Robert Walker - Bitter Instinct

“Pillow talk?” asked Parry. “You think Gordonn is sleeping with someone close to the investigation? Who?”

“I don't know. Someone on the task force, maybe, someone in the ME's office. I'm just grasping at straws here, Jim.”

“Like everyone else,” Kim commented.

Jessica said, “If so, then he knew when we were on, when we were off.” She wondered if some more mundane answer was closer to the truth. “At any rate, it's as if the city has swallowed our boy up. He won't easily be located.”

While Jessica and Parry cruised in Parry's car, FBI dispatch alerted them to an urgent call from Dr. Coran's “snitch,” Marc Tamburino.

“I've got more than you bargained for this time, Dr. Coran.”

“No games, Marc. I've got no time for nonsense. What is it?” Gordonn is being helped out of the city by well-meaning friends, friends who have already had their asses in a sling thanks to the police, if you get my drift.”

“Are you telling me that Leare is protecting Gordonn? That she knows him well enough to help him escape?”

“All I know is what I hear, and what I hear is that the poets of this city are fed up with your gestapo tactics, and they've banded together to help Gordonn out. How do you think he so thoroughly disappeared while under surveillance?”

“Some poets did this? I've never known poets to be so militant, Marc. What exactly are you telling me? No riddles, okay? Tell me, how did Gordonn learn that he was under suspicion?”

“I haven't a clue, but I do know that what I've heard is accurate information. I'll expect a healthy check for this piece, love.”

“So, a group of right-thinking, well-meaning artists have banded together to protect Gordonn.”

“He's like a cult figure to some of them, like a symbol or something. The founder of the fad, don't you see? It's earned him a measure of respect.”

“And his poisoning people to death?”

“That, too, with some in this crowd, believe me.”

“All right. Marc. Thanks for the lead. You'll be hearing from us.”

Jessica conveyed Tamburino's information, and while Parry admitted to being skeptical, he could not argue with following up on it. “We go back to Leare, Locke, possibly Burrwith, Plummer, and the photography people.”

“Well-meaning friends who cannot conceive of his guilt in this bizarre business are hiding and abetting him?” Kim asked when she heard the news. She had a sudden flash of how they all looked from afar, a flock of buzzards standing around Gordonn's vehicle as it was searched from top to bottom before being towed to the police lot. Aaron Roth put an APB out for Gordonn, and he arranged to have all highway entrances from the city closed off and roadblocks put up. Photos of George Linden Gordonn were circulated. All this, and still George did not surface.

The search brought them back to Donatella Leare's home, the suspicion being that she had picked up loose bits of information about Gordonn from Sturtevante or notes Sturtevante may have left about. They found the place dark, but could just make out some music, soft and melodious, playing in one of the rear rooms. Jessica rang repeatedly, but there was no answer. Peeking through the curtained door, she saw the flickering light of candles, and she caught a whiff of incense.

“Could be lounging in a bath and can't hear the bell with that music turned up so loud,” Parry suggested.

Kim had joined Leanne in her cruiser, and they arrived behind Jessica and Parry. Leanne now rushed toward the house, a look of dread etched on her features. Jessica apprised them of the situation.

“God, she's taken that creep in, and he's killed her!” Leanne cried. “I just know it!”

“Break down the door,” Jessica told Parry.

“No,” said Sturtevante. “I still have a key. I'll go in.”

“She's likely in the shower, but you tell her if she's aiding and abetting Gordonn, she's in trouble,” said Parry. “Make it clear to her that she has to tell us where he is.”

The detective nodded. “Will do.” She then entered the premises, calling out to her former girlfriend, while the others waited outside. In the time it took for Leanne Sturtevante to walk from the front room to the master bedroom and bath, all they could hear was the soft music and an occasional shout of “Donatella! Donatella!” Then a sudden scream sent a horrid ice pick into Jessica's spine. Sturtevante shouted hysterically that her friend Leare was dead.

The others raced in to find Donatella Leare lying facedown on her bed, rather haphazardly so. On the poet's back were the now familiar blood-orange words of the Poet Killer, carved into her skin with the selenium-laced ink. The poem on Leare's back stared back at them like a laughing skull, Jessica thought.

She wondered now if Gordonn or Tamburino or both of them together were not having fun with them all, PPD and FBI alike.

“Bastard! Bastard's killed Dona!” wailed Sturtevante, distraught and on her knees, her gun beside her.

“Locke-Locke and Burrwith!” shouted Jessica. “We've got to get to Lucian Locke's place, and to Garrison Burrwith's, and now! If the Poet Killer has targeted Leare for death, then he'll try to kill his other instructors as well.”

“Come on, Jessica. We'll let Kim take care of Leanne, and the crime scene will take care of itself,” said Parry. “Let's go. We've got to get a radio car dispatched to both locations. Someone close at hand.”

“Someone close to the investigation,” she muttered. “Who… who close to the investigation has given up our every move to the killer?”

“Vladoc,” shouted Sturtevante.

“Vladoc? But why?”

“He drinks, he talks. Someone knows this, uses him. Gordonn is shrewd. Doubled back on us all and escaped, didn't he? And we thought him a pitiful slob who had a miserable beginning and would have a miserable end, and left it at that. Meantime, he's busy killing… killed Donatella.”

Parry's cell phone went off. He lifted it and barked, “What is it?”

“Dispatch, sir. Another urgent for Dr. Coran, sir. Patch him through, now!”

“It's for you,” he told Jessica, his eyes bulging. “Says it's Lucian Burke Locke.”

Strange coincidence, she thought, taking the phone in hand. She repeated the garbled words she heard coming through for the benefit of the others. “Says he knows where we can find George Linden Gordonn.”

The strange little man, Locke, said clearly into the phone, “I have information as to where George can be found, or rather where what remains of him can be found.”

Parry snapped the button to place the cell phone on speaker so that the others could hear the conversation. “What do you mean, the remains of him?”

“He's dead.”

“Dead?”

“Ready for burial, yes.”

“Can't you be a little more descriptive? How did he die? Where are you?”

“He's lying dead alongside another of his victims,” Locke shouted into the phone, making Parry jump back.

“Where are the bodies, Dr. Locke?”

“My house.”

“We'll be right over. Don't touch a thing, do you understand?”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

He hung up and said, “We should still send a cruiser to Burrwith's place, have them look in on him. Meantime, we'd best get over to Locke's.”

Kim had been holding Sturtevante's hand as the other woman continued to cry over the loss of her friend. “I'll stay here with Leanne. You two go.”

“Be certain to maintain the integrity of the scene,” Jessica told her. “Call for Shockley to get over here and walk the grid.” Willdo.”

With that. Parry and Jessica rushed to the home of Lucian Burke Locke in search of George Gordonn… or what remained of him.