Robert Walker - Absolute Instinct

“Ahhh… I just… well, are you sure?”

“Sure, yes.”

“All right, then. I'll catch up with you there.” Feeling her ire, sensing her coolness, Reynolds took his doughnut and coffee out the door.

Jessica frowned after him, sat down and uncovered the hot plate of hash browns and scrambled eggs he'd ordered for her. “Carbs're going to kill that kid,” she muttered, “if I don't first.”

After reviewing the preliminary autopsy report, a thumbnail sketch of the final autopsy on Joyce Olsen-put off thanks to her having to focus on Oregon's Sarah Towne and Millbrook's Louisa Childe-Jessica realized that Ira Sands must know that it provided nothing new. Reynolds had somehow managed to get this early-stage report out of Sands sometime the night before, during that period when he had disappeared and suddenly appeared with last evening's room-service cart, she guessed.

She wondered if he were hiding something, some more personal stake in all this. Had he known one of the victims? Did he know Towne personally? Perhaps before becoming FBI? Had Towne somehow reached out to Darwin from behind prison walls for one man's sympathy or letters threatening blackmail?

Perhaps, perhaps not. Perhaps her unflattering suspicious nature, part of her job and makeup, was at work overtime. None of it made much sense except to excuse him on the grounds of having become a crusader, and yet she had learned long ago to trust her fears, to accept fear as a gift, a gift of innate intelligence that sounded certain bells within, and the ringing of said bells saved her life on more than one occasion. Not that she feared Darwin, but she wondered at the depth of his motives in all this. Then she chided herself, recalling the depth of her own feelings and motivation in many cases she had worked as a younger woman, and she realized why she liked X. Darwin Reynolds so much. His enthusiasm was contagious. So much so that even Richard must have felt it over the phone. And that enthusiasm re-minded her why she did what she did, reminded her who she was, what the culmination of years of FBI work meant to her.

“Guess I could use some of that kid's zeal about now.” She sipped at the hot coffee. Still a tweaking, annoying doubt hung in the air, suspicion lurking in the corners of her mind, some twinge of intuition that questioned Darwin's reasoning and actions. She caught a glimpse of herself in the hotel mirror, her long auburn hair tied in the businesswoman's bun. It normally trailed to her shoulders these days, playfully ribboning a frame for her emerald eyes, and she knew she looked good in the virgin-white of the hotel terry-cloth robe. Did Darwin have designs on her?

No… just a wrong instinct this time, she assured herself. The guy is desperate to help an innocent man, believes in Towne's innocence. Likely has allowed the case to consume him… obviously so. Likely hasn't slept a full night's sleep since beginning his quest to save Towne.

Jessica quickly finished breakfast, finished dressing, located her shoes and medical bag, and walked the few blocks to the morgue. When she arrived, she found Ira Sands already at work, having clocked several hours on the autopsy the day before, and being a thorough scientist like herself, taking enough time to be rested and coming back at it. He'd become obsessed in his effort to run down any miniscule medical lead in the Olsen matter. Perhaps to show her up… perhaps to beat out the most famous M.E. in America, so that he could tell the tale at the next annual meeting of the AMEA-the American Medical Examiners Association.

Jessica suited up and joined Sands for the second go-round.

Seeing the Olsen woman's body again shook Jessica to her core. Again the stark horror of the crime clawed at Jessica's own spine. It slithered upward and curled around her brain stem on its way to her innermost psyche.

With Sands closely watching her reaction, she shook off the paralyzing feeling and went to work. Several hours later, she and Sands finally gave up the ghost. There was nothing further that Joyce Olsen could tell them. Nothing further that Jessica and Ira could do beyond feeling absolute frustration. As in the Minnesota case, they had scant little to go on. The toxicology reports had come back absolutely negative. Serum and blood tests demonstrated there was no one's blood or saliva present other than the victim's. No evidence of rape, no DNA evidence, no fingerprints, no bite marks on the body. The only thing they could say for certain was that she, like the other two victims, had been struck by a blow to the head with a hammer.

Using the mop, which tested negative for prints, the killer had even robbed them of bloody shoe prints. The two M.E.'s hated to call any murder a perfect crime. To do so meant admitting failure. Still, this one had all the markings of a flawless crime.

She shared with Sands the one bit of good news about Richard's scavenger hunt through the Millbrook evidence lockup, morgue and cemetery, and the hope that Richard's investigation there held out.

“You're telling me our mastermind cut off the wrong fucking fingers?” Ira Sands's laughter filled the silent autopsy room. “That's rich. That does give us hope.”

“Still,” cautioned Jessica, “the DNA found in the exhumation is more likely to free a death-row inmate than to capture a murderer.”

“Unless someone's charged with the crime and his DNA is in the system and we gain a match.”

“A lot of ifs. Look, I have to get out of here, now,” she confided and marched off for the lockers.

Jessica felt a gnawing, clawing, claustrophobia creeping in, one she recognized as the frustration and stress monster her shrink had so often warned her to get as far from as possible when she felt the onset. “Go out and feed your inner child immediately. Go to a zoo, a museum, a park to watch the dogs frolic and kids laugh, anything but your grim reality, your fiicked-up work ethic, and your current case files.”

“But I'm twenty-four-seven an M.E.,” she'd argued at first.

“Then you gotta reclaim that time. No one else can do it for you, not even Richard.”

So she knew now, after the night she had spent and the day's autopsy, that she must release the little kid inside. “Gotta at the very least get the fuck out of the lab,” she swore aloud as she pushed through the doors leading into the locker room area for female medical personnel. She tore off her protective wear, showered and dressed a second time today. Grabbing her things, she went past Sands's office.

“Join me for coffee?” Ira held up a pot and a cup, a smile stretching his mustache.

“No thanks, Ira,” she responded to the offer. “I really have to get myself some air, get out of the building, you know. The kind of day you've had, Dr. Sands, you should play hooky with me.”

“A tempting, tempting offer, Jessica. Ahhh, yes, space and air… things I am denied for the time being. Go, yes! Go for the rest of us, and when you return, tell us what is out there in the land of the free, but no… can't break away just now. Too many people would have my scalp, but I quite understand the impulse, my dear. Go… go for both of us, Dr. Coran.”

“As quickly as possible, but you must come along, Dr. Sands. We've had not a moment to simply catch our breaths and talk,” she persisted, but there appeared no budging the man. He seemed in a marathon of his own making.

SHE easily found the local Caribou coffee house, where she sat in an enormous overstuffed chair by the window looking out on the avenue. She felt a need to control the sheer amount of aggravated, discouraged and stymied anger rising up in her as a result of this mad phantom who sketched his victims before killing them. And after a time of silent meditation and forced relaxation, she felt annoyed with Darwin Reynolds. To a far less degree than she did toward the “Butcher of West Allis,” as one paper's headline called the spine thief, but annoyed with Darwin nonetheless. She had time to think about the tall, handsome, broad-shouldered man who had popped up at times when she didn't need to hear from him. But now, when she wanted to hear news of their departure time, where the hell was he? She wanted to get out of Milwaukee, to put some distance between herself and the failed investigation, and the growing cancer of what appeared from the get-go as an un-solvable crime, a futile investigation-one that would never go away but remain on the open books forever.