Robert Walker - Darkest Instinct

“ You… you were part of the force that tracked those guys in Oklahoma down, weren’t you?”

“ Part of the BSU sent to Oklahoma, yeah.”

“ BSU?”

“ Behavioral Science Unit, part of a larger division. We profile killers, try to get into their heads, track them through understanding them as best we can.”

He nodded. “So, maybe if we shipped the cretin back to England it’d be better all around. Isn’t he guilty over there until proven innocent?”

“ You might have a great idea there, Don. Imagine the Menendez trial in England. The defense would’ve had to prove innocence, and all the prosecution would’ve needed to do would’ve been to burn incense, blow smoke and hold up mirrors, rather than the other way around. As it was, it was just the opposite in California.”

“ Why not extradite this guy to England then?”

“ Good point. Maybe we’ll consider it, but I doubt the American public will stand for it. Everybody wants him fried in Florida. Trouble with that is the electric chair’s too good for the likes of this mother-”

“ Death row food for how long?”

She shook her head, unable to answer.

“ So, what do we do now?”

“ We take the bastard back to the States to stand trial.”

“ Maybe we should let the Cayman authorities have him?” he wondered aloud. “Maybe their brand of justice would be swifter, surer?”

“ You got a point, Lansing… you have a point, but once again the U.S. isn’t likely to stand for it. Our government and the State of Florida’ll be looking to control this one, not to mention America’s Most Wanted.”

Jessica took in another deep breath of the rushing, hurricanelike air all around her. “Bring the chopper in as low as you can. I’m going down to the boat.”

Lansing was doing gyrations both in his seat and in his head, asking, “What? What’d you say?”

“ I’m going down there… on the ladder.”

“ Hey, we’re not talking child’s play here, Dr. Coran.”

“ I want to be with my partner, and I want on that ship, now, Don!”

“ But-”

“ No buts! Just do it.”

Jessica snatched off her headphones and looked out over the side. The straight drop gave her renewed respect for Eriq. Tauman was still unconscious, but she hadn’t recalled his lying half on, half off the back of the boat where those thick, black nylon ropes were still draped. She wondered if any bodies dangled there now, but she rather doubted it. She also wondered if he’d moved, or if he had been moved. Had the boat simply shifted his deadweight? Had Eriq come back to kick him a few times?

Or had the Night Crawler, she wondered again, moved himself?

With the chopper lower now over the slowing boat, the bottom rungs of the ladder were loosely coiled aboard the ship when Jessica began her descent, doing so with one eye on the evil below her while the wind tore at her body, whipping wildly at her blouse and slacks. She thanked God she’d been wise enough to wear cotton pants and comfortable sneakers.

Each rung down the rope ladder brought her nearer Tauman, and she couldn’t help but recall her father’s long-ago words to her when they were on a hunting trip once in Minnesota. Her father had had to kill a snake, and she went to pick it up, curious to examine it as closely as possible. It was beautiful in its size, and variegated color scheme and surprising in its dead heft. She was thirteen at the time.

“ Never assume a snake is dead until you cut off its head and feed on its heart,” her father had warned.

“ Oh, yuck. Dad. Whataya mean? Eat its heart?”

“ Old Indian proverb-American Indian, Lakota, I think. If you don’t cut off the head and eat the heart of your enemy, he will rise again to strike you when you least suspect it.”

Another glance at Tauman told her this particular snake was stone still. Maybe Eriq had indeed killed Warren Tauman. It would certainly save the taxpayers a bundle if it were true; still, she wanted this devil alive. Florida had the death penalty, and she would conduct hundreds of hours of laboratory tests over the remnants of his victims to prove Warren Tauman more than just the “alleged” killer.

Jessica was two rungs from the boat deck now, twirling uncontrollably around and about over the deck of a still moving ship, dangling from the chopper overhead, holding on tightly. Maybe Don Lansing was right. Maybe she was a fool to risk life and limb in this manner, but for so long now they had tracked this beast, and so she felt she had to get a closer look and be certain that her partner was all right.

She didn’t want to jump too soon, didn’t want to lose her balance as Eriq had. In the meantime, due to the buffeting winds here, Don Lansing had had to bring the helicopter a bit higher, and looking down at her feet, she realized there were no rungs lying on the deck any longer. In fact, she had reached the final rung, and there remained a three-foot drop, with the boat still going at quite a speed. She took a final look at the snake whose blood was dripping over the gunwale and into the salt sea.

Tauman lay there like a broken granite statue; he hadn’t so much as flinched. He was exactly as she had seen him from the top. Maybe he was dead; maybe Eriq had used deadly force, which would mean a review of every moment of every second of this past hour. The Bureau and the attorney general of the United States would be studying Eriq’s behavior instead of the killer’s, trying to determine if deadly force had been necessary, and the eyewitnesses to that deadly force would be Lansing and Jessica.

She saw Eriq coming up from below, his wild, adrenaline- fed eyes meeting hers just as she jumped on deck, and he cried out, “Nooooo!”

When she hit the deck, the momentum of the ship sent her directly back, and she fell into the grasp of Warren Tauman who’d gotten to his feet. Tauman snatched her gun from her shoulder holster before she could get at it, both of them fighting for balance, and now pointed her weapon at Eriq, focusing through blood that streaked from his forehead and half blinded him. Eriq, in that same instant, surged forward, trying to react, but froze in place when he saw the gun pointed directly between his eyes.

At that moment, Jessica half heard, half saw the flare which Lansing had suddenly fired across the boat; reacting immediately, she stomped on Tauman’s foot with all her weight and forced both Tauman and herself back toward the aft, until both of them again lost their footing.

Together, they went over the back of the ship and into the water, the boat moving swiftly away from their falling bodies.

Hovering above the boat now were two helicopters. Jim Parry had had Henri contact Lansing, telling him who they were. Lansing recognized Okinleye’s voice, Okinleye saying something to the effect that they were well within Cayman’s waters at this point and that the prisoner below was his prisoner now. Parry was simply yelling at Lansing for having allowed Jessica Coran to take the dangerous step of climbing down onto the boat from the moving chopper. Everyone above had then seen the sudden standoff below.

Parry had had an instinctual feeling that Tauman was not secured. He saw no handcuffs or anything else restraining the man, and earlier, he, Ja and Henri had seen the two flares sent up from the boat at the helicopter. Parry had prepared the flare he’d earlier seen, and he had had it poised and ready to signal those on the boat of their arrival the moment they came over. Instead, he’d used it to disrupt the Night Crawler’s plan when Parry saw him grab Jessica and take hold of her as his hostage. The distraction had worked, but only up to a point. Now it appeared Jessica was in the water with the now armed madman.