Killer Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  “See you at the airport, then.”

  She waved him off. From the backseat, Scarborough waved back and winked, his grin like that of the devil, and this made her wonder how much stock she could really put in what he had said.

  Well, she told herself, his DNA couldn't lie to her. She forgot about Scarborough, but she could not forget about the image of his father, covered in blood, threatening his son with mutilation and boiling in his own blood and oil.

  With these thoughts swimming about her mind, she went back inside to call a cab. She was beginning to miss her apartment in Virginia, and its safe walls.

  # # #

  From far above it, looking through the portal of the Learjet, Wekosha, Wisconsin, looked at peace, like a quaint village nestled in the wood where nothing evil could touch. But Jessica Coran could imagine Scar in his cell still trying to convince everyone that he was innocent of any wrongdoing in the Candy Copeland affair. She imagined Sheriff Stowell, Vaughn and the other police officials desperately seeking a confession from one of the perverts dragged in under their net. She could see the child's block in the far distance that represented police headquarters, where police faced off against press and community leaders clamoring for complete disclosure. Not far away, she made out the squares and shapes of the university medical complex where she imagined Dr. Stadtler, too, was inundated by reporters trying to get the full story.

  She was glad to be above it all, but she was hardly divorced from the case, her mind wandering back to the girl who called herself Candy and the awful nature of her death. The public outcry over the girl who was ignored her entire life was a little late in coming, she thought.

  Still, there were other girls in the community to worry about, others who might fall prey to a terrifying predator in their midst. So the predator must be found and incarcerated or eliminated quickly. It was the predictable result of a mutilation murder; it sent a shock wave of horror through the system to discover that one so physically close had died in so brutal a scenario, with one's own community as backdrop. Now that Candy Copeland was dead, it seemed that she had gained the attention she so yearned for in life, that her murder had outraged people in the community, but that outrage failed to include an outrage against Wekosha, the outrage that Jessica felt.

  Being literally above Wekosha, perhaps it was easy to judge, she decided. The jet made a pass over the city in a tight arc, the pilot having fun, coming to a southeasterly heading. The feeling for the moment was one of the plane's being like the archangel Gabriel, blowing a fiery horn across the land, screaming at the occupants of sleepy Wekosha.

  She wondered momentarily if the killer lived in Wekosha or on its outskirts. She wondered if there would be more such horrible mutilations here, and if she and Otto would have to return. She prayed not.

  Now that the plane was in flight, she lifted the newspapers which Boutine had slapped onto the table between them with the single command “Read,” before he busied himself on the jet's computer modem and fax machine. On the front page of a special, late edition of the Milwaukee Journal, she found a picture of herself and before and after pictures of the victim, the glaring headlines reading: “The Ice Woman Cometh” and “FBI's M.E. Is Woman of Steel.” All this according to the local authorities, some of whom were quoted directly, others indirectly. But how had they gotten her picture? Newspeople were adept at getting what they wanted, and this news foretold that they would soon know about the more grisly aspects of the crime. So far, they had not gotten this from either Stowell's people, Vaughn's or the medicine man, Stadtler. But it was only a matter of time.

  She felt a little strange being characterized as a woman of steel with ice for blood just because she stood her ground and did her job. She knew that had she been a man, her demeanor and bearing at the crime scene would have been summed up differently, as professional and businesslike.

  On the way to the airport from the inn, she had given a great deal of thought to the case and the part that she was now playing in it. It might be like a hundred other cases which went unsolved for years, if it were ever solved at all. Like Boutine, she didn't think the net the locals would cast out to drag in the lowlife of Wekosha was going to catch this killer. At the airport, her autopsy samples caught up with her, along with the crime-scene evidence from the evidence cage at the police department, the two couriers talking about the upcoming baseball season like old friends. Otto arrived soon after, antsy to get into the air and to learn anything new that she had as a result of the autopsy. She had told him that there was nothing new. She did so because she needed more time to think about what she had discovered; she needed to talk to J.T., to confirm her suspicions.

  J.T. was John Thorpe, Jessica's second-in-command and her right arm at her Quantico laboratory. She placed complete trust in J.T. for handling medico-legal evidence. knowing that Thorpe treated it with the same reverence and care that she did. Their respect for each other was mutual, and even though John was several years her senior, he never allowed either her age or her sex to become a problem between them, unlike others under her auspices, such as Dr. Raynack, the old buzzard who once, in the heat of an argument he felt he must conduct in front of others, called her a scavenger. Behind her back, the name was still being used, and it was J.T. who made it an “acceptable” label when, on her birthday, he placed it on the cake which was shared by all in the department except Raynack.

  J.T. had made a little speech over the cake, saying in his baritone voice, “We all know you're better than a bloodhound at the scene of a crime; that Sherlock Holmes would have to take a seat behind; that you don't accept anything on face value, or on the word of a man because he happens to have a Ph.D., an M.D. or even an M.E. back of his name”—a clear shot at Raynack—”or blindly accept letters printed on a death certificate. We know you leave nothing to chance or human error, that you are a methodical scavenger!”

  She admired J.T. also because he had come up the hard way, a self-motivated orphan who had miraculously found the inner strength to set goals for himself and become a fine doctor, and then to continue on to become an M.E., when she herself had had so much help, encouragement and love from her parents and the example of her father.

  Otto was suddenly standing over her with a drink in his hand, offering it to her. “Private stock,” he said.

  She took it gratefully. He sat across from her once more as she sipped at the bourbon and water. He seemed to know her likes, and a moment's paranoia flitted in and out of her consciousness. Otto was very perceptive, and picking up on this, he said, “I asked your friend J.T. what you liked to drink. Saw to it we had some on board.”

  “That's a lot of trouble to go to.”

  “Not if it gets me what I want.” She smiled across at him, her eyes playing a game with his. “And what's that?” Her voice crackled with a sultry edge.

  “Some fast answers,” he replied. “Didn't the autopsy tell you anything new?”

  She told him about the severed tendons, trying to put him off.

  “Anything else?”

  She felt pressured. “It raised more questions than it answered. Lfet me put it that way.”

  “Then tell me about the questions it raised.”

  She felt they were dancing in a circle now. She was first a scientist, and he knew this, so why couldn't he accept the fact that it would take time to investigate the minutiae of this murder. “Otto, I need to get back to my lab, need J.T.'s assistance, need time—”

  “Time is something we don't have a lot of, Jess.”

  Her mouth fell open at the cryptic words. His eyes pulled from her as he laid out a stack of papers that'd come over the fax, black-and-white pictures and reports on earlier Tort 9s, the dark duplicate photos cascading across at her, photos of three other victims hanging in the air, upside down, just like Candy Copeland.

  She carefully placed her now swirling drink onto the tabletop. It settled in the glass as she nervously fingered the edges of the additional information that Otto
had offered.

  “You made me think I was in some holding pattern,” she said, staring at him now. “That this assignment was the next on docket, but it wasn't, was it?”

  “Some people didn't want you on it; I did.”

  “You knew it was the work of the same guy all along.”

  “I suspected, yes.”

  “Then why the charade?”

  He leaned back into the cushion of his seat. “I didn't want you knowing, all right? I wanted someone with no prior knowledge, someone with a fresh eye, someone who had the expertise, and I didn't want a lot of judgments predicated on this!” He pointed to the materials lying between them.

  “Is that supposed to be an apology?”

  “I tell you where to go and when to go. I don't need to apologize or explain myself.”

  “You were hoping to get something from me to corroborate a theory or theories you're developing? Is that it?”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  She breathed deeply and said, “You must have a hell of a lot of confidence in your theory, then.”

  “I do.”

  “That Wekosha is no isolated case.”

  Otto stared at her like someone caught in a lie. “That's my guess.”

  “And you must have had a lot of confidence in me.”

  He nodded firmly. “I do.”

  “Now you want me to review these earlier cases, see if I agree, that there's some sort of pattern here, some connection?”

  “That's right; any match points you can make will add to mine, and then we can sell Leamy on it, and get my team to work on it before...” His voice trailed off.

  “Before there's another Candy Copeland,” she finished for him.

  “That's right.”

  She nodded, sipped more from her drink and lifted one of the faxed photos. “Let me look this stuff over.”

  “I'll be up front if you need me,” he said, getting up and going forward.

  She studied each of the reports, noting the dates of each earlier blood-taking murder. She searched for patterns. One was dated November 3 of the previous year; a second, December 6. They were hundreds of miles from each other, yet both, like the third, were in the Midwest. The third report told of a bizarre death that had occurred the following March, late in the month. Why the long hiatus between the second and third killings? And now Candy Copeland on April 3. If it was the work of a single killer or a single pair of killers on a rampage, going the several months between December and March might mean a jail term was being served, or the killer had moved away for a time before returning to the area. Yet, it was such a wide-ranging area: Wisconsin, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa.

  The method of murder was chillingly similar in all these cases, and it gave rise to the horrible thought that there could be far more murders committed by this madman than anyone knew, or ever might know. Other bloodless bodies buried in shallow graves and hanging in such remote locations as to have gone undiscovered.

  She jotted notes from her meandering thoughts, one of which was to check with all missing persons bureaus across the Midwest, to gain a computer list of all the names and addresses of the missing and see if any lived in or around such places as Wekosha, Wisconsin, and these other small hamlets.

  She also noted on the reports that all the women had not only been mutilated and drained of their blood supplies but had had their tendons severed. She noted, too, that the earlier cases had all been under the purview of Dr. Raynack, who, as acting head of the department before her appointment, had not seen fit to discuss any of these cases with her.

  “The bastard,” she muttered.

  “Coffee?” It was Otto, returned with two cups of coffee.

  “You're a lifesaver, yes.”

  Otto settled in again across from her in the cab. He waited expectantly for her to express herself on the faxed material. She kept him waiting until her coffee was half-consumed, and then she told him what she had found in the way of patterns, all of which he already knew.

  “These were Raynack's cases, I see,” she finished.

  “The old doctor didn't pursue them as aggressively as I would like to have seen them pursued.”

  “He never left Virginia,” she said. “Expected to do it all from the confines of the lab. Just took samples sent him by the local guys in every case.”

  “And that's only in the cases that bothered to notify us at all. I suspect there've probably been others, but we're not always notified or asked for help.”

  “How did you get interested in this one?” she asked.

  “It was brought to my attention in a not too subtle way by John Thorpe.”

  “All before my appointment.”

  “Thorpe did the right thing, but no one, not even Raynack, knows about my having pursued the matter. As for J.T., all he knows is that he felt someone ought to investigate a little more in-depth on such cases.”

  “So why didn't you get John Thorpe on this flight? Instead, you have me.”

  “J.T.'s a good man, no doubt about that; but so are you—and I mean that in the most complimentary way. But you are also now head of your area, and I want your area to fall under my division, to be a part of my division. Raynack has fought the notion for a long time, but I'm hoping you'll see the wisdom in it.”

  “I can understand Raynack's reluctance.”

  “I've heard all of his arguments, about how scientists cannot be bullied and pressured into framing reports that fit a case scenario that my psych team puts together; that's not what I want to do at all.”

  The flight was coming to an end, a Fasten seat belts red light flashing now. Otto reached across and took her hand in his, a gesture she wasn't expecting. He was a handsome older man, striking with his silver-dappled head; dedicated to the work, he had shown such pain in his eyes back at that death cabin in Wekosha.

  “Jess, you did a hell of a job, and I want you standing before my team with your findings up to now—''

  “Whoa!”

  “—tomorrow afternoon, four sharp, debriefing room 222, all right?”

  “Hold on, Otto! I'd have to work my people on twenty-four-hour shifts to—”

  “Just bring us what you've got to date. That's all I'm asking, Jess.”

  “I just don't know... Standing before a psychological profiling team—your team—with the paltry bits and pieces I have...”

  “Do it for me, then, Jess.”

  She sighed and looked down at her hands in his. When she looked up he said, “I've got all the confidence in the world in you.”

  “That's... what I like to hear. All right,” she conceded. “And thanks for the confidence.”

  “You earned it, measure for measure.”

  He released her hands and sat more calmly in his seat, the Lear descending rapidly now. He muttered almost to himself, “I'm sorry if you felt lied to, cheated or used in all this, Jess.”

  Part of her wanted to shout, “Use me!” but another part forced her to remain silent, to hear him out.

  “Things're very unsettled in my life right now. Between my wife's coma taking its toll on us both, and the demands of the job... Leamy, Raynack, some other enemies I've managed to make...”

  She had had no idea that he considered Leamy an enemy along with Raynack, and she wondered about the others, but she remained silent, allowing him to go on.

  “Anyway, working with you has been real, very real and refreshing.”

  “Thanks, Otto, but are you sure you're not making too much of all this? Raynack's a pain in the ass, I know, but—”

  “Put it this way, kid. Watch your backside with Raynack. It's people like us, you the new-kid-on-the-block and me the tired old racehorse, they screw first... so watch it.” She watched as he doused his coffee with a hefty helping of bourbon. She guessed he had had too much alcohol and was feeling it, and feeling sorry for himself, which was totally out of character for Boutine... and yet, she had heard reports about his excessive behavior of late, something about his having pun
ched out a doctor at Bethesda.

  “Hey,” he began philosophically, “life and the Bureau go on, right? With or without guys like me. We're all expendable. It's what's expedient at the moment for the Bureau that ought to concern each and every one of us, right?”

  “That's nonsense, Otto. Everyone knows you're the best psych team leader at Quantico, and everybody knows—”

  “Nobody knows a goddamned—” He stopped himself, the old control coming back over him like a mantle.

  “Your solve rate is higher than any—”

  “Look, I just wanted you to understand—I mean know— the full extent of... of my... of my use for you, Dr. Coran. I may be pulling you down with me.” He stared hard into her unflinching eyes now. “There! Confession, they say, is good for the soul.”

  She wondered if there wasn't something else he was holding back; she believed for a moment there was and that he was going to continue to confess, to say something about how he felt about Jessica Coran and not about Dr. Coran. But he lapsed into silent stoicism, staring out into the blankness of the cloud cover above Quantico.

  Up front, the garbled voice of the pilot talking to the tower was the only thing that broke the silence of the cab. The revelations from Boutine, such as they were, only served to confuse her. She knew he was having difficulties with his wife's condition, that any man must, but she had not known that he was becoming paranoid, that he felt threatened here at Quantico by Leamy, Raynack and mysterious others. It must be the booze talking.

  The plane touched down, the urrrk-urrrk-urrrrrrk of the burning tires kissing the tarmac below a sullen, rain-soaked, dreary sky here on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. She was relieved to be returning to the Virginia facilities and to home.

  SEVEN

  John Thorpe met them at the airstrip the moment they touched down, wheeling out in a jeep, waving his arms, as full of enthusiasm as ever. He leaped from the backseat, rushed toward the plane and plied them with questions before they got their feet on the ground, anxious to know if the trip had panned out, or if it should have been panned.