Robert Walker - Darkest Instinct

“ You think that Allison Norris was looking for us?”

“ I have to.”

Santiva and the stewardess exchanged a glance, the woman lowering her eyes to her lap, a bit embarrassed at having listened in, or simply wishing she hadn’t. Santiva returned to Allison Norris’s file, likely sizing it up in relation to what Jessica had said, trying to determine if there were indeed a fatalism at work here, perhaps one that began when victim and killer spoke their first words to one another.

Jessica’s own thoughts again turned to James in Hawaii. They’d made superficial, perhaps frivolous preparations to have Jessica return to Hawaii a third time; to shed everything she owned, all that she was, give it all up to be with him in Hawaii even if the FBI could not see its way clear to a transfer, since he simply could not leave Hawaii. Even if the FBI did see its way clear, she’d have to take a lesser position, become a field operative at the state level. She’d still be working cases, but her work would be confined to the Hawaiian island state. “Not exactly the worst wall to have your back against,” Jim had kept reminding her of her choices.

It was a major life and career change, and she and Jim had a great deal of thinking to do before lunging ahead. Still, she recalled those precious days on Maui where she had spent the most wonderful moments of her adult life. Jim had been so vibrant, so loving and good for her. James and Hawaii had rejuvenated her, had conspired to make her whole again, and in Hawaii you could almost believe that evil no longer had a depressingly powerful foothold in the world.

Finally, at one point she’d sworn to Jim, and any of her friends kind enough to listen, that she’d return to D.C. only once more, to make all necessary arrangements to return to Paradise for good and all. Jim and she had talked of taking their romance to the next stage. And she’d made up her mind that either the FBI would grant her a full-time arrangement on the islands, so that she and Jim could be together, or she would seek a civilian job outside the agency, go back into pathology work with one of the hospitals in Oahu… maybe.

Jim and she were talking marriage, a home together, stability and someday-some days for an array of milestones awaiting them, among them someday children. Her closest and dearest friends-Donna LeMonte, Kim Desinor, J. T„even Paul Zanek-were happy for her, and her life’s work quickly became how best to get the hell out of the D.C. area and back to Jim. She began by divesting herself of the many worldly possessions she would have had absolutely no need of in Hawaii, from heavy winter coats, hats and gloves to woolen blankets and rain slickers and boots. In Hawaii people went barefoot in the rain.

She had also begun to rid herself of binding arrangements here, from her job to her apartment and money matters, looking into electronically moving her money into a bank in Oahu, and she was discreetly saying her good-byes when she got the wake-up call that, while she was gutting her own world, James Parry was actually unwilling to give up anything for the relationship. She was uprooting and changing everything so that her life might fit into his life, while James had forfeited nothing. She had leapt into love’s crevasse, while he stood yet at the cliff, looking on. All these impossibly huge life changes she’d made without the slightest guarantee, and it suddenly dawned bright that it wasn’t fair. Then her friend, psychiatrist Donna LeMonte, had kindly and cleanly cut her up into little pieces with the truth, that this perceived lack of sacrifice on Jim’s part was all the excuse and rationale she’d secretly, subconsciously been waiting for, so she might escape the terrifying stress and equally terrifying idea of commitment and devotion, for which she would have to relinquish so much of herself, her hard-won identity.

Donna had reminded Jessica that there were never any assurances in the best of relationships. But Jim had made no assurances whatsoever, and for Jessica, the signals she was basing her new life on suddenly crumbled like stale cookies, forcefully alerting her to the kind of fool she’d become. And next she began to question her and Jim’s motives. Was Jim worth turning her entire life inside out for? Maybe yes, but he might’ve at least shown some of the class Alex Sincebaugh had in giving up his beloved New Orleans for the woman he loved. Whether right or wrong, Jessica decided at the thirteenth hour that neither Jim nor Hawaii was going to back her into any corners.

She had desperately tried to explain her newfound well of concerns to Jim, but his typical male response had infuriated her. He’d complicated the issue with his ego; had dared complain that he had already placed his house up for sale and had been searching for a beach house, a place for the two of them. He had finished with a lame joke, some nonsense about how much Jessica was going to be underfoot. She heard it as how she had “put him out.” “Wrong answer,” she had told him, hanging up on him.

She hadn’t heard from him now in several days. Depressed, she had closed in on herself after that, closed off her feelings, like blinds closed against the light. She had not taken time to mourn the loss of their phantom future life together; instead, she’d thrown herself back into her work, even as Donna argued that this was not the full extent of who she was. Pretending for the time being that nothing mattered but her profession, she had asked for an assignment, any assignment. So now she was on her way to Miami with Chief Eriq Santiva, who had the day before forwarded to her a strange telephone call from a shark research facility in the Florida Keys. She’d spoken to a Dr. Joel Wainwright about some interesting specimens found upon dissection of sharks at his facility-female human body parts. A map of the area showed that, as the shark flies, there was not a lot of distance between Key Largo, where the sharks were caught, and Greater Miami

Together now, Jessica Coran and Eriq Santiva had joined forces on a true fishing expedition, on what seemed a convoluted trail that might lead to a madman who was drowning his defenseless young female victims after sexually molesting them.

“ You think the water has any significance to the killer?” asked Eriq.

“ Damned straight it does. Could mean anything from the amniotic fluid in the womb to the salt of the earth to this guy. Look at the letter he wrote to the Miami Herald.”

He fished among the papers for the handwritten, faxed copy of the purported letter from the Night Crawler, as the press had dubbed the killer.

Chief Santiva had already scanned the Night Crawler’s scrawl several times. Now his patient eyes played over the loops and swirls of the killer’s feral handwriting once more.

Santiva, of course, had wanted and had screamed for the original handwritten note attributed to the Night Crawler, but the local police wouldn’t or couldn’t provide the document; something was even said about its having gotten lost in the “cage,” cop talk for the Evidence Lockup Room. Thank God it had been faxed before it was completely lost, if it were indeed from the killer.

Meanwhile an Interpol communiques, forwarded to the FBI via Scotland Yard by an Inspector Nigel Moyler, had mentioned a similar outbreak of killings occurring along the Thames River in London the previous year, killings which had gone unsolved. He had forwarded a handful of letters written by the Thames River Killer when Santiva had shown an interest. The two cases seemed to have some similarities, and Santiva had seen some immediate similarities in the handwriting, but there were also differences. Many of the most salient differences, according to Eriq, could be attributed to a growing neurosis which was reflected in the letters from overseas.