Darkest Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  Night operations were always more difficult than day, Stallings was thinking when he heard a strange little pa- plunk noise. At first he thought it some odd sound floating across the bay from shore, maybe a backfiring car or the bad note from one of the many ocean deck bands, but then he saw Manley stumble backward and fall over the side and back onto the Boston Whaler with a crack-thud, and now Manley was flat on his back, looking just as he had when the corpse had so frightened him, except this time he wasn’t cursing, not a sound was coming out of him, only a long spear protruding from his chest. Stallings whipped up his 9mm Glock, but he found nothing to target, nothing to focus his anger on, no one in the fog shroud.

  He then shouted, “Manley!” tearing to get to his partner.

  He momentarily crouched over Manley, realizing the fi­nality of the moment, that the other man wasn’t breathing. His best friend’s eyes were wide open but unseeing. A noise to his right sent Stallings into a sprawl on the deck of his boat, his gun poised, ready. Still, he could see noth­ing to target his weapon on.

  The damnable fog and the lights mirroring off it had created a surreal pocket here on the water. Stallings realized suddenly that their own lights had blinded them to the kill­er’s whereabouts.

  He inched along the deck, trying to stay down, to get to the high-powered spotlight, to click it off, knowing that it’d created a large and easily targeted silhouette of big Rob Manley. And now the damned light was doing the same to him, sending up a clear picture of him for the killer to focus on.

  He got to the light, crouched on his knees to reach for the off switch, then slammed it home. At the same instant, he heard another pa-plunk sound, followed by something hitting the water the other side of the boat. Was it the noise of a tightly strung speargun, followed by a miss—the arrow striking the water?

  Alone now, unable to do anything for Rob, Stallings des­perately tried to keep his head. He kept his eyes trained on the killer’s boat, every inch of it. Then he saw a shadow flicker into his peripheral vision, making him wheel and fire, the explosion of his Glock sending shock waves across the water, but hitting no one. It was as if he’d fired on a ghost, completely ineffectual.

  He then saw another slight movement, this one at the rear of the seventy-foot schooner. Were there two Night Crawlers? He’d wheeled and fired off several more rounds, when at once the ear-splitting noise which he’d created was silenced, when in a moment something hard and cold grazed his forehead, when he felt his leg turn into a raging fire, when he went suddenly blind and cold and weak and hurt from slamming so hard on his back. Unable to move now, paralyzed, he smelled blood—his own; he felt the heavy weight of the shaft that’d torn through his leg mus­cle, and he could sense the terrible gash to his left temple where the earlier spear had tagged him, sending him sprawling to the deck alongside Rob’s body.

  All went silent for a time, but then he could hear his crackling radio, Bob Fisher at dispatch trying to hail him and Manley; he also heard a birdlike, choking, devilish laugh, footfalls, curses, but he could not see, and something in his psyche told him that if he so much as groaned, he was a dead man.

  He heard the Crawler’s guttural curses from the other boat as he worked to separate the two boats, casting off the line which Manley had tied to the Cross. Again, he heard his radio, hailing him by name now. “Ken, Ken... come in! Stallings? You out there?”

  He heard the motorized lift on the Cross’s anchor as it began to mechanically tug the chain from the water. He heard a voice from deep within himself, calling him a cow­ard, telling him that he should someway, somehow find his sight, find his feet, find his lost weapon and blow this freak’s head off. He also heard a voice of reason, a child’s voice, his child’s voice telling him to survive this night.

  Another voice, a cold, clinical voice, told him that a pow­erful spear had creased his temple, turning the world into inky blackness. If he got to his feet, even if he could locate his weapon, he’d stumble, feel for a handhold and clumsily alert the killer to the fact that a third spear needed to be put into Ken Stallings. His leg had now gone completely numb. His mind raced for a way to beat this, a way to counter this, a way to find vengeance before he blacked out. His last thought was a running question: What about Jenny, the kids, tomorrow? Will I die here like this, never see them again, never open my eyes again, never feel again, never live to stop this bastard who’s killed me and Manley? Never... ever... ev... er...

  The dispatcher’s voice from Stallings’s radio wafted across the water as the Tau Cross, with Warren Tauman aboard, made its way out into the Gulf and into the stormy sea.

  • NINETEEN •

  The blank page; difficult mirror, gives back only what you were.

  —Giorgos Sefkriades

  Other FMP officers, Coast Guard and county marine cops arrived at the quadrants called in by the 7-11 Team, and they were at first confused by the onslaught of pea soup that they had motored into, a wall of rain and darkness. Somewhere in here their comrades were in trouble, unable to respond to repeated radio calls. Fear for Manley and Stallings ran high. The officers now searching for them were both friends and admirers of the two men.

  Patty Lawrence was the first to spot the listless, bobbing little Boston Whaler, all instincts telling her there was something terribly wrong. She had been listening in when Stallings and Manley had made their last radio call to dis­patch, advising of their position and intent. She and partner Bill Mullins hadn’t hesitated, but had raced toward the un­folding incident just off Madeira, hoping to be first backup, and then when dispatch lost contact, she’d become terribly worried. It wasn’t like Stallings to leave his radio for so long a time.

  She advised Bob Fisher at dispatch to continue hailing the Delta-4, the 7-11 club, as loudly as he could, and that she and her partner would use his hail as a buoy, since a blinding fog had overrun the waters off Madeira.

  “How bad is the fog?” Fisher at dispatch wanted to know.

  “Like a goddamn blanket of misdirection, like a star nebula.”

  “Star what?” asked Fisher from his safe haven ashore. “Like in those Star Trek movies when the ship goes into a cloud of gases created by an ancient exploding star, so you don’t know what’s up, what’s down, what’s right or left.”

  Bill Mullins agreed, saying, “You got that right.”

  Lights from onshore and from boats all around bounced off the low-lying cloud that’d rolled in. “They’re out there!” She pointed, adding, “I got a glimpse of the boat. Move it, Mullins! Eleven o’clock.”

  “They’re out there and so’s the Crawler,” countered Mullins. “Did Fisher let the rest of the world know what’s going on out here?”

  “Says he reported it to the guard, the mainland police and the sheriff’s office. We’ll have company in a matter of—there it comes.”

  They heard sirens blaring as other Marine Patrol boats began to encircle the area.

  It was then that Patty caught a second glimpse of the appearing, disappearing, directionless little Boston Whaler. The turbulence was unusual, threatening, so her partner called for a weather report. The boat they searched for was identical to her own, save for the markings. “It’s them! There! See?” She pointed ahead, her partner now putting on some speed. “If you see any sign of a sailing ship moving off in any direction,” Mullins advised all the other patrol boats join­ing them now, “go at it cautiously, but contain it.”

  “Roger that,” replied another nearby patrol boat.

  “Any sign of your men?” asked a county sheriff’s boat.

  “We have the boat in sight. Going in for a look.” Mul­lins gave their coordinates so that the others might readily converge on the area.

  Patty Lawrence felt the scene as if it were a floating graveyard. She didn’t smell death here on the water with the ocean odors and the light drizzle falling from the cloud they stood in; she didn’t taste death here—all was too sod­den for that, the now steady downpour and lapping waves like a warni
ng bell—but she sensed death here nonetheless. It felt like a palpable visitor, a dark figure shrouded and standing on the water between them and Stallings’s boat as they approached. Patty had once enjoyed a wonderful, care­free affair with Ken, long since over, and now all her fears for his safety seemed realized.

  Patty and Mullins’s boat had to slice through this Mr. Death, and it did so, dispelling for a moment the Grim Reaper’s hold on her imagination. Only it wasn’t imagi­nation staring back at her as they came alongside the 7-11. The boat fairly cried of crisis. It wasn’t anchored and was without mooring of any kind; it bobbed and waved and threatened to hit them as they approached. There was no one aboard, at least no one who could be seen. The lights reflected crazily around them, hitting and shoving and push­ing one another for the right to penetrate the fog, when nothing could penetrate it now. Patty’s own spotlight was more trouble now than it was worth, reflecting back at them like a ghostly mirror. She thought for all the world she saw a kind of airy spirit in the lights and the fog, rising up from the unhappy scene, like the spirit of a departed friend.

  Mullins pulled their boat in tight and Patty worked a grappling hook on a ten-foot rod into position over the er­rant gunwale, snatching the 7-11, the noise creating a din. She tugged and hauled with all her strength, pulling the lonely FMP boat into them.

  Patty fairly well jumped onto the 7-11 when the two Whalers bumped, and she quickly tied off the two boats, feeling her way in the darkness but quite aware that what appeared to be two dead men with long spears sticking from their bodies lay at her feet.

  “Christ, Bill, it’s bad ... really bad!” she called back to Mullins, who steadied the boat and cast off the anchor line.

  Patty felt Manley’s carotid artery for a pulse but found none. His skin felt like wood. His eyes looked up at her like large question marks. She’d always liked Rob Man- ley—his swagger, his humor, his kindness to her over the years—and she gave a thought to Louisa and his four kids, the oldest just finishing high school at George Washington in St. Pete. “Is he... is he dead?” asked Mullins as he leaned in over the death boat.

  “ ‘Fraid so, Bill.”

  “And Stallings?” Fearfully, she looked across Manley’s wide chest, saw the bloody tissue about Ken Stallings’s head and the spear shaft in his leg and shook her head, afraid to touch him, afraid to move, terrified that if she tried, she’d faint at the smell of blood and the sights around her, which threatened to overwhelm her anyway. She’d handled bodies before, but none where the faces were familiar, the ties so strong.

  Suddenly breaking the silence, Stallings himself an­swered Mullins from within the confining darkness of his useless eyes, “Bill? Patty? Is... is zat... you?”

  “Good God, he’s alive!” Patty shouted. “Ken, Ken, it’s us. We’ve got you. Hang in... hang in there.”

  “We’ve got to get him to a hospital, now!” Mullins shouted. “Take the wheel and follow my lights!”

  Bill cast off and raised anchor, turning his boat directly for shore. Patty situated herself at the helm of Delta-4 and did precisely as Bill had instructed, following in his wake, her tear-filled eyes ever on his lights rather than on the bodies of her two friends in her peripheral vision, rushing her precious cargo to shore.

  Bill radioed dispatch as to what was going on, and Bob Fisher promised that an ambulance would be waiting at Madeira Beach.

  Meanwhile, the other Marine Patrol boats continued a frantic circling about the fog in an ever-widening arc from the original quadrants that’d pinpointed what Ken Stallings had called in as the Tau Cross, the suspect ship. They in­tended to search all night for it if need be. But somehow, Patty Lawrence feared, the Night Crawler had already es­caped the net.

  When Jessica and Eriq arrived in Tampa Bay, the TV newscasters and the radios were aflutter with news that two Florida Marine Patrol officers had been struck down by what officials suspected to be the infamous Night Crawler, who had been approached by the FMP officers on a routine check which had turned out to be not so routine when one officer saw the body of a Night Crawler victim. Both men were fired upon, the suspect boat owner using a speargun. One of the officers was dead, shot through the heart, while the other was fighting to regain con­sciousness from a coma induced by a nasty blow to the head by another spear which, fortunately, had not pene­trated his skull.

  Both Eriq and Jessica knew how valuable Ken Stallings had suddenly become to their case; what he saw out there on the water was the ship which everyone in America wanted to see hauled ashore with its evil captain in chains. He had information no one else had. They raced to Grant Memorial Presbyterian Hospital in Madeira Beach, where Stallings was hanging on to life. When they arrived, they found an army of family, friends and newshounds, gathered in an enormous vigil which the hospital personnel were perturbed about and trying desper­ately to force into a small waiting room. A spokesperson, a Dr. Cameron Daniels, told the waiting crowd, “Mr. Stall­ings appears stable in every respect; we don’t expect to lose him. At this point, we can only give time the opportunity to do its magic and heal this man. We are hopeful, but as yet, he remains in a deep coma.”

  “When do you expect he’ll be out of the coma?” asked one foolish reporter.

  “If I knew that, I could tell you all to come back fifteen minutes before, now couldn’t I? I could also make book on the next Buccaneers game and make some real money. I’m sorry, people, but I can’t make such predictions at this point.”

  “Doctor! Doctor!” the press called out after Daniels, but the spry little man was through a pair of double doors marked Hospital Personnel Only before anyone could cut him off.

  “Let’s get out of here before someone spots us,” Jessica warned Eriq.

  “Right you are.” Outside in a drizzle, they decided to locate Bob Fisher, the dispatcher who had been in contact with Manley and Stallings during the crisis. “I want to hear that tape,” Eriq told Jessica.

  “That makes two of us.”

  They made their way back to the rental car and were soon motoring toward the local headquarters of the Florida Marine Patrol. Local FBI field operatives, having expected them, guided them about the unfamiliar territory and in­formed them of all that had transpired out on the waters fronting Madeira Beach.

  Fisher was not hard to find. He was, in fact, still manning the board when Jessica and Eriq were introduced to him. “I’ve got two boats out there still, along with two county patrol boats and a fifth from the sheriff’s office. Coast Guard is out there, too. They’ve searched high and low for that damned bastard you people’ve chased clear up here, but they haven’t so much as a whiff of diesel oil to track him by, and that fog out there’s playing havoc with our guys. We’re ready to call ‘em all in.”

  Fisher was a bony, gaunt man with piercing gray-green eyes, a mustache and thinning hair dyed an awful shade of red-brown.

  “That’s your decision, of course,” replied Eriq.

  “You don’t want to risk any more lives, and that’s quite understandable,” agreed Jessica.

  “That’s all well and good, but these men and women out there now, they’re out for revenge. They’re not out there for the FMP or the county or the state; they’re out there for Manley and for Ken Stallings. Ours is a small community. All these watercops know one another. Don’t know if they’d come in off the Gulf if we ordered them, and if we do, and they refuse, then we’ll have sanctions against men who’ve worked all night at risk to life and limb to end this thing. So, I’ve given ‘em rope... let them take the tether for the time being, and I’ve got my boss on the wake-up line. He’s been checking in every few minutes and’s on his way.”

  “We’d like to hear whatever you have of Stallings and Manley on tape,” Jessica told Fisher.

  He nodded. “Sure. There’s a soundproof room there,” he said, pointing. “I’ll run it through to you. You just go on in there.” They listened to the moments leading up to death for Manley and coma for Stallings. They listened a
second and a third time, and they told Fisher that they’d like a copy of the tape, and that it wasn’t to be given out to the press or TV. He readily agreed and obliged, dubbing them a copy and listening for any new excitement out on the water all at the same time, but he also warned that TV types were going to be offering big sums of money for the tape, and that the FMP was in dire need of funding, and that it wouldn’t be up to him to make the final decision on that one.

  “Certainly sounds like our guy,” Eriq whispered in Jes­sica’s ear.

  “Ninety-nine percent sure. A body trailing off the back end of the boat, the boat has the words Tau Cross painted at its rear, registration numbers blurred, teakwood all around. Possibly of foreign manufacture.” These were all statements which Stallings had made at one point or another during the course of the night to Fisher’s dispatch office.

  Eriq began thinking aloud, saying, “So now that someone’s reached out and touched his boat, he’s got to know we know; he’ll be painting it, changing her look, renaming it. We’ve got to canvass every dry dock along the coast from here to Louisiana and back again to the Keys and the Eastern seaboard to be on the lookout for anyone anxious to maul teakwood with paint and anyone with a boat that bears a name with the word Cross in it. And now this—the Tau Cross. I’d count ourselves lucky: This creep is no longer quite so completely invisible.”

  “The kind of scare those watercops must’ve put in him, I agree. This guy I know. He’s afraid of capture and ex­posure; he’d probably prefer death. So now he’s running scared.”

  “That’s what I mean,” agreed Santiva. “He’ll run to the nearest boat works, try to sell the boat or overhaul it. If we put out an APB on the boat, he’s dead in the water, so to speak.”