Robert Walker - Absolute Instinct

Jessica quietly slipped out, located the car she had come in, found the keys dangling in the ignition, got in and drove for Chicago's Lake Shore Drive and the Museum Campus.

Along the way her phone rang. She looked at the signal to determine if it were Richard. He'd be angry and fuming by now if he had discovered her gone. But she recognized the signal as coming from Amanda Petersaul's phone. It was Giles calling.

“It's a special night,” he said. “By now, you've seen my work. What do you think, Dr. Coran?”

“It's… It was unique… Yes, very different from anything I have ever seen before, I must say.”

“And coming from you, that's saying a hell of a lot.” “An amazing display of bravado on your pan. Are you wanting to be put down like a dog, Giles?”

“I think I've surpassed the master! Dear old Dad?”

“Yes, in a manner of speaking, absolutely.”

“In a manner of speaking?” he said, clearly annoyed that she hadn't agreed wholeheartedly.

“In some ways, yes.”

“In all ways.”

“If you say so, Giles.”

“No, bullshit. If you say so, Dr. Coran, and I know you feel it, too. Wish we had time to delve into this more, time to just sit over coffee there at the Avanti and just talk about it.”

“We do, Giles. We have the rest of your life.”

He exploded with laughter at this, and then he hesitated. “You mean, Dr. Coran, you'd come to see me? Visit at the asylum? Have tea with the freak, the criminally insane, Satan's son, heir to Jack the Ripper? Did you know that Jack, too, was an artist?”

“I believe any tea we might have, Giles, would be shared on death row, in the shadow of the execution chamber.”

“Society's monster killer. You know very well I'd get the asylum, like Father. Come now! My crimes are too insane to not offer up an insanity defense.”

Silence followed as her car sped along the faerie tale lit outer drive past the gaiety of Navy Pier with its array of colors and giant, lit-up Ferris wheel, a beacon in the night. She wondered why he had not leapt off the wheel after overturning the box of clippings on his father. She now asked him point-blank.

He replied, “You think you know me, don't you, Jessica? But if you really knew me, you'd never ask such a question.”

Something chilling in his remark told her that he meant to do as his father had attempted, to take Jessica with him into eternity, be it heaven or hell.

Given the full-page ad for the Field Museum's night opening of the bone show, Jessica assumed the place would be overrun by people. Capturing or killing Giles Gahran, or dying in the process herself as Otto before her, one way or another, this life and death struggle between them was going to happen here and now. It would end at the Field Museum, his chosen venue.

She felt the bulge of her holster and gun below her armpit as she drove. She felt the heft of her second weapon on her ankle. If Matisak was indeed his father, she'd need both weapons.

“Well, Doctor? Which is it to be? Execution tonight or the asylum? You think there's an asylum that can hold a Matisak?”

“No… on that we agree.”

“How lovely a spine you must possess, Jessica. Come alone.”

The Chicago Field Museum had a long and distinguished history as one of the original buildings of the famous White City of 1893, created for the Chicago World's Fair Columbian Exposition of that year. It had stood sentinel at 1400 S. Lake Shore ever since, and millions annually flocked to its doors to see the wonders of the natural world.

Ironic, Jessica thought, that her chasing down Giles Gahran, the son of her worst nightmare, should end here in this palace devoted to all things natural-its other name being the Museum of Natural History. But then there actually was something natural about the development of the criminally insane, too… How natural it all was, despite what people wanted to believe to the contrary. The criminal mind was as old as man himself, and like an ancient, persistent, resistant virus, it resided-sometimes dormant, sometimes active, but always present-within every developing human brain, the paterfamilias of evil. Like a new layer or patina over an old deck, the rotted original boards remained.

Still, a part of Jessica recognized the role that Larina Gahran had played in creating the monster Giles. No matter his genetic makeup, no matter the mark of Cain on his soul, no matter his predisposition toward blood and violence and that which could not be predicted, his sick fascination with spinal fluid, bone marrow and bone, fed as it were by the rare esoteric volumes he'd collected over the years. Despite all of it. Despite what he may or may not have done as a child to make Larina believe him the spawn of Satan himself, Mother Gahran could have gotten him help, she could have shown an inch of compassion, she could have shown a modicum of love at least for that part of the child that was good and innocent, but she chose instead to pour poison over poison.

It reminded Jessica of a story of child abuse written decades before it became commonplace news and TV and radio talk fare. The tale entitled Born of Man and Woman was penned by the master storyteller Richard Matheson. Matheson's monster, too, was created of poor parental attitudes and behaviors as much as the boy's birth defects.

These thoughts swam about in Jessica's mind even as she keenly and warily watched her every step now that she'd entered the museum. She was suddenly barred from going farther by a hefty black woman in security guard uniform. When she flashed her badge, the woman didn't budge from her path. “Everybody pays same here, cops, no different.”

“I'm on the job here, in pursuit of a fugitive.”

“How do I know that?”

“Fucking… Christ lady look…” She read the woman's nameplate, “America? Is that your name?”

“That's right. Mama was a marine, first lieutenant.”

“Well, listen, America, I need your help on this case.”

“My help?” “That's right.” Jessica pulled forth a folded sheath of papier. “Wanted poster,” she added.

“This looks like just a kid,” she replied.

“His high-school photo. It's all we've got to go on. Look, America, I want you to make copies of this picture on your museum copier and get it out to every security guard in the place for me. Can you do that? And can you let me have your radio in order to keep in touch with all your personnel?” Jessica pointed to the state-of-the-art earphones and mouthpiece.

America nodded and handed over the radio and said, “Does it rain in a rainforest? I'm a law-and-order woman.”

“But no one is to go near this guy. He's armed and dangerous.”

“No way he got through our screening with a gun,” she countered.

“Perhaps not, but he is a multiple murderer.”

“I see.”

“Point me in the director of the Lovely Bones exhibit. I'll start there.”

“Straight ahead. That big mess, you ain't gonna miss.”

Jessica started out alone save for the headphone hookup. She wondered how quickly and efficiently America might act or fail to act. She entered the huge, marbled concourse of the Field Museum, the lights turned down for effect over the simulated dinosaur boneyard created for the exhibit at the center of the concourse rear. Instead of a museum, she had walked into the Mojave Desert. Leading up to the bone yard itself a simulated dusky red earth trail. On all sides, an impressive illusion, created masterfully with Hollywood effects and lights made Jessica feel herself in a strange desert filled with people in black tie and evening gowns toasting the museum's latest major opening, celebrating an enormous find in the Mojave. From what she gathered, the find had come of a vision. This vision had led the chief archeologist in charge, a millionaire named Abraham Stroud, to the exact spot and layer below the surface, and aside from the dinosaur find, it had also uncovered evidence of an early race of forgotten people, the Mojaves, Stroud named them.