Darkest Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  The burly, pigeon-toed mechanic almost dropped his teeth when she spoke to him, looking from her to the news­paper photo and back again. “I need to charter a plane or a helicopter, now. Can you help me?”

  “I, ahhh... I can take you to somebody who maybe can, ma’am.”

  “That would be wonderful, if you don’t mind...”

  He didn’t mind in the least taking time away from his duties to drive her across the taxiing strip. “I like driving the golf cart,” he confided as they skirted the runways in search of a plane she might charter. The airfield was so covered in fog that only the lights of the tower were visible, and these were shrouded. They pulled from the darkness to within inches of a white cub plane which had been painted with tiger stripes below a sign that read White Tiger Avi­ation.

  “It’s a cargo operation with tourist flights as a sideline,” explained the mechanic. She thought it more likely a front for smuggling of some sort. She imagined the little plane going back and forth to Cartagena, Mexico, perhaps even Cuba. And if so, they’d be antsy about knowing that an FBI woman was on the premises.

  She tried slipping a twenty to the mechanic, but he flatly re­fused any payment for his troubles. “You kidding? This was my pleasure, Dr. Coran. Meeting someone like you. Ain’t no­body at the house going to believe it, though. Hey, maybe you could maybe autograph this for me?’’ He lifted out his copy of the Enquirer and turned to the page where a glaring picture of her without makeup and on her way to the scene of a killing stood opposite a shot of her dressed to kill, taken the night she was out with Eriq in Miami’s Little Cuba area. She had not seen any reporters that night, but obviously, someone had seen her, and cameras being everywhere and anywhere these days, now the entire world had.

  She scrawled her signature across the article for Lyle, the mechanic, and again thanked him. He replied, “If anybody can get you airborne in this soup, it’ll be Pete Geiger. He flew in Nam, you know.”

  “Thanks ... thanks, Lyle.”

  “Didja hear the news ‘bout that girl missing from Naples?”

  She hadn’t heard anything recent. “No, no, I haven’t.”

  “Saw it on the tube just an hour ago. She’s been missing a couple of days now. Some say the Crawler got her. Any­ways, poor thing... They fished out a body at Madeira Beach where—”

  “Isn’t that where—”

  “Yeah, the two Florida watercops were brought ashore; anyways, some are saying the body’s the Naples girl, that they’re the same.”

  “I pray not.”

  “Sorry about the way the boss treated you, back there at the hangar, I mean. He can be an ass,” Lyle confided as he turned his cart and headed back the way he’d come, disappearing into the shroud and whistling “Misty.”

  She’d had extremely bad luck with the helicopter guys across the field. She hadn’t been wrong in feeling some hostility from Lyle’s boss, which even the less than alert mechanic had taken note of. No doubt the guy had eaten heartily of all the negative press about the FBI’s handling of the Night Crawler case. Now, telling the White Tiger guys the truth might easily alienate them, she feared. She needed a plan, one that didn’t include stories in the press and photos in the National En­quirer. She sauntered into White Tiger, knowing she would tell them nothing about her true identity or mission.

  Inside she found a man with his feet propped on a desk amid stacks of paper, books and charts, his office a mold and mildew pit below the Quonset hut shell. Dust mites teemed here, it was a place where cheese mold would feel quite at home. A half-eaten sandwich and a Pepsi can in­dicated a quasi-meal had been only partially consumed some days before.

  The moment he saw her come in, he dropped his feet to the floor and began tossing wrappers and empty cans and grossly neglected items such as bread crumbs into a waste- paper basket. He clearly hadn’t expected anyone to step in from the fog outside. All the while, she saw his mind racing with questions: Who is she? How’d she get way out here? Is she alone? Jessica guessed that he also wondered about her marital status, and perhaps how much effort it might take to get her into bed with him. Knowing the male mind as she did, she suspected the truth of it, and it had nothing whatever to do with her opinion of herself. In fact, the weaker her opinions, she knew, the more likely he’d be attracted to her. Perhaps, she told herself, she could use this typical male attitude against the guy to get what she wanted.

  Despite all of her patently biased thoughts, all the man said was a polite, “May I help you, ma’am?”

  He was a tall, gaunt young man with rugged Clint East­wood features. In fact, the fellow most certainly didn’t look old enough to have been in the Vietnam War; neither did he look as if he’d be comfortable in the cockpit of a small plane, given the length of his legs. Still, his flak jacket hung on a coat rack behind him, and pictures of him and other men standing around Air Force fighter jets signaled that he was a wartime flier at one time, perhaps during Desert Storm.

  “I need a plane out of here, Mr., ahhh...”

  “Lansing, ma’am. Don Lansing.”

  “I thought your name was Pete Geiger.”

  “I’m Pete’s, ahhh... partner. We’ve been told to stand down till this weather’s over, though, ma’am, so I’m—”

  “Don’t say it! I’ve heard ‘sorry’ up and down this damned airport. You’ve flown in worse, I’m told.”

  His smile was wide, charmed and charming. “I have, but going against the tower, ma’am, miss... well... it rubs those boys the wrong way, and I’ve got to live with them after...”

  She read into his words that he’d also have to answer to Pete.

  “I’ll make it worth your while.”

  He was instantly interested. “How much?” She drew on her best Lauren Bacall voice now. “Double your usual rate.” She saw his eyebrows twitch.

  “Phewww... wish I could. I hate turning down green, and being grounded all in the same day. now that’s a bitch. Pardon, ma’am.”

  “Then let me take it up; I’ll fly it out, return it in a few days.”

  His hands shot up in a defensive gesture as if she’d pulled a gun on him. “Whoa... you’re going to take it up in this fog?”

  “I’ve flown in fog before,” she lied. “Besides, once I’m above the soup, there should be no trouble.”

  “ ‘Cept from Pete or Harvey up there in the tower. You hear those winds revving up to eighty, ninety miles an hour? You know what that does to a little bird like that modified Sandpiper out there?”

  “I’m heading due east,” she lied again.

  “Straight for where?”

  “The other coast.”

  “Must be awful important, Miss, ahhh...”

  “Little, Pamela Little, and yes, it is important, ex­tremely.”

  “What’s your exact destination?”

  “The... the Cayman Islands.”

  “Really? That’s not exactly due east. Damn, you’d be lost in a blink up there alone. Love the Caymans myself. Haven’t been there in some time.”

  “Maybe now’s a good time? We go sharp east first, avoid the storm, get south of it and continue in southeast over Cuba.” She purposefully, rapidly blinked her lashes at him as she spoke. “That ought to get us to the Caymans sometime late today.”

  Jessica could tell that he was giving it serious thought as his eyes played over her; he imagined she was proposition­ing him. She really wants a pilot, badly... maybe some sort of pilot groupie, he no doubt was thinking. She really didn’t have any notion whatsoever of flying out of here for the Caymans on her own.

  “Whataya say?” she prodded. She really didn’t want to have to fly out of here herself, especially not with Santiva screaming in her ear that she was a madwoman to attempt it. “Twice my usual rate?” asked Lansing, biting his inner right cheek.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “You must be in an awful hurry. You runnin’ from the law or something?”

  “Will you do it?” Let his imagination fi
ll in the blanks, she told herself. He looked out at the fogged-in airfield. “Well, I can’t let you do it.”

  “All right, then you take me out of here.”

  “No, I can’t do it neither, much as I’d like, Miss... Little, did you say? I could lose my license; I could lose my business.”

  “Triple your usual rate.”

  “Damn...” He started to pick up the phone. Then he thought better of it, replacing it in its cradle. “How soon can you be ready?”

  “I have to make a call; you’ll have two passengers.”

  “Two?”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “Well, it means more drag... the weight, you know.”

  “Is it a problem?” she repeated. “No... no... guess not. How soon do you want to de­part?” he asked again.

  “As soon as my... my friend can get here.”

  Jessica, already armed with the water route that Ander­son had outlined for her, thanks to Quincey’s being in con­tact with him, needed now only to get Eriq out here to the airfield. She telephoned the hospital, waited on hold, finally reached him and asked in a conspiratorial voice for Mr. Santivas, intentionally adding a final letter for Don Lan­sing’s benefit. Santivas sounded even more exotic and in­triguing than Santiva.

  Lansing, while remaining the other side of the desk, cocked an ear in her direction as she spoke to Eriq, hearing only Jessica’s voice. “Has the situation there changed?” she breathily ques­tioned Eriq.

  “Yes, it has,” he surprised her. “What’s happened?”

  “Stallings is out of critical danger, and he’s fully con­scious; it appears he’s going to make it, and with some rehab, he’ll be fine. They’re not so sure his eyesight will ever return, however.”

  “That’s good news; has he been able to tell you any­thing, anything at all? About the boat, perhaps?”

  “He’s still weak, and his eyesight is zero like I said, and his emotional state isn’t so good; he’s blaming himself for Manley’s death.”

  “So he’s not talking?”

  ‘ ‘Well, I managed to make him see the light, so to speak. He gave me enough to recognize the schooner when I see it.”

  “Schooner?”

  “World class. He said it had three masts and state-of- the-art equipment, that it was fully automated so that one knowledgeable seaman alone could sail her. That even the sails could be brought down and put up by a single man. Said it was of British manufacture, made for racing, had excellent teakwood moldings all around, and that while the name and call numbers were obscured, it appeared to be the Tau Cross.’’

  “Excellent. Then we’re on our way to the Caymans.”

  “Not so fast. Something else has surfaced.”

  “I heard something about a body in Madeira Bay?” Jes­sica was acutely aware that her words were causing quite a stir in Don Lansing; she was either going to frighten him away or excite him into following through on the flight out of here. It all depended on what kind of man he was. “Well, it’s not a bay, actually.” Eriq was giving her a ge­ography lesson. “It’s oceanfront, and yes, a body has been left in the bastard’s wake, a kind of present for us. She’s already been IDed as a Naples Missing Persons case.”

  Jessica audibly groaned. “We’ve got to end this freak show, Eriq.”

  “You’ve got to get back here, locate the Pinellas County Coroner’s Office and do your thing. See if the body can tell you—”

  “Tell me what. Eriq? Tell me what I already know? No, I’m not coming back there. I’m flying to the Caymans within the hour.”

  “Jess, it’s not good protocol to just let the body—”

  “It’s exactly what he wants, Eriq. Don’t you see that? The body was left for us to find in order to slow us down.”

  Santiva was silent for a moment at the other end. She jumped on his silence, adding, “He’s yanking our chain. That dead body is his way of trying to control our move­ments and to cut down on his own damned drag!” Jessica realized only now that Lansing, on hearing additional snip­pets of her conversation, had carefully armed himself, plac­ing a gun in his belt. She feared that perhaps she’d gone too far with her masquerade and that Lansing had only heard the most provocative words, most out of context.

  “You’ve secured transportation?” asked Eriq.

  “I have, and I want you here ASAP. Otherwise, I do this alone.”

  “No... no. you don’t. Give me your location.”

  She gave him directions and the name of the place from which they were booking the flight. “You’re in a hospital. Pick up what you need in the way of Dramamine there, and then get right over here, Eriq.” Jess, this latest victim deserves our best, as much as any of the others.”

  “Then send our best field M.E. or pathologist over there. Tampa’s got to have someone who can take over.”

  “This young woman, Jess, lived her entire life in Naples and was some sort of a queen at her high school there; she wasn’t a tourist but a resident, a towny. She loved Naples and they loved her.”

  “Eriq, trust me. If I don’t see you here in forty minutes, I’m gone, so like I said, get right over here.”

  “And you’d do it, too, wouldn’t you?” he said, but she’d already hung up, wondering if the killer had any other bod­ies aboard the ship which Stallings had called the Tau Cross; did the bastard plan to drag the body of yet another victim the entire distance to the Cayman Islands with him? Now Jessica stood looking across the room at Lansing, who was nervously pacing, wishing he hadn’t said yes, anx­ious to find out more about her—or just anxious to get out of the deal? He kept looking across at her, sizing her up, curious about her and her story—and her friend on the other end of the line. The situation seemed more shady with each passing moment. The questions were pinging about his brain like a pinball, so palpable she could almost hear them ringing, and she realized she had him exactly where she needed him to be.

  “How long’ll it take for your friend to get here?” he asked now.

  “An hour, maybe.”

  “Maybe by then some of this stuff’ll blow over. Maybe... if things don’t take a turn for the worse...”

  He tuned in the weather report, but the news only made both of them more nervous and fidgety, filled as it was with the latest happenings and the strange disappearance and possible literal “surfacing” of the girl from Naples, fol­lowed with reports that her body may have “washed ashore in a state of preservation, as if lost by a mortuary,” in the reporter’s words.

  “Damn, Madeira Beach’s not too far from here,” mused Lansing. Jessica tried to recall if she’d said anything about Ma­deira Beach which Don Lansing might’ve taken the wrong way. At the same time, a picture flashed on the TV for a few moments, a photo of the dead girl in happier times, telling Jessica that the victim had the same general appear­ance as all the others before her. Finally, Lansing clicked the TV off.

  “I just brewed some coffee. Would you like some?” he asked her.

  “Sure... that’d be great... might warm my insides a bit.” She was very aware of the small-caliber but quite deadly .22 he’d holstered in his belt.

  There was no clean place in the hut to sit. She remained standing, pacing, looking from time to time out the window as if any moment the strobe lights of a police car might be out there, giving chase to the fleeing suspect in Don Lan­sing’s florid mystery as it played out in his brain.

  When he came to stand beside her at the window, the coffee extended, he, too, peeked out at the fog as if ex­pecting someone.

  “Triple my usual’s going to come to a hell of a lot of money, lady. You do understand that?” He jotted down a figure on a pad and handed it to her. His twenty-four-hour day rate was $575 plus fuel, so the mysterious “Maltese Falcon” lady who’d just stepped into Don’s life was look­ing at over $1,700 just for starters. That’d buy him and Pete some time on those bloodsucking creditors; Pete would thank him for this later, Don assured himself, tell him that if he hadn’t tak
en this job, Pete would’ve killed him, and if Pete were here, he’d do exactly what Don was doing right this moment, up the ante.

  He went to the phone, asked if it was all right if he called his partner, to let Pete know what was going on and where they’d be taking Pete’s plane.

  “Pete owns the plane?”

  “Yeah, it’s Pete’s plane...”

  “Sure, do what you have to do.” Lansing got only an answering machine, into which he spoke a cryptic message for his partner. “You’re doing the right thing,” she assured him. A long look into her eyes confirmed this for Don, she was sure. The clock on the wall seemed frozen in time at 5:09 a.m. She wished Eriq would get here before Don changed his mind and backed out.

  “Triple my usual,” repeated Lansing, “almost enough to go to hell for.”

  She looked up at him. “Paradise, remember,” she re­plied.

  He moved in a little too closely, and she stepped away. She wondered how far the Night Crawler might’ve gotten in the six hours that had elapsed since he’d eluded Stallings and Manley. She wondered how long it might take to catch the killer’s ship, imagining that moment when it would come into view; she imagined going on to Grand Cayman Island and simply waiting for Patric Allain to ease into port there and how simple it would be to apprehend the bastard beast when he stepped off the boat. They could then secure the boat as a crime scene, and she’d nail him six ways to Sunday and beyond for multiple murder. Next stop the Florida electric chair, the same as toasted the likes of Ted Bundy; see how Patric liked sailing that mother.

  She imagined that Okinleye would want to hold Allain for questioning in the murders that had occurred in his ju­risdiction, but knowing Ja and the problems of the islands, she also believed that the Cayman government would not stand in the way of an expedient order, so that Allain would stand trial in Florida, where he’d face the death penalty. She was only sorry that he could not be electrocuted sep­arately for each victim he’d so tortured.