Robert Walker - Absolute Instinct

Suddenly, the massive dark shadow at the table registered in her waking mind.

My god, it's Darwin. Here all night. He never left. She realized that Reynolds had fallen asleep there, too, sitting upright in a chair, the autopsy report of Louisa Childe lying in disarray on both the table and at his feet. He looked like one of those big Klingons in the Star Trek movies, his eyes closed, head back, slightly snoring.

Shit, how in the hell did this happen? she asked herself.

Pulling her robe on and tight around herself, Jessica rolled from bed and grabbed clothing from her unpacked bag. Reynolds blinked and yawned, coming around. “What time is it?” he asked matter-of-factly, as if no time had passed at all.

Jessica decided she had to cover any sign of embarrassment. “Six-oh-five. We both flaked out. Wake up, will you? Call down to room service for a pot of coffee while I freshen up and dress.”

She disappeared into the bathroom, and Reynolds staggered to the phone.

After showering, she rejoined Darwin, and while doing her makeup and hair at the mirror, she summed up what they had discussed the night before, ending with a solemn, “OK, then, I am convinced beyond doubt that the deaths are indeed, in some fashion or other, related.”

“I knew it! I knew you'd see it my way!”

“Curb your enthusiasm, Darwin. We've got a long way to go.”

“But you believe me? You believe me!” He stepped out on the balcony and yelled a hurrah to the sky and the morning traffic.

Once he had calmed and returned from outside, an enormous smile on his face, Jessica calmly said, “After seeing all this?” She pointed to the circumstantial but compelling evidence he had lain out before her. “Yes, I'm onboard with you, Darwin.”

Darwin's large black hands exploded, sending a thunderclap bounding off the walls. “Excellent. Think of it. Dr. Jessica Coran's backing. That'll cut the governor's cheese.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, but what the governor of Oregon knows about Jessica Coran is not likely to be much.” “Are you kidding? With your rep? With all the FBI cases you've solved? All that behind you?”

“Damn but you make me feel old, Darwin Reynolds.”

“I–I-I didn't mean it the way it came out, I swear.”

“I'll bet you didn't. Look, Darwin, seriously… Trust me, I don't pull a lot of weight.” She said this as she pulled a brush through her long, rich hair.

“Trust me, you do. You make a big difference.”

“I think there's another insult in there somewhere.”

“What?” He looked confused.

“Con yourself if you like, Darwin, if it helps, but I'm not so sure.” She paced the room, thinking aloud. “Now, as I see it, we need to put out an all-points bulletin on this creep's MO.”

“Sure, right.”

“Should be forwarded electronically to every law-enforcement agency in the country to alert them to anything smacking of these uniquely gross murders, and anything in the way of peculiar sketches being left at a crime scene.”

Darwin nodded, taking notes. “Yeah, we want to be notified immediately if a similar killing takes place anywhere in the country.”

“Right. We've got to proceed under the assumption of zero help coming out of Minnesota or Oregon, since we've no way of knowing if Richard will be successful or not.” Jessica returned to the mirror, sat and continued brushing out her wet hair as she spoke.

Reynolds watched the shining auburn hair pick up the morning light coming through the balcony windows. “The man who sketched the charcoal drawings did not sign his work, but his signature is all over the drawings.”

“Yeah, if someone pops out of the woodwork and happens to see them, and happens to know the artist, we have it made. But you're right, of course. We need an art expert to tell us what he can about our boy.” “I've already got a guy.”

“An expert who will back our contention that in each case, the artwork is the same hand at work.”

Darwin insisted, “I've got it covered, and I'm satisfied with-”

“Who's your expert?” she challenged.

“My wife's brother.”

She dropped her brush and her chin.

“Now wait a minute! Ronnie's an art major at Columbia. He knows this stuff.”

“No, Darwin, no! We gotta get art professors and dealers plural to cover our asses on this,” she argued. “Multiple opinions, understood? If it's to cut any ice with the governor in Oregon.”

“Yeah… you're right, sure. Important thing is you're with me now, one hundred percent!”

There was no curbing the man's enthusiasm now.

The same time

As Giles Gahran worked with hammer and nail, putting his fully packed traveling crates together, he thought of how often he had done just this, picked up his entire circus and left town overnight, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep. He looked in over the lip of the collapsible crate he'd finished assembling, readying to hammer the lid shut. Inside lay Luanda's naked body wrapped in absorbent packing materials. From Lucinda's purse he'd gotten Keith Orion's mailing address in Chicago where the other artist hailed from, and he had affixed a label addressed to Orion on the lid. He now placed the lid overtop of Lucinda, gave her one last look and blew her a kiss as he muttered, “Such a waste, so sorry… too bad. We could have made a beautiful partnership, Loose.”

He'd taken her life and one other additional irresistible item-her backbone-and why not? It was there for the taking. Why waste it. Besides, she had so wanted to be a part of his art. Now she would play a major part for all eternity.

A short time after Giles had knocked her into unconsciousness, Lucinda had regained her senses, and she felt a great weight on her back-Giles, squatting gargoyle fashion over her. “I think you're a snake person, Lucy. I'll sculpt snakes all about your feet as if they come to you for advice and succor. You damned witch. You slither in here and get my hopes up and now this. I even trusted you for a brief moment.”

She felt the first incision, and she screamed. The incision ran from the base of the cranium to the tailbone, coursing down and through the center of her back. She screamed murder. Giles stopped cutting long enough to stuff an oily rag in her mouth. Moments later, she felt the artist's scalpel continue on its way. “I'm sure you have a backbone in there somewhere” were his last words to her.

Now she was neatly packed away, as were all his sculptures, including the dogs, horses, birds, figures and all the vertebrae, including Lucinda's own in separate crates.

Giles lifted another pine wood lid top and covered over the crate of carefully packed spinal columns, which he'd thought safest if packed all together, even the one he'd so arduously glued back into one piece with super glue and a bevy of C-clamps. He'd done this work while Lucinda looked on through dead eyes.

It never failed to surprise him how quickly he could, when he put his mind to it, bug out, even though encumbered with artists tools, instruments, the life-size sculptures, all his various colors and elixirs, cleaning fluids, brushes, scrapers, scalpels, oils, easels, papers, pens, clips, clamps, scaffolding, as well as his clothing and personal belongings. As he worked to place everything in boxes, bags, suitcases and crates, he half wanted to forget the box beneath his bed. Part of him said, “Incinerate the damnable thing.” Perhaps if flames consumed it, he might forget it, but he couldn't forget it, now could he? It had been pushed into his hands by his dying mother.

“Go on, take it, you little bastard… spitting image of your father, you are. Sonofabitch that he was. You're just like him… just like him. Long line of sonsofbitches all the way back to the origins. Might as well know all about him now. I spent all these years protecting you from the truth, but it's in you-that same evil fucking seed, his malicious being, his hatred of the world that short-changed him, and his for blood. I've seen you, Giles, out there in the backyard, killing animals. You've got the same disease as your father, exactly. You can only feel when you're inflicting pain. So go on, take the box! Take it and open it after I'm dead, and maybe, just maybe you'll come away with me.”