Pure Instinct jc-5

by Robert W. Walker

  “ We've got another body… washed up out of Big Muddy this morning… looks like the work of the Hearts guy,” said Stephens to Jessica Coran as the motorcade moved over an enormous bridge spanning the Mississippi, the dappled light and shadow of the bridge cables creating a mosaic of fleeting images through the tinted glass windows. “Thought you may's well set right to work, Dr. Coran. You should've come ahead with me yesterday,” he finished, chastising like the polite headmaster of a boarding school.

  “ We heard you had another yesterday as well. Kinda getting crowded in the morgue, no doubt. Deja vu for Dr. Ward-law, I'm sure.”

  Stephens was silent for a moment. “Wardlaw'll be around for a week or so, hand over the baton, all that, but he's officially off the case.”

  “ Off the case?”

  “ We felt it best that you take complete control at this point, Doctor… for the time being at least, and he… well, he didn't like the arrangement, so we severed ties with the man.”

  “ Whew…what happened, Stephens? What really happened? Out with it. You don't fire an M.E. for no cause.”

  Stephens ran a hand through his thinning red hair and sighed in exasperation, echoing her words. “What happened… quite…”

  “ I'm a big girl, Commissioner. Tell me straight out.”

  “ Look, suffice it to say that the man's become unglued, and it's spilled over into his work and, well… having the eyes of the nation bearing down on us, thanks to this case, we just can't have any slipups at this point.”

  “ Unglued? As in a nervous breakdown?”

  “ Not precisely. Perhaps you might call it a drug dependency.”

  “ Alcohol?”

  “ You are perceptive, Doctor.”

  “ It comes with the territory, sometimes. The drug dependency, I mean…” She felt for this faceless, unknown Dr. Wardlaw. Many good M.E. s, and doctors in general, had faced the same problem he faced now, she included-although hers was of a short duration, exacerbated by two men in her life, Matisak and Jim Parry, the one she feared and hated, the other she feared and loved.

  What difference would it have made had she stayed in Hawaii, she told herself. If she'd remained, she would have found a way to destroy what she and Jim had anyway. Dr. Lemonte had told her as much. Not until she could rid herself of the damage caused by Matisak could she be fully free of her crippling fears, which included a fear of commitment and a fear of happiness.

  “ We're here to assist in any way we can, Dr. Coran,” said Lew Meade, introducing himself and shaking hands with Jessica. “Frankly, I long before lost all faith in Frank Wardlaw, and I also place little store in psychics, even if they do work for us, so I was more than pleased when I learned of your coming.”

  Stephens quickly countered with: “But we are at our wit's end here, and the local police have exhausted their leads, so…”The limo ride was like glass over a silken pond. “So, why not give hocus-pocus a chance?” Jessica asked.

  “ Thought you'd appreciate my candor, Dr. Coran,” said Meade, a thick man whose girth spread across the limo. “Sorry, I don't mean to offend in any way.”

  Jessica wondered why she'd felt compelled to defend Dr. Desinor in her absence. “No offense taken,” she lied, taking an instant and irrational dislike to the man, feeling uncomfortable with the way in which he and Stephens had chosen to handle matters, waving a red flag at the press. And yet isn't that what she'd wanted, to signal to Matisak her whereabouts, to lure him out?

  “ Tell me more about the specific reasons for taking Ward-law off the case,” she said.

  Stephens ran down the particulars, citing numerous lab errors which Wardlaw had made, finishing with: “Really not much more to tell. The man simply couldn't cope with it any longer-emotionally, I mean. In any case,” he continued, “you're pretty much in charge at the NOPD crime lab for the moment, Dr. Coran.”

  It was a thought that made her happy to some degree, to be in charge, not to have to tiptoe around the local chieftain at the crime lab, to be able to simply plunge in without the usual bowing, scraping and posturing, to just have everyone in the place following her orders. The idea held out great charm and possibilities to her. Maybe Wardlaw's loss was her gain; maybe Wardlaw's alcoholism was her redemption… maybe now that she had a handle, she believed, on her own problems…

  The motorcade had drawn onlookers and a crowd of reporters, just as it was intended to do. Some had snapped off shots at the airport, but this wasn't enough for many who'd followed on their heels, and now as they pulled in under the enormous, rusting metal bridge spanning the Mississippi, reporters were not only taking snapshots of Dr. Jessica Coran but of the crime scene itself. Stephens and Meade had, for their own reasons, staged a media circus, and Jessica found herself in the center ring.

  “ You got public-relations problems with this case big time, don't you, Commissioner?” she asked as she climbed from the limo, dragging her hefty black valise with her. The two men in the limo admired her legs before following her out.

  A suspendered politician with a young and hungry look rushed to them and took her hand, shaking it like a pump, saying, “I'm second deputy mayor of the city, Leroy David Fouintenac, Dr. Coran, and anything-I mean anything the city can do to make your stay more comfortable-please, please don't hesitate to contact me. Call me at this number, day or night, you got the least problem, understood?” He slipped her his card, which she took with a heavy dose of salt.

  “ I'd like to get to work over here,” she told the men, stepping away from them, allowing them to roost here at a safe distance where they might posture for the public all they wished. She went straight for the body. It felt good to be back…

  She was soon over the corpse, standing, sizing up things from afar. The body, which had already been disturbed by others, was now draped with a policeman's sheet, one that could've been cleaner-old blood smears from previous cases staining it. The coverlet was meant to protect the deceased's integrity, but it did very little to protect the integrity of the crime scene, most likely having come from somewhere in the back of a squad car.

  From her black valise, Jessica pulled forth a full-length white lab coat and placed it over her shoulders to protect her lime-green pants suit. It was extremely humid already though it was still early morning, the day promising a record-breaking heat. She saw an unmarked police car coming off the bridge now, and in the rear seat she could dimly make out Dr. Kim Desinor's pretty profile.

  “ Good,” she muttered to herself, “give the men something else to stare at for a while.”

  Overhead, Jessica saw a sign for the Jax Brewery, and beside this an even larger billboard advertising live bait, beer and snacks in that order, along with excursion boats and fishing charters, all below bold letters that read: “TOULOUSE STREET WHARF.”

  12

  One by one, and two by two.

  He tossed them human hearts to chew.

  — Shelley

  Alex Sincebaugh felt the wave of burdensome humidity leisurely insinuate itself into his pores as it wafted across the pier where the body, pulled from the water by men and machines moments before, was still dripping and not likely to dry out anytime soon. As early as it was, the heat had settled in like God's angry breath on their faces, necks and any exposed skin, sending a perspiring reminder to one and all that mortality was ever present, while promising up a scorching day for the radio announcers to bitch about, a day of blown-out tires and blistering metal fatigue for automobiles, all in the wake of a record-breaking Louisiana heat wave; in other words, misery and a wall of super-heated air to exist in and to move through.

  Louisiana's summer heat killed things: potted plants on win-dowsills-all but St. Augustine grass-and the small hearts of rabbits, raccoons, and overwrought birds that didn't stand a chance, couldn't cope. Dead opossums floated downriver in the Big Muddy, their teeth, gums and bone exposed, water turning their hardened, furry forms into tar like slicks. Only time and the water might clean up such debris; the fish didn
't seem to want it.

  It was nearing mid-morning at the Toulouse Street Wharf, where the first rays of the sun glinted and winked between the paddle wheels of the steamboat Natchez. From where Alex stood, the angle of the paddle wheel lifted over the bridge, making passing cars disappear on the Jefferson Highway on the east side of the river and U.S. 18 on the west. Here was a Mississippi River stopover with restaurants, a Texaco station for boat traffic and another excursion cruise ship called the Bayou Jean Lafitte, which departed every two hours for the Bayou Barataria, once home to the famous pirate.

  Across the river from where she stood, Kim Desinor, her sundrenched hair glistening in the New Orleans morning, could see a levee and a canal, which in the old days might well have connected up to others and, if followed carefully, might take one to Lake Ponchartrain-but that was before economic progress had covered over many of the canals.

  Still, there remained literally hundreds of canals that crisscrossed the city, meeting the perpetual downriver flow of the Mississippi at the city's northernmost tier. New Orleans was a city of canals and intermittent pumping stations. Below sea level, half the city's land mass was perpetually under siege by water, and when it rained hard, as it often did, water had to be pumped from canals which fed into Lake Ponchartrain, else the entire city would flood.

  Sincebaugh and Ben deYampert, along with Kim-who was feeling like the psychic interloper or psychic saint, however the myriad perceptions might mold her-now joined the crowd of authorities on the wharf where Jessica Coran had already started to work. It appeared the aftermath of yet another seemingly mindless, unreasonable and bestial desecration of a person, the body belonging to a young man, his exact age and identity yet to be determined.

  All too obviously to Kim, as it must be to Jessica's FBI-trained eye, the brutalization of the body had filled a raging need in the monster who'd inflicted such wounds in his at-tempt to get at the heart, ripping wide the chest and viscera from the hapless victim. Kim, also trained to some degree in criminal-profile procedures, could read all that in the stark evidence on the wharf. No great or mysterious or powerful trick in that observation, she told herself now; certainly no sixth sense required, she continued to mentally remind herself, wondering again why Jessica Coran should be acting so bitchy toward her. Perhaps it had all to do with the fact that Jessica's mind, as well as her entire life, had always been predicated on the search for scientifically proven fact, indisputable, hard, tangible evidence. It was what a medical examiner staked her life on; it was her worldview. Yet here Jessica was on bended knee, and not bending too gracefully at that, groveling in her mind's eye, no doubt, to a woman whose worldview was in direct contradiction to her own, having to ask Kim Desinor for help. She had been so far reduced by her continuing fear of the phantom stalking her that she'd arranged a secret moment alone with a psychic for answers, and then what did she get? The sky is falling…shit…

  Kim was angry with herself that her reading had gone so badly. It might color their relationship from here on out, should Dr. Coran make assumptions based on what had occurred in that Lear jet.

  Kim watched the other woman now in the shadow of the big riverboat Natchez; Jessica's sable-like, auburn hair and alluring features were startlingly set off by the white lab coat she now wore, a pair of silver-rimmed magnifying glasses framing her enchanting hazel eyes. Besides appearing lovely, Jessica looked adept, competent, knowledgeable, experienced and in charge all at once-all those good things which Kim at the moment was wishing she felt. Jessica and the NOPD principals on the case, Sincebaugh and deYampert, did their work while tourists looked on from the deck, preparing for an excursion upriver and down.

  A light fog veiled the scene, but not enough to offer cover from prying eyes and the high-tech photo lenses of curious journalists and people with home cameras. Officials were rightly concerned that they might wind up on I-Witness Video in coming weeks, and from Stephens's behavior, he'd welcome it. Word had already gone out about the heinous nature of the crimes to both the locals and nationwide. Facts in evidence: There'd been a string of male prostitute deaths in the French Quarter; these deaths were caused by massive lacerations to the upper body; each victim had later had his genitals excised; each victim had had his heart removed, some people speculating that it had happened before death set in; the killer had struck five, possibly six times and had escalated his attacks; the killer had attacked both indoors and out. And now he was escalating the frequency of his attacks, according to police; only the day before there'd been another discovery of a body floating in a Mississippi backwash, the headless ca-daver that Sincebaugh had only hinted at. Everything known about the killer culminated in one frightening truth-the phantom remained unapprehended and he would kill again and again until he was stopped.

  Sergeant Detective Ben deYampert ambled over to where Jessica worked, almost stepping on her black valise, he was that clumsy. He started talking as if they'd known each other since childhood.

  “ You know, I've lived all my life in New Orleans, and I've spent the last six years on the NOPD, working my way up to sergeant detective, Homicide Squad. Guess it takes a case like this to make you wonder why a man'd subject himself to this line of work, huh?”

  When he got no answer from Jessica, whose attention now was riveted on the body, deYampert merely continued on. “I got a wife and kids at home; they don't hardly know me anymore. I'm telling you, if something doesn't bust loose soon, well… I ain't so sure I want to keep on as a detective.”

  She finally looked up at the doughy-eyed, large man and offered a half smile of reassurance. “Hang in there, Sergeant. We're going to get this bastard and soon.” Even as she spoke the words, she realized how cold and routine they must sound, but she only made things worse when she went on. “But if you're looking for psychoanalysis, see Kim Desinor over there. I understand she's a shrink as well as a psychic.”

  “ Is that your idea of a consoling word, or do you have something concrete or useful to share with us?” asked an acerbic man now beside deYampert who quickly introduced himself as the principle detective on the case, Alex Sincebaugh.

  She looked over her shoulder from the kneeling position she'd taken alongside the horrid corpse. The fire in Alex Sincebaugh's eyes was a sharp contrast to the cold, watery yet barren gaze of the corpse.

  “ Why'd he leave this one's head intact?” asked deYampert of her, as if she had some magical dust to spread which would reveal the answers to all his questions.

  “ I don't think he's really interested in heads as trophies,” she coolly replied.

  “ We figured with yesterday's vie,” deYampert continued, as if still hoping for the pixie dust, “that he was increasing his attacks, but we never figured on finding another body within twenty-four hours.”

  Jessica had no reply for such a statement, certainly not here and now. She'd need considerable time in the lab to look over the evidence of both recent kills. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Dr. Kim Desinor was pacing the wharf, seeking out an area where she might receive some psychic emanations, Jessica supposed, but the doctor of head and haunt seemed at the moment only to be frustrated. Continuing to gather what trace elements she could from the waterlogged victim, scraping out the nails, knowing that the water had likely already gotten her real trace evidence, Jessica made short work of the preliminaries. At the same time, she kept an eye on Kim, who had now reached into her purse and pulled forth the rosary beads but seemed hesitant to clutch them, dropping them back into her purse instead.“So, do you have anything of substance for us? Dr. Coran?” Sincebaugh pressed. “Wardlaw, your M.E.,” she began to Sincebaugh's audible groan, having to forge ahead over the man's pained expression. “Anyway, he tells me yesterday long-distance that he was able to get some semen from the previous victim's mouth which he's running DNA scans on now. He theorizes that it could be from the killer, and if so… who knows, maybe we can leam something about this guy's physical makeup-racial identity, probable height, weight, colo
r of hair, eyes…”

  “ Wardlaw's just as likely to botch a DNA test as any other test he runs.”

  She looked up again at the rankled cop. “Well, I see there's no love lost between you, but amazingly enough, there were some hairs and fibers found inside the corpse which didn't belong to the victim.”

  “ Semen? None of the others had any semen in their mouths.” DeYampert was working on this puzzle.

  “ Exactly… and none of them had had their heads severed either, and nor does this morning's package. Everything intact except the missing heart and genitals.”

  Sincebaugh was nodding appreciatively. “I'd had similar un answered questions about yesterday's 'package' as you call it, Doctor. So, Frank's on top of that one, huh? Going at it through DNA testing. Just where is officer Frank Wardlaw this morning, Dr. Coran?” Sincebaugh asked while struggling with some inner turmoil that Jessica couldn't quite put her finger on.

  “ I assume he's at his crime lab. I really couldn't say.”

  “ I would've assumed he'd be here. How're you two getting on, then?”

  “ We actually haven't as yet met-face-to-face, that is, Lieutenant.”

  Damn thorough of Frank to catch the semen, thought Sincebaugh. Wonder what's up. Now that the famous Jessica Coran had hit town, was Frank going to finally do his job? “Just the same, Frank ought to be out here, don't you agree?”

  “ He… he wasn't called out, so I'm told.” She blinked in the morning glare in P.C. Stephens's direction, her long lashes like butterfly wings.

  “ Wasn't called? Really?”

  “ Yes, really. He's…well, guess you'll hear soon enough, but it's not my place to tell you.”

  “ Tell me what?”

  “ He's currently under some, I don't know, attack…”

  “ What the hell's that? FBI euphemism for investigation of misconduct and impropriety?”