Darkest Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  “Well, we’ve got our own little welcoming committee for the Night Crawler,” replied Jessica. “Let’s get airborne, gentlemen.”

  Okinleye told the driver to “rush rush,” and soon they were at his cousin’s helicopter hangar, where a large sign read paradise flights. But there were immediate prob­lems. His cousin Henri would not release his best helicop­ter—he had two machines—to “no udder man” without a signature on an insurance form and twice his double fee. Okinleye nearly took the man’s head off, and he settled for the usual fee and the signature, with Lansing taking up the better of the two birds.

  After the haggling, Don Lansing took the helicopter up with Jessica beside him and Santiva in the rear. It was a large bird, with hatch doors on both front and rear seats, and Santiva’s view was almost as good as Jessica’s. They circled the island once on takeoff and then headed due north toward the incoming fleet of racing ships. Within an hour, they came into view of the racing ships, their tall masts and sails like miniature fingernails on the horizon at first, soon enlarging to half moons. The sun and shimmer­ing emerald-blue waters here created a blinding effect of beauty and brilliance against which the sailing ships existed like cartoon cutouts. “Fly in low over those boats. Let’s be sure our guy hasn’t gotten smart and is camouflaging himself among them,” said Jessica over the headphones.

  “Why would he bother?” asked Santiva a bit sullenly, still feeling jarred by last night’s revelation that the killer might well still be in Florida. “He doesn’t know we’re here. If he has come to the Caymans, he’s got no reason to suspect we know that, right?”

  “We know he’s outfoxed any number of port authority agents, Eriq,” she countered. “We know he’s cunning. Maybe he’ll take the race for a way for him to slip into the Caymans unnoticed.”

  “And maybe he knew about the race all along?”

  “Maybe... either way, we best not take any chances. Go in lower, Don, please...”

  Don did as Jessica instructed, and together they studied each boat for any sign of perversion—a ragged sail, a weathered-the-storm appearance, any sign of death, as if it would leave a pall over the ship. What they found on closer inspection was that there were many ships in the race with torn and stripped sails and a beaten-up look. It appeared they had all seen some rough weather since their last stop­over.

  The brilliant yellows, oranges, blues, greens and reds of the boat markings only added to the needle-in-the-haystack feeling of the search.

  “If he has chosen to hide among this flock, he couldn’t have selected a better one,” Jessica said, a sigh releasing some of her pent-up frustration.

  “There’re too damned many...” complained Eriq.

  “Look for a large ship, larger than sixty feet,” she sug­gested.

  Lansing added, “A schooner class is sleek, smooth-lined, but I gotta tell you, most of those below are schooner class. You gotta be to be in a race like this. Santiva said through his teeth, “There’re too damned many. If he is among them, how can we know?”

  “He’s got to be farther out than this. If he’s trailing the race, he’ll be due north ahead, and he’ll be standing alone. Take us up and northward, Don,” Jessica suggested.

  The ships below were beautiful, the sails flapping in the wind, their brilliant colors winking up at the sun and the passing shadow of the helicopter. The trio moved onward, northward out to sea and toward Cuba, looking intently at those straggling, losing boats at the end of the race line. But none called out to Jessica or to the others as the killer ship.

  “God, I hope we’re not out here on a wild-goose chase, Jess,” complained Eriq.

  “Whataya want to do now?” asked Lansing, the chopper continuing due north, no sails whatsoever on the horizon.

  “Keep going forward for another ten or fifteen minutes,” Jessica suggested. “You suppose he was among those boats back there, Jess?” asked Santiva. “Maybe we should just return to port, wait at the dock and keep our eyes peeled there.”

  “No, he’s out here somewhere, and we’re going to find the bastard. Don’t you see? If we can take him in interna­tional waters, before he gets to Cayman—’’

  “Then he’s our prisoner free and clear, sure... I see, Jess, but it’s not worth it if we miss him altogether. Trying to see from up here, well, it has its drawbacks.”

  “Give it a little more time, Eriq, please.”

  “Ten minutes, then we head back.”

  “Agreed.”

  They spotted a stranded ship on the horizon. The mast was down, and looked like there had been a war aboard the craft. They flew in low and closely examined the markings and the overall appearance of the lame ship. It was a sixty- or seventy-foot schooner, exactly what they were looking for, but there were three crewmen aboard, all waving life jackets. Their engines seemed damaged and they’d jerry-rigged a small sail, but it wasn’t getting the job done.

  Lansing dipped the chopper from side to side, an inter­national sign that their distress was duly noted and that the pilot would send back help. They thought the chopper was very likely an official checker for the race.

  “Now, turn us around and let’s head back for George Town,” Eriq told Don.

  Lansing frowned and raised his shoulders, waiting for Jessica to give him the word. When she did so, Lansing turned the bird around, and they headed back toward Grand Cayman, the cockpit thick with disappointment.

  “I want you to fly in lower over the boats as we come on them again,” Jessica instructed Don.

  “How close do you want to be?”

  “As close as we got to that disabled vessel. I want to see the crewmen aboard, the names of the boats, the reg­istration numbers, the tattoos on their biceps.”

  “What’s the use, Jess?” asked Eriq. “Can’t you admit defeat? He’s not out here; he’s most likely back in Pensa- cola, for God’s sake.”

  “We’ve come too damned far for defeat.” Lansing brought the chopper down, skimming just above the water, and as they came in sight of a racing vessel, they buzzed it, making crewmen either shout or curse—it was difficult to tell which. Some likely thought them a camera crew trying to get some footage for the evening news, while others likely thought them race spot­ters or thrill-seekers.

  They passed boat after boat, and each had multiple crew members. “We find a boat with a crew of one aboard, we’ll have Tauman, Eriq,” she promised, sounding like the psy­chic detective Dr. Desinor, “and if we find him soon enough, he’s ours free and clear.”

  “Are you that worried the Cayman government will cause us problems with deportation?”

  “I just got an uneasy feeling about Ja’s plans for cashing in on this whole affair. He’s a good man, but he’s also into taking care of himself.”

  Lansing brought the bird up a bit and wheeled to the left, spotting a ship off in that direction. He glanced over his shoulder at Eriq to see if he was all right with everything.

  Eriq shook his head and said into his headphones, “Go, do as she says.”

  Lansing lowered and came in hard toward the lone craft, and Jessica became excited for a moment, seeing a large T figuring in the lettering of the name. But it was the Trini­dad, and there were two men above deck and a third who came rushing out when the chopper careened by.

  More racing ship crewmen were alarmed now by the buzzing chopper, as if it were some enormous albatross that had invaded their space, a few of them sending up hand gestures to make their minds known. This only made Lan­sing more daring, and he began driving the chopper be­tween boats that were a mere fifty or so yards apart.

  While Lansing was having his fun, whooping like a cowboy, Jessica saw a ship to their extreme right which Don had not seen. The boat moved swiftly and its sail was clean, bright, a beautiful sundial image reflecting back at her. There were no rents in the sail. It looked dif­ferent from the other ships only in that it was in too good a repair.

  “Don. turn us around. There’s one at just past three o’clo
ck you missed, and I want to go in low over it.”

  “The sundial?” he asked.

  “Yeah, that’s the one.”

  “Give it up, Jess,” Eriq said into his headphones.

  Lansing did a complete turnaround and circled high over the craft.

  “Bring us in,” she instructed as Eriq now studied the clean, teakwood lines of the sundial ship, his eyes growing larger.

  “She’s got the teakwood veneer we’ve heard so much about,” he granted. “Get us in a bit closer, Lansing,” he unnecessarily added. “Will do.” They lowered at an alarming rate, causing Eriq to grip the back of Jessica’s seat. “Damn, take it easy,” he shouted. They came in fast and low across the bow of the ship and sped by her. “You see anybody aboard?” asked Jes­sica.

  Lansing shook his head. “Not a damned soul.”

  “Take us around again. This time approach the aft. I want her name.”

  Eriq’s curiosity was piqued, but he cautioned Jessica with regard to the scarcity of crew members, saying, “They could all be below, eating or ill. Don’t get your hopes up.”

  Coming in low again, they saw someone poke a head from the cabin and appear to shout back down to others. Then this figure waved for his comrades to come out and have a look, and next he warmly waved up at the folks in the chopper in a friendly gesture, unlike the angry other boaters they’d seen. Jessica could not clearly make out the man’s features, except to say his hair was a sandy-blond shade. She instead concentrated on the stenciled name of the boat at the rear, as did Eriq, who read aloud, “Smiling Jack and blond hair. That’s a far cry from the Tau Cross, Jess.”

  They buzzed off from the boat again, Lansing saying, “What now?”

  “Take her around again for a closer look. I only saw one man.”

  “Jessica, I could swear I saw someone below. This man­hunt is getting us nowhere. It’s simply futile.”

  “It’s the name: Smiling Jack Remember Kim Desinor indicated we should take care to look as much for the sym­bolic as the literal meaning in things dealing with the Night Crawler?”

  “I seem to recall something of the like, yes.”

  “His Union Jack and Smiling Jack could be one and the same. What symbol is as strong as a flag? And Jack has, over the years, been used to refer to the Devil, and a smiling Jack could well mean the Devil’s grin. And C. David Ed­dings told us that if the killer is into e. j. hellering’s poetry, he might well also begin to quote e. e. cummings.”

  “I don’t get the connection.”

  “I took a little time one night with cummings and stum­bled over a particularly nasty little limerick called ‘jack hates all the girls.’ “

  “You think he’s gone to all this trouble to change the name of the boat only to leave such glaring Freudian slips behind?”

  “I don’t know, but I want another look. Besides, there’s something queer about that boat and about the man’s be­havior.”

  “What?” asked Eriq.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know what. I just have a feeling, an instinct.” Her darkest instincts, she thought. “Bring her around for another look, then, Mr. Lansing,” Eriq relented. “Aye, aye, Chief.”

  •TWENTY-THREE-

  Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.

  —Joseph Wood Krutch

  Back on Grand Cayman Island, Ja Okinleye, taking no chances, ordered his entire force to be on the lookout for any suspicious-looking ships entering the ports around his three-island nation. In the easy rhythms of the Dutch- French language which Ja and his men often reverted back to when talking with one another, his officers crowded the airwaves with questions: “What is meant by suspicious- looking boat?”

  “How is a boat going to be looking like that? To look suspicious?”

  “What do you mean, Chief Inspector?”

  “I never heard of no seventy-foot boat being operated by one man.”

  “Fully automated ship?”

  “Wouldn’t someone in port authority know about such a ship?”

  Ja angrily stared at the radio mouthpiece where he sat in his car, still at the airport in front of his cousin’s island helicopter business. “Do I have to think for all fifteen of you? Anyone new coming into port, particularly alone, a lone visitor. That is suspicious. What kind of man is he who comes to Cayman without a woman? A ship with a registry outside our waters. Use your heads! Use your eyes and ears! Damn your lazy asses.”

  Ja Okinleye had never been involved in a case as large, and with such international roots, as this: a killer who was wanted not only in America but in Great Britain as well. Whenever he did have a bigger than usual case to coordi­nate, he found it best to be on hand, at the forefront, and so he operated now out of his limousine. This case could cement his career.

  It had occurred to him that catching the now-infamous Night Crawler would mean a great deal to him politically, and he had for a while been giving some thought to running for higher office—to get away from being so directly in­volved in law enforcement. It would make Aliciana and her whole family happy. It would mean more time with his children, not to mention his own sanity and peace of mind. Over the years, he had managed to engender a lot of ene­mies who would be only too glad to see him placed in higher office, where he might do them less harm.

  The island was teeming with underworld activity, much of it stemming from various gambling casinos and smug­gling and money-laundering operations, especially in the drug trade. Cayman intermediaries helped mask the route of shipments pouring into the U.S. from such places as Colombia. Customs officials were notoriously easy to bribe, and replacing them again and again hadn’t changed the “island habit” or the morals of the men involved. In the midst of such expected third-world palm greasing, Ja was all too well aware of certain facts of island life. In order to coexist, law enforcement, as much as Ja personally hated the drug trade, pretty much looked the other way save for the occasional good-faith show of a raid now and then, typically as a result of an informant in the drug trade wish­ing to quell a move by newcomers to the business. It was all so sordid, and Ja was sick of police work, where the investigator’s hands were tied by the very people who charged him with doing his duty. It was, he assumed, the same in most third world countries and communist coun­tries and cities across the world, including America.

  Being a cop in Cuba must be the worst kind of hell, he imagined. Handcuffed by one’s own bureaucratic night­mare—like here, he thought. Here the balance wasn’t set so much by a corrupt government as by the powerful men of the island who ran everything, both legitimate and illegiti­mate and everything in between, including some of the giant casinos and tourist centers. Such powers expected Chief Ja to keep the peace for them and to know where certain lines were drawn, to know where his jurisdiction ended. Sometimes it was at a given door, sometimes at a given street, sometimes at a given level of intervention. It all depended upon the who— the players. He must be ever vigilant about whom he was deal­ing with and what their connections were and how much po­litical clout they brandished.

  Ja now opened another line to bark orders in his native tongue to other subordinates, telling them to be in place. “Nothing is to be left to chance,” he insisted. “Now be certain to cover every slip at every wharf. Coordinate with the port authorities at each port.” Even as he said it, he knew the meager resources of the PA here meant everyone working for it—maybe six men for the three islands—was so grossly underpaid as to make graft as common as tipping in a restaurant. He thought of bringing every damned one of these men in, grilling them until one of them gave him information on the killer’s first visit to the islands. They— one or more of them—had to have known something, seen something. If all else failed today, he would look into this.

  Another of Ja’s men was now asking, “Are you certain, sir, you want to be including the hotels and restaurants?”

  “Especially the hotels and restaurants.”

  “But, sir,” replied the voice
at the other end, “that will draw attention. What about the tourists?”

  “And the casinos?” asked another of his men.

  “To hell with the tourists and the casinos. I will worry about the tourists and the casinos.” And worry he would have to. After this was over, he’d deal with the Tourism Council and the local money-making interests as best he might. They were both like natural forces he had to always enter into any equation if he wished to survive, and he had already worked out a script they could both easily under­stand, one that meant more money for them as well as for many islanders. But for now, he hadn’t the time or the inclination to spend explaining his actions to anyone. “But we will get complaints,” the young officer at the other end of the line bemoaned. Ja realized that complaints translated into threats. “I will handle all complaints! Just distribute the sketch I forwarded you last night, and the information, and do as I say!” Ja slammed down the receiver of his car phone and looked out over the sea in the direction Jessica and the others had flown. He trusted they would be unable to pick out a single sailing vessel amid the morass of ships out there and heading this way. It seemed only too logical to him that the killer would camouflage himself amid the rac­ers, if he was indeed as crafty and cunning as the U.S. papers had made him out to be, and if he was indeed ac­tually on his way to the Caymans.

  Ja momentarily thought of his children, what their adult lives would be like on the island. No more living off sun­shine and air and sea. The island economy was in a horrid state of affairs. His children were likely to turn into cham­bermaids and waiters in the casinos. There was so little opportunity for a native-born child. What would be the fate of his children? What kind of changes were coming with the trade winds?

  He locked up his vehicle now and joined his cousin Henri, who had fired up his second, more aged and battered, whirlybird. Shouting over the rotor blades, he said, “Let’s go, brother!”