Bitter Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  “Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you,” he said in a voice that sounded trapped in his windpipe, the gravelly sound requiring her to translate each word. “Bit of a cold,” apol­ogized Peter Flavius Vladoc. “I've come to help you on the Poet Killer case.”

  “That's a relief, because we do need help, sir.”

  “Not every professional will admit such a fact. Sturte­vante told me you were a beautiful creature, but she did you no justice. I wished to tell you as much the other night at Merlin's, but I did not wish to embarrass you or put you on the spot.”

  “Thank you—for the compliment, I mean.”

  “I looked over the material you forwarded me. We should talk.”

  “Very good. What do you make of the killer?”

  “I have looked closely at the poetry, you see, and it has meaning for me, and I have made some sense, I believe, of what he or she wants.”

  “You think you know what the Poet wants?”

  “It is nothing he wants of us; authorities can give in to no demands, for there are none being made.”

  “Still the killer wants something,” she said.

  Vladoc indicated the chair with his cane. “Do you mind?”

  “Please, sit down. What's happened to your leg?”

  “Degenerative condition; flares up now and again. Slows me down; makes me feel damned old.” He stepped slowly to the chair, banging the wooden cane against the chair legs like a blind man. As he came into the light, she suddenly realized that he was blind or partially so, but that he had hidden it well that night at the club—maybe be­cause of the lighting, maybe because Jessica had had one too many. “Rheumatoid arthritis; can only get worse with each step I take. Eyes are going as well. Require a high-powered magnifying glass given me by Shockley to even read.”

  “I'm so sorry to hear it.”

  He waved it off as if it were nothing.

  “So, what is it our killer wants, Dr. Vladoc?”

  “Peace.”

  “Peace? World peace, peace for himself?”

  “Peace for his victims.”

  “Peace...”

  “And one other thing.”

  “And that is?”

  “Validation.”

  The man had a fondness for enigmas, she thought. “Val­idation of what? His actions?”

  “No, validation of myth, legend, fairy tale even, valida­tion of a magical way of thought that he has fully given himself over to, you see.”

  “I see, and this is your revelation for me?”

  “Your killer is seeking his own peace and purification and the validation of his magical thinking.”

  “And he does this by killing young people?”

  “He kills in order to cleanse them and make them over as... well, in his or her mind, as the beings they were be­fore being born into this world. Beings born of gods, not of tainted flesh—in other words not born into our tribe, the tribe we call Homo sapiens.”

  “Beings... beings born of God?”

  “More superior beings, better, yes.” The little man leaned forward in the chair, which was too large for him, knowing he had Jessica's attention now. “Not born of man and woman or flesh. In other words, angels. He's in the business of making, that is, creating angels of them, you see.”

  She felt incredulity fill her mind. “He kills them to turn them into angels?”

  “I know it sounds like full-blown madness, but there are precedents for such behavior. People have killed others to release them from the bondage of the human coil before, and in fact poetry and literature are filled with examples of such homicides. Look, it goes back to childhood fantasies and beliefs and upbringing, and you know how weird and warped and dysfunctional that can get.”

  “Are we going to excuse the killer on the basis of his traumatic childhood, Dr. Vladoc?”

  “I do not offer an excuse but an explanation, a reason why.”

  “His motivation.”

  “His or hers, yes. It could well be a woman.”

  “Let's order in some food and talk about this further, shall we? I want to hear all you have to say on the subject. But I would like Dr. Desinor to join us.”

  “Coffee and a sandwich would be pleasant, yes, and as for your associate joining us, I have no objections.”

  Jessica made the arrangements.

  After Kim came in to join them, Vladoc began. “The be­havior exhibited by the Poet Killer—I have seen milder ex­amples of it in my practice over the years. It is normally at its height in late adolescence when years of belief in magic are called upon to compensate for a person's having been deprived of it—”

  “Deprived of it?” interrupted Jessica.

  “—prematurely in childhood. Fantasy, I mean.”

  “Bruno Bettelheim,” said Kim.

  “I believe Bettelheim was right about the importance of childhood fantasy.”

  “You mean the importance of fantasy in understanding and coping with the world.”

  “Yes,” replied Vladoc, who returned to his exposition. “All of your victims as well as the poisoner here, I strongly suspect, these are young people who now feel that it is their last chance to make up for a severe defi­ciency in their life experience. You see, without having had a period of belief in magic—as all healthy children do in interpreting the world—they are then unable to meet the rigors of adult reality.”

  “Are you suggesting,” Jessica said, “that many young people today who seek escape in drugs and other addictions were deprived of childhood fantasies?”

  “If not drugs, then they will apprentice themselves to some guru, go crazy over astrology, engage in black magic, rites, and rituals, or some other obsession,” Vladoc assured them.

  Kim explained further, in obvious sync with Vladoc on the subject. “Such deprived people are engaging in escape from reality into daydreams about magical experiences which they believe will change their lives for the better; drugs are an avenue for such thinking, yes, but those pre­maturely pressed into an adult view of reality can only sus­tain themselves through magical thinking and doing.”

  “So the cause is in the formative years,” said Vladoc, “when experiences prevented early development of skills that can only be mastered later in life, in realistic as op­posed to mythical ways.”

  “And this is how the Poet thinks?” Jessica asked.

  “He is committing their souls over to the angels. What does that tell you about his worldview?” asked Vladoc, shaking his head. “And that of his victims?”

  Jessica leaned back in her chair, the movement making the old wood groan. “You're sure of this, are you?”

  “Quite. I'm good at reading between the lines. Each poem is about a chance encounter that ends in his cleansing them—body and soul—in preparation for their return to their true reality, a reality populated by only the pure. That is, in a nutshell, this killer's patho­logical mind-set.”

  “What did Sturtevante think of your interpretation?” Jessica took a leap, guessing that Vladoc had already shared his findings with the lead investigator on the task force.

  “She agreed with it, of course. I have studied such lu­nacy for well over a quarter century. She has confidence in my judgment. ”Words like angelic and pure did seem to apply to the victims, she thought. Vladoc stood, his head barely above hers, although she remained seated. With a Danny DeVito-like glint in his eye, he half smiled and said, “I hope this information helps to stop this poor, driven devil.”

  “You're not sure he's... that the killer is male?”

  “It is impossible to say from what I saw in the writing, but you have handwriting experts who might help there, right? Don't graphologists claim to know how to differen­tiate a woman's handwriting from a man's?”

  “Our experts have not been able to determine gender on the basis of the handwriting, no.” Not even Wahlbore's program made that claim.

  “Perhaps the killer is like his victims in more ways than we think; perhaps he or she is androgynous,” Kim
sug­gested. “We know that the less secure a man—or woman— is within himself, the more he cannot afford to accept an explanation of the world that says he is of minor signifi­cance in the grand scheme of the cosmos.”

  “True, the one you are after believes himself or herself to be at the center of the universe,” said Vladoc. “Think of it. As long as a child is unsure of his immediate environ­ment, that it will protect him, the more he must believe that superior powers, such as a guardian angel, watch over him, and that his place in the world is of supreme and para­mount importance.”

  “It's far preferable to zero security,” Jessica agreed.

  “Imagine parents who make it their full-time job to den­igrate protective imagery like angels and invisible friends as mere childish projections, the flotsam of immature minds,” added Vladoc.

  “And you rob the child of one aspect of the prolonged safety and comfort he or she requires,” finished Kim.

  “Precisely. To quote Bettelheim, 'The child knows that he was created by his parents, so it makes sense that, like himself, all men, and where they live, were created by a su­perhuman figure not so different from his parents—some male or female god.' “

  “He comes to believe that something like his parents, only far more powerful, intelligent, and reliable, will care for him in the world—something like a guardian angel,” added Kim.

  Vladoc launched into his conclusion. 'To feel secure on this planet, our killer needs to believe there is a place where the world is firmly held in place by rules and immutable laws, where terra firma means terra firma, and it's all held in place by loving, caring beings, or one super being who wishes to cloak and envelop him with love and an outpour­ing of concern, and a peace that can never be achieved in this life, not through thugs, not through preachings, not through sex or food or material wealth or fame. It is that which can­not be achieved on this plane that our killer is interested in, not unlike the desires of the great Romantics in art and liter­ature, not unlike Byron's mad quest across the continent in search of the perfect love and the perfect peace.”

  “Our killer has been given the unenviable chore of send­ing over those who believe strongly in the world of invisi­ble spirit?” asked Jessica. “Do you think he hears voices telling him what he's supposed to do?” Of that I have no doubt,” said Vladoc. “Killer and vic­tim share a faith in the angelic world, and magical think­ing—taken to the extreme—is as dangerous as reality itself, or religious fanaticism, or any other ism you may go completely obsessive over.” With that, Vladoc bid Jessica and Kim farewell and good night.

  The two FBI agents sat alone in the darkened office.

  The phone rang, and Jessica picked it up.

  “Jessica, it's James. I want to apologize for my behavior the last time we were alone together. I had no right to say some of the things I said. Certainly no right to hurl accu­sations at you.”

  “Apology accepted, James.” She spoke his name for Kim's information. Kim stood, waved, and disappeared, giving her privacy.

  James said, “Think for the good of the case, we need a reconciliation? For the good of the case. We must be able to work together.”

  “Agreed.”

  “So, it appears your visit to the university was pretty much a bust, from the report you and Kim filed.”

  Jessica filled him in on their visit.

  “Still, I think we need to follow up, talk to this Leare woman and this guy Locke. Shake some trees, see what falls out.”

  “Jim, Vladoc has given us some useful insights into the mind of the killer. Now we must match a person to those insights, and I don't see Burrwith fitting in here.”

  “Vladoc's pretty strange, Jess. Sturtevante filled me in on where he's headed with the case. You buy any of it?” She told him about Vladoc's visit and his strange but eerily on-target conclusions about the killer, drawn from his reading of the poems. “Kim and I think he's right on with this magical-thinking business being at the bottom of the killings.”

  “Even more reason to follow up on our concrete leads. We need to talk to this Leare and Locke about Burrwith from my perspective, you know, one grounded in his reality.”

  'Tonight—now?”

  “Let's stay on the university poets,” replied Parry, after considering all that she'd passed along from the psychia­trist, Vladoc. “You got those addresses handy?”

  Jessica hesitated a moment, wishing to go back to her hotel, call Richard, shower, and sleep. But she relented, saying, “No time like the present. All right. You're the boss.”

  “I'll meet you out front of the crime lab in fifteen min­utes with a sack of burgers and chili.”

  “Sounds good. I'm starved. Bring enough for Kim, too. See you then.”

  “She there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You're on.”

  But when Jessica hung up, she could not find Kim; the psychic had literally disappeared, but she had left a note on her office door for Jessica.

  Dear Jess,

  Took all my stuff to the hotel. In view of Dr.

  Vladoc's findings, I'm going to retrace my steps, go

  back over all my notes on the psychometric readings

  to see what, if anything, jumps out. Need a quiet, se­cure, safe place to work.

  Yours, Kim

  “Dr . Plummer did say that Leare was out of town,” Jes­sica told Parry. They stood outside the professor's home on the northern outskirts of the city. Several days' worth of newspapers adorned Dr. Donatella Leare's doorstep. A weak light illuminated little of the interior, but to Jessica it looked dark and grim.

  On the way to Dr. Leare's place, Jessica had confided in Pany exactly what Vladoc had told her. “I suspect the dwarf is onto something,” said Parry, “I just have trouble with such notions. I'm a pragmatic realistic myself. Can't believe a grown man or woman could buy into such think­ing to the degree he kills—albeit benignly—over it.”

  “Come on, Jim, it's not so different from Lopaka Kowona's trade winds god telling him to mutilate young women in the islands, or have you forgotten his magical thinking, his god, Ku, talking through the winds? And as for the strange little Vladoc, I don't think he's actually a dwarf, Jim, merely stunted. As to his theory, it plugs into our own theories about the killer rather well, perhaps too well.”

  “It does fit with the known clues pretty neatly. What do you mean, too well?”

  “I'm not sure, but Vladoc sees a lot of mentals; maybe he actually knows this guy and is bound by, you know, patient-client confidentiality.”

  “That old twisted ethical argument that the doctor pro­tects his Frankenstein at all costs, despite the fact that the insane monster is on the loose and killing people? I never understood that. Talk about magical thinking.”

  “If it's true, we need to look at Vladoc's patient list, see who's on it. I don't know about you, but I'm generally skeptical of theories that fit too neatly.”

  “Agreed. All the same, I suppose we have to entertain the notion that Vladoc's information is... well informed. Else, if it is not Que, then the killer wants us to believe that it is?”

  “Perhaps to point the finger at someone else?”

  “Perhaps. We'll have to keep an open mind to all possi­bilities. “Yes, as we should.”

  Parry picked up a stone and threw it into the trees. “Don't you find it strange that both Locke and Leare are out of town at the same time?”

  “You mean at the same time that the killings have stopped?” she asked.

  “That, too, yes. You say the two are returning from some sort of conference in Texas?”

  “College and university teachers' conference, yes.”

  “And have been there for what—two days and nights?”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “And from what you tell me, everyone in the English de­partment is sleeping around. These two might be off screwing their intellectual brains out, mightn't they?”

  “I have no idea if there's anything
between them, Jim, other than a love of poetry. Any suspicions you have are all rather hypothetical, wouldn't you say?”

  “Agreed. ”hey'd already tried Dr. Lucian Locke's residence, and had found it equally abandoned and nearly as dark.

  Jessica took a deep breath. “I say we get out of here.”

  “Where to?” he asked.

  “That bookstore, Darkest Expectations, on Second Street. I understand it's open till midnight.”

  “All right, I'm game if you are.”

  As they climbed into Parry's official car, Jessica realized only now what Jim had hinted at earlier. “You're not sug­gesting that we might possibly have two killers, two poets poisoning kids, are you?”

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  “And you're betting on Locke and Leare as the bloody-minded duo?”

  “Not necessarily, no, but Leanne knows Leare person­ally, you see.”

  “Oh, yeah, I do remember her mentioning Leare as a friend the university to whom she was talking, an expert in poetry.”

  Parry continued speaking as he drove toward Second Street. “And she's had discussions with her about the mur­ders, you see, and when she spoke to Vladoc about the killings, well, she got it in her head that Donatella Leare knows something. Fact is, this Leare woman is one of Vladoc's private patients, and so is Harriet Plummer. He has a lot of female patients, according to Leanne.”

  “It's a reach, Jim. The whole thing is a real reach. I've seen nothing to indicate two perpetrators here. Are you thinking Leare and Plummer, two women, could be the Killer Poet?”

  “Other than your tearstained evidence, Shockley had found trace elements of two sets of DNA on one of the vic­tims, and neither set matches the victim, or any known per­son on the evidence-gathering team.”

  “Then the meeting with DeAngelos was meant to ask him to be on the lookout for two contradictory sets of information, and he was informed by Dr. Shockley of these suspicions? Suspicions I'm only now hearing about?”