Robert Walker - Primal Instinct

“ Nothing more?”

“ Sorry.”

“ He never invited you elsewhere to 'talk'?”

“ Sure, every time. Wants me to walk to his car with him, go to his place, he says. Says he thinks I'm pretty; say's he'd like to take care of me, shit like that, but when I mention money and tell him he can have me for an hour, he backs off and repeats himself. Then he tells me I shouldn't sell myself on the street like common garbage, tells me that I could be happy being taken care of by a man like him.”

Her partner, Haley, laughed at this. “Pip-squeak.”

“ Compared to you, Haley, everybody's a pip-squeak,” replied Gagliano.

Reno went on. “And last night I answered with how I could use a place for the night, because my pimp's been looking for me to beat the shit outta me, and he says he knows the guy.”

“ Knows the guy?”

“ Yeah, and get this… says his name is Paniolo. You believe that?”

Parry's eyes lit up. “You didn't say Paniolo first?”

“ No, I swear.”

“ And you were wired? You got this on tape?”

“ Damn straight, mate,” said Haley.

“ Any film on the guy?”

“ No, we're not budgeted for film,” Haley said with a moan.

“ All right… go on, Terri.”

“ Course, at the time, I didn't know Paniolo from shinola, but I said sure, that's the guy, so Robert says that he'd be happy to put me up for the night.”

“ What happened then?”

“ Weirdest thing.”

“ Yeah?”

“ He wanted to know what I was.”

“ What you were?” Jessica asked before Parry could.

She nodded, the comb in her hand at a standstill now. “My nationality. Wanted to know if I was even part Hawaiian, and I told him I was one-quarter Hawaiian, part French — 'cause I thought that would turn his burners up-and part American.” She was punctuating with the hairbrush now. “I figured he'd never believe me if I told him I was Hawaiian, you know.”

“ So what happened then?”

“ Nothing.”

“ Nothing?”

“ He didn't come back. Said he had to go get his car, which he said was over by the park, and — “

“ The park?”

“ Fort DeRussy, I took him to mean. Anyway, I asked the guys on the mike what rating they'd given the guy.”

“ Rating?” asked Jessica.

“ On the nut scale. One to ten. Anyway, they just gave him a mild rating, so I waited, not particularly interested, and when he didn't come back, I figured he'd thought better of crossing this guy Paniolo.”

“ How many times did he come back to speak to you on the street?”

“ Last night? Just the once, but others, whew… and if he wasn't speaking, he was watching. Spooky guy, really, but I took him for a mental, and since they're generally harmless, well…”

“ How many times in all did this guy approach you?” asked Parry, clarifying Jessica's question.

Reno pursed her lips and thought about this for a moment. “Hmmmmm… four, maybe five different nights.”

“ Consecutive nights?”

“ No, no… scattered.”

“ You haven't been out there more'n a week,” said Tony Gagliano, getting the picture.

“ And he'd come up to me two or three times a night to just make small talk until I brushed him off, telling him I had business to attend to and how he was cramping my style. Now I hear about this guy Paniolo here, and suddenly I'm wondering all over about this guy I thought was a nerd, that maybe he could be the Cane Cutter.”

Parry was instantly at her. “I want you to sit down with Don Myers, get as good a sketch of this guy as possible to put in Kaniola's paper and the Union Jack News. And Tony, you and I are going to be backing Terri out there tonight, and if this toad shows, we're going to corner his ass. The connection with Paniolo is just too sweet.”

“ It's the bottom of the ninth and two outs,” said Jessica, “and we're due for a little luck.”

“ I don't get this,” said Haley. “I've seen this guy. He's a kanaka worm.”

'Then he's Hawaiian?” asked Jessica.

“ Would figure if he's acquainted with Ewelo,” Tony Gagliano put in.

Parry asked, “A worm in what sense?”

“ Slinks like a goddamn worm, Chief. He's hefty, eats well, I'd say, works out maybe, but he's low to the ground and he's mealy mouthed. Hell, even Terri scares him.”

'Terri scares me,” joked Gagliano, breaking the others up.

Terri threw her carefully brushed wig at Tony.

Haley continued after all had settled down. “I figured the Trade Winds Killer for a ladies' man. Chief, not a worm.”

“ He's dysfunctional where women are concerned,” corrected Jessica.

“ And he bides his time like a damned spider,” Parry stated. “Crawls in and out of the darkness to locate food, goes back in, comes back out again. He spends hours, no, days, laying it out, planning, lulling his victims into the same complacency you and Terri're in, Haley, making his intended vies think he's a harmless little shit. This guy's exhibiting the very traits of our killer, Haley, and you don't even recognize him. He's like a street lamp to you, a garbage pail, and he's damned glad you see him that way.”

The room was silent after Jim's emotion-laden lecture, thick with Parry's accusation that the hardworking agents weren't thinking clearly, weren't seeing even though they were looking.

Terri Reno swallowed hard, thinking of what might have happened had she gone to this thick-necked, thick-armed creep's place with him last night. According to information Jessica had released to them on the killer, once he had his victim where he wanted her, he struck so ferociously and quickly that she could be killed or maimed for life before anyone could break in a door.

Jessica could see the pained expression on Tern's face from across the room, and she could well imagine what was going through Terri's mind at the moment. She flashed on a time when she was defenseless against a maniac bent on taking her own life. Parry continued. “While you two are busy with a sketch artist, Haley, the rest of us want to hear those surveillance tapes. Terri, you get started with Don Myers. Haley, fetch those tapes.”

“ Will do, Boss.” Kalvin Haley needed no second telling, relieved to be going out of earshot of his chief.

“ The guy knows Hal Ewelo,” Parry said thoughtfully, “and Ewelo ironically kills an innocent kid in an attempt to leam the killer's identity!” He shook his head. “Sometimes people do prove the stereotype, and Ewelo's one stupid kanaka. We push Ewelo harder, find out who his friends are, who his goddamned relatives are, who he knows that's kinky or strange or sexless in his estimation, anything out of the norm. Promise the bastard a deal. Tony, you're on that, and don't hesitate to use this information to get some leverage with the bastard.”

“ He's called in a lawyer.”

“ Then do it with his lawyer present, but do it.”

Tony hustled off, disappearing as Haley had before him.

“ We're going to end the killing,” said a resolved Parry.

Every wheel went into motion. Parry, along with Jessica, listened intently to the taped meanderings of their latest mystery suspect, and she found Robert all that Haley had said and more. He sounded like a pitiful soul, a poor castaway wretch, just searching the city for a little kind word, a soft touch, a pleasant smile. He talked of everything and anything, almost nonstop, as if Terri were a long-lost relative, and with each contact, he became more and more familiar while maintaining a mewing, whimpering voice, conspiratorial actually, in which he maintained that he was a lot like Terri, a down-and-outer, misunderstood by his parents, his friends and relatives, not to mention his bosses, and that he had kicked about from one job to the next, always being pushed around by some bully or a boss, and always fired or let go because someone didn't like him. Politics, he called it. On subsequent tapes he let Terri know more about himself, or about his false self, one could not tell for certain. He spoke of his favorite job once as a cowboy.