The elaborate scheme to somehow fetch his mother from the nether regions into which he himself had sent her, to return her to himself so that he might inflict eternal suffering on her, only evolved over long time and experience with murder.
Those first fledgling attempts at feeling something, of making contact with his own soul, with which he had become unfamiliar, were important bridges. They were bridges leading to the soul of his dead mother as well, although he had been awkward, crude and blind in his murdering meanderings. Only when he found the teachings of Tauto and read them, understanding that all things in life carried a spiritual double, did he realize that it might be possible to recapture the moment of murdering his mother through the soul of a stand-in. Rudimentary as they were, those first killings became the cornerstone upon which he had built a relationship with his god and his deceased mother.
Tauto, in his great wisdom, told Warren to leave London and to seek his mother’s image in younger women, women who in every way mirrored her as she was the year of Warren’s birth. He calculated that she was between sixteen and eighteen when she gave birth to him, so he had sailed from England to America in search of a fresh start and a fresh approach to his problem. Now, in the land of milk and honey, along the sun-drenched coasts of Florida, he had found what he had come in search of many times over…
Still, he remained unfulfilled, his need insatiable, so long as Mother remained aloof and out of reach, capable of tormenting him at will.
He brought his pleasure craft into the wind and looked forward to his return trip to the Keys and beyond, perhaps a little trip to the Gulf of Mexico and the east coast of Florida. He’d heard that Tampa Bay and the Naples area were both beautiful this time of year…
Jessica yawned even as she worked over her microscope at the crime lab this morning. She hadn’t gotten much in the way of sleep the night before, tossing and turning due to her earlier argument with Eriq and a late-night phone call from Dr. Kim Desinor which only solidified the fact that their killer was a sailor, and an elusive one at that. The psychic’s take on the killer told Jessica she was looking for a man with a frightful multiple personality disorder, possibly schizophrenic, with a brain full of voices, certainly delusional and possibly hallucinating. “This man convinces people to go off with him, Kim,” she’d challenged Desinor. “How can he be hallucinating and in control at the same time?” “I get the picture of a complex personality-complex.”
“ Say that again.”
“ I mean, he plots out his actions against his victims, Jess, but he’s also quite mad, not unlike your old friend Matisak.”
“ I get the picture.”
“ And he’s a man of many disguises who has seawater for blood.”
Jessica pictured the pretty psychic at the other end of the line. She was sharp and intelligent and quick, and most of the time, in one fashion or another, she was right, her instincts dead-on. However, Jessica had learned to take what Kim said with caution. She saw signposts and symbols as often as she saw actualities, so every word had to be weighed in the context of its possibly being a reflection of some other meaning.
“ Your killer has many ties, but he has no ties.” Enough with the riddles, Jessica thought, but kept silent.
“ He is tied to his past. He is filled with venomous anger, a fiery rage, and he is on some sort of bizarre quest to locate something he lost as a child-some great object he must regain.”
“ He’s murdering young women to regain something he’s lost. Now that’s a bulletin, Kim,” Jessica replied, unable to hold back on her sarcasm any longer. “That hardly narrows my search.”
“ There is one other thing.”
It sounded as if Kim was about to give out with the good stuff. “Go on.”
“ The letter T which he signs with…”
“ Yes, well, we’ve come to expect tea with this crumpet.”
Kim paused before saying, “Cute, Jess. I read about the accent, and that maybe the guy is British. You’re thinking there may be some validity to it, but be cautious. He’s a player, a thespian if you get my drift, so the accent could well be part of his act.”
“ Are you saying he’s a pro?”
“ If not, very close to it, yes. Now, back to the cross-T signature.”
“ What can you tell me about it?”
“ It’s actually the sign of the Tau Cross; a cross in the shape of a T. I had a friend in the department, Peter Ames, an expert on ancient markings, look it over.”
“ And?”
“ He says it has an ancient and rather mysterious history. It has a history as a Christian marking, but there’s also an offshoot religion called the Tau which keeps coming up in the literature.”
“ And? What about it?”
“ Well, very little is known about it, but he says one thing is sure.”
“ What’s that, Kim?”
“ Human sacrifice was part of the deal.”
“ Why am I not surprised?”
“ One other thing, Jess.”
“ Yes?”
“ He’s like a confused or wounded animal-he’s extremely dangerous.”
“ We know that much.”
“ He makes love to the dead; he’s a necrophile.”
“ There’s no way to know that scientifically since all evidence of such… such perversion was washed away by the sea. We know the women were raped, but how can you be sure he… he does their bodies?”
“ I saw it.”
Over the course of the rest of that night, any pleasant dream Jessica conjured churned itself into, a convoluted nightmare, her rest shattered by the screams of modern human sacrifices.
Now bleary-eyed, Jessica sat in the lab, contemplating microscopic trace evidence taken from the victims and at the same time recalling Dr. Kim Desinor’s psychic and psychological profile of the killer. They seemed no closer to catching this cretin than the day they’d arrived in Florida, and this frustrated her to no end.
A lab technician called to Jessica, bringing her out of the scope and her reverie. “There’s a phone call for you. Press three,” said the Oriental technician, a small woman with a sweet smile and smiling eyes.
She lifted the phone beside her to hear the warm hello of Dr. John T. Thorpe. J.T., her lab director and friend back at Quantico, had been put onto something which he had kept secret from Jessica up till now.
“ Your timing is impeccable, J.T.”
“ As always,” he joked.
“ I’m right this moment staring into my microscope, looking at the slide which you FedExed me yesterday.” With the phone in one hand, her microscope at the other, she and J.T. talked about the strange new findings in the Night Crawler case.
“ What does this mean, J.T.?” she asked even though she knew.
“ You tell me,” he replied. “I’m really in no position to say, Jess.”
“ Well, is it a case of accidental contamination somewhere along the journey of the evidence chain? Did the botching come as a result of those people in Islamorada Key, maybe?”
“ Well, they’re researchers; what do they know about handling forensic evidence?”
“ We’ve got to know if this was intentional-committed by the killer-or accidental, committed by Wainwright or someone in Coudriet’s lab, here in Miami.” J.T.’s voice was suddenly thick with disbelief. “Jess, if it’s intentional, then the chemical agents were introduced by the monster behind the killings…”
“ And what does that tell you?”
“ He’s into some sort of preserve-the-flesh fetish?”
“ On top of everything else. We have reason to suspect he’s a necrophile, and if so, attempting to preserve the body for as long as he can fits.”
“ So an icebox isn’t good enough for this guy.”
“ Cold bruises the skin tone, discolors the product.” She continued to stare through the dual ocular eyepiece of the electron comparison microscope, to assure herself that what she was looking at made sense in light of the i
nformation J.T. had found back at Quantico, where he’d put their best chemists to work on tissue samples she’d taken from some of the body parts found that day in Islamorada. There had been something peculiar about the isolated chemicals; they didn’t belong.
Now she had confirmation; the bizarre turn of events unearthed at the microchemical level brought about a shower of new and disturbing images of the killer. This new information showed trace amounts of chemicals routinely used in the mortician’s trade. Perhaps their killer had worked for a time in a mortuary. Such a fact would tie in with a fetish for preserving the tissue. “Listen, J.T., this is to be kept between us, understand?”
“ No problem whatsoever, Jess.”
“ We’ve got precious little to convict on if we ever do connect anyone with these killings. If a true confession is ever taken, and the killer opens up about this aspect of his fantasy, then we’ll know we’ve got the right man. At the moment, we have thirty-four confessed Night Crawlers undergoing various stages of arrest, booking, psychiatric testing, scrutiny and release.”
“ Damn, that’s amazing.”
“ What’s amazing?” she asked.
“ That anyone would confess to such heinous crimes.”
“ Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe the real Night Crawler will crawl up the MPD stairs and turn himself in today or tomorrow. But I rather doubt it.”
“ Yeah, don’t hold your breath.”
She involuntarily nodded. “He’s having too much fun to stop.”
“ But what about the letters? Isn’t that a subconscious cry for someone to stop him, a sign that he wants to confess?”
“ Like you said, J.T., don’t hold your breath. No, this guy’s letters are strictly to please himself, to taunt us and to vent more of his venom.”
“ Talk about confessions… Had a call the other day from a guy in Hawaii,” J.T. abruptly changed the direction of the subject. Jessica felt her heart skip a beat. “What? Really?” She wondered if she’d successfully kept her excitement out of her voice.
“ He was looking to talk to you, Jess. Maybe you should give him a call. Sounds like he really misses you.”
“ Good… he should.”
“ Hope you don’t mind, but I told him where you were staying. So be warned: He may call.”
She imagined Jim Parry, a hemisphere away, and she longed to be with him. “J.T., don’t go playing Cupid now. The role doesn’t suit you.” He laughed lightly and said good-bye and they hung up, Jessica left with this extraordinary new twist in the case, wondering if she should rush to share it with Eriq Santiva or hold the information in abeyance, at least until after the episode of America’s Most Wanted was aired, so that they might keep it under wraps for future use against the Night Crawler.
She could go to him, argue the point. And if she didn’t share with Eriq, her chief? She could get into a hell of a lot of trouble with him over failing to bring the news to his attention through the lie of omission. He’d be wanting soon to know also if she’d had contact with Kim Desinor.
Jessica rubbed her tired eyes, lifted her head and leaned back on the stool. She stared out through the glass partitions all around her. The partitions ran the length of the lab offices like a house of mirrors, each reflecting light from the other to create an illusion of endless corridors within corridors, an ev- erlastingness reflecting science-man’s need to know the truth at all costs. The Miami-Dade authorities certainly had spared no cost in building the new facility here.
Now, through the various partitions, Jessica saw Dr. Andrew Coudriet approaching. He seemed to be looking for her, so she waved. He came now directly to her and in a near whisper, he said, “I heard about your blowout with your partner.”
She frowned up at him. “The walls hear everything?”
“ Is there more? I heard you disagreed over whether to release the artist sketch and description.”
Jessica’s hands seemed to work independently of her at the lab table. She’d been made aware that all of Allison Norris’s parts were to be interred today, per order of the family despite what Coudriet or anyone in the FBI had to say about it, and personally, she didn’t have the strength or desire to fight the politically powerful family-not at this late point in time.
Finally, she looked into Coudriet’s eyes and replied, “It’s a sad day when the M.E.’s office can’t control the evidence it oversees.”
“ If you mean the Norris body, well… that’s out of our hands. If you FBI people wanted to contest it, then you have my blessings, but it sounds as if Santiva has already caved, as they say.” She shook her head. “There really isn’t much more that Allison can tell us now, is there?” He nodded. “Pretty sure she’s given up her last secret.” Jessica withheld even from her colleague the fact that the girl’s hand had actually been severed before she died and used in an unholy fashion, in the killer’s attempt to permanently preserve it. Little wonder that body and body part had become so separated in their quest for final burial. The killer had held on to the hand for a long time, along with the bracelet, before he gave up on it, tossing it overboard as shark fodder. And Jessica had no doubt that the killer had given up this trophy with the name bracelet intact- superglued, in fact, to the wrist-with thoughtful intent, for his own reasons; most likely, he wanted to tell Jessica-or someone like her-the truth. The monster wanted a voice, wanted to speak, wanted to communicate its plans.
The terrible truth told at the molecular level was that the hand had been severed while the girl remained alive and that very soon after the severed hand had been injected with embalming fluids.
“ So what are the juicy details surrounding this big problem that has arisen between you and your chief?” Coudriet asked.
Pretending busyness, Jessica returned to the microscope.
“ Don’t pretend you don’t hear me, Doctor, or that you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Coudriet said, placing a meaty hand over her microscope lens.
“ Precisely how did you hear about our disagreement?” She had told no one of her and Eriq’s argument.
“ As you said, walls in a police precinct have ears.” He noticed only now, by their labels, that the series of slides she was working on had come from the severed hand of Allison Norris. The attention she showed the slides created in him even more interest in what she was about. “What more do you hope to accomplish with that material?”
Jessica needed an ally, needed someone she could talk the scientific facts out with. Andrew Coudriet would have to be it; he would soon have access to the information anyway. “I’m not sure, but I noticed some odd anomalies with respect to the chemical makeup.”
“ Really? Now you’re a forensic chemist as well?”
“ I had our chemists at Quantico check it out.”
“ I see.”
“ Something didn’t quite jive, but now I’m sure.”
“ Sure of what?”
“ I noticed an odor when I first had this specimen in Islamorada, but I chalked it up to the embalming fluids used on the shark carcasses there. Early on, I sent tissue samples up to Quantico, to chemists there. Quantico confirmed a hunch I had, so now that I’ve got corroboration, I thought you might care to have a look.” She got up from her stool to allow him access to the microscope. “Go ahead. Tell me what you see.”
He looked from her to the scope and back again before settling his eyes over the dual eyepiece. “What am I looking for?”
“ Just keep looking.”
Coudriet settled in, removed his glasses and stared hard down into the microscope. After a moment, he thoughtfully said, “This came from the severed hand?”
“ Yes.”
“ What is it, precisely?”
“ I just got off the phone with an expert chemist with my outfit in D.C. He FedExed these slides overnight.”
Coudriet’s eyes squinted, the red brows looking like bird feathers. “And… and?”
“ And from the chemicals they were able to isolate, J.T. says it’s cle
arly a preservative or fixative of some sort… not unlike the kind we use to keep our own specimens in limbo.” Jessica rubbed the sleepiness from her eyes.
“ Good God, are you saying this madman is or was a… a medical man?”
“ Not necessarily. The chemicals could be had at most any drugstore. He might also have a link with a mortician’s office, or for that matter any number of places in the business of preserving flesh,” Jessica speculated.
“ From Jell-O to WonderPIus Glow 19? But why is he using preservatives on the hand alone? We saw nothing of the kind in the autopsy, and a thing like that, you don’t miss.”
“ No, there was no evidence of it in the body proper, no.”
“ Islamorada then. They somehow stuck the hand full of it. It’s the only logical explanation,” Coudriet said.
“ Yeah, maybe… I thought the same.”
“ Thought? As in the past tense?”
“ Well, Doctor, one of my jobs is to think the unthinkable.”
“ And precisely what unthinkable are you thinking?”
She considered her answer carefully. She knew she ought actually to be talking to Eriq about this, and she planned to, but he had so infuriated her the night before that she meant to steer clear of him today. “If I were relentlessly killing people, Dr. Coudriet, in cold and brutal fashion, I’d need some sort of construct or scaffolding built around me, as a safety measure for my own sanity. You follow me so far?”
“ I… I think I do.”
“ So, I kill and kill and kill again, enjoying the delight I take in robbing others of the most potent and powerful force on the planet-life itself. I feed myself on that loss of life and suffering others must pay me. However, I need a reason, a rationalization for my cruelty and perversion which will in effect wash my hands of guilt.”
“ What has this to do with preserving the girl’s hand?”
“ As a trophy, as a prize, to keep forever or to give in offering to my master and god.”
“ To God?”
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