Robert Walker - Darkest Instinct

TV and newsprint media saturated viewers and readers with whatever few details had made it past the police PR team assigned to minimize the deaths and maximize the appearance that everything humanly possible was being done to end the nasty little career of the Night Crawler.

The triple murder was being analyzed by psychiatrists across the city as a throwing down of the gauntlet, as a slap to the collective face of law enforcement and Police Commissioner Orlando Everette. Jessica and others working the case were hounded and harassed and bombarded with microphones, cameras and inane questions at every turn and down every corridor. “What’re the police doing?”

“ How’re you FBI people helping?”

“ Why isn’t anything being done?”

“ Who’s responsible for this?”

“ Will he strike again, soon?”

“ Where will he strike again?”

“ Is it true that one of the bodies was a copycat killing, maybe two of them?”

“ Is it true that one of the bodies hadn’t been in the water as long as the other two?”

Jessica and Santiva plowed through with “no comments,” geysering forth until they came to a door which was off limits to press, closing it behind them, knowing how foolish they would look on the six and eleven o’clock broadcasts.

They were led through another door and down a passageway to Dr. Coudriet’s Crime Lab Unit, with its adjacent morgue. Jessica still had to log in the evidence she was carrying from her seawater crime scene. Here it would be logged by date, tag number and item description and then she would have to sign off on it. This done, she could begin her lab work and analysis of the evidence-such as it was.

They soon located the evidence lockup and Jessica filled in forms which indicated every piece of evidence she had collected, each item now logged in on a manifest. This took some time, so Eriq located a nearby coffee machine and brought back a Styrofoam cup filled with the black liquid for Jessica. She hadn’t had any breakfast, so the coffee was welcomed.

“ What kind of monster is behind this?” she asked Santiva as she finished up the necessary paperwork, not expecting an answer. “The damned reporters want to know if and when and where it will continue-stupid questions.”

“ Well, it’s not like we can read minds or look into the future,” he replied, “but on the other hand, we are the experts. Who else’re they going to come to for answers?”

“ Then maybe we’d best work with the press, the Herald at least, as we promised?” She gulped down the remainder of her coffee, which had gone lukewarm.

“ Leave that to me. You concentrate on the lab evidence.”

The uniformed officer at the “cage,” where the evidence was finally and completely logged, now thanked Jessica and told her everything appeared in order. She returned the thanks, tossed away her empty coffee cup and indicated to Santiva to follow her and they’d locate the morgue from here.

Eriq’s request that she focus on the lab work and leave the press to him sounded like an order, so she said no more on the subject, but it seemed that Santiva felt a need to explain himself further. He looked over at her as they continued down the institutional-gray corridor and said, “People are rightfully upset, and I’d be more worried if they weren’t. Hell, it’s a goddamn mystery, and they want some goddamn answers, and we’d better begin to provide some or we’ll be crucified along with Commissioner Everette and his guys.”

She nodded in agreement, still in jeans and shirt stained with saltwater, her hair pulled back and in a ponytail. “People need to know why this is happening, why here, why now… to them. Only problem is, so far, God alone knows the answer to that one. But you know, Eriq, I’m wondering if anything like this has happened before, if this case can be linked to any earlier bizarre outbreaks elsewhere.”

“ Where multiple victims have been dumped at once?”

She brightened a bit, hopeful. “Has the computer told you anything along those lines?”

“ Nothing quite like this, no. Like I said, London thinks there could be a connection, but I don’t see it.”

“ What do you think he’s trying to tell us, Eriq, sending us three bodies at once?”

Eriq shrugged and pushed a door open for her. “Your guess is as good as mine. But I would hazard a guess that he’s not quite as in control of himself as he was earlier.”

“ He’s getting careless; that’s for sure.”

“ Not so much careless as uncaring, perhaps.”

“ Which could be made to work in our favor, if we work swiftly.” She stopped him in his tracks and looked deeply into his eyes, asking, “He’s become bored with the game that he’s played thus far, hasn’t he? That’s what you’re driving at, isn’t it?”

“ Let’s say he’s altering the routine of his fantasy. If it holds true that all three of this morning’s victims were his to give up to us whenever he chose, its clear that he’s become more interested in… well, in us…”

“ Good Christ, you don’t suppose he’s stepped up his killing spree as a direct result of reading about our coming in on the case, giving the case a high profile, do you? So he plays to the press even more than ever, which means he steps up his killing agenda?”

“ It is a distinct possibility, Jess.” She dropped her gaze. “God… so, he jazzes it up a bit. To what end?” To make it that much more challenging, exciting, dangerous maybe.”

She nodded, relenting. “Yeah, J can see that.”

They continued along the corridor, coming to the Miami- Dade Crime Lab, one of the finest in the nation, where Coudriet had already made arrangements for Jessica to view the additional two bodies that’d washed ashore that morning.

She had instantly wanted to know more about the freshest of the three kills as soon as she’d learned of the three- in-one deal allotted them by the murdering Night Crawler. That body had turned out to be the one Coudriet had attended to. The most recent kill could quite possibly tell them far more than any other body turned up thus far.

“ I’ve had an opportunity to reexamine my corpse from the Flamingo Hilton Beach Resort,” Dr. Coudriet told them. “She hasn’t been in the water for longer than a week and a half, maybe ten, twelve days at the outside, but she had a condition as a child which medication has over the years stabilized-Addison’s, which bloats the skin. Without her medication, bloating set in, along with the natural expansion of the tissues by the water. It’s how and why I was able to get fingerprints from her.” He held up a single vial with a tiny lump of flesh in a preservative gel. “It’s one of Tammy Sheppard’s fingertips. It was enough to ID her with a missing persons report. You want a witness list?”

Thorn hung back, but Powers rushed them with a long- bone X ray, the left femur and knee. “It’s from our victim. She once had a compound fracture. You can see it here, just below the knee; and just above, here, you also see a simple spiral fracture,” he said, pointing with a ballpoint pen. “It has gone a long way in IDing Jane Doe number three.

” Thorn momentarily joined them, piping in with, “As for your victim, Dr. Coran, we found absolutely nothing to distinguish her. Her insides are as clean a slate as her out- sides.”

“ And all three were strangled, repeatedly?” she asked. “The water in the lungs-”

“ Lungs full to bursting, but yes, signs of multiple lacerations and strangling,” added Thorn.

“- about the throat and wrists, just like the others, and that information was not released to the press,” added Powers.

“ So, there’s little chance any one of these was a copycat killing,” surmised Santiva.