Robert Walker - Darkest Instinct

Ja had since moved up the ranks on Grand Cayman. He had used his new authority to send some of his officers to the United States for training at the FBI Academy, and had been pleased with the results.

Jessica recognized his voice immediately when she was finally put through to Ja.

“ Okinleye here!” Ja was always loud and clear, having had a British education and a military upbringing. He was stiff and formal even at a party, but his formality had become so much a part of his personality, it seemed pleasantly integrated, charming even. “Ja, it’s me, Jessica Coran. I’m calling on a matter of some urgency.”

“ Aha! To congratulate me, no doubt.” She laughed into the phone. “Yes, that of course, but I sent a card when I learned of your promotion. Just the same, congratulations.”

“ And your card and well-wishing is much appreciated. Dr. Coran, it is always a pleasure to hear from you! Where are you calling from? Are you on the island?” He sounded surprised.

“ I’m in Florida-Naples, Florida, to be exact. I’m working a case here; one you may’ve heard about?”

“ Hoooo, yes, an evil business that one in Florida I hear of.”

“ That’s my case.”

“ I have word of your string of children, all dead at the hand of this fiend they are calling the Night Crawler, but I didn’t know you were handling the case. If there is anything-anything whatever-I can do, please never hesitate one moment to ask, my dear Doctor.”

She pictured Okinleye’s Sidney Poitier appearance, his wide forehead and piercing, nearly black eyes as she replied, “Ja, have you had any like Missing Persons cases- disappearances-turn into murder victims? These would be young women, American or British, my basic appearance-height, weight, color of hair.”

“ Teens, tourists?”

“ Or early twenties, yes.”

“ In point of fact… yes, but are you suggesting a connection?”

“ I’m not sure…”

“ I will have my best man scour our records for… for how long past?”

“ A year… no, two years ago?”

“ That far back may take some time. I of course recall several instances of bodies washing ashore, all clustering about a year ago, yes.”

“ Were they bound, gagged?”

“ No, nothing like that.”

“ Nude?”

“ Yes.”

“ Cause of death?”

“ First it was suggested as drowning, but one of our men who is academy-trained by your fine FBI realized it was strangulation.”

“ And the killer was never apprehended, I take it.”

“ No, never… to our shame.”

“ We may be trailing the same man here. Can you send all you have on the protocols there?”

“ Absolutely, as soon as it is amassed.”

She gave him the NPD’s address in Naples. “Make sure it’s marked for me personally.”

“ It will be done. I wish you all good luck there, Dr. Coran.”

“ Thank you, Chief Okinleye. It does appear that we’ll need all the luck we can find.”

“ I apologize for my surprise when you first called,” he said.

She unnecessarily shrugged. “What for?”

“ I mean, I thought you were in Hawaii, that you had relocated and had married some fellow there?”

“ Well… not quite…”

“ Not quite? Or not quite yet?”

“ I’m not quite sure yet. Does that answer your question?”

“ I am sorry to pry; your happiness is all that I wish.”

She smiled at this genuine, simple desire, so sincerely stated. “Thank you, Ja, and I’ll look forward to hearing from you.”

“ When will you come to dive The Wall in Cayman again? When will you come to see us? You will not believe how big my children have become. They were busting the house, so in keeping with my new duties, we have purchased a suitable abode far above the city, overlooking the city and the harbor.”

“ It sounds lovely, and I’ll visit as soon as I can, promise.”

“ Remember to take time to play; that life is not made for work alone, that work alone is not life.”

“ Thank you, Ja. I’ll remember that island wisdom.” Ja hung up and she played over his final words inside her head and heart. She knew he was right, that once again she’d become so entangled in her work that it had become her life. For that kind of advice from her shrink, she paid through the nose; getting it through Ja’s simple wisdom was cheaper, but no less painful.

Quincey and Samernow knew the so-called best barbecue place in Naples, so the foursome wound up at Brace’s for drinks and dinner. They tried to talk about anything and everything besides their great disappointment in not having had the chance to pounce on the Night Crawler this day. They talked of sports and weather and the Eddie Perlman trial, which had started in earnest in Seattle. Perlman was accused of the brutal murder of his six children, his wife and his mother-in-law. The case had been in the headlines for almost a year now as prosecution and defense jockeyed for position. It was a classic example of a defenseless defense resorting to blowing smoke, burning unrelated incense in the courtroom, fanning the flame of confusion and creating doubt where no doubt existed by playing one mirror off another, all in a superfluous effort to deflect and ultimately derail the truth while boring the jury to death.

“ When we do finally catch this bastard Allain, or whoever the hell he is, the damned legal system will drag it out, ass-over-backwards, for ten years,” complained Quincey, “and it’ll take some prison-cell justice to see the SOB gets what he deserves.” Jessica and the others drank to the sad truth.

Jessica reminded them how, after capture, Mad Matthew Matisak had been placed in a federal prison for the criminally insane, and how he had played the system for years, and how the moment his doctor’s defenses went down, he’d struck like a waiting cobra. He’d escaped, wreaked havoc and murder from Philadelphia to Louisiana, where he began stalking her, until finally she had cornered and killed him in a New Orleans warehouse. Final justice three long years after he was found guilty of the slow-torture deaths of the countless victims he had drained blood from to feed an insatiable appetite for the red fluid.

And so the conversation worked its way back around to what was eating away at them all tonight, the whereabouts of the Night Crawler.

“ Where the hell can he be?”

“ He’s like a damned crayfish, hiding in the mud out there-invisible but there.”

“ How’d he know we’d staked out Buck’s Trophy Shop?”

“ Was he maybe using Buck to decoy us away?”

“ What do you mean?”

“ Keep us here, while he goes north to Tampa?”

“ Is he just playing more cat-and-mouse games with us?”

The questions spiraled and threaded through their conversation, and Jessica sadly and resignedly began to believe that they were no closer to apprehending the monster than when they’d begun their effort so long ago in Islamorada Key. She voiced this feeling and the others stopped their drinking and eating to stare.

“ How can you say that, Jess?” asked Eriq. “We know a lot more about this creep now than when we began.”

“ But that’s not enough. Knowing about him hasn’t stopped him.”

“ Fact is, he gets off on letting us know bits and pieces, seems to me,” said Quincey. “Isn’t that why he cut loose three bodies in one day and left the nylon rope behind?”

Samernow agreed. “Isn’t that why he keeps writing the damned papers with his damnable poetry?”

“ Yeah, he feeds us… we feed him,” grumbled Santiva, who’d had more to drink than the others and was now completely despondent.

“ Anybody here by the name of Coran or Santiva?” shouted the bartender, waving a phone in one hand, hefting a stein of beer in the other.