Bitter Instinct jc-8

by Robert W. Walker

  Kim didn't answer, her gloved hands now moving like two markers over a Ouija board as she gritted her teeth in concentration. Jessica again thought how perfectly beautiful she was.

  “It is rather a radical, even alien idea nowadays, but regardless of their sexual proclivities, our killer may well have seen these four as virginal in some context only he fully understands. We may rule it out as a fact, but we shouldn't rule it out as a fantasy, part of the killer's fantasy,” Kim suggested.

  “Yeah, he may have so strongly wanted it that way that he saw them as such, regardless of facts,” agreed Jessica. “It's the kind of designation or imprinting a madman might stamp on his victims.”

  “I recently had a case of murder after months of stalking,” said Shockley, “and the shooter did just that. He saw his victim as pure, put her on a pedestal, and when she inevitably fell off it, he killed her.”

  Jessica had learned to put aside the horror of such moments, that so much human potential and life itself had been snuffed out as one might crush a caterpillar underfoot. So much waste. All the victims were young, with so much lying ahead of them, each barely out of the teen years. Wasted… the single word said it all, a waste of human promise and potential. No one could imagine what might have burgeoned from these beginnings.

  Jessica realized that the image of the virginal soul, or the state of actual virginity, might not fit here, but the appearance of it-that is, the physical appearance of purity displayed by each body-might have a great deal to do with the killer's choice of victims. That it might well play into his selection process. “Perhaps the Poet wanted a perfectly unblemished 'slate' to write on. It might be that the killer, while not strictly interested in virgins in the literal sense of the word, did find people who gave the appearance of purity in one form or another.”

  “While not virgins, they may have easily given that impression of innocence and naive that proved, in the end, the most alluring trait of the virginal or celibate life,” agreed Kim. “Virginal behavior, virginal by nature, virginal appearing, or a combination of all three.”

  Jessica silenced herself as Kim's psychic persona took center stage once again.

  Kim's energies, however, had been drained like a used-up battery from the earlier readings. She received little from Anton Pierre, save the overwhelming sense of confusion, mixed with a bit of awe. She concluded in a few flat words: “He never knew what hit him. Didn't see it coming. Innocence sums him up, innocence and perplexed ignorance of how he came to be dead.”

  “And as for being, as Madonna says, 'like a virgin'?”

  “The overwhelming trait I get coming through is confused innocence, like a child who has been lied to. Again the number nineteen and the words rampage and quark returned during my reading. Something insistent there.”

  “You think the killer is nineteen and on a rampage, his mind 'quarked'?”

  “Such a direct interpretation would only lead us in a wrong direction. No, the nineteen is a symbol for something greater than age. And as for the word rampage… again it may hold some other meaning we are not aware of or do not normally associate with the word. The same will likely be true of quark. We need to pursue these words and the symbolic meanings ascribed to the number nineteen. I'll set myself that task.”

  “That sounds reasonable.”

  “Our killer's MO is certainly not one of a man on a rampage, so I must assume it stands for something other than our normal interpretations would allow.” Jessica's eyes lit up with a notion. “Perhaps its opposite, then, rampage equals peace, serenity, perhaps what serenity betokens? Absolute peace?”

  “Possibly, but I'm not at all certain at this point.”

  While Jessica and Kim were talking, Dr. Shockley had been on his cell phone, taking heat for having not responded to the call at the murder scene. Jessica imagined that a nearby hospital pathologist or someone on Parry's team had had to be called in to walk the grid and to pronounce the victim dead before authorities ordered it shipped off to Shockley.

  Dr. Shockley now said, “Couldn't tell you for a certainty, but I'm suspicious that my superiors are pissed off. Meantime, I am tired and I am retiring-for the night at least. Jessica and Kim, good night. Carl will be nearby to help you out and to lock up.”

  The sound of the closing door reverberated throughout the lab when the old man disappeared. Jessica said, “I agree. Let's save our sanity and get out of here for now. Come at it fresh in the a.m.”

  “Agreed. Bed is waiting.”

  The women made their way out of the semidarkened crime lab, secure in the belief that they had done all that was possible for the night, and that Carl would put Anton Pierre's body on ice; they found the elevator and took it to the ground floor.

  “If we extrapolate from one body to the next, all that appears before us is a series of fine, hairless, flawless young specimens.” You are your father's daughter, Jessica, she heard herself say to this. Reducing a life to the word specimen had been an ongoing argument between them when he was alive. He maintained that an ME must be as objective and emotionally controlled as his scalpel. She maintained that the more the ME knew about the personality of the victim, the more he or she could tell with a scalpel.

  “You were right, Jessica, to suggest that our victims have, if not the actual and physical status of virgins, then the mental state of virgins. Petryna's soul was virginal on exiting this life in the sense that she and the others never harmed a living thing, ever. They were the kind of people who, as they say, couldn't harm a fly. I get that much from my readings.”

  “Are you sure they all had this sort of nature?”

  “I'm quite sure of that much.”

  “Meaning the killer may have liked them that way?”

  “Perhaps…” Kim muttered. “I couldn't say for a certainty.”

  “A big maybe.” In the cramped car of the elevator, Jessica bit her lower lip as she went over what she had seen so far. Her thoughts felt at odds, a bewildered one combating with a chaotic one, the clash creating only larger confusion. She threw in a healthy dose of anger and frustration at having missed out on Anton Pierre's crime scene. She imagined how angry James and Sturtevante must be at the forensics team at this moment-missing in action during a key crime-scene investigation. She excused her absence on the grounds of complete exhaustion as the elevator doors opened at ground level, and she and Kim made their way to the hotel on foot, taking in the night air.

  Once they reached the brightly lit hotel, they staggered to the lobby elevator and rode it up to their rooms. They said their good-nights when Jessica, her room on a lower level, stepped off the elevator. Jessica imagined that Kim, like herself, would fall directly into bed and into a deep silence and weariness called sleep.

  The following day at Shockley's morgue

  “Sad to see such healthy people die so uselessly,” Dr. Shockley muttered. “When I think how useless my old bones have gotten… Sad to see these bodies go to the crematorium or the grave. Waste of excellent cadavers, which we could use around here for instructing the med students.”

  “You're not into the body-snatching business now, are you?” Jessica asked, knowing what a great demand existed for such excellent specimens as the three corpses now in Shockley's care.

  “If I thought I could talk the next of kin into it, I'd split the proceeds,” he said, and cackled again.

  “Well, you routinely hand them the papers to sign for permission to harvest body parts, so why not pursue it with the families?”

  “One in a million can walk away from the remains of a loved one. Forget about it. Still, just look at this Adonis. Hardly looks dead, does he? Am I right? What a specimen of Homo sapiens.”

  “Fact is he looks like that statue of David,” Jessica observed.

  “Michelangelo's David?” Kim asked. “I don't see the resem-”

  “No, no, not Michelangelo. The infamous one that looks like the boy David most likely looked like, the one by the sculptor Donatello.”

&n
bsp; “Oh, yes, I know the piece you mean. A portrayal of David at the time of his slaying of Goliath, presented as the pubescent child he had to have been at the time rather than a muscular Hercules.”

  “Donatello, living in the mid-fifteenth century, defied conventional wisdom. He believed in being true to nature and history. I've always admired his perfectly horrifying rendition of the street prostitute Mary Magdalen as well.”

  They had come back fresh to examine Anton Pierre's body, and Jessica, staring hard at the handsome face through a high-intensity magnifying glass, noticed an unusual pattern. “I see a blemish or the faint remains of a rash, I believe, on his forehead.”

  They had found small areas of patchy redness on all the victims caused, Jessica believed, by the toxin.

  “Just another rust-colored rash?” asked Shockley, coming closer to have a look.

  “No, no discoloration. Rather a faint shadow under the scope. Take a look.”

  'Teardrops,” said Shockley.

  'Teardrops? No way. Teardrops form a line as they drop down the face. These are polka-dot fashion. Besides, they're above the eyes.”

  “Let me put some infrared light on the subject,” Shockley suggested. “Hit the light switch on the wall beside you, Dr. Desinor.”

  Kim did so, and except for the red glow of the infrared light Shockley held over the dead man's striking features, pitch darkness surrounded them. Their white lab coats turned a Day-Glo purple.

  Studying the supposed rash more closely now, Jessica could clearly see a pattern of small circles with rivulets running away from each, all under the red glow, all about the young man's forehead.

  'Teardrops,” Shockley again said.

  “But the splatter pattern is… all wrong, as if…”

  “Yes, I agree. Jessica, dear, we finally have something the killer left behind.”

  “Then the tears are his; the killer's left his secretions on the victim?” asked Kim.

  “We'll have to lift his DNA with great care. I have just the fixative and gel for the job,” Shockley assured her.

  “Are you sure? We damage it, it's gone. Are you sure we shouldn't simply do an electron bombardment photo?”

  “And destroy the only evidence we have?”

  “We'd have the photos.”

  “Photos will tell us nothing. We can't test the photos for human DNA properties. These teardrops, if we can lift and fix them, can tell us if our killer is male or female, his approximate age, skin color, what kind of secretor he is, possible blood type. Of course, this will take some time.”

  “The green,” said Kim, taking Jessica's arm. “It was green tears that I saw. The green reflecting pool. He cries in the color green.”

  “Green tears?” asked Jessica, her voice giving way to confusion.

  “I didn't recognize it before, but the green pool I saw- he cries in green for all the lost hopes, dreams, intentions of this world that have never come to fruition. He cries for the loss of angelic aspirations.”

  An attendant in blue surgical garb stuck her short-cropped head through the door and said, “Pardon, Dr. Shockley, but the red light is spinning again, and there's a call for Dr. Coran and Dr. Desinor. The caller says it's urgent.”

  “I'll take it,” said Jessica.

  Kim followed Jessica back toward her temporary office to take the call, but Kim said she had to find some caffeine and sugar quickly or she would keel over, so they parted near the elevators. Jessica took the call alone.

  Detective Sturtevante's voice rang out. “Sorry to disturb you there, but this is about the case Jessica thought she detected a tinge of sarcasm. “Go ahead.”

  “Then you haven't heard? I thought Parry and you were tight.”

  “Heard what? I haven't seen or heard from Parry since you left together, yesterday.”

  “Unfortunately, we think we may have victim number five already. If it's true, this guy's really stepped up his timetable in a big way.”

  “Can you send a squad car for Dr. Desinor and me?”

  “It's waiting for you outside the lab, east exit of the building.”

  “Thanks. See you when we arrive and we're all sorry about the confusion of the other-”

  “And Dr. Coran…”

  “Yes?”

  “Good to have you on the case. Don't think I had the opportunity to say so before.”

  “ 'Predate it, Lieutenant.”

  “I know we need all the support we can muster on this one.” Leave it to Sturtevante to call me support staff, Jessica thought. “Right. Male or female?” she asked.

  “Come again?”

  “The victim, male or female?”

  “Male, but he pretends otherwise.”

  “Come again?”

  “Likes dressing up in women's clothes. He's something of a… let's say an androgynous sort.”

  “I see.”

  “Might have something to do with all this, you think? This look of the victims? To me, they all appear to be rather difficult to pinpoint as to sex. The men are as pretty as the women.”

  “Perhaps, could be. We've been remarking on the same thing here. I mean to say that their lifestyles, all of the victims, were…” She hesitated. “In one fashion or another, they were atypical, sexually speaking.”

  “Agreed. And they dressed the part, playing down which sex they belonged to, playing down their sexual characteristics. Add to that the thin, lithe bodies, none of them dating in the normal sense, all looking for some spiritual answer to the sexual dilemma.”

  “You've given this some thought.”

  “I have, yes.”

  “I did notice the asexual nature of the bodies, both the two females and the feminine males. Long, slender, no telling them apart from the back, even difficult from the front, such small breasts on the women.”

  “Yes, the killer's body type of choice.”

  “Could have a great deal to do with what's going on inside his head.”

  “We'll never know if he decides one of these days to take his own medicine.”

  “You think he may be suicidal?”

  “His poetry leads me to think so, yes.”

  “We've duplicated the poems and have had them forwarded to every teacher and professor in the area and beyond, to see if anyone recognizes the handiwork,” Jessica told her.

  “Good thinking. As you know, I'd already started down that road with the local professors at the university. Listen, I must rush off. I'm glad we've had this chat.” The detective abruptly cut the connection, and Jessica wondered for a moment if the androgynous nature of all the victims had spoken more to Lieutenant Leanne Sturtevante than to others working the case. She wondered momentarily about Sturtevante's sexual orientation. Then she admonished herself for the thought.

  “Kim!” she called out to Desinor as her Mend passed by the office, a cup of steaming coffee in one hand, a half-eaten Snickers bar in the other. Kim poked her head inside, asking between chews, “What was the call about? Who was it, Parry?”

  Jessica stepped around the desk and walked over to Kim, taking the coffee and sipping from it. “Thanks, I needed that.”

  “Hey, go get your own.” Kim retrieved the cup.

  “There's been another killing, Kim.”

  “Oh, Jesus. Our boy has gotten busy since our arrival, hasn't he?”

  “Yeah, I'm afraid he's been bad again-”

  “Damn him-or her,” Kim corrected herself. “Damn.”

  “In any case, the killer has struck again, and we're up to bat.”

  “What about Shockley?”

  “This one's our house call. I think Shockley knows it. They already have a car waiting on us at the east exit of the building. Let's go.” Jessica grabbed her medical bag and a lab coat.

  “Right behind you.”

  Shockley saluted them as they passed by his office and found the elevator. Jessica got the distinct impression Dr. Leonard Shockley looked upon all the care and political tiptoeing being done around him as so much
silly cloak-and-dagger.

  “Have a good time at the show,” he called out to the two ladies standing before the elevator.

  Jessica and Kim smiled. The elevator arrived and they stepped aboard.

  “What do you think of old Dr. Shockley?” Kim asked.

  As the elevator descended, Jessica replied, “I think he's good for my ego.”

  “That goes without saying.”

  “But he's also shrewd, and I believe at some point he'll declare himself.”

  “Declare himself?”

  “Show his true colors, make his professional move. He has great acumen. That much he proved with the tear find.” 'True enough, but you've got to believe that some of us co-inhabitants on the planet are genuine, Jess.”

  “Some few, sure.” Jessica placed a hand on Kim's shoulder, reassuring her. “You know I'd trust you with my life, as I have in the past.”

  “Same here.”

  SEVEN

  Instinct is the express train-no stops, no detours, no layovers nor delays… Instinct is knowing without knowing why.

  — from the casebooks of Dr. Jessica Coran, ME

  Like everyone else entering the murder scene at 1102 South Street, Suite 3-35, Jessica felt an eerie sensation of disbelief that anyone here lay dead, much less murdered. The music and odors coming from the room were pleasing to ear and nose. A Loreena McKennitt CD had been set on continual play-presumably set in motion by the deceased or his killer-and one haunting melody after another softly caressed the ear. As sandalwood incense burned, McKennitt's dulcet voice and heartfelt lyrics sounded like the wail of the dead man's spirit, the sad Celtic strings and flute filtering through the window and onto the street below.

  This strange feeling came from what was missing at the scene of the murder of Maurice Deneau. The place proved to be chillingly pleasant, normal and calm; nothing appeared out of the ordinary, nothing the least disturbed in the apartment, and the body lay posed, facedown so that anyone discovering Maurice would first be struck by the etched poem on his back. The body, thus posed, appeared in deep, comfortable slumber. Beside the dead man, on his nightstand, lay a book of poetry, a gilded marker inserted three-quarters of the way through Lord Byron's Childe Harold, Canto II, and the book was dog-eared at the opening of his famous long poem, Don Juan. Other books on a nearby shelf showed Maurice to be a lover of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, as well as Pope, Swift, Voltaire, Milton, and two of Jessica's favorite poets, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Robert Browning. Two modern poets graced the bookshelf as well, one named Lucian Burke Locke and the other named Donatella Leare, the poet and professor at the university, Jessica recalled, that Leanne Sturtevante was using as an expert and consultant.