Robert Walker - Darkest Instinct

“ Say that again.”

“ I mean, he plots out his actions against his victims, Jess, but he’s also quite mad, not unlike your old friend Matisak.”

“ I get the picture.”

“ And he’s a man of many disguises who has seawater for blood.”

Jessica pictured the pretty psychic at the other end of the line. She was sharp and intelligent and quick, and most of the time, in one fashion or another, she was right, her instincts dead-on. However, Jessica had learned to take what Kim said with caution. She saw signposts and symbols as often as she saw actualities, so every word had to be weighed in the context of its possibly being a reflection of some other meaning.

“ Your killer has many ties, but he has no ties.” Enough with the riddles, Jessica thought, but kept silent.

“ He is tied to his past. He is filled with venomous anger, a fiery rage, and he is on some sort of bizarre quest to locate something he lost as a child-some great object he must regain.”

“ He’s murdering young women to regain something he’s lost. Now that’s a bulletin, Kim,” Jessica replied, unable to hold back on her sarcasm any longer. “That hardly narrows my search.”

“ There is one other thing.”

It sounded as if Kim was about to give out with the good stuff. “Go on.”

“ The letter T which he signs with…”

“ Yes, well, we’ve come to expect tea with this crumpet.”

Kim paused before saying, “Cute, Jess. I read about the accent, and that maybe the guy is British. You’re thinking there may be some validity to it, but be cautious. He’s a player, a thespian if you get my drift, so the accent could well be part of his act.”

“ Are you saying he’s a pro?”

“ If not, very close to it, yes. Now, back to the cross-T signature.”

“ What can you tell me about it?”

“ It’s actually the sign of the Tau Cross; a cross in the shape of a T. I had a friend in the department, Peter Ames, an expert on ancient markings, look it over.”

“ And?”

“ He says it has an ancient and rather mysterious history. It has a history as a Christian marking, but there’s also an offshoot religion called the Tau which keeps coming up in the literature.”

“ And? What about it?”

“ Well, very little is known about it, but he says one thing is sure.”

“ What’s that, Kim?”

“ Human sacrifice was part of the deal.”

“ Why am I not surprised?”

“ One other thing, Jess.”

“ Yes?”

“ He’s like a confused or wounded animal-he’s extremely dangerous.”

“ We know that much.”

“ He makes love to the dead; he’s a necrophile.”

“ There’s no way to know that scientifically since all evidence of such… such perversion was washed away by the sea. We know the women were raped, but how can you be sure he… he does their bodies?”

“ I saw it.”

Over the course of the rest of that night, any pleasant dream Jessica conjured churned itself into, a convoluted nightmare, her rest shattered by the screams of modern human sacrifices.

Now bleary-eyed, Jessica sat in the lab, contemplating microscopic trace evidence taken from the victims and at the same time recalling Dr. Kim Desinor’s psychic and psychological profile of the killer. They seemed no closer to catching this cretin than the day they’d arrived in Florida, and this frustrated her to no end.

A lab technician called to Jessica, bringing her out of the scope and her reverie. “There’s a phone call for you. Press three,” said the Oriental technician, a small woman with a sweet smile and smiling eyes.

She lifted the phone beside her to hear the warm hello of Dr. John T. Thorpe. J.T., her lab director and friend back at Quantico, had been put onto something which he had kept secret from Jessica up till now.

“ Your timing is impeccable, J.T.”

“ As always,” he joked.

“ I’m right this moment staring into my microscope, looking at the slide which you FedExed me yesterday.” With the phone in one hand, her microscope at the other, she and J.T. talked about the strange new findings in the Night Crawler case.

“ What does this mean, J.T.?” she asked even though she knew.

“ You tell me,” he replied. “I’m really in no position to say, Jess.”

“ Well, is it a case of accidental contamination somewhere along the journey of the evidence chain? Did the botching come as a result of those people in Islamorada Key, maybe?”

“ Well, they’re researchers; what do they know about handling forensic evidence?”

“ We’ve got to know if this was intentional-committed by the killer-or accidental, committed by Wainwright or someone in Coudriet’s lab, here in Miami.” J.T.’s voice was suddenly thick with disbelief. “Jess, if it’s intentional, then the chemical agents were introduced by the monster behind the killings…”

“ And what does that tell you?”

“ He’s into some sort of preserve-the-flesh fetish?”

“ On top of everything else. We have reason to suspect he’s a necrophile, and if so, attempting to preserve the body for as long as he can fits.”

“ So an icebox isn’t good enough for this guy.”

“ Cold bruises the skin tone, discolors the product.” She continued to stare through the dual ocular eyepiece of the electron comparison microscope, to assure herself that what she was looking at made sense in light of the information J.T. had found back at Quantico, where he’d put their best chemists to work on tissue samples she’d taken from some of the body parts found that day in Islamorada. There had been something peculiar about the isolated chemicals; they didn’t belong.

Now she had confirmation; the bizarre turn of events unearthed at the microchemical level brought about a shower of new and disturbing images of the killer. This new information showed trace amounts of chemicals routinely used in the mortician’s trade. Perhaps their killer had worked for a time in a mortuary. Such a fact would tie in with a fetish for preserving the tissue. “Listen, J.T., this is to be kept between us, understand?”

“ No problem whatsoever, Jess.”

“ We’ve got precious little to convict on if we ever do connect anyone with these killings. If a true confession is ever taken, and the killer opens up about this aspect of his fantasy, then we’ll know we’ve got the right man. At the moment, we have thirty-four confessed Night Crawlers undergoing various stages of arrest, booking, psychiatric testing, scrutiny and release.”

“ Damn, that’s amazing.”

“ What’s amazing?” she asked.

“ That anyone would confess to such heinous crimes.”

“ Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe the real Night Crawler will crawl up the MPD stairs and turn himself in today or tomorrow. But I rather doubt it.”

“ Yeah, don’t hold your breath.”

She involuntarily nodded. “He’s having too much fun to stop.”

“ But what about the letters? Isn’t that a subconscious cry for someone to stop him, a sign that he wants to confess?”

“ Like you said, J.T., don’t hold your breath. No, this guy’s letters are strictly to please himself, to taunt us and to vent more of his venom.”

“ Talk about confessions… Had a call the other day from a guy in Hawaii,” J.T. abruptly changed the direction of the subject. Jessica felt her heart skip a beat. “What? Really?” She wondered if she’d successfully kept her excitement out of her voice.

“ He was looking to talk to you, Jess. Maybe you should give him a call. Sounds like he really misses you.”

“ Good… he should.”

“ Hope you don’t mind, but I told him where you were staying. So be warned: He may call.”