Bitter Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  “If he held suspicions that one of his patients had taken a life, he could only attempt to convince the criminal to step forward and accept punishment. Until the dangerous patient confesses and becomes a menace to others, the shrink's hands remain bound by client privilege. Vladoc can't give up his notes or make any comment on what passed between himself and a patient.”

  “We have to share our findings and suspicions with Parry and Sturtevante, and while the evidence against Locke or Gordonn appears strong, despite its circumstantial nature, the case against 'Weird AT Vladoc is not firm at all.”

  “Neither Parry nor Sturtevante will be able to deny the strange coincidence that ties George Gordonn with both the Second Street scene in a big way—taking live-action video.” Kim believed this all tied in to her visions neatly, almost too neatly.

  “Get on the horn to the others. We're going to bust this asshole Gordonn,” Jessica declared.

  “Are you quite sure?”

  “Quite. Given what we know, there's no telling what a thorough search of the man's place will turn up. ”The FBI and PPD investigators organized into two teams, which stormed the production companies simultaneously for personnel records on each suspect. They learned that Stuart Andrews had caused some difficulty for his employ­ers by excessive absence due to alcoholism, and that while he had not been fired, he was encouraged to take his gold watch and pension a little earlier than planned, whereas Gordonn, a young man, had indeed been dismissed for re­peatedly missing days and showing up late and hung over.

  They closely scrutinized the background of George Lin­den Gordonn, aware that with the weekend looming, the killer would probably be selecting a new victim. The per­sonnel file showed that he had been let go as recently as the week before the first Killer Poet victim had surfaced.

  When the file came up empty of photos of the suspect, one of the personnel secretaries assured James Parry that, “You really don't want to see a photo of that man. He's re­pulsive.” She had shivered on saying his name. “Warned them against hiring him in the first place.”

  “How long did he work here?”

  'Two years, three months, and eleven days. I know 'cause I do payroll, and I had to count every one of those days.” She burst into laughter at her own remarks. Parry and Sturtevante radioed their concern to everyone else, Parry saying over the wire, “We're reluctant to let the news spread about Gordonn, fearful of interviewing his working buddies, since one or more of them could tip him off to our interest. We're not exactly in Oz anymore, and so no one expects anyone outside of law enforcement to be cooperative. That would be asking too much.”

  “We've got to obtain a federal warrant to stake out his home, and to get a photo surveillance under way,” said Sturtevante. “And I know you feds will have a lot more in­fluence on a federal judge than I could ever hope to have, so it's up to you.” And you're a lot easier on an old judge's eyes than I am by a hefty margin, Jess,” added Parry.

  “All right... I get the picture, but I think Dr. Desinor here can handle obtaining the warrant. She's got a lot more patience with local federal judges than I do, believe me.”

  Kim nodded. “And besides, Jessica doesn't want to let this guy out of her sight for a moment.”

  Jessica glared at her. “You reading my mind again?”

  With Gordonn on her mind, Jessica hummed and half sang the words to an old favorite Gordon Lightfoot tune, “If You Could Read My Mind.”

  “Just like an old-time novel, the kind the drugstores sell,” piped in Parry, equally bored with staring through binoculars at Gordonn, who was nervously pacing behind the curtains. Jessica watched now as Gordonn's dark sil­houette suddenly disappeared. Had he stepped into another room? Had he sat down on a couch, into an armchair, prone on the floor? Had he gone out the back?

  “He's on the move!” Jessica suddenly called out.

  Parry looked out to see Gordonn burst through the front door, moving directly for the street. Jessica said, “He ap­pears as harmless as a puppy dog; slight of build, thinning hair, undistinguished face, pale skin tone, small and unas­suming in every way. Yet he somehow held sway over peo­ple's minds, convinced them to go wherever he wanted, to step softly right into their own deaths. He literally talked them out of their lives once he talked them into becoming the 'canvases' for his seemingly benign art form.”

  “Yeah, how'd this weasel do that?” asked Parry.

  Kim still hadn't gotten back with the search-and-seizure warrants, and Jessica had heard from her only once, some­thing about a hard-nosed, liberal-assed judge who worried about “violating Gordonn's guar-an-teed rights for rea­sonable expectation of privacy.” Kim wanted to kill the man. Instead, she took her request to another judge during a break in the session, something to do with the original judge having the runs. “In the meantime, I had a psychic episode since last I saw you, Jess.”

  “Having to do with the case?”

  “Yes, well... I believe so, yes.”

  'Tell me about it.”

  “Further visions of the crimes, picking up images which lead me to images of... the victims posed for photos.”

  “Posed?”

  “The killer wanted and got photos of the poems, the killer's handiwork on their backs, before leaving each crime scene.”

  “Souvenirs to treasure,” said Jessica, knowing serial killers' penchant for retaining mementos of their victims and the moment they had shared, souvenirs to help them relive the moment.

  “This memorabilia of his work,” said Kim, “the killer must keep close at hand.”

  “Gordonn just left the premises, Kim. I'll search for the nasty mementos in his home, if you can get me inside.”

  “I'm working on it.”

  ASAC FBI Agent James Parry and PPD Detective Leanne Sturtevante could feel the tension wringing out of their every pore. Each killing had raised the pressure on them, but with the arrest of Sturtevante's former girlfriend on suspicion of being the Poet Killer, the level became all but unbearable.

  Jim Parry, to his credit, did not know of Sturtevante's personal involvement with Donatella Leare until well after the arrest, learning of it only during interrogation sessions with the suspect.

  Since then, Leare had posted bond and was released eas­ily and quickly. From all accounts, she had made a great adjustment to her newfound notoriety. Her books were selling like hotcakes, according to Marc Tamburino, who was heard to exclaim, “Man, you can't buy that kind of pub­licity. Not even Donald Trump can buy that kind of publicity. The news media can't even manufacture that kind of story, I tell you.” Jessica had passed word along to Sturtevante that she— Leanne—had, however unwittingly, given Leare's career the proverbial shot in the arm, that people all over Philadelphia were vying for copies of her poems, and that Leare was being asked to speak publicly at functions all across the state. The detective had taken the news badly, as a slight, a lousy joke. She had pointed the finger at Leare, had arranged for her arrest, and now she felt like a fool. She had taken the action against Leare in spite of Jessica's better judgment, and Parry had sided with her; now both had come to the re­alization that Leare was not the Poet Killer after all. All three of them—Jessica, Sturtevante, and Parry—knew that Sturte­vante's personal involvement with Leare had impaired her judgment. This fact, unspoken among them, colored every word now of their discussions of the case, and made them all intensely uncomfortable.

  Parked alongside Gordonn's rambling, aged house, atop a cracked and weed-choked driveway, a battered beige late-model Oldsmobile had been waiting. Once the suspect had gotten into the car, and once he sped off, disappearing around the comer, an unmarked police vehicle took off after him.

  Inside the surveillance van, Parry told Jessica, “We can't wait any longer. We go in now while he's out.” He started for the door, stooped and cramped in the small interior with Jessica, Leanne Sturtevante, and a technician named Jake Towne. “Go in without paper?” protested Sturtevante.

  “If we miss this
chance, we may not have another to bug the place before he decides to scratch his itch again,” Towne warned the others, taking Parry and Jessica's side.

  “We need the warrant, Jim,” Sturtevante cautioned. “We've already made one mistake. Let's not compound it with another.”

  Parry protested. “You made the mistake, Leanne; you were so convinced of Leare's guilt that you convinced me, and now that we have a viable suspect, it's time you owned up to your error. But I have to agree with Towne, this guy could return at any time.”

  Leanne checked with the team that now followed Gor­donn. She spoke to them on a closed line. Then she told Parry and Jessica, “According to the team that's on him, Gordonn appears to be driving aimlessly about the city.”

  “In the vicinity of Second Street?” Jessica asked.

  “No, he's wandering around the warehouse district.”

  “Looking for new prowling grounds, perhaps?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “All right, then. I say we go in and hope the warrant ar­rives before we leave the premises,” Parry said, his hand on the door.

  Jessica readily agreed. “I'm with you, Jim.”

  Sturtevante warned, “Any word of this gets out, no mat­ter what you collect from bugging the place, Jim, it'll be tossed. I know the system in Philly, and that kind of thing will get you nothing but a reprimand. The prosecutor's of­fice won't touch tainted evidence or evidence gathered by criminal means, and that's what you two are talking about.”

  Parry looked Jessica in the eye. “Are you sure you want in on this?”

  “I am.” Jessica took it as a challenge.

  “It could backfire, Jess.” I'll take that risk.”

  “Like you did in Hawaii?”

  “Yeah, guess so.”

  He turned to Sturtevante. “Stay on Dr. Desinor to get the paperwork to us ASAP.”

  “I just want it noted that your action is—”

  “So noted, Lieutenant Sturtevante, so noted. In the meantime, why aren't you on the phone to your contacts, getting a local warrant?”

  “We're doing the best we can. I've gotten the mayor out of bed.”

  “Good, he wanted results, right? Where're all those clowns in their three-piece suits when you need them? Where's your boss, Roth?”

  “Hospital. Family emergency. Wife's been fighting can­cer.”

  “Shhheeesh, sorry to hear that.”

  Parry threw open the surveillance van doors. “You with me, Jess?” he asked, extending a hand.

  “I want inside,” she replied, following him out.

  “No radio contact,” said Sturtevante, who remained in­side the van, bent up like a yogi on a bad day. “Towne, you got that?”

  “Got it,” replied the technician.

  The three exchanged glances, all of them knowing that radio contact meant that the exact timing on this would be recorded. No radio contact meant an ambiguous time line later if anyone should ask. Don't ask, don't tell would be the rule of the day. “It'll keep us all a little more... hon­est,” said Sturtevante. “Just a little.”

  “Good thinking,” Parry told her.

  “Good hunting,” Sturtevante said. “I'll watch your backs. If Gordonn makes a move anywhere near here, I'll break radio silence with a single word.”

  “And what would that be?” Rampage.”

  The other task-force members, watching Gordonn's movements, kept in constant radio contact with Detective Sturtevante while Jessica and Parry entered Gordonn's home. Parry had brought along his lock-picking tools, and it took him only a few minutes to gain entry. He broke in like a pro, disturbing nothing.

  Once inside, Parry expertly wired the place, setting taps on Gordonn's phones and placing bugs in his walls.

  Meanwhile, Jessica wandered about freely until she came upon a collection of photo albums. She opened one after another in search of the incriminating evidence—Ex­hibit A.

  “Even if you found something, without that warrant we can't produce if for a jury; no prosecutor would touch it.” Parry was telling her what she already knew, but he also knew that she, like himself, felt an insatiable need to learn if they were or were not on the right trail.

  “I just want to find out if it is him, if we're really onto the right man here,” she confessed, now telling him what he already knew. She continued to thumb through Gor­donn's photos and books, private papers and file boxes in an attempt to at last discover the truth.

  Then Jessica came across a photo of Gordonn as a child with his mother and father. She noticed that his father was separated from his wife and son, who huddled together as if in a shared cocoon, as if they were protecting each other. Perhaps for good reason? she silently asked, her eyes searching every detail, every nuance of the snapshot.

  In another photo, mother and child were captured in the nude, and their obvious delight at playing whatever game they were playing again suggested how terribly close they were, maybe a bit too close, Jessica caught herself think­ing.

  Jessica wondered who had taken the photo—Gordonn's father, perhaps? Flipping to yet another photo, she gasped. “My God, Jim, he's got to be the Poet Killer. Look at this photo.”

  Parry came to her side and looked at the strange photo­graph. What he saw caused him to gasp as well. The words Happy 6* Birthday in an angry, burnt-orange color seemed to scream at him from little George's back, where they had apparently been scrawled. Evidence or sheer coincidence? the detectives wondered, their eyes meeting.

  “God bless me,” said Parry, swallowing his own words. The message written across the child's back looked like a banner; these words were followed by the lines of a poem: Spirit child of my spirit/Soar to the estate/Of star and moon/To return to us soon... On his sixth birthday, either Gordonn's mother, Lydia Byron Gordonn, or his father had written lines of poetry on the child's back, as if to carve them into his flesh.

  This single photo spoke volumes in and of itself, Jessica believed, but photos of Gordonn's victims would prove ab­solutely damning. It all gave her pause, and her thoughts fluttered like so many nervous pigeons now as she consid­ered the mother's maiden name of Byron and her married name, Gordonn. It was yet another damning apparent co­incidence, for the Romantic Poet Lord Byron, Jessica knew, had been bom George Gordon, the same name minus an n.

  She wondered if the mother had perhaps been a failed poet, and a failed person as well, and if she meant more by these words on her son's back than anyone knew, if she had been the one who penned them. She wondered about the relationship between mother and son, and between father, Harold Gordonn, and son. She wondered just how balled up and twisted up with Byron's dark and somber personal­ity the relationship between father and mother had be­come. Myths and legends had grown up around Lord Byron, both during his scandalous lifetime and after; Jes­sica even remembered hearing it said that he had become a vampire, or simply a person who lived the life of a vampire in some ways. Yet his poetry was as beautiful as it was dis­turbing. Some considered him a fallen angel, and there was evidence in his reported conversations and poetry to sug­gest that he himself had started this particular bit of folk­lore.

  Parry cursed first under his breath, and then aloud. “Fucking A—these shots of little George ought to come in handy at trial, once we can get our hands on them again, but for now, darlin', they have to stay put. Place them back exactly as you found them. We don't want Gordonn to have the slightest inkling we've been here or that we're onto him.”

  “I need to search for photos of his victims. These won't convince a jury that he's guilty of murder. It's far too cir­cumstantial and could be presented as mere coincidence, chance, by a good defense lawyer.” She began a frantic search through the remaining albums on the shelf but stopped when several clippings from the Philadelphia In­quirer fell onto the dirty carpet.

  Jessica now knelt, dirtying her skirt and knees, to reclaim the clippings, ecstatic, certain they had located more in­criminating evidence. But her bubble burst when her eyes lit on the
date of the clippings: May 4, 5, 6, and 10, 1969. Another clipping was dated a year later, 1970. The clip­pings dealt with the suicide pact of Gordonn's mother and father, and with the surviving child, who had been turned over to Child Protective Services, a child with a strange poem emblazoned on his back. Jessica only had time to scan the clippings when Parry shouted, “We've got to get out of here—now!”

  “Just a minute.”

  “We're out of time. Leanne's calling 'rampage.' “ Jes­sica could hear the word like a mantra over the police band. “Get moving, Jess. It's the warning we agreed upon earlier. Gordonn's returning home.”

  “Then we take these with us,” she said, pointing to the photos and clippings.

  “No, we can't take a thing; we've already disturbed too much here. If he knows we've been inside, he'll know the place is bugged, and all our efforts will have been for noth­ing. No, you can't leave the premises with a thing. As for the clippings, they're public record. We can duplicate them at the Inquirer's microfiche library.”

  “But, Jim, the photos, these could disappear; he could bum them at any time.”

  “He hasn't burned them in all these years. Why would he do it now?”

  “If he feels threatened, he might.”

  “We'll just have to take that chance.”

  “And I still want to locate victim photos.”

  “You don't even know if they exist. It's just something Kim Desinor thinks she knows, another trance image.”

  Jessica and Parry were still arguing when Sturtevante pushed through the door and shouted, “He's only a block away. Get out of here—now!”

  “Put everything back the way you found it, Agent Coran. That's an order!” shouted Parry.

  “Going to pull rank on me now, Jim?” Jessica bit her lip but did as he ordered, tucking the loose photos back into the album from which they had spilled, her hands steady but her nerves pulled taut.

  Parry said, “Sorry, Jess, but we haven't enough evidence on the guy to get a warrant, obviously, so how're we going to justify taking stuff out of his home?”