Bitter Instinct jc-8

by Robert W. Walker

  The coffee left a bitter taste in Jessica's mouth, as did Plummer's overly helpful coaching of the girl to point the finger at Burrwith. After fifteen minutes of listening to basically useless and superficial information, they sent the student on her way.

  As they were about to leave the English department building, where they had walked with Johnnie, once again the chairman of the English department clung to them as if she were afraid to be left so close to Burrwith. “You should speak to a Dr. Donatella Leare, also an expert in literature here.”

  “But let me guess, she's also had some run-ins with Burrwith?” Jessica said.

  “She has, but she's never confided the details. She has excellent insight into poetic expression, far more than anyone on my staff. I have given over the information I received from the FBI to her, and she has shown a great deal of interest in the case. You may find her at home late tonight or early tomorrow. Here is her card.” She had escorted them to the parking lot now.

  “Thank you. Dr. Plummer. You have been a great help,” replied Jessica, tiring of the woman's overbearing manner.

  “We wish to cooperate as much as possible. This is a horrible blot on our community, these awful killings.”

  Jessica's police instincts made her suspect Dr. Plummer herself, perhaps not of the murders per se but of some connection to them. She was too eager to be of help, going out of her way, so far as to dig up a student who'd done little more than sit in a classroom with one of the victims, and who'd been in Burrwith's class. She also showed them registration forms indicating that another of the victims had taken Burrwith's class. This overzealousness was a sure sign that she was hiding something. Jessica wondered if the dean's secrets had anything whatever to do with the case; much more likely they had to do with the angry scene the student had referred to, the argument involving Plummer, Burrwith, and the third English professor, Locke, at the Brick Teapot.

  “Dr. Donatella Leare may be able to give you some additional insights, as I said.” Plummer continued talking as they made their way to the car. “Meanwhile, I can continue to delve into such things as student records.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Plummer.” Jessica attempted a smile. “You've been most helpful, indeed.”

  “And perhaps you should talk to Dr. Locke, Lucian Locke. We call him Lucky.”

  “Lucky?” asked Kim. “How is he lucky?”

  “In the vernacular of some of our students, 'He de man,' “ replied Plummer, standing now under a brilliant blue sky and a blinding, fiery setting sun from which she guarded her eyes. “Sir Lucky. Just won the well-funded if less than history-making R. J. Reynolds teaching fellowship. 'Lucky' Strikes, you see.”

  “A fellowship to teach, but isn't he teaching now?”

  “This will afford him the opportunity to teach and write in Japan.”

  “I see.”

  “That makes him number one on this campus. Reflects well on the entire university, you see. Makes my department shine. It's called professional development. We don't like our faculty to stagnate, you see.”

  “Publish or perish?” asked Kim.

  Jessica replied, “In the case of our killer, it's publish and perish.”

  “Guess I'll be packing my bags soon, hey, Dr. Plummer?” It was Dr. Burrwith. He'd exited the building from a basement door, a door that led out to the parking lot; as he stood at the top of the flight of stairs, his body was silhouetted against the light. He'd come up from behind them, but none of them had noticed, so quiet was his footfall.

  “There's no need to deride your own work here, Dr. Burrwith. No one knows the classics like you. We all know that.”

  “Lucky Lucian, ladies,” said Burrwith, unmistakable anguish in his voice. “L-U-C-K-Y with a capital dollar sign. The tobacco industry's latest weapon in their public relations war-fund literature and literacy so they can point to their investment in people's ability to read the surgeon general's warning label on their products. Thereby further excusing themselves for selling addiction and genocide.”

  “Let's not minimize the fact that our colleague has just won one of the biggest fellowships in all of academia, Dr. Burrwith,” Plummer soothed. “Queerly enough, everyone in the department has taken Locke's victory personally, as if it means a professional blow to others. Why is that, Detectives? You know human nature better than most. Why does one man's or woman's success have to be viewed as another's failure?”

  “I'm sure I can't say,” replied Jessica, surprised by the question. She now sensed there was far more rancor in the relationship between the dean and her colleague than she at first realized.

  “Insecurity on the part of the second party,” said Kim Desinor. “Textbook psychiatry, chapter one.”

  “Usually Dr. Lucky is in by now, but he hasn't bothered showing up for his office hours since the big windfall,” said Burrwith. “Fortunately for him, the dean here is, in his case, lenient about such matters.” The implication that Dr. Lucian Locke was either figuratively or literally in bed with Dean Plummer was far from subtle. “His office is next to mine. It's the one office from which I haven't yet been displaced.”

  Jessica wondered momentarily if such professional jealousy and bickering could spill over into murder and an attempt to frame someone.

  Burrwith swung out with his briefcase and strode off, his head held high. If he had at one time been infatuated with Plummer, he appeared well over it now.

  “Pay him no mind,” said Plummer. “The students have all flocked to Dr. Leare and Dr. Locke, you see, and Garrison has been left with lecture classes the size of tutorials. I fear Dr. Burrwith has lost his touch with the young. His communication skills, while always questionable, are now definitely on the wane.”

  “The other instructors are more in tune with the students?”

  “The students persist in calling them a team, Locke and Leare, they say. If you've had Locke and Leare, you know you've covered the territory.”

  “Then Locke… he's a good teacher as well as an award-winning poet?”

  “Good? Good? He brings literature to startling life, and the man's forgotten more about the classics than I ever learned. Good man, fantastic teacher, really, and I think he, like myself, enjoys the work tremendously, and the rewards cannot be weighed. He loves his students.”

  “As do you?”

  “To keep my hand in, I continue to teach one course per semester, and yes, I do-love my students, that is. That's what makes this sordid business all the more shocking, to lean that two-no, three-of the victims were enrolled here. I found it rather astonishing, absolutely astonishing”-Jessica thought, Yeah, public-relations-wise-”to learn of the connection, while that smug Garrison Burrwith pretends he never had the least inkling this kind of thing was going on, which made me suspicious of him, you see. How can someone claim to know not the slightest about these horrible incidents? It's a bold-faced lie.”

  “There has to be more reason for your suspicions of Burrwith. What are they really, Dr. Plummer?” pressed Kim. He… he and I once had a thing, a romantic thing, you see, and well, as I mentioned before, he liked using a pen on me.”

  “Using a pen on you?”

  'To excite me; he would use a pen… down there… pretend to write in the area of my thighs, the lip of-well, you get the picture. At first it struck me as odd, but so is Burrwith. After we broke it off, he withdrew into himself, and when I learned how these young people, some our students, had died, he just naturally leaped into my mind. You will keep this private, won't you?”

  “As much as possible, yes, of course,” said Jessica.

  Kim bit her lip, saying nothing.

  “You will be discreet, won't you?” pressed the dean.

  “Of course.”

  “You never know around here if your job is secure, and should my superiors learn of… Well, they wouldn't be, how shall I put it, liberal in their thinking.”

  “We may have to speak with you again, Dr. Plummer. You don't have any plans for leaving the city, do y
ou?”

  “Oh, gracious no. Are you suggesting, I mean, does this mean that I am… a suspect?”

  “No, not really.”

  But she wasn't listening. “How unusual. Wonder how one adds being a suspect in a murder investigation to one's curriculum vitae?” She half smiled at her own little joke and added, “Imagine, questioned in relation to a homicide investigation. What will the trustees think?”

  “We'll keep this as businesslike and as discreet as possible, I assure you, Dr. Plummer.”

  “Thank you. Truth be known, Locke and I, we've visited some of the coffeehouses on Second Street, to 'plug in,' as he says.”

  “To plug in?”

  'To the youth thinking-the 'scene,' as they call it. We may well have been seated next to the victims, and then one night Garrison showed up. It's horrible to think of.”

  “Did you ever notice anyone there who struck you as out of the ordinary, unusual in any way?”

  “Only him-Burrwith. He made a scene one night at the Brick Teacup. Confronted me before Locke. It was most unpleasant.”

  “Did he in any way threaten you?”

  “He stalked me for several weeks after our breakup. That was threat enough. That night, I made it clear that in no uncertain terms… that whatever we had at one time was dead, absolutely and completely dead and over with. He got the message, believe me.”

  “He felt replaced by Dr. Lucian Locke?” asked Jessica.

  'To say the least, yes.”

  “And you think him capable of poisoning young people in order to… to get back at you and the university for feelings of having been wronged?” asked Kim.

  “Poison would be just like him, don't you see? You saw how he sneaks up on you. Beneath that calm exterior lies a volcano waiting to erupt.”

  “We'll keep an eye on him for you.”

  “Thank you… thank you. And I wanted to tell you out of Dr. Burrwith's hearing that both Locke and Leare are out of town at the moment-an academic conference in Houston.”

  “When do you expect them back?” Jessica asked.

  'Tomorrow, for their classes. They'll likely return sometime late today or tonight.”

  Jessica took down the addresses of the two professors. The three women shook hands and Dr. Plummer made her way back up the stairs and into the airless castle where she worked, a fortress no architect would construct outside a university campus. She was not a beautiful woman in any sense of the word; her legs looked like stuffed sausages, her waist had lost the battle to differentiate itself from her hips, and her hair was from another generation, down to the bangs and flip. She dominated these men through her power in the department, Jessica imagined, but now, with Locke's having won a lucrative if not prestigious award, he likely no longer needed her or the university.

  “Whole lotta shakin' goin' on here, wouldn't you say?” Kim asked, picking up on Jessica's mood. She had also picked up on the same vibes about Plummer. “That woman appears to rule here.”

  “Soon, I imagine, she will be repaid in kind by the men she uses.”

  “Some piece of work she is,” Kim agreed, the sun reflecting a glint in her eye just before it sank below the horizon.

  “Yeah, let's get out of here before she comes back with another bogus eyewitness.”

  “What about Leare and Locke? Do you think we should talk to them sometime soon?”

  “Academics are scary, aren't they?”

  “Yeah, you got that right.”

  “Imagine, this woman has concocted this fantastic modus operandi and motive for the killer, and it all revolves around her love life, her scorned lover. She believes herself the center of the universe?”

  “Yeah, it all revolves around me, me, me.”

  “How're we going to write up this report?”

  “Get in the car, and let's get out of here, shall we? We'll worry about the particulars later.”

  FIFTEEN

  Indolence is heaven's ally here,

  And energy the child of hell;

  The Good Man pouring from his pitcher clear,

  But brims the poisoned well.

  — Herman Melville

  Jessica and the team, man for man, woman for woman, felt stymied. Forensics had revealed little of the killer, and the poison he used continued to evade toxicologists at Quantico, Virginia, just as it had evaded DeAngelos's team. Another night had fallen on the case, and no one stood a step closer to ending the career of the strange Poet Killer.

  Jessica looked up from her notes and the killer profile that she, Kim, and James Parry had prepared for the PPD. Lieutenant Sturtevante and her people continued to be cooperative, pleased for the most part with the FBI involvement. The case had simply ground to a frightful halt, and for a time, it appeared that perhaps the Poet Killer had either committed suicide or left the city, or perhaps been arrested and imprisoned on some other charge.

  The PPD, under Sturtevante's guidance, looked over the suicide records and any recent arrests and incarcerations that might point to a suspect. With thousands of people leaving Philadelphia on any given day, there appeared little hope of locating the killer if the stepped-up pressure of police surveillance of Second Street and its nightlife had caused him to take flight. Jessica again looked up from her paperwork, intuitively feeling someone staring at her from the doorway of the temporary office she sat in. A squat little man with a cane who looked like Truman Capote, down to the dark glasses, stared back at her, giving her a moment's fright.

  “Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you,” he said in a voice that sounded trapped in his windpipe, the gravelly sound requiring her to translate each word. “Bit of a cold,” apologized Peter Flavius Vladoc. “I've come to help you on the Poet Killer case.”

  “That's a relief, because we do need help, sir.”

  “Not every professional will admit such a fact. Sturtevante told me you were a beautiful creature, but she did you no justice. I wished to tell you as much the other night at Merlin's, but I did not wish to embarrass you or put you on the spot.”

  “Thank you-for the compliment, I mean.”

  “I looked over the material you forwarded me. We should talk.”

  “Very good. What do you make of the killer?”

  “I have looked closely at the poetry, you see, and it has meaning for me, and I have made some sense, I believe, of what he or she wants.”

  “You think you know what the Poet wants?”

  “It is nothing he wants of us; authorities can give in to no demands, for there are none being made.”

  “Still the killer wants something,” she said.

  Vladoc indicated the chair with his cane. “Do you mind?”

  “Please, sit down. What's happened to your leg?”

  “Degenerative condition; flares up now and again. Slows me down; makes me feel damned old.” He stepped slowly to the chair, banging the wooden cane against the chair legs like a blind man. As he came into the light, she suddenly realized that he was blind or partially so, but that he had hidden it well that night at the club-maybe because of the lighting, maybe because Jessica had had one too many. “Rheumatoid arthritis; can only get worse with each step I take. Eyes are going as well. Require a high-powered magnifying glass given me by Shockley to even read.”

  “I'm so sorry to hear it.”

  He waved it off as if it were nothing.

  “So, what is it our killer wants, Dr. Vladoc?”

  “Peace.”

  “Peace? World peace, peace for himself?”

  “Peace for his victims.”

  “Peace…”

  “And one other thing.”

  “And that is?”

  “Validation.”

  The man had a fondness for enigmas, she thought. “Validation of what? His actions?”

  “No, validation of myth, legend, fairy tale even, validation of a magical way of thought that he has fully given himself over to, you see.”

  “I see, and this is your revelation for me?”

&nbs
p; “Your killer is seeking his own peace and purification and the validation of his magical thinking.”

  “And he does this by killing young people?”

  “He kills in order to cleanse them and make them over as… well, in his or her mind, as the beings they were before being born into this world. Beings born of gods, not of tainted flesh-in other words not born into our tribe, the tribe we call Homo sapiens.”

  “Beings… beings born of God?”

  “More superior beings, better, yes.” The little man leaned forward in the chair, which was too large for him, knowing he had Jessica's attention now. “Not born of man and woman or flesh. In other words, angels. He's in the business of making, that is, creating angels of them, you see.”

  She felt incredulity fill her mind. “He kills them to turn them into angels?”

  “I know it sounds like full-blown madness, but there are precedents for such behavior. People have killed others to release them from the bondage of the human coil before, and in fact poetry and literature are filled with examples of such homicides. Look, it goes back to childhood fantasies and beliefs and upbringing, and you know how weird and warped and dysfunctional that can get.”

  “Are we going to excuse the killer on the basis of his traumatic childhood, Dr. Vladoc?”

  “I do not offer an excuse but an explanation, a reason why.”

  “His motivation.”

  “His or hers, yes. It could well be a woman.”

  “Let's order in some food and talk about this further, shall we? I want to hear all you have to say on the subject. But I would like Dr. Desinor to join us.”