Bitter Instinct jc-8

by Robert W. Walker

“So they needed a scapegoat.”

  “In the islands it's known as a sacrificial pig. You know how they like to roast pigs in Hawaii.”

  “Funny, Jim, but I'm sorry for what happened to you.”

  “I'll be a damned sight more careful in the future, and that's got to be the case with Gordonn.”

  “Are you suggesting that we can only arrest him with the deadly pen in his hand?”

  “Something like that, yes. If we want an airtight case against the freak.”

  “God, I wish we'd had more time at his place to locate his stash of photos of the victims, assuming he had any- something beyond his collection of news clips of his parents' deaths.”

  “Even if we'd found such evidence, if you'd walked out of there with them, they would have been inadmissible in a court of law. Besides, we couldn't disturb the place. Like I said before, if Gordonn caught on… I mean if he somehow figured out that we were in his pad, he'd know it's bugged. We've got to get him to incriminate himself in one fashion or another.”

  “All right,” she said, relenting, “but I still wonder if we won't both regret the decisions we made back there at his place.”

  “Are you referring to Sturtevante? Has she a hidden agenda?” Something like that. She's kinda closed off, or hadn't you noticed?”

  “Holds her cards close to her chest, yeah,” he agreed.

  “Do you trust her, Jim?”

  “I do, and you can as well.”

  “Fine… good to hear it.”

  “Does that mean you trust me, too?”

  “I trust that you're at my back.”

  “Yeah… you can bank on that, Jess.”

  “I haven't forgotten how you saved my life in the Cayman Islands,” she told him.

  He stabbed at his fettuccini. “We'd best get out of here and to that meeting with Vladoc and Desinor. See if they've come up with anything useful on Gordonn.”

  Sturtevante was late for the meeting. “Gordonn is on the prowl, heading down Second Street as we speak,” she told them as she entered the meeting room. “Surveillance is on him, but I think we ought to get out in the field.”

  “I want to know what Dr. Vladoc and Dr. Desinor have to say first,” Parry told her.

  Jessica remained silent. Vladoc, who had been speaking when Leanne arrived, picked up where he had left off.

  “Further investigation into Gordonn's past and parents reveals much to us,” he declared, twirling his glasses as he spoke. “Dr. Desinor has unearthed all the local newspaper articles from the various papers, including those she found at the Philadelphia Inquirer's, microfiche library.”

  “There's sufficient detail in the stories,” said Kim, “to link what happened to Gordonn as a child with what is going on today.”

  Jessica stared at the array of articles Kim had collected, squinting in order to follow the fuzzy microfiche copies. In the days before computers, microfiche had seemed a miracle of an invention, but today it seemed about as advanced as chiseling on stone tablets. The images and words on the poor-quality copy she held in her hand were hard to see, but the headline was easy enough to read: family suicide pact ends life of poet lydia byron and artist husband harold gordonn-child survives.

  The story summarized the macabre little family suicide pact that became as powerful an urban legend as any in Philadelphia artistic circles, in addition to being the great motivating force of George Gordonn's life, the origin of the living-poem fad and the reason he was on the prowl that very night.

  The phone rang, breaking everyone's intense concentration. Jessica picked it up and heard Marc Tamburino's voice, sounding loud and shaken. “Dr. Coran, I have some information you might like to know about.”

  “Pay for, you mean? You're suddenly getting very good at digging up stuff, Marc. I think we've discovered a hidden talent in-”

  “I located information about how the Philadelphia fad of writing poetry into the skin began.”

  “Is that right? Go ahead,” she told him, curious now.

  “There've been several explanations over the years that have attached themselves to the fad, but one in particular I found in my research… well, it's weird enough for The X-Files, and I wanted to share it with you.”

  She took share to mean sell.

  “Does it have anything to do with a bizarre suicide pact in George Gordonn's past?”

  Tamburino's silence clearly meant yes.

  “Do you know this guy Gordonn?” she asked.

  “Are you kidding? He's the leader of the Locke and Leare groupies. He never misses a signing, and he's taken a lot of pictures at them. Hey, just remember, without me, you'd be nowhere on this case. ”So why wasn't he on the list of names you gave me earlier.”

  “It never occurred to me to list him. I thought you wanted pros! He's an amateur, a goofball, a weirdo, but not the kind you'd notice particularly, and certainly not the kind who you imagine could kill somebody.”

  “Your information is a little late, Marc and frankly it sucks. No deals this time. In other words, thanks but no thanks.” She hung up on his protests. While plainly useless at this point, Tamburino's phone call at least added to their conviction that they were on the right path.

  “We're wasting time here,” said Sturtevante.

  “I want to see if Gordonn shows up on anyone else's class list, say like Garrison Burrwith's, Leare's, or Locke's,” Jessica protested. “It won't take long.”

  “Grab the lists; bring them along,” Parry suggested.

  “They're in lockup,” Jessica told him, “along with all the other evidence we have. It'll take a while to get my hands on them. Go ahead. I'll catch up.”

  “Let's hit the streets, people,” said Parry. “Get on the track of this creep. Tonight I feel lucky.”

  With that, everyone but Vladoc and Jessica hurried out of the office. When they were gone, Vladoc muttered, as if to himself, “I still can't believe it of George. He's so mild-mannered and pleasant.”

  “So was Ted Bundy, Doctor.”

  Jessica left the police psychiatrist and went to the evidence room, where she signed out the class lists they'd acquired from the university and quickly scanned for George Gordonn's name. It appeared three times. He'd taken poetry classes with Locke, Leare, and Burrwith.

  She ran into Kim on her way toward a waiting car. “Thought I'd ride with you,” said her psychic friend. “What did the class lists reveal about George's career as a student?” He took classes with the whole triumvirate-Locke, Leare, and Burrwith.”

  “Why didn't we see this before?”

  “It's not unusual for the same students to be showing up in a series of lit courses, especially when one is a prerequisite for the other. A lot of the names on the lists were repeated.”

  “Including those of the victims. George Gordonn knew the victims.”

  “He took Burrwith first, a year ago, followed by Locke last summer, and then Leare most recently, fall term. After that he signed up for Goldfarb's film class. He's been busy.”

  “It would seem so… researching the life of Byron perhaps?”

  “It would seem so…”

  As the car pulled out of the underground lot, Jessica at the wheel, Kim said what both of them were thinking. “It would appear that we are finally on the trail of the Poet Killer, Jess.”

  George Linden Gordonn, it seemed, having somehow learned of the police's interest in him, most likely from noticing that he was being followed and watched, had fled. At first, this presented no problem to the surveillance team, as they had him in their sights, driving his sedan. It was only when he slipped out of sight, veering into an underground lot and speeding out at an exit around the block, that it became a problem. But when they went to round him up-they figured he'd shot himself in the head or something-they found an empty car.

  “How the hell did he just vanish?” the police chief, Roth, asked, having joined them at the car with a warrant in hand to search the vehicle, “and exactly how did Gordonn know that we were on
to him?” He'd been kept apprised of events by Sturtevante. Angry, he shouted, “The surveillance team was never compromised, and yet he knew he was being watched. How?”

  “Perhaps he simply felt the police presence everywhere, picked it up in, I don't know, some supersensory way,” Jessica wondered aloud. “Perhaps that's how he's stayed a step ahead of us.”

  “You saying he's psychic?” asked Kim.

  “That or very 'blue-sensed.' “

  Roth and the others knew she was referring to police jargon for a cop's instincts. Sturtevante offered another possibility. “Maybe someone's keeping him informed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe someone close to the case is in some way close to him. I'd thought that was the case when… when I suspected Leare, that she was getting the information from me.

  “Pillow talk?” asked Parry. “You think Gordonn is sleeping with someone close to the investigation? Who?”

  “I don't know. Someone on the task force, maybe, someone in the ME's office. I'm just grasping at straws here, Jim.”

  “Like everyone else,” Kim commented.

  Jessica said, “If so, then he knew when we were on, when we were off.” She wondered if some more mundane answer was closer to the truth. “At any rate, it's as if the city has swallowed our boy up. He won't easily be located.”

  While Jessica and Parry cruised in Parry's car, FBI dispatch alerted them to an urgent call from Dr. Coran's “snitch,” Marc Tamburino.

  “I've got more than you bargained for this time, Dr. Coran.”

  “No games, Marc. I've got no time for nonsense. What is it?” Gordonn is being helped out of the city by well-meaning friends, friends who have already had their asses in a sling thanks to the police, if you get my drift.”

  “Are you telling me that Leare is protecting Gordonn? That she knows him well enough to help him escape?”

  “All I know is what I hear, and what I hear is that the poets of this city are fed up with your gestapo tactics, and they've banded together to help Gordonn out. How do you think he so thoroughly disappeared while under surveillance?”

  “Some poets did this? I've never known poets to be so militant, Marc. What exactly are you telling me? No riddles, okay? Tell me, how did Gordonn learn that he was under suspicion?”

  “I haven't a clue, but I do know that what I've heard is accurate information. I'll expect a healthy check for this piece, love.”

  “So, a group of right-thinking, well-meaning artists have banded together to protect Gordonn.”

  “He's like a cult figure to some of them, like a symbol or something. The founder of the fad, don't you see? It's earned him a measure of respect.”

  “And his poisoning people to death?”

  “That, too, with some in this crowd, believe me.”

  “All right. Marc. Thanks for the lead. You'll be hearing from us.”

  Jessica conveyed Tamburino's information, and while Parry admitted to being skeptical, he could not argue with following up on it. “We go back to Leare, Locke, possibly Burrwith, Plummer, and the photography people.”

  “Well-meaning friends who cannot conceive of his guilt in this bizarre business are hiding and abetting him?” Kim asked when she heard the news. She had a sudden flash of how they all looked from afar, a flock of buzzards standing around Gordonn's vehicle as it was searched from top to bottom before being towed to the police lot. Aaron Roth put an APB out for Gordonn, and he arranged to have all highway entrances from the city closed off and roadblocks put up. Photos of George Linden Gordonn were circulated. All this, and still George did not surface.

  The search brought them back to Donatella Leare's home, the suspicion being that she had picked up loose bits of information about Gordonn from Sturtevante or notes Sturtevante may have left about. They found the place dark, but could just make out some music, soft and melodious, playing in one of the rear rooms. Jessica rang repeatedly, but there was no answer. Peeking through the curtained door, she saw the flickering light of candles, and she caught a whiff of incense.

  “Could be lounging in a bath and can't hear the bell with that music turned up so loud,” Parry suggested.

  Kim had joined Leanne in her cruiser, and they arrived behind Jessica and Parry. Leanne now rushed toward the house, a look of dread etched on her features. Jessica apprised them of the situation.

  “God, she's taken that creep in, and he's killed her!” Leanne cried. “I just know it!”

  “Break down the door,” Jessica told Parry.

  “No,” said Sturtevante. “I still have a key. I'll go in.”

  “She's likely in the shower, but you tell her if she's aiding and abetting Gordonn, she's in trouble,” said Parry. “Make it clear to her that she has to tell us where he is.”

  The detective nodded. “Will do.” She then entered the premises, calling out to her former girlfriend, while the others waited outside. In the time it took for Leanne Sturtevante to walk from the front room to the master bedroom and bath, all they could hear was the soft music and an occasional shout of “Donatella! Donatella!” Then a sudden scream sent a horrid ice pick into Jessica's spine. Sturtevante shouted hysterically that her friend Leare was dead.

  The others raced in to find Donatella Leare lying facedown on her bed, rather haphazardly so. On the poet's back were the now familiar blood-orange words of the Poet Killer, carved into her skin with the selenium-laced ink. The poem on Leare's back stared back at them like a laughing skull, Jessica thought.

  She wondered now if Gordonn or Tamburino or both of them together were not having fun with them all, PPD and FBI alike.

  “Bastard! Bastard's killed Dona!” wailed Sturtevante, distraught and on her knees, her gun beside her.

  “Locke-Locke and Burrwith!” shouted Jessica. “We've got to get to Lucian Locke's place, and to Garrison Burrwith's, and now! If the Poet Killer has targeted Leare for death, then he'll try to kill his other instructors as well.”

  “Come on, Jessica. We'll let Kim take care of Leanne, and the crime scene will take care of itself,” said Parry. “Let's go. We've got to get a radio car dispatched to both locations. Someone close at hand.”

  “Someone close to the investigation,” she muttered. “Who… who close to the investigation has given up our every move to the killer?”

  “Vladoc,” shouted Sturtevante.

  “Vladoc? But why?”

  “He drinks, he talks. Someone knows this, uses him. Gordonn is shrewd. Doubled back on us all and escaped, didn't he? And we thought him a pitiful slob who had a miserable beginning and would have a miserable end, and left it at that. Meantime, he's busy killing… killed Donatella.”

  Parry's cell phone went off. He lifted it and barked, “What is it?”

  “Dispatch, sir. Another urgent for Dr. Coran, sir. Patch him through, now!”

  “It's for you,” he told Jessica, his eyes bulging. “Says it's Lucian Burke Locke.”

  Strange coincidence, she thought, taking the phone in hand. She repeated the garbled words she heard coming through for the benefit of the others. “Says he knows where we can find George Linden Gordonn.”

  The strange little man, Locke, said clearly into the phone, “I have information as to where George can be found, or rather where what remains of him can be found.”

  Parry snapped the button to place the cell phone on speaker so that the others could hear the conversation. “What do you mean, the remains of him?”

  “He's dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Ready for burial, yes.”

  “Can't you be a little more descriptive? How did he die? Where are you?”

  “He's lying dead alongside another of his victims,” Locke shouted into the phone, making Parry jump back.

  “Where are the bodies, Dr. Locke?”

  “My house.”

  “We'll be right over. Don't touch a thing, do you understand?”

  “Yes, yes, of course.”

  He hung up
and said, “We should still send a cruiser to Burrwith's place, have them look in on him. Meantime, we'd best get over to Locke's.”

  Kim had been holding Sturtevante's hand as the other woman continued to cry over the loss of her friend. “I'll stay here with Leanne. You two go.”

  “Be certain to maintain the integrity of the scene,” Jessica told her. “Call for Shockley to get over here and walk the grid.” Willdo.”

  With that. Parry and Jessica rushed to the home of Lucian Burke Locke in search of George Gordonn… or what remained of him.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing that he had put together.

  — Mary Shelley, introduction to Frankenstein

  “I knew young Gordonn only through a class I taught nearly I a year ago; didn't hear from him or about him again until he began working on his Byron project in the film department, you see. He took my course to leam more about Byron and the Romantics; he loved the notions of romantic love, enduring, undying love, but he remained primarily focused on Lord Byron. I took him under my wing, so to speak, and just recently, he began to brag about how he was party to the killings.”

  “That's how he would put it?” asked Jessica.

  “Precisely, but I blew it off, as they say. Of course, knowing him, even for a short time, I knew this was all a he, bravado, all that. I never for a moment believed George to be guilty, and so when I learned he was under suspicion, I gave him safe haven until the young man should feel secure enough to leave.”

  “That's a felony, Dr. Locke,” said Parry, “one which you could be tried for.”

  “I realized that at the time, but I felt an overwhelming need to help George. He had that effect on people; people wanted to 'fix' him.”

  “And precisely how did you know he was under suspicion, Dr. Locke?”

  “That's right,” added Parry. “It wasn't public knowledge “Information I gleaned from Leare, who had it from her lover, Sturtevante. Seems Sturtevante went to apologize to Donatella about all the misunderstanding, the mishandling of the case, all that, and she let it slip that you were zeroing in on George. Leare knew of George through me, and she had had him as a student once as well. I was trying to help George to stay… stable, you know. I knew what he had gone through. But of late, George had begun to seriously worry me.”