When they were gone, Chief Roth stood aside, rather agitatedly, to hear a brief “pep talk” from the deputy mayor, whose final clich6-”I hope you all good hunting”-fell flat.
Then Chief Roth, his bulldog face turning stony, said, “Senator Harmon is not the only one ready to throw you people to the dogs. I had another father in my office late yesterday. It was Maurice Deneau's father, a local alderman and minister, who collapsed under the strain right there in my office. Paramedics rushed him to St. Stephen's; he's expected to recover, but the man's a basket case; so depressed that he's under a suicide watch. His family's going through a double hell now.” We're getting closer every hour, every day.” Kim told them what they wanted to hear. “I am seeing more details; each vision I have of the killer brings me more words and symbols to puzzle out and piece together.”
Jessica helped Kim calm Chief Roth and Deputy Mayor Alsop, both fathers themselves, with assurances that the agents themselves did not wholly believe.
A telephone call came an hour later; another body had surfaced, discovered this time in the first stages of decomposition. Over the weekend both Leare and Locke had been in Houston, there had been a murder after all, but the body had gone undetected. Jessica steeled herself as she walked into the now familiar “cozy” death scene, a set of props and surroundings created between lovers, between victim and killer, or so it seemed, down to the leftover Pinot Noir, the candles, and soft music.
Time had taken its toll on the crime scene. Candles had burned out, spilling wax like small pools of lava over surfaces. This young woman's body had been discovered by her mother, who, after numerous attempts to reach her daughter by phone, had driven to her apartment and quietly let herself in; the hysterical woman now sat sobbing in a neighbor's apartment down the hall, a cluster of building residents standing about her in a protective circle.
It proved to be a carbon-copy murder scene, and it took little time to determine that the MO was that of the Poet Killer. Victim facedown on living-room floor, this time a pillow under her head, a soft down comforter pulled to her waist, a blatant message left by her killer, penned once again in angry red-to-ocher-burnished ink that made the words appear to be written in dried blood.
The only difference with this victim was the more advanced stage of decomposition; decay had caused some of the killer's penned words to sink inward, as it were, creating puckering slash like wounds in the skin. This time, the victim's skin had to be pulled tight on either side, held by forceps, in order for the poetic lines to be completely made out. Rigor mortis had set in days before and had long since released its grip on the corpse.
“Same MO, same setup,” muttered Parry, just to hear himself speak.
“It's definitely the work of the Poet,” Sturtevante agreed.
“The body gently posed for all eternity, and the victim is familiar as well. She is all the others, all the others are her,” added Kim Desinor.
After a cursory examination of the body, Jessica stepped aside for Kim to “read” it, but Kim's examination fell short. “Getting nothing; emptiness, save for those words again: rampage… quark, preflight, and outing… At least I… I think it's outing.”
Jessica then began collecting the minutiae of evidence left by the killer, searching in particular for the tearstained evidence. Under her magnifying glass, she found it. Using an adhesive, she collected the sample and placed it in a vial, labeling it and carefully putting it away.
Parry and Sturtevante had been searching about the room, Parry again going for the books. He held up a copy of Locke's poems. “It was on her shelf,” he said, opening the volume to a marker. “She appears to have been reading a poem entitled 'The Stage Is Set.' “ He began to read:
The Enochian world is made of gritty tectonics of mind, pressed against the choking smokestack of our lonely city, a place of diastrophic shifts thought masquerading as landmasses that grind into one another.
There, at the hazy altar of ruined pavement, vested in soot, the twin lovers to be wed; purity and iniquity.
They stand in pools of nervous devils, clutching one another with vows of betrothal, caught in the tactile rush of Thorazine bedlam.
They are the lost children elected to host the supraliminal.
On the marker, Jessica read the name and address of the bookstore where the victim had purchased this autographed copy of the book-Darkest Expectations. Also on the marker was a scribbled note, which the victim had apparently written as a reminder to herself. Purchase Leare's work next, it read.
From the look of the apartment, Jessica imagined that the victim could ill afford to purchase both books at the same time, but then Kim entered from the bathroom, carrying a copy of Leare's book.
“It all keeps going back to Locke and Leare and that bookstore,” said Jessica. “Somehow I believe their work is connected to the killings.”
“What are you saying?” asked Sturtevante. “You have no proof of that. None whatever.”
I believe that somehow Locke, Leare, or both are connected to the killings, or at the very least, their poetry is somehow inextricably mixed with the reasoning behind the killing spree.”
Kim supported Jessica. “Such phrases as Enochian world in Locke's poem-that refers to occultism and ancient rites and conversations with God or his agents, angels?”
“Vladoc spoke of it,” said Sturtevante. “But Leare was out of the city all weekend, and Locke with her. Neither of them could possibly have had anything to do with this.”
Jessica felt a sense of relief coming from Sturtevante. Had she begun to suspect her friend Donatella Leare?
“Yes, so they say,” Jessica commented.
“They were both out of the city all weekend, and according to your own findings, the victim died Saturday night,” countered Sturtevante. “And as for Locke's reference to Enoch, Donatella tells me that many poets are familiar with ancient religions and magical practices. Hell, that Dr. Burrwith guy, his poetry alludes to the Four Quarters all the time. Vladoc told me that that's part of the Enochian belief system, too. It's more widespread among artists and writers than you would imagine.”
“Vladoc did make some brief mention of strange belief systems,” said Kim. “I think I remember that.”
“They both left the city on a flight for Houston, or so we are told,” Jessica said, thinking aloud. “But suppose one or the other faked the flight out of here, not getting on that plane, asking the other to cover for him or her?”
Jessica stepped out and down the hallway to talk to the mother. Sturtevante followed. The woman said she was Rowena Metzger, wife of Phillip K. Metzger. Sturtevante knew what this meant, so she explained for Jessica's sake. “Only the most powerful business leader in the city.”
“Cinthia, our daughter, absolutely rejected her father's and my lifestyle and all that we offered her. This began after she started at the university.”
“University of Philadelphia?” asked Jessica.
The mother nodded, still sobbing. Finally, she added, “She wanted so to become an artist and poet. Now… my God… nooooo!” The wailing moan ripped at Jessica's heart.
'Take her to St. Behan's Hospital,” Sturtevante told a nearby medic as she helped Mrs. Metzger to her feet. “She will need something to calm her down until her husband can be located.”
When the sobbing woman was led away, Sturtevante said to Jessica, “The Metzgers, Phillip and Rowena there, regularly appear on the society pages.”
“And now they're front-page news.”
Jessica and Sturtevante returned to the death room to find Kim Desinor attempting a second reading of the body. “It's teasing, something being held out of reach,” Kim muttered, when suddenly Phillip Metzger, a tall, barrel-chested, white-haired man, charged in bull-like. He had become another of the walking wounded-another victim.
“Get away from her! Get away!” he cried out at them as if they were all ghouls, and as if he somehow believed the girl might be saved by his touch. He fell to his knees over
his daughter, grabbed her up in his arms, and rocked and sobbed as uncontrollably as a hurt child.
Sturtevante looked shaken, Jessica thought as the PPD detective moved her toward the door. “Can we talk privately?” the detective asked. “I need to talk to you alone… now.”
Jessica did not argue; Sturtevante's voice had become at once tremulous and conspiratorial.
SEVENTEEN
If poisonous minerals, and of that tree whose fruit threw death on else immortal us, If lecherous goats, if serpents envious cannot be damned; alas, why should I be?
— John Donne (1572–1631)
They went to a small stairwell just down from the death room, and Leanne Sturtevante was pacing there like a caged tiger. “I don't know how to tell you this any way but straight out. Leare… Donatella… she is the Poet Killer. Leare-she has done this.”
“What are you saying?”
“She killed that kid down the hall!”
“How do you know this?”
“You were right. Donatella never left for Houston.”
“How do you know this?”
“I confronted her with it.”
“Confronted her with it? When? Did you call her in for questioning? What?”
“No, I arranged a meeting.”
“A meeting?”
“You don't understand.”
“No, I don't. Enlighten me.”
Leanne finally stopped pacing. “Donatella… she and I… we've known each other for several years, and she's become… well, obsessed of late.”
Jessica finally felt the light bulb go on in her head. Leanne and Donatella were-or had been-lovers. “Obsessed? How? In what manner?”
“She's been baiting me with these murders, playing me! Don't you get it? Ever since I broke it off with her, she's been obsessed, fixated on getting us back together. She knows I… I've complained volumes about how unfair the PPD is when it comes to giving women detectives a chance, and I fear… I believe she created this case for me!”
This was beginning to sound to Jessica as if Leanne Sturtevante were the delusional one in the relationship. “She is arranging to help you in the department by killing all these kids?”
“I know it sounds crazy! It is crazy. She's crazy. She fits Vladoc's profile of the killer, and-”Have you any proof? Has she said anything, made any kind of confession?”
“She got off that plane to Houston, like I suspected, Jessica.”
“Are you sure?”
“She pleaded with Locke to keep it to himself. She has become… desperate… since, since our breakup.”
“So, she is a spurned lover, but she doesn't take her anger out on you. Instead she takes it out on these young people… in a bid to help your career? Some thoughtful lover she turned out to be…”
“Cut it out. I broke it off a couple of months ago, and just after, the killings began… and I checked. She never boarded that plane. I confronted her with it, and she confessed, after she told me she had seen me somewhere in the company of a friend on a day when she was supposed to be in Houston.”
“I see. So you put two and two together and-”
“She never got on the plane, and now this kid is dead, and I'm telling you all of it equates to her as the killer.”
“But what evidence do you have that she was involved in what's happened down the hall, Leanne?”
“She's scary, always has been, and now all this. I'd been subconsciously denying that she had anything to do with it, but now… now I can't deny it any longer. I know the poetry is hers. I've read enough of her crap to know she's the one who has penned the death verses.”
“You've got to have more than your hunches and your emotional involvement in order to make an arrest.”
“She lied about her whereabouts on the night when this young woman died. She tracked you down, didn't she? Found out you were working the case from another angle? Picked you out as one to watch and learn from so she can keep a step ahead of you.”
“We still need more than your suspicions to make an arrest, Leanne. So far as I can tell, your hypothesis about Leare is as uncorroborated as Dean Plummer's against her old boyfriend, Burrwith.”
“This isn't the same. Donatella calls herself the reincarnated soul of the poets of the Romantic period. She believes in all that kind of crap-past lives, karma, love that transcends time, you name it. And the fake alibi, that's significant; plenty enough for an arrest.”
“So someone has to bring her in for questioning?”
“But it can't be me.”
“Are you asking me to arrest Dr. Leare on the basis of her feelings about the breakup of your relationship or because she lied to us about her whereabouts and was stalking you instead of attending a conference?”
“She once talked me into it.”
“Into what?”
“Into sitting for a poem, writing it out on my back. I still have deep scars from it. It was as if she wanted to brand me as hers for life.”
“And you've been living with this knowledge all this time?”
“No, I didn't think it was her until I learned she had not gotten onto that plane, and I even rationalized that away until now, until you said that this one died on Saturday. It's an indication how far she will take this delusion that we still have this… this connection.”
“It sounds like enough to warrant a surveillance, but hardly enough to haul her in.”
“Fine, I'll talk to someone else. God dammit, I know she's the Poet Killer. I know it in my bones.”
Sturtevante stormed off, fuming. As she disappeared down the hallway and out of the building, Jessica returned to the crime scene to finish processing it, Donatella Leare very much on her mind.
Jessica would have liked nothing better than to make an arrest, but a false arrest could prove embarrassing for everyone involved, not to mention the amount of wasted time and effort. Instead, she returned to Dr. Stuart Wahlbore and Rocky, taking her copies of both Leare's and Locke's book for analysis and comparison to the verses used by the killer. She asked Dr. Wahlbore if he would put his electronic language sleuth onto the case. Wahlbore was in raptures.
“Can you also examine the two poets as possible collaborators?” she asked.“Create a composite of stylistic features of Locke and Leare's work Rocky can do; designed to do such work, he was.”
“And then match this composite of their work with the killer's poetry, should you find no match with either separately?”
“The suspicion being that the killer's pen might be the work of their collaboration. Most interesting, indeed.”
“How long will it take?”
“An hour, maybe two.”
Again, a weekend approached, and it promised another corpse. Jessica stayed with the linguistics professor until he made the comparisons. Dr. Wahlbore came back with his verdict.
“While similar to our killer, not so close a match is Locke as Leare.”
“Then Leare's style is closer to that of the Poet Killer?”
“Yes, but a precise or exact match, I fear it is not.”
“And when the two styles are combined?”
“Closer to the truth, according to Rocky.”
Given his fractured syntax, Jessica imagined what kind of poetry Dr. Wahlbore would write. The news provided corroboration of Leanne Sturtevante's worst fears. At least on the evidence of her poetic style and linguistic mannerisms, Donatella Leare was looking more and more like a suspect. Still, it was not enough to rush in and make an arrest. Jessica certainly could not arrest a person on the basis of a computer program, even though Dr. Wahlbore assured her that Rocky was also programmed as a lie detector, should she get Leare to agree to a test.
“Rocky is far more accurate than any lie detector, even,” Dr. Wahlbore added.
“Still, it's inadmissible in a court of law,” she reminded him.
“Well, we'll see about that, I suppose.”
“What do you mean, Doctor?”
“Any findings over to local FBI
and PPD I must send.”
“What? I didn't ask for you to do any such thing.”
“Requested of me it was, after your first visit, that apprised I keep them.”
“By whom?”
“Agent Parry and a Lieutenant Sturtevante.”
“Sonovabitch,” she muttered. “Don't send these findings.”
“Already done so, electronically. For any offense to you, I am sorry.” I'll just bet you are, she thought, realizing that Dr. Wahlbore only wanted someone, anyone in power, to lend credibility to his program, and now that the renowned Dr. Jessica Coran of the FBI had asked for his assistance, he'd no doubt do anything to keep the ball rolling.
Jessica immediately dug out her cell phone and called Parry, locating him in the field. “We're moving on Sturtevante's friend, Jessica,” he informed her.
“Don't do this, Jim. It's a mistake.”
“We don't think so.”
“You can't go forward on the basis of Dr. Wahlbore's work. It's no more reliable than-”
“It's just another piece of the puzzle, Jess, added to what Sturtevante knows about her, and the he about being in Houston last Saturday when the last victim was killed. It's enough for us to move on; we get her into the sweatbox, get a confession, and the mayor and the governor and the senator'11 all be happy.”
“You've fallen pretty far, haven't you, Jim?”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“You, James Parry, caving in to political pressure on a case. I remember a fellow in Hawaii who would have told the politicians where they could stuff it.”
“That was Hawaii, Jess, and a long time ago. This is now and this is Philly, and I've changed. I make no apologies for moving on Leare. I like her for the crimes, and you will, too, when she confesses.”
“That isn't going to happen, Jim.”
“How can you be so sure? Your famous instinct?”
“Yeah, intuition tells me it isn't her.”
Bitter Instinct jc-8 Page 26
