Robert Walker - Darkest Instinct

Jessica could not help but have the impression he was sent out by the others to report on what she was doing. Either that or he couldn’t stand being with the others another second and actually preferred the company of the body and the M.E. to those ashore. He finally asked, “How’s it coming, Jess?”

“ The natives getting restless?” I think Quincey’s going to chew his fingers off. His captain’s chewed his head off already over his partner’s being a no-show and-”

“ Yeah, well… some things can’t be helped. But where the hell’s Coudriet and his boys?”

“ What exactly happened with Samernow?” he stubbornly pressed. “I saw Quincey pull over and put him out. Started to pick him up myself, but decided I’d best steer clear of that one.”

“ I’d say the case is… has gotten to him…”

“ Quincey or Samernow? Or both?”

“ Samernow for certain.”

“ Doesn’t surprise me.”

“ A case like this, Eriq… it’s enough to get to anybody, so go easy on him.”

“ None of my concern until it gets in the way.”

“ Far more important, where in hell’s Coudriet’s brigade? I’d expected him to come sloshing out to me a good twenty or thirty minutes ago.”

“ There was another call, Jess.”

“ Another call. Well, that figures, a city the size of Miami…” She continued to work over the body, snipping at loose tissue and filling vials.

Santiva was having a hard time of it now, looking at the body, turning a shade of green to rival the waters.

“ I mean another call’s come in on another floater…”

“ Another floater?”

“ Yeah, what are the odds, huh?”

Jessica continued to work. “Well, this is water country…”

“ It was in another section of beach south of here. In fact, there’ve been two additional bodies located, three in all this morning.”

She looked up at him from her work and found Eriq’s eyes now pinned on the open sea and horizon, his mouth mumbling something about how each of the bodies must have come in from a northwesterly direction, this one having gotten caught up on the jetty, the other two released elsewhere, but all within close proximity and along a straight line with the coast. As he mumbled, she kept repeating the single-word question: “Three? Three?”

“‘ Fraid so.”

“ Are you telling me-”

“ All quite possibly related, yes.”

“ Three… He gives us three in one bloody day?”

“ Coudriet is overseeing one of the others and his two assistants are taking care of number three. It would appear that our man has stepped up his timetable considerably.”

She nodded her dismayed agreement, cursing the monster under her breath. Eriq turned, stared into her eyes and then at the corpse over Jessica’s shoulder and said, “He’s decided to really rub our faces in it, hasn’t he?”

“ You sure you want to be this close to the corpse, Eriq?” she asked. “I’m going to need help any minute now to roll the body. You want to get those medics out here?”

Santiva shook his head and donned a smug look that told her he was macho enough to take whatever she could. He looked down once more at the blowfish corpse and suddenly Eriq’s large chest heaved like a machine, pulsating in staccato rhythm to the pump that was now in control of his stomach and spewing forth bile into his throat. He lurched away and vomited into the ocean.

“ Aww, damnit, Eriq, can’t I take you anywhere?” she asked, half smiling. “Maybe you had better wait onshore with the others. I’m near about done here, anyway. You can tell the others to come ahead with their ropes and nets.”

“ I’m all right, damnit. Whatever assistance you need…”

“ Eriq, you ever roll a floater before?”

“ One or two…”

“ This long in the water?”

“ No, but it’s time I got my hands wet, so to speak. Let’s get on with it, Doctor.”

“ Got a bit more here to finish up on first, so hold on, Eriq.”

“ Do you know any more than when you began?” he wondered aloud. “Will I ever know all the answers you seek, Eriq?” She bagged and labeled a strand of soggy hair. “Yes, I’d say so.”

“ How much longer, Jess? Out here like this, I mean?” She breathed in the sea air. “I want enough for my collection, Eriq.”

“ Cute…”

“ I’ll be done in five, maybe ten minutes. Takes time collecting fibers, skin, embedded minerals, chemicals, trace elements, all that good stuff.”

Eriq guffawed, repeating her words. “Good stuff…”

“ I don’t exactly have time to train you in the ways of forensic medicine here and now, Chief.”

Eriq pointed to the body and said, “Look at this… It’s like a parade balloon. How can you tell the age from this?”

“ I’d like to get a look at her throat and face now, Eriq, if that’s possible. Will you gently help me to turn her in the water onto her back? ”His mortified expression said, Jesus, Jess… I didn ‘t come out here for this, but if it’ll help speed up matters, while his voice said, “That’s what I’m here for…”

“ Good, it’ll speed up matters.”

He extended his hands in a gesture to indicate they were there for her bidding. “Just tell me what to do.”

“ Just follow my lead; grab on to her right forearm, not the wrist, and her right ankle. With her hands still tied, that’s going to help turn her. I’ll keep her steady.”

He tentatively touched the spongy flesh until it was no longer quite so disturbing to him, but this took some time.

“ Got hold?” she asked.

“ Some date,” he muttered.

“ Now begin to turn her with the tide on my count. One, two… three and go.”

Each layer of skin was like a soggy pastry crust, more water than flesh. Tissue came off the bloated corpse like cream at the top of curdled milk as the dead girl was twirled in the water, and now the FBI agents looked into a pair of empty eye sockets, like mirrors removed from frames, the soft tissue of the eyes having been first to disintegrate or become a meal for feeding microbes, fish, crabs and the like. Nose, chin, cheeks, ears and forehead had all congealed into one puffy, featureless putty mask. No one could safely or routinely identify what the sea had sculpted from flesh. Santiva looked as if he were ready again to lose it, but he obviously had nothing left to chuck.

“ The body has had long exposure to the air as well as the water,” she informed him. “If it’d remained underwater, at some depth, the decay would have been forestalled to a greater degree than we see here, pressure at greater depths being equal on all sides. The flesh would’ve remained firmer, more intact. As it is, with the slightest touch, the skin sloughs off.”

Santiva watched as a piece of the dead girl curled away with the outgoing tide, like oil spilling into the water. “What does that say

… ahh, tell you about the body, about how it came to be here like this?”

It was a good question. “Come back at me with that one when I know more, will you, Eriq?” she asked.

“ Can’t get over what water does to flesh,” he said, even his words creep-crawling as he spoke.

“ Kinda like centuries-old books,” Jessica replied. “You know, how they crumble at the slightest touch, even at the threat of a touch,” she added, both fascinated and pitying at once.

“ How can you be so damned clinical?” he said, and immediately regretted it, apologized and fell silent again.

She shrugged both the remark and the apology off, searching the bloated rolls of skin about the throat and trying a peek below the rope for what she might find there. Santiva, perhaps in an attempt to further mask his earlier remark, now asked, “How can you be so sure of the age, or even the sex for that matter?” The woman’s torso, stomach to sternum, was one large blimp, swallowing the breasts in bloated mimicry of the female form. The crotch area, too, was inflated beyond recognition. What they had was hardly human. Jessica dared not, at this time and place, attempt to remove the tightly twisted rope from the bloated neck to reveal what awful bruises lived beneath. “The other bodies before Jane Doe here were discovered without rope around their necks.”