Absolute Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  “Still, we can't ignore the facts. All the others were matronly, in their late forties. They were all shut-ins or self-imposed introverts who related better and more to animals than to people. While Lucinda appears their opposite.”

  “Hardly reclusive with a business of her own,” he agreed.

  “A large, prominent family. Busy businesswoman. Bet she had no animals, at least not in the city, at her place.”

  “From her photos, she appears to be a classy dresser, quite up on fashion.”

  Jessica agreed. “Beautiful from her photo, in step with the young and hip crowd in Milwaukee, and in her mid-twenties. Not the killer's victim of choice.”

  “OK, so Orion changed his pattern drastically.”

  Jessica paced the room, her chin in her hand. “It could mean that she somehow found out about his extracurricular activities and... so she was killed out of expediency, not like the others who were targeted, stalked, massaged through the drawings and then murdered.”

  “By now every scrap of his artwork and supplies and instruments are confiscated, and the techs are searching for blood evidence on his art scalpels.”

  “Yeah, and maybe they found the bone cutter still fresh with Lucinda's blood on it,” she sarcastically replied. “Let's stay grounded, Darwin. In a few hours we're going to be meeting Richard at the airport and all we've got in hand is the blood typing. So, let's go as planned.”

  “Penitentiary for the blood test.”

  “Right. And to meet your brother.”

  “It's all set for two this afternoon.”

  “And Richard's plane is due in at six. We see the governor again at seven. Now get outta my room and let me get dressed for the day.”

  “I'll keep you apprised of any and all I learn as Petersaul is going down to Chicago to find out all she can. Meantime, our people in Milwaukee have raided the place where Orion stayed while in Milwaukee, the downtown Marriott, for anything he may have left behind.”

  “Anything breaks in the investigation, let me know. Otherwise, I need some peace and quiet, and to put on my foundations, Darwin. Out, out, and Darwin, don't get me wrong, I am as pleased as you at this new development. I just think, given what we know now about J. J. Hughes that nothing 'back East' is going to persuade him unless it is absolutely overwhelming.”

  “By end of business day, I am hoping to make it overwhelming,” Reynolds countered.

  “I do hope you can, Darwin. I do hope so.”

  # # #

  CAFE Avanti sat flush below a four-story brownstone on Southport within shouting distance of the Music Box Theater's marquee, just as Lucinda had described it to Giles. The doors to Cafe Avanti opened inward and a lilting bell sounded, announcing yet another customer. The place appeared as quaint and curious as Lucinda had told him it would be over pillow talk just before he'd fallen asleep, just before he'd had to kill her.

  He stood at the center of the room, staring down a narrow corridor leading to the rear where he'd been told the cafe housed a small galleria-styled maze of nooks and crannies. Standing before the stenciled windows, Giles Gahran, his ornate box tucked under one arm, his huge artist's portfolio dangling from his other hand, drew the attention of the Spanish woman behind the counter.

  “Good morning. Can I be helping you, sir?”

  “Lucinda sent me.”

  “Who?”

  He replied, “Art dealer in Milwaukee, Lucinda Wellingham.”

  “Ahhh... jes, jes. She sends you here to me? Ahhh... that is good then. Let me see your work.”

  “Said you'd show my stuff on her recommendation. I have a note to that effect with her signature.”

  “That's perfect timing. I just got the rooms cleared out again. Get tired of seeing the same things too long... not good for business. New exhibit is. Show me what you got.”

  “Lucinda said Cafe Avanti is the premier place for a first showing in Chicago, and from there word will spread.” “Right, spread like spilled India ink on a white satin tablecloth. Lucinda told you that, sweetheart... good how she help us... good to us... and now they are showing her picture in the paper and saying she has been killed, do you know?” She handed him the Sun-Times lying on a nearby table. “Horrible... so horrible what that black-hearted bastard Orion done to her, and look how he goes walking free!”

  Giles read the headlines and scanned for details. “Imagine letting a monster like that just walk away,” he muttered in response.

  “God, so awful about her death—murdered, horribly disfigured.”

  “Terrible, I agree.”

  “I'd only seen her jus' last week in Milwaukee to preview Orion's work, too.”

  “Oh, really? What'd you think of it?”

  “The man is a pig. A murdering pig now. Such evil in him to horribly disfigure my beautiful Lucinda.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “It turns my stomach, the whole thing.” Giles pretended innocence for the part owner of the Cafe Avanti.

  “It must've been so shocking for you. Oh, where are my manners. Coffee? Juice? Something stronger?”

  “Coffee, yes, thank you. Yes, I... I just saw her a few days ago myself. How. could such a thing happen?”

  “Well, how well do you know that arrogant ass Orion?” she asked. “I can just imagine if a girl were to cross him. It's been all over the news. Hated that man before, but now I really hate him.”

  “I didn't know until recently. Been too busy moving in, you know. I rarely look at the papers, and I don't own a TV.”

  “The bastard wasn't even arrested or arraigned! No jail time, no bail, nothing, but if he dares show his face here again, I'll make him wish they had kept him behind bars.

  I'll personally scratch his eyes out, you know, for my poor, sweet Lucinda.”

  She'd gone back around the counter and handed him an Irish coffee with whipped cream. “On the house.”

  “Imagine, Keith Orion, theeeee Keith Orion, a killer.”

  “He's finished in the art world, especially in the Chicago arts community.” She reared up. “When I saw her face on the tube... and then they flashed her death photo... Oh my God, I thought I'd throw up and faint. I called the authorities immediately, you know, to, you know, identify her as exactly who they thought she might be, but I think I... my word put a cap on it for them.”

  She took a moment to compose herself. “Now tell me, Mr. Gahran, why should we display your art, your paintings, your sculptures at Avanti? I've got to fill out a flyer, get the word around, plaster it on some windows that original artwork is on display at Avanti. Got to have good reason, other than the fact Lucy sent you to us just before she died. In other words, defend your work.”

  He spread out his show photos and several sketches and a few paintings to give her a broad range of the kind of work he was doing at the moment.

  She tried to curb her immediate positive reaction to the unusual work.

  Giles began speaking as she glanced over each painting and sketch slowly, carefully sizing each up, one at a time.

  “Kinda reminds me of Goya, your style anyway, and maybe Picasso's Guernica like the way their bones are out of their bodies.”

  “In occult physiology the most important bone in the body is the sacrum and—”

  “What's a sacrum?” asked Conchita Raold, interrupting Giles's spiel.

  “Ahhh... sacrum... it's not what you think,” he said with a little smirk.

  “Oh, and what am I thinking?” “It's got nothing to do with the male member. It refers to the ancient sacer, meaning the sacred, so it's called... was called the sacred or holy bone—the—”

  “Spinal cord.”

  “Backbone to be exact—cord refers to the nerves. You mean spinal column.”

  “Holy bone but not holy boner then. OK, so your show is about this holy bone.”

  “You see in ancient civilizations it had a role to play... a role of like special—”

  “Significance?”

  Giles hated the way this woman finished all
his sentences for him. “Yeah, significance in many systems of divination by the bones of the body, in religious rites, in sacrificial—”

  “Ceremonies?”

  “Ahhh... right again. It was commonly believed to contain the immortal part of the body and to be directly connected with the spirit realm. In the Western tradition this was the bone kissed at the witch sabbat.”

  “Man, really? Wow. I didn't know that. I love Wicca stuff like they got next door in the candle and card shop. How many people would know that. That's kinda amazing. Man, Giles, you are going to fit right in around here. People coming to Avanti, they love shit like this.”

  “It means different things to different people, still does,” he continued. “Semitic peoples have a tradition that there exists in every man a tiny bone that cannot be seen or felt, cannot be burned or otherwise destroyed, never rots or perishes, and is lodged in the sacrum.”

  “You're shitting me?”

  “No, really. I've studied it. At death this indestructible, incombustible, imponderable, impalpable, atomic bone particle will remain incorrupt in the earth, and when the time of resurrection comes—and it will—it will form the 'seed' around which a new body will be built, the body that will proceed to the last judgment and to its final destiny in heaven or hell.”

  She had been silenced, awed by all this strange talk.

  Finally, Conchita stammered, “Damn, I gotta get you a showing, and I mean immediately. Just start carting your stuff over. I love it... love it, fucking love it.”

  “Formerly, Jews believed that when they died this bone, which they called luz or luez, would find a resting place in the Holy Land, and that if a Jew was buried far away, the luz would travel underground or find some means of getting to the sacred soil. If the bone was eaten en route by say a bird or an animal, it would not be absorbed into the system but passed out while using the bird or animal to trans-port itself.”

  Wide-eyed at this, Conchita muttered, “That's some creep-azoid shit, Giles. OK, I call you by your first name?”

  He nodded, but kept on explaining about the luz bone. “Muslims, too, believe in the existence of this bone, which they call al ajb.”

  “Al-a-jib? What's that mean?”

  “The curious bone, a tiny fragment around which the resurrection-body will take shape.”

  “The resurrection-body? Yes... I see... I think.”

  “In medieval Europe a number of popular beliefs were associated with the spine. I mean a man possessed of an unusually large spine, such as a hunchback or an Abe Lincoln was thought to be endowed with almost talismanic power.”

  “Fucking cool man. I'm pretty tall myself.”

  “Didja know that an old form of address for a hunchback was 'My Lord'?”

  “No way. Amazing.”

  “To touch a hunchback brought good luck, and to touch and wish at the same time ensured that the wish would come true. The expression 'to have a hunch,' implying—”

  “Get out, no way.”

  “Implied prescience.”

  “Pre-what?”

  “Knowing about something before it happens, like in pre—”

  “I know! Precognition!”

  “A belief in the precognitive faculty inherent in the hunch of a hunchbacked person actually.”

  “Damn, you oughta write all this up for a program guide on the gallery showing.”

  “And explain why a gnarly little hunchback psychic is trusted far more than a good-looking, straight-backed person claiming such powers, huh?”

  “You mean like the little sawed off psychic in Poltergeist! I get it. Right. Look, Giles, I really want you to show here at the Avanti, and I swear to you that I'll get all my contacts in the art world here in Chicago to be here for the opening show. You're going to be a smash with them, and soon it'll lead to larger shows, larger venues for your work. Is it a deal?”

  “It's wonderful. I understand you've showcased a lot of talented artists here over the years.”

  “Since eighty-two, yes, we have—my husband, Arnie, and me... We worked hard to build a reputation for the place as being a refuge for struggling young artists of all sorts, from artists like yourself to cabbies working on screenplays. We encourage all creative-like-stuff here.” She frowned and added, “Orion got his start here, I'm ashamed to say now.”

  “You have my undying gratitude.” He shook her hand vigorously.

  “Can you arrange to have the sculptures here tomorrow?”

  “Tonight if you like.”

  “Then it's settled.”

  They shook on it again.

  “You don't have to get your husband's OK?”

  “Hey baby, this is 2004, and I'm a liberated Spanish Gypsy Queen. I didn't even take on his name when we got married. He's Irish. What the fuck am I going to look like to people with a face like this, and a name like Conchita Murphy? Huh? Hey? It's got no whatayma-callit?”

  “Cadence?”

  “What's that?”

  “Like music, rhythm.”

  “Ahhh...” She gave it some thought. “Nah, I was thinking something else, not about the sound but if people would believe it or not. You know, like I was some kind of liar. Me!”

  “Credence, it doesn't feel like it has credence.”

  “Yeah, right, credence, cadence... like that, yeah. You're right, Giles. You're smart, aren't you? Hey, you know what, you oughta talk to the cops, too, since you knew Lucy and you think Orion was trying to set you up.”

  “I have! I did.”

  “And they still let him go?”

  “They're keeping an eye on him. They let the fox out of the cage for good reason, to lead them to where the evidence is buried.”

  “You think so?”

  “Remember how the cops did things in the Laci Peterson case? They didn't arrest the guy right away, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah... that's right.”

  She contemplated this for a long moment. “Hey, Giles, don't you find it a little ironic that the bastard ripped out her spine and here you got sculptures with spines floating up above people's heads?”

  “That's just it. Orion was jealous of my art. Jealous of Lucy and me. I think he thinks the cops'll think I killed her 'cause my art is like it is.”

  “Wow, how diabolic is that?” She laughed raucously and he struggled to join in her mirth. “You're not worried the cops're looking for you?”

  “Nahhh... I got nothing to hide.”

  “Good... good, Giles.”

  Later that same day, Giles was erecting his various sculptures in the dark back rooms of Cafe Avanti.

  # # #

  IN the muted light of the dimly lit old world cellblock look of the back rooms of Cafe Avanti no one could see the strings, and Lucinda was right again about leaving one of the spines in its natural state, unpainted.

  The curious sweet smell of blood on the three painted vertebrae, comingling with the damp, earthy odors of the ancient sweating brick walls, proved the perfect olfactory effect, one that would never be captured in an aerosol can. The colored lights of this palace of old Chicago history reflected magically off the myriad multifaceted surfaces of the other three vertebrae. The life-size sculptures could not simply be walked around but required care in negotiating their way into the back rooms as they filled the closed in little nooks and crannies made available to them. There remained hardly elbow space in the rooms featuring each of his three women and four spines.

  Looking on the work, once set up, Giles again felt a sense of pride come over him. He wondered what Father would say if he were here; he knew Mother would not understand any of it as art. Still, he'd never felt so certain and self-confident of himself than at this moment of his unveiling, his coming out, toasted by Conchita and all her patrons, wine flowing and cheese balls abounding. Across the doorway to his showing, Conchita had surprised him with a banner reading: Sweet Marrow of Life.

  Delighted at causing grief and bad publicity for Keith Orion, Giles felt even more delighted at havi
ng learned that Orion had been picked up for questioning a second time now. Although allowed to roam free again, no doubt suspicions surrounded him wherever he went now, and no doubt police officials were hounding his every step, while they knew nothing of a Giles Gahran.

  Orion's balloon had burst, while Giles's future could only be up-up and away!

  If he could keep from acting on a great urge to rip out the energetic spinal column of one Conchita Raold.

  Conchita called to him now and in tow she had her partner and husband, Arnold Murphy, an enormously powerful looking black man—hardly Irish. “Go ahead, tell him, Giles... Tell Arnie all that stuff you told me about how the shamans of old used the backbones of their victims, you know, how 'waste not, want not' meant something to these people, and they even used bones in their everyday lives— bone jewelry, bone implements, dishes, even bone utensils—bone forks.” She yanked at her husband and asked, “Isn't that fascinating, Arnie?”

  Arnie only stared, his mouth going slack at the four spinal columns floating one after another through the rooms in places usually preserved for darts and pool cues.

  “Giles, you gotta tell Arnie about the luz bone.” She made the two men sit down. “Arnie, you're not going to believe this shit.”

  FIFTEEN

  In the psychopathic mind no common law exists. Without law, there is no injustice or moral wrongs. Only a Hobbsian state of nature wherein power, rape, torture, mutilation is the order of things—natural selection, for in this parallel universe inside a psycho's head every man has the rights of nature, including the right to another person's body.

  —JESSICA CORAN, FBI M.E.

  AGENTS Amanda Petersaul and Jared Cates had learned that Lucinda Wellingham had showed up at Keith Orion's art opening on the arm of some no-account, down-and-out artist whose work no one had ever seen, a guy named Giles Gahran whom Lucinda was talking about all night long, a guy she threatened to replace Orion with, and she made these comments loudly and often during the night. It had something to do with putting Keith Orion in his place, seeing to it that if he didn't behave and do exactly as she wanted, that she would back another horse. Petersaul and Cates had gotten this information before leaving Milwaukee for Chicago.