Suggests a Ted Bundy type? Suave, smooth, lures his victim in and snares her in that instant when her guard is completely down?”

  “Could well be, but if so, it’s an act; likely a well- rehearsed and polished act, but an act all the same. This guy’s full of phobias and problems. Likely the product of a broken home; likely a failure at most everything he’s touched; likely working at some menial job somewhere which he regards as far below his natural talents.”

  “You can tell all that from his handwriting?” She could not completely keep the skepticism from filtering into her voice.

  “Well, I combine the handwriting analysis with what we also know of profiling, of course. It’s in the combination that I sometimes get startlingly lucky results.”

  “Sometimes?” she replied sarcastically. Much of San­tiva’s work was chronicled, much of it now standard read­ing for FBI Academy personnel. His work in both document investigation and handwriting analysis had caused his star to rise meteorically, due to his extraordinary success rate at pinpointing killers through trace evidence and profiling techniques which were applied to victim and killer alike to create a matrix for murder.

  Santiva coined an interesting line to explain what it was that his profiling team did, telling the press once, “We create a vector of character, personality, physical traits, even habits of both the victim and the killer.”

  By studying the victim or victims, as well as by studying the killer, Santiva and the profiling team to which Jessica now belonged could put together a total picture of what occurred, and sometimes from that why it occurred. Before getting on the plane, they had already put together a com­plex picture of the man the press had dubbed the Night Crawler, but Jessica had not been in on sessions directly related to the handwritten document the killer had felt com­pelled to forward to authorities.

  There at thirty thousand feet, Jessica had next concen­trated on the ME’s report on Allison Norris. A capable man, this Miami M.E. named Coudriet demonstrated his own smaller, neater, nearly pinched handwriting, which Eriq called controlled, conservative, careful. “He’s likely to hold his cards extremely close to his chest,” Eriq said, siz­ing the man up in much the same terms as Jessica had. Even the corrections he’d made on the page told her that he was a guarded man. There was that element of purpose­ful equivocation in his language. He’d likely been prodded and rushed to turn over a report which he was not entirely happy with; he likely had wanted much more time to find the truth than people and agencies around him wanted him to take, from insurance companies to the Miami Police De­partment to the FBI. In Dr. Coudriet’s couched tones, bruises about the wrists might indicate handcuffs or possi­bly tightly tied ropes. Strangulation about the neck perhaps might indicate use of rope or cord, and/or likelihood of the killer’s hands. Strangulation death may have occurred be­fore seawater entered the lungs, and this may indicate death before drowning. The man’s tentativeness was a sure sign the autopsy was a slapdash job, that he was attempting to cover his ass in the event questions arose later, at which time he could simply say, “I never said that...”

  “What do you know about Dr. Andrew Coudriet?” San­tiva had suddenly asked, as if reading her mind.

  “Not much, save by reputation.”

  “Good, bad. indifferent?”

  “Highly regarded, well respected. He’s always on someone’s dais.”

  “Someone’s what?”

  “You know, giving speeches on the latest technologies used in crime detection. Speaks anywhere and everywhere they’ll pay his fee.”

  “Which is?”

  “Astronomically high—five, six figures, I’d assume.”

  “Sounds lucrative. Why aren’t you on the talk circuit?”

  “Doing’s better’n telling? I haven’t given it much thought. Not that I haven’t had offers, but who has the time?”

  “Obviously Coudriet does,” he replied, but beneath his words, he was running a thought—trying to figure out just how to take her last remark about having had offers, she guessed. She tilted the photo of Allison Norris’s body in his di­rection, a mushroomed body that had exploded with gases after having been picked over by sea life. In the photo, sand crabs were still making a meal of the dead girl, who was missing a chunk of flesh from her upper left thigh, a right femur and a right arm up to the elbow, where, obviously, sharks had taken more than a passing nibble.

  “Whoever did this to Allison Norris wants for power. craves control of the ultimate—life itself. He kills to show that he has the power in his hands to do so,” Jessica said.

  “He takes their manna, their being,” Santiva agreed. “At least, he thinks he does, and so long as he believes he does, he’ll continue to kill.”

  “He takes their power away from them, takes power from another living creature and claims all that power for himself. I’ve seen it before.”

  “I know you have. That’s why you’re here on the case with me. Now, if you don’t mind...” He indicated the picture, his queasiness threatening a return.

  She closed the file jacket, leaned back in her cushioned chair and rode out the remainder of the storm.

  Forty-nine minutes later, below a silver spray of rain shimmering in bright sunlight, they landed on a newly blackened, rain-slicked, glassy runway at Miami Interna­tional. A smoother landing Jessica had never experienced, and when the captain came on the intercom to give himself a cheer, saying that after twenty-seven years of flying he’d finally made the perfect landing, everyone offered a spirited hand-clapping and hooting reply—at least those who were able to.

  After this and the taxiing to the airline terminal, the usual deplaning chaos ensued. Everyone wanted off as quickly as possible, wanted to feel their feet on the solid construction of the airport walkways. But one man was forcing his way onto the plane, holding up a gold shield and shouting Santiva’s name.

  Santiva waved the heavyset, middle-aged man with the balding head and Gene Hack man features forward. As the passengers thinned out, the Miami-Dade homicide detective managed to shuffle down the aisle and come alongside the patient FBI team he’d come to welcome to Miami.

  “You’re Eriq Santiva,” he said, smiling, extending his hand, the gregarious grin remaining on his face even as he vigorously shook Santiva’s hand and then exchanged it for Jessica’s. “And you must be Dr. Coran. What a pleasure, an honor, really, to meet you both. I’m Detective Charles Quincey, MPD. Just call me Quince. Everybody does. I was sent ahead with Mark, my partner”—he indicated a man in a gray suit who’d held back at the exit—”you know, to kinda escort you out of here and onto the waiting helicopter for Islamorada, or if you prefer to take a little time, freshen up; we can arrange that as well.”

  Santiva turned to Jessica and muttered, “Helicopter... isn’t there any other way to this Isma-whatever-Key?” She stifled an urge to smile. “Not if we’re going to make time, no.”

  Eric’s frown brought the enthused MPD detective down. “Escort away,” Eriq told him, “and as for taking a little time, yes, by all means, and thank you, Detective.” Jessica grabbed her carry-on and the round Detective Quincey made a grab for it.

  “No thanks, Detective. This one stays with me.�
� He realized that it was her professional black bag. “Ahh, yes, Dr. Coran, and may I say on behalf of the MPD, we’re extremely glad to have you on the case.”

  “That would be a refreshing attitude,” she replied.

  “It’s true, Doctor. We’re at wit’s end and we know it. This makes the ninth victim in the state to wash ashore in as many months. I mean this bastard’s doing ‘em on av­erage of one a month, maybe more. We’ve had a lotta strange disappearances.”

  “The disappearances outnumber the bodies, I under­stand,” she replied.

  “ ‘Fraid so, yes ma’am... er, Doctor.”

  Outside the plane but inside the exit ramp, which was like a sauna in Miami in the springtime, they met Charles Quincey’s partner, a well-proportioned, tanned and tall man with piercing blue eyes and the rugged good looks of an outdoorsman, perhaps a fisherman or maybe just someone who spent a lot of hours playing volleyball at South Miami Beach. The younger man’s level of enthusiasm was nil, contrasting sharply with Quincey’s attitude. Obviously, Quincey’s partner did not share his appreciation for having the Feds come in on the case, for this detective offered no handshakes, nor could he be bothered to open his mouth, more or less groaning his name, Detective Mark Samernow.

  Jessica thought that Samernow looked as if he’d slept in his clothes; perhaps he’d pulled an all-night stakeout, or simply an all-nighter.

  Samernow was disheveled, whereas Quincey had obvi­ously put some hair gel and some thought into their meeting. Quince was together, perhaps for the first time in his career as a detective, his hair slicked down, his tie in a knot around a neck that didn’t easily take to it, reddening and swelling and about to burst; even cuff links showed at his wrists. Samernow, by comparison, had a wild shock of dark hair lying over his forehead and one eye, his tie snatched viciously away from his neck, a short-sleeved white shirt with a jacket carelessly tossed over his shoulder, making Jessica wonder where his gun was.

  Samernow began kidding Quince about how his thick neck looked like ten pounds of sausage in a five-pound bag, and how, when it burst, the buttons were going to go like shotgun pellets. Samernow warned Jessica and Santiva to duck when the thing blew and then laughed at his own joke.

  Quince told his partner to shut up.

  Now the two detectives warned of the press just ahead, and they weren’t kidding. Along the corridor, there was a retinue of police uniforms and authorities in suits, all wait­ing along with a small army of newspeople with notepads, recorders and huge microphones extended on lances, their cameras held overhead like loaded cannon flashing the fire of battle. “I guess things are kinda slow in Miami these days,” commented Jessica.

  “Looks like we’re tomorrow’s headline.”

  They stopped long enough to assure the reporters and the people of Miami and south Florida that the FBI was making the Night Crawler case a number one priority. Cameras flashed in their faces as they fielded a handful of questions, each one of which required more assurances.

  Quince parted the sea before them and led them to a private room in the airport, where Santiva composed him­self and Jessica lingered at a window, staring down at a helicopter waiting below to take them to Islamorada Key.

  For a time, Jessica wondered if she would ever get Eriq on board the helicopter, telling him at one point that he should stay behind and get familiar with the case from Mi­ami’s point of view, and that she would rejoin him as soon as she could. But he proved too stubborn to leap at the opportunity she extended him, begging another Dramamine patch instead.

  And now finally, here they were, at the shark research facility that had tipped them off to what appeared to be quite a cache of body parts, the pathological evidence they had come for. To Jessica, it appeared a kind of dark gold mine.

  “Precious is a nickname given Allison Norris by her father,” said Eriq, just returning from a hurried phone call. “That’s according to Quince in Miami. Quince will call to confirm if Allison wore a bracelet inscribed with the name, but it seems an almost foregone conclusion, given the cir­cumstances.”

  Jessica paused in her work over another body part. “Still, a tissue match will be necessary to verify the fact beyond a mirrored shadow... to lay solid foundation against the man who fed Allison to the sharks.”

  “Well, sure ...just thought you’d like to know.” She nodded. “Thanks.” Jessica would also have to re­turn with any and all other body parts which Wainwright and company had unearthed here, and tests would have to be run on each, with an eye to matching them to other bodies that had incongruously washed ashore along Florida’s blindingly bright, pastel-colored, idyllic-looking coastal waterways.

  Wainwright came to her with yet another bundle of body parts. “There’re a few more small pieces in the freezer, but you’ve got the bulk of it now, at least till we continue our work on the sharks again maybe...”

  “I want to see everything you have, Dr. Wainwright, every specimen, all of it,” she announced. “And I’ll need a larger area in which to work, if you don’t mind.”

  “That’d have to be our main lab, where we do most of the sharks.” You can’t use it,” said Insley suddenly. She’d obvi­ously gotten hold of herself and had returned from her bed. “That would disrupt our entire operation.”

  “I believe, Dr. Insley, that your entire operation here has already been interrupted,” countered Jessica. “I’ll need the space for at least the next twenty-four hours, and if your people discover more human tissue or bones, I’ll want you to turn these over to us as well.”

  “Then I did the right thing, calling you in?” asked Wainwright, solely for Insley’s benefit.

  Jessica nodded solemnly. “That you did, Dr. Wain­wright ... that you did.”

  •FOUR

  It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice!

  —Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Razzles on the River

  South Miami Beach, Florida, 11 P.M.

  Once again Kathy Marie Harmon glanced up and into Pa­nic’s alluring, azure eyes... once again. They were the eyes of dreamy miracle within a house of crystal and aqua- blue mirrors—where a girl could get lost and giddy and not care if her head were spinning; they were the eyes of cool, blue ocean swells into which she could so easily splash. He spoke with such assurance and confidence, yet without the arrogance of other men Kathy had met in and around the bar scene in South Miami’s Biscayne Bay area.

  Kathy had come to Razzles in the company of two girl­friends, all of them looking for Mr. Right, Mr. Good, Mr. Solid. Usually, they wound up with Mr. Jell-O, a spineless creature with one thing on its mind—satisfying horny urges through unadulterated self-gratification. And most were in fact engaged in some base form of “adulterating” self- gratification, many turning out to be married.

  Most of the guys hanging out at bars like this just wanted someone to stick it to, to feel warm flesh against their pri­vates, to “get inside” a woman.

  She hadn’t wanted to come out tonight. She was going to sit at home, do her hair, watch an old movie, maybe pop some corn, curl up with a Vincent Courtney or a Geoffrey Caine horror novel and read her brains out, maybe. But the tug and pull of her two girlfriends was too strong. Melissa and Cherylene could not be denied. They, like Kathy herself, believed in rainbows and lotteries and love and romance, all under a full moon, and tonight there hung at least a crescent moon, aglow in the sultry Miami night, rocking like a stellar cradle over the City of Dreams, Oz South.

  Perhaps it’d been the moon that had tipped the scales to bring her here tonight. Whatever it was, sitting across from Patrick Allain, she was eternally grateful, while her two best friends had turned a resonant shade of chartreuse that shone through the purple-blue Art Deco lights of the evening world of Key Biscayne.

  The live band did their best imitation of Jimmy Buffet, Dylan and Bob Marley tunes all evening long while she and Patrick sipped pina coladas and munched on curly cheese Cajun fries below the moon out on th
e ocean deck, where beautiful Biscayne Bay met the incoming swells of the Atlantic on picture-postcard Key Biscayne. Over one shoulder blinked the moon, over the other the colored lights of the Sheraton Royal Biscayne. Stretched before them were the milky white sands of Sonista Beach on one side, Harbor Drive and the Harbor Drive Wharf on the other. The night was enchanted lit, the ocean breeze like a lov­er’s caress, and Kathy’s dreams had all come alive. Patrick had arrived by boat—his boat, an incredible seventy-footer, all wood and sail and lovely, and all his, bought and paid for. He must be rich beyond rich, Kathy surmised. Maybe Patrick was the one. Who knew? Life was a gamble, an exquisite dice game, and love and heartache formed the soft felt playing field of white lines, numbers, colors, rules and order. If you remained on the rail, outside the borders, afraid to toss the dice, nothing happened, all was nil... If she hadn’t shown up here tonight, if Chery­lene and Melissa had come here without her, it might have been one of them sitting now across from Patrick instead of her—Melissa most likely, since she was so much prettier than Cherylene—and if so, it’d be Melissa’s eyes all dreamy and swimming with handsome Patrick’s at this mo­ment... But it was as if Patrick had come on the wind of fate for her alone, as if she had heard the enchanted, holy wind call her name so that she might meet the one eternal lover for whom she had longed her entire life.

  He sat across from her now.

  She didn’t stop to analyze her thoughts or doubts, whether Patrick would simply have found Melissa instead had she come to Razzles without Kathy, nor what this said about him. There was no time for analyzing. There’d be more than enough time for going over the details tomorrow when Cherylene and Melissa came sniffing around to find out what happened.

  So, thanks to lovely, intricate destiny, chance, fortune, circumstance, karma, kismet—all stepping in at once to play Cupids—this time it was Kathy Harmon’s turn to shine instead of Melissa’s or Cherylene’s. Yes, this time it was her time, her fortune, and Patric was the treasure of a lifetime, meant only for her, fated. And what a treasure, looking as if he’d stepped off the cover of a romance novel or magazine cover. And the way he’d picked her out from among her friends, just as if he’d come directly here from some exotic port of call for her and her alone; just as if he had sailed across the Atlantic to find her, and with that dreamy accent—British maybe, or perhaps Australian— maybe she wasn’t far wrong. He obviously had money, and didn’t mind spending it, either. And he hadn’t gotten the least annoyed when she’d been unable to finish her veal parmigiana dinner across the street at the Sheraton, where he had insisted on taking her.