Robert Walker - Killer Instinct

It was midmoming when he pulled from the driveway, waving to a few neighbors who, retired, had nothing to do beyond tending to crabgrass and their tomato plants. Somewhere a dog barked.

He pulled from the little subdivision of houses onto the main road, then took Interstate 294 in its wide arch around the sprawling city. He wanted to find a good place in Indiana to post his letter to Dr. Jessica Coran and eventually mailed it from the small post office in Hammond. People stared at him with his hat and sunglasses on, since it had become overcast. He got back into the dark interior of his van and hid behind the black-tinted windows. From there he watched a young woman pull up, get out of her car and go into the post office. She was, to him, a bucket of blood. Everyone walking before his gaze was a bucket of blood. But young girls were prettier buckets. He stayed long enough to watch the girl exit, get into her car to leave. He fell in behind her, fantasizing about doing her.

But he had a schedule to keep, and he knew that schedules could be checked, and so when the red Firebird ahead of him turned off onto a residential street, he kept pace with the traffic going back toward the interstate and Indianapolis.

At least the letter got off.

He switched on his cassette player and listened to the Blue Danube to combat the jackhammers and noise of busy Hammond. Hammond was bustling with sound and pollution and he hurried to the interstate. But he was careful not to go through any yellow lights, to lane-change or to cut anyone off. He certainly didn't want to be placed in Hammond, Indiana, by some stupid traffic ticket on the same day that a certain letter was mailed to the FBI's premier forensics investigator. If he was going to play games with the authorities, rub their faces in their helplessness against him, he meant to do it right.

On the seat alongside him was his brown leather briefcase. Inside the case were his special blood-tapping tools. Behind his chair was his cooler, stocked with empty jars anxious to be refilled.

Dr. Grubber was waiting for him, and following that a new client in the Indianapolis area.

The sunlight had not been harsh or glaring when he got out of the van to post the letter, and yet it still had hurt his sensitive skin and eyes; it'd bring the sores and scabs if he was not careful. Dr. Leonard Grubber would supply him with more of his concoction of proteins and carbohydrates which the man claimed was the best single source of relief from porphyria as well as Addison's disease. Grubber had been seeing to his needs since he met the man his first day on the Indiana run. Grubber was fascinated by his case and wanted to do a case study. It took a long time for the confidences and assurances to be bonded, but now he saw Grubber as a harmless medicine man who wanted to conduct his experiments. It was a trade-off, a kind of symbiotic relationship. He'd give Grubber the use of his body for study, if Grubber provided him with the medications he required to hold the diseases that ravished his body in check.

Grubber was, in fact, the closest thing he had to a friend.

Grubber's records were interesting. He had picked them up once and read about himself. Grubber had not been able to get the research and his paper published in any medical journals yet, but he kept trying.

He found his way back to the interstate and pulled into traffic. If he made good time, maybe he'd get lucky later on this evening.

Late in the day at Quantico, Teresa O'Rourke claimed that the killer lived in or around the Chicago area. This pinpointing of residence was important for several reasons, and despite her methods, everyone wanted to believe she was accurate. This would narrow the focus considerably. Records could be more easily checked, DMVs, registrations of all sorts. The Chicago FBI field offices were very professional, very good. Everyone was elated when O'Rourke demonstrated how she had arrived at Chicago. She had taken a radial scanner and had drawn circumferences of twenty, thirty, forty, fifty and one hundred miles from the kill sites, and all of them at the one-hundred-mile range intersected at or near Chicago.

It was late, however, and other than contact the bureau offices in Chicago, there was little else they could do tonight. Besides, everyone had plans to be at the wake for Marilyn Boutine. The meeting broke up with everyone having a job to do. Byrnes was to be a catcher-in-the-rye back at Wekosha, digging deeper into the life of one Candy Copeland, and to keep a watch on her haunts for anyone who might have known her. He would even go so far as to place a recording device on her headstone, he had said.

Schultz was to work with the newspapers in an attempt to stir the killer to some foolish action that might reveal more of his identity.

O'Rourke was to fly to Chicago to give the bureau there the details of the P.P. team's work, and to share the forensics information amassed against the killer.

Boutine and Jessica would remain in Quantico to coordinate any further “troop movements.” Everyone was feeling hopeful; everyone was sure that the noose was tightening, but everyone also feared the next telephone call from some law enforcement agency in need of FBI assistance on a Tort 9.

# # #

The phone call came while they were at the wake. People started disappearing early, Boutine telling them that he understood and would soon follow. Jessica stayed on with Boutine until he himself decided to put an abrupt and early end to the wake. There was too much at stake. News had come in from Zion, Illinois, of the discovery of a mutilation murder that fit the M.O. of their Tort 9 killer. Otto had put it out on every wire, and everyone in a law enforcement position in the nation, and particularly the Midwest, was watching, and while they'd had some sixty maybes, this one sounded like a certainty, down to the near spotless condition of a white to beige rug over which dangled the body from its heels from a chandelier cord. The chandelier had been torn down and cast into a heap in a corner. “I'll fly out tonight, Otto. No need for you to go,” she told him.

“ How're you going to get on without me?”

“ Our Chicago guy's have it. They'll be there.”

He looked back at the open casket, into the face of his dead wife, nodding. “Thanks, Jess, for being here for me. Can you arrange a flight and-”

' 'Leave it to me. You just see to what you must here, and I'll see you when I get back.”

She quickly made her way back to her place, packed and made the necessary calls. She'd be on a transport within the hour, military again. She had hoped to be able to avoid the uncomfortable military transport for the plusher Lears of the FBI, but these were all in use.

At the airfield she had another uncomfortable shock. Both Kaseem and Forsythe. They'd gotten the word on the Zion killing, and they had orders to proceed there themselves, and they had booked the same transport. She gnashed her teeth and managed a catlike grin when Kaseem extended his hand and said, “Looks as if we will be working together again.”

“ What is your interest in this case. Dr. Kaseem?”

Kaseem's eyes gave him away. He did hold some secret. The black orbs flashed for a millisecond, and Forsythe became uncomfortable and worked toward finding a seat.

“ There is something more to your interest in these vampire killings than you've told me, isn't there? Isn't there?”

“ It's a long story.”

“ We have a long flight ahead.”

He took a deep breath. “All right, we'll talk.”

During the flight, Kaseem painted a bizarre picture of a young medical technician in the marines who had a taste for blood. When caught at his peculiar addiction, the marine was removed from all medical areas, given other work to do. Stationed in West Germany in 1976, at the age of eighteen, still a private, a man named Davie Rosnich had successfully eluded military and civilian police after mur-dering a bunk mate in a bizarre fashion deep in a wooded area far from the base. Rosnich had convinced the other man that he was interested in him sexually, had convinced him to furlough the weekend with him and had then rendered him helpless, and finally took from the other man all of his blood.