Robert Walker - Darkest Instinct

Perhaps that was what she was-what she’d become over the years, so that she was unfit company for either male or female friends; but if so, why did she still feel so much anger from her encounter with Jim Parry, as if all the misunderstanding was his fault alone?

She nestled into a chair at a small table on the balcony, nursed a cup of coffee and nibbled at a croissant sent up from room service. Miami was a beautiful lady, but she was also an ugly lady, unfeeling with an unadorned growth across her belly. Like all American cities, Chicago, New York, New Orleans, L.A., Honolulu, Miami ate its young.

Jessica stared long and longingly out over the pristine, sun-dappled, sea-splashed, ever-renewing bay, and from this distance it created a magnificent still life; she found the ocean an immense cradle which both supported and destroyed life, its white-tipped waves beckoning and constant, and the horizon above the sea a fresco of thunder- heads poised in a moment of time, painted there by some artist of colossal size, his brush and palette beyond all human proportion. It made her think of what Eddings had said about creation and destruction, giving life and taking life.

“ If the Artist of creation cannot kill,” she prayerfully whispered to the wind as it rushed around her on the balcony, “then God does not kill; so then God is not synonymous with nature or mankind, for both nature and mankind kill indiscriminately. Therefore, God is without guilt.”

Believing the syllogism she had just created might assuage some of the pain she had stored up over the years, since her first encounter with her first serial killer in 1992, she had begun to pursue this notion when her peace was shattered by the telephone.

She reached the phone on the fourth ring, hesitant to answer, wishing for a little more time with the blue, the stark white and the brilliant pinks and yellows of the Miami morning. Still, she acted.

“ Yes. Jessica Coran. Can I help you?”

Detective Quincey’s overwrought voice fired back, “Dr. Coran, you gotta coine right away. I can pick you up in five, maybe ten minutes. There’s been another killing. The body’s washed into Silver Bay, near Virginia Key.”

“ Give me time to dress. I’ll meet you in the lobby. Have you notified Santiva?”

“ I’ll do that now.”

“ Good.” She hung up and dressed quickly, glad that she’d showered the night before. She knew she’d be wading in water, so she pulled on a pair of lightweight jeans and a loose-fitting shiit. She didn’t have time for makeup, but she brushed out her hair, grabbed her bag and was in the lobby before Quincey arrived. Standing on the street corner just outside was Santiva, who had also hastily dressed. But she liked the fedora. He was going native, it seemed.

The standing order to all law enforcement that they be notified immediately of anything smacking of the work of the Night Crawler was obviously being observed. It was 7:03 a.m. when Charles Quincey and his partner, Mark Samernow, pulled up to the hotel lobby.

Santiva had had his car brought around. “You ride with the detectives. Find out whatever you can about the circumstances of discovery and make sure they’re-”

“- following our request that nobody touch the body before I get at it,” Jessica finished for him. “Right, I know. Chief. See you at the scene.”

“ You all right, Jess?”

“ Yeah, I’m… I’m fine, Chief. Just that sometimes…”

“ Sometimes what, Jess?”

“ You ever feel like a ghoul? What we do, I mean… sit around knowing there’s going to be another victim, knowing and waiting, knowing and being unable to stop it, knowing and being unable to do anything.”

“ Get control, Agent Coran,” he firmly said. “See you at the scene.”

She climbed into the backseat of Quincey’s departmental car, and once again noted how dull and bored the man’s partner was with the whole undertaking. She mentally made note of the fact that Samernow smelled of liquor from the night before and that he looked as if he’d slept in his clothes. Perhaps the case was taking a toll on the younger man.

Quincey seemed to know what she was thinking, having gazed up into the rearview mirror. “Mark’s going through a tough divorce,” Quincey said, covering for his partner. “It’s his first.”

“ Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Detective.”

“ Still, if the captain sees you in this condition, Mark, it’ll be hell to pay.”

Samernow scowled. “Mind your own damned business!” He sat sullen for the duration of the trip to Silver Bay.

“ Anything you can tell me, Detective Quincey, about how the body was discovered that might help me now?”

“ Same as the others, really. Naked, same signs of wear and tear, as if in the water for a long time. It’s bad, from what we’ve been told.”

“ Think I’m going to be sick, Charlie,” announced Samernow in a near whisper. “Pull over.”

“ We can’t pull over, Mark! We’re on our way to a crime scene.”

“ Then let me the hell out!”

“ What?”

“ You heard me, damnit! Either pull over and let me puke or let me outta the damned car.”

Quincey, exasperated, pulled hard into the curb, hitting it and jarring them all. He ordered, “Get out, partner! Go on!”

“ Just hold on a minute,” Samernow replied.

“ Get the fuck outta the car, Mark!” He glanced back at Jessica and added, “Pardon me, Dr. Coran, but lately all Mark responds to is cusswords.”

Samernow slammed the door hard and Quincey burned rubber, leaving his partner to alternately shake a fist at him and double over to vomit in the grass. Again Quincey was apologizing to Dr. Coran and blinking back at her image in the mirror.

“ Sometimes we all make asses of ourselves, Quince,” she assured him. “Not to worry on my behalf, Detective, really… I understand. The job takes a toll.”

“ Between Mark’s divorce and this case, he’s… well, he’s just stretched to the limit is all. I hope it… well, I hope you don’t have to say anything about this to anybody.”

“ You have my word.”

“ Maybe the captain’ll believe one more excuse…”

“ But you doubt it, right?”

“ So, you read minds, too?”

“ Not exactly.”

“ Experience, huh? Some teacher.”

“ The mother of all teachers.”

They passed over a beautiful, spiraling causeway, the water shimmering, even blinding in the morning rays, which danced like splattering nickels and dimes atop the water’s glimmering surface.

“ Here’s our turnoff just ahead. I’ll have you there in a jiffy.”

“ Part of me wishes I’d gotten out of the car with your partner back there, Detective,” she darkly joked.

“ Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“ So, who discovered the body?”

“ Some young couple on bikes, out for a predawn ride. Honeymooners, I hear.”

“ Uhgggg…”

“ Anyway, they rushed to the nearest phone and dialed 911; the paramedics and a couple of cruisers got there about the same time. The paramedics started toward the body, you know, to check it out, but one of the cops, a veteran, saw it for what it was and wouldn’t let them proceed. They got into a shouting match, but we got lucky and the veteran cop stood his ground, a guy named Frank Lombardi who’s seen a lot, used to be a cop in New York City. Anyway, he knew about the FBI request to leave floaters who’ve been in the water for any length of time alone until you guys passed on ‘em. So, here we go.”

He swung the car into an area where a Medivac van and several police cruisers stood silent sentinel over a stretch of palm trees and crescent beach. Already a mob of onlookers was at the scene, and police had snaked a yellow and black banner, flimsy in the wind, between the palm trees, daring anyone to cross the line.