Eriq was on his way down the corridor and eventually to the airport when she saw from the lab window that he had been stopped in his tracks by Samernow, who was displaying more emotion than she’d ever seen from the man before. No doubt he wanted Eriq to stay long enough to talk with Aeriel M. L. Monroe. After all, he had put in a lot of investigative hours pursuing her at Eriq’s specific request, and now Eriq was walking out on the investigation. She saw Eriq mouth the words It’s over several times. But then suddenly Eriq glanced up from a slip of paper Samernow had pusheid into his hands and his eyes fixed on Jessica’s. Jessica could see from the intensity of his stare that he was going to miss that plane.
Quincey had joined the group, and all three men came barreling toward the lab and Jessica like a small squad, each intent on her.
Jessica stripped away her gloves and lab coat and met them in the office which had been provided for her adjacent to Coudriet’s. Lately, Coudriet had been absent from the place. He had fallen in love, she was given to understand. More power to him, she thought with a pang of remorse about the absence of love in her life, despite Jim’s having called her now repeatedly to profess his love for her.
“What’s going on?” she asked of the men who piled into her temporary office, making the little cubicle feel like a telephone booth.
“This was received by the Naples Constitution early this morning,” said Samernow, handing Jessica a flimsy fax machine copy of a handwritten note. She gasped uncontrollably, repeating, “It’s him,” while staring at the note, which appeared to be in the killer’s hand. It read:
“He couldn’t help himself. He had to show himself,” she said after reading the ugly words.
Samernow said to the floor, “A Sanibel Island girl matching the victim description has disappeared and remains unaccounted for. He’s on the west coast now!”
“He’s definitely back,” Quincey immediately agreed.
Eriq vehemently shook his head. “We don’t know that, not for certain.”
“It’s the third installment of the e. j. hellering poem,” Jessica countered. “It’s got to be him. Who else?”
“You forget, the damned Miami Herald printed the first two installments, not to mention a background story by that Eddings guy on hellering. Don’t you see, any number of nutcases out there might’ve decided to reinvent the killer, and so this shows up clear across the state. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to reserve judgment.”
“But you’re the expert on handwriting!” Samernow exploded. “And you said the handwriting appeared the same.”
“The key word is appears, Samernow. With the killer’s handwriting out there for any and everyone to see, hell, anybody could forge it now.” Quincey quietly reminded Eriq of the missing Sanibel Island teen.
The Herald had disappointed Santiva. The FBI and Santiva had disappointed the Herald. As for the newspaper, who could blame it? The FBI hadn’t kept its bargain, after all, and was pulling up stakes, now, so Merrick hadn’t seen any need to withhold on the whole story once it was given to America’s Most Wanted, especially now that it appeared the Night Crawler had disappeared from the vicinity. The entire fiasco seemed a catch-22.
“We don’t know that it’s the killer’s handwriting, not for a fact,” repeated Santiva. “We really need to get the original, put our documents experts to work on it.”
Samernow was instantly in Eriq’s face. “You said it was the same handwriting!” Jessica wondered what had fired Mark Samernow up so.
“I said on first appearance, it might be the same, but it will take much closer scrutiny than I can give it in a hallway.”
Quincey raised his considerable hands to quell the two other men and said, “Mark’s got a daughter about the age of the victims—”
“Shut up, Quince!”
“—and the divorce took her to Naples.”
“Is that why you’re so interested in establishing the authenticity of this letter?” asked Eriq. Samernow stammered, “I’ve been torn up over this whole damnable business from day one, the way this creep does them. My little girl... I haven’t seen her in six months, but she could pass for Allison Norris. And here I thought with her in Naples, at least she was out of harm’s way, but now... now this
“We need to get somebody over to Naples,” said Quincey, “but we also need to get somebody down south of here to Matecumbe Key to hear the testimony of the Monroe girl. We want... we’re asking you both to stay on long enough to talk to her and to look into the Naples connection a little more closely.”
“Someone’s got to go to Key Largo,” said Courdriet, materializing from nowhere at the doorway.
“Why’s that, Dr. Coudriet?” asked Jessica, wondering what the ME was getting at.
“Friend of mine is a pathologist at the local hospital there. They have a body washed up on shore bearing all the marks of the Night Crawler’s handiwork and then some.’’’’
“Show me on the map?” asked Santiva. They moved into the laboratory, where a map of south Florida and the Keys had been pinned on a bulletin board, each colored stickpin marking another of the Night Crawler’s victims. This southernmost tip of Florida resembled a slovenly J, the islands like ink spatters at the bottom. Coudriet did the dubious honors of tacking in this most recent kill.
“What do you mean and then some?” asked Jessica.
“Washed up between the Key Largo Hammocks State Botanical Site and the Carysfort Yacht Club, right here,”
Coudriet said as he jabbed the tack into the corkboard. “Came in on the Gulf Stream.”
“Well damn, then that’s got to place our killer well south of Key Largo, as the stream would ripple the body in a northerly direction at that point,” said Quincey. “I know— I’ve fished those waters.”
“And then some?” Jessica repeated, tugging at Coudriet’s billowy shirt. The man had dispensed with ties and jackets, it appeared. “What did you mean when you said ‘bearing all the normal marks of the killer and then someT “
He looked directly at Jessica when he replied, “Seems this time he embalmed the girl, and not just a piece of her... the entire body. You were right. Prophetic, in fact. Doctor.”
She didn’t enjoy being right like this, and such power of prophesy was more a curse than a wonder. “It’s him, Eriq. Now one of us has to go to Naples and the other to Key Largo,” said Jessica.
“What’s this about, Jess? What haven’t you told me?”
“I told you about the embalming agents found in some of the body parts. This just confirms it,” she said, sighing heavily. “The killer’s trying to preserve a victim. He’s been experimenting with embalming methods.”
“Naples is straight across the state by way of Alligator Alley,” said Quincey. “Mark could drive you,” he told Eriq. “And me, I’ll take Dr. Coran to Key Largo. From there, we can go down to Matecumbe Key, interview the Monroe girl in person.”
“Yeah,” agreed Samernow, “sure, I can take Agent Santiva to Naples.”
“Not before I authenticate this letter,” Eriq said. “It could be a hoax.”
“Who would put together such a hoax?” asked Coudriet, a bit facetiously.
“I wouldn’t put it past that creepy bald guy Eddings at the Herald, for one,” replied Santiva.
Jessica’s eyebrows shot up. “Eddings? I rather doubt that, Eriq. I know he was a bit strange, but—”
‘A bit strange?’ “ Eriq laughed. “Try X-Files weirdo supernerd paranoid fringe dittohead.”
“I thought he was kinda cute and sweet,” she said with a laugh.
“Just the same, I’m going nowhere until we authenticate the letter.”
She countered with her own challenge. “Well, I’m going to Key Largo. Detective Quincey, I just have to get my bag and a change of clothes. Can you pick me up at my hotel?”
Eriq only shook his head and found a chair to plop into, seemingly beaten.
“I’ll swing by in, say, half an hour?” Quincey aske
d Jessica.
“Agreed.”
“Jess,” said Eriq, climbing again to his feet and now taking her away from the others. “I thought we agreed to discuss any major moves we take in relation to this case. Now you’re rushing off to the Keys, and you want me to race to Naples without our having had a chance to authenticate the letter or discuss it.”
“I thought we just did authenticate and discuss.”
“We did what?”
“We discussed how Eddings would not’ve plotted such a hoax and the fact that there is a missing girl meeting the victim profile the other side of the state. We have to move on this, Eriq.” She briskly walked back to her temporary office, grabbed her black ME’s bag and rushed out with Quincey.
Eriq stared across at Mark Samernow. “All right, Detective, let’s go to Naples... Maybe pay a visit to your girl and your ex. I can make the comparison points on the letters along the way.”
“I’ll get you there in two and a half hours without leaving the ground,” Samernow promised. “And thanks, Agent.”
•THIRTEEN •
Pursue like a shadow...
—Anonymous
In the Gulf of Mexico, Somewhere off Naples, Florida
Warren Tauman hadn’t thrown everything overboard. He still had shanks of hair and fingernails he’d clipped from several of his victims, some jewelry and underclothes he had clung to—all of which he could bring to the nostrils, for these items opened up an entire vista of memories.
He recalled each of his victims in turn, and what he’d done to each one in his years-long attempt to reach out for the soul of his departed mother, to lure her back to him. He wanted to reincarnate her in the image of one of his victims, and once done, he wanted to make her suffer as all his victims had suffered. As he had suffered. Was that asking so much?
After all, his god Tauto had promised that there was a way. That he need merely to find his way. The poetry of e. j. hellering promised a way. Through sacrifice, a path would open.
Something in the warm Gulf air told Warren Tauman that he had been right to come here to Naples. Sanibel and Captiva Islands had been beautiful and filled with tourists, but they were small and insular, filled with a xenophobia, despite the tourists, and the loss of one of their own had sent ripples throughout the communities, ripples he cared not to feel.
The warm, balmy wind and the stolen items from his victims brought back moving, exciting images in his mind. He recalled the one called Tammy Sue. He had placed her in the water and, while she was still alive, had dragged her at great speed. She didn’t last long, and she’d not put up much of a fight from the beginning. Annoying and disappointing, really, because he knew that Mother would not seek to inhabit such a body, that she’d require a strong- willed fighter, like the one who’d gotten away so early in the game, the one who called herself Aeriel.
He recalled his excitement in having her scratch and tear, spit and kick out at him as he’d choked the life from her. Then how he had to do it again. He had not found any victim so motivated to live as Aeriel—certainly not the bitch strapped to the rear of the boat now whom he had wooed aboard at Sanibel Island.
Now he prayed that Naples would be kinder to him than Sanibel had been, or Miami or London or Grand Cayman Island, for that matter. When would he ever find the one acceptable “bride” for Mother?
His thoughts wandered back to those early attempts at reaching out to Mother through the filthy crones and tramps of London streets, derelicts one and all. Even then, he knew he must alter the way he did things. From the first, he instinctively knew this. Tauto had only reinforced what his own soul was trying to convey to him when he’d intentionally changed his ways, seeking out for the first time a younger body.
Her name had been Pauline Charlotte Warmellby, and what a fine, warm name it was, too, he’d told her before he had taken her life. He knew then, after killing her, that he must start over, and that this meant going elsewhere. The police, Scotland Yard, everyone in England was on the lookout for him by then, yet he was so far from attaining his final and prime objective. He knew he had to relocate, start over, and this time with younger women. Mother was vain and always had been vain; why should that change just because she was dead, an inhabitant of another world? She’d been vain till the bitter end, and she’d remain vain in the afterlife.
She would never come back to reincarnate the body of an older woman with wrinkles and a chicken neck. It stood to reason.
Besides, the police had thrown a scare into him. Two bobbies had come to his flat, soliciting information about Pauline, who’d lived a few flats down. She was reported as missing at the time, her body as yet unfound. No one knew that she was tied and weighted down at the back of his boat, a small craft with a barnacled bottom, hardly capable of floating; no one knew that Pauline was below the surface of the water, awaiting the time when he could experiment on rejuvenating her in the form of his mother.
When all his experiments failed, and when finally he relented, releasing the body into the Thames, he decided it was indeed time to leave London and England altogether, to seek out new hope and opportunity in America.
Warren had made the trip over the vast ocean in solitude, testing both himself and his knowledge as a sailor. It was a rigorous crossing, a marathon, and the sea almost engulfed him during one storm, but he had prevailed, and during the long, lonely lull days when the wind had abandoned him, he had read again the Book of Tau and the teachings of Tauto, especially the teaching that all life was reincarnated, that all life-forms sought out their doubles and bonded with their double spirit in an effort to grow. His spirit could only grow if he could fetch back his mother’s, then destroy it completely so that it could not return to this life ever again.
He recalled his earliest childhood memories of life at the back of a brothel, of being chained for days to a bedpost. “For your own safety,” she’d lie. He recalled beatings, both physical and mental, which he endured in stoic silence for so long that Mother thought him unfeeling, unreachable. But he had felt plenty.
The trip over had taught him that Tauto was on his side; that Mother’s spirit deserved capture and punishment. The trip over had also taught him that there was no predicting the future.
“Hell, look how far I’ve come,” he told himself now, folding his arms over his chest, allowing the wheel to turn the ship inward toward landfall as he maneuvered his craft toward shore.
He was keen-eyed now, intelligent, cunning, self-taught. “One must not allow the constraints of time, place, kinship or birth to confine, curtail or otherwise handcuff the superior self,” he instructed himself in the words of Tauto. “Otherwise, one is robbed of character.” He saw the warming lights of the shops, hotels and restaurants ahead, and this made him smile.
“One must instead actually invent one’s future,” he told the sky and himself. “And so I have, and so I have...”And so he had changed who he was, he thought. He had escaped the mold, the construct, the working definition everyone had held true of him, beginning with Mother.
Women had held sway over him his entire life; first Mother, the other whores she consorted with and the chorus line in the various theatres and then the matrons at the school. Everywhere he turned, women were there with their rules and order, constantly pecking at him. Women had held so much power over him for so long that he had, for a time, begun to think that this was the way of the world. But no more. No longer could others imprison him; he disallowed any constraints. He could flex his mind, he had become a flexible fellow.
He had begun to take the power from them; he was taking the power from them. He truly hated them, each and every one, but Mother in particular.
Without realizing that he was falling back into his old habit of dwelling on the past, he now flashed memories of himself as a weak and ineffectual child, tormented and abused by his mother. She would tie him naked to the bed and burn him in unspeakable places with her cigarette in order to keep him in line, to main
tain control and power. Sometimes she’d use a hot lightbulb, and sometimes she’d use electrical shocks. She did it when he wet the bed; she did it when he spoke back; she did it when he cried over broken things.
Mother would use ropes, garter belts, guitar strings—anything at hand. She’d use multicolored scarves, the sort used by clowns in the theatrical troupe they traveled with. She’d twist one scarf about his hands and another about his feet, and shove a third deep into his mouth, gagging him to the point of suffocation and unconsciousness. He often awoke in a black closet, locked from the outside. She let him know every day who was in control, and she let him know that she detested him—that he was the cause of her failed career and her failed life. That he was a miserable wretch. That he was exactly like his miserable father whom he had never known.
Then she changed. She mellowed and became the charming lady of the stage persona, all an act. Yes, quite certainly, she had matured, but by then, so had he; he gave her no more trouble and seldom exchanged words with her, or anyone else for that matter. Warren went hiding in books instead, searching for the meaning of life, for a clue as to why he was ever born...
She became settled, and when she met the man from Grimsby who promised to take her away from the theater and settle her life once and for all, Warren was sent to the best finishing school money could buy, Southwark. Warren didn’t flourish at Southwark, nor did he “finish” well. In fact, he remained a loner, absolute in his noncommunication, a stone. But Southwark pointed the way, not only because he learned there how delectable it was to make another human being suffer the kinds of torment and pain he had endured at Mother’s hands, but because it was there, one day in the dusty stacks while researching a paper on comparative ancient religions, that Warren came across the doctrines of the Tau.
It was a magnificent book, one he had to have, so he stole it from the library. Within its pages, the book revealed a whole new life for Warren in the teachings of Tauto, a twelfth-century monk whose life was significantly influenced by Eradinus, one of the eighty constellations of Taurus, the “bull in the sky.”
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