Robert Walker - Unnatural Instinct

The phone rang, and Jessica grabbed for it; anything to end her staring at the reams of paper that made up the bulk of DeCampe's cases in just the last month.

The call was for Lew, his wife, sounding pissed off. Jessica handed him the phone and tried not to watch him squirm. Jessica liked Lew, but she thought the man ought to show a little firmness with the woman on the other end of the line.

Clemmens hung up, shaking his head. “Sorry… she has no idea why we have to be in D.C. I had to leave a message at home for her. She wasn't pleased.” Again the phone rang. This time J. T. came on the line, going on about how the newsies had gotten the entire story of Judge DeCampe's disappearance and still no ransom note, nothing whatever, in fact, from the abductor. J. T. sounded as if he might hyperventilate.

“ And everyone's gunning for you, Jess. They think you're not moving fast enough on the case. Can you believe the crap that-”

“ Slow down, J. T. Take it easy, and take a deep breath. I'm working on the case. I've got Lew Clemmens here, and we're searching electronically through old case files that have anything to do with Judge DeCampe. Going to take it back incrementally to her first year out of law school if necessary to find any clue as to what sort of phantom we are chasing. You tell all the whom evers that. Give it to Santiva. He'll kick it upstairs.”

“ Yeah… good thinking. He'll run to the end zone with that. Gotcha. I told them you were on top of it.”

“ Thanks, John. And John-”

“ Yes?”

“ Don't let the bastards wear you down.”

“ Situation normal, all fouled up,” he replied and laughed.

“ And let Santiva know that Lew and I have been at work at HQ for two hours this morning on this.”

“ Right… check… count on it. Lew's with you al-ready?”

“ Picked him up on my way back from Quantico. Tell anyone busting our asses that we are busting our own asses and don't need any help. See you back here when you can get here.”

“ Will do. You did the right thing calling in Lew.”

'Tell them that. I wouldn't trust anyone but Lew with this. He knows the COMIT project like no one else aboard, so if this guy's MO is in any of the files, open or unsolved, that we've poured into the system to date, then we'll get him.”

“ Just a matter of time.”

“ Nice of you to say so, J. T.”

She hung up. Lew stared up at her where she now stood. “Thanks again, Doctor, for the confidence. I'm correlating any unsolved murder cases in the system with the judge.”

“ Who knows? We might get lucky. Meanwhile, I also want you and Steve Conyers to work on/off shifts so there's no slowdown on this info gathering. And Lew…”

“ Yeah?”

“ Do the same for solved cases as you're doing for unsolved cases, and cases that resulted in threats on the judge's life.”

“ Let our fingers do the legwork,” he replied. “Why not?”

“ It's the time element that's crucial here. Guy abducts a woman and does not make a ransom demand… well, you figure it out. Not much hope that time is on our side here. Maybe the computer can even the odds a bit.”

Lew fell silent for a moment. The personal aspect of this case called on them both to work especially hard to locate a female judge whom they both knew from stints at the courthouse. They were at war with the clock. And time had no beginning and no end here; instead it took on the nature of a runaway train.

“ What're we really looking for, Jess?” asked Lew.

“ In the Native American scheme of things, Lew, a wrong done at the beginning of time still festers because it may as well have been done today. Now, all things in nature being cyclical, even human nature and actions are understood as circular, and time is no exception.”

“ I see… I think.”

Jessica continued, not missing a beat, talking over Lew. “Nor is revenge. It's the same kind of thinking that has kept the ancient, tribal belief in avenging one's brother by one's own hands an absolute trust. But the belief is not limited to Native Americans. It's one that has come down through the ages through all cultures.”

“ Is that why Native Americans view the atrocities of the Indian Wars as having just happened like yesterday?”

“ Same holds true of black men who'd never lived under the institution of slavery, yet they still often act as if wronged personally, because it was a kind of slow death meted out to their ancestors. Easily understandable, really. Who can blame a black man or a red man for not putting a time limit on such atrocities?”

“ Little wonder the Indians take such glee in victories like the Little Big Horn.”

“ While Wounded Knee continues as an open sore for Indians and an embarrassment for whites.”

Jessica, who had always had a fascination for Native American culture and art, had joined some friends who had gone to the small reservation town of Wounded Knee with its long history of bloodshed. Wounded Knee's largest cemetery cradled the murdered Sioux who had died there, victims of a bloody massacre at the hands of the U.S. Cavalry in 1890 that proved to be the last major encounter between the red man and the white man on a battlefield. Then, on February 27, 1973, absolutely frustrated with conditions at the reservation town of Wounded Knee, American Indian Movement leaders staged a takeover and an encampment to bring national attention to the plight of Native Americans and the deteriorating reservation conditions everywhere. They occupied several buildings to dramatize their complaints. FBI and Bureau of Indian Affairs police surrounded the AIM camp. During the next seventy-one days, gunfire was exchanged, until AIM members could no longer go on. Trapped without food, water, or electricity amid the bitter winter, the noose was drawn, not unlike the Sioux before them. Two members of the occupying force-Anna Mae Aquash and Joe Stuntz-became martyrs to a cause for which most Americans took no heed. Nine other people were wounded, including a federal marshal, who came away paralyzed.

Jessica had felt an overwhelming sense that the judge was the victim of a kind of justice, or injustice, not entirely different from the kind of injustice that came with “blood” vengeance-Native American style.

Jessica had had DeCampe's Western-style pistol brought into the task force room to keep focused on who they were working to locate.

The cold sight of the. 45 brought Jessica back to the present, full circle. “How long has she gone missing?” She recalled having asked the WPD detectives the night before.

“ Long enough to alarm her family; they waited dinner for her after she'd called to say she was out the door, on her way home after working overtime. It was her 'overtime' night as she called it, Thursday nights. But it went unusually long, and then she didn't show up at all. Finally, she was not answering her cell phone, so her son-in-law comes down to investigate when midnight rolled around,” Jack Dane, a longtime veteran of the department who had no love lost for Judge DeCampe, had replied.

“ Found her cell phone in her purse,” added Dane's heavyset partner, Joe Myers. Jessica had taken one look at the pair and instantly understood why the higher ups wanted an “independent” brought in to lead the investigation. These men were emotionally involved, yes, but in a negative sense; in fact, they were so negative that they might have done the deed themselves, if Jessica didn't know better. It appeared that DeCampe had managed to offend every working cop in D.C. at one time or another, even to the degree that some in the city would as soon leave her to her fate. In fact, officialdom didn't believe they could scrape two Washington cops together who could devote themselves to DeCampe's case without some prejudice. As a result, Jessica felt certain that the bureau could and would do a better job of finding the judge than the D.C. police for more reasons than manpower and technological support.