Unnatural Instinct (Instinct thriller series)

by Robert W. Walker

  “Go on,” came his voice out of the gloom surrounding her. Bastard sat on a three-legged milking stool in the gray gloom, just within her sight if she squinted; sitting there watching her struggle, no animal sounds but her own sad whine.

  She could not form words. The tape choked her. Attempting to form words took too much effort. Still, she strained against her bonds and cursed him just the same. “More you thrash around like a sturgeon on a pike, faster the bruisin'll pop up all over Little Jimmy; I say little 'cause he's done shriveled up so since they threw the switch on him. Body's just a shell of what he once't was, but it's full of dying cells, you can believe that. Hell, you can smell it. My old pap always told me what you can smell, you can believe in.”

  Despite her gag, she cursed him in no uncertain terms.

  He ignored her feeble attempt to curse him, adding, “Like an overripe apple, Jimmy Lee is. He'll decay faster if'n you help it along that way, and so you'll catch the decay from him more quicker, so's you can end it that much sooner. So, you just carry on, little Miss High and Mighty Judgess.”

  Again she thrashed and cursed under the gag.

  “You thought it was cute, first time I called you Judgess in your courtroom office, way back when you was still just a judge in Houston. I could tell you thought it was cute. You still like it some?” he asked, a hissing snicker escaping him. 'Treated me like dirt when I come to speak to you personal about taking on Jimmy Lee's appeal case, remember?”

  She lay perfectly still and silent, thinking. I'll be damned if I'll put on a show for this mother fuckin' throwback son of a motherless fucking pig.

  He laughed hollowly, as if he understood her silent curse. He lit a lantern and studied her and his dead son where they lay like some kind of game with four legs and four arms. He hemmed and hawed for a few long minutes, then, taking his lantern with him, he left her in the empty darkness of what felt like a barn, alone with the diseased thing that meant to kill her in flowing ooze and in slow motion. Only a small light was left burning, a single flame that dipped and rippled with the intermittent wind through the cracks. The old man had left a small candle burning on the stool where he'd been sitting earlier.

  Just enough light to create grotesque shadows.

  While her eyes focused on the flame, her ears told her that there were no chickens, no sound of sheep, no cow's tail thumping against a stall. She remained perfectly alone, except for erratic slithering noises that came and went— curious vermin, brought by the odor of decaying flesh; that and the sound of her own breath remained all there was. She gagged repeatedly as she took in the awful odors through her flared nostrils.

  How long? How long will the process take if this sick fuck allows it to continue to its natural—or is it unnatural— resolution? Two days, six, twelve, a month? At what point will I begin to feel the inevitable pain? The horror of my own rotting flesh? The stench of flesh as it loses its bond, the unrelenting odorous horror of inhaling my own dying flesh? Will it be distinguishable from the flesh that takes my flesh into its maw? At what point will I feel no more? At what point do I go sinking and melding into Jimmy Lee's decaying body? At what point do I go insanely insane?

  The old man had left the candle burning on a holder on the stool. It only required a moment's thought to prefer burning to death to what Purdy had in mind for her. She slowly began to rock Jimmy Lee's body beneath her. It was easier getting momentum going than she had imagined. The old man was right. Jimmy Lee was no longer a large man, no longer much mass left to him. Still, she would have to roll with great momentum to make Jimmy and herself a missile for the stool. She didn't care at this point if she would or would not come out atop the dead man. It would only take a half roll to send the candle onto the hay-strewn floor and possibly, just possibly, set the two of them, Jimmy Lee and herself, ablaze. She believed it a far, far better way to die than by the slow and painful degrees the old man wanted to see and relish.

  She got the body rolling back and forth with great force now, and suddenly the bodies lashed together hit the stool, but at the same moment, the old man lifted the candle into the air. He'd been standing in shadow, watching, inwardly laughing at her struggle. The candle had been left to test her and to offer false hope, so that he could take it away.

  Bastard....

  She was under the corpse now. The old man kicked out at his son's dead body and sent it back over to its original position, she on top.

  “Wouldn't do to have Jimmy on top,” he said. “He'd decay you too quick that away. I want this to last.”

  She cried as darkness completely enfolded the bam, while the old man waltzed out this time to the tune of her complaints. The old man made a noisy show of rattling the door, locking her inside.

  ISAIAH Purdy, determined to make his destination, had continued on toward Huntsville, Texas, at dawn, even after the near-fatal crash into the ditch that had acted like a hammer blow to wake him up at the wheel. That night he'd been nearly killed, having been run completely off the highway by a road hog truck driver, who didn't so much as slow down. Like a goddamn ocean liner running down a man in a rowboat. This all happened just outside of Sioux City, Iowa, where one turn would take him to South Dakota, another to Nebraska. He'd needed the exit for Nebraska, and having almost missed it, he'd veered into the path of the truck, which was passing him on the right. When he'd come to his senses, it was too late, and the trucker had no sym-pathy for his indecision. “Indecision kills,” he'd muttered to himself once the van had come to a complete halt.

  Purdy then continued on for the border exit out of Iowa altogether and, using the interstate, was soon having breakfast in neighboring Nebraska.

  The long journey had given Isaiah time to think clearly about his plans, and to again and again condemn that bitch judge who had sent his child to his death.

  At the time of his going to Huntsville, Jimmy Lee's execution was imminent, looming in Isaiah's mind like a predatory bird picking at his brain whenever he gave the least thought to the adult boy he had raised on the farm. He recalled how he had taught the boy all he knew about raising pigs for slaughter, and how Jimmy Lee learned to slit a pig's throat and drain the blood from the carcass in the most efficient manner. How the pig must be boiled in water to scrape off every whisker and hair, and how to dismember the animal limb by limb, and how to use every strip of flesh and organ. At first, the boy proved reluctant and a slow learner. Isaiah had had to shame the boy into his first slaughter of a pig the boy had become fond of.

  The boy's mother joked on more than one occasion as to how Isaiah loved his pigs more than he did her, and more than he did his own son, that he spent more time with his pigs than he did his family. But how else to make a go of a pig farm? It took time—lots of time—to make money off of a slew of piglets raised to become pork on the hoof.

  The Nebraska state line had come and gone, and still Isaiah had miles to go before he slept that night if he were to make his son's execution by the appointed time. “What a cursed life it's become,” he moaned, and his stomach and sore heart lurched in unison, bringing a sour pain to his chest. Acid indigestion, a lifelong problem, rearing its ugly head, he thought. “Miles to go before I sleep... miles to go before I sleep...”

  That had been only a week ago. Now he had completed the journey to Huntsville, and he had sat stone cold and rock-hearted as they strapped Jimmy Lee into that chair and they played out their little ritual like they were the military, and the order was given and all those many volts of electricity were sent coursing through Jimmy Lee's horrified body, turning the boy into a stiff board. He'd then claimed his boy's body, and had gotten the needed extra coffin loaded into the van alongside Jimmy's. All the paperwork was filled out, and then he'd gone looking for the judge. Miss High and Mighty. Jimmy Lee's choice to spend eternity with. It was the boy's final wish. And Isaiah believed it was the least he could do for the boy at this terrible time.

  He reasoned that his fulfilling the boy's last wish would make up for all t
he time he'd not spent with Jimmy Lee as a child. Maybe...

  That was only a week before.

  Now Isaiah had set Jimmy Lee's final request in motion. Now Judge DeCampe lay helplessly strapped to Jimmy Lee's decaying corpse.

  Now... now it was set in motion, he kept telling him-self, because sometimes he didn't believe it himself. Sometimes, the idea of time itself meant nothing to him. Sometimes nowadays time had no linear meaning to the old man; one day did not follow another, and there were no increments of time, no minutes, no hours, no days, no weeks, months, or years—not any longer.

  Sometimes inside his head, Isaiah still had the journey to Houston to complete, still had to kidnap the woman there in Houston, even knowing now that she hadn't been in Houston but in Washington, D.C., where he had found the woman who had for so many years occupied Jimmy Lee's dreams. In his mind, he had not yet kidnapped the woman, but he would. And he'd do it without a hitch whatsoever, so sure was he of his plan. And why not? After all, it was foreseen and foretold by Jimmy Lee before his execution in one of the boy's visions—visions that had come to him after his incarceration. The visions came along with Jimmy Lee's sudden realization of how his life—even his life in prison- could be softened and helped by a steady reading of his Bible, the one his mother had sent him.

  So while he drove to Huntsville to fetch Jimmy Lee's corpse and then to Houston for the judge's soon-to-be- corpse, he was also simultaneously turning the woman's flesh to a gangrenous Jell-O. All in due time... all in time, but all time was relative, after all.

  His pocket watch read three A.M. Everybody was a little crazy at three in the morning. He had returned to the barn and now regained his seat on the stool facing DeCampe. She lay helpless in Isaiah's power, but in truth, it was due to Jimmy Lee's power, the power he had found in the scriptures. If truly in the faith—as old white-haired Samuel Putnam said every Sunday at prayer meetings—Jimmy Lee could move mountains even in death. Hell, he had moved his old man clear across the continent and back. Proof positive the boy had come to know that he could not go through this life without help from those who loved him, had loved him his entire life, had forgiven him his horrid deeds, had forgiven him his murdering ways, had forgiven him his unthinkable, unspeakable acts, because in the end he had accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior. This above all had moved his mama and papa to stand by their only begotten son. The Lord moved in mysterious ways... the Lord moved people in mysterious ways.

  The humming of the van's engine all along the winding roads, which took him closer and closer to Huntsville and his “walking dead” son, conspired to give more and more credence and time over to Jimmy Lee's secret life inside Isaiah's head. Still, he had resisted long and hard to control the voice and to beg for a sign or a word from Eunice Mae, where she stood in all this now that she had crossed over. However, Eunice Mae had not stirred from the grave and had not visited inside Isaiah's head, as had the living, prepared-to-die Jimmy Lee.

  Life, death, the passage of time, the stars, the universe, God, and the tree of life, how men chose to live their lives, all of these questions Isaiah had had time to ponder and sift through his brain on his long and twisting journey to the Huntsville, Texas, penitentiary. Other more worldly concerns also occupied his time; on more than one bleary-eyed stop, the old man feared he would not make it in time to see his son alive again, but rather that he would arrive only to collect up the body that was of his flesh.

  As it turned out, he'd gotten there on time for the execution, which had been a surprise—but hardly a pleasant one.

  Saints and snowstorms had always converged at that one corner of his farmhouse, back of the barn, the whiteness of it covering his Iowa land to form a huge lake of purity that blinded a man. He burst out in a rattle of laughter that tasted good but lasted only a moment. He'd suddenly recalled having discussed the beauty of the old place and what his son mockingly called “the palace itself.” It was at a time when Jimmy Lee had turned to God for answers as to what to do with the rest of his incarcerated life. Jimmy Lee had gotten a peaceful look on his face and had replied through the glass partition that had separated them, “You think God ever really sends any saints down to Earth along with the snowfall like mama always claimed?”

  “He sent your mama, didn't he?” was Isaiah's instant reply, and it had shut the boy up on the topic. “Sure, son, we beat you when it was called for, but your mama was a saint if ever one lived.”

  “I 'spect God would send a saint to a lonely old backwoods Iowa farm to live out her days.”

  “Modern life being what it is, you think he'd send a saint into someplace like New York City, boy?”

  That's when Jimmy Lee's voice took on the tenor of a god and he bellowed out, “Sodomy and Gay-mor-aaa!”

  To pass the time and distance between Iowa City and Huntsville, the three of them—Iowa farmer, death row inmate, and God—talked of theology, the nature of time and space, of man and spirit, of the anima and fate, karma and vengeance. They spoke of death and life and the cycle in between, and they spoke of rebirth, renewal, and regeneration, and Isaiah wondered about regeneration of tissue and limbs like he'd seen in frogs and tadpoles, and he asked God why men couldn't do that, and he asked why God had created mosquitoes and mites, pestilence and disease, and he asked about pain—pain from physical harm and pain of the emo-tional and mental sort. He asked why such things existed in the world, and God and Jimmy Lee pondered these questions, and neither of them gave the old man a straight answer. So he continued to drive on.

  The entire way to Huntsville across America's highways Isaiah asked questions that no one—not even God—could provide an answer for, until finally Isaiah decided that God had nothing to do with the way things worked out, that while He set things in motion, He could not have known that out of the muck of the original mire from which mankind dragged itself a seriously screwed-up brain would come about alongside polyps and viruses and no-see-ums.

  Then Jimmy Lee's laugh would fill Isaiah's brain; sometimes the laughter was followed by a sneer. Sometimes Jimmy Lee would tell him he was an old fool to bother God with such stupid questions. While it had been exhilarating at times to sense Jimmy Lee traveling over space and time to enter his mind, Isaiah often feared the power and clarity of his son's voice in his head. This he felt was what the young folks called intensely “cool”—that his son, sitting on death row, awaiting certain execution, had not waited until death had overtaken him to astrally project his anima or spirit to the back wall of Isaiah's head, to live inside the old man full-blown, and to direct him in these actions. His brain, encased in his skull, had always been a comfort to him, but now it registered a discomfiting feeling, and he was no longer at ease with his own mind. Not since Eunice followed her sister Emma Tilda to the grave. His beloved wife Eunice had been first to hear their son, Jimmy Lee, as clear as ringing a Wisconsin cowbell. But Jimmy Lee had not sounded his words alone. He had come in the company of his God, and they were awful and all-powerful in their combined voice and message of death.

  Driving the byways of Nebraska, crossing into Kansas, heading toward Arkansas and parts south for Texas, zigzagging downward across the states, fearful now of the big interstates, Isaiah Purdy simply no longer felt at ease. His agitation came on scratching claws and unsettling words; words that spoke of a cruel revenge, something he had never thought himself capable of. Yet the evolving plan—Jimmy Lee's unfolding wrath—would not leave his brain. It came that first night to mark his mind, like a knife slicing across his forehead to make itself clear, like a firm fist pounding on a bolted door, clamoring to get in.

  Strange how it had gotten into Eunice's head first, but then not so strange after all; Jimmy was always more partial to his ma than his pa. And the old man could well understand. After all, it had been his father who had had to punish the boy repeatedly, every time he broke a commandment. Jimmy Lee usually took a horse-hiding to come into line. And the favored instrument used on the boy was a harness.

  Ma
ybe it had all been for the best, his beating the boy. The boy was, after all, finally traveling in the company of his and Isaiah's Maker.

  Isaiah looked up from the steering wheel and stared over it at the endless stretch of Texas highway, the center white line at the center of his hood, and once again he knew he was veering into an oncoming car. He snatched the wheel and brought it in line as the highway coalesced into a hay- strewn barnyard floor upon which lay a nude woman strapped to a dead man, to the corpse of his dead son.

  Isaiah wondered what time it was. He'd been dozing on the stool set up alongside the suffering woman. 'Time for a soft bed up at the house,” he told himself and Jimmy Lee, who, in the old man's head, agreed.

  “Time for bed, old man....”

  JESSICA Coran had been unable to reach her friend Kim Desinor by phone, by fax, or by E-mail either at her office or home. Kim appeared to have disappeared without a word, and such behavior was unlike the woman. Jessica then learned that Kim had told Eriq Santiva that she wanted nothing more to do with the DeCampe case. She put in for time off. The sudden turnabout in Kim's behavior, her interest turning to disinterest, worried Jessica, so she asked Richard to take her to Dr. Kim Desinor's door an hour from D.C.

  This necessitated a drive out to Quantico, Virginia, to Kim's apartment home, a beautiful place carved out of a hillside, now mushroomed with single and multiple duplex homes and apartments. They'd had a bit of a holdup at the gate when no one answered the buzzer, but they had convinced the security guard to let them pass. Outside Kim's door lay several untouched newspapers, and blinds and curtains were drawn against the gray, overcast day, which was just beginning to see patches of blue and sunlight

  Kim didn't readily open her door when she heard Jessica's voice on the other side of the stout, white-coated wood. Richard had remained behind in the car, reading some of Judge DeCampe's case files, sifting for information, anything that might click. Alone at the door, Jessica sensed that Kim had, for whatever reason, chosen to hole up here like a wounded animal. Jessica wanted to know why. “Come on, Kim. You don't keep your friends standing on a doorstep. What's up with you, sweethearts?” It was an old joke laced with truth. Jessica had once told Kim that her heart seemed so large, open, and giving that she must have two hearts, so she'd begun to call her sweethearts.