Robert Walker - Absolute Instinct

“Scat-o-logical? Does that mean it's logical to scat?” he joked, but she could hear the fatigue in his voice.

“Scatological refers to bodily functions, autonomous stuff, weird shit.”

“Got that right. This is some weird shit. Says here, 'According to the Chinese system an exceedingly fine tube starts at the sacral'-whatever that is-'extremity and goes up the spine and enters the skull, and is connected with a reservoir of marrow called t-t-t-t'ung te situated at the back of the head.'“

“From tailbone to skullcap,” she commented, nodding. “Pleasure points in body and mind.”

He read on, “ 'The Tibetans took over this notion and added a refinement by introducing a system of boo… ahhh… bu-gu-chan veins.' Sounds like moo goo gai pan.”

She frowned and took the book away from him. “ 'These veins,'“ she read, “ 'branch out of the spinal column and then loop back again forming a network of tiny channels filled with a vaporlike essence. This system of veins is responsible for vitalizing the blood, semen and other “wet” elements of the body.'“ She lifted her final dram of whiskey sour to toast these words. “And here's to wet elements.” She downed the whiskey. “And I do believe it is time for me to retire.”

“I appreciate all the time you've taken, Dr. Coran.”

“On the case or on your crusade?”

“I assure you they are one and the same.”

“Then we will make it so, one and the same.”

She staggered, dog tired and tipsy, back into the room. He followed. “Lock that window up for me, will you? And get outta here, will you, Xavier Darwin Reynolds? I'm off to see the wizard.” She set her alarm as she spoke. She laid across the bed as he made his way toward the door.

“Good night or rather morning, Dr. Coran.”

“You know, Darwin, you could be wrong every step of the way on this thing, and especially the part about an aging FBI M.E.'s having any sort of clout with authorities in Oregon to get a man off death row.” In her foggy mind, she once again rifled through the photos as she spoke. “Still, there are some damn striking similarities here, even to time of year. Another pattern. Always in the fall, mid-fall, right? Only a year apart…”

“Two years ago come November fourteenth in Millbrook, Minnesota.”

“Yeah, Millbrook… How big is this place, Millbrook?”

“Size of my left toe. One fire hydrant town. Farming community. More cows than people. I figure our guy may've just been raised there, and with too much time on his hands… who knows… maybe he read your friend Asa's book or he's read Evan Kingsbury's god-awful novels depicting Lovecraftian monsters feeding on human beings.”

“The possibility that Asa's book set him off… that would upset Asa, I can tell you.”

“Why the bastard needs a crocodile-sized bone God alone knows!”

She said, “Something to fuck, something to cuddle with in bed, something to take walks with, who knows what goes through the minds of these fucked freaks that can do this kind of thing to another human being.”

“More likely it's like you said. He's extracting the bone marrow and cannibalizing it.”

Propped on her elbow on the bedspread, she replied, “I said that? Oh, yeah… least that'd be my guess if I dared venture one. Possibly thinks it gives him some magical power or eternal life or some such nonsense.” She flashed on the crime-scene photo showing the charcoal sketch Louisa Childe clutched in a closed right hand fist. Another photo showed that the fingertips of her left hand had all been removed. Removed by the killer himself. These had been recovered, unlike the backbone.

“Tell me again what was in the picture Louisa Childe had clutched in her hand.”

He let go of the door and moved a few steps back into the darkened room. Darwin's skin glistened here in the room as if it came alive in the dark. “A charcoal drawing depicting the victim-”

“Right… feeding birds in a park.”

“Not just any park, but the one directly across from her apartment, one she frequented. Three other drawings of the park and the birds had also been left clumsily tacked to the walls.”

“That's some con to run… quite a segue way into a woman's apartment.”

“And Minnesota authorities believe the butcher did the artwork.”

“Was it a good likeness?”

“Good likeness?”

“Did he do his subject justice. Did it look like her, you know, a decent job?”

“From what I gather, it was quite good, along with the other prints found tacked to the walls-all determined to've been done by the same artist.”

“Strange… strange he would leave such a calling card. Especially in so rural an environment. People there could recognize the hand at work.”

“Unfortunately, that hasn't happened.”

“How much time does Robert Towne have before they drop the acid?”

“Forty-eight hours, and nothing I've been able to do has had the slightest effect on authorities and the governor there, including our field office in Oregon.”

“Do you know the governor? What kind of a guy is he? Can you get cooperation?”

“He's a cowboy and an asshole. He's made up his mind, and why not? He has the entire fucking state, along with all of Portland, behind him.”

“Tell me more about Towne and his wife.”

“They were estranged, had enjoyed a long separation. He had no motive to kill her. No insurance, no kid problems, no alimony, no motive. The brainless cowboys out there just want a show, and he's the main attraction. Apparently, she was some sort of sainted beauty queen and cheerleader once, so the media had no problem creating a beast out of him.”

“And now Joyce Olsen in your town.”

“Under my nose.”

“Is that your personal interest in this, why you're so passionate about it? That it happened on your watch?”

He hesitated a moment. “Damn straight it is.”

She thought for a moment she should read something into his hesitancy and his reply, but she was too foggy and fatigued now to try. “Get out. Tomorrow is another day. G'night…”

Millbrook, Minnesota 5:16 A.M.

All of Millbrook, Minnesota, slept. Her quaint tree-lined streets silent save for the Sunbeam bread truck, the milkman's van making its predawn rounds, a farmer going door to door with fresh eggs. A place out of time, Richard thought as the car he and Brannan rode in rushed past disinterested raccoons that'd gotten into garbage back of the Millbrook Diner. The animals simultaneously rummaged, fed and fended off a barking dog barring its teeth at the family of four. Noticing Richard's interest in the raccoons, Dan Brannan said, “Little ones are cute as hell.”

They followed two cars turning onto a back road out of town that took them trundling across a wooden covered bridge over a stream called Paintbrush Creek on a green sign. Ahead of them in the lead car, now wending its way toward their dubious destination, was the cemetery caretaker who doubled as the small city's undertaker for The French and Parker Arrangement Center-a euphemism for a euphemism-what Sharpe learned was the new term for funeral parlor. Mori French of French and Parker had slipped FBI Agent Richard Sharpe his advertisement which was called a Funeral Decision Guide, and in it Mori and partner Garrett Parker had summed up their service philosophy in a paragraph. The guide pointed out that French and Parker wanted only to help people make the single-most important decisions of their lives-decisions about death and “arrangements” for death in one's own absence. It made Sharpe think of Woody Allen's famous statement on the subject, which he shared with Dan beside him. “ 'I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens.'“

Dan laughed in response. “Got that right.”