Bitter Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  “Forget the pecs. Look at the rest of him,” said Kim, with a slight shake of the head.

  Jessica added, “And his skin.”

  “More darkly tanned than the others.”

  “Hardly what you'd call a sun worshiper, however.”

  “Not a freckle or a mole on him.”

  “It's as if it's a prerequisite—a flawless complexion—to die in this manner,” finished Jessica.

  Although the victim's skin in this case was several shades darker than the women and the other man, the body itself, displayed as it was, showed not a single blemish, save for the normal discoloration to the frontal areas, face, chest, and legs, where the blood had settled. Obviously, once again the victim had been left facedown to display the handiwork of the Poet Killer to authorities. Thus gravity had caused the blood to pool in areas of the front, creating large purplish splotches on the skin.

  Jessica stared across the cadaver and into Kim's eyes. “Is it only coincidence that Anton Pierre, Barona Gaitano, Micellina Petryna, and Caterina Mercedes all have such extraordinary features? It must fit into the killer's fantasy, whatever that fantasy might be.”

  “Agreed,” Kim replied, staring at Anton Pierre's per­fectly proportioned body and beautiful face. “Some people would kill for a body that looks like these.”

  “And obviously someone has,” Shockley put in.

  “Think you want to try a 'deep read' on Pierre?”

  Kim bit her lip, sighed heavily, and nodded. “I'll do what I can.”

  Jessica stared across the cadaver at her colleague and friend, Kim Desinor, whose complexion rivaled those of the two dead women for purity. Kim had shoulder-length hair these days, the natural flip framing her large, energy-filled eyes and accentuating her high cheekbones. “Fearful you'll use up all your magic our first day?” asked Shockley, who remained skeptical of Kim's psychic abilities.

  Kim didn't answer, her gloved hands now moving like two markers over a Ouija board as she gritted her teeth in concentration. Jessica again thought how perfectly beauti­ful she was.

  “It is rather a radical, even alien idea nowadays, but re­gardless of their sexual proclivities, our killer may well have seen these four as virginal in some context only he fully understands. We may rule it out as a fact, but we shouldn't rule it out as a fantasy, part of the killer's fan­tasy,” Kim suggested.

  “Yeah, he may have so strongly wanted it that way that he saw them as such, regardless of facts,” agreed Jessica. “It's the kind of designation or imprinting a madman might stamp on his victims.”

  “I recently had a case of murder after months of stalk­ing,” said Shockley, “and the shooter did just that. He saw his victim as pure, put her on a pedestal, and when she in­evitably fell off it, he killed her.”

  Jessica had learned to put aside the horror of such mo­ments, that so much human potential and life itself had been snuffed out as one might crush a caterpillar under­foot. So much waste. All the victims were young, with so much lying ahead of them, each barely out of the teen years. Wasted... the single word said it all, a waste of human promise and potential. No one could imagine what might have burgeoned from these beginnings.

  Jessica realized that the image of the virginal soul, or the state of actual virginity, might not fit here, but the appear­ance of it—that is, the physical appearance of purity dis­played by each body—might have a great deal to do with the killer's choice of victims. That it might well play into his selection process. “Perhaps the Poet wanted a perfectly unblemished 'slate' to write on. It might be that the killer, while not strictly interested in virgins in the literal sense of the word, did find people who gave the appearance of pu­rity in one form or another.”

  “While not virgins, they may have easily given that im­pression of innocence and naive that proved, in the end, the most alluring trait of the virginal or celibate life,” agreed Kim. “Virginal behavior, virginal by nature, vir­ginal appearing, or a combination of all three.”

  Jessica silenced herself as Kim's psychic persona took center stage once again.

  Kim's energies, however, had been drained like a used-up battery from the earlier readings. She received little from Anton Pierre, save the overwhelming sense of confu­sion, mixed with a bit of awe. She concluded in a few flat words: “He never knew what hit him. Didn't see it coming. Innocence sums him up, innocence and perplexed igno­rance of how he came to be dead.”

  “And as for being, as Madonna says, 'like a virgin'?”

  “The overwhelming trait I get coming through is con­fused innocence, like a child who has been lied to. Again the number nineteen and the words rampage and quark returned during my reading. Something insistent there.”

  “You think the killer is nineteen and on a rampage, his mind 'quarked'?”

  “Such a direct interpretation would only lead us in a wrong direction. No, the nineteen is a symbol for some­thing greater than age. And as for the word rampage... again it may hold some other meaning we are not aware of or do not normally associate with the word. The same will likely be true of quark. We need to pursue these words and the symbolic meanings ascribed to the number nineteen. I'll set myself that task.”

  “That sounds reasonable.”

  “Our killer's MO is certainly not one of a man on a rampage, so I must assume it stands for something other than our normal interpretations would allow.” Jessica's eyes lit up with a notion. “Perhaps its opposite, then, rampage equals peace, serenity, perhaps what seren­ity betokens? Absolute peace?”

  “Possibly, but I'm not at all certain at this point.”

  While Jessica and Kim were talking, Dr. Shockley had been on his cell phone, taking heat for having not re­sponded to the call at the murder scene. Jessica imagined that a nearby hospital pathologist or someone on Parry's team had had to be called in to walk the grid and to pro­nounce the victim dead before authorities ordered it shipped off to Shockley.

  Dr. Shockley now said, “Couldn't tell you for a cer­tainty, but I'm suspicious that my superiors are pissed off. Meantime, I am tired and I am retiring—for the night at least. Jessica and Kim, good night. Carl will be nearby to help you out and to lock up.”

  The sound of the closing door reverberated throughout the lab when the old man disappeared. Jessica said, “I agree. Let's save our sanity and get out of here for now. Come at it fresh in the a.m.”

  “Agreed. Bed is waiting.”

  The women made their way out of the semidarkened crime lab, secure in the belief that they had done all that was possible for the night, and that Carl would put Anton Pierre's body on ice; they found the elevator and took it to the ground floor.

  “If we extrapolate from one body to the next, all that ap­pears before us is a series of fine, hairless, flawless young specimens.” You are your father's daughter, Jessica, she heard herself say to this. Reducing a life to the word spec­imen had been an ongoing argument between them when he was alive. He maintained that an ME must be as objec­tive and emotionally controlled as his scalpel. She main­tained that the more the ME knew about the personality of the victim, the more he or she could tell with a scalpel.

  “You were right, Jessica, to suggest that our victims have, if not the actual and physical status of virgins, then the mental state of virgins. Petryna's soul was virginal on exiting this life in the sense that she and the others never harmed a living thing, ever. They were the kind of people who, as they say, couldn't harm a fly. I get that much from my readings.”

  “Are you sure they all had this sort of nature?”

  “I'm quite sure of that much.”

  “Meaning the killer may have liked them that way?”

  “Perhaps...” Kim muttered. “I couldn't say for a cer­tainty.”

  “A big maybe.” In the cramped car of the elevator, Jes­sica bit her lower lip as she went over what she had seen so far. Her thoughts felt at odds, a bewildered one com­bating with a chaotic one, the clash creating only larger confusion. She threw in a
healthy dose of anger and frus­tration at having missed out on Anton Pierre's crime scene. She imagined how angry James and Sturtevante must be at the forensics team at this moment—missing in action during a key crime-scene investigation. She ex­cused her absence on the grounds of complete exhaustion as the elevator doors opened at ground level, and she and Kim made their way to the hotel on foot, taking in the night air.

  Once they reached the brightly lit hotel, they staggered to the lobby elevator and rode it up to their rooms. They said their good-nights when Jessica, her room on a lower level, stepped off the elevator. Jessica imagined that Kim, like herself, would fall directly into bed and into a deep si­lence and weariness called sleep.

  The following day at Shockley's morgue

  “Sad to see such healthy people die so uselessly,” Dr. Shockley muttered. “When I think how useless my old bones have gotten... Sad to see these bodies go to the cre­matorium or the grave. Waste of excellent cadavers, which we could use around here for instructing the med stu­dents.”

  “You're not into the body-snatching business now, are you?” Jessica asked, knowing what a great demand existed for such excellent specimens as the three corpses now in Shockley's care.

  “If I thought I could talk the next of kin into it, I'd split the proceeds,” he said, and cackled again.

  “Well, you routinely hand them the papers to sign for permission to harvest body parts, so why not pursue it with the families?”

  “One in a million can walk away from the remains of a loved one. Forget about it. Still, just look at this Adonis. Hardly looks dead, does he? Am I right? What a specimen of Homo sapiens.”

  “Fact is he looks like that statue of David,” Jessica ob­served.

  “Michelangelo's David?” Kim asked. “I don't see the resem—”

  “No, no, not Michelangelo. The infamous one that looks like the boy David most likely looked like, the one by the sculptor Donatello.”

  “Oh, yes, I know the piece you mean. A portrayal of David at the time of his slaying of Goliath, presented as the pubescent child he had to have been at the time rather than a muscular Hercules.”

  “Donatello, living in the mid-fifteenth century, defied conventional wisdom. He believed in being true to nature and history. I've always admired his perfectly horrifying rendition of the street prostitute Mary Magdalen as well.”

  They had come back fresh to examine Anton Pierre's body, and Jessica, staring hard at the handsome face through a high-intensity magnifying glass, noticed an un­usual pattern. “I see a blemish or the faint remains of a rash, I believe, on his forehead.”

  They had found small areas of patchy redness on all the victims caused, Jessica believed, by the toxin.

  “Just another rust-colored rash?” asked Shockley, com­ing closer to have a look.

  “No, no discoloration. Rather a faint shadow under the scope. Take a look.”

  'Teardrops,” said Shockley.

  'Teardrops? No way. Teardrops form a line as they drop down the face. These are polka-dot fashion. Besides, they're above the eyes.”

  “Let me put some infrared light on the subject,” Shockley suggested. “Hit the light switch on the wall beside you, Dr. Desinor.”

  Kim did so, and except for the red glow of the infrared light Shockley held over the dead man's striking features, pitch darkness surrounded them. Their white lab coats turned a Day-Glo purple.

  Studying the supposed rash more closely now, Jessica could clearly see a pattern of small circles with rivulets running away from each, all under the red glow, all about the young man's forehead.

  'Teardrops,” Shockley again said.

  “But the splatter pattern is... all wrong, as if...”

  “Yes, I agree. Jessica, dear, we finally have something the killer left behind.”

  “Then the tears are his; the killer's left his secretions on the victim?” asked Kim.

  “We'll have to lift his DNA with great care. I have just the fixative and gel for the job,” Shockley assured her.

  “Are you sure? We damage it, it's gone. Are you sure we shouldn't simply do an electron bombardment photo?”

  “And destroy the only evidence we have?”

  “We'd have the photos.”

  “Photos will tell us nothing. We can't test the photos for human DNA properties. These teardrops, if we can lift and fix them, can tell us if our killer is male or female, his approximate age, skin color, what kind of secretor he is, possible blood type. Of course, this will take some time.”

  “The green,” said Kim, taking Jessica's arm. “It was green tears that I saw. The green reflecting pool. He cries in the color green.”

  “Green tears?” asked Jessica, her voice giving way to confusion.

  “I didn't recognize it before, but the green pool I saw— he cries in green for all the lost hopes, dreams, intentions of this world that have never come to fruition. He cries for the loss of angelic aspirations.”

  An attendant in blue surgical garb stuck her short-cropped head through the door and said, “Pardon, Dr. Shockley, but the red light is spinning again, and there's a call for Dr. Coran and Dr. Desinor. The caller says it's ur­gent.”

  “I'll take it,” said Jessica.

  Kim followed Jessica back toward her temporary office to take the call, but Kim said she had to find some caffeine and sugar quickly or she would keel over, so they parted near the elevators. Jessica took the call alone.

  Detective Sturtevante's voice rang out. “Sorry to disturb you there, but this is about the case Jessica thought she detected a tinge of sarcasm. “Go ahead.”

  “Then you haven't heard? I thought Parry and you were tight.”

  “Heard what? I haven't seen or heard from Parry since you left together, yesterday.”

  “Unfortunately, we think we may have victim number five already. If it's true, this guy's really stepped up his timetable in a big way.”

  “Can you send a squad car for Dr. Desinor and me?”

  “It's waiting for you outside the lab, east exit of the building.”

  “Thanks. See you when we arrive and we're all sorry about the confusion of the other—”

  “And Dr. Coran...”

  “Yes?”

  “Good to have you on the case. Don't think I had the op­portunity to say so before.”

  “ 'Predate it, Lieutenant.”

  “I know we need all the support we can muster on this one.” Leave it to Sturtevante to call me support staff, Jessica thought. “Right. Male or female?” she asked.

  “Come again?”

  “The victim, male or female?”

  “Male, but he pretends otherwise.”

  “Come again?”

  “Likes dressing up in women's clothes. He's something of a... let's say an androgynous sort.”

  “I see.”

  “Might have something to do with all this, you think? This look of the victims? To me, they all appear to be rather difficult to pinpoint as to sex. The men are as pretty as the women.”

  “Perhaps, could be. We've been remarking on the same thing here. I mean to say that their lifestyles, all of the vic­tims, were...” She hesitated. “In one fashion or another, they were atypical, sexually speaking.”

  “Agreed. And they dressed the part, playing down which sex they belonged to, playing down their sexual character­istics. Add to that the thin, lithe bodies, none of them dat­ing in the normal sense, all looking for some spiritual answer to the sexual dilemma.”

  “You've given this some thought.”

  “I have, yes.”

  “I did notice the asexual nature of the bodies, both the two females and the feminine males. Long, slender, no telling them apart from the back, even difficult from the front, such small breasts on the women.”

  “Yes, the killer's body type of choice.”

  “Could have a great deal to do with what's going on in­side his head.”

  “We'll never know if he decides one of these days to take his o
wn medicine.”

  “You think he may be suicidal?”

  “His poetry leads me to think so, yes.”

  “We've duplicated the poems and have had them for­warded to every teacher and professor in the area and be­yond, to see if anyone recognizes the handiwork,” Jessica told her.

  “Good thinking. As you know, I'd already started down that road with the local professors at the university. Listen, I must rush off. I'm glad we've had this chat.” The detec­tive abruptly cut the connection, and Jessica wondered for a moment if the androgynous nature of all the victims had spoken more to Lieutenant Leanne Sturtevante than to oth­ers working the case. She wondered momentarily about Sturtevante's sexual orientation. Then she admonished her­self for the thought.

  “Kim!” she called out to Desinor as her Mend passed by the office, a cup of steaming coffee in one hand, a half-eaten Snickers bar in the other. Kim poked her head inside, asking between chews, “What was the call about? Who was it, Parry?”

  Jessica stepped around the desk and walked over to Kim, taking the coffee and sipping from it. “Thanks, I needed that.”

  “Hey, go get your own.” Kim retrieved the cup.

  “There's been another killing, Kim.”

  “Oh, Jesus. Our boy has gotten busy since our arrival, hasn't he?”

  “Yeah, I'm afraid he's been bad again—”

  “Damn him—or her,” Kim corrected herself. “Damn.”

  “In any case, the killer has struck again, and we're up to bat.”

  “What about Shockley?”

  “This one's our house call. I think Shockley knows it. They already have a car waiting on us at the east exit of the building. Let's go.” Jessica grabbed her medical bag and a lab coat.

  “Right behind you.”

  Shockley saluted them as they passed by his office and found the elevator. Jessica got the distinct impression Dr. Leonard Shockley looked upon all the care and political tiptoeing being done around him as so much silly cloak-and-dagger.

  “Have a good time at the show,” he called out to the two ladies standing before the elevator.

  Jessica and Kim smiled. The elevator arrived and they stepped aboard.