Bitter Instinct jc-8

by Robert W. Walker

  “Coffee and a sandwich would be pleasant, yes, and as for your associate joining us, I have no objections.”

  Jessica made the arrangements.

  After Kim came in to join them, Vladoc began. “The behavior exhibited by the Poet Killer-I have seen milder examples of it in my practice over the years. It is normally at its height in late adolescence when years of belief in magic are called upon to compensate for a person's having been deprived of it-”

  “Deprived of it?” interrupted Jessica.

  “-prematurely in childhood. Fantasy, I mean.”

  “Bruno Bettelheim,” said Kim.

  “I believe Bettelheim was right about the importance of childhood fantasy.”

  “You mean the importance of fantasy in understanding and coping with the world.”

  “Yes,” replied Vladoc, who returned to his exposition. “All of your victims as well as the poisoner here, I strongly suspect, these are young people who now feel that it is their last chance to make up for a severe deficiency in their life experience. You see, without having had a period of belief in magic-as all healthy children do in interpreting the world-they are then unable to meet the rigors of adult reality.”

  “Are you suggesting,” Jessica said, “that many young people today who seek escape in drugs and other addictions were deprived of childhood fantasies?”

  “If not drugs, then they will apprentice themselves to some guru, go crazy over astrology, engage in black magic, rites, and rituals, or some other obsession,” Vladoc assured them.

  Kim explained further, in obvious sync with Vladoc on the subject. “Such deprived people are engaging in escape from reality into daydreams about magical experiences which they believe will change their lives for the better; drugs are an avenue for such thinking, yes, but those prematurely pressed into an adult view of reality can only sustain themselves through magical thinking and doing.”

  “So the cause is in the formative years,” said Vladoc, “when experiences prevented early development of skills that can only be mastered later in life, in realistic as opposed to mythical ways.”

  “And this is how the Poet thinks?” Jessica asked.

  “He is committing their souls over to the angels. What does that tell you about his worldview?” asked Vladoc, shaking his head. “And that of his victims?”

  Jessica leaned back in her chair, the movement making the old wood groan. “You're sure of this, are you?”

  “Quite. I'm good at reading between the lines. Each poem is about a chance encounter that ends in his cleansing them-body and soul-in preparation for their return to their true reality, a reality populated by only the pure. That is, in a nutshell, this killer's pathological mind-set.”

  “What did Sturtevante think of your interpretation?” Jessica took a leap, guessing that Vladoc had already shared his findings with the lead investigator on the task force.

  “She agreed with it, of course. I have studied such lunacy for well over a quarter century. She has confidence in my judgment. ”Words like angelic and pure did seem to apply to the victims, she thought. Vladoc stood, his head barely above hers, although she remained seated. With a Danny DeVito-like glint in his eye, he half smiled and said, “I hope this information helps to stop this poor, driven devil.”

  “You're not sure he's… that the killer is male?”

  “It is impossible to say from what I saw in the writing, but you have handwriting experts who might help there, right? Don't graphologists claim to know how to differentiate a woman's handwriting from a man's?”

  “Our experts have not been able to determine gender on the basis of the handwriting, no.” Not even Wahlbore's program made that claim.

  “Perhaps the killer is like his victims in more ways than we think; perhaps he or she is androgynous,” Kim suggested. “We know that the less secure a man-or woman- is within himself, the more he cannot afford to accept an explanation of the world that says he is of minor significance in the grand scheme of the cosmos.”

  “True, the one you are after believes himself or herself to be at the center of the universe,” said Vladoc. “Think of it. As long as a child is unsure of his immediate environment, that it will protect him, the more he must believe that superior powers, such as a guardian angel, watch over him, and that his place in the world is of supreme and paramount importance.”

  “It's far preferable to zero security,” Jessica agreed.

  “Imagine parents who make it their full-time job to denigrate protective imagery like angels and invisible friends as mere childish projections, the flotsam of immature minds,” added Vladoc.

  “And you rob the child of one aspect of the prolonged safety and comfort he or she requires,” finished Kim.

  “Precisely. To quote Bettelheim, 'The child knows that he was created by his parents, so it makes sense that, like himself, all men, and where they live, were created by a superhuman figure not so different from his parents-some male or female god.' “

  “He comes to believe that something like his parents, only far more powerful, intelligent, and reliable, will care for him in the world-something like a guardian angel,” added Kim.

  Vladoc launched into his conclusion. 'To feel secure on this planet, our killer needs to believe there is a place where the world is firmly held in place by rules and immutable laws, where terra firma means terra firma, and it's all held in place by loving, caring beings, or one super being who wishes to cloak and envelop him with love and an outpouring of concern, and a peace that can never be achieved in this life, not through thugs, not through preachings, not through sex or food or material wealth or fame. It is that which cannot be achieved on this plane that our killer is interested in, not unlike the desires of the great Romantics in art and literature, not unlike Byron's mad quest across the continent in search of the perfect love and the perfect peace.”

  “Our killer has been given the unenviable chore of sending over those who believe strongly in the world of invisible spirit?” asked Jessica. “Do you think he hears voices telling him what he's supposed to do?” Of that I have no doubt,” said Vladoc. “Killer and victim share a faith in the angelic world, and magical thinking-taken to the extreme-is as dangerous as reality itself, or religious fanaticism, or any other ism you may go completely obsessive over.” With that, Vladoc bid Jessica and Kim farewell and good night.

  The two FBI agents sat alone in the darkened office.

  The phone rang, and Jessica picked it up.

  “Jessica, it's James. I want to apologize for my behavior the last time we were alone together. I had no right to say some of the things I said. Certainly no right to hurl accusations at you.”

  “Apology accepted, James.” She spoke his name for Kim's information. Kim stood, waved, and disappeared, giving her privacy.

  James said, “Think for the good of the case, we need a reconciliation? For the good of the case. We must be able to work together.”

  “Agreed.”

  “So, it appears your visit to the university was pretty much a bust, from the report you and Kim filed.”

  Jessica filled him in on their visit.

  “Still, I think we need to follow up, talk to this Leare woman and this guy Locke. Shake some trees, see what falls out.”

  “Jim, Vladoc has given us some useful insights into the mind of the killer. Now we must match a person to those insights, and I don't see Burrwith fitting in here.”

  “Vladoc's pretty strange, Jess. Sturtevante filled me in on where he's headed with the case. You buy any of it?” She told him about Vladoc's visit and his strange but eerily on-target conclusions about the killer, drawn from his reading of the poems. “Kim and I think he's right on with this magical-thinking business being at the bottom of the killings.”

  “Even more reason to follow up on our concrete leads. We need to talk to this Leare and Locke about Burrwith from my perspective, you know, one grounded in his reality.”

  'Tonight-now?”

  “Let's st
ay on the university poets,” replied Parry, after considering all that she'd passed along from the psychiatrist, Vladoc. “You got those addresses handy?”

  Jessica hesitated a moment, wishing to go back to her hotel, call Richard, shower, and sleep. But she relented, saying, “No time like the present. All right. You're the boss.”

  “I'll meet you out front of the crime lab in fifteen minutes with a sack of burgers and chili.”

  “Sounds good. I'm starved. Bring enough for Kim, too. See you then.”

  “She there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You're on.”

  But when Jessica hung up, she could not find Kim; the psychic had literally disappeared, but she had left a note on her office door for Jessica.

  Dear Jess,

  Took all my stuff to the hotel. In view of Dr.

  Vladoc's findings, I'm going to retrace my steps, go back over all my notes on the psychometric readings to see what, if anything, jumps out. Need a quiet, secure, safe place to work.

  Yours, Kim

  “Dr. Plummer did say that Leare was out of town,” Jessica told Parry. They stood outside the professor's home on the northern outskirts of the city. Several days' worth of newspapers adorned Dr. Donatella Leare's doorstep. A weak light illuminated little of the interior, but to Jessica it looked dark and grim.

  On the way to Dr. Leare's place, Jessica had confided in Pany exactly what Vladoc had told her. “I suspect the dwarf is onto something,” said Parry, “I just have trouble with such notions. I'm a pragmatic realistic myself. Can't believe a grown man or woman could buy into such thinking to the degree he kills-albeit benignly-over it.”

  “Come on, Jim, it's not so different from Lopaka Kowona's trade winds god telling him to mutilate young women in the islands, or have you forgotten his magical thinking, his god, Ku, talking through the winds? And as for the strange little Vladoc, I don't think he's actually a dwarf, Jim, merely stunted. As to his theory, it plugs into our own theories about the killer rather well, perhaps too well.”

  “It does fit with the known clues pretty neatly. What do you mean, too well?”

  “I'm not sure, but Vladoc sees a lot of mentals; maybe he actually knows this guy and is bound by, you know, patient-client confidentiality.”

  “That old twisted ethical argument that the doctor protects his Frankenstein at all costs, despite the fact that the insane monster is on the loose and killing people? I never understood that. Talk about magical thinking.”

  “If it's true, we need to look at Vladoc's patient list, see who's on it. I don't know about you, but I'm generally skeptical of theories that fit too neatly.”

  “Agreed. All the same, I suppose we have to entertain the notion that Vladoc's information is… well informed. Else, if it is not Que, then the killer wants us to believe that it is?”

  “Perhaps to point the finger at someone else?”

  “Perhaps. We'll have to keep an open mind to all possibilities. “Yes, as we should.”

  Parry picked up a stone and threw it into the trees. “Don't you find it strange that both Locke and Leare are out of town at the same time?”

  “You mean at the same time that the killings have stopped?” she asked.

  “That, too, yes. You say the two are returning from some sort of conference in Texas?”

  “College and university teachers' conference, yes.”

  “And have been there for what-two days and nights?”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “And from what you tell me, everyone in the English department is sleeping around. These two might be off screwing their intellectual brains out, mightn't they?”

  “I have no idea if there's anything between them, Jim, other than a love of poetry. Any suspicions you have are all rather hypothetical, wouldn't you say?”

  “Agreed. ”hey'd already tried Dr. Lucian Locke's residence, and had found it equally abandoned and nearly as dark.

  Jessica took a deep breath. “I say we get out of here.”

  “Where to?” he asked.

  “That bookstore, Darkest Expectations, on Second Street. I understand it's open till midnight.”

  “All right, I'm game if you are.”

  As they climbed into Parry's official car, Jessica realized only now what Jim had hinted at earlier. “You're not suggesting that we might possibly have two killers, two poets poisoning kids, are you?”

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  “And you're betting on Locke and Leare as the bloody-minded duo?”

  “Not necessarily, no, but Leanne knows Leare personally, you see.”

  “Oh, yeah, I do remember her mentioning Leare as a friend the university to whom she was talking, an expert in poetry.”

  Parry continued speaking as he drove toward Second Street. “And she's had discussions with her about the murders, you see, and when she spoke to Vladoc about the killings, well, she got it in her head that Donatella Leare knows something. Fact is, this Leare woman is one of Vladoc's private patients, and so is Harriet Plummer. He has a lot of female patients, according to Leanne.”

  “It's a reach, Jim. The whole thing is a real reach. I've seen nothing to indicate two perpetrators here. Are you thinking Leare and Plummer, two women, could be the Killer Poet?”

  “Other than your tearstained evidence, Shockley had found trace elements of two sets of DNA on one of the victims, and neither set matches the victim, or any known person on the evidence-gathering team.”

  “Then the meeting with DeAngelos was meant to ask him to be on the lookout for two contradictory sets of information, and he was informed by Dr. Shockley of these suspicions? Suspicions I'm only now hearing about?”

  “DeAngelos and Shockley have been working the case together far longer than we have, Jess. Don't go crazy over this little mix-up. The notion had life breathed back into it by Sturtevante, who, while she's looking at this poet Leare as a possible suspect, does not want to believe her friend is our killer.”

  “I see, and when were you and Sturtevante going to inform Kim and me of all this?”

  “When we got some evidence; we have DeAngelos looking into the possibility of separating out two kinds of poisons. One of Leare's poems is about someone poisoned twice, by two separate lovers. What more can I say?”

  “Nothing… not a word.” he interior of the car remained icily silent the rest of the way to Second Street.

  When they entered the bookstore called Darkest Expectations, they weren't prepared for the amount of dust and mildew, or for the prevailing motif-Early Draconian meets the Orgone Box. Fake blood wept from the walls and clotted in the iron maiden in the comer, the same one they'd seen in Maurice Deneau's apartment.

  “Got her for seventy percent off at the Louvre, a furniture place around the comer,” said the young man covering the register. “Really brightens up the place, don't you think?”

  Jessica stepped up to the guy, a bald, plump, earringed, postapocalyptic beatnik with a lot of facial hair and beady eyes; his nose had been buried in an Owl Going back horror novel before the jingle of a bell hanging on the entry-way door had disturbed him. When James Parry, standing beside Jessica, flashed his FBI badge, he said, “Hey, cool! Just like Mulder and Scully in The X-Files. Wow, wait till I tell DeWitt.”

  Jessica introduced herself as an ME, which only heightened the young man's sense of awe. He dropped the Going back book on the counter, his tiny pupils enlarged, and with both of his hands propped on the counter, Jessica thought for a crazy moment that he meant to lean in to her for a kiss. “Wow… freaky, really, how can I help you?”

  “I have a series of names and photos here,” she replied. “I'd like to know if you recognize any of them.”

  “You mean did I know them personally, or as customers? Cops have already asked me the same-”

  “Regardless, we're not the cops, and we'd like to know.”

  “Sure, any way I can help. This is about those murdered kids, right? The ones t
he Poet Killer poisoned, right? Parry, reading the man's name tag, said, “Don't concern yourself with that, just look at the photos and names and answer the questions, Marc.” Parry's officious-sounding tone appeared to hit the young man like a blow, if Jessica read his reaction correctly; he seemed to lean back exaggeratedly, straighten, and take a deep breath, as if assessing the agents anew.

  “Tamburino,” he said to Parry, “my name's Tamburino to you.”

  As Jessica laid out the photos and names, she asked, “You always on the day shift, Mr. Tamburino?”

  “Day, night, all the time. It's mine,” he said throwing his hands skyward. “Bought out the owner, Nelson DeWitt. Took every penny I had plus a major-assed loan I'll die paying back, but it's a living, sorta.”

  “Do you recognize any of these young people?” she asked again.

  “This one looks familiar,” he said, pointing to Maurice Deneau's picture, “and I remember this guy,” he added, pointing to Pierre Anton's image. “I like guys.” He eye-balled Parry hard now. “Hell, they all look familiar. One time or another, I do believe they've all been in my store… These two for absolute certain.” He again fingered the pictures of the two male victims. “And this babe, always in here-browsing and sitting on the floor and reading in-house mostly. Seldom to never purchased. Had the need but not the bread.” He indicated Micellina Petryna with a jab of his left index finger.

  “What about the others?”

  “Not so regular, but yeah, I'd almost swear all of 'em's been in at one time or another, sure. Why? I mean anyone living around here? They're going to be a full-or part-time student somewhere, and students read, and therefore they wind up at my store. I order books for the classes at the community college and at University of Philly, undercut their on-campus stores, you see. Everybody knows it, so they come to me for textbooks and they browse and buy other kinds of books while they're here. Doesn't mean 1 had anything to do with their getting themselves killed.”

  “No one is accusing you of anything, Mr. Tamburino,” Jessica soothed.

  “That'd be a switch,” he replied, and winked. “You can call me Marc.”

  “The victims didn't have too far to come for reading material,” said Parry in her ear.