Bitter Instinct Read online

  “But, on the other hand... ?”

  “A thrill, a conquest, a victory. Dr. Desinor has said that she felt the killer was on some sort of crusade.”

  “Precisely the definition of a sociopath of the sort we find in religious zealots, my dear, wouldn't you say?”

  “Someone whose aims are glorified to a pathological in­tensity, working out of a sense of mission or a sense of a destiny ordained by God. That would make our killer a complicated nutcase, whose vision and fantasy are reli­gious in nature, like Jim Jones in Guyana and David Koresh in Waco, Texas.”

  “Yes, well, if you believe so.” Dr. Shockley lifted his brow, a shrewd look on his face. “Isn't such a man always more frightening than all the chain saw killers combined?”

  “Yes, of course, especially if he is preaching such dis­tortions as I heard in the case of the Crucifier in London.”

  “Read all about it in the journals. You really should write that case up for the benefit of the rest of us, Jessica.” And then he abruptly added, “So, where have all the others gone off to?”

  “No need for them to baby-sit here. They'll do just as well to follow leads independently of us.”

  Shockley nodded, looking to her like the actor who played Santa Claus in the original Miracle on Thirty-fourth Street. He plopped wearily into the chair across from her, the desk she'd been given between them. “I heartily agree. That man Parry looked quite anxious to end his stay in my little death chamber. Behind my back, the PPD personnel, all of them, call this place 'Shock Theater,' where the 'Shock Doc'—that'd be me—operates like some ghoulish Dr. Frankenstein.” He laughed at the image, his white hair falling over one eye, and for a moment, Jessica thought he might drop off to sleep where he sat.

  “I'm 'Shocky' to my friends,” he told her, “and I would be pleased to count you, my dear, among them. You needn't call me uncle. You're hardly the child I knew when your father was alive.”

  Hearing footsteps, Dr. Shockley turned, and Kim Desinor showed up in the doorway, asking, “Which way to the second autopsy room and victim number two?”

  “Are you sure you can handle that now, Kim?” asked Jessica.

  “I am. Let's have at it.”

  Jessica stood. Shockley, taking more time to get to his feet, joined the women, both of whom were already halfway down the corridor, en route to the waiting body.

  Jessica had already begun to relax in her new surround­ings, but she felt a great deal more at ease without James Parry in the room. A momentary and fleeting thought, like a scuttling bug, reminded her she had yet to contact Richard Sharpe in England to tell him of the case, and that she'd “run into” James Parry as a result. She wondered if he'd believe such a sequence of events, or if she simply ought to tell him the truth. But what was the truth? she now asked herself.

  Standing over the second victim, banishing such con­cerns from her mind for the moment, she concentrated in­stead on the corpse. She and Kim both immediately saw the surface similarities: although the two women looked quite different, each had flawless skin and trailing, curling black hair, flowing freely, a dark ribbon of it, the effect pure and beautiful. In fact, each looked like the stereotype of the Pre-Raphaelite woman, the woman of poetry and song made famous by the poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

  Kim then waved her wand like hands over the prone body.

  “Her name was Caterina Mercedes,” Shockley said softly. Both beautiful names, Jessica thought. Beautiful women, beautiful and flawless skin; hair like winding vines; pouting, large but soft lips; high cheekbones; stat­uesque; perfectly proportioned; yet their most striking fea­ture other than the smooth and flawless skin had to be their slim, even boyish physiques. Something about the eyes in this one, too, reminded Jessica of the other victim; aside from the crystal blue green of the orbs, there seemed a hint of the piercing life hiding deep within the corneas, like seeds, somehow reflecting light even in their dormancy. How incredible those eyes must have been in life, she sur­mised.

  As much to shake herself from the unreasonable feel­ings welling up in her as to learn anything, Jessica broke the stillness, asking Kim, “Are you getting any feeling from this one?”

  “Anger... pure and unadulterated anger. She hates him passionately.”

  “As passionately as the other loves—loved him?”

  “Even more so. Nothing so transcendent as hatred. She feels used, conned. Not at the time, not while he was in the act of poisoning her, but now she feels the hatred so strongly that she hasn't completely left this plane of exis­tence.”

  “That's pretty scary. Anything else?” Jessica coaxed.

  “Only that this one's not cold; this one's on fire.”

  Jessica only now realized that the blue aura surrounding Kim had turned to a red glow, and that Kim found herself afire. She was again faint, and Jessica grabbed her where she stood beside Dr. Shockley, who flinched at the heat coming off the psychic. “Please, help me to sit,” Kim begged, nodding toward a nearby stool.

  With Kim recuperating, Jessica asked Shockley, “How do you see these killings, Doctor? Did your protocol first link the killings?”

  “The killer did that for us.”

  “The poems, you mean. His MO.”

  “Fairly obvious about himself, wouldn't you say?”

  Poems, left on each victim like tablet writings, of course, not that he was kind enough to leave a signature in the literal sense, but this was, in police parlance, quite a John Hancock after all. Still, he did leave another signature of a sort: the poison in their systems. If only they could de­cipher the message....

  Shockley got on the intercom, called for his attendants, and saw to the careful return of the body to its freezer compart­ment. Jessica stepped nearer to the old man and asked, “Had to've been a potent poison to work as it did in the slight wounds he opened with... with a pen.”

  “What we've managed to determine is that the killer used a quill pen, the old-fashioned sort you dip into an inkwell. It certainly cuts more deeply than your typical fountain pen.”

  “Clever of you to come up with the type of pen he used,” she complimented.

  He shrugged it off. “Wasn't hard for me to detect this fact alone, although I've been stumped by the exact nature of his poison. It has contradictory elements.”

  “Contradictory elements?”

  “It may act as both a stimulant and a downer. A real downer in the end, of course. At first exciting the victim, then leaving her to languish.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Wouldn't you have to be high to allow someone to cut your flesh to this extent? He may even tell them the anes­thetic is in the ink, for all we know, and they being young and trusting souls... who knows.”

  “I see. But why has it been so bloody difficult to isolate the exact nature of the poison?”

  'Trace amounts of this and that, from boric acid to retinol. None in a lethal enough dosage in and of itself to kill has been isolated out, but the base poison continues to elude detection.”

  “You isolated boric acid and retinol in the system?”

  “Well, not I. And not surprising, actually. Boric acid is used in baths, and retinol—vitamin A skin conditioning— has become a common enough over-the-counter wrinkle cream. Our toxicologist, Dr. DeAngelos, did the work on that, but as it turns out, Mercedes's doctor had prescribed retinol for a recurrent problem she thought she was having with bags under her eyes. Of course, it was a pure figment, as there are and have never been any flaws beneath her eyes, but her doctor prescribed it, he says, as a way to calm her down.”

  Jessica took a deep breath, sighed heavily, and released her pent-up frustration all in what seemed a single, flowing movement. “The choice of American women everywhere these days, yes.”

  SIX

  ... the blood of the moon steeps through me, but you cannot find me, as I have disappeared into your darkness, while seeking out your flesh, only to find instead your deepest secret.

  —Steph
en Walker

  Jessica encouraged Kim to rise to her feet. Together they sized up each other's tolerance level, and without words, each decided she would go on from here to autopsy room number three. “Something in me needs to get this done tonight,” Kim insisted.

  “All in one fell swoop? Kim, suppose it puts you out of commission for the duration of the case?”

  “I can't tell you what it is; all I can tell you is that I have to... I must see all three victims in quick succession. That is what my intuition is telling me.”

  Autopsy room number three housed the third victim, as Shockley had told them. The doctor stood waiting at the door, a grim look on his face, a single wave of the hand inviting them in; the stance and manner of his invitation called to mind a maniacal ringmaster in a circus, but Shockley's little circus had death in all three rings.

  The seasoned old ME had prattled on about the increase in crime and the necessity for still more autopsy rooms and MEs to do the work. He moaned over the circum­stances, the fact that hospital pathologists knew less today than they had known when butchers and barbers were the local coroners. Then, apropos apparently of murder-minded barbers, he started telling them how he had re­cently seen a revival of the musical Sweeney Todd at the local opera house. Finally, he muttered to Jessica, “Don't suppose you'd care to come to work for me, heh?” His wrinkles danced with his laughter, the gray-framed eyes twinkling.

  The third victim, although male, possessed a soft and beautiful countenance like the deceased women: a pouting mouth, high cheekbones, and skin every bit as flawless as the other two victims. “Beginning to see a pattern here,” Jessica said to the others.

  As if wanting to get it over with, Kim had instantly put her gloved hands on the body. From her deep trance, she struggled to say, “This one, like Micellina, thought the killer loved him.”

  “How long had he known him?” asked Jessica, fishing for more detail.

  “Forever and never, but perhaps only since nineteen.”

  Jessica was beginning to feel some of the angst Parry felt around Kim. She always spoke in riddles, because she saw in images, symbols as opposed to facts. Jessica knew it was useless to ask if she meant nineteen days, weeks, years, or since the young man's nineteenth birthday. In­stead she asked, “What does he look like?”

  “An angel, like Michael, the Messenger... angel on a rampage. The letters arranged spell quark!'

  Jessica moaned, but managed to ask, “Quark? As in physics?”

  “Astrophysics,” Shockley corrected.

  “Like the way rampage came to me; in Ouija-board fashion; now the word quark has arranged itself.”

  Jessica felt this line of questioning useless. So she changed her tactics, asking, “Hair color?”

  “Like light.”

  “Light? Light gray, light brown?”

  “Light.... like white jewels, like goldenness open to the sky.”

  Giving up on hair, Jessica asked, “Eyes?”

  “Lime green, radiant, radiating light. A green reflecting pool.”

  “Sounds gorgeous, or maybe not... Maybe the SOB wears contacts?”

  Jessica knew from experience with Kim that no image could be taken at face value; lime-green eyes might simply mean that the killer saw life through a green lens. Lime suggested bitterness, so perhaps the killer saw the world as green bile, slime even, the opposite of green lawns and green as the color of hope, new life, and growth. She knew that the moment one locked down on the meaning of a psy­chic image, it was hard to shift the idea. Like interpreting dream images, there was more art to it than science. Cer­tainly, psychic symbols and representations could not be taken on face value.

  “How tall is our man?”

  “A giant in his eyes.”

  “How is he in bed?”

  Dr. Shockley gasped, then laughed at this.

  “No way to know. He did not sleep with the women; he sees the women as virginal, pure, angelic.”

  “Virginal? Are you sure? They're both over twenty.”

  “It's how he, the killer, perceived them.”

  “And the young man?”

  “Virginal as well.”

  “A virgin? Are you sure?”

  Shockley, shaking his head, put in, “The boy's twenty-three years of age. He's hardly likely to be a virgin at his age, unless of course he was raised a Mormon!”

  Kim countered, saying, “It appears... that is, it feels so.”

  “Feels so to the killer, you mean?” asked Jessica.

  Kim shook her head. “No, feels so to me, here and now.”

  “I didn't bother to look with the women,” Shockley confessed, “whether or not... the question of their vir­ginity...” His shoulders rose as if attached to puppet strings as he stared across the cadaver at Jessica. “It isn't something one goes looking for, not since the late seven­ties anyway. Once I established that there was no sexual assault, I saw no need to... to search any further, you see.”

  “Do it now, for the first victim, the Petryna woman, and I'll check the Mercedes woman,” suggested Jessica.

  “But the police told me that each had multiple boyfriends, including our young Mr. Barona Gaitano, here.”

  Kim erupted, saying, “Barona? His name was Barona?”

  “Changed his name to it, yes. Was Luis. Quite a leap, wouldn't you say? Gaitano's his real name, though.”

  “Barona Gaitano... has a showbiz sound to it, doesn't it?” asked Kim.

  Ignoring this, Jessica said, “Check on victim one's vir­ginity, Dr. Shockley. See if there is any evidence of sexual activity or assault. I'll do the same for the other woman.”

  “Will do.”

  Returning to where victim numbers one and two had been stored, Dr. Shockley at their side, Jessica said, “If they could be proven to be virgins, and if we can determine that the young man was saving himself for a true love, it will tell us something about the sort of people the killer tar­gets, and it will hand us one more piece to add to our jig­saw puzzle.”

  Kim agreed. “Yes, this could all figure into the killer's game plan. If he selects virgins as his victims, flawless in every way, it tells us something about him.”

  The white-haired Shockley nodded all the way down the corridor, muttering, “Virgin sacrifices? Is that what we're dealing with here? It'd be a first for me! Unfortunately, there is no way to prove it.”

  They soon had their answer when Shockley examined the first body and Jessica examined the second. The atten­dant was annoyed to remove the cadaver from its freezer compartment for a second time and wheel it into the room where Shockley worked. Beside him, Jessica quickly ex­amined victim number two for any signs of sexual activity. Kim anxiously looked on, pacing behind her.

  “False alarm,” announced Jessica, who felt no surprise in learning that Caterina Mercedes was no virgin. Shockley had come to the same conclusion with respect to Micellina Petryna.

  Kim, looking on, said, “I felt it so strongly.”

  “No more virgins out there to sacrifice, I'm afraid,” the old coroner said.

  “As for the male,” Kim began, “only his friends—”

  “Could possibly know,” finished Jessica.

  Shockley added, “And they might not tell. Something else Sturtevante needs to run down.”

  After some silence, Jessica heaved her shoulders and sighed. “Nothing else to accomplish here. I can listen to Shockley's protocols on tape at my leisure, back at the hotel.”

  But a revolving red light went on in Shockley's lab, a sure signal that another corpse was on its way, and a mo­ment later, the doors to the crime lab burst open and an at­tendant wheeled a corpse through.

  “Dear God,” muttered Shockley through grinding false teeth. “We've got another one.” He ought to have been ap­prised of the body's earlier discovery so he could have sent out an evidence tech unit to sweep the crime scene.

  “Dammit,” Jessica muttered. “Does this mean what I think it means?”

  “We've
screwed up is what it means,” Shockley replied as he rushed for a look at the body and to speak with the attendant.

  “I left messages, Doctor. Didn't anyone find you?” the attendant was asking when Jessica and Kim joined the ME.

  “Not a word. We've been in and out of the autopsy rooms and the freezers,” Shockley replied. Then a second young attendant rushed in shouting, “Dr. Shockley, Tim Brothers somehow stupidly turned off the red-light special, and what with the panic button off, none of us knew. I mean, we just now learned. It's another male victim of that poison-pen guy.”

  This was obvious, as the victim lay facedown in the gurney, the glaring, ugly poetry on his back dried with blood, red and rusty. “Damn it all, man, tell me something I don't know. All right, let's have a look at this latest victim, shall we?”

  With the three of them in surgical garb, they moved toward the Poet Killer's fourth suspected victim.

  “Looks all too familiar.” Kim's remark came with the tones of fatigue and frustration.

  Again they found themselves in autopsy room number one, where Jessica read aloud the toe tag, anton pierre, even as she stripped away the sheet to reveal the male corpse. Anton's eyes, wide open and sea blue to emerald green, displayed the usual marble like stare, stony and without life, but the color, like those of the other victims, mesmerized and made one believe some life danced just behind the stillness. Jessica wanted to reach for the stetho­scope to make certain this beautiful, untouched victim— untouched but for the now familiar poetic scars on his back—lay just beyond in the realm of sleep, not death.

  He hadn't been deep-frozen and thawed out, she silently told herself. Not like the others. He hardly looked dead; it hardly seemed possible that the healthy-looking person on the slab could be a corpse. “Perfection,” muttered Kim.

  “Once again,” Jessica agreed. “Now it's even; two women, two men, for a total of four victims.”

  Shockley added, “Another perfectly proportioned man at that. Look at those pecs.”