Robert Walker - Darkest Instinct

Santiva coined an interesting line to explain what it was that his profiling team did, telling the press once, “We create a vector of character, personality, physical traits, even habits of both the victim and the killer.”

By studying the victim or victims, as well as by studying the killer, Santiva and the profiling team to which Jessica now belonged could put together a total picture of what occurred, and sometimes from that why it occurred. Before getting on the plane, they had already put together a complex picture of the man the press had dubbed the Night Crawler, but Jessica had not been in on sessions directly related to the handwritten document the killer had felt compelled to forward to authorities.

There at thirty thousand feet, Jessica had next concentrated on the ME’s report on Allison Norris. A capable man, this Miami M.E. named Coudriet demonstrated his own smaller, neater, nearly pinched handwriting, which Eriq called controlled, conservative, careful. “He’s likely to hold his cards extremely close to his chest,” Eriq said, sizing the man up in much the same terms as Jessica had. Even the corrections he’d made on the page told her that he was a guarded man. There was that element of purposeful equivocation in his language. He’d likely been prodded and rushed to turn over a report which he was not entirely happy with; he likely had wanted much more time to find the truth than people and agencies around him wanted him to take, from insurance companies to the Miami Police Department to the FBI. In Dr. Coudriet’s couched tones, bruises about the wrists might indicate handcuffs or possibly tightly tied ropes. Strangulation about the neck perhaps might indicate use of rope or cord, and/or likelihood of the killer’s hands. Strangulation death may have occurred before seawater entered the lungs, and this may indicate death before drowning. The man’s tentativeness was a sure sign the autopsy was a slapdash job, that he was attempting to cover his ass in the event questions arose later, at which time he could simply say, “I never said that…”

“ What do you know about Dr. Andrew Coudriet?” Santiva had suddenly asked, as if reading her mind.

“ Not much, save by reputation.”

“ Good, bad. indifferent?”

“ Highly regarded, well respected. He’s always on someone’s dais.”

“ Someone’s what?”

“ You know, giving speeches on the latest technologies used in crime detection. Speaks anywhere and everywhere they’ll pay his fee.”

“ Which is?”

“ Astronomically high-five, six figures, I’d assume.”

“ Sounds lucrative. Why aren’t you on the talk circuit?”

“ Doing’s better’n telling? I haven’t given it much thought. Not that I haven’t had offers, but who has the time?”

“ Obviously Coudriet does,” he replied, but beneath his words, he was running a thought-trying to figure out just how to take her last remark about having had offers, she guessed. She tilted the photo of Allison Norris’s body in his direction, a mushroomed body that had exploded with gases after having been picked over by sea life. In the photo, sand crabs were still making a meal of the dead girl, who was missing a chunk of flesh from her upper left thigh, a right femur and a right arm up to the elbow, where, obviously, sharks had taken more than a passing nibble.

“ Whoever did this to Allison Norris wants for power. craves control of the ultimate-life itself. He kills to show that he has the power in his hands to do so,” Jessica said.

“ He takes their manna, their being,” Santiva agreed. “At least, he thinks he does, and so long as he believes he does, he’ll continue to kill.”

“ He takes their power away from them, takes power from another living creature and claims all that power for himself. I’ve seen it before.”

“ I know you have. That’s why you’re here on the case with me. Now, if you don’t mind…” He indicated the picture, his queasiness threatening a return.

She closed the file jacket, leaned back in her cushioned chair and rode out the remainder of the storm.

Forty-nine minutes later, below a silver spray of rain shimmering in bright sunlight, they landed on a newly blackened, rain-slicked, glassy runway at Miami International. A smoother landing Jessica had never experienced, and when the captain came on the intercom to give himself a cheer, saying that after twenty-seven years of flying he’d finally made the perfect landing, everyone offered a spirited hand-clapping and hooting reply-at least those who were able to.

After this and the taxiing to the airline terminal, the usual deplaning chaos ensued. Everyone wanted off as quickly as possible, wanted to feel their feet on the solid construction of the airport walkways. But one man was forcing his way onto the plane, holding up a gold shield and shouting Santiva’s name.

Santiva waved the heavyset, middle-aged man with the balding head and Gene Hack man features forward. As the passengers thinned out, the Miami-Dade homicide detective managed to shuffle down the aisle and come alongside the patient FBI team he’d come to welcome to Miami.

“ You’re Eriq Santiva,” he said, smiling, extending his hand, the gregarious grin remaining on his face even as he vigorously shook Santiva’s hand and then exchanged it for Jessica’s. “And you must be Dr. Coran. What a pleasure, an honor, really, to meet you both. I’m Detective Charles Quincey, MPD. Just call me Quince. Everybody does. I was sent ahead with Mark, my partner”-he indicated a man in a gray suit who’d held back at the exit-”you know, to kinda escort you out of here and onto the waiting helicopter for Islamorada, or if you prefer to take a little time, freshen up; we can arrange that as well.”

Santiva turned to Jessica and muttered, “Helicopter… isn’t there any other way to this Isma-whatever-Key?” She stifled an urge to smile. “Not if we’re going to make time, no.”

Eric’s frown brought the enthused MPD detective down. “Escort away,” Eriq told him, “and as for taking a little time, yes, by all means, and thank you, Detective.” Jessica grabbed her carry-on and the round Detective Quincey made a grab for it.

“ No thanks, Detective. This one stays with me.” He realized that it was her professional black bag. “Ahh, yes, Dr. Coran, and may I say on behalf of the MPD, we’re extremely glad to have you on the case.”

“ That would be a refreshing attitude,” she replied.

“ It’s true, Doctor. We’re at wit’s end and we know it. This makes the ninth victim in the state to wash ashore in as many months. I mean this bastard’s doing ‘em on average of one a month, maybe more. We’ve had a lotta strange disappearances.”

“ The disappearances outnumber the bodies, I understand,” she replied.

“ ‘ Fraid so, yes ma’am… er, Doctor.”

Outside the plane but inside the exit ramp, which was like a sauna in Miami in the springtime, they met Charles Quincey’s partner, a well-proportioned, tanned and tall man with piercing blue eyes and the rugged good looks of an outdoorsman, perhaps a fisherman or maybe just someone who spent a lot of hours playing volleyball at South Miami Beach. The younger man’s level of enthusiasm was nil, contrasting sharply with Quincey’s attitude. Obviously, Quincey’s partner did not share his appreciation for having the Feds come in on the case, for this detective offered no handshakes, nor could he be bothered to open his mouth, more or less groaning his name, Detective Mark Samernow.

Jessica thought that Samernow looked as if he’d slept in his clothes; perhaps he’d pulled an all-night stakeout, or simply an all-nighter.

Samernow was disheveled, whereas Quincey had obviously put some hair gel and some thought into their meeting. Quince was together, perhaps for the first time in his career as a detective, his hair slicked down, his tie in a knot around a neck that didn’t easily take to it, reddening and swelling and about to burst; even cuff links showed at his wrists. Samernow, by comparison, had a wild shock of dark hair lying over his forehead and one eye, his tie snatched viciously away from his neck, a short-sleeved white shirt with a jacket carelessly tossed over his shoulder, making Jessica wonder where his gun was.