Robert Walker - Bitter Instinct

“Everyone has laid the case to rest. Parry, Roth, and Sturtevante are happy to turn it over to the DA's office.”

“While you and I, dear, remain skeptical,” said Kim. “I just have a gut feeling about it. Call it-”

“Instinct? Combine your gut feeling with mine, and we have one hell of a big gut feeling between us,” finished Jessica

“I hate to think that our killer is slipping through legal hands, and that Gordonn was set up by the obvious candidate, Lucian Burke Locke.”

“We need more to go on than a gut feeling,” Jessica countered. What about warming up your cold hypothesis with this?” a male voice interrupted.

Both Jessica and Kim swung around to see Dr. Leonard Shockley, holding a manila folder overhead and slapping it against the dooijamb where he stood.

“And what's this?” Jessica asked the ME.

His hands slightly shaking, Shockley spread the contents of the folder before her where she sat. 'Take a look.” He gave Jessica time to read the information from his work on the final corpse, Ariana Dupree.

Jessica stood, came around the desk, and kissed Dr. Shockley, while Kim asked, “What? What is it?”

Jessica announced, “DNA… the killer's DNA from the tears… doesn't match up with Gordonn's DNA.”

“Then the last two victims were killed to cover the real killer's tracks.”

Jessica kissed Shockley again and started out on the first step in a long journey, one that now had a specific goal: to nail Lucian Burke Locke, the strange little man with the picture-perfect home and the picture-perfect-but only in appearance-family.

“A closer look at Locke is in order,” she announced.

The closer look into the life of Lucian Burke Locke revealed that he was the product of a home dominated by an alcoholic father who had made life a nightmare for Lucian and his mother. It was Dr. Harriet Plummer who provided this information, all the while defending Lucian to the detectives when they suggested that he was not telling the entire truth the night of Gordonn's death. The police also talked about Locke with Garrison Burrwith, who was only too happy to inform them that he had learned from campus rumors and word of mouth that Locke had always been fascinated with the urban legend that turned out to have originated with Gordonn's family. There were even students who swore that Locke referred to the story of the Gordonn family deaths in his lectures as an example of the power and influence of the Byronic image nearly two centuries after the poet's death.

“But no one knew at the time that George Gordonn was part of the ill-fated family,” Burrwith explained, “no one except Professor Locke, I suspect. I suspect the boy informed his revered instructor when Locke spoke of the story as an urban legend. George was extremely shy, you know. He would never have announced such a thing in public, no more than he would tell a classroom full of people that he had been the first to disrobe and display a poem etched on his back.”

“Strange that someone you call shy could do that.”

“Some say he did it at the urging of a psychiatrist, who was helping him to face his fears.”

“Vladoc,” muttered Kim.

Burrwith continued, his bow tie bobbing as he spoke. “I suspect the boy told Locke every detail, down to the fact that he was seeing a shrink.”

“If so, Locke would have to know not only Gordonn's secret, but what was going on in his mind-now,” said Kim.

“The diary entries,” Jessica said, thinking aloud. “Gordonn wrote about his fantasy to kill and be killed in the manner of his parents. Said he had recurring dreams about it.”

Kim nodded. “The diary entries alone would likely have ensured life imprisonment, but Locke didn't count on the chips falling as they have.”

“I hope you nail that brash, arrogant SOB,” said Garrison Burrwith, which brought Jessica sharply back from her thoughts. She thanked Burrwith for his time and help.”

“You're going to put him away for life, aren't you?”

“We will if he is our killer, yes.”

“Then you don't believe Gordonn did those horrible things.” At the moment, we are not a hundred percent certain of it, no, but we must ask you to keep this to yourself. Word of our suspicions gets out, and, as we said to Dr. Plummer, anything could happen. We don't want to damage a man's reputation without airtight evidence, you see.”

“Of course, like you people did with poor Donatella.”

They left abruptly then.

“Vladoc isn't telling us everything he knows, Jessica,” Kim said as they located the car in the lot outside the building, a bright Philadelphia sun momentarily blinding Jessica before she slipped on her dark glasses.

“What do you think Vladoc is hiding?”

“I don't know exactly. But something's not right. For one thing, how could Gordonn afford Vladoc's rates for therapy?”

“You think the shrink was using the boy? How and for what?”

“I don't know. I just know that on Gordonn's salary, he could ill afford a downtown shrink like Vladoc, unless they had cut some other deal.”

“Like access free and clear to the kid's story?”

“You mean for a book or something? Who knows?”

“That night at the club, when I spoke to Gordonn, before I knew who he was, when he was videotaping the nude poets…”

“Yes…” Kim leaned over the hood of the car so as to hear over traffic.

“He said he had been hired by the owners of the club, and that he got free copies of the tapes for his own use.”

“Go on.”

“Suppose Vladoc had cut a deal with the owners in order to put George to work doing what George wanted to do, and making money in the bargain. Each video sold to the clubs to create a kind of library, which they could use to create their ads.” Yeah, I've seen a few while flipping through channels in the hotel room. They're enticing in a crude way. And their makers must get well paid.”

“George does the work, George obtains free psychiatric help, Vladoc gets paid-the old barter system at work.”

“I hope that's all Vladoc is hiding.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

They drove to Locke's place, Jessica telling Kim, “We need to get a sample of his DNA any way we can, from a beer glass to a cigarette, anything he has recently touched.”

“You distract him, and I'll filch something.”

“It has to be in plain sight, and preferably something he hands over, to please the court.”

“Sheeeeesh.”

“Obviously he knew of the urban legend long before the night George Gordonn supposedly killed himself and his supposed final victim.”

“Are you going to confront him with it? Tell him we know he shared the particulars of the so-called legend with his students, discussing it as yet another example of Lord Byron's mythic legacy, further evidence of a poetic voice and legend that defy death and the passage of time?”

“Burrwith hinted at a bond between Locke and George Gordonn, after Gordonn had become his student. The bond may well have been the poet Byron.”

“A poet out of time,” said Kim.

“I'm going to tell him that we know that Gordonn had approached him-his professor at the time-that Gordon told him that the story Locke had repeatedly used over the years in his lectures was in fact a true story and not merely an urban legend, as Locke had thought. That Locke became extremely interested in Gordonn as a result. Learning that the legend was in fact true, seeing Gordonn's clippings, and learning that Gordonn had been the forlorn child who survived his parents' suicide, Locke becameobsessed with the why of it all, delving into the depths of Gordonn's mind for answers.”

“I'd certainly like to get my hands on Vladoc's records on Gordonn, see what shakes out there. Suppose out of the goodness of his heart, Locke began to pay Gordonn's psychiatric bills?”