Robert Walker - Darkest Instinct

“ Be damned if C. David Eddings’ll ever add to that total fabrication by bowing to it! I’m not in the business of fostering misconceptions or carrying on stereotypes, no,” he mumbled to himself, as was his habit while he worked.

The habit was so well-worn now that only the greenest of office workers and reporters might stare; everyone else took it in stride, along with the noise of several hundred computer monitors, all humming their chorus of meaningless gibberish.

C. David Eddings was the obit page editor and the last man to be called into an editorial board meeting, but today he looked up to see that Merrick, the editor in chief of the Miami Herald, was gesturing him to follow the pack into the boardroom.

“ Wonder what’s up,” he said to himself, checking the wall clock and seeing that it’d just turned 8:06 a.m.

“ We got another sweetheart letter from this freak who’s killing girls up and down the goddamn coast,” said Bill Lawrence as he whizzed by. “Come on, Eddings, you don’t wanna miss this.”

There was something ugly and unsettling, yet terribly exciting about what was going on with this serial killer everyone was calling the Night Crawler. Unsettling was the best word for it, like someone had taken a cold, coarse, rusty pair of pliers and reached into Eddings’s stomach and torn at the core of him, at the soul of his being, rocking his world on its axis-mainly because he found that he enjoyed the excitement of it; something like a strange, prurient interest had hold of him, and since the paper had begun reporting the disappearances and the subsequent discoveries of the bodies, he found himself unable really to get enough. This fact and his reflection over it disturbed him greatly. It was a side of himself he had not known existed. He found himself sitting up nights, wondering what the killer was like, who he was, where he was at that moment, why he was doing it, how he did it-curious about each gory detail. He dared not share his newfound fascination with anyone, but keeping it bottled within had become more and more difficult.

He saw death every day in his obits, dealt with it as a sausage grinder might sausage, but there was something sotitillating, so invitingly dirty about this whole Night Crawler affair that it must be like what was at the heart of most illicit love affairs, he guessed. Yet this was far different, at the other end of the spectrum of emotions, he reasoned, and it had continued to confuse and agitate him, this dangerous, pseudonymous side of himself that he’d discovered, this sick interest he had taken both in the case of the Night Crawler and in the monster himself, as well as in what he did to the women. What kind of man was he? Was he of the same species as Eddings? The same race? How could he do such terrible and vicious things to lovely young women? What did it do for him? Did it make him forget who he was? Did it make him feel taller, larger, stronger, immortal-what? And why was he sending newsy little tidbits about himself to the Heraldl

The short, stubby obit page editor snatched at the loops on his suspenders and straightened his pants, hitching them up before he threw on his coat and stepped toward the big boardroom. He was conscious of the stares and the chattering going on all around the bull pen. Word had leaked, as it always does across a newsroom floor, and everyone knew what the emergency meeting was all about. Eddings felt like a snoop, a prurient meddler, his guilt rising as he moved from his desk to the juicy information which awaited him inside the newspaper boardroom.

C. David Eddings, no matter what his small stable of reporters called him behind his back, would be at that meeting, just as he’d been involved in the first such meeting. He’d be there because death was involved, and death reporting was very much a part of what he did; he and the city desk editor were in constant contact, because today’s headline, Youth Shot in Drive-by on US1, was tomorrow’s obituary column. As Merrick was fond of saying, “One hand’s gotta know what the other’s doing at all times.” Eddings routinely countered with, “One foot in the grave had to know where the other foot was at, at all times,” after which he’d snort and laugh. Perhaps it was for this reason that other journalists considered him a ghoul, an undertaker who used words rather than a shovel. Still, he was in. In on the biggest, breakingest story to come along in years. How many others could say they were on the inside of the biggest manhunt in the history of the city?

Instinct, however, had told him to again, like the last time, keep his mouth shut and his eyes open during the meeting. The letter from the killer was passed through everyone’s hands that last time-even the cooking and accent page editors-before it had finally reached C. David Eddings’s fingertips. He didn’t expect any change in the pecking order today. Still, he was in; he was part of it all. How many men in Miami could say that?

As he filed into the room behind the other editors, C. David Eddings saw that Glenn Merrick’s secretary, Sally Hodges, a busty, middle-aged woman for whom Eddings had nursed a crush since coming to the paper, stood in back of Merrick with an overhead projector, replacing a blown light, it appeared. And next Eddings noted that there were strangers among them-very stem and serious looking customers, a dark-skinned handsome man and a strikingly interesting woman with silky auburn hair which created a fishnet and lattice effect about her shoulders, hooding a pair of dark, alluring eyes.

Sally looked up from what she was doing to give Eddings one of her bejeweled smiles. Eddings wondered if she was smiling out of politeness or genuine interest. He’d never gotten up the nerve to find out.

Merrick began by introducing their guests: Eriq Santiva, chief investigator for the FBI, and Dr. Jessica Coran, M.E., FBI. Merrick informed them all that Santiva and Coran were now spearheading the manhunt for the Night Crawler.

“‘ Bout time we got some clout in on this.”

“ Damn sure not going to see any results from the Miami morons in uniform,” said another.

“ Welcome to our city,” said the lone female editor. “I hope you don’t judge us by what’s going on out there in the streets, or by what’s said in this room.”

“ Of course not,” Santiva said, nodding and smiling at the assembled editors. “I wish to thank you all, and especially your editor-in-chief, Mr. Merrick, for showing such civic duty, calling me the moment anything having to do with the killer broke.”

Even Eddings got the underlying message, that Santiva and Merrick had had a serious talk at some previous point, and that Merrick dare not screw around with Santiva on this matter.

Jessica Coran quickly added, “Without your cooperation, gentlemen, catching this fiend will be far more difficult.”

“ What’re the chances he’ll be stopped?”

“ Just how far along are you in the investigation?”

“ Got any suspects? Anyone good?”

The questions were like live ammo coming at the FBI people. “We’re not here for a news briefing, gentlemen!” shouted Glenn Merrick over his people. Nancy Yoder, the accent page editor, replied with an explosive, “Oh, pooh!” Merrick next announced what they all already knew, then asked that Jessica hold up the note from the killer for all to see. She reached into her black valise and pulled forth a plate of glass which had been sealed to a second plate. Between the two plates lay the now flattened communique, the second to have been sent to the Herald by the Night Crawler. The ridges where it had been folded and stuffed into an envelope could still be seen. Jessica held up a cellophane bag which housed the envelope. The editors studied both the note and the envelope from their seats.