Robert Walker - Killer Instinct

And so they would have their nasty old Chicago vampire in Lowenthal, and Teach could go for some time on the supply of blood that he had, allowing things to cool a bit, just so that Dr. Jessica Coran was satisfied that she had gotten the man she wanted.

It was a perfectly orchestrated plan of genius, killing two problems with one suicide. The only drawback was losing his grandfather's quill pen, but this couldn't be helped. He knew that the FBI could not be fooled by a substitute, and since he had written the earlier letter to Coran with it, he must sacrifice this.

When he returned from the basement, he saw that Lowenthal was fully dead and that the suicide could not look more authentic. The only missing ingredient was the letter, the inkwell and the pen. As far as stocking Lowenthal's refrigerator with blood, he wasn't about to give up everything for the plan. He had brought two pints. If this did not suffice, so be it. The authorities would simply decide that he had another hiding place for the blood, or that his appetite for it was completely insatiable.

He surveyed the work, ticking off each detail, going through his plan as he had a hundred times throughout the day. With the blood in the freezer compartment, he decided that his work was done, save for the letter. This he pulled from his briefcase, little blood flecks popping off it as he moved it into place, atop the coffee table amid splatters of Lowenthal's blood.

It looked perfect there.

He left with his new tools, glancing back at Lowenthal's body where it had eerily slumped over the coffee table.?

Jessica Coran had had to spend another day and night in Chicago, poring over the list of pharmaceutical companies and hospital supply companies in the Chicagoland area. The list was endless. Pages upon pages, and none of the names-in and of itself-was of help. Still, she narrowed the firms down to the several hundred who either distributed or made their own surgical equipment.

She had telephoned HQ in Quantico and had gotten J.T., who sounded a little strange, but when she asked him what was going on, all he said was, “Be careful out there, Jess.”

She tried to get him to talk, but he dove into the case with some new twist that might have been the cause of the shakiness in his voice. “Robertson says the semen samples taken from Wekosha are definitely from a different man than those you sent from Zion.”

“ What about the Indiana killing? I sent the samples earlier today. You get them?”

“ Just got in the door, but from first scoping, I'd have to say no connection with Wekosha. That means no DNA match. That means-”

“ I know what it means, John!” She sounded more caustic than she meant to. “I think I know what it means.”

“ Sound tired.”

“ That's an understatement. Look, J.T., suppose for a moment that the guy who did the Copeland killing, the Trent and the McDonell killings was the same guy as our Zion guy. It's not a sex-lust killing in the usual sense with this guy, since his lust is not to fulfill any sexual fantasy but a fantasy of blood-harvesting. He simply has no need of sex.”

“ Then why the semen at all?”

“ To keep people like you and me going around in circles.”

“ So he gets the semen from other men? I don't get it.”

“ Goddammit, he's impotent. He's in and out of hospitals until he becomes a known fixture. We know he's likely using medical apparatus-tourniquets, tubes maybe, cortisone in potent dosage, and quite possibly narcotics. He knows his way around hospitals. So he knows where the sperm bank is.”

“ Ahhhh, gotcha.”

“ Men.”

“ What?”

“ You can be so thick.”

“ Thick?”

“ So he doesn't like playing with girls in that way, only killing them by syphoning away their lives through a tube.” The thought of such a killer made her feel once more for his various victims, and with the body count spiraling upward, she feared for his next victim. Her hatred of the killer grew by steady leaps.

She asked if he could transfer her to Boutine's office, complaining she'd heard nothing from him.

He said he'd transfer the call, but came on again complaining that Boutine was unavailable at the moment. She said goodbye to J.T., who seemed reluctant to hang up.

That had been at 4 P.M., sometime after she and Joe Brewer had gotten back to the Chicago bureau. Now she was back at the Lincolnshire Inn, where she had a message waiting from Boutine. He was flying in. He left the number on the jet where he could be reached.

She telephoned from her room immediately.

It was wonderful to hear the strong timbre of Otto Boutine's voice again, but after the amenities, she learned why J.T. was acting so strangely, and why Otto had been kept tied up at Quantico. A letter had arrived there addressed to her, a letter which may have come from the killer. J.T. had taken receipt of the letter, and finding it odorous and suspicious, he had taken it to Boutine, who had ordered it opened. Boutine had an instant impression that it was genuine, and so he and J.T. had run it through Documents for any clues to the identity of the killer. Dried flecks of blood from the lettering had accumulated like rust in the bottom of the envelope, and these were cross-matched with those of the known victims, and the blood had been matched with Candy Copeland's after other chemical components had been separated out.

“ What other chemical components?”

“ Ahhh, blood had been mixed with an anticoagulating agent, so as to have more of an inky quality.”

“ Mixed with India ink?”

“ Not quite.”

“ What, then?”

“ Same components as in correction fluid, nail polish.”

Jessica took this all in with full gulps of air. “Tell me about the paper it was written on. Any clues there?”

“ Cheap, ordinary office stock.”

“ Copier paper?”

“ Yeah, nothing special about it.”

“ And the handwriting?”

“ Printing. Our boy's crafty.”

“ The pen?”

“ Done with an old-style quill pen.”

“ Want to hear it, or wait until I get there?”

She knew the original would not leave Quantico; that he had a copy. “Go ahead,” she said, although she didn't want to hear it. Over the phone, from the jet. Otto's reading of it was not enough, even verbatim. She listened intently, trying to penetrate beyond the words, to read between the lines. But she needed to see every word before her. Even so, each word took on its own chilling new meaning for her. And when the killer ended by saying that perhaps one day they might meet, that he might one day take a little of her blood, she had heard enough, and she understood why J.T. was acting as he had at the other end of the phone. He'd been ordered to say nothing of this to her, obviously by Boutine, who, as it appeared, wished to break it to her his way. He hadn't wanted her to spend the day with this additional monkey on her back; and he had wanted the letter completely analyzed before she learned about it.

He had no idea she had gotten an inkling of it through Brewer. And she kept it that way.

She had never been directly addressed by a maniac before, and this one was a level 9 torturer, a blood-drinker. Otto's Tort 9 who wanted some of her blood. It was like hearing his ugly voice and being touched by his ugly hand, as if she were one of his victims. The letter was a vile document, and yet it seemed to excite Boutine; for him, it was the most important single clue to finding the killer yet; for him, the killer had finally made a mistake, exposing himself for the first time.

“ If he writes once, he'll write again, just as he'll kill again,” said Boutine with certainty.

She didn't want to tell Boutine that she didn't want any more love letters from a human vampire. She instead told him of what they had found in Indiana and about the cortisone clue found in Zion.