Robert Walker - Darkest Instinct

Coming in low again, they saw someone poke a head from the cabin and appear to shout back down to others. Then this figure waved for his comrades to come out and have a look, and next he warmly waved up at the folks in the chopper in a friendly gesture, unlike the angry other boaters they’d seen. Jessica could not clearly make out the man’s features, except to say his hair was a sandy-blond shade. She instead concentrated on the stenciled name of the boat at the rear, as did Eriq, who read aloud, “Smiling Jack and blond hair. That’s a far cry from the Tau Cross, Jess.”

They buzzed off from the boat again, Lansing saying, “What now?”

“ Take her around again for a closer look. I only saw one man.”

“ Jessica, I could swear I saw someone below. This manhunt is getting us nowhere. It’s simply futile.”

“ It’s the name: Smiling Jack\ Remember Kim Desinor indicated we should take care to look as much for the symbolic as the literal meaning in things dealing with the Night Crawler?”

“ I seem to recall something of the like, yes.”

“ His Union Jack and Smiling Jack could be one and the same. What symbol is as strong as a flag? And Jack has, over the years, been used to refer to the Devil, and a smiling Jack could well mean the Devil’s grin. And C. David Eddings told us that if the killer is into e. j. hellering’s poetry, he might well also begin to quote e. e. cummings.”

“ I don’t get the connection.”

“ I took a little time one night with cummings and stumbled over a particularly nasty little limerick called ‘jack hates all the girls.’ “

“ You think he’s gone to all this trouble to change the name of the boat only to leave such glaring Freudian slips behind?”

“ I don’t know, but I want another look. Besides, there’s something queer about that boat and about the man’s behavior.”

“ What?” asked Eriq.

She shook her head. “I don’t know what. I just have a feeling, an instinct.” Her darkest instincts, she thought. “Bring her around for another look, then, Mr. Lansing,” Eriq relented. “Aye, aye, Chief.”

Back on Grand Cayman Island, Ja Okinleye, taking no chances, ordered his entire force to be on the lookout for any suspicious-looking ships entering the ports around his three-island nation. In the easy rhythms of the Dutch- French language which Ja and his men often reverted back to when talking with one another, his officers crowded the airwaves with questions: “What is meant by suspicious- looking boat?”

“ How is a boat going to be looking like that? To look suspicious?”

“ What do you mean, Chief Inspector?”

“ I never heard of no seventy-foot boat being operated by one man.”

“ Fully automated ship?”

“ Wouldn’t someone in port authority know about such a ship?”

Ja angrily stared at the radio mouthpiece where he sat in his car, still at the airport in front of his cousin’s island helicopter business. “Do I have to think for all fifteen of you? Anyone new coming into port, particularly alone, a lone visitor. That is suspicious. What kind of man is he who comes to Cayman without a woman? A ship with a registry outside our waters. Use your heads! Use your eyes and ears! Damn your lazy asses.”

Ja Okinleye had never been involved in a case as large, and with such international roots, as this: a killer who was wanted not only in America but in Great Britain as well. Whenever he did have a bigger than usual case to coordinate, he found it best to be on hand, at the forefront, and so he operated now out of his limousine. This case could cement his career.

It had occurred to him that catching the now-infamous Night Crawler would mean a great deal to him politically, and he had for a while been giving some thought to running for higher office-to get away from being so directly involved in law enforcement. It would make Aliciana and her whole family happy. It would mean more time with his children, not to mention his own sanity and peace of mind. Over the years, he had managed to engender a lot of enemies who would be only too glad to see him placed in higher office, where he might do them less harm.

The island was teeming with underworld activity, much of it stemming from various gambling casinos and smuggling and money-laundering operations, especially in the drug trade. Cayman intermediaries helped mask the route of shipments pouring into the U.S. from such places as Colombia. Customs officials were notoriously easy to bribe, and replacing them again and again hadn’t changed the “island habit” or the morals of the men involved. In the midst of such expected third-world palm greasing, Ja was all too well aware of certain facts of island life. In order to coexist, law enforcement, as much as Ja personally hated the drug trade, pretty much looked the other way save for the occasional good-faith show of a raid now and then, typically as a result of an informant in the drug trade wishing to quell a move by newcomers to the business. It was all so sordid, and Ja was sick of police work, where the investigator’s hands were tied by the very people who charged him with doing his duty. It was, he assumed, the same in most third world countries and communist countries and cities across the world, including America.

Being a cop in Cuba must be the worst kind of hell, he imagined. Handcuffed by one’s own bureaucratic nightmare-like here, he thought. Here the balance wasn’t set so much by a corrupt government as by the powerful men of the island who ran everything, both legitimate and illegitimate and everything in between, including some of the giant casinos and tourist centers. Such powers expected Chief Ja to keep the peace for them and to know where certain lines were drawn, to know where his jurisdiction ended. Sometimes it was at a given door, sometimes at a given street, sometimes at a given level of intervention. It all depended upon the who- the players. He must be ever vigilant about whom he was dealing with and what their connections were and how much political clout they brandished.

Ja now opened another line to bark orders in his native tongue to other subordinates, telling them to be in place. “Nothing is to be left to chance,” he insisted. “Now be certain to cover every slip at every wharf. Coordinate with the port authorities at each port.” Even as he said it, he knew the meager resources of the PA here meant everyone working for it-maybe six men for the three islands-was so grossly underpaid as to make graft as common as tipping in a restaurant. He thought of bringing every damned one of these men in, grilling them until one of them gave him information on the killer’s first visit to the islands. They- one or more of them-had to have known something, seen something. If all else failed today, he would look into this.

Another of Ja’s men was now asking, “Are you certain, sir, you want to be including the hotels and restaurants?”

“ Especially the hotels and restaurants.”

“ But, sir,” replied the voice at the other end, “that will draw attention. What about the tourists?”

“ And the casinos?” asked another of his men.

“ To hell with the tourists and the casinos. I will worry about the tourists and the casinos.” And worry he would have to. After this was over, he’d deal with the Tourism Council and the local money-making interests as best he might. They were both like natural forces he had to always enter into any equation if he wished to survive, and he had already worked out a script they could both easily understand, one that meant more money for them as well as for many islanders. But for now, he hadn’t the time or the inclination to spend explaining his actions to anyone. “But we will get complaints,” the young officer at the other end of the line bemoaned. Ja realized that complaints translated into threats. “I will handle all complaints! Just distribute the sketch I forwarded you last night, and the information, and do as I say!” Ja slammed down the receiver of his car phone and looked out over the sea in the direction Jessica and the others had flown. He trusted they would be unable to pick out a single sailing vessel amid the morass of ships out there and heading this way. It seemed only too logical to him that the killer would camouflage himself amid the racers, if he was indeed as crafty and cunning as the U.S. papers had made him out to be, and if he was indeed actually on his way to the Caymans.