Robert Walker - Darkest Instinct

“ Quite a stack, actually. A couple of leg fragments, part of another arm, some feet and a cache of bones.”

Jessica turned to Santiva and said, “Tell the helicopter pilot to take off, but to remain on standby for our call. And Eriq-tip him well. And since we’re going to be here for some time, maybe a couple of days, you may want to get a rental car and rooms for us.” She turned to Wainwright and asked where the nearest hotel might be. “Two days, you estimate?” asked Santiva.

“ Hotels, around here? Sorry,” replied Wainwright. “Closest thing I might call a hotel around here is our dormitory, but it’s pretty stark. No room service, but you could dine with us.”

The prospect wasn’t particularly appealing. These people reminded her of the Addams Family for some reason.

“ Do you really figure it’ll take so long, Jess?” Santiva repeated.

“ Long enough so you can get that fishing trip in you’d hoped for, since you are in the Keys, after all. Go for it. But do like Spider said: Get a local guide.”

“ Now that I can help you with,” Wainwright proudly piped up. “Know one, do you?”

“ We know and use several, but Jabez Reiley, he’s the best, though expensive.”

“ Never mind the expense. Where can we get in touch with Mr. Reiley?” Jessica asked.

Eriq put up a cautionary hand to her, taking her aside and whispering, “But Jessica, won’t you need help around here, maybe to keep that dragon lady off your back?”

She returned the whisper. “I can handle the crone, and you’d just be in the way.” She then turned to Dr. Wainwright, telling him, “I want to see every single body part your people have discovered.”

“ No problem.”

“ And I want each one photographed from every conceivable angle; have you a good man for that?”

“ Aron Porter here is an excellent photographer. One of his gifts.”

“ Good… good… Then I’ll want some, if not all, of the body parts collected, boxed and protected with your best absorbent material, okay? I’ll want to take everything back to Miami with us.” Dr. Lois Insley had gone white by this time and had found a stool upon which to perch; she now leaned against one wall, making the noises of one about to hyperventilate. Jessica quickly approached the older woman and offered her a brown paper bag to breathe into, from a supply she kept in her black valise for reasons other than sickness. Brown bags were useful for certain types of evidence gathering, items such as blood spatters on cloth, items you didn’t want to smear or to have drying out in too rapid a fashion.

Dr. Insley graciously accepted the bag, opened it wide and began breathing from it, inhaling deeply, gathering herself up. No one in the place seemed the least concerned or helpful, Jessica thought as she returned to Wainwright and said, “You want to take care of Dr. Insley first?”

“ Sure… sure… although I’d rather get Reiley on the phone for you.” But instead he went over to Dr. Insley, placed a hand on her shoulder and marched her down a corridor, where, presumably, he had her lie down to rest. Jessica hadn’t time to wonder long about their obviously strained relationship. She rocked on the balls of her feet before what remained of Precious, her attention riveted on the torn and ugly limb and the bracelet beside it.

From down the hall, a gentle sobbing welled up from the woman named Insley. Jessica thought the woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown; she’d certainly overreacted to their intrusion on her private little world here-or had Precious simply gotten to her?

While Eriq did a cursory stroll about the facility, Jessica continued her examination of the would-be evidence, the two students curiously watching her.

Soon Wainwright appeared and assured Jessica that the other woman was quite all right. “Mood swings, a hormonal thing,” he whispered in Jessica’s ear-the archetypal male response to any female emotional venting too complicated for the male mind, Jessica irritated thought.

She wondered how much plotting and politicking went on in this little research hothouse. With their lives so wrapped up in this place, so focused on their jobs that their identities-who they were-had long since become inextricably mixed up with what they did. It was obvious the work was everything to them, with their whole world and worldview shaped by it. Jessica gave a thought to what Donna LeMonte so often warned her about, that she should not obsessively become Jessica Coran, FBI, ME. She worried momentarily that she might have a lot more in common with Dr. Lois Insley than she cared to admit.

Jessica had seen a look of animal fear in Dr. Insley’s eyes when they’d arrived. She had also seen the sudden loss of color in the woman’s face, replaced by a doughy pallor which reminded Jessica of how Santiva’s naturally dark, Cuban skin had gone two shades lighter by the time he’d returned to his plane seat over North Carolina on the long journey coming down. And now, as Wainwright began bringing out the accumulated body parts, each tagged and dated, and as Jessica rolled up her sleeves to go to work over each errant body part collected by Wainwright, she thought back to the plane trip down. With her hands, eyes and mind busy at her current task, she considered just how her relationship with Santiva was shaping up, even as her mind wandered back to what they knew of the killer they’d come in pursuit of.

She recalled now the killer’s taunting note to the authorities and what Eriq had revealed to her about it through the handwriting analysis-a kind of magic-he performed.

The note was written out in lean but large and hard strokes, the aggressive longhand having a character of its own, and it read:

When Jessica had looked up from the note, Santiva began working with her, explaining, spending great effort in carefully filling her in on what hidden and subconscious messages the killer had given them. “Notice he signs in the name of his god, not unlike the Zodiac Killers we’ve seen over the years.”

She nodded. “Yeah, he’s from a long line of upstanding killers. Hell, it’s easy to kill if you can pass the buck along to some demonic force within you which you conveniently have no control over. Lets you and your murderous hands off the hook, so to speak. Gives you reason and motive, and removes all personal guilt. That’s my personal favorite. What a bastard.”

“ The big excuse,” Santiva agreed, the plane having finally leveled out above the storm. “Takes away your inhibitions. Greatest excuse in the world.”

“ Ranks right up there with ‘a woman made me do it,’ ‘the Devil made me do it* and ‘God talks to me.’ Son of a — bitch.”

“ You see these little clubs at the end of each long letter, the L here, and F here and here?’’ Santiva pointed to each letter he mentioned. Jessica quick-studied them, knowing he had come up through the ranks as a documents and handwriting analysis expert. “Yeah, I see them.” “See the thin tight lines? A lot of letters you and I would loop, he makes straight up and down. See here, the G? And notice the force with which he crosses his Ts? The long extension across the page?”

“ Yeah, I see.” The lines were overlong, overdone, overwhelming, thrusting forward like lances.

Eriq continued, “The drive behind any line going forward can show excitement, energy or a lack of energy. In our man’s case, we see energy in the extreme-not a positive sign of energy, but rather in this case aggressive and unrestrained energy, sexually motivated, potent energy, even hostility, rage.”

Jessica immediately felt the truth of what Santiva was saying and sensed that Eriq was indeed a gifted handwriting analyst and interpreter, although she didn’t have much firsthand evidence to base this conclusion on. Still, she was hoping to learn more about this interesting “science” that had years ago been adopted by military authorities, police agencies and the FBI. She believed that Eriq could teach her a great deal about what he called “graphology” as they worked this case together.