Robert Walker - Killer Instinct

“ Both killings match up with our guy?”

“ No doubt in my mind.”

“ I'll call Hector Rodriguez at the Tribune to print another story, and this time we'll tell the world the guy is gay, that he's a momma's boy, anything we can think of to keep him on edge.”

“ I'm not convinced that using the press is going to rattle this guy. He wrote that letter to me before he read anything of any substance in the Tribune. All they had was the useless info coming out of Wekosha, and that was pretty paltry stuff.”

“ The team's decided, Jess. This is the best way to go now.”

“ Then why not go all the way? Really shake him up.”

“ How do you mean?”

“ Give it out that the killer is suffering from a rare disease-”

“ Rare disease? What rare disease?”

“ I've talked to several doctors here that agree with me that the level of dosage this guy's taking in the form of cortisone can be for any number of illnesses, but the one disease that would fixate our boy on a vampire obsession might be Addison's disease. This means he's very sensitive to cold, and that he's probably got large, lumpy areas on his back and buttocks. That's pretty personal shit. He's likely to have a large, oval face, big jowls.”

“ Symptoms of the disease?”

“ Exactly.”

“ Yeah, I can see where this might shake this guy loose a bit, put a dent in his methodical armor.”

“ And there's something else.”

“ Shoot.”

“ He really is impotent.”

“ How do you know that for certain, Jessica?”

“ He's stealing sperm from other men.”

“ What? Say again.”

“ He's using other men's semen-”

“ The semen of other men? The lab tell you that?”

“ In each case, the semen has been different, so there's no way we can get a DNA match on this guy's semen sample. The semen he's smearing into the orifices by hand is coming out of… test tubes or something. Taken from sperm banks or something.”

“ He's getting drugs and semen samples from hospitals he visits,” said Boutine. “Then why not simply steal the blood he needs and wants from the same source?”

“ It's not just blood he wants.”

“ Of course not.”

“ He wants power, supreme power over others. He wants to enjoy the blood-taking the old-fashioned way, and he can't do that by rifling blood banks.”

“ A real throwback, huh?”

“ You got it. And Otto, we may's well really stick it to this creep.”

“ How so?”

“ Give the papers the tube; the fact he plunges a nasty little straw into the victim's jugular and sucks out the blood through a tube and carries off most of the blood in jars.”

“ How do we know it's jars?”

“ Easier to handle than packs in the situation. Mason jars, I suspect.”

“ Be as specific as we dare, huh?”

“ The jars alone will unnerve the bastard, and possibly make him do something to flash who he is.”

“ But we're giving away a lot, and it'll draw the cranks like flies.”

“ We're holding back enough to discredit any professional confessors,” she said. “Besides, stories about his manhood aren't going to bother this guy. He's sexless. His only sex is getting off on the torture and the blood he swallows, don't you see? So attacking his manhood isn't going to bother him in the least. And one more thing.”

“ Yeah?”

“ He's targeted me, and he's going to know that I'm the one saying these things about him.”

“ Yeah, that worries me, Jess.”

“ Worries hell out of me, too, but I don't see we have much of an alternative. This guy's really stocking up for Christmas in his personal blood bank account. We've got to make an offensive move, lead with our knight.”

“ Suppose you're right. I'll see to it.”

“ How soon will you arrive?”

“ Before dawn. I'll meet you there. Get some rest.”

“ You, too. And good night. Otto.”

“ Good night, Jess.” The news of the letter left Jessica shaken, but she hadn't wanted Otto to sense this, and so she covered it well. She was just relieved that he was coming to her.

In the meantime. Brewer's Chicago task force had every available law enforcement officer in the city looking into hospital records and asylum releases, and by way of the P.P. team's suggestion, all medical supply companies. Still, there were so bloody many in the area, it might take months to narrow it down to just the right one where their killer worked.?

Otto Boutine had grown up on a weedy little farm that was aspiring to be a ranch near Bozeman, Montana. It had been a rough life, filled with hardships, but amid the difficulties there was a great affection between himself and his parents, and the life had taught him self-reliance and resourcefulness. He was raised on chores. He was responsible from a very young age for firewood, hay for the horses, the scut work around the bam, grazing the mares and helping during foldings. His memories were filled with some very good times. But they all ended in harshness.

A spate of bad luck plagued the small ranch when his mother fell ill. Diagnosed with cancer, she did not last long. It was after her passing that Otto learned just how much his father and his father's business depended upon the wisdom and guidance of his mother. The place went downhill like a California mud slide and there was nothing his father could do to help; in fact, the more Herman Boutine did, the worse his situation became. With the loss of his wife and the financial setbacks, Otto watched his father decline.

The place had had to be put up for auction, and Otto and his father watched every personal belonging go up for sale. The loss of their home was the final blow for Otto's father. All life had soured for the man, and he could see no use in the future, and no amount of talking to him seemed to matter. Otto watched him pull a cloak around himself, a shroud, and in his living death he was never able to free himself from this shroud again.

He was soon in the hospital, unable to pay for the bed in which he lay. He died there within forty-eight hours of entering the hospital, hating every second of his ' 'welfare stay” as he called it. Otto was not quite eighteen at the time, but he had won a scholarship to attend the University of California at Berkeley, and so, after burying his father, he left Bozeman and never looked back.

That had been in 1963, the year that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The assassination that touched so many lives turned his attention toward law enforcement and the FBI in particular. At Berkeley he pursued a course of study that would lead him into criminal justice. Along the way he had met a young, brash lawyer named Marilyn Amesworth. They married and before them lay a beautiful life, their love for one another the great support in his life. And then she was struck down. And now he had buried his wife.

So here he was on an FBI-owned Learjet bound for Chicago as much to get to Jessica Coran as to put an end to a case which, it appeared, was shaping up to be the most important case in his career. Word about the corridors of FBI headquarters at Quantico had it that he was emotionally crippled by his latest personal bout with death; that the case should be handled by someone else, someone stronger and younger. Leamy had made it all quite clear: Boutine had twenty-four hours in which to show some break in the deadlocked case, or he was off it.

He wondered about his own deepest motives for racing to Jessica now. Ostensibly, it was to share the wording of the letter from this madman calling himself Teach, and most people would accept that. Ostensibly, his rushing away from pressing duties in Virginia to be at her side was due to the obvious threat the killer posed to Jessica. But if he were honest with himself, it was a desperate action. But was he more desperate to be with Jessica or to be nearby when she broke the case? For he had little doubt that Jess would bring about the break in the case they needed.