Blind Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  And so now, here they stood, Deputy Frizzell, his thumbs in his waistband, buried below his protruding stomach, and J. T., looking out of place from his Ralph Lauren glasses to his expensive leather shoes, marking him as a visitor from Mars, standing before the platform porch of the place where Abominable practiced being abominable the most-—on his own family.

  Now more young people, large burly men and boys, spilled from the doorways of the house, over the porch and into the yard, all wanting to know why their deputy cousin and uncle had come in the company of this obvious outlander. What had happened and what was going on telegraphed from every hang-mouth face.

  Deputy Frizzell explained the situation bluntly and without fanfare. The news garnered no tears, but it did get a pair of whoops and yahoos and curses. One of the boys said, “Damned glad to hear it, Dr. Thorpe. Thank you.” The im­plication being, “You can go now,” J. T. thought.

  Another of the sons asked, “But why'd you come all this way to tell us about it when you coulda' just phoned it in?”

  “Did he ever make it to Utah? That where he died?” asked another of the younger boys who'd missed the earlier con­versation about the mysterious death in New Jersey that had led J. T. to their doorstep.

  One of the older siblings, a girl holding firm to a baby, brought her little brother up-to-date with a few choice words: “Don't be stupid, Kyle.”

  J. T. added, “You see, the body went unidentified, and it took a great deal of detective work, using his tattoo art, to trace it—your father—”

  “Gran-pap,” corrected the younger boy.

  “Yes, of course, pardon.”

  “You think he was murdered up there in New Jersey?” asked the young woman with the child in her arms as she stepped forward, the baby cooing mam-mam-mam! in her ear.

  “Matter of fact, yes.”

  “How was he kilt?” asked the older woman who hadn't budged from her porch chair.

  “Are you Mrs. Sanocre?” J.T. asked.

  “That'd be me.”

  “We need to talk.”

  “About?”

  “Arrangements, return of Mr. Sanocre's remains.”

  “We don't want his cussed remains here,” said one of the youngest boys.

  “He were the Devil,” said the young girl with the babe in her arms. “Ever'body knows-sit!”

  J. T. saw it flicker in her eyes, the hatred, yes, but also the truth. “You killed him, yourself, didn't you, young lady. I read you like a book.” She done nothing of the kind!” defended one strong-armed fellow instantly at her side who didn't have the same coloring or hair shade as the others.

  “Your husband, Miss Sanocre?” asked J. T. of the man. “Yes.” 'Tell me, son. You own any of these dogs?” asked J.T.

  “What's going on?” asked Mrs. Sanocre from the porch chair.

  “That bastard broke my mama's legs, both of 'em, just outta meanness and evil. If he got killed, it was God put him dead, not us,” said the young girl.

  “Do you have access to a rabies venom, sir?” J. T. asked the man at her side.

  “All right... All right, I did it. I killed that Devil, and I did it on my own. None of these folks here had anythin' to do with it.”

  “No, no, July!” shouted the daughter. “I ain't allowin' you take this on your head alone!”

  “Shut up, Cassie! You know I done it alone, all on my own!”

  The others were abuzz, some of them clearly confused, and the old woman shouted, “What're you all talkin' about?”

  The daughter went to her maltreated, malnourished mother to comfort her, cooing that everything would be put right. The mother accepted her daughter's words as if they'd been spoken by an angel or God.

  Deputy Frizzell said, “Cassie, July, I think we have a long night of talkin' to do down in Diamondback at the jailhouse. Come on.”

  Cassie handed off her child without a misstep or a tear, and she and July voluntarily found the rear of the squad car. Their deputy cousin did not handcuff them. Others in the family gave out threatening gestures, lifted voices, and banged on the car, but they did allow Deputy Frizzell to pull off with Cassie and July in custody.

  Deputy Frizzell began to read the pair their rights.

  It came off as simple as that. All they needed to see was an FBI expert in their front yard telling them that he knew they had done it, and the entire elaborate scheme fell away like a house of flimsy cards.

  When the full story came to light, three others in the family, two of whom had raced off to become fugitives, were impli­cated in the conspiracy to kill Maxwell Sanocre, all of them his children, all full-grown adults. They had conspired to mur­der him in New Jersey where they sent him on a supposed reunion with his high school buddies. Before he ever got to the “reunion,” however, he was fooled into visiting the junk­yard for “great used Harley parts.” There he was murdered by the rabid dogs which his daughter, married to a veterinary apprentice, had masterminded. “The beauty part,” Cassie at one point in the interrogation said in chilling matter-of-fact manner, “was that we used his own damned, vicious pit bulls to get him. He made them dogs evil, same as he wanted to make all his children evil. Somebody had to put an end to him and his dogs. The rabies was for the dogs as much as him, and we figured since he was wanted in New Jersey, he'd die before he took hisself to a doctor, even if he could get over that junkyard fence. He was the Devil his-self. No matter what you think, Dr. Thorpe, we done the right thing . ..”One son, a daughter, and a son-in-law, each of whom pas­sionately hated the old man, were held over for trial, while two others remained at large. Clearly, Sanocre's wife, with little sense left, did not understand this sudden disintegration of her family, but she clearly laid it at her dead husband's feet. Perhaps, if the jury found any sympathetic thread in all this so as to understand the terrorizing and traumatizing abuse that even to J. T., an outsider, appeared rampant, then daugh­ter and sons might find some mercy with the court.

  J. T. wanted out of Diamondback as quickly as possible, and so he flew back to New Orleans, where he took some time to relax, see the sights and recoup before even thinking of flying on to Quantico, Virginia. From New Orleans, he dialed London, in hope of reaching Jessica to tell her that he'd wrapped up the case of the Missing Person known to them as Horace the Tattoo Man.

  Proud of himself, pleased at his handling of the case, burst­ing to tell Jessica the news, he called the York Hotel only to find her not in, and in converting the time, he wondered where she might be at 6 p.m. British dme, for when he tried Scotland Yard, she could not be found there, either. He couldn't opt to leave her E-mail because his terminal awaited his return to Quandco. He hated being out of touch, and gave some thought to that laptop he'd been thinking of purchasing.

  His next call caught Eriq Santiva between meetings. San­tiva gave him great praise at having so efficiently worked the case. “And all on your own,” the chief added. “Enjoy New Orleans! Take whatever time you like.”

  They spoke briefly about Jessica's case in London, neither of them having heard from Jessica in some time now. Each promised to keep the other informed should they hear from Coran in London.

  Sunday Evening, October 1, Scotland Yard

  Jessica and Sharpe, skirting the peripheral corridors of Scot­land Yard, found their way into the bowels of the building where Sharpe introduced Jessica to Ralph Crider, telling her that Crider knew more about film and film enhancement than anyone on the planet. Jessica left her film with Crider, who promised to have it developed and blown up to enlarge the map and scale models she'd taken pictures of at the RIBA. She lamented having had no time to take “normal pictures” here in London.

  They carried on, as Richard called it, now past the com­puter archives to an archive predating the computer age, where hard-copy materials and microfiche remained housed in boxes and on shelves.

  Still struck by the strangeness of the two “orphaned” twins named Houghton, Jessica insisted on searching the Yard's data banks on them, t
o see what might turn up. She again said to Richard, “I just know I recall something about a case dealing with a pair of twins from Gloucester.”

  They gained entry to the file rooms using Sharpe's identi­fication. Soon their eyes marked the speeding trail of a mi­crofiche tape machine, as the dates she was most interested in, the years between 1950 and 1960, sped by in a newspaper history on the microfiche. The whining of the machine sounded like a miniature siren wail as the tape sped past their eyes.

  Searching the index for the Houghton name in relation to any crime or victimization, Jessica found several. She scrolled first to one and then to another. On the third scroll, they found the Houghton twins.

  On the fiche a registration number told them where to look for the police report, but here, staring back at them, was a London Times article and pictures of the twins and their par­ents. Details of the case, while sketchy, came clearer and clearer for Jessica as she read on, as they did for Richard, who suddenly gasped, saying, “Of course! I now remember the case well. Tragic, horrifying really. A real curler.”

  For Jessica, the veil had also been lifted, and she found it strangely coincidental that the shocked, traumatized twins as children were now hanging about St. Albans, getting spiritual advice from Father Strand and Father Luc Sante. While she scanned from photo to photo display, Jessica thought of how little play the case had gotten in America. At least in public America. But in police circles, the Houghton case had caused quite a ripple and wave, especially among forensics people. It had been a case in which the killers, mother and father to the twins, almost escaped a just execu­tion over a botched forensics trail of evidence, not unlike the O. J. Simpson case in America in this regard.

  Records clearly detailed the British case from 1954. Sharpe began paraphrasing and reading aloud in her ear, saying, “The father hailed from Gloucester, England ... name of Frederick Houghton ... finally caught while burying a thirteenth vic­tim.”

  “Literally caught in the act,” she replied.

  “Fifty-two-year-old Houghton confessed to over twelve ad­ditional murders, all of which his wife knew of and nine of which she'd helped him to commit.”

  “Look here,” she added, pointing at a buried paragraph and saying, “the last victim's remains were located in someplace called Finger Post Field.”

  “Some ten miles outside Gloucester, near the remains of Houghton's first wife, his first victim,” Richard read on.

  Now, her memory jogged, Jessica recalled having read the details in Press Association, Britain's domestic news agency. Asa Holcraft had received the British news that way for as long as she'd known him. “Rosemary Houghton, the second wife, forty years of age,” mused Jessica aloud now. “She had been charged with killing nine women, including her hus­band's own sixteen-year-old daughter, Heather.”

  Richard shook his head as though the gesture might ease the words he read aloud. “Houghton, a construction trade builder, was charged with killing the same nine women— Heather, a daughter from his first marriage and Heather's mother, his first wife.”

  Jessica read on in silence, Richard doing likewise over her shoulder, following her finger down the page.

  Nine of the bodies were found below the Houghtons' house on Cromwell Street in Gloucester, some 110 miles west of London. Heather Houghton's body was discovered under the house of a former place of resi­dence nearby. The eleventh body, that of the original Mrs. Houghton, Catherine Costello, had been located in a field in a place called Kempley, beside another victim, a former baby-sitter to the family who'd mysteriously disappeared some twenty years before.

  “Amazing story, but where's the information on the twins?” she wondered aloud. “I remember twin little girls who lived in the house while all this was going on. There were other children in the house, too, but I particularly recall the twins for some reason.”

  “Read on,” suggested Richard.

  The thirteenth and final victim was yet another young baby-sitter, but in her case, the disappearance caused an uproar in the entire village. A search for her had gone on for weeks when Houghton, under pressure from his accomplice wife to rid the house of the “hot” body, found himself spodighted by authorities, who had begun to watch him on tips from neighbors about strange goings-on in the Gloucester home where the girl had baby-sat from time to time.

  Something about the case which Jessica couldn't let go of: The total devotion the killers had instilled in their children to keeping the family secrets, as grisly and as gruesome as they were. It harkened back to what Luc Sante had said about the group mind, the power of authority figures and peer pressure, the sort of brainwashing and conditioning, which in her es­timation, never completely left a person, whether the condi­tioning was to the lifestyle of a survivalist, a KKK member, a prisoner of war, a wrestling fan, or a child taught that mur­der, under the right circumstances, was all right; this mentality or some remnant of guilt stayed with a person forever. She pushed on with the article, reading:

  There were five children living under the same roof with Mr. and Mrs. Houghton besides Heather. When Heather disappeared and next the baby-sitter, too many unanswered questions went wanting. The additional five children, two of them young twin girls, were all taken into custody and placed in the care of authorities.

  Jessica assumed these Houghton children had all been placed in child welfare and protective agencies, and later found homes. The two Houghton twins she'd met earlier, ac­cording to Father Luc Sante, were nowadays devoted to help­ing others in the cause of Jesus Christ, but each of the sisters lived behind big, onyx glass eyes, glazed over at that. They appeared drugged, at least on a mild sedative, she believed. Perhaps, even now, they must continue on a regimen of psy­choactive drugs to hold back the horrors of their childhood, in order to not live a life condemning their own parents who, out of a core evil that included abuse, murder, incest, and forced sodomy on their own children as final insult.

  Once again, Jessica must face Luc Sante as a possible sus­pect in the crucifixion murders. Obviously, he had access to various drugs and would know how to use Brevital. Jessica could not help but wonder just how traumatized the two grown children of parental abuse must still be, and just how long Dr. Luc Sante, as a psychotherapist had had them under his care and treatment. She further wondered just how far the two bug-eyed creatures might go to further their cause in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

  She shared these fears with Richard, somehow relaxing them by putting words to her fears and sharing with another person.

  The name Gloucester, too, sounded familiar, and a quick check of the birthplace of Theodore “Burtie” Burton came up Gloucester. Another simple coincidence? Britain was, after all, an island nation, and life popped full with synchronicity and coincidence every day here. Still, Jessica could hardly help questioning these two hounds, coming as they did on one another's heels, yipping away at one another.

  Good Inspector Sharpe, too, had difficulty simply swallow­ing these two examples of chance at play in the fields of murder in one generation so unkind and cruel, and the cru­cifixion murders in this generation.

  “What do we do with this information?” she asked.

  “It all remains relatively circumstantial.”

  “Agreed. I've lost cases on more evidence.”

  They fell silent, each locked in thought for some time be­fore Jessica blurted out, “I think it's time we got a search warrant for St. Albans.”

  “St. Albans? A church? You want a sanctuary for evil to— oops!—sorry, a Freudian, I suppose. Do you really expect that a sanctuary for any and all in peril—such as the Houghton twins—to be served with a search warrant? In London?”

  “I realize this isn't the South Bronx or West Queens, but we are dealing with a radical situation here, and the timetable on the body count has risen and will only continue to rise if we don't do something.”

  “I tell you, getting a court order to raid a Catholic church in London, or anywhere in
Great Britain, will not do. I'm afraid we've not progressed too far in that area since Henry the Eighth. But what we could do is approach from the bridgethe canal, the end of that labyrinthine tunnel we saw on the map. That's public domain.”

  “Are you suggesting we go it alone?”

  “Everyone else is concentrating efforts elsewhere, looking in the wrong place, I fear. Convinced by Boulte and company that surveillancing the waterways is our best effort. It appears Chief Inspector Boulte has everyone out in force doing so. So, I'm afraid we're on our own.”

  “That could be damned risky. I don't have a desire to find myself spread-eagle on a resurrection cross, Richard.”

  “Do not tempt me. It presents a fairly juicy picture to this person, love.”

  “Stop that.”

  “I will not,” he teased further.

  “All right, as soon as we have the maps in hand, we go,” she agreed.

  Sharpe had not exaggerated Crider's gift for magic with film. The maps were sharp and clear and easily read. They took them in hand at 8:26 p.m. and left the Yard without anyone but Crider having known they'd been in the archives.

  Sharpe made a detour along the route back to the Mary­lebone district, stopping off at the RIBA in search of someone familiar with the locks and canals of London. Someone who had the right know-how and tools to open a locked grate covering an ancient canal below the city, someone who knew a clapper bridge when confronted with one.

  As luck would have it, Donald Wentworth Tatham turned out to be the ready “soldier” on the spot, as Sharpe referred to him. Together, Sharpe, Jessica, and Tatham traveled toward the far northern border of Marylebone, at the terminus of a canal no longer in use, serving only as a drainage ditch and locked away from the sight of men for some forty-eight-odd years.