Bitter Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

Leanne said nothing, pacing instead.

  “Why don't you sit down somewhere, Detective?” asked Parry.

  In a moment, Dr. Goldfarb stepped in, saying, “Dr. Throckmorton has informed me of your interest in a for­mer student of mine, a George Gordonn, and his film proj­ect.” He held up a black record book, scanning it for Gordonn's grades. “He accumulated a series of D's and low C's before dropping out, withdrawing from the class. What more can I tell you?”

  “Is there anything you can tell us about him of a more personal nature? What was he like?”

  “I had no discipline problems with him; he displayed no odd behavior, if that's what you mean. Somewhat subdued, sullen as I recall, a bit withdrawn.”

  “I see.”

  '1 fear I can tell you very little, but I will be happy to assist in any way that I can. Outside of classwork, I know next to noth­ing about any of my students, and Gordonn wasn't an especially notable student, to be hank, save for his interest in Byron, his proposed project I remember being surprised that he selected the poet for his term project Most admirable. I usually get proj­ects about the effects of concussions on NFL quarterbacks.”

  “So George Gordonn challenged himself and that sur­prises you?”

  “By term's end, I only knew him as a grade. Over a hun­dred students in my Literature in Film class, so sorry, but he really made little impact on me, and as for his film and aspirations to do definitive work on Byron, it was a joke. He couldn't do it. He simply hadn't the intellect for it; it's as simple as that. What little of the film I saw in its early stages was merely... pitiable.”

  “But he works as a specialist, or has worked as a spe­cialist with film development.”

  “Workhorse stuff in this arena. He was no photographer, and certainly no writer/director.”

  “So he failed to complete your course?”

  “Dropped out, at my urging, you see. He and I both knew he was heading straight for an F. I do remember one strange thing he told me once, but I thought it a mere af­fectation, so I paid it little attention.”

  “Until now?” asked Parry. “What strange thing did he tell you?” Said he had been the first young person ever to disrobe and show a poem emblazoned on his back as so many do now in the pubs on Second Street; said he started the trend in a South Street pub and coffeehouse called Charlie's or Charles's Manse or something of the sort.”

  “That clinches it,” said Sturtevante. “He's got to be our man.”

  Goldfarb looked stricken. “Do you actually think him capable of murdering people?”

  “Did you believe him? About his starting this fad in the coffeehouses and pubs?” asked Jessica, startled at this news.

  “I chalked it up to bravado, talk, you know.”

  “And that's the last you saw of him?” asked Sturtevante, her eyes locked onto the professor.

  “Well, yes, we had no further reason for contact.”

  “Thanks for your help, Professor Goldfarb. I think we've got all we came for.”

  “I'm sorry I could be of no more help,” finished the pompous little man before disappearing through the door.

  “Little weasel,” said Sturtevante in his wake.

  A quick check in the phone book showed no Charlie's or Charles's Manse, but there was a listing for Charle­magne's. The trio of detectives headed directly for the cof­feehouse, the oldest in the area, according to its sign. Tucked away on a dead-end street off Second, it was out of the way of the normal flow past such places as Starbucks.

  It had not been overlooked in the police sweep of the coffeehouses, but it had produced no leads, and so, like the others, it had ceased to be of interest, until now. When they got to the door, Sturtevante begged off, telling the others to work the place. 'Two detectives are unwanted company,” she said, “three's a police action.” But I was going to suggest a bite to eat, Leanne, at Sitale's,” Parry said.

  “Not for me.”

  Parry protested. “A late-afternoon lunch/dinner before rendezvousing with Desinor and Vladoc back at headquar­ters. Come on, you haven't eaten all day.”

  She didn't go into any details but claimed she had an ur­gent private matter to deal with. “Something I must take care of.”

  Jessica imagined it had something to do with her broken relationship with Donatella Leare.

  At Charlemagne's they learned very little. No one work­ing the day shift had any recollection of Gordonn, and when they flashed his photo, hastily taken by the detectives who'd been watching the man and forwarded to them, everyone in the establishment drew a blank. Either that or they were good actors. They weren't particularly interested in cooperating with authorities. This much was clear.

  Jessica and Parry left feeling unhappy with the contin­ued lack of results, cheering each other with the fact that Goldfarb could be called in to testify to what Gordonn had said to him about starting the back-poetry fad. “Another nail in his coffin,” Parry, using his favorite figure of speech, commented.

  Parry located a small Italian restaurant in the heart of Philadelphia, a place that had become his favorite among the downtown eateries.

  The restaurant turned out to be splendid, the dishes au­thentic old-world cuisine. Over wine and food, James Parry opened up to Jessica, telling her how he had lost his post in Hawaii, and how much it had devastated him. “It was all a lot of hogwash, but hogwash that had been accu­mulating since... well, before I met you.”

  “Hogwash in the FBI has a way of accumulating to the point where you find yourself drowning in it,” she replied, commiserating with his situation. “If I had a dime for every time some BS-stuffed official in the ranks came into my lab and made demands, well... go on, Jim.”

  “It was based on my not following proper procedure during just such a case as we have today.”

  “Really?”

  “A murder conviction on a mobster had been thrown out of court, and the resulting fallout rained down on me. It had been a case the Bureau had been building for years.”

  “So they needed a scapegoat.”

  “In the islands it's known as a sacrificial pig. You know how they like to roast pigs in Hawaii.”

  “Funny, Jim, but I'm sorry for what happened to you.”

  “I'll be a damned sight more careful in the future, and that's got to be the case with Gordonn.”

  “Are you suggesting that we can only arrest him with the deadly pen in his hand?”

  “Something like that, yes. If we want an airtight case against the freak.”

  “God, I wish we'd had more time at his place to locate his stash of photos of the victims, assuming he had any— something beyond his collection of news clips of his par­ents' deaths.”

  “Even if we'd found such evidence, if you'd walked out of there with them, they would have been inadmissible in a court of law. Besides, we couldn't disturb the place. Like I said before, if Gordonn caught on... I mean if he some­how figured out that we were in his pad, he'd know it's bugged. We've got to get him to incriminate himself in one fashion or another.”

  “All right,” she said, relenting, “but I still wonder if we won't both regret the decisions we made back there at his place.”

  “Are you referring to Sturtevante? Has she a hidden agenda?” Something like that. She's kinda closed off, or hadn't you noticed?”

  “Holds her cards close to her chest, yeah,” he agreed.

  “Do you trust her, Jim?”

  “I do, and you can as well.”

  “Fine... good to hear it.”

  “Does that mean you trust me, too?”

  “I trust that you're at my back.”

  “Yeah... you can bank on that, Jess.”

  “I haven't forgotten how you saved my life in the Cay­man Islands,” she told him.

  He stabbed at his fettuccini. “We'd best get out of here and to that meeting with Vladoc and Desinor. See if they've come up with anything useful on Gordonn.”

  Sturtevante was late for the meeting. “Gordonn is on the pro
wl, heading down Second Street as we speak,” she told them as she entered the meeting room. “Surveillance is on him, but I think we ought to get out in the field.”

  “I want to know what Dr. Vladoc and Dr. Desinor have to say first,” Parry told her.

  Jessica remained silent. Vladoc, who had been speaking when Leanne arrived, picked up where he had left off.

  “Further investigation into Gordonn's past and parents reveals much to us,” he declared, twirling his glasses as he spoke. “Dr. Desinor has unearthed all the local newspaper articles from the various papers, including those she found at the Philadelphia Inquirer's, microfiche library.”

  “There's sufficient detail in the stories,” said Kim, “to link what happened to Gordonn as a child with what is going on today.”

  Jessica stared at the array of articles Kim had collected, squinting in order to follow the fuzzy microfiche copies. In the days before computers, microfiche had seemed a mira­cle of an invention, but today it seemed about as advanced as chiseling on stone tablets. The images and words on the poor-quality copy she held in her hand were hard to see, but the headline was easy enough to read: family suicide pact ends life of poet lydia byron and artist husband harold gordonn—child survives.

  The story summarized the macabre little family suicide pact that became as powerful an urban legend as any in Philadelphia artistic circles, in addition to being the great motivating force of George Gordonn's life, the origin of the living-poem fad and the reason he was on the prowl that very night.

  The phone rang, breaking everyone's intense concentra­tion. Jessica picked it up and heard Marc Tamburino's voice, sounding loud and shaken. “Dr. Coran, I have some information you might like to know about.”

  “Pay for, you mean? You're suddenly getting very good at digging up stuff, Marc. I think we've discovered a hid­den talent in—”

  “I located information about how the Philadelphia fad of writing poetry into the skin began.”

  “Is that right? Go ahead,” she told him, curious now.

  “There've been several explanations over the years that have attached themselves to the fad, but one in particular I found in my research... well, it's weird enough for The X-Files, and I wanted to share it with you.”

  She took share to mean sell.

  “Does it have anything to do with a bizarre suicide pact in George Gordonn's past?”

  Tamburino's silence clearly meant yes.

  “Do you know this guy Gordonn?” she asked.

  “Are you kidding? He's the leader of the Locke and Leare groupies. He never misses a signing, and he's taken a lot of pictures at them. Hey, just remember, without me, you'd be nowhere on this case. ”So why wasn't he on the list of names you gave me ear­lier.”

  “It never occurred to me to list him. I thought you wanted pros! He's an amateur, a goofball, a weirdo, but not the kind you'd notice particularly, and certainly not the kind who you imagine could kill somebody.”

  “Your information is a little late, Marc and frankly it sucks. No deals this time. In other words, thanks but no thanks.” She hung up on his protests. While plainly useless at this point, Tamburino's phone call at least added to their conviction that they were on the right path.

  “We're wasting time here,” said Sturtevante.

  “I want to see if Gordonn shows up on anyone else's class list, say like Garrison Burrwith's, Leare's, or Locke's,” Jessica protested. “It won't take long.”

  “Grab the lists; bring them along,” Parry suggested.

  “They're in lockup,” Jessica told him, “along with all the other evidence we have. It'll take a while to get my hands on them. Go ahead. I'll catch up.”

  “Let's hit the streets, people,” said Parry. “Get on the track of this creep. Tonight I feel lucky.”

  With that, everyone but Vladoc and Jessica hurried out of the office. When they were gone, Vladoc muttered, as if to himself, “I still can't believe it of George. He's so mild-mannered and pleasant.”

  “So was Ted Bundy, Doctor.”

  Jessica left the police psychiatrist and went to the evi­dence room, where she signed out the class lists they'd ac­quired from the university and quickly scanned for George Gordonn's name. It appeared three times. He'd taken poetry classes with Locke, Leare, and Burrwith.

  She ran into Kim on her way toward a waiting car. “Thought I'd ride with you,” said her psychic friend. “What did the class lists reveal about George's career as a student?” He took classes with the whole triumvirate—Locke, Leare, and Burrwith.”

  “Why didn't we see this before?”

  “It's not unusual for the same students to be showing up in a series of lit courses, especially when one is a prereq­uisite for the other. A lot of the names on the lists were re­peated.”

  “Including those of the victims. George Gordonn knew the victims.”

  “He took Burrwith first, a year ago, followed by Locke last summer, and then Leare most recently, fall term. After that he signed up for Goldfarb's film class. He's been busy.”

  “It would seem so... researching the life of Byron per­haps?”

  “It would seem so...”

  As the car pulled out of the underground lot, Jessica at the wheel, Kim said what both of them were thinking. “It would appear that we are finally on the trail of the Poet Killer, Jess.”

  George Linden Gordonn, it seemed, having somehow learned of the police's interest in him, most likely from noticing that he was being followed and watched, had fled. At first, this presented no problem to the surveillance team, as they had him in their sights, driving his sedan. It was only when he slipped out of sight, veering into an under­ground lot and speeding out at an exit around the block, that it became a problem. But when they went to round him up—they figured he'd shot himself in the head or some­thing—they found an empty car.

  “How the hell did he just vanish?” the police chief, Roth, asked, having joined them at the car with a warrant in hand to search the vehicle, “and exactly how did Gordonn know that we were onto him?” He'd been kept ap­prised of events by Sturtevante. Angry, he shouted, “The surveillance team was never compromised, and yet he knew he was being watched. How?”

  “Perhaps he simply felt the police presence everywhere, picked it up in, I don't know, some supersensory way,” Jes­sica wondered aloud. “Perhaps that's how he's stayed a step ahead of us.”

  “You saying he's psychic?” asked Kim.

  “That or very 'blue-sensed.' “

  Roth and the others knew she was referring to police jar­gon for a cop's instincts. Sturtevante offered another pos­sibility. “Maybe someone's keeping him informed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe someone close to the case is in some way close to him. I'd thought that was the case when... when I sus­pected Leare, that she was getting the information from me.

  “Pillow talk?” asked Parry. “You think Gordonn is sleeping with someone close to the investigation? Who?”

  “I don't know. Someone on the task force, maybe, some­one in the ME's office. I'm just grasping at straws here, Jim.”

  “Like everyone else,” Kim commented.

  Jessica said, “If so, then he knew when we were on, when we were off.” She wondered if some more mundane answer was closer to the truth. “At any rate, it's as if the city has swallowed our boy up. He won't easily be located.”

  While Jessica and Parry cruised in Parry's car, FBI dis­patch alerted them to an urgent call from Dr. Coran's “snitch,” Marc Tamburino.

  “I've got more than you bargained for this time, Dr. Coran.”

  “No games, Marc. I've got no time for nonsense. What is it?” Gordonn is being helped out of the city by well-meaning friends, friends who have already had their asses in a sling thanks to the police, if you get my drift.”

  “Are you telling me that Leare is protecting Gordonn? That she knows him well enough to help him escape?”

  “All I know is what I hear, and w
hat I hear is that the poets of this city are fed up with your gestapo tactics, and they've banded together to help Gordonn out. How do you think he so thoroughly disappeared while under surveil­lance?”

  “Some poets did this? I've never known poets to be so militant, Marc. What exactly are you telling me? No rid­dles, okay? Tell me, how did Gordonn learn that he was under suspicion?”

  “I haven't a clue, but I do know that what I've heard is accurate information. I'll expect a healthy check for this piece, love.”

  “So, a group of right-thinking, well-meaning artists have banded together to protect Gordonn.”

  “He's like a cult figure to some of them, like a symbol or something. The founder of the fad, don't you see? It's earned him a measure of respect.”

  “And his poisoning people to death?”

  “That, too, with some in this crowd, believe me.”

  “All right. Marc. Thanks for the lead. You'll be hearing from us.”

  Jessica conveyed Tamburino's information, and while Parry admitted to being skeptical, he could not argue with following up on it. “We go back to Leare, Locke, possibly Burrwith, Plummer, and the photography peo­ple.”

  “Well-meaning friends who cannot conceive of his guilt in this bizarre business are hiding and abetting him?” Kim asked when she heard the news. She had a sudden flash of how they all looked from afar, a flock of buzzards standing around Gordonn's vehicle as it was searched from top to bottom before being towed to the police lot. Aaron Roth put an APB out for Gordonn, and he arranged to have all highway entrances from the city closed off and roadblocks put up. Photos of George Linden Gordonn were circulated. All this, and still George did not surface.

  The search brought them back to Donatella Leare's home, the suspicion being that she had picked up loose bits of information about Gordonn from Sturtevante or notes Sturtevante may have left about. They found the place dark, but could just make out some music, soft and melo­dious, playing in one of the rear rooms. Jessica rang re­peatedly, but there was no answer. Peeking through the curtained door, she saw the flickering light of candles, and she caught a whiff of incense.