Unnatural Instinct jc-9

by Robert W. Walker

  “ I think he's telling us all he knows.”

  “ But he could have hallucinated the whole damn thing, right? I mean with the caskets, the cattle prod, all of it. Could be just filling in blanks you laid out, Jess.”

  “ I don't think so. He's… he comes across as telling the truth, Chief.”

  “ Murphy's Law at work, huh?”

  “ I don't follow you.”

  “ If something can go wrong, it will, right? So if I report what we know from Mr.-ahhh-Dr. Marsden in there, it could come back to clip me at the knees.”

  “ We really don't have time for this kind of hand-holding with the politicians, Chief. Not with DeCampe's life in the balance, not with the time clock ticking as it is. DeCampe doesn't have the time. We don't have the luxury of holding meetings with lieutenant governors and deputy mayors and-”

  “ Now hold on, Jess.”

  “ We need to pursue this Iowa license plate on a huge dark van with two coffins aboard the thing. We need every field office between here and Iowa on it.”

  “ You'd think such a thing would be obvious or at least curious to someone out there.”

  “ I need more people, Eriq, to call every law enforcement agency in the goddamn country for anything smacking of such a report. Can you get me that kind of support here?”

  “ I'll get you more people.”

  “ When?”

  'Today.”

  “ As for someone out there seeing two caskets in a dark van with tinted windows, how weird is that, Eriq, in the grand scheme of things in the state of this nation? Besides, even if someone saw the caskets, say at a Waffle House stop this old man made, do you think the average John Q. Citizen is going to bother getting involved? I don't know why I was so angry with Marsden. He's just typical of all of us.” Eriq tried to calm her. “I know… I know, Jess.”

  She relented. “People might simply take it for a hearse; after all, according to Marsden, it's black and the windows are tinted.”

  “ I still need something to take upstairs. We're going to hold this guy for as long as we can, right?”

  “ On suspicion he's somehow connected to the abduction? Are you really going to announce to the world that this poor bastard's the perpetrator?”

  “ We need something, Jess. If it comes to that, yes.”

  “ Damn it, Eriq, we need to know what triggered this old man's vendetta against the judge. We need to know who he is, how he is linked to her. And we don't have the luxury of time, so we really don't have time for any g'damn games.”

  “ We're talking about keeping the fucking governor of the District of Columbia and the mayor of Washington apprised, Jessica, and now the governor of Texas and the mayor of Houston. They have all sampled party favors together with the judge on many occasions. Their interest is not purely politically motivated. They all genuinely liked-or at least respected-the woman.”

  Lew Clemmens found them, a cell phone in his hand. “I've got someone in Houston, Texas, willing to run out to Huntsville and interview Goddard. Goddard's on borrowed time, waiting to hear if his appeal is going to go forward. If he's shut down, he dies by the switch in seven days.”

  “ Who've you got?” asked Eriq.

  “ Guy that Dr. Desinor recommended, Detective Lucas Stonecoat with the HPD. He knows something about Goddard, and he has a special place in his heart for Judge DeCampe. Says she busted his chops more than once.”

  “ When did you speak to Kim Desinor?”

  “ She called in. Wanted to know if we were any closer. I told her about the Houston, Texas, connection.”

  Jessica took the line, holding her hand over the mouthpiece for the moment. She knew something of the Texas Cherokee Indian detective's recent history with successfully closing out a string of unusual cases in his home state and beyond. Kim Desinor, acting as the FBI psychic consultant on the case, had spent time in Houston working with Stonecoat and the police psychiatrist Meredyth Sanger there. Jessica recalled that Kim had once urged her that if ever she needed insight into Texas and the Texas penal system, that Lucas Stonecoat was her man. “Hello, Detective Stonecoat, this is FBI Medical Examiner Dr. Jessica Coran. We appreciate your help.”

  “ I'll interview Goddard with the help of our resident po-lice shrink. Dr. Meredyth Sanger,” he replied. “She's the best Houston has. If anything can be shaken loose from Goddard, she can do it.”

  “ Excellent news, and thanks.”

  “ No thanks necessary. Let's just find Judge DeCampe. Underneath that scaly, rough yet too-liberal exterior beats a beautiful heart. She's good people.”

  Beats a beautiful heart still, we hope, Jessica thought but replied, “Yes, yes, she is.”

  “ I'll call you back the moment we have anything.”

  “ We're working up a sketch of the abductor now. We'll fax it to you. Clemmens will take your fax number, and again, thanks.”

  “ Hold on. You've got a witness who can ID the abductor?”

  “ We do.”

  “ Excellent work.”

  “ Lucked out.”

  “ Not from what Dr. Desinor tells me about you. She tells me you are the most intuitive detective she has ever known.”

  “ She's being generous.”

  “ The state here just executed a guy named Purdy three days ago. Purdy's original trial played out with Judge DeCampe presiding-one of her first trials, long before she became an appellate judge.”

  “ What's so interesting about this guy, Purdy?”

  “ He was in the same cell block as Goddard. They had to have known one another. Now Purdy has been fried. It could have something to do with your case, maybe… maybe not.”

  “ This fellow Purdy by any chance from Iowa?”

  Stonecoat's stentorian voice silenced. “I… I'm not sure. Will look into it. What does it matter? I mean, does it matter?” He quickly answered his own question with, “Of course it's important; otherwise, we wouldn't be discussing it, right?”

  “ Suffice to say, it could be vital, yes.”

  “ We're looking under every rock in Houston. Trust me.”

  “ I'm sure you are. We'll forward the artist's sketch as soon as we have it. Hasn't actually been created as yet.”

  Lucas Stonecoat replied, “We've begun with traffic records, any tickets, maybe DMV and also have my computer whiz kid cross-reference between the DeCampe caseload and anything to do with threats.”

  “ We're doing the same here. That's how we focused on Goddard.”

  “ I'll have him cross for anything doing with Iowa and Purdy then.”

  “ Same here.” Jessica hung up, sighed heavily, and leaned into an institutional gray wall. “Man, I hope something substantive comes of Marsden's interrogation. For all we know, he's making it up as he goes. That's what one voice is telling me; another voice is telling me he's our best shot yet.” Santiva, who had listened intently in on her side of the conversation with Detective Stonecoat, now said, “Jess, keep me posted on what you learn from Texas and from Jasper, Georgia.”

  “ Course, will do.”

  “ And Jess…”

  “ Uh-huhr

  “ You sure got some second sight or something.”

  “ Meaning?”

  “ I'm sure glad you kept me out of the interrogation box and away from this guy, Marsden.”

  “ And why's that, Eriq?”

  “ I might've strangled him when he dropped it about the dog.”

  Jessica laughed lightly, and Eriq, shaking his head, went in search of his office, a little privacy with his phone, paperwork, and coffee, no doubt. “It's going to be a long night,” he muttered back at her from the elevator where he now stood.

  Aren't they all? Jessica thought but only waved Santiva off.

  She turned to stare at the interrogation room where Richard Sharpe, now one of Santiva's agents, continued to study Marsden through the one-way; but overhearing Santiva's last remark, he heartily agreed in her ear as she came close, saying, “The boss is right. It's g
oing to be a long night, dear heart.” Sharpe had made his presence felt on the case, and at the same time he had often put Santiva at ease, acting as a kind of right-hand man for Eriq. Jessica's only fear was that Richard might get assigned to direct duty alongside Eriq. That would be a nightmare come true, Jessica thought. Richard would not own his own time if that should become the case. It would be like the relationship she had with Santiva-always on call. Like her, Richard would never know peace. “Yeah, long night,” she agreed.

  Eriq disappeared via the elevator, and Jessica imagined him, instead of rushing back to his stuffy office, going straight for a set of doors that opened onto the world outside. Air, a clean breeze, something Jessica herself wanted right now so badly. Instead, she turned back to Richard, taking him in her arms, saying, “I could sure use a hug about now.”

  “ I'll take one as well,” he replied, obliging. They stood that way in the corridor outside the interrogation room. “I think I've seen enough of Dr. Marsden to last me.”

  They kissed. “Strange case,” he muttered when their lips parted.

  “ And getting stranger by the moment. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking, not just for the judge but for Kim.”

  “ Did she really appear as bad as you say?”

  “ Worse.”

  “ But if they're psychosomatic lesions-”

  “ No, no, these were as real as knife cuts.”

  Keyes stepped off the elevator and came through a milling crowd of agents and toward Jessica. “I'll write up my notes on the interrogation,” she said, her hands full with some food in a bag from a nearby Boston Market. “Your captain requested a copy pronto. Caught him on the way out.”

  Jessica momentarily wondered what words had transpired between Santiva and Keyes, and if Keyes were working for Jessica or for Eriq. She wondered if Keyes might not be the eyes and ears of the upper brass, peeking over Jessica's shoulder. It wasn't unheard of in the organization.

  “ Yeah, me, too,” added Jessica, looking weary and shopworn. “Poor Eriq needs PR fodder, and he needs it badly.” Jessica smiled, then frowned and shook her head. “The eyes of a nation are on our every move, Dr. Keyes. Imagine if we fail. Who's going to be the first to blink?”

  Keyes gave her a firm glare and replied, “Certainly not the most famous forensic detective in die history of the bureau, not Dr. Jessica Coran.”

  TIME relentlessly reminded them with each passing hour that Judge DeCampe's life hung in the balance. Only Jessica, J. T., and Richard knew that Kim's life, too, hung in the balance. The situation gave Jessica pause, and she wondered if Kim's eerie malady might not simply disappear with Judge DeCampe's demise. If the judge were dead, then why wouldn't the psychic leprosy simply end? It made Jessica hopeful on the one hand that DeCampe might yet be found alive, but it also twisted a dark key in Jessica's mind as well. If the logic proved true, that with the Judge's death Kim might be released from her pain and suffering, Jessica could not help but choose Kim's life over that of the judge's.

  She confided these thoughts to no one save Richard, who had held her firmly to him when she finished speaking. They had found a moment in her office.

  Meanwhile, the hunt for the appeals court judge continued. No one was idle. Every lead was followed. The team narrowed the search after gaining new insight into the case, thanks to information coming from different sources, which all began to converge. Aside from what they'd gathered from the hobo thief, that a man old enough to have been the victim's father accosted DeCampe, a sketch-artist likeness had now been put together from Marsden's befuddled brain. The likeness, which Jessica prayed was likeness enough, now circulated to everyone in law enforcement nationwide. A call to John Walsh's producer at America's Most Wanted had gotten instant results. The story was run on an emergency basis, and now the media everywhere had both the story and pictures of Judge DeCampe and her suspected abductor, as well as a description of the suspect vehicle. But even Walsh called up to complain that the man in the composite looked like everybody's grandpa. In fact, the likeness drawn of the man they were so desperately seeking closely resembled George Burns. Add a cigar and a baseball cap as when Burns portrayed the role of God in the film Oh God, and it proved a perfect likeness. Some law enforcement people openly laughed at the depiction. It certainly didn't look like a desperate criminal; in fact, it looked cartoonish.

  Jessica and Richard returned to the operations room.

  “ Get me Detective Lucas Stonecoat in Houston, Texas,” Jessica ordered the civilian secretary who had been turned over to the task force.

  “ It's only seven A.M. in Houston, Dr. Coran.”

  “ I don't give a damn what time it is. Get me Stonecoat.”

  “ Yes ma'am. Will see what I can do.”

  Jessica reached for the bottle of Tylenol someone had brought her earlier, and she downed three tablets with a swill of Coca-Cola.

  In a moment, the secretary tossed back her hair, saying, “Stonecoat is cm one. They patched us through to his home.”

  “ Did you get the likeness we sent of the suspect?” Jessica said into the phone. “We laser-faxed it an hour ago.”

  “ Got it, yeah. Some old geezer, I'm told. How sure is your information?”

  “ We're certain of it. We think he's out for some kind of revenge motive. You guys turn up anything since last we talked?”

  “ We're planning a ride out to Huntsville, see what went on there with respect to Jimmy Lee Purdy's execution and body. With the sketch, we'll have something for show and tell. Been my experience that most cons respond to pictures a lot sooner than words.”

  “ Keep us posted. The clock's ticking.”

  “ Yeah, understood.”

  Jessica feared the Huntsville, Texas, execution and this guy Goddard, awaiting execution, would be just another blind alley.

  NINE

  Startling, like the first handful of mould cast on the coffined dead.

  — P. J. Bailey

  Texas State Penitentiary, Huntsville, Texas

  Lucas Stonecoat feared that a visit to the state penitentiary would likely uncover little or nothing. Most convicts had little reason to cooperate with law enforcement, and few did so without inducements of one sort or another. Lucas had come to the fortress of stone and barbed wire with no authorization to barter with or OK any promises he might make to an inmate on death row. Along with Lucas, police psychiatrist Meredyth Sanger had come, but so far, only rumor filtered to their ears, something about a dead man reaching out from the grave-a story of how Jimmy Lee Purdy meant to get vengeance at whatever cost after his execution. Purdy certainly appeared the most fixated inmate bent on DeCampe's being punished. Warden Jerold Gwinn characterized Jimmy as he led them toward Purdy's only friend inside prison walls.

  “ Purdy was a Bible-thumping so-called born again,” began Gwinn. “Jimmy Lee condemned any use of the Lord's name being taken in vain, but he called up unholy hellfire to rain over his enemies, and no one cursed more or longer than Purdy. Still, the idea that Purdy-executed on the Sunday before Judge DeCampe's disappearance-could have had any hand in the judge's disappearance…7'

  “ We don't know for certain that he had anything to do with it, Warden Gwinn, but we're trying to keep an open mind,” explained Meredyth.

  “ Inmate Goddard!” shouted Gwinn, rousing the shackled prisoner as they stormed into the interrogation room where Goddard had fallen asleep while waiting for them.

  Goddard laughed at the warden.

  “ You show these people respect and answer their questions as best you can, Inmate Goddard, and you'll get two merit points, two demerits if I learn otherwise.”

  Lucas wondered what kind of a kindergarten Gwinn was running here.

  “ You reap what you sow,” replied Goddard, and this biblical injunction seemed to appease Gwinn, who turned to Stonecoat and Sanger and said, “He's all yours. Good luck.”

  “ Inmate Goddard is ecstatic about DeCampe's suffering, if that's what you want to know,” said Goddar
d before they had time to sit. “But I don't know jack-shit about what happened to the bitch or who's behind it. I had nothing whatever to do with it. So, are we done here?”

  “ The warden apprise you of what we're here for?”

  “ Got it through the prison grapevine.”

  “ Ever hear Jimmy Lee Purdy threaten the judge?” Goddard laughed uncontrollably. “Do rats shit? But hell, I don't have to talk to you, and I ain't about to rat out my only friend in here.”

  “ He's no longer in here,” countered Lucas. “You can't seriously believe that you can rat out a dead man, do you?”

  “ The hell he ain't, and hell yes, I don't rat out nobody, not even the dead. Besides, like I said, Jimmy Lee's still here in the cellblock. Talked to him just last night. He's a haint now, haunts the place. I hear him talking in my ears when the lights go off. He tells me what hell's like. Fact is, it don't sound so bad after all.” Goddard, a hairy chest peeking from his prison shirt, grinned throughout his little speech.

  Meredyth raised a hand and said, “Cooperate with us, Mr. Goddard, and-”

  “ And what? What can you do for a walking dead, sweetie?”

  “ What're your chances you'll ever kiss another woman before you die?”

  He laughed. He snorted. He stared into her eyes. Then he slowly formulated a reply. “They say I can't have no contact in here with my visitors. Any contact, and I'm in the hole.”

  “ You willing to chance that for a moment's pleasure?” she asked.

  “ What about a touch. One touch, here,” he bartered, standing and holding his crotch.

  “ Only if my partner can stay and watch over me.”

  He glared at Lucas now. “Shit. All right.”

  “ Then you'll tell us what you can about Purdy?”

  “ All right… all right.”

  Meredyth indicated to Lucas to watch out for the guard. Lucas started to protest, but she put a linger on his hps and said, “It's for a good cause.”