Unnatural Instinct (Instinct thriller series)

by Robert W. Walker

  “This DeCampe must be well connected,” he volunteered.

  She laughed hollowly. “Firmly entrenched in the top levels of society here in D.C., even though she's not been in the city for long.”

  “Oh, really? And just how does one pull that off? By spending money?”

  “Yes and no. She was born and raised under wealthy family circumstances. She climbed to the top of the legal profession as a lawyer and was a judge in Houston, Texas. After nearly twenty years on the bench there, she moved to D.C. and took a position as an appellate court judge here.”

  “So, Officer, you saw the crime scene, right?”

  “Yeah... sure did.”

  “Any theories as to who has her?” she asked Hanrahan, who'd been chewing on a Snickers candy bar.

  He took a moment to swallow. “Not a clue, Dr. Coran, but you know how many loony tunes go through the system and are carrying a hard-on for... I mean a grudge against the judges? And DeCampe in a short time has managed to piss off everybody, the good guys as well as the bad guys, so...” He let his words hang in the air.

  She imagined how worrisome the entire matter would be to the other judges once word got around. “So perhaps my first instinct is right.”

  “And what would that be, Doctor?” asked Richard as the car came within sight of the courthouse. A roaming wispy but spirited ground fog played about the windshield like a ghost from a wishing well, while the black emptiness of the abandoned street gave Jessica a fleeting chill.

  “My intuition tells me that some sort of sociopath has her. Someone who isn't in it for any sort of ransom, some one out for some sort of vengeance, some kind of hate motive.”

  Richard replied, “Sounds like , a normal thing, the way you put it, Doctor.”

  “Sociopathic reasoning may resemble our so-called normal reasoning and motivations, but it never rises to the level of daring to think about itself... or to think of its consequences.” She realized instantly that she had lost Hanrahan in the serpentine, labyrinthian thought when he replied, “Say what?”

  Richard said, “Then don't look for a rational motive.”

  “So, you're going to consult on this case, are you?”

  “If I can get assigned to it, I will.”

  “Assuming you are assigned to it, what kind of motive would you suggest, Richard?”

  “Some sort of revenge motive, likely a quite twisted one.”

  Somehow Officer Hanrahan had gotten his feelings hurt, and now he took a turn too fast, tossing his occupants to one side, but they only luxuriated in one another and were back to kissing as the car came to a careening stop inside the garage below the Washington, D.C., appellate courthouse. “Strange place for this,” she told him.

  “Never too strange surroundings for love,” he replied.

  “God but I love you.”

  “I love you,” he countered.

  “We're here,” Hanrahan announced, switched off the motor, and climbed from the car. Then Chief Eriq Santiva, Jessica's immediate supervisor with Unit Four, Behavioral Division the PHI. snatch ' '.' ' ' or “ and pried them loose with the obligatory greetings, 101 lowed by J. T. with more of the same.

  “Jess, she's vanished without a trace,” Santiva assured her, taking her by the hand to help her from the car. “Not so much as a hair so far.”

  “We're thinking it may've been someone with a grudge against her,” said J.T.

  “Someone pissed over one of her rulings.” The two men were talking over one another.

  “Wow... that narrows the field,” she joked. “And who would possibly be upset by one of the woman's rutting rules?”

  “Still, they're right,” said Richard. “It's quite likely that if no demands are made, the culprit has other punishment in mind.”

  “Richard and I discussed it and have as much as agreed on the same point. Richard ought to be brought in as consultant, Eriq. What's the alternative? That he go back to the restaurant and demand a container to box up my lobster?”

  Chief Eriq Santiva grimaced. “Sorry to cut into your honeymoon.”

  “Honeymoon? Eriq, we haven't even set a date.”

  “Preamble then to your honeymoon... whatever you two are calling it. Sorry to cut it short.”

  “Honeymoon sounds good to me,” Richard replied. She looked at Richard, and he smiled back. “I only meant that it... well, it's just that the word doesn't quite apply, like Missing Persons being applied to this case will likely prove inaccurate.”

  'Trust me, the heat put on to solve this thing immediately and now... it necessitated we call it a Missing Persons case.”

  “I see.” Her eyes widened with realization. She explained to Richard, “Makes it far easier to rationalize FBI involvement in an otherwise police matter. So we've already taken full charge of the case, right? WPD is cooperating with us, rather than the other way around?”

  “You've grasped the political nature of the case with your normal brilliance, Agent Coran,” replied Santiva, a little edge to his voice. “Absolutely, we've taken those steps. No one in the WPD is going to give a rat's ass about what happens to a judge, especially this judge, don't you see?”

  “As saviors, we had no choice.”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “Done deal as you Yanks say,” interjected Richard, trying to defuse the moment.

  Eriq, his Cuban features twitching now, his black eyes like cold marble, said, “We moved ahead on this for all the right reasons. Trust me, this is no casual snatcher. She may've run into a psycho serial killer.”

  “What're you saying? That this guy targeted her and her only? That tells us a great deal right from the get-go.”

  “Yeah, he's out for revenge, not ransom.”

  J. T. joined them, adding a word. “Which will likely involve torture; out of torture, he will gain some sense of control over her, break her down, make himself feel more powerful as a result.”

  Jessica had heard the familiar tale too often. “The abductor wants to feel superior to his victim—to a woman— and he will, despite all her titles.”

  The four seasoned veterans had all dealt with the worst crimes in recent history. They were well aware of each other's capabilities, but they were equally aware of the depravity they might well be facing. “How long?” asked Jessica.

  “We figure her absence was not felt until three hours after what occurred here. Her daughter was holding a late-late surprise hot meal for her at home—the judge's place. Couple of friends, relatives who were planning an intervention.”

  “An intervention? Was she on the bottle or—”

  Eriq waved his hands. “No, no! Nothing like that. They thought they could break her of her workaholism. You know, the caring children wanting the aging mother put out to pasture, all that.”

  “Gee, wish I had friends like that,” muttered Jessica.

  “We could arrange for an intervention for your obsession with work,” teased Richard. But the remark left Jessica frowning, Santiva staring, and J. T. simultaneously scratching his ear and scrunching his face up as if deciphering where and when.

  Santiva said, “Jess, you do have friends like that, but they're so busy that they can't find time to intervene you, you see?”

  “Richard's only kidding, you two! Get off it. Funny, Richard. Now let me have a look at the crime grid, will you?” She pulled away from Richard's hand on her arm, and she pushed past the other two men, going for the location of the crime, saying, “If only these walls could talk.” She meant to read the crime scene and come away with some useful, guiding clues or patterns, or a direction in which to take the case.

  “Look, we'll need to get Lew Clemmens to look into the judge's caseload records for anyone who even smells bad.”

  “Can do, but there're men here at D.C. headquarters who can handle that.”

  “I trust Clemmens to be always right on, Eriq. And we don't have time to work with skeptics and people who're going to second-guess our moves, not if we want to find this
creep before he kills her. Not if we want to bring her back alive.”

  “Shhh... family over there.”

  Jessica saw the grieving handful of people all huddled in one corner, two pretty young women who looked like younger versions of the judge among them. She'd heard the judge had two daughters and three grandchildren with one on the way. Jessica wondered who had the little ones, and her heart sank at the thought of pain brought on the innocent grandchildren.

  JESSICA now approached the cordoned-off area, the grid of the crime scene. She saw that Kim Desinor, FBI agent and psychic, was well within the grid, attempting to pick up any psychic vibrations or hits that might defy both the skeptical onlooker and reality itself... at least reality as most people knew it.

  “How long has she been in trance?” asked Jessica.

  J. T. replied, “Going on twenty minutes.”

  “She say anything?”

  Eriq piped in with, “Before she went under, she touched the gun and the shoe.” He pointed to a shoe and a gun lying about the rear of a car tagged for impound-the judge's car. “Said the shoe and the gun belonged to Judge DeCampe. But then even I could've told you that.”

  So far, Kim Desinor's efforts had remained unimpressive. Still, Jessica had worked previous cases with the psychic detective, and she sometimes proved to be uncannily accurate. “She say anything while under?”

  “Naaah... lot of nothing so far. Couple of grunts maybe.”

  The moment Eriq said this, Kim Desinor screamed and stumbled forward, as if in a drunken stupor. She was caught by Santiva, only moments before she might have cracked her head on the dirty, oily pavement. Back of her, near the car tagged as the judge's, Jessica momentarily focused on a large .45 Remington revolver—a Texas weed eater some called it—a set of keys, and a single high-heeled, stiletto- style shoe.

  “Get her some water, enough for drinking and splashing,” Jessica told Richard as Santiva collapsed to the floor with Desinor in his arms. “Eriq, J. T., get her topside where there's some cold air. It reeks of stagnant exhaust fumes in here.”

  Santiva saw to helping Kim Desinor away. The psychic agent looked in a state of shock, her knees bleeding from having scraped the concrete floor. The results of the fall might have been far worse. Jessica wondered if there would be any significant results of another kind, the psychic kind. Dr. Desinor had in the past conjured miracles. However, Jessica knew she must rely on science and not magic, even if that magic might well have a basis in fact.

  A team of two evidence technicians with the Washington PD stood about watching, ordered to hold until Dr. Desinor had completed her reading of the crime scene area, and further ordered to stand down until Jessica could complete her examination of the crime grid. The snickering from the WPD techs over what they had witnessed with Dr. Desinor could not be masked in this underground tomb where every word echoed and bounced.

  Normally, no one was to touch a thing until the lead forensic investigator assigned to the case arrived. Dr. Jessica— “Her Highness,” as many had taken to calling her behind her back—Coran had now arrived to give the place a thorough look-see and walkover. She'd done that much; she was on deck, at the scene as soon as ordered, and she had taken it all in at a glance, while a piece of her mind wandered back to Richard.

  The last time she'd been called to a crime scene it had also cost her an expensive meal. That time, her friend and colleague, Dr. John Thorpe, J. T., had come along with her, as they'd been dining together at the local Caribbean Sin on succulent mahi mahi steak dinners, which had been left cold and standing.

  On staring across the taped-off area, Jessica felt a sense of dread and deja vu, and she said to herself, “Sometimes I feel like Eriq's hired bloodhound.”

  “You can bet WPD'll want this one. It is their jurisdiction, and they're going to fight for it,” said one of the D.C. police crime techs. “Dr. Sleezac's contesting jurisdiction as we speak.”

  Jessica knew Herbert Sleezac, M.E. for the city. She felt no surprise at his contesting jurisdiction. If she were in his position, she'd fight for her jurisdictional rights as well.

  “Kidnapping is a federal offense. We don't need an invitation, with a federal appellate judge having been kidnapped.”

  “All the same, you know how the Washington PD works. Going to be like pulling teeth for you to get any cooperation.” Jessica knew what the guy meant. The city police still thought it was 1940, but they couldn't argue with the FBI taking over, not on this one. They wouldn't stand a chance in a court of law, and they knew it. “Suspected kidnapping of an appellate court judge is a far cry from your ordinary Missing Persons case.”

  Jessica had developed a reputation among her colleagues for an uncanny ability to “read” the signs of a violent crime scene, and whatever bread crumbs an assailant or a killer left behind. She'd proven it many times over. She not only had the good “blue” sense of a fine detective, but she also “divined” from another place in her psyche that few other women or men could touch. Some called it mysticism. Jessica called it a knack, a Yankee intelligence that came with the DNA. Reading people was a gift passed on to her by her father, a forensics man for the U.S. military. Still she had no illusions about being the kind of psychometric reader Desinor was.

  While Jessica had lost her father many years before, she had never lost his spirit, or what he had passed on to her: patience and hard work, how to find out what one needed in any circumstance, how to use time wisely, how to discipline oneself to a task, and how to question and then question the question. All lessons hard won and never to be forgotten, and in never forgetting, she kept her father alive as well. As a result, her father had never completely left her side.

  J. T. had remained with Kim Desinor on the outside, while Richard Sharpe and Eriq Santiva had returned. Eriq whispered in her ear, “The absolute absence of a trail or a clue of any sort has dictated, at least in my mind, the need for your special talents, Jess.”

  “As a forensics guru or as backup to Kim Desinor?”

  “And tracker, and cunning person,” Santiva added. “We both know the absence of a trail would leave any other forensic investigator or techie Washington cop scratching his head for months or until a body washed up in a storm drain. With this one, the clock is ticking furiously, Jess. We all sense it. Dr. Desinor sensed it strongly the moment she stepped into the garage.”

  Jessica Coran now crouched over a mini-debris field that spoke of a confrontation in the capital courthouse's underground parking lot—a modern day haunted interior if ever there was one.

  Jessica immediately keyed in on the fallen Remington .45, a sterling shiny new barrel looking like an errant piece of a wind chime. The modern version of the old .45 proved far lighter. Jessica had a pair of originals in her gun collection at home, under glass—a collection that had been her father's, which she had added to over the years. Friends who had seen her collection joked that she had more firepower and hardware than did the Pentagon.

  Using a pen through the trigger guard, Jessica thoughtfully examined the .45 as she lifted the weapon. Titanium steel and lighter weight notwithstanding, the thing dwarfed her own .38 Police Special; the monster was not nearly so accurate nor easily concealed as her .38 Smith & Wesson. Likely, the former Texas lady judge didn't want to conceal the fact that she packed a deadly weapon. “Why does every man, woman, and child in Texas think bigger is better?” she asked no one in particular as she stared down the enormous length of the .45's barrel, a cannon in Jessica's estimation. “Bitchin' gun.”

  Immediately on saying this, a naked light bulb illuminating much of the crime scene began to blink, first creating a pattern of dark ripples across the area and then light- generated shadows.

  “She probably used the gun to scare people off,” suggested Richard, who stood, hands clenched, nearby, also taking in the bloodless crime scene. “Apparently, whoever has her didn't cringe and slink away on seeing the weapon. Tells us something about her assailant.”

  “Yeah, righ
t. Maybe he knew her well enough to know it was for show, and that she'd never pull the trigger.” Jessica bit her lower lip and shook her head. “Eriq... get me a couple of our guys from the lab down here. I want our techs to help me cover the territory, not the city payroll guys over there.” She indicated Sleezac's men.

  “Of course, will do.” Eriq got on his cell phone, but like everything in this underground world, it wasn't working. He had to return to the outside to make his call, bitching about his cell company the entire way.

  Jessica reached for Sharpe's hand and stared into his eyes. “There are a lot more places I'd rather be, and all of them with you, Richard.”

  “I know... me, too.”

  The D.C. techs watched, curious about the lovers as they embraced.

  SOME fifteen minutes had passed when Jessica recognized one of the FBI technicians as Phil McMillen, and ignoring the WPD techs on hand, she said, “Phil, I want the firearm in our lab. Give it a once-over for prints now, but bag it and label it as ours.”

  Phil fought down a gloating look. “Gotcha, Dr. Coran.”

  Since the city police techs put up no argument, and the city detectives remained mute, Jessica assumed everyone had gotten word from above that she was in charge of the crime scene, regardless of the usual protocol or any jurisdictional crap, as Jessica called it when lines between agencies were blurred. Such bullswallop she despised—the jurisdictional quibbling that often escalated into arguments, and later became the sort of loopholes defense attorneys drove John Deere tractors through. All the wrangling also took up far too much precious time, and that would be especially true on this case. The hell if I'm going to put DeCampe's life at risk over a question of boundaries between law enforcement agencies. Judge DeCampe was important enough that the governor, the mayor, and most of the city's elite wanted immediate results, and they didn't trust the Washington Police Department for anything requiring speed or overnight results. The same scenario put Jessica and her FBI team on a hot tin roof that would be scrutinized minute by minute.