Robert Walker - Blind Instinct

“Are you sure?”

“I'm sure I don't want to be alone tonight.”

“I don't relish the thought, either. If you're quite sure.”

“Quite, yes. And when's the last time you showered with a woman?” she asked.

He smiled and reached out to her, squeezing her hand warmly in his. “You've made me care about things of that sort again, Jessica, small things like touch and warmth. It's rather true what Luc Sante says about the child within us all, clamoring to surface, to be given attention. Somehow, with you, when we're intimate, I feed that child all and more than he ever bargained for.”

She reached across, and tugging at her seat belt, she kissed his cheek. “You've made London a beautiful place to be, despite all the shadowland horror we're chasing.”

He smiled. “You've made life a great deal more bearable for certain, dear Jessica.”

Again, they spent a warm, affectionate evening together, indulging in fantasies, one providing whatever the other wished, and then the other reciprocating. Jessica had always felt that making love in the shower, under the warm spray, to be the perfect place to begin a night of unbridled passion.

The following day, Jessica awoke to find Richard gone, a note announcing that he had been unable to sleep, and so he had gone into the office to get an early start on much neglected paperwork.

Jessica prepared for her day, showering and dressing with much thought given to what she guessed Richard would like. She had learned that his favorite color on her to be blue, and that he liked to see her hair held back by a band across the front. “It's much softer than wearing your hair up always,” he'd said. She dressed for Richard this day. She had decided that whatever came, whatever evolved from their intimacies, she would accept. She'd become so intensely focused on James Parry when she had fallen in love with him that, in a sense, she had become a prisoner, a shackled person, shackled by her own emotions and fears and passions. She found she had as much, if not more feeling for Richard, and yet, this love felt intensely novel, startlingly and wholly unconventional, despite Richard's “conventional” veneer; in fact, this love felt freeing, liberating in every sense of the word, delivering her from… she must wonder from what?

Actually, she told herself, Richard Sharpe delivered Jessica Coran from Jessica Coran. He made her feel completely free; his love was not measured in give-and-takes, compromises or restraining demands. His love knew no constraints and placed no constraints on her. She could never be the object of his love, for he did not treat her as an object. Rather, he treated her as his equal, and he asked for no des, no commitments, and expected none to be hoisted upon him. In a word, Richard Sharpe turned out to be the most continental man she'd ever known.

Onoe dressed as she felt Richard would like, Jessica hurried out to Scodand Yard, hoping that today she and Sharpe would find a solution to the Crucifier mystery.

Just as she stepped from the door, however, the phone rang. Richard, she thought, and not wishing to miss his call, she returned to find an excited J. T., filled with good news about the outcome of the Tattoo Man's case.

She had to slow J. T. down, thinking he might hyperventilate on the other end as the story of Maxwell Sanocre unfolded. Jessica encouraged him to take it slow and to tell her everything.

J. T. told how he had located the dead man's family, and how it appeared from all evidence that members of his own family had first plotted and then killed the man.

“As it turns out, the dead man's own children arranged for both the dogs to tear him to shreds and for the rabies infection, to insure his death. The daughter in particular really hated the old man, and she had damned good reason to.”

“What reason led her to kill him?”

“She had a child by him. Incest. Then she tries to get out from it, tries to marry a boyfriend, but the old man won't hear of it. Says nobody but him is 'good enough' for his baby girl. Sick, I know.”

“Evil is what it is. A man deprives his own daughter of a natural life.”

“The boyfriend, whom she did marry only days after her father was killed, turns out to be an apprentice veterinarian. He saw to the rabies, but the dogs they used, the dogs actually belonged to the old man. Family says he treated his dogs better than he did his wife and children.”

I“ Sounds like one man who deserved what he got,” she muttered.

“More I learn about the case, more I'm thinking the same, and we're educated doctors, Jess.”

“So? We can hate with the best of 'em, J. T.”

“The old man was infuriated at his daughter for wanting a normal life. Blocked her every avenue. I think the court will have to take in the circumstances, show some mercy. Sure it was a vicious murder, but in a sense, the girl was driven to it.”

“And the accomplice?”

“Nice young man by all accounts, but premeditating with the rabies like that. It's not going to go down well. The rabies was his idea.”

“How do you know he's not covering for her, that it wasn't her idea all along?”

J. T. considered this. “You're right. Could well be.”

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

“You may have something there, Jess.”

“Find out how long the boy and girl had been seeing one another. The shorter the time period, the more likely she hatched the whole show, putting him up to it.”

“They'd been seeing each other for less than a month when they started planning the details and planning their marriage. The boy meant to raise her child as his own, and they meant to have children between them as well, start a real family, she told her cousin.”

“Her cousin?”

“Her cousin's the authority in Diamondback, Louisiana.”

“I see.”

“Max Sanocre had only been missed by people in his biker gang, but word had been put out that he'd gone to Utah to allow both John Law and rival gang members to cool off, because he had-according to an elaborate story circulated by his children-somehow pissed both parties off, so that no one had the least suspicion that Cassie's father, Maxwell 'Abominable' Sanocre was even dead.”

“ 'Abominable'?”

“It's what he went by.”Sounds like you did one hell of job on this one, J. T.”

“Thanks. I am feeling pretty good about now. Chillin' in Naw'leens, right now.”

“Great, but tell me, J. T., how'd you get all these people to confess down there in Diamondhead?”

“Back. Diamondback. And 1 did it by just showing up.”

“Showing up what?”

“Just showed up on their doorstep. It seemed like the girl and the boy, they just expected me, and when they saw me standing there, they just gave it up.”

“Maybe that's what I need to do on this case.”

“What do you mean? You have a suspect, and you think if you just showed up on his doorstep that a guy like this serial killer Crucifier guy is going to just give it up? London's a far cry from Diamondback, and I suspect Londoners are a bit different than Diamondbackers, Jess, so I'd be a bit more cautious than-”

“Than you were? You could have just as easily disappeared in that remote area of Louisiana as not, J. T. But hey, don't worry about me. I'm not going to do anything foolish to endanger myself. Hell, look how long I've gone without any scars. I've got a record to maintain, and a pool to win back at Quantico,” she joked.

J. T. laughed, finding this amusing, adding, “Hey, who do you think started the pool?”

They parted with good-byes and well wishes, and Jessica started anew for Scotland Yard, but at the cab stand, rather than walk over to the Yard, she made a detour.

“I'll just show up on Luc Sante's doorstep,” she told herself. “See what gives if he knows that I know.” The doorman hailed the next available cab in line to come forward to pick Jessica up. When she climbed inside, she announced, “St. Albans, the Marylebone district, please.”