Robert Walker - Primal Instinct

“ Found, yeah, she's been found.” Parry watched intently for any reaction to this news.

“ Thank God. It must've been a nightmare for the parents.”

Either Claxton was an extremely cool character, or a sociopath-which their killer must be-or the man had no idea that Linda Kahala had been brutally murdered. At this point, Parry didn't want to disturb his line of questioning with the fact the girl was found dead. “I understand she had a problem with you, Dr. Claxton?”

“ Problem? Oh, well, she wasn't too bright; she failed to do well in my class, but-”

“ Why's that, Doctor?”

Tony snidely asked, “She didn't do well on her orals or what?”

“ Because she didn't pass your goddamned sex exam?” Parry bluntly added, having agreed on the ride over to press the man this way.

Claxton visibly reddened there in the dark doorway. “What the hell is this? I'll thank you to leave now, you gentlemen of the law.”

“ We know all about your classroom tactics, Claxton,” Parry retaliated. “And now one of the girls you sexually molested has turned up dead, mutilated beyond recognition and-”

“ Dead? Mutilated?”

“- and that's a bit too much to overlook, Doctor, even for a man of your refinement and reputation. Now, are you going to cooperate, or do I have to get a warrant to search, and maybe a second to arrest?”

He stood there breathing heavily, pondering his options. “All right, all right, what the hell do you want from me?”

“ We'd like to come inside, look around,” said Tony. “ 'Less you got somethin' to hide.”

He looked over his shoulder, eyeballing his guest. “It's really a bad time for me. What about coming back tomorrow, say two in the afternoon?”

Parry pressed on. “You gave Linda a book of sonnets?”

“ I give a lot of books away.”

“ Did you or not?”

“ What if I had? What's it to you?”

“ This book?” Parry's sleight of hand with the book impressed Tony, whose eyes bored into Claxton, his fists clenched.

“ Yeah, maybe… I suppose I may've given her a book. I give away a lotta books.”

“ When? Before or after you raped her?”

“ Raped her? Are you guys nuts? What rape? There was no… never any rape. She… consented.”

“ Yeah, right,” muttered Tony.

“ Right there in your office, Doctor? Where you backed her into a corner?”

“ God damnit, do you know how many of these kids with poor grades go shouting sexual harassment these days?”

“ She's told others about the incident,” Tony added.

“ It's her word against mine.”

Tony instantly corrected him. “Was… was her word against yours.”

“ And who's a court to believe, Doctor? You or a poor dead girl whose life was shattered first when her professor put his hands all over her, from where she spiraled down to the street?” asked Parry.

“ What exactly do you fuckin' cowboys want from me?”

Parry and Tony heard the noise of a back door closing. “Go get that person, Tony. Maybe we'll have a talk with her, too… corroboration, maybe.”

Tony started away. Claxton called out. “All right, all right.”

Tony stopped at the foot of the stairs. Parry motioned for him to return.

“ Now, Dr. Claxton, I want you to tell me where you were on the night of the 11th when Linda Kahala disappeared.” Claxton backed from the door and pushed it open for them to step inside, saying, “Look around. Does this look like the house of a maniac?”

Parry stepped in, followed by Gagliano, who said, “You got any coffee?”

Claxton ignored the request.

They went through the necessary questions and as they did so, Parry began to feel that Claxton, while a scum, was no killer. He finally asked Claxton, “Have you any students, particularly male students, that Linda gravitated to in class? Was there anyone she worked with in particular, studied with, say on a class project, anything?”

“ She was dating some guy in my nine o'clock. That's all I know.”

“ We know about the boyfriend, Oniiwah,” replied Tony. “He's clean.”

“ Anyone else she might have shared a book like this with?” pressed Parry.

“ A guy, huh?” He had lit up a cigarette and now he blew out a long stream of smoke. He sat back on his lounge chair in his robe, naked beneath, rolls of fat making a spiral of snakes about his relaxed midriff. “I couldn't say… I don't know… I'm no mind reader… Don't pay that much attention to these kids, you know. Besides, I have a lot of classes and students.”

“ Sounds like the Albert Schweitzer of academia, don't he?” asked Tony.

Parry said, “This would be a guy in her class.”

He shrugged. “I can give you the roster; you take it from there. I didn't notice anything in particular going on with her and another student. Course, I don't pay that much attention to the private lives of my students.”

“ No, I guess you wouldn't. You're just interested in their private parts.”

Claxton started to protest but thought better of it.

“ Let me have the roster. Fact, let me have all your rosters.”

Claxton nervously bit at his inner jaw, but went to a desk and ripped several computer printouts from a book. “Here, take them. I got others.”

“ Jesus,” moaned Tony as he stared over Jim's shoulder at one of the lists which numbered three hundred students.

“ This the way Shakespeare's being taught nowadays?” asked Parry rhetorically as he made for the door, anxious to be rid of Dr. Claxton.

“ It's a fucking introductory level course.” Claxton pursued them, as if it were important for them to understand him better. “It's bottom-line, product-centered, factory mentality in the bloody womb of academia, thanks to the bureaucratic assholes in administration whose primary concern is to suck every cent out of their pockets! Whataya want from me?” Claxton bellowed as the door slammed in his face.

At the car, Gagliano began a coughing and spitting jag. Parry asked him if he was okay, his right hand pounding Tony's back in mock concern. “Come on, it wasn't that bad.”

“ I'd rather deal with the rats on the wharves than a puke like that. Guy turns my stomach.”

“ You carry Rolaids; use 'em. For now we'll split the lists into four evenly divided, Tony. I'm getting additional manpower and if the Trade Winds Killer is on that list, I intend to get to know him up close and personal.”

Parry then took the list from Gagliano and ripped off the first of the four sections.

“ You've got to be dead on your feet, Boss,” offered Tony. “What can you do tonight?”

“ Narrow the list to all Caucasians first. It's a good bet our killer is white; also look for the killer to be older, a good deal older than Oniiwah, upper twenties to middle age marks the kind of organized, controlled killer we're dealing with here, if the statistics mean anything. It's unlikely this guy's a kid. He's too deliberate, too careful to be a kid strung out on drugs, or some hot-tempered punk who'd leave a trail any idiot could follow.”

“ Given the deliberateness of his remaining in the shadows, the fact he's left no crime scene for us to work, yeah, I got to agree on that score.”

“ He seems to know enough to cover his ass, all right. Tomorrow, start with the registrar's office, get every bit of vital information on every male on the list their damned computer has, and have it play kiss-face with our mainframe, got that?”

“ It's called in-your-face, Boss.”

“ You mean innerface.”

“ Who'll you be recruiting?”

“ Haley's expressed an interest and so has Terri Reno.”

“ Kalvin Haley, that big Aussie?”

“ He's had experience with serials, and he was practically born here, part Hawaiian even if he won't admit it. Could really be of help to us.”