Robert Walker - Darkest Instinct

“ How did we get to Picasso?” asked Eriq.

Eddings ignored Eriq. “Art both confines passion and crystallizes it. So neither a van Gogh, a Picasso, a Michelangelo, a Kipling or a Sartre, nor a Twain or a hellering, could ever have proved murderers… Look through the history of the world, the history of murder in particular- and being an obituary man, I know something of murder. How many true artists have been murderers? There have been far more doctors who’ve become murderers than writers and painters, I assure you.

” Eddings’s voice had risen on the final words as he warmed to his subject, and this brought a snarling librarian from behind the counter to ask them to please be quiet. Santiva nudged Jessica and said, “Let’s get out of here, shall we? This place is giving me a case of indigestion.”

“ Everything gives you indigestion.”

“ I was the kid in school who always got caught talking in the library and sent to the principal’s office for talking back to the librarian.”

“ I’ll bet, and you were always talking about books, too, right?” “You got me… girls.”

“ That would figure.”

“ I like a good figure…” Jessica realized only now that like many men, Santiva saw little use for poetry, that it was about as significant to his life as was a little man like C. David Eddings. Eriq showed his boredom in his face; it appeared he felt the direction they had taken was costing them too much time and energy for whatever dividend they might reap. For this reason, Eriq had already stepped away from Eddings once, and now he wanted farther away from the round obituary editor, without even fully knowing why. Jessica, too, wanted away from the small man at her side whose dream of becoming a satirical novelist revealed an ambiguous creature filled with copious, venomous and passionate secrets all of his own making. He had in effect told her that so long as he regarded himself as an artist, he would remain sane, but that should that self-image ever be shattered, he, rightly or wrongly, would blame others-specifically female others; he had told Jessica that one day she could well be hunting him. She wondered how many other men balanced their sanity on such a flimsy, egoistic scale. Then she thought of Adolf Hitler, the failed painter, and Manson, the failed performer.

Jessica and Eddings followed Eriq toward the huge en- tryway and foyer of the library, but Eddings stopped at the desk, whipped out his library card and asked for assistance in checking out the book from which he’d made copies.

“ What’s he doing now?” asked Eriq, who had found himself going through the checkout gate alone and having to return to Jessica. As she stared across at Eddings, he asked, “Is it me, or does this guy give you the creeps, too?”

“ He reminds me of Burgess Meredith in that old Twilight Zone episode-you know, he’s the last man on earth, surrounded by books, but he breaks his prescription glasses.

” Eriq only guffawed and said, “Let’s get some air.”

They waited just outside at the Grecian columns and the huge stone staircase, a place where Charlton Heston in robe and sandals might have played a scene out of Ben Hur if only the traffic noise, the overhead airplanes and the constant buzz of city construction and electricity could be silenced.

“ Here you are,” said Eddings when he joined them.

Jessica looked up to see that he was offering hellering’s book of poems to her. “I’m not sure-”

“ There’s two weeks on it. Return it to me when you can. I’ll pay any late fees.” He was adamant. “Who knows, you might learn something valuable-something that might help you with the case, I mean.”

“ Thank you, Mr. Eddings.”

“ If anything comes of it, you can thank me then.” Just what she’d hoped to avoid, she thought-ever seeing him again. He obviously wanted it otherwise, however. They parted company back at the newspaper, the original note from the killer safely tucked away in Jessica’s valise. From there, they drove to FBI Headquarters in Miami, where Jessica ceremoniously turned over the evidence to Eriq. “You’ll make sure, then, that Kim Desinor sees this immediately? Are we agreed?”

“ Consider it done. I read all about how she helped you in N’awlins last year.”

“ You have no idea.”

I have every confidence that our psychic sector will flourish in the coming years. Say, Jessica, do you think that Eddings was any help? He sure was a sad sack.”

“ Yeah, something melancholy about him, that’s for sure, Eriq. As for being a help, who knows. Although in a sense, he’s predicted for us what the Night Crawler’s next love note will contain.”

“ The second stanza?”

She nodded, a chill running up her spine.

“ Spooky, huh? And the guy was kinda spooky, too. You don’t suppose he’s the Night Crawler, do you? That would tie in with the Herald connection.”

“ Sure, he chooses to send his murder messages to his own paper, then identifies the source for us. No, I don’t think so.”

“ Strange little guy in a way, kind of a mix between Peter Lorre, Wally Cox and Bela Lugosi, wouldn’t you say?”

This made her laugh, which felt good. There hadn’t been much to laugh about in a long time.

“ Did I hear him say something about writing a book?” Eriq asked between laughs.

“ As a matter of fact-”

“ What could a guy like that have to say that anyone would want to hear?”

“ Well, it takes a certain amount of arrogance on the part of anybody to write a book, to believe they have enough to say to the world and that people-strangers to them- are going to actually be riveted to ink markings on a page. But you’ve got to admit, he was the only one in that room who knew about hellering’s bizarre little poem, if you remember,” she defended, not knowing why.

“ Yeah, yeah… I stand corrected. He wasn’t like, you know, hitting on you, was he?”

“ And what is it with you men who feel threatened by a little man like Eddings, or… or a woman with a brain, anyway?”

“ Threatened? Who feels threatened?” Eriq threw up his hands.

“ Forget it. Just get me back to Miami Crime Lab; I’ve got lots to do there. You promise now to get the killer’s note, the original, off to Kim as-” “Like I said”-he was annoyed-”consider it done.”

The Following Morning

Morning came to Miami as if all of nature’s most peaceful and warm and beckoning best had come knocking at the door of mankind’s most striking artifices-the towers of the modern city. A brilliant, blinding Florida sun omni- sciently and without struggle won the battle for hierarchy here, alongside an equally rich and stunning blue sky, a sky which acted the foil for the creamiest, whitest clouds Jessica had ever seen in any place other than Hawaii, all vying for attention amid a lush cityscape of skyscrapers and man- made spirals and pinnacles. For a moment, looking out over the pearl-white sand beaches, she thought that she was back in the paradise which she and Jim Parry had shared; imagined for a moment that he would step out onto the wraparound balcony here with her. A part of her soul went out to him. He had to be feeling her, even from this quantum distance.

But she stood alone on the Fontainebleau balcony overlooking a fresh, new paradise which was compromised once again by the stain of human passions, and unable to answer her own questioning heart, she wondered anew why she had chosen to be so alone. Was there some truth in what C. David Eddings had communicated to her, all that about male/female roles and how you could no more escape the hatred and contempt than you could escape the allure and fascination, unless you were a bona fide third sex maybe? She imagined it might be called a UNIX-a completely combined mix of the female and male sides of the species coming together as in some bizarre and wonderful Clifford Simak science fiction tale.