Unnatural Instinct (Instinct thriller series)

by Robert W. Walker

  “Praying we hear from the abductor or get a ransom demand.” Jessica now went for coffee only to find that Richard had emptied the pot, leaving it on to burn the bottom of the glass container. She returned to him and took what was left in his cup, drinking it down. “We've got the phones at every possible contact point bugged. We're just waiting to hear his demands.”

  “After all this time, Jess, I doubt he's interested in contacting the family.”

  She sighed deeply. “Gotcha.”

  “I feel so damned helpless. What can we do to find her, Jess, and how do we know which path down the maze to take? How do we keep from wasting a minute?” He took the cup from her and studied its emptiness, a reflection of his gut feeling about the progression of the case thus far.

  “We work round the clock,” she replied. “We keep running down leads, as in any case.”

  “Meanwhile, we dodge the media and the brass?”

  “Nobody's asking you to dodge Santiva or anyone else, Richard. But... but...”

  “Yes, of course, I appreciate what you're not saying.”

  “Trust me. I have an ill feeling about Judge DeCampe's disappearance, and I fear it can only get worse, but if she has an iota of a chance, it can easily be lost if, say, Santiva or someone over his head decides to take the case out of our hands and changes horses in midstream or begins to dictate what direction our investigation ought to go in.”

  “What exactly do you mean, Jess, by an ill kind of feeling?”

  Abandoning her chair, she again paced the operations room. “Gut feeling is all.”

  Richard knew by now that her pacing actually signaled either a characteristic impatience at the lack of leads or her frustration with the four walls closing in on them, time being so short. 'Texas may have some input here, you know,” she now said. “Before the judge was an appellate judge here, she was a criminal judge in Houston, Texas. We've got friends in Texas; field office SAC is George O'Leary, right? And there's this Lucas Stonecoat with the Houston Police Department.”

  “Stonecoat?”

  'Texas Cherokee... worked a case with Kim Desinor a couple of years back.”

  “Oh, yeah... the case that was shaping up as another Atlanta black boys murder thing. I recall reading about it and hearing about it on the telly.”

  “The case took a real toll on Kim, but nothing like this has... Who knows, maybe our friends in Texas could jump-start us on any cases Judge Maureen DeCampe tried in Houston.” Richard nodded, agreeing. He somehow sensed that this time Jessica's pacing meant more, that she was searching for any errant clues in her mind. Sharpe's eyes followed her movement; as always, she fascinated him, and as always, he resisted her fascination at the moment with cold caution. He thought of how quickly they had come to a full-blown, rich relationship that was more than that of simply lovers but that of friends. He'd be the first to admit that his sexual interest in her remained as high as ever, but his fascination for her keen scientific mind and what the two of them shared in this world was just as important to him. He understood that her work had always been her first love, that she was positively obsessive about the hunt, and so in a sense she was involved with another lover, but he accepted this as part of the person he loved, one of the major reasons he loved her. Aside from this, she was a Scorpio to boot.

  She caught his eyes on her. She quickly asked, “What does your gut tell you?”

  “Doesn't tell me anything unless I've just swallowed a pepperoni pizza.”

  She didn't laugh at the joke. “Me... I have a tick. An uneasy tick... like a ticking bomb in my head.”

  “So you think she is alive?”

  Jessica turned to him and forced direct eye contact. “Yes, but I fear her time is limited, and maybe....” She hesitated to say more.

  “Maybe what?”

  “Perhaps she'd be better off if she were... dead.”

  Richard's jaw quivered. “What makes you say that?”

  “Just a sense I get. Revenge motive, you said it yourself. If this guy knows her from her court dealings, he's going to hurt her, right? He's out to hurt her badly. That's what revenge is all about. In its way, it's as horrid as any hate crime because of the level of hatred involved.”

  “Well then, we'll just have to hope that her abductor instead fell in love with his victim, that it's that media- fixation thing at work, right?”

  “Yeah, maybe we can do a better job focusing on that scenario.”

  “But you don't think so.”

  “It's certainly a possibility.”

  “But if it's wrong?”

  She nodded. “If it's wrong, it could cost her precious time. Fact is, any move we make down a wrong path will cost her precious time.”

  FOUR

  Tis man's perdition to be safe, When for the truth, he ought to die.

  —RALPH WALDO EMERSON

  MY goddamn hands are tied to the lifeless hands of some dead guy, lashed to them by—she could not think— rawhide strips; my legs and body're lashed similarly to the corpse. My face has been forced into the decaying face of death, right cheek to his left. A sick mockery of the dance posture, this horrid nightmare; a nightmare from which she had awakened only to find herself once again here, lashed to the dead man. His decaying process was slowly, torturously breaking down the bonding tissues of her own flesh.

  Her mind had shut down on itself more than once since coming to the realization that her predicament was not a nightmare, but a nightmare reality. She had not—could not—awaken from the nightmare, because it proved to be no dream at all.

  Someone had drugged her—no, stunned or traumatized her in some manner as to render her helpless; stunned first, drugged afterward. That had been the sequence. Maureen could not recall the particulars, but she had a vague notion of the small man behind this mad revenge on her.

  All because she had excused herself from any further dealings in the old man's problem, his son, James Lee Purdy, who she had put on death row after his first trial. With his appeal filed, all the time that had passed, almost ten years, she had become an appeals court judge, and Jimmy Lee Purdy's appeal should never have come before her. She'd had to recuse herself and step away from the case; it only made sense. The judge who presided over the original trial, the judge who had condemned Jimmy Lee to death in the first place, could not be the same judge to hear his appeal.

  Anyone who knew anything about the law understood the enormity of such prejudice and conflict of interest, but for some strange reason, Jimmy Lee and his father both had wanted her on the case. The old man had come to her office and pleaded, saying, “It'll be Jimmy Lee's last wish for you to stand in judgment on him a second time. And since he's what they call at the prison 'a dead man walking,' then you gotta give him his last wish. We'd do it in Iowa. What kind of people are you Texans?”

  She had flatly refused, and then the wizened old man placed two clenched fists on her desk and sternly said, “It's not just Jimmy's wish. God told him it had to be you, Judge DeCampe. God, do ya' understand that? God's wish.”

  “God does not dictate here, Mr. Purdy. The court system does. I can't break the law to enforce the law. Now, please, I have no more to say on the subject.”

  “I have lived in perdition all these years Jimmy's been on death row. I won't apologize for taking up a half hour of your life, Your Honorable Judgess.” He'd stood, rail thin, bony, emaciated, haggard, and sickly. He'd come like a visit from Death himself to her chambers there in the Sam Houston Central Courthouse. That had been almost a year ago, long before she'd taken the position in Washington.

  “He'll get a fair appeal, Mr. Purdy, before Judge Raymond Parker,” she had assured the scarecrow before her.

  That had been the last she'd seen of the old man, but this Jed Clampett parody continued to wander the courtroom halls like a ghost, sitting in every day of his son's doomed appeal, just as he had for three months during the original trial. She had caught glimpses of him, and she also caught moments when his eyes staked
her with their mix of frustration, sadness, and a kind of fire that spoke an angry and sullen language all their own.

  Even though she had no choice but to recuse herself from the case in Houston, Texas, she'd secretly blessed the fact she did not have to hear Jimmy Lee Purdy's bullshit ever again. Further, she never wanted to see his ugly face again. She'd begun to feel exactly the same toward the old man.

  The state by and large had to bury death row inmates using large sums of taxpayer dollars, and they were interred in a sad potter's field. Judge Parker, with whom she'd remained in contact primarily through E-mail, had confided to her that on sentencing day, Mr. Isaiah James Purdy had asked for only one thing from the court before he'd ended his plea for leniency for his son. He had asked that the boy's body be returned to him, to be shipped back to Iowa, where Mr. Purdy meant to inter his son on the family farm.

  That had all been a lie.

  The wizened little old man wanted the body for a far more grim and sinister reason; he wanted it to wreak its slow revenge on Judge Maureen DeCampe; he wanted to watch his son's decaying flesh eat away at her, to eventually murder her in a slow and agonizing fashion not heard of in modem times. Something he'd muttered about Romans... and something about the biblical injunction of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, but she hadn't gotten it all. Flesh for flesh, she imagined now. She failed to dredge up some words he'd read to her from his Bible. She was unable to recapture every word, far too busy as she was with the horror of the moment, lashed to Jimmy Lee Purdy's decaying, shrinking corpse, the odor of it certain to drive her insane long before her body would turn to rotting mush. Die, let me now... now let me die, she mentally pleaded.

  The duct tape around her mouth worked twofold: to silence any screams and to hold her head into the deadly, flesh-eating decay. It was all too horrid and heart-sinkingly terrifying to contemplate. Mercifully, her mind sent her into a spiral of unconsciousness, her only means of escape.

  THEY began the tedious process, requiring a small army of agents, of re interviewing everyone, starting with the parking lot attendant. But Jessica soon learned that the man could not be located, and that it appeared Arthur Collins had packed his belongings and had vacated his apartment. He might be on a plane, a train, or a bus bound for anywhere. His suddenly fleeing the area told Jessica that her instincts about the creep had been perfectly right all along, and now she cursed herself for allowing Collins the time to vanish. She immediately ordered an all points bulletin for his apprehension and return.

  In the meantime, they spoke to the judge's youngest offspring, her adopted son, Michael. Michael, a law clerk, tearfully told them that he meant to follow in his mother's footsteps. At twenty-five, Michael blamed himself, saying he'd wanted to stay late in the building and go out with her that night for dinner and drinks, but that she had insisted he go on his way when it became extremely late. He'd met his fiancee at a restaurant, and he'd wanted the two women to get along, so he had the date set for weeks, but his mother hadn't really wanted to meet with them. She'd begged off, using her usual excuse: work.

  “She is a workaholic, you know,” Michael had said during the course of the interview. “She'd been happy for me,” he said. “I didn't know anything was wrong until the following morning, when my sister called.”

  The daughters had been the ones to initially cry foul. Further discussion with them amassed no new information. The family was at a total loss as to how anyone could possibly want to harm their mother.

  Hours passed like days on this case, a case that had nerves frayed from the lowest civilian to the governor of the state. Information of any useful sort simply failed to materialize; every person questioned seemed unable to supply a single helpful clue. Jessica's anger at herself for not cornering the parking attendant when she had had the chance threatened to explode. Richard Sharpe's detailing of the suspect from his unique perspective, from what few givens he'd had to work with, while not adding anything startlingly new, did corroborate Jessica's own worst fears for Judge DeCampe, that her abductor was in it for revenge, that his motive must be to inflict pain and suffering on the woman. Such evil revenge might come in any number of cruel ways. The revenge motive, in the experience of the people running the investigation, proved the worst possible scenario for the victim. The only crime that rivaled it was lust-torture and lust-murder done by a psychotic killer who had created some fantastical notions of right and wrong in his head in order to come to sexual release. A typical rape— if there were such a thing—was by contrast all about power and domination, while a lust-rape-murder had also to do with the mental state of the killer who must take life to feel alive or to fulfill some demented commands made on him by Satan or some hound of Satan's, or some other “outside” force he could not fully control.

  Still, murder for revenge could be as savage as any. It certainly predated most reasons for murder.

  Richard had agreed. He had cast aside all other possibilities, just as Jessica had on reading Richard's profile of the abductor.

  “A media stalker is usually an amateur, who is a great deal sloppier,” Richard had assured her, once again corroborating her own feelings. She knew her abductor. Jessica and Richard decided to drive back to the scene of the crime, where they hoped to speak to anyone who had come into contact with her on the night of her abduction. Now, as they made their way to their waiting car, they talked. “I've contacted Eriq Santiva,” she informed him, “and he's convinced that bringing you on board, Richard, lends a certain air of respectability to the investigation.” She laughed lightly at this.

  “And why does this make you laugh?”

  “Don't you see? He can tell the governor and the mayor that he's got a bona fide Scotland Yard investigator on the case alongside his best profiling team.”

  “I'm here merely as a consultant on the case.”

  “You're Richard Sharpe of Scotland Yard. Your record speaks for itself.”

  “And the Yard has handled countless abduction cases, and I've certainly had my share.”

  “You know a great deal about the psychology of abductors, as well as being an expert on stalkers.”

  “I'm sure the official thinking is that you Yanks can use all the help you can get, Jess.”

  “Some people are going to say it was the only way I could get you over here, Richard.”

  “Really?” Now he laughed.

  “That it took a fee to entice you to me. That you are a kept man.”

  He laughed louder, his tone rich and resonating. Then he said, “Fuck anyone who says so.”

  “Thanks. I needed that.”

  “You hungry?”

  “I could eat.”

  He turned right. “Do you know of a nearby useful place?”

  “Funny...” she muttered as they turned down the side street that took them out of the madcap traffic of downtown D.C.

  “What's funny T

  “I feel guilty doing things like eating, sleeping, breathing... knowing that Judge DeCampe is likely being deprived of basic needs and possibly being tortured.”

  “Nonsense. We don't know anything of the kind. You're just... What is it young people over here say? 'Laying a trip on yourself,' Jess. Besides, you gotta-hafta keep your strength up.”

  “I know you're right, but... Hey, turn in here!”

  He quickly pulled into a parking lot fronting a sign that announced the place as St. George's Potato Patch. “I have a feeling we're going to be pulling an all-nighter. What is this place, by the way?” He jerked the car to a halt and shut down the motor.

  “St. George's Potato, a pub and grill. We're still pretty near the agency building and Police Precinct One. Police and others working in the area of the courthouse frequent the place. Everyone at the bureau and nearby precincts hangs out here.”

  “Let's give it a go then.” They exited the car for the restaurant. Everyone in law enforcement in the area had gotten comfortable with the idea that the FBI and not the WPD would be running the show in the De
Campe case, and most in the WPD were glad the FBI had taken the leadership role in the Missing Persons case. So walking into this lion's den would be no threat, Jessica assumed.

  “You sure you want to be in this place?” he asked her.

  “When in Rome... all that.”

  Inside, once seated, Jessica stared across at Richard. He had been a stalwart and honest friend since their first meeting in London, where they'd worked the case of the Crucifier. It seemed so long ago; they had shared so much since then. She often thought about how she could have used such a friend when she was chief medical examiner for the city of Washington, D.C., before joining the FBI, when her life had unraveled before her eyes in a matter of days. Her father's health had suddenly declined, when a series of strokes first left him paralyzed, then comatose, and finally she had had to decide on life support or death. She had chosen as her father would have wanted: no heroic efforts to save him in his vegetative state. She had had few friends then, having devoted herself entirely to the job. Dr. Asa Holcraft, her mentor all through the final stages of her education as an M.E., was the only one at her father's funeral for whom she felt any affection.

  As if losing her father were not enough, Jessica lost a series of politically motivated battles with the city commissioner and assistant to the mayor, and despite her spotless record and determination to keep the Office of the Medical Examiner above and beyond political rancor and the influence of politicos, she failed. The writing was on the wall, and when FBI Division Head Otto Boutine, recognizing the fine work she'd done as M.E. and noting the work she'd done during a horrendous airplane disaster at Dulles International, offered her a job with his FBI Behavioral Science Division, she readily accepted.

  Otto had explained that they needed someone with great talent to create psychological profiles of both killers and victims. Serial killer profiles proved difficult, but doing profiles of victims tore at the heart of anyone with feelings. Still, she leaped at the chance to do more forensic psychology.