Grave Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  “You're in it now with this case,” she countered.

  A voice came over his radio, hailing him. He lifted the microphone and said, “This is Sorrento. Go, Dispatch.”

  “Patching Lieutenant Besant through, sir.”

  “Nick Besant's the NOPD officer in charge out at the scene,” he told Jessica. “We have a presence there, too.”

  Besant's voice buzzed from the radio. “Work crew's finally got a secure hold on the van, and it's being hauled up from the river. We're pretty sure it's Kenyon's. Dark green Chrysler, maybe a '97. Has a stolen plate on it that doesn't match the one Labruto and Doyle called in, but we suspect he changed it out.”

  “Seconds away, Nick. I have a forensics expert with me from D.C., Dr. Coran. She's been on the case since the get-go”

  “The crew has the van's nose over the water now. Don't worry. We have Dr. Brunner and his team on hand. They'll do a thorough job, but you'll also have time with the van and its contents.”

  Sorrento grit his teeth, but he calmly said, “Thanks for the cooperation, Nick.”

  “Don't mention it, Mike.”

  He turned to Jessica and said, “Two dead cops and a missing woman in one night has helped a little to raise the spirit of cooperation, but not by much. Every cop in the city wants to John Wayne this thing.” He then pointed at the masts of ships at a marina they sped by. Two squad cars were parked among some unmarked vehicles. “That's where Lands End disappeared from last night. We have men interviewing neighbors and the harbormaster for any additional information, maybe get up a sketch of Swantor.”

  “Coast guard should be able to locate the boat from the call numbers kept in harbor records,” suggested Jessica.

  “And the fact it's a white Even rude Windjammer 2000, capable of moving at great speed through the Gulf waters. It should stand out.”

  “Let's hope so, before he reaches Mexico.”

  THEY arrived at the van site where the wrecking crew sent up a screeching sound followed by a thunderous belch, and then the dripping van settled on its four tires beside the road. The day had remained dismal and overcast, imprisoning a dense, low-lying fog in the gullies along the river. Shrubbery and dead branches added to the morbid feel of the place. It obviously had been a gargantuan effort to remove the mud-caked van from the muck and mire along this stretch of river. And they had done it in thick fog. The work crew looked like pencil sketches of gray ghosts, Civil War ghosts, each caked with mud.

  “Get your mud boots on, Dr. Coran.”

  “ 'Fraid I didn't pack any.”

  He pointed his key holder and an electronic blip indicated that he had popped the trunk. “I have an extra pair.”

  They quickly donned heavy Wellington boots. Everything was covered with slippery mud from the evening rains and the water, spilling geyserlike, from every crevice of the Chrysler van. “It's definitely the make and model,” said Jessica as they approached.

  “And the color Labruto and Doyle had radioed in. I gotta wonder how the bastard ever got from the French Quarter to here without being detected?”

  “Luck of the devil,” she said.

  “I suspect you know all about that, Dr. Coran. I read about that weird case in London, and that strange business in Philly.”

  Jessica bit her lower lip and nodded. “Unfortunately, yes, I've danced with the devil a time or two.”

  Jessica rushed ahead toward the back of the van, where she saw a field of debris—destroyed paper, cloth, maps, packs of gum, a comb, a toothbrush, coins and small bills— that'd been dumped out. Someone had already opened the back doors and inspected for the Montoya woman's body, yet no one was talking. Rather, everyone stood stone silent as if in mourning. “Have you found the dead girl or not?” she asked a man who introduced himself as Assistant M.E. Brunner.

  “Dr. Coran . . . heard about you from downtown. The van's empty except for a lot of soaked rags and trash. We're having it towed to a place where we can thoroughly work it,” he said in a nasally voice. Fighting a cold, he sneezed into a handkerchief, knocking his glasses down his nose.

  “We found nothing. Apparently, the perpetrator saw no reason to lock his doors,” said a voice in her ear. She turned to stare at the fiery blue eyes of a determined man. “Lt. Besant, NOPD, Dr. Coran,” said the tall, thin man with a mustache who now stood between her and Brunner. Brunner had chosen to back off. “You should first let us determine if there're any water moccasins or other poisonous snakes inside. We're still removing water and—”

  “Yes, I can see you've removed quite a lot,” she indicated the debris at the foot of the van doors, seeing a license plate swim by, wondering what else had floated out. “Thanks for your concern, Lieutenant, but please, out of my way.”

  After donning gloves, Jessica climbed in the van, where the water was still ankle deep. The officer in the front shouted, “The rest of the water'll come out when we hoist it again. Then we can tow it.” Jessica pulled a penlight from her pocket and scanned the rear of the van. She felt Sorrento before she saw him climb in behind her. “Whata we got, Doctor?”

  Her light showed the leather viselike head shackle peeking out from beneath the water. She estimated where the hands would have been held, and she found thick blood-crusted chains attached to both seats. Her light telegraphed this fact to Sorrento. He then located the ankle shackles lying beneath the water, heavy and slick like a string of mollusks.

  Jessica announced, “It's his killing ground all right.”

  “We've got men in the water, searching,” said Besant. “They are black water divers, capable of locating anyone who might be down there.”

  “Did you find any tools? The damned bone cutter, a scalpel, anything along those lines?” asked Jessica.

  Besant shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “Cutting tools, no. But we did fetch a shotgun, a completely ruined laptop computer and some audiotapes and a tape machine, all soaked, but with FBI help perhaps we can restore the tapes, and get something out of that computer.”

  “We have that capability here in New Orleans, right, Michael?” Jessica asked.

  “That's right,” replied Sorrento.

  Besant turned the laptop and the tapes over, exactly five, the number of known victims. They were labeled by number, not name. “This could be a good sign,” Jessica suggested. “If he has a tape for each victim, and he failed to make one for Selese Montoya, she may still be alive.”

  “You think she's on Lands End, too?” asked Sorrento in a conspiratorial whisper.

  “I'm thinking aloud. If he didn't have time to make a tape, he may not have had time to feed on her, and if Swantor's incapacitated him, she may still be alive.” And you think Swantor's taken her with them.”

  “And if the two of them are kindred spirits . . . Swantor may be as dangerous as Kenyon,” said Jessica as she and Sorrento climbed from the death van.

  “Taken her where?” asked Nick Besant who'd listened to their conversation.

  “We're not sure, but we have a Coast Guard cutter and a helicopter searching the river for any suspicious-looking watercraft.”

  “Suspicious how?”

  Sorrento updated Besant.

  Jessica heard only snatches of what Agent Sorrento told Besant, but she heard enough to know that he had made it a simple abduction theory, that Kenyon had commandeered the boat and taken its owner hostage along with the girl. She did hear Sorrento add, “It's a long shot, but one we thought worth pursuing.”

  “I'll see about getting some NOPD water cops out there to help the Coast Guard,” Besant replied.

  “That's the scene, Nick,” lied Sorrento, the look in his eyes told Jessica to play along. Jessica wanted no part of the petty games played between these two, so she instead turned away and returned to Mike's still open trunk to remove the boots and climb back into the car. Once settled in her seat, she opened her laptop to check Cahil's Web page to see if any additional images of Kenyon had been put up on the board.

  Sitti
ng amid the mud, shrouded in a fog that chilled her to the bone, Jessica keystroked in the necessary dot-com.

  Jessica was startled to find a woman cuffed to a bed in what appeared the same room where she'd seen Kenyon in earlier. The camera motion was the same, too, swaying . . . bobbing.

  The woman on the screen appeared exhausted from long hours of tears and crying. She only whined now, unable it seemed to shout. Her eyes appeared glazed and dull. She looked as if drugged.

  Jessica stared at the struggling young woman, presumably Selese Montoya. She felt the helplessness of the poor woman's situation from where she sat in Sorrento's car, unable to affect anything. The victim was likely miles and miles away, and here Jessica sat hopelessly mired in the gloom of a place called Turtle Fork Bend.

  She could save Besant and his divers any trouble now. They would not find the body in the river, at least not yet. Selese was being held somewhere, likely Swantor's boat.

  “That's her! I've seen her picture,” said Sorrento, looking in on Jessica. “That's the Montoya woman.”

  “And this is being fed to us live.”

  Sorrento had tossed his boots in the trunk, and he'd climbed in beside her. No one else saw the images being fed them. Now the image of the woman in chains was replaced by Kenyon, pacing like an animal. His ankle chain rattling and visible in the shot. He paced. He shouted into the camera, presumably at Swantor, but the words were edited, and at times nothing came out of his open mouth.

  “We've got to locate Swantor and fast. I don't know what his plans are for the next installment, but I can imagine it's not going to get any prettier.”

  “We'll get him,” promised Sorrento. “He belongs to the FBI, not the NOPD. We take him, he's ours. Besant gets to him first, we lose him. It's as simple as that. They'll put him up on charges of murdering Labruto and—”

  “We've got to tell them the Montoya woman's not down there in the river,” Jessica said.

  “No, that's valuable lead time that we need, so we can make the grab, Dr. Coran. Trust me, NOPD just wants to blow this guy away as a cop killer.” “Michael, we have an obligation to cooperate with these guys.”

  “Do you want this guy to stand trial for the string of murders of all his victims in a federal court or not? Louisiana's got some jurisdictional loopholes a homegrown lawyer could run a twenty-ton elephant through. Unless we pick him up, they could spend a year prosecuting him here for cop killing, he goes away to Angora to serve time. I want him the fuck executed. How about you?”

  She mulled over Sorrento's logic. It made a certain sense, although she knew the state had the death penalty. Still, she didn't know Besant, but she had gotten the distinct impression that he wanted Kenyon every bit as badly as she did.

  “Just buy us a little time. They were going to do the search here anyway. If we hadn't seen that video . . .” He backed the car up into an embankment, cut hard to the left and turned the car around, heading back toward the marina.

  As they drove away, Jessica had mulled over the names, SquealsLoud, Sweet, Swantor in her mind. Were they all the same man? “All right,” she finally agreed. “We do it our way.”

  FIFTEEN

  Your eyes are so sharp that you cannot only look through a millstone, but clean through the mind.

  —JOHN LYLY, 1554-1606

  Downriver Later that night

  JERVIS Swantor awoke to the sound of a boat whistle, someone hailing his ship, he feared. It was far too soon to be caught and stopped.

  He looked out the porthole above his bed and could see absolutely nothing. Just as predicted by the weatherman, the Mississippi was awash in a thick, gray fog, a soup that blotted out sight.

  He grabbed his night-vision binoculars and saw that it was a southbound barge, pushed by a tugboat, and it came within feet of his yacht. Barges were plied up and down the river like silent dinosaurs, but he could not believe these fools were still running under such conditions. If they saw his lights at all, they must think the same of him. He feared anyone seeing him out in this would report his position, thinking him in danger.

  The swells from the barge also indicated just how close they'd come to swamping Swantor's yacht, as they caused it to bob like a giant cork, stirring his two guests to shouts and pleadings.

  He picked up the tool kit belonging to Kenyon, and went to the woman's room to look in. She pleaded with him to save her from a madman. “I've got your madman next door, opposite you.” He pulled forth the brain saw and held it up to the camera, which could only catch his upraised hand and the saw. “I've got his tool kit. For now, you needn't worry, my dear.” He had turned the audio off for now to lessen his need to edit out his voice and any references to himself.

  He straddled the two rooms and pushed open the door, which allowed him to see both Kenyon and the woman at the same time.

  “You stinking, lousy bastard, Swantor!” shouted Kenyon, getting up from his bed and rushing Swantor, but the chain stopped him a few feet from Swantor, like a collared dog.

  “Well now, everyone's awake. Likely hungry, aren't you?”

  “I'll kill you, Swantor.”

  “Make nice, Mr. Kenyon. I intend on feeding you.” He held the saw out to Kenyon. “Take it.”

  “What's going on?” pleaded the woman.

  Kenyon took firm hold of the bone cutter. His eyes locked with Swantor's. “What're you planning?”

  “I'm going down to the galley to fix you a bite, my dear! No one should die on an empty stomach,” Swantor said to the woman. “Be right back.”

  Swantor smiled as he closed each door and left. He'd gotten it all on film. His next installment. Before his last installment for this episodic adventure, he would first prepare a hearty meal for the lady.

  Swantor glanced at the monitor screens for each room. The woman looked weak, vulnerable in her chained position. By comparison, Kenyon was enervated by the bone cutter, huddling over it, rocking, and once or twice he placed it to his temple, but he didn't turn it on. Instead he held it at arm's distance and studied it in his fist. He looked as if he were revisiting each of his kills, savoring each moment, his jaw hanging open, his eyes fixed.

  He then applied the bone cutter to his ankle chain, creating sparks. Swantor turned off the tape and turned on the intercom, warning Kenyon that he would not eat if he broke the blade. “The chain is made of titanium steel. You're wasting your time and the blade on it.”

  “If I get my hands on you, Swantor, I'll kill you.”

  “They're going to say you were crazy, Dr. Kenyon, and I must agree. I've heard some of your conversation with your friend, what's his name? Phillip. Yes, they're going to call you crazy, but they're going to say I was even crazier.”

  Kenyon stopped the horrid scream of the bone cutter, and as its whirring ended, he heard the woman's screams. “Music to all our ears, Dr. Kenyon, Phillip,” Swantor said and turned toward the galley. “Must now fatten the calf, as they say.”

  INFORMATION about Swantor at the marina proved scarce. According to everyone they spoke to, the man was a loner. He had come off a bitter divorce battle and had been living on his boat for several months. It hardly sounded like the know-it-all, nosy Swantor of Florida, and here he was known as Jacob Swift. Except for these few details, their time canvassing the marina had proved useless. Besant had joined them there, filled with questions. Sorrento asked the frustrated Besant to place his men on a boat-to-boat search for the Montoya woman. This done, they drove off for a small nearby airport where Sorrento chartered a small helicopter. The pilot agreed to get them to a Coast Guard cutter but that was all. “Bad weather and poor visibility'11 make any river search for a single craft impossible until conditions improve. Weather report says that could be twenty-four hours.”

  They accepted the ride to the cutter.

  Jessica and Sorrento soon stood on the deck of Triumph, the Coast Guard cutter, plying through the water at a good clip, considering the weather, in search of Swantor's yacht. Sorrento had called for the
cutter to pick them up at a designated rendezvous point thirty miles south of where the van had been found. They assumed Mexico to be Swantor's destination. Still, to be certain to cover any escape, they also sent a cutter north along the river.

  Jessica felt good being on the ship, felt good at being in pursuit.

  Every port city and town along both banks of the Mississippi River was alerted to the description, call numbers and the name of the yacht, and asked to report any sighting.

  Using her laptop, Jessica found a countertop where she could work on the cutter. Since Swantor was not responding to the Coast Guard via the radio, she wanted to try reaching him using what she suspected was his Squeals Loud E-mail address, which she had gotten from J.T. She taunted him, saying she knew that he was both Swift and Sweet as well as Swantor. She sent him a warning that he was being pursued, and that he should give himself up to authorities. She said if he cooperated, they would go lightly on him. That they wanted Selese Montoya released unharmed, and that they wanted Kenyon. She also wrote in their coordinates and added:

  We're right behind you on the river. So far, you've just

  impeded our investigation. Don't make it any worse, Mr.

  Swantor. The only response was a series of moving digital images. She and Sorrento watched this series of images displayed, images of a helpless woman chained to a bed by hand and foot, followed by a shot of a handheld bone cutter, the sort used in autopsies. It was held to the camera in a man's hand, the woman now in the background. There was only a muted audio, but the woman's screams were raised in volume.

  This was followed by a new scene of Kenyon, one which displayed him shouting and racing toward someone—presumably Swantor—stopped only by the ankle chain. The prisoner was then shown the same bone saw as had been displayed to the woman. Again, the audio was silent save for Kenyon's shouts and screams, carefully edited, screening out any reference to Swantor, and not once did she hear the man's own voice.