“Sound tired.”
“That's an understatement. Look, J.T., suppose for a moment that the guy who did the Copeland killing, the Trent and the McDonell killings was the same guy as our Zion guy. It's not a sex-lust killing in the usual sense with this guy, since his lust is not to fulfill any sexual fantasy but a fantasy of blood-harvesting. He simply has no need of sex.”
“Then why the semen at all?”
“To keep people like you and me going around in circles.”
“So he gets the semen from other men? I don't get it.”
“Goddammit, he's impotent. He's in and out of hospitals until he becomes a known fixture. We know he's likely using medical apparatus—tourniquets, tubes maybe, cortisone in potent dosage, and quite possibly narcotics. He knows his way around hospitals. So he knows where the sperm bank is.”
“Ahhhh, gotcha.”
“Men.”
“What?”
“You can be so thick.”
“Thick?”
“So he doesn't like playing with girls in that way, only killing them by syphoning away their lives through a tube.” The thought of such a killer made her feel once more for his various victims, and with the body count spiraling upward, she feared for his next victim. Her hatred of the killer grew by steady leaps.
She asked if he could transfer her to Boutine's office, complaining she'd heard nothing from him.
He said he'd transfer the call, but came on again complaining that Boutine was unavailable at the moment. She said goodbye to J.T., who seemed reluctant to hang up.
That had been at 4 P.M., sometime after she and Joe Brewer had gotten back to the Chicago bureau. Now she was back at the Lincolnshire Inn, where she had a message waiting from Boutine. He was flying in. He left the number on the jet where he could be reached.
She telephoned from her room immediately.
It was wonderful to hear the strong timbre of Otto Boutine's voice again, but after the amenities, she learned why J.T. was acting so strangely, and why Otto had been kept tied up at Quantico. A letter had arrived there addressed to her, a letter which may have come from the killer. J.T. had taken receipt of the letter, and finding it odorous and suspicious, he had taken it to Boutine, who had ordered it opened. Boutine had an instant impression that it was genuine, and so he and J.T. had run it through Documents for any clues to the identity of the killer. Dried flecks of blood from the lettering had accumulated like rust in the bottom of the envelope, and these were cross-matched with those of the known victims, and the blood had been matched with Candy Copeland's after other chemical components had been separated out.
“What other chemical components?”
“Ahhh, blood had been mixed with an anticoagulating agent, so as to have more of an inky quality.”
“Mixed with India ink?”
“Not quite.”
“What, then?”
“Same components as in correction fluid, nail polish.”
Jessica took this all in with full gulps of air. “Tell me about the paper it was written on. Any clues there?”
“Cheap, ordinary office stock.”
“Copier paper?”
“Yeah, nothing special about it.”
“And the handwriting?”
“Printing. Our boy's crafty.”
“The pen?”
“Done with an old-style quill pen.”
“Want to hear it, or wait until I get there?”
She knew the original would not leave Quantico; that he had a copy. “Go ahead,” she said, although she didn't want to hear it. Over the phone, from the jet. Otto's reading of it was not enough, even verbatim. She listened intently, trying to penetrate beyond the words, to read between the lines. But she needed to see every word before her. Even so, each word took on its own chilling new meaning for her. And when the killer ended by saying that perhaps one day they might meet, that he might one day take a little of her blood, she had heard enough, and she understood why J.T. was acting as he had at the other end of the phone. He'd been ordered to say nothing of this to her, obviously by Boutine, who, as it appeared, wished to break it to her his way. He hadn't wanted her to spend the day with this additional monkey on her back; and he had wanted the letter completely analyzed before she learned about it.
He had no idea she had gotten an inkling of it through Brewer. And she kept it that way.
She had never been directly addressed by a maniac before, and this one was a level 9 torturer, a blood-drinker. Otto's Tort 9 who wanted some of her blood. It was like hearing his ugly voice and being touched by his ugly hand, as if she were one of his victims. The letter was a vile document, and yet it seemed to excite Boutine; for him, it was the most important single clue to finding the killer yet; for him, the killer had finally made a mistake, exposing himself for the first time.
“If he writes once, he'll write again, just as he'll kill again,” said Boutine with certainty.
She didn't want to tell Boutine that she didn't want any more love letters from a human vampire. She instead told him of what they had found in Indiana and about the cortisone clue found in Zion.
“Both killings match up with our guy?”
“No doubt in my mind.”
“I'll call Hector Rodriguez at the Tribune to print another story, and this time we'll tell the world the guy is gay, that he's a momma's boy, anything we can think of to keep him on edge.”
“I'm not convinced that using the press is going to rattle this guy. He wrote that letter to me before he read anything of any substance in the Tribune. All they had was the useless info coming out of Wekosha, and that was pretty paltry stuff.”
“The team's decided, Jess. This is the best way to go now.”
“Then why not go all the way? Really shake him up.”
“How do you mean?”
“Give it out that the killer is suffering from a rare disease—”
“Rare disease? What rare disease?”
“I've talked to several doctors here that agree with me that the level of dosage this guy's taking in the form of cortisone can be for any number of illnesses, but the one disease that would fixate our boy on a vampire obsession might be Addison's disease. This means he's very sensitive to cold, and that he's probably got large, lumpy areas on his back and buttocks. That's pretty personal shit. He's likely to have a large, oval face, big jowls.”
“Symptoms of the disease?”
“Exactly.”
“Yeah, I can see where this might shake this guy loose a bit, put a dent in his methodical armor.”
“And there's something else.”
“Shoot.”
“He really is impotent.”
“How do you know that for certain, Jessica?”
“He's stealing sperm from other men.”
“What? Say again.”
“He's using other men's semen—”
“The semen of other men? The lab tell you that?”
“In each case, the semen has been different, so there's no way we can get a DNA match on this guy's semen sample. The semen he's smearing into the orifices by hand is coming out of... test tubes or something. Taken from sperm banks or something.”
“He's getting drugs and semen samples from hospitals he visits,” said Boutine. “Then why not simply steal the blood he needs and wants from the same source?”
“It's not just blood he wants.”
“Of course not.”
“He wants power, supreme power over others. He wants to enjoy the blood-taking the old-fashioned way, and he can't do that by rifling blood banks.”
“A real throwback, huh?”
“You got it. And Otto, we may's well really stick it to this creep.”
“How so?”
“Give the papers the tube; the fact he plunges a nasty little straw into the victim's jugular and sucks out the blood through a tube and carries off most of the blood in jars.”
“How do we know it's jars?”
“Easier to handle t
han packs in the situation. Mason jars, I suspect.”
“Be as specific as we dare, huh?”
“The jars alone will unnerve the bastard, and possibly make him do something to flash who he is.”
“But we're giving away a lot, and it'll draw the cranks like flies.”
“We're holding back enough to discredit any professional confessors,” she said. “Besides, stories about his manhood aren't going to bother this guy. He's sexless. His only sex is getting off on the torture and the blood he swallows, don't you see? So attacking his manhood isn't going to bother him in the least. And one more thing.”
“Yeah?”
“He's targeted me, and he's going to know that I'm the one saying these things about him.”
“Yeah, that worries me, Jess.”
“Worries hell out of me, too, but I don't see we have much of an alternative. This guy's really stocking up for Christmas in his personal blood bank account. We've got to make an offensive move, lead with our knight.”
“Suppose you're right. I'll see to it.”
“How soon will you arrive?”
“Before dawn. I'll meet you there. Get some rest.”
“You, too. And good night. Otto.”
“Good night, Jess.” The news of the letter left Jessica shaken, but she hadn't wanted Otto to sense this, and so she covered it well. She was just relieved that he was coming to her.
In the meantime. Brewer's Chicago task force had every available law enforcement officer in the city looking into hospital records and asylum releases, and by way of the P.P. team's suggestion, all medical supply companies. Still, there were so bloody many in the area, it might take months to narrow it down to just the right one where their killer worked.
TWENTY-TWO
Otto Boutine had grown up on a weedy little farm that was aspiring to be a ranch near Bozeman, Montana. It had been a rough life, filled with hardships, but amid the difficulties there was a great affection between himself and his parents, and the life had taught him self-reliance and resourcefulness. He was raised on chores. He was responsible from a very young age for firewood, hay for the horses, the scut work around the bam, grazing the mares and helping during foldings. His memories were filled with some very good times. But they all ended in harshness.
A spate of bad luck plagued the small ranch when his mother fell ill. Diagnosed with cancer, she did not last long. It was after her passing that Otto learned just how much his father and his father's business depended upon the wisdom and guidance of his mother. The place went downhill like a California mud slide and there was nothing his father could do to help; in fact, the more Herman Boutine did, the worse his situation became. With the loss of his wife and the financial setbacks, Otto watched his father decline.
The place had had to be put up for auction, and Otto and his father watched every personal belonging go up for sale. The loss of their home was the final blow for Otto's father. All life had soured for the man, and he could see no use in the future, and no amount of talking to him seemed to matter. Otto watched him pull a cloak around himself, a shroud, and in his living death he was never able to free himself from this shroud again.
He was soon in the hospital, unable to pay for the bed in which he lay. He died there within forty-eight hours of entering the hospital, hating every second of his ' 'welfare stay” as he called it. Otto was not quite eighteen at the time, but he had won a scholarship to attend the University of California at Berkeley, and so, after burying his father, he left Bozeman and never looked back.
That had been in 1963, the year that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The assassination that touched so many lives turned his attention toward law enforcement and the FBI in particular. At Berkeley he pursued a course of study that would lead him into criminal justice. Along the way he had met a young, brash lawyer named Marilyn Amesworth. They married and before them lay a beautiful life, their love for one another the great support in his life. And then she was struck down. And now he had buried his wife.
So here he was on an FBI-owned Learjet bound for Chicago as much to get to Jessica Coran as to put an end to a case which, it appeared, was shaping up to be the most important case in his career. Word about the corridors of FBI headquarters at Quantico had it that he was emotionally crippled by his latest personal bout with death; that the case should be handled by someone else, someone stronger and younger. Leamy had made it all quite clear: Boutine had twenty-four hours in which to show some break in the deadlocked case, or he was off it.
He wondered about his own deepest motives for racing to Jessica now. Ostensibly, it was to share the wording of the letter from this madman calling himself Teach, and most people would accept that. Ostensibly, his rushing away from pressing duties in Virginia to be at her side was due to the obvious threat the killer posed to Jessica. But if he were honest with himself, it was a desperate action. But was he more desperate to be with Jessica or to be nearby when she broke the case? For he had little doubt that Jess would bring about the break in the case they needed.
Still, his feelings for her were undeniable. He wondered if he should not declare them to her. He wondered if he dared.
Marilyn had been gone from him long before her actual clinical death. The lingering coma had sapped him of hope, reducing him to the little boy who watched his father's slow death. He needed someone to turn to, someone who would take the pain away, draw it off the way Jessica did, sometimes without her even knowing.
Was he acting like a fool? Would Jessica respond to him? Would she understand his needs? Or would she confuse them with motives of a different nature?
The hum of the engines was like the thinking of God, deep and resonant and peaceful but also unfathomable. He let the black-and-white copy of the letter from Teach slip from his grasp and onto the circular tabletop as his head fell back and he rested his eyes just for a moment before falling into a deep slumber.
He dreamed of Jessica.
# # #
Otto Boutine arrived at her door, and she welcomed him in. He had come alone except for the copy of the letter he had on his person, and it seemed like there was a third person in the room—the killer.
She went to the kitchenette and brewed them coffee. Otto spread the letter out on the table, saying that Documents was picking it apart, along with several shrinks and as many of his P.P. team as he was able to get back to Quantico. Byrnes was still in Wekosha, where he had uncovered very little new information, except for the fact that a guy with a medical supply company had made some purchases in the town at a music store, tapes of classical music primarily. The name of the place was Pernell's Music Emporium. A weak description of the man was of very little help, but it supported much of the theorizing that the P.P. team had done: the killer was in his late twenties or early thirties, a medical supply salesman of some sort, quiet and wallflowerlike, if not a regular shrinking violet.
With their coffee and the strange letter from Teach between them, the two FBI agents discussed its deeper meaning.
“I'm worried about this, Jess,” he admitted. “It means that he's picked you from a crowd. Of all the hundreds of law enforcement people involved in this case, he has fixed his bloody attention on you. Gives me the chills, just thinking about it.”
“Hasn't done much for my digestion either,” she admitted. “Or my beauty sleep.”
He had noticed that she'd been staring at the TV from the couch rather than in her bed when he had come in. “That's why I flew out. Christ, Jess, J.T.'s analysis of the blood scrapings—”
“What? What about them?”
“The blood on the letter matches Copeland's in every detail.”
“Bastard,” she muttered. “Pisses away the dead girl's blood, uses it for ink... God knows what other uses he makes of it.”
“A real Marquis de Sade. Wouldn't be surprised if he bathed in it,” he said. “So, little wonder I got worried about you out here. Called Joe Brewer personally to ask him to stick by you.”
�
��Oh, he did that.”
“That jerk didn't make a pass at you, did he?”
“Not quite.”
“Meaning?”
She frowned and shrugged. “It was nothing.”
“Jess?”
“He... he asked about our relationship.”
Otto dropped his gaze. “He's not the only one asking.”
“I told him we were just best of friends.”
“And we are,” he replied, reaching across to her hand and covering it. “But I've had... hopes... that we might be more to one another... someday.”
She covered his hand in hers. “I've had similar... hopes.”
“So I came a thousand miles to be with you.”
She stared at him, trying to uncover the unspoken words here. “Against orders? Not against Leamy's holy wishes, I hope.”
“No, nothing like that,” he said, but there seemed to be something hidden in his tone.
“What, then?”
“Someone's been spreading stories about... well, about you and me, Jess.” He scratched nervously behind his ear, and she saw that he was exhausted.
She frowned, but leaned across to him and kissed him. “Can you blame anyone for talking? There's some fire in this smoke... isn't there?”
“There is... a fire.”
“Brewer... some of your friends... are just worried it's too soon after Marilyn. Afraid I'll not be good for you or your career. And maybe, maybe they're—”
“—wrong,” he finished for her, kissing her deeply, probing her mouth with his tongue.
She felt her passion for him rise like the energy above an open flame; she felt as if all her inner turmoil and emotional conflict, the horrendous nature of her long, defeating search for the killer, the stress of being in charge of a forensics division of the largest law enforcement agency in the world—all of it melted within her, turning to an invisible, yielding mist that drained off her mind, to be replaced with his touch.
She could feel, also, Otto's inner trembling as he gave into his need for her. He tenderly held her, his mouth hungrily exploring hers, until suddenly he swept her up and carried her into the bedroom, where he softly placed her against the pillows. The earlier darkness of the room had been too heavy and somber and cold, but now it was as if a ray of morning light had filtered in. She could see Otto clearly over her, his features distinct and his eyes probing. She reached up and helped him tear away his shirt, her nails going into his flesh, making him arch toward her. She lifted her mouth to his chest and suckled at him, making him groan. She lay back and opened her robe to him.
Killer Instinct Page 21
