Robert Walker - Extreme Instinct

"Thanks, Eriq." She thought, He's now a good and tried friend and associate.

"If you say the word, Jess, I'm on the next flight there."

"That's not necessary."

"Then you're all right?"

"Yeah, I'm dealing-"

"As usual? There's nothing usual about this business, Jess. My concern is not just for your physical safety. I'm also concerned about your emotional state. This kind of thing, the way this guy is toying with your head, Jesus, I mean how?"

"How?" she asked.

"How did this… this fiend behind the pyromurder of Chris Lorentian know where you would be staying?"

"Easy enough. Convention's been in the papers here and it's centered at the Hilton."

"Still, how'd he so effortlessly orchestrate this foul scheme-much less think it up?"

She sensed that Eriq's fear barometer, along with his concern, was also on the rise. And Eriq, as long-winded as he was, managed to ask all these questions in quick, fluid, Latin-accented succession. It made her think of their work together in Miami, where together they tracked the trackless Night Crawler all the way to the Cayman Islands. "You should be getting a request for a nationwide fingerprint search through the Vegas branch office, and my friend Chief Warren Bishop."

"We'll give it first priority to be sure. God"-he stopped to gasp-"I mean, it's truly sick, and the notion that this detestable monster's in a suite not three floors below yours when he contacted you, allowing the smoke and fire of his flaming victim to mask his movements. It's sheer horror."

"It gets worse."

"How so?"

"The fingerprints." She explained to him how they had obtained prints in only one place, and how the killer had written his code using the burned flesh of his victim as ink.

Eriq fell silent at the other end for some moments.

''Did you get all the photos and notes I sent you on the crime scene?" She finally broke the silence, staving off any further fits of hysteria from him.

This got him talking again. "Well, yes, I did."

"So, have you had time to analyze the handwriting?"

Eriq's forte remained handwriting analysis and documents. Being chief of a division now afforded him little time to do actual investigatory work, but he loved the work, and he liked keeping his hand in. "The fact he chooses to write out his message across a mirror rather than a wall may say something about him, but that's just conjecture at this point."

"Oh, I think he likes watching himself at work, that's for sure. Give me something I can use," she protested.

Eriq replied, "We blew up the shots immediately, and I put a team on it. Not much of a message; very few letters to deal with, you know. We didn't know that the words and letters actually consisted of

… the victim's own creosote residue. I'll clue everyone in on that little factor. We're still studying each photo, including the crime scene photos. I have a profiling team at work on a victim and a killer profile. Have these to you, hopefully, by end of business day."

"FedEx 'em as soon as possible," she pleaded. "Going to need all the help I can get on this one. Talk to Dr. Desinor. See if she'd be willing to do the scene photos for us, okay? I have J. T. with me, and don't worry about my safety."

"Oh, sure, J. T.'s a deterrent to any maniac," he said, chuckling.

"He's been a big support; don't pick on him."

"I've taken some time to study the lettering myself," he finally confessed, "and…" Eriq was known for his ability at handwriting analysis. "Yes, well, it's quite revealing."

''Revealing of what, precisely?'' she prompted.

"It's my educated guess that we are dealing with some sort of schizoid fanatic type, almost… well, like a terrorist mentality."

"A split personality, you mean? Like someone listening to voices in his head, telling him what to do? What do you mean, 'like a terrorist mentality'?"

"A fanatic, possibly a religious fanatic. Could be that he hallucinates, yes, or follows the dictates of a second, stronger personality. Or worse yet…"

"What worse yet?"

"Like I said, a religious fanatic, with the zeal of a righteous religious nut, maybe."

"Religion, you mean like burning at the stake in the name of the Inquisition, all that?''

"In the name of the Holy or unholy."

"What makes you think so?"

"The guy's scrawl is large, no center line to speak of, stiff and erect on the lines but erratic. Again, there's too little here to go on, but that's my best estimate."

"I would've liked to have forwarded the original, but it weighed eighty pounds and measured six by four feet, and FedEx isn't good with mirrors."

"Do you want me out there with you, Jess?" he again asked in a tone making it clear that he was prepared to take a jet the moment he got off the phone, if she so much as hinted her wish for him to do so.

"No, Eriq. I know you've got your hands quite full enough as it is with that awful child molester/killer where you are."

"Yes, well, that's true enough. He's causing havoc, all right, in the shadow of the White House. Where do you think our energies and resources and priorities ought to be spent, Jess? All the same, Jess, if you need me or anyone on the team, give a shout."

Jessica, like everyone in the country now, knew of the brutal, sadistic killer calling himself the Capital Punisher. This monster took precedence, for it had a penchant for child victims, and it was wreaking havoc in D.C., the nation's capital, and while Jessica had worked on some of the forensics and the profiling of the killer there, she was not herself a principal player on the case.

Jessica understood the media attention being given the creep in Washington. He was, after all, a pedophile of the worst order. He not only seduced and raped children, but also came out of the experience feeling extreme guilt and hatred of himself and what he'd done, but rather than cut his own throat or another appropriate appendage, the maniac turned his rage outward to the very objects of his perverted desire, the children, and in his uncontrollable rages, he murdered.

"I'm sure you'll catch this guy soon. The profile has him pegged. Meanwhile, don't worry about us out here in the Wild West. We're chugging along, plugging at our man."

"This creep we're after, Jess. He knows every back alley, open courtyard, basement window, and dark corner in D.C., and every schoolyard."

"As our profile says, he's a killer of opportunity, a difficult monster to stop. He wanders the streets by van and on foot, spends long hours simply moving around, a predator of the first order, waiting to pounce if given the slightest opportunity. Makes me wonder…"

"Wonder?"

"If our two killers aren't somehow… connected, related, Eriq."

"How's that?"

"Oh, I don't mean in the sense they know one another or are blood brothers or anything… Just that sometimes you've got to wonder from what cloth these so-called men are cut."

"Yeah, yeah… maybe." Eriq spoke now as if to himself. ''A child of eleven is ignored by his older sister and wanders through a gate, into a courtyard behind a fence, never to be seen again, his body never recovered. A little girl of twelve follows a bouncing ball into a shadow, and he is there. Only the ball is found. Later, her body is discovered stuffed in a drain pipe off Old Plymouth where it bisects Jackson Boulevard."

''Has Dr. Desinor been helpful?'' Jessica asked, knowing that FBI psychic detective Kim Desinor had been called in on the Punisher case.

"She's made some impressive hits, particularly locating the bodies after their disappearances, but so far little headway on the preventative side."

Jessica gave some thought to Dr. Kim Desinor. When last Jessica had spoken with Kim, the psychic detective had confided that the Punisher case had eroded any faith in herself and her power to do anything for the victims and their families.