Killer Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  “Get that bastard out of my sight and handle him as if he were Harry Houdini; and I want our best E.T. team in here and no one—no one—is to touch a goddamned thing—”

  “Brewer! She's coming around,” said one of the agents of Jessica. “She wants to talk to you.”

  “No way,” said the medic. “She needs every ounce of energy.” Joe Brewer went to his knees over Jessica.

  “Joe... Joe...”

  “Yes, it's me.”

  “Otto... is he... ?”

  “He's... he's going to be fine, Jess.” The lie felt like lead in his throat.

  She breathed deeply. “Thank God.”

  “Yeah...”

  “And Joe...”

  “Yes?”

  “Nail the bastard, Joe. Promise me.”

  “You've got it, Dr. Coran. You've got it.”

  The medics carried her out.

  The second set of medics lifted Boutine on his stretcher but Brewer stopped them. “Put... put the chiefs body back against the wall where he was shot.”

  “What?”

  “Do the fuck as I say!”

  The medics shrugged at each other. Leonard conferred with Brewer. Brewer said loudly enough for all to hear, “I want photographs of everything in this room, and that includes Otto Boutine's... body.”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Leonard, who turned to the other agents and said, “Come on, let's get the work done.”

  They all understood what it was that Brewer wanted most to happen here tonight: that they leave no stone unturned in nailing Matisak to the cross of justice. Whatever now would become of Matthew Matisak, Brewer and the other FBI men meant to avenge Boutine and Jessica Coran for the murder of one of their own and the torture of another.

  Brewer finally left, leaving Boutine's body now as part of the crime scene, staring back only once at his old friend.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Four months later

  On crutches, Dr. Jessica Coran worked her way through the corridors and past the cells that lined her way; she'd been pushing the healing process and so had not used a wheelchair for a week. The reconstructive surgery to her ankle tendons had worked remarkably well. She had seen some of the microscopic still shots the doctors had taken of the wounded tendons, and it amazed her that the doctors at Rush-St. Luke's Presbyterian in Chicago had been able to correct what Matthew Matisak had so blithely destroyed.

  Her throat had healed nicely.

  The glaring, stark white walls of the maximum security prison for the criminally insane gave it the appearance of a holy place, a white chapel or shrine, save for the gray bars.

  She thought of all that Matthew Matisak had done that could not be corrected, either by surgery or prayer or the law. She thought about all of his other victims, the ones who had not lived, and she often wondered why she had been spared. She had recoiled at the gate outside and at the door leading into the cell block where Matisak now lived the life of a rather odd, unspeaking, former vampire. He was said to be engrossed in ancient works of literature from every nation, and in the Bible; word around the compound at Quantico had it that he had found numerous passages in the Bible that told men to drink the blood of others, and that his actions had been sanctioned by the highest authority, the authority over all man's laws, God himself, who, as Matisak claimed, quite often drew blood from men, such as Job. She wondered how much of it was Matisak, how much rumor.

  She faltered a moment, causing the guard accompanying her to stop and ask if she was all right.

  “Yes, I'm all right; now, please, I want to go ahead.” Her voice was a great deal firmer and stronger than she felt.

  Inside she was asking herself. Are you sure you want to go through with this?

  Yes, she told the voices that haunted her. Voices of the dead, Candy Copeland, Melanie Trent, Fowler, Gamble even, but most of all Otto's voice. She meant to face the vampire now caught in the net.

  She hated Matisak passionately. She must go through with her plan.

  Besides, the vampire apparently had dreams, and she had figured heavily in his dreams, and it was he who had requested that she come to speak with him. Could it be that, like so many other criminals trapped with only themselves and four walls to surround them, he had become repentant? Had the Bible reading softened the madman? Was there some secret he wished to convey only to her? Was there still more to learn from Matisak?

  She had been called in by the new chief of the division, O'Rourke, who told her as delicately as possible that it was not an order that she speak to and record whatever Matisak wished to convey, but that it would be her decision. O'Rourke seemed genuinely to mean it. Jessica could have turned down the offer. She didn't have to be here—except for the other thing.

  Except for the long, difficult nights in which she, too, had dreams, but not like the vampire's dreams. Hers were nightmares: nightmares of being held in bondage, unable to move, to struggle, to resist, while slowly, surely her life was drained from her; nightmares in which Matisak figured heavily, as did Otto; nightmares from which she believed she would never escape; nightmares from which she awoke screaming and bathed in sweat, her nostrils filled with the odor of blood.

  The FBI had done its part, putting her on a strict regimen of work and visits to the resident shrink, Dr. Donna Lemonte. Lemonte told her she must face her fears, and he, like O'Rourke, gently urged her to hear what Matisak had to say to her.

  “What could he possibly have to say that I want to hear?”

  “That he's sorry,” said Lemonte.

  She exploded in the shrink's office. “Sorry! Fuck sorry! The bastard—”

  “You need to get on with your life and put an end to this tragedy. Reliving it over and over can only—”

  “But sorry isn't going to do it.”

  “Perhaps, but seeing him stripped of everything? Perhaps then—”

  “It won't return Otto to me. It won't restore the blood he robbed from my body. It won't return—”

  “You don't know what it will return, until you see him.”

  So she had come on the advice of her psychiatrist and at the gentle urging of the department, as psychological profiling was forever collecting data on convicted maniacs like Matisak, hoping that one day, somehow, the brain of a killer such as his could be fathomed.

  She did not believe that day would ever come. They might get a few useful tidbits from a man like Matisak, and much of modern profiling techniques was built on conversations with serial killers, but Matisak was not likely interested a whit in FBI concerns.

  She continued along the white corridor that led to the sealed inner sanctum where the worst offenders resided in separate cells, out of sight of the world and even one another. The walls here were so thick that even the inmates could not hear one another. It must be like living in the belly of an animal, she thought. She hoped that Matisak was suffering, but she doubted that it was enough. It was, as O'Rourke had quoted from the agency manual, policy to speak to the criminally insane at whatever opportunity might arise in order not only to ascertain information about exactly how they went about their foul deeds but to gather their introspective reasons as to why.

  All the whys were analyzed by the computers.

  But they knew all about Matisak now; they had Balue-Stork records that proved him to be in every location where a young woman or man had disappeared within days of his visits. There remained, however, missing people or missing bodies, and any chance whatever of learning of the whereabouts of these supposed victims, she must take.

  Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky had also been on Matisak's account list. Law enforcement agencies in those areas had been apprised, and now information on other possible Tort 9 victims was forthcoming.

  But the thought of being within sight again of Matisak, of being within killing range of the man... it frightened her; and she was not a woman accustomed to dealing with the emotion. She wondered if she was more afraid of Matisak or herself, afraid that she would go through with her own mad plan ag
ainst the madman who had taken Otto Boutine away from her.

  Matisak had treated her as if she was a slaughter animal. He had drained her of her precious blood, and had fed on her blood, swallowing it.

  At the courtroom door her gun had been taken from her, but she had also had the concealed one in her wheelchair. She had been brought in to point a finger at him, but she knew what she really wanted to point at him.

  The courtroom appearance became excruciatingly painful and difficult for her, to have to talk about the details of his treatment of her, and she found herself physically ill at the sight of the plain-looking, ordinary-enough man in a gray suit and tie who did not look capable of the crimes she had watched him commit. He sat emotionless throughout the trials as if an observer from another country or planet, never once revealing the least emotion until he made his insanity bid.

  Since the trial, she had gotten away on a much-needed rest, leaving J.T. in charge of the forensic testimony, unable to be both victim and forensic expert in the case. J.T. did an extremely good job on the stand, nailing the lid shut on Matisak. He demonstrated the spigot for the court and jury, explained how Dr. Jessica Coran had uncovered the truth below the huge throat gashes of three successive victims, and how Dr. Robertson had pinpointed the use of a sable brush used in a cosmetic attempt to cover the fact that the bodies were drained of blood.

  The evidence of DNA meant another nail in the coffin over the vampire. A physical examination of the accused showed that he suffered from Addison's disease, which linked him with the cortisone capsule found at the Zion murder.

  Teresa O'Rourke took the stand to explain how the psychological profiling team, using the innovative approach pioneered by Otto Boutine, had arrived at Matisak as the killer. She took too many bows so far as Jessica was concerned, but the logical, step-by-step process that led judge and jury from Wekosha, Wisconsin, across the Midwest to Chicago and Balue-Stork, was something ev-eryone became fascinated with. They could understand this a great deal easier than the scientific aspects of the investigation.

  The weakness in the case against Matisak was due to Otto's recklessness as well as her own, Jessica knew. Otto, in a highly charged emotional state, had not taken legal precautions. As a result nothing taken from Matisak's house, nor any photographic evidence from the house taken the night that Otto and Brewer had broken in, was held as admissible by the presiding judge, who quoted chapter and verse of the laws surrounding FBI and local police officials' necessity in securing proper search and seizure warrants, even in cases of probable cause where the FBI was concerned.

  So the jury never heard it. This enraged anyone familiar with the case and particularly Jessica, who would have died as Matisak's final victim if Otto had waited for papers to be served. As a result none of the evidence so carefully gathered at Gamble's house by Brewer was admissible, either. The prosecutors could find no way to get this information before the jury.

  This made the hair, fiber, blood and DNA evidence trebly important. Matisak was prosecuted not for killing Melanie Trent, Candy Copeland, Tommy Fowler or his many other typical victims, but for murdering Gamble, Maurice Lowenthal, Captain Kaseem, and for returning fire and killing Otto Boutine. He was convicted on two counts of murder and one count of manslaughter. Despite the fact the FBI evidence pointed to Matisak as the Chicago vampire and certain items found at Lowenthal's, such as the spigot and the designs and patent papers in his lockbox, also pointed to Matisak as the serial killer, he was acquitted of the charges of these heinous acts on the grounds of reasonable doubt and his insanity plea.

  Jessica now stood before the man's cell.

  She could not believe that she had made it this far. Her crutches were pinching at her underarms, and she perspired badly.

  The door swung silently on an inward hinge, opening on a serving area. Matisak received his food through a tray that opened outward and moved inward electronically. At no time did a guard have to put his hand into the cell. A single chair stood in the ante-area outside the cell. This area, along with the cell itself, and the creature that stood in it, staring wide-eyed back at her, gave her the impression of a zoo, except that there were no bars here, only a thick, Plexiglas divider between them.

  Matisak looked like a pathetic little man inside his cloistered, white cell behind the glass that separated him from the rest of the world. He looked like a specimen in a laboratory to be studied.

  The guard pointed to an intercom in the wall beside the chair.

  “You talk through there,” he said.

  Matisak stared at her as if she were the bug behind the glass, his blue crystal eyes never leaving her. She fought her way into the hard chair from her stilts with as much grace as she could muster, found a good place for the crutches to be leaned and then she fished in her purse for a number of items. She tried to avoid his gaze as she prepared for the interview.

  As she did so, she looked into the bottom of her purse, thought about a false bottom there where she had once concealed a gun and carried it into a courtroom. The false bottom was still there. She wondered if the glass between them was bulletproof, guessing that the state would not foot the bill for such an expense. No one expected someone to come in with the intention of murdering an inmate. Perhaps the glass would deflect the bullet, however, causing her only to injure him. It might take two, three shots.

  She lifted out the pad and pencil she had brought, and below this, she fished for the tape recorder.

  THIRTY-THREE

  She showed him the tape recorder. It was her stipulation that she would come only if he would allow it. She said nothing to him, not wishing to initiate anything with Matisak. Rather, she spoke into the microphone her intentions as he leered out at her, his dark blue eyes like crystals, the only feature about him that might be called redeeming, and yet they were filled with a kind of unfathomable mad light.

  “I knew you'd come... couldn't help yourself,” he was saying as she pressed the go button on the recorder.

  “Let the record show that on this day, August 13, 1992, prisoner AK2115 of the Pennsylvania Federal Penitentiary at Stony Meadow, Matthew Matisak, here on three counts each of homicide—”

  “Never mind all that, Dr. Coran.”

  “—and serving two life terms consecutively—”

  “I understand your father was also a doctor, a coroner, in fact, like you.”

  “—had indicated a wish to talk openly with agent Jessica Coran, also Dr. Coran, Chief Medical Examiner, Division—”

  “He was a good man, your father, wasn't he?”

  “—that said prisoner has agreed to this taping. Say it now!”

  “I've read one of his books. Kind of obtuse writing, but very inform—”

  “Say it, damn you!”

  “All right... all right, I agree to this taping.” 321 “Now, will you tell me what it is you wish to discuss?”

  “You.”

  “No, no, we are not here to discuss me, Mr. Matisak. If that is all you wish...” she started to get up and ring for the guard.

  “No, no! Don't go!” His voice was filled with a pitiable sob that seemed to her rehearsed. “I meant only to ask... how you are.”

  “How I am,” she repeated, almost laughing at the irony of this man's asking her how she was. “You bastard.”

  He stared at her, his eyes riveting hers. “I fully understand your hatred for me.”

  “Good. Then we know where we stand with each other. Now, shall we continue with this... this interview?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you prepared to talk seriously?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. Why? Why did you ask to speak to me?”

  “To... to first say that I... I meant... At the time, I was not in control of my... my blood craving. The doctors here understand that; they understand my physical need was quite real.”

  Her jaw tightened. She knew he was just toying with her again.

  “And maybe... maybe one day I'll be a free man a
gain... cured, on proper medication for my addiction. It was... is an addiction, you know.”

  “No one can cure you of what you are, Matisak. No one can. They can feed you the blood of an ox if that helps your cravings; they can ply you with proteins and hormones and medications of all sorts, but you and I know that if you had the opportunity today to do to me what you did—”

  “No, never... never again.”

  She realized he was going for the model prisoner, the one out of thousands the system could help; she realized he was very adept at it. “You're incurably insane, Matisak.”

  “I'll be up for parole in twenty years. You'll change your mind toward me by then... especially if I help you.”

  “Help me?”

  “Yes, help you.”

  “There's nothing you can do for me.”

  “The FBI, then.”

  “You don't give a damn about me or the FBI, and if it had been up to me you would not be here now; you would have been dead of electrocution.”

  “The FBI wants to know why,” he said with just the trace of a grin.

  She stared across the whiteness at him. The room became insufferable. He was insufferable. For a moment, she feared that the Plexiglas was not between them, and that she had been fooled into being here and that he was about to leap across the chasm between them and go for her throat. The burning whiteness of the place saw her reach to her purse and bring up the gun, which she aimed. He stood there frozen, wide-eyed, expecting the bullet aimed at his brain. She squeezed the trigger slowly, enjoying the moment, savoring the image of his brain splattering onto the white wall. She fired in her daydream and his entire body flailed and splatted against the wall of his cell, his vampire's teeth bared, in a death grimace, and she felt an overwhelming feeling of closure, that it was finally over. Then she looked up at the real Matisak in the real cell and found him looking quizzically at her, her dream over.

  She knew what the agency wanted; she knew what Otto would want of her. She said calmly, “Let's get to the point, Matisak. You want to confess to additional killings, don't you? Some in Kentucky, Ohio? Elsewhere?”