Darkest Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  “But these ropes didn’t come loose from anywhere?” She held up the end of the rope that trailed from the dead girl’s throat. “No, no... This was cut with a knife.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure the medics know the score.”

  “Without giving too much away?”

  “Right. Of course.” They both knew they had to keep some information about the killer and his private moments with his victims a complete secret from the press and pub­lic. How else to know him when they were standing across from him in an interrogation room?

  “And make sure they take her to the right morgue, Eriq, and—”

  “All right, I get it.” Eriq didn’t need a second telling. He was now quickly wading toward shore, solid ground and the other men. He looked back only once, when he heard Jessica saying a prayer over the dead.

  Jessica felt his eyes on her as she finished what few words she could muster for the deceased young woman, for now Jane Doe. The brilliant sun reflecting off the water was blinding, burning, hateful to the eyes, which she had kept protected with her sunglasses all the while she worked. The polarized lenses didn’t distort colors like other glasses, so they had served her well here while she’d labored over the body, the lenses also cutting down on the awful glare, so much so that she could see the trail of lively, excitable minnows nipping at her feet below the surface. The mini­ature fish also tried to nip at the rest of the corpse, wanting it in death to give over to them continued life.

  •EIGHT-

  The Churchyard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.

  —Samuel Johnson

  Rainbow Heaven Beach Resort

  Dr. Andrew Coudriet, like Jessica Coran before him, stood now in an alcove of the cathedral of the saltwater Atlantic, up to his calves after having removed shoes and socks and rolled up his pants. His own near-alabaster skin was not so far removed from that of the corpse, and the sight before him was beginning to be too damned common, angering as well as disgusting him. Neither statistical data on suicides nor accidental drownings could account for the sheer num­ber of bodies washing up on Florida shores this season.

  And all this bleached-white death was so damnably stark by contrast to this brilliant, lovely morning with its heady sea breeze that whispered tales of immortality in the air. The ocean swells were mere curious creatures this morning, rising only a soft few inches in this estuary where the land developers had placed their pinnacle of a resort, which shone in the sun like something out of Oz, but the swells, like persistent, hungry dogs, kept up a constant begging at his calves, soaking the fabric of his pants in ever-higher increments, even as the water cradled the body in a rocking, back-and-forth fashion.

  “To and fro, lullaby and good night,” he murmured to the dead as the next swell hit and then moved away from him, trying to take the too-heavy body back with it.

  He had taken most of what he wanted from the dead girl as other officials waited to do their jobs, each looking on from afar. One of the hotel guests, looking down from his window, had that morning stepped from his shower to a balcony and spotted the corpse as it washed ashore here. He’d immediately dialed 911 and everyone was put on alert. Coudriet was on his way to another crime scene when he was diverted here by the call.

  The slightest pressure on the water-soaked corpse stripped off such vital portions as the nails and epidermal skin layer, some of which had miraculously held. He be­lieved that if he were extremely careful fingerprints could be had from one or both hands, since the next layer of skin below the epidermis had miraculously remained intact— soupy, but intact. If he could cut away the fingertips and drop them into a preservative now, he’d have them. But it would take everything he had and another pair of hands. Unfortunately, his two assistants were on yet a third drown­ing victim call, likely just that—a drowning victim. Perhaps even the body which Coran and Santiva had surrounded was a simple drowning victim. He dared not think that they had three murder victims in one bright morning here. He knew for certain that door number two—this victim—was like those murdered before her. The rope burns about the wrists and neck would no doubt become evident when, back at the crime lab, Coudriet removed the ropes which still clung to the deceased, trailing ribbons of torture and abuse.

  He had at first considered this a copycat killing because of the thick nylon ropes dangling about the body’s throat and tied hands, but closer examination had determined this to be the work of the Night Crawler. Of this, he was certain.

  The tail ends of the ropes at both neck and hands floated in serpentine loops, two trapped black vipers.

  Removing the ropes here and now would only cause a further loss of tissue, and coloration with it, to the water. Best to leave well enough alone. Still, the cause of death was as evident to him as the glare of the sun over the water’s sparkling surface, despite the bloating and the folds of tissue which worked so hard at masking the features and the facts.

  “I’ll need another man here!” he shouted over his shoul­der. “A volunteer, someone experienced and capable.” Even as he shouted it, he wondered who was experienced in such horror.

  One of the paramedics didn’t hesitate, wading out into the water in a pair of boots she’d donned earlier, announc­ing, “I’m your woman, Dr. Coudriet.”

  Coudriet found himself staring back at a woman who looked like a housewife in a Pillsbury doughboy ad, her plump form and chubby cheeks offset by the stern and steely gaze of a woman who meant business despite her pleasant, white-toothed smile. “Serena Hoytler, Dr. Coud­riet. I’ve hauled a few corpses to you over the years. I’ll be happy to assist in any way I can.”

  He didn’t recognize her, but then he seldom mixed with the paramedics, and certainly not a woman paramedic, al­though he wondered how he had not noticed her before. Then again, at a distance, given her dress, she looked like a heavyset male paramedic. Still, she had a grace about her, the way she carried her weight, and how her eyes sparkled, he thought now.

  “You see these surgical scissors?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want you to know what you’re in for. We can have no mistake here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m about to cut off her—the fingertips at the joint.”

  Serena swallowed hard but simply nodded.

  He was delighted that she didn’t ask him why he was going to take the fingertips.

  “They will pop free and the water will eat them up if we don’t do this correctly,” he continued.

  “Just tell me what to do, sir.” He stared at her, nodding, saying, “Good... good. Now just take one of the large plastic bags from my right coat pocket and hold it around the woman’s hands.”

  Serena saw that the dead girl’s hands were tied together with thick, black nylon rope in what appeared an unyielding knot. Saying nothing, she reached into Coudriet’s lab coat pocket, jerked out one of the large plastic bags and pried open its lip. She next cautiously took the dead girl’s hands without the slightest recoil and slipped them into the poly- urethane bag.

  Coudriet closely watched the paramedic’s hands, and saw that Serena Hoytler was not trembling in the slightest. “I’ll make the cuts inside the bag. That way, we catch what we need, you understand?”

  “Affirmative, sir.”

  “Good... good...” He had to hand it to her. She had grit, unlike many of the other paramedics—male and fe­male—he’d employed over the years.

  They went to work, Serena looking away whenever the scissors closed around a joint; but she couldn’t close her ears to the little crunch each cut made, and she could feel the weight in the bag around the bloated hand increase with each cut.

  “There, done,” he finally said. “We have them all.”

  “Do we do the other hand now?” she asked, her voice steady.

  “You lost count. I’ve done both hands; I’ve got all the useful tips I’ll be taking. What few are left would prove a u
seless exercise.”

  Serena Hoytler breathed in her relief. “Glad I could help, Doctor.”

  “I couldn’t’ve done it without you. Thank you, Mrs. Hotler.”

  “Hoytler, sir, Miss ... Ms., actually. I divorced my hus­band six years ago, returned to school, got my two-year degree, finished the medic program at State, and I’ve been working the meat wagon ever since.”

  Coudriet saw that she was pretty, despite her size; her eyes were filled with a radiance he hadn’t seen in a woman in a long time, and this radiance seemed to be for him, directed at him. Now, staring at her, he found her reddening up, actually blushing.

  As he worked to place the dismembered little pieces of the victim into small vials of a preservative which the sales­man had called WonderPlus Glow 19, Coudriet said, “I’ve been a widower for about as long as you’ve been single. And how old are you, if you don’t mind my asking.”

  “I’ll be twenty-nine soon enough.”

  “I’m old enough to be your father.”

  “Yes, sir, Doctor. I know, but personally I... I like older men.”

  He looked up from what he was doing to see that she was blushing even more, yet staring deeply into his eyes. He managed a smile and was instantly kicked at the same time by the body so near—as if it were vying for his full attention—the water having heaved it into his leg. His wife of so many years was gone now; still, he was a grandfather, an old buzzard, set in his ways. What could this ... this child see in him? Is that why you so readily volunteered to wade out here and hold hands with a corpse for me? he wondered but dared not ask. Flirting here like this, over the body, was wrong, he told himself. He opted for what he felt was a soft joke instead. ‘ ‘Where does it say in your job description that you have to help cut off fingers?” He’d had outrageous thoughts all his life come full-blown and unbidden into his head, but this ... thoughts of making a date with the paramedic over the body: No, he couldn’t, he told himself now.

  “My job is to assist my superiors and officials of this city as best I can, where I can and when I can, sir, and I would never, ever allow my personal life to get in the way of that, sir.”

  He smiled, enjoying her now immensely, loving her paramilitary bearing and speech. “Tell you what, Ms. Hoyt—Hoytler, is it?”

  “Serena, yes.”

  “Serena, a lovely name... Listen, how would you like to have dinner with me tonight?”

  She smiled now, the sunlight dimming amid clouds as if on cue. She was so cheery, so delightful... perhaps just what he needed, he silently told himself, although a deep- seated voice also said, No fool like an old fool, and then a third voice interceded, saying. Nobody’s a fool like the fool who lets her get away...

  “You just tell me when and where to be, Doctor.”

  “Andrew... call me, Andrew.”

  “All right, Andrew. You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to speak your name aloud to you.”

  “That’s... that’s sweet,” he replied, thinking that it was also a bit extreme. He wondered just how intense she might become, welcoming her intensity, and a bit fearful of it as well.

  “Do you need me for anything else, Ann-drew?” A fresh twinkle shimmered in her strikingly green eyes.

  “Sure, sure... yes, help me bring the body onto shore.”

  “Well, I’ve got my partner for that. We’ll take it from here, sir. Around the others, I’ll continue to call you sir and Doctor, sir.”

  “Thank you very much, Serena, and if you’ll leave me your number, I’ll call you later and we’ll get together.”

  She whipped out a card with her address and telephone number clearly printed, handed it to him and said, “Funny, huh... How an ugly, awful thing like these brutal killings can bring two people together. Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t’ve called her ugly.” She indicated the bloated body bobbing inches from them. “It’s just so... so ghastly to see...”

  “The one kind of death they don’t even like to discuss in medical school, even in M.E. training, my dear Serena, is the floater. A floater is an ugly travesty of the human form. Don’t feel ashamed.”

  “But it’s so horrible that I should gain from so tragic a loss...”

  “Just be thankful you still have feelings at all. In our business, it’s hard to hold on to honest feelings, believe me. She instantly agreed with a nod. “I know drivers, para­medics like me, who’re so burned out. Why this one guy, Stover—” She realized she was carrying on too long for here and now, so she closed down.

  Coudriet turned and waded back to shore as Serena’s burly partner came out toward the body, the two men nod­ding vigorously to one another as they exchanged elements. Coudriet clutched the small medical pouch, stuffed now with the evidence of the crime, where it dangled about his neck on leather thongs. He had all the evidence the body could give him here in the field. The rest would have to wait for a thorough examination in the morgue, in dry con­ditions, below bright lights and under the microscope in his lab, where he might turn for a warm cup of coffee and listen to classical music as he worked, anything to lessen the abomination of the moment.

  “Take love when and where you can find it,” Coudriet muttered to himself when he had arrived ashore. He turned to watch how Serena manfully hauled the body toward land, her partner hardly helping or keeping abreast. She appeared to be quite a woman, perhaps too much of a woman for him. She was intriguing, but he worried about what might become of them if they were to get involved. Perhaps it’d been wrong of him to encourage the young woman, but something in Serena stirred him even now, as he watched her wade ashore. Something deep within told him it was a feeling he should pursue, if for no other reason than to experience some much-needed excitement in his life, to feel again. It seemed a selfish reason, but he was too old anymore to fall back on falsities, to deny that he was selfish.

  “There’s a call for you, Dr. Coudriet,” said a uniformed cop in his ear, bringing the M.E. out of his reverie. “You can take it in my unit. Follow me.”

  Coudriet climbed into the front seat of the man’s squad car and took up the nicely contoured, modern police re­ceiver, barking into it, “Coudriet here. What is it?”

  “It’s me, Dr. Coudriet, Powers.”

  “Oh, yes, Owen, good of you to call. Now tell me, what’ve you and Thorn got out at Lighthouse Point?” Coudriet pictured the lively little Coconut Grove park where the historical monument—one of Florida’s most an­cient and prestigious lighthouses—looked out over luscious palmettos, native cacti and other vegetation along the riv­erside, and the sugar-sand beach, cerulean waters and dis­tant Atlantic horizon on the other. There was also nearby Peacock Park and the oldest building in Miami, the Bar­nacle, an historic home built in 1908 which had long since become a museum offering a glimpse into Florida’s past, the grounds overlooking the ocean, ideal for strolling and spotting the occasional native armadillo and raccoon. He imagined how crowded the entire area would be even at an early hour, it being a favorite haunt of both locals and tour­ists, with cafe, gift shop and beach all in one place. The red-brick lighthouse, while no longer operational, still acted as a beacon, a magnet, for people to come and visit, whether it was to climb her 320-odd spiraling steps or to party amid the seascape.

  What an awful foil against which to examine a body in the water, he thought, even worse than doing so below the thousand or so windows of the Flamingo Hilton Beach Re­sort. At the lighthouse, there would be little children about, dogs and Frisbees, sand castles and sea urchins to chase. But looking around now, he saw children already locating the pool at the resort while others impatiently waited with sand buckets and colorful shovels in hand so they might hit the beach.

  “So, tell me ... what exactly do you have out there, Owen?”

  He silently prayed for a stabbing victim, a drowned surfer, anything but another sampling of the work of the Night Crawler.

  “Ted and I both concur, sir, that it’s the work of the Night Crawler.”

  “Goddamn it al
l! Are you absolutely certain?”

  “Absolutely, yes. Unfortunately, all the signs, sir.”

  “Were the hands bound in front with a black nylon boat­ing rope?”

  “As a matter of fact, they were, and the same rope was tied about her throat.”

  “Sounds like we’ve got the makings of a... a hat trick...”

  “A hat trick, sir?”

  “Hockey, Doctor... You remember hockey, don’t you? I’m talking about mass murder, possibly three victims in a single day, if Coran’s victim is also one of his.”

  “Oh, yeah, ice hockey... hat trick, sure... gotcha, Dr. Coudriet.”

  “Damn... damn...”

  “So your victim, sir... was a bound female, nude ex­cept for the ropes with the same ligature marks, same time in the water, sir?”

  “One and the same, but not so long in the water as pre­vious victims, no...”

  “That is unusual, isn’t it?” Powers was a master of the obvious.

  “Two victims, a possible third, all given to us on the same day, yes, Powers, damn you... damned unusual. Have you gotten what you may from the body at this point?”

  “Wasn’t really much to get. The usual samples were impossible to take, but yes, sir, we did what we could with what little we had.” “How’re you doing with it, Powers?”

  “Sir?” He sounded confused. “Are you and Thorn holding up?”

  “Well... yes, sir, but I gotta tell you, I really hate these floater bodies, sir, and Thorn about came unglued when we turned her in the water.”

  “Get everything into the lab; I’ll see both of you back there. Tell the press nothing at this point, and especially nothing about the ropes, do you understand? This will have to be handled delicately. Leave it to our PR guys.” He cut off communication with the younger doctor and asked the waiting officer just outside the car if he’d call in and have him patched through to the first crime scene. “I want that FBI guru, Jessica Coran, or her boss, Santiva.”