Robert Walker - Bitter Instinct

Jessica stepped on the accelerator. Outside, the orange glow of sodium vapor lights flooded across the hood and windshield at regular intervals. “Since we're dealing in hypotheses here, I suspect that Locke was particularly fascinated by the genesis of the skin poetry and by the kind of poison on the pen. He could have learned about the use of selenium from the story of Gordonn's father and mother.” And he would have been interested in the reasoning of the mother. Locke began to think in a way similar to Lydia.”

Outside the cocoon of the car, the world sped by faster and faster.

Jessica gripped the steering wheel, trying to control the rage growing within her. “He may well have come to believe that the world held a magical secret, that there was some rare race of angelic people, hidden within our race, people so close to ethereality that being born into this existence was a kind of imprisonment.”

“What if Locke had begun to hear voices that corroborated his gestating beliefs, the voices of angels, encouraging him in his beliefs, imploring him to send their brothers and sisters back to them? What then?”

Jessica pulled to a stop before Locke's home. “Is that how he embarked on this deadly odyssey? Is this how the Lord Byron Poet Killer was born?”

The answers were housed somewhere deep within the recesses of Lucian Locke's mind and possibly hidden someplace in this house as well. The answer, for example, to the question of why he had chosen to kill Leare. Was it something beyond his control, an order he could not refuse, or had she gotten too close to the truth, threatening to expose him? If it were the latter, he had to have rationalized her death by seeing her as one of his chosen, despite everything against such a view, from her appearance to the profanity that she liberally used in speaking. Leare hardly matched the victim choice, although a case could be made for Gordonn and the young woman he had died alongside.

Jessica and Kim had stepped halfway out of the cruiser, their eyes pinned to the professor's car, which was parked in front of the house, telling them that he was home, when radio dispatch called with an urgent message from Leanne Sturtevante. It was obvious that Locke wasn't going anywhere, so Jessica sighed, dropped back into the unmarked cruiser, and took the call. Kim sat beside her.

“What's up, Leanne?”

“There've been two Poet Killer murders tonight-two!”

“My God, when, who?”

“At the bookstore, Darkest Expectations, Marc Tamburino, dead in his upstairs apartment. Same MO as Gordonn's. Someone's decided to take up where he left off.”

So Tamburino wouldn't be collecting that snitch money after all, Jessica thought. She tried to put this new information together with Locke, who was now their primary suspect.

Sturtevante, her voice shaky, added, “He was alive when I found him, but before he could be gotten to a hospital, the poison did its work. I had gone to check out a few details with him; when I found the place locked, I tried his apartment. He didn't answer, so I got the super of the building to open it up. I heard music inside, and when I saw him, I thought he might have overdosed, until I saw the poem cut into his back. Began with the same three lines as the others.”

“You said there was a second victim?”

“Yes… Dr. Harriet Plummer.”

Jessica and Kim exchanged a shocked look. “Plummer?” Jessica exclaimed. “We just spoke to her earlier today.”

“Garrison Burrwith found her at her place; her back was cut with a poem. Same MO.”

“The man's on a rampage,” Jessica said. “Now he's murdering anyone his fevered mind perceives as a threat.”

“He needs nineteen angels, Jessica,” Kim reminded her.

“What is your location?” Parry asked suddenly over the police radio. Jessica assumed that Leanne had called him to the crime scene at Plummer's residence. We're sitting outside Lucian Locke's house; we have good reason to believe him the Poet Killer. We were wrong about Gordonn, dead wrong.”

“Wait for backup. This guy's flipped out, and he's extremely dangerous. Hold on until we get there.”

“We were just about to call for backup, Jim.”

“You've got it. I'll radio the nearest cruiser to join you, and we're on our way. And remember, you don't need a warrant if you at all suspect his children to be in danger from him… if you know what I mean.”

“His angels, he called them,” Jessica replied, realizing only now what a target this made of the two children, and possibly of their mother, Locke's wife, if the three had returned to the house from wherever it was that they had gone.

“We've got to get in there, Jess. If the children have been poisoned, and if we're not too late, perhaps we can do for them what Sturtevante was unable to do for Tamburino- get them to a poison center for treatment.”

“Agreed.”

“We can't sit idly waiting for backup knowing what we know.”

Jessica agreed, lifting her. 38 automatic from her ankle holster below her slacks. Kim, too, found her weapon. They advanced on the house quickly but cautiously, and as they did so, the dim lighting became dimmer and dimmer until only a great darkness awaited them inside.

When they got to the front porch, Jessica put a hand on Kim's shoulder. “I'm going to need you to direct traffic when backup arrives. We have to get medics in here, immediately, so hold this position.”

“Oh no you don't. If you go in, it isn't alone.”

Jessica tried reasoning with her friend, but Kim remained adamant. As they argued, the lights inside flickered and died again, leaving the place as black and still as a mausoleum.

“It's so quiet here my ears are ringing,” Jessica commented. “Far too quiet.”

“Where's the requisite music, the obligatory candlelight? His vat of selenium? All of the rest?”

“I think he's spotted us out here.”

“What's he going to do? Kill us with a pen?”

Jessica's joke notwithstanding, they approached with extreme caution, guns held at the ready. The door was not locked, and within they now heard the faint sound of music coming from somewhere upstairs. Faint sounds other than music could also be heard-rustling, the pitter-patter of someone in slippers moving casually about, ghostlike sounds that mixed with the shadows and played pranks on the ear, making Jessica wheel and bring up her gun only to realize that what she heard was only the faint meowing of a cat.

In the living room, she saw the piano and the pictures of Locke and his adopted children, cute urchins at play, she could see, even in the darkened room, one as adorable as the other. Jessica and Kim could also see a pair of large adult eyes, the penetrating eyes of Evey, Locke's wife, but this image staring back at them, Jessica suddenly realized, was propped up in a chair, and it was no photograph.

The corpse of Evey Locke sat upright in the chair across the room. From her pose, she seemed to have been tied there, but closer inspection revealed that this was not so. She was dead, but she was sitting up. From the impressions on the deep-piled rug, picked up by a flashlight Kim had grabbed from the glove compartment of the car, it appeared that she had crawled to this, her last resting place in this life. No blood trail, only a dead body, naked and stiff. Jessica stood over Mrs. Locke now, and placing a hand on her cold form, pronounced her dead.

Kim, standing next to Jessica, flashed the light on the woman's back and said, “Look at this. More proof that we're right about Locke.”

Jessica looked, and seeing the familiar cuts, nodded. “He did her, all right.”

“The children've got to be upstairs.”

Jessica turned and headed for the stairwell, Kim directly behind her. Fearing the worst, they made their way up the stairs, cautious and not very hopeful about the children.