Darkest Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  “Operating under the influence, Tom,” explained the pi­lot, “and no, no no,” he pleadingly added for Manley’s sake, “no one here’s operating while intoxicated.”

  Ken suggested into Rob Manley’s ear, “Send ‘em on their way.”

  “Watch your speeds through here, sir.” Manley tutored as he and Stallings returned to their patrol boat.

  “Damn nigger watercop...” muttered someone from behind them as they shoved off.

  “Any other night, I’d’ve found sixteen violations for those turkeys,” Manley assured his partner.

  “But this ain’t just any night,” Stallings agreed. “There’ll be eight, nine, maybe ten other units on the water tonight—our guys, the Coast Guard, Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, Pinellas and Manatee County Sheriff’s Of­fices, and the Tampa Police—they all wanna see action. Let them keep an eye on ol’ Hellfire.”

  Tampa Bay, with adjoining Hillsborough Bay and the wide channel, skirted three counties, their boundaries clear only on the maps, smack in the water. There were also islands to the south and the Gulf side of St. Petersburg to consider, where the “Pete” Police would have a couple of units in the water. If what the FBI was saying had any validity to it at all, the damned ugly Crawler would be a fool to come into these waters. And from what Stallings had gathered, this creep would be most attracted by the St. Petersburg strip along Reddington Beach. So he now qui­etly suggested they cruise out into the Gulf and northward to have a look.

  The watercops of the well-trained Florida Marine Patrol had been efficiently scouring Florida’s coasts from Jack­sonville on the Eastern seaboard to Tampa Bay and Pen- sacola on the Gulf, checking every boat that resembled anything like that belonging to the alleged killer—but then, given the general nature of the description of the boat, they knew it might match literally thousands in these waters.

  Stallings revved up his engine to the max and gave her full throttle, then laughed when Manley grabbed on to the railing of the now speeding Boston Whaler. The siren blared out across the enormous waters of Tampa Bay. It was exhilarating to open her up.

  Both men knew all there was to know about the Night Crawler, and from the descriptions put out on the killer’s boat, they had created a guessing game, naming boats that might suit the killer’s liking and perverse needs. Manley had decided it was a fully equipped Davis 71 Sailsprinter, but Ken Stallings disagreed, saying it was more likely to be a faster, sleeker fifty-five- or sixty-foot Alden Motor- sailor like the one he’d seen win a race from Florida to Tennessee with a crew of one! Everything aboard the boat was fully motorized and easily worked by this one man, who knew what he was doing at all times. Stallings be­lieved there was no more seaworthy a vessel than the Alden Motorsailor, and if inner police circles could be believed, this creep had come sailing into Florida waters from as far away as New Zealand or Australia. Such a boat for loners would be to the killer’s perverted liking.

  The water was choppy tonight, the waves growing in intensity due to a storm sitting out in the immense Gulf beyond, one which forecasters warned could become a se­rious threat to coastal towns and cities, depending upon shifting winds and that lottery called fate. Thus far, it was a tropical depression, but everyone hereabouts knew how soon a TD could be upgraded to a full-blown hurricane, so while at the moment no one outside of law enforcement and other service groups had given much of a damn, the unofficial watch was on. If Stallings had learned one thing during his tenure as an FMP officer, it was that the sea was a very unforgiving “mother of nature,” that she simply did not condone, excuse or absolve stupidity or arrogance or any of their relative combinations; nor did the sea care if the people floating across her surface knew her intentions or not. It looked now as if the Bay Area would, in a few hours, be shrouded in fog. A light mist had come up, thick­ening as they got farther and farther from Tampa Bay proper and moved northwest along the coast, the Boston Whaler skimming now over the Gulf of Mexico under con­trolled speed.

  They moved along more slowly as they passed areas where yachts and sailing vessels were moored. In the dis­tance, Stallings spotted a boat with teakwood markings all along her sides, and from the look of her, if she wasn’t an Alden, she was damned close enough to stand in for one.

  They had the right to routinely pull alongside any boat to make a spot check for licenses and booze containers; if they found captain and crew smashed, they had the right to arrest people and tow their boats into shore. If this proved another false alarm—as had so many since they’d been put on the alert for the Crawler—they’d simply feign a routine call on the boat.

  The fast little Whaler was high up on plane now, her blue-to-red strobe light flashing, siren wailing as they ap­proached the sleek, beautiful ship whose markings were obscured—perhaps deliberately, Stallings thought aloud, calling out his misgivings to Manley and asking, “Whataya think, Rob?”

  Manley replied by jotting down what he could of her numbers, and he attempted to locate a name, but because of the angle of their approach and the seemingly mystical, evolving fog that’d rolled in to engulf them, this was im­possible. “You may wanna send in the numbers we have as a precaution,” suggested Manley, handing the figures to Stallings, who had the radio at his fingertips.

  County cops in Florida who filled in during peak seasons and watercops in other states might have little or no train­ing, or even boat experience, before they were given the keys and told to cast off, but that wasn’t the case with the Florida Marine Patrol. Admittedly, they were spread thin— their duties covering eight thousand miles of coastline. Still, Stallings and Manley had put in their training time in the most rigorous marine law enforcement program in the country. They’d done an additional stint together at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center outside Bruns­wick, Georgia, in a three-week advanced marine law pro­gram, and a weeklong course in protocol on seizures and boarding on the high seas.

  Stallings momentarily thought of the financial crunch which had recently halved the Florida Coast Guard’s bud­get, handcuffing those guys. FMP was up for cuts, too. He and Manley had studied under the Coast Guard for a time, but the Guard’s training program had since dried up due to those same budget constraints. Now the entire course con­sisted of classroom theory only—no practical experience on the water! Kind of nuts, Stallings felt. Then, taking ad­vantage of the sudden scarcity of watercop training facili­ties, the Florida Marine Patrol repackaged its academy training into a one-week intensive course offered to state and local jurisdictions. So far, some sixty Florida police departments and departments from eleven other states had availed themselves of the FMP training. Now Stallings was considering an offer to become a training officer himself and lead a more stable life as a result.

  His wife and children were all for the change, but he knew he’d miss the excitement out here on the water with Manley. They’d been through hell and high water many times together, from making drug busts on the water to fighting with drunken baseball players on holiday to wres­tling with alligators wandering into people’s backyards. One damned fool had even captured a gator and dragged it aboard his boat, then called them in when the animal re­fused to die from the clubbing it was given. Damned fools. They didn’t like the fines or the time doled out by the judges, but somehow water recreation bred stupidity.

  Stallings knew that a standard national training program in maritime law enforcement was absolutely necessary and remained a long time in coming, and he’d have liked very much to be a part of formulating the standard. Certainly, he had seen enough in his nine years out here. For a place like Tampa Bay, or Miami, guys could train for months every year and it still wouldn’t be enough, he thought.

  Looking to Washington for money was futile... Funds would only come from a constituency committed to and in need of better-trained marine cops, and unfortunately, the boating public made it quite clear that they didn’t have any urgent desire for watercops, trained or otherwise.

  Manley had the bullhor
n now, and as they came along­side the suspect ship—and she was a beauty—Manley an­nounced who they were and told the parties aboard the three-masted, schooner-class sailing vessel that they should prepare to be boarded.

  There was no immediate response from the ship, and no one could be seen at the helm or on deck. In his hand, Manley, like Stallings, held a gun. This was no routine check. This looked suspicious as hell; this could be the Night Crawler, or it could be nothing. Either way, there was nothing routine about boarding another man’s boat, another man’s property line in effect. Unlike a road cop, Manley couldn’t ask the suspect to get out of the ve­hicle and kneel on stone-hard pavement so as to gain con­trol of the situation; rather, the FMP officer had to follow an even stricter code of conduct for an effective, safe arrest.

  Stallings and Manley stared at what they had. It appeared an empty, anchored vessel. Unless they found probable cause, they could not board the ship.

  The wind was picking up, buffeting them about. Stallings had to work to keep the patrol boat steady and pointed in the right direction. Manley showered the other boat with light from the Megalite 300 spotlight attached to their stern while Stallings called in the few numbers they had on the boat, saying into the radio, “Alpha-poppa-thirty, this is Stallings, Delta-four, 7-11, come in.”

  This was met with the friendly banter of the night dis­patch officer, who replied, “Gotcha, Ken. What’s up?”

  “We got a suspicious-looking boat out on the water with obscured markings. We think the numbers are Oreo-Two- Charlie, Niner-Eight-Niner, something, something, Niner, but can’t make out. Going in for a closer look.”

  “What’s your position, Delta-four?”

  Stallings offered up their position, even though they were somewhat far afield of their assigned area. As he did so, he also worked the Boston Whaler in an effort to counteract the oncoming wind and the swollen waves, which had be­come hungry mouths feeding on the bow and spilling over the gunwale. Now they were idling just off the side of the suspect boat, in textbook fashion.

  Manley instructed through the horn, “Marine Patrol! Anyone aboard the schooner, come above deck, show your­selves, please, with hands raised behind the neck.”

  If anyone showed, Manley would continue to instruct them in the proper and safe steps to take next, telling them to tug at their collars to raise their shirttails and to do a full 360-degree spin to show they had no concealed weapons. Only after protracted contact with the suspect through the bullhorn would Stallings pull in tight against the other boat, and only then would he and Manley board the other vehicle.

  Handcuffing suspects on a bobbing boat posed other problems, but before one removed a suspect from a boat and placed him on an FMP boat, he had to be cuffed, hands behind the back.

  Manley continued to hail the dimly lit cabin across from them, still getting no response; then he suddenly claimed to have seen a shadow against a window. But the windows were tinted, so Stallings wondered how his partner could see a thing. Stallings had seen nothing, but he trusted Rob’s eyes and instincts as if they were his own, so he gave a blast on the foghorn, the sea tossing them in an increasingly unfriendly manner toward the other boat now, the two boats kissing, buttressing one another at this point, each protected only by the big foam bumper guards Manley had quickly tossed over the side.

  “Everything calm there, Delta-four?” asked the voice over the radio.

  Manley shouted over his shoulder, “Back us off a little ways, Ken.”

  “She’s not holding out here, partner,” Stallings told Manley, and then said to dispatch, ‘ ‘No problem. It appears no one’s aboard.” But he wondered even as he reported this to dispatch if it weren’t in error.

  So far as Manley was concerned, whoever was on the sleek schooner was either ignoring them or in a drunken stupor. The suspect boat was anchored well in waters off Madeira Beach, where lights from shoreline restaurants twinkled back at them only to fade amid the catlike, en­croaching fog. The ship sat out alone, by itself, apart from the hundreds of others anchored here, all as if by design, Stallings thought, a loner...

  “Let’s go easy, Rob,” he cautioned, feeling Manley’s impatience to board the other boat. Stallings could see the black man’s skin itching to move. “We got no probable cause, and we can’t go nosing around on board without something,” Ken reminded his friend of the restraining law.

  They were out some distance from most of the anchored ships, most people preferring to sink anchor in a bit shal­lower depth. This time of year the locals knew that these waters—even the more protected bays—could never be completely trusted. This guy looked like a newcomer to the area. He had all the markings of a visitor save the one the law required: His port of origin was clearly missing—hav­ing been painted over perhaps? Or was it below the water- line, as the waves were cresting higher and higher. “Marine Patrol!” Manley bellowed again, but still there was no response from anyone aboard. “Maybe they’ve taken a launch in?” he suggested, but the lone dinghy was lashed to the deck.

  “Let’s try that registration number.”

  Manley began the chant. “Oreo-Two-Charlie-Niner, Ni­ner—no damnit, that’s an eight—no, hell! Can’t make it out. Damned if it doesn’t look’s’if it’s been intentionally obscured with paint or something.”

  Marine law prohibited their going aboard without knowl­edge of the owner unless there was probable cause, provocation or impending need. If anyone were aboard, the siren ought to’ve blown out his hearing, and certainly he had to feel the bump and grind of the boats. If a guy were looking out a porthole—and there were several on this starboard side—he’d have to know they were cops, Stallings told himself. From their Stetsons to their 9mm Glock pistols, they were dressed identically to their state trooper counterparts. Besides, their boat was clearly marked.

  Stallings brought the Boston Whaler around to the rear of the mystery ship, where they read her name, the Tau Cross. Hadn’t there been talk that authorities in Miami were looking for a boat in which the letter T and a cross might figure prominently in the name of the boat? Didn t the killer sign his bloody notes with a T-cross?

  Manley almost whispered, “You see what I see, Ken?”

  “Yeah, I see...”

  “You take that and the obscured numbers and missing port of origin for probable cause in a murder investiga­tion?”

  “Could be... could be...” Stallings knew they had plenty of reason to board the other boat, but a foreboding had overtaken him, a sense not of fear but of a palpable and distressing evil, a darkness, a force not unlike the now encroaching, engulfing fog, and he wondered if they ought not call in backup right this moment, surround the godfor­saken suspect boat with numbers. “Maybe we’d best call it in, tell ‘em what we’ve got before we go any further. Get some backup out here, Rob.”

  “Something sure smells here, Ken.”

  “Agreed.”

  “No, I mean something really smells over here, just over the surface of the water.”

  Stallings had worked with dogs on boats to search out drowning victims. Dogs could smell decay out over the surface of the water and when they sent up a howl, the divers knew where to search. Had Manley’s nose picked up something similar? Ken could smell nothing but the salt air, and a touch of metallic copper was filling his nostrils, a sure sign of an impending rain, possibly a squall. But he knew, too, that Manley’s instincts and senses were razor- sharp, like those of a hound.

  Stallings was about to call it in when he heard his partner say, “Damn, damn ... whata we got here?” Stallings looked over to see Manley tugging on a sleek black snake, a quarter-inch nylon rope hanging off the rear of the mys­tery ship. The rope was obviously weighted down with something.

  Manley tugged hand over fist, and suddenly an eyeless, bloated, dead face rushed up at him, making him slip and fall on his elbows and butt, causing him to explode in a litany of curses as the unholy package he’d lifted from the water dropped back into the depths with a
n easy splash. “Mother-J-fuckin’-Christ-a-minny-damn! Call it in, damn you, Stallings! Call it in now! Get us backup out here. We’ve got a crime scene here! Damnit if it ain’t him; Jesus if it ain’t the freakin’ Night Crawler! Stallings began making the call, saying “Urgent, urgent” to clear the airways as much as possible.

  Manley had regained his feet, but not his composure. “Call it in, damnit! Call it in and take us round to the side,” he demanded.

  “All at the same time? I’m doing my damned best.” Only a static-filled radio replied to Stallings’s call. Dispatch had obviously gotten busy with other calls.

  Manley announced, “I’m climbing aboard.”

  A Florida summer fog continued rolling in as if from nowhere, as if the clouds from heaven had come upon them to mask their doings. It seemed the work of a devil’s lieu­tenant, Stallings thought. The fog only lightly covered them at the moment, but it was thickening as it moved across their bow and creepily veiled the mysterious death ship, the Tau Cross.

  “Hold off on that, Rob.” Stallings worked the marine radio even as he maneuvered the Whaler into position alongside the port side of the seventy-foot schooner. His eyes took in the teakwood beauty presented them by the ship. It was a ship of foreign manufacture. Stallings called in their location once again, this time being more precise, drawing on his twelve-week training at the FMP academy, doing it by the book. Into the radio, he gave their unit number—Delta-4—followed again by their exact quadrants, the partial number and name of the boat they were about to board, and the fact that they had a body dangling over the side, and the fact that they believed the boat belonged to the suspect Patric Allain, otherwise known as the Night Crawler. “And if it ain’t him,” Stallings wryly added, “it’s his first cousin Beevo! We’ve fished out a body lashed at the rear of the boat. I repeat, these quadrants, just west of Madeira Beach, a crime has been committed, a body located at this site.”

  There had been word in police circles that the killer had entered Gulf waters, that he’d spent time in Naples and was expected to move northward, and now here he was. “Go careful, Manley,” Stallings cautioned, but Rob was already over the side, standing flat-footed on the deck of the Cross and tying their smaller craft to a stanchion.