Darkest Instinct

THIRTEEN

In the Gulf of Mexico, Somewhere off Naples, Florida

Warren Tauman hadn’t thrown everything overboard. He still had shanks of hair and fingernails he’d clipped from several of his victims, some jewelry and underclothes he had clung to-all of which he could bring to the nostrils, for these items opened up an entire vista of memories.

He recalled each of his victims in turn, and what he’d done to each one in his years-long attempt to reach out for the soul of his departed mother, to lure her back to him. He wanted to reincarnate her in the image of one of his victims, and once done, he wanted to make her suffer as all his victims had suffered. As he had suffered. Was that asking so much?

After all, his god Tauto had promised that there was a way. That he need merely to find his way. The poetry of e. j. hellering promised a way. Through sacrifice, a path would open.

Something in the warm Gulf air told Warren Tauman that he had been right to come here to Naples. Sanibel and Captiva Islands had been beautiful and filled with tourists, but they were small and insular, filled with a xenophobia, despite the tourists, and the loss of one of their own had sent ripples throughout the communities, ripples he cared not to feel.

The warm, balmy wind and the stolen items from his victims brought back moving, exciting images in his mind. He recalled the one called Tammy Sue. He had placed her in the water and, while she was still alive, had dragged her at great speed. She didn’t last long, and she’d not put up much of a fight from the beginning. Annoying and disappointing, really, because he knew that Mother would not seek to inhabit such a body, that she’d require a strong- willed fighter, like the one who’d gotten away so early in the game, the one who called herself Aeriel.

He recalled his excitement in having her scratch and tear, spit and kick out at him as he’d choked the life from her. Then how he had to do it again. He had not found any victim so motivated to live as Aeriel-certainly not the bitch strapped to the rear of the boat now whom he had wooed aboard at Sanibel Island.

Now he prayed that Naples would be kinder to him than Sanibel had been, or Miami or London or Grand Cayman Island, for that matter. When would he ever find the one acceptable “bride” for Mother?

His thoughts wandered back to those early attempts at reaching out to Mother through the filthy crones and tramps of London streets, derelicts one and all. Even then, he knew he must alter the way he did things. From the first, he instinctively knew this. Tauto had only reinforced what his own soul was trying to convey to him when he’d intentionally changed his ways, seeking out for the first time a younger body.

Her name had been Pauline Charlotte Warmellby, and what a fine, warm name it was, too, he’d told her before he had taken her life. He knew then, after killing her, that he must start over, and that this meant going elsewhere. The police, Scotland Yard, everyone in England was on the lookout for him by then, yet he was so far from attaining his final and prime objective. He knew he had to relocate, start over, and this time with younger women. Mother was vain and always had been vain; why should that change just because she was dead, an inhabitant of another world? She’d been vain till the bitter end, and she’d remain vain in the afterlife.

She would never come back to reincarnate the body of an older woman with wrinkles and a chicken neck. It stood to reason.

Besides, the police had thrown a scare into him. Two bobbies had come to his flat, soliciting information about Pauline, who’d lived a few flats down. She was reported as missing at the time, her body as yet unfound. No one knew that she was tied and weighted down at the back of his boat, a small craft with a barnacled bottom, hardly capable of floating; no one knew that Pauline was below the surface of the water, awaiting the time when he could experiment on rejuvenating her in the form of his mother.

When all his experiments failed, and when finally he relented, releasing the body into the Thames, he decided it was indeed time to leave London and England altogether, to seek out new hope and opportunity in America.

Warren had made the trip over the vast ocean in solitude, testing both himself and his knowledge as a sailor. It was a rigorous crossing, a marathon, and the sea almost engulfed him during one storm, but he had prevailed, and during the long, lonely lull days when the wind had abandoned him, he had read again the Book of Tau and the teachings of Tauto, especially the teaching that all life was reincarnated, that all life-forms sought out their doubles and bonded with their double spirit in an effort to grow. His spirit could only grow if he could fetch back his mother’s, then destroy it completely so that it could not return to this life ever again.

He recalled his earliest childhood memories of life at the back of a brothel, of being chained for days to a bedpost. “For your own safety,” she’d lie. He recalled beatings, both physical and mental, which he endured in stoic silence for so long that Mother thought him unfeeling, unreachable. But he had felt plenty.

The trip over had taught him that Tauto was on his side; that Mother’s spirit deserved capture and punishment. The trip over had also taught him that there was no predicting the future.

“ Hell, look how far I’ve come,” he told himself now, folding his arms over his chest, allowing the wheel to turn the ship inward toward landfall as he maneuvered his craft toward shore.

He was keen-eyed now, intelligent, cunning, self-taught. “One must not allow the constraints of time, place, kinship or birth to confine, curtail or otherwise handcuff the superior self,” he instructed himself in the words of Tauto. “Otherwise, one is robbed of character.” He saw the warming lights of the shops, hotels and restaurants ahead, and this made him smile.

“ One must instead actually invent one’s future,” he told the sky and himself. “And so I have, and so I have…”And so he had changed who he was, he thought. He had escaped the mold, the construct, the working definition everyone had held true of him, beginning with Mother.

Women had held sway over him his entire life; first Mother, the other whores she consorted with and the chorus line in the various theatres and then the matrons at the school. Everywhere he turned, women were there with their rules and order, constantly pecking at him. Women had held so much power over him for so long that he had, for a time, begun to think that this was the way of the world. But no more. No longer could others imprison him; he disallowed any constraints. He could flex his mind, he had become a flexible fellow.

He had begun to take the power from them; he was taking the power from them. He truly hated them, each and every one, but Mother in particular.

Without realizing that he was falling back into his old habit of dwelling on the past, he now flashed memories of himself as a weak and ineffectual child, tormented and abused by his mother. She would tie him naked to the bed and burn him in unspeakable places with her cigarette in order to keep him in line, to maintain control and power. Sometimes she’d use a hot lightbulb, and sometimes she’d use electrical shocks. She did it when he wet the bed; she did it when he spoke back; she did it when he cried over broken things.

Mother would use ropes, garter belts, guitar strings-anything at hand. She’d use multicolored scarves, the sort used by clowns in the theatrical troupe they traveled with. She’d twist one scarf about his hands and another about his feet, and shove a third deep into his mouth, gagging him to the point of suffocation and unconsciousness. He often awoke in a black closet, locked from the outside. She let him know every day who was in control, and she let him know that she detested him-that he was the cause of her failed career and her failed life. That he was a miserable wretch. That he was exactly like his miserable father whom he had never known.

Then she changed. She mellowed and became the charming lady of the stage persona, all an act. Yes, quite certainly, she had matured, but by then, so had he; he gave her no more trouble and seldom exchanged words with her, or anyone else for that matter. Warren went hiding in books instead, searching for the meaning of life, for a clue as to why he was ever born…

She became settled, and when she met the man from Grimsby who promised to take her away from the theater and settle her life once and for all, Warren was sent to the best finishing school money could buy, Southwark. Warren didn’t flourish at Southwark, nor did he “finish” well. In fact, he remained a loner, absolute in his noncommunication, a stone. But Southwark pointed the way, not only because he learned there how delectable it was to make another human being suffer the kinds of torment and pain he had endured at Mother’s hands, but because it was there, one day in the dusty stacks while researching a paper on comparative ancient religions, that Warren came across the doctrines of the Tau.

It was a magnificent book, one he had to have, so he stole it from the library. Within its pages, the book revealed a whole new life for Warren in the teachings of Tauto, a twelfth-century monk whose life was significantly influenced by Eradinus, one of the eighty constellations of Taurus, the “bull in the sky.”

The ancient monk Tauto meditated and prayed and after a lifetirfie of diligent study finally became one with his god, Eradinus. Young Warren Tauman was immediately taken by Tauto’s plight-both a solitary and a deformed figure, having by some accounts a hunched back and a club foot, he was banned by his order for “occult practices” and “perverse sacrifices” to his god.

Tauto shared himself with his god, becoming his instrument on Earth. Warren was at peace and oneness with his god, as was Tauto so many years before; together, they shared so much. They shared the same symbols and icons such as the Tau cross, and even the same name: Tau(man)… Tau(to)… Tau(rus). Now, in the twentieth century and nearing the twenty-first century, the name Tauman, Warren decided, was but an extension of Taurus and Tauto, for he had so much in common with the historical Tauto and the god Taurus.

He had read of how Tauto’s victims were repeatedly strangled at the altar erected for his god; he had learned that Tauto believed that anyone willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, as he had, of becoming the living instrument of his god on Earth, would one day become a significant part of that god’s being in the next life.

Warren had read also about how Tauto himself had died, at the hands of commoners who stoned him to death out of fear and ignorance and revenge, for he had sacrificed a large number of lives to his god by then. Warren fully expected to die at the hands of the ignorant masses who were currently provoked by what they termed a killing spree and what he called necessary sacrifices, offerings to his god on high.

One of the few luxuries Warren managed to get from his mother’s newfound wealth upon marrying Sir William Anthony Kirlian of Grimsby was a telescope. She said she wished to “encourage the boy’s interest in the stars.” Many a night, he had used the telescope at the precipice over which he had thrown Mother, there in search of the constellations of Taurus and Tauto in particular. Warren believed himself a reincarnation of the self-taught monk of the twelfth century. With his telescope, he had discovered the light of Era- dinus as if all over again. That light-Eradinus himself- began talking to Warren. First it was in a low, unintelligible voice in the tongue of a forgotten language, but soon, after Warren learned to open his mind, the gibberish became clear, the words concise, the voice in his head now a comforting lull, a welcomed visitor from afar, from the stars. Warren easily, blissfully opened his mind, soul and heart to the godly voice that now spiraled about the convoluted corridors of his sometimes fevered brain. Once the voice of Tauto breached Warren’s inner mind, there was no question but that he had to seek out all the power denied him all the years of his life, and not surprisingly, he began his concerted effort at regaining power and control over his life within his new family. First old Kirlian must go, the voice told him, and then his mother.

Laughter now wafted across the bay and into Warren’s mind, making him look toward the wharves, the harbor lights closer now, reflecting wild colors off the mirroring water of Naples, warming the darkness like some ancient campfire, and him just outside the light, beyond the human pall. These impressions and thoughts reached Warren’s mind now, making him blink and return to the present moment. He had almost overshot the wharf where he wished to ease the Tau Cross into a slip owned by a restaurant, one that went unpatrolled by Coast Guard or city dock inspectors. He worried little about someone with a clipboard asking for his port of origin, his background or the call numbers of the boat. It was one of the little things he loved about America, her many freedoms so taken for granted by people here. Besides, the boat had multiple papers made out on her, and he changed both her numbers and her names routinely to throw such agencies as the Florida Marine Patrol off his wake.

As his boat neared, he heard more clearly the tinkle of glass and the sound of women’s voices amid the clatter and chatter of this place. How cunning they were, the female of the species, always hiding their satanic nature in garlands of sweet words, toothy smiles and lilting laughter. Few people knew just how much pure evil resided in their so-called purity and virtues. Women were snakes to be beheaded, so far as he and Tauto believed.

There was little he detested more than false piety and false purity in women; these two qualities reminded him more of Mother than anything else, and it was with an eye to these qualities in a woman, along with their physical appearance-which must suit Mother’s-that he went hunting. Mother would wish to inhabit the vilest creature, the one with the most makeup and guile, the lewdest of them all, but she must also be beautiful, with trailing, auburn hair like Mother’s own had always been.

He moved the Tau Cross in closer, closer, inching it forward. The lights from the wharf reflected wildly, haunt- ingly off his masts and rigging, showing off the luxurious teakwood molding all round his ship. How could he help but attract Mother’s new body? His constant, perhaps obsessive polishing of the boat’s wood would pay off here.

He had given fair warning by way of the newspaper, and if they hadn’t seen fit to print it, then by Eradinus, that wasn’t his deceit or his problem. He had warned that he was coming, and so he washed his hands of guilt in the coming and in the actions he contemplated on behalf of Tauto. Anyone accepting his invitation tonight could only have deceit for a heart, and that was precisely what he was looking for.

No one here had seen him or his ship before. This was, as the Americans were fond of saying, “virgin turf.” He’d have to be careful, but given the level of intelligence of those in pursuit of him, he decided that he hadn’t that much to fear.

Another reason Tauto had chosen the Naples area was because here Warren could and had indeed located Gordon Buckner, the most knowledgeable of men regarding trophy fish taxidermy. Warren had ingratiated himself with Buckner by telling him of his apprenticeship with Works of Art Taxidermy in Key West. Buckner respected the work that went on at Works of Art and had in fact founded it along with the current owner, the man who’d trained Warren before he’d caught him stealing supplies. But Buckner didn’t know about that.

Warren had asked Buckner about doing a number on a game fish so that the internal organs might stay intact.

Buckner had looked him over queerly and said, “It can’t be done without embalming the entire fish the way you would a… a corpse.” When Buckner wanted to know why Warren wanted to do such a thing, he quickly told the old man that it was to be a gag gift for a friend.

“ I get it,” Buckner had dubiously said. “When the guy goes to mount the thing, it’d be heavier’n hell, and it would begin to stink.” Buckner had laughed at the notion and wondered aloud why he hadn’t ever thought of it himself, and had then slapped Warren on the back and repeated, “I get it. You wanna present a pal with the thing and then gut and scale it, with a chain saw maybe?” Buckner’s laugh had become raucous by then, his laughter filling the trophy- making warehouse he oversaw in Naples.

Now Warren knew he must embalm the entire body in the manner of the mortician, as he’d done with his last victim, but that he’d have to use chemicals beyond what the normal wake called for, to make the effect last not weeks or even months but years. He had been diligently studying the matter and had come to the conclusion that the most successfully preserved bodies had come about as a result of men who were obsessed with women, usually their wives; when the wife died, the husband would preserve her in the manner of mummies. This involved chemicals of a highly potent variety, but it would mean that the corpse’s internal organs, along with the shell, could remain indefinitely, or at least until Mother was reincarnated.

He began by gathering up the chemicals he would need. Ordinary formaldehyde would not be enough. He already had an IV drip, which he’d used on his last victim. What he hadn’t used was the new formula. Now all he needed was someone like Mother to try it on. The Sanibel girl might have to do if he could not find someone more suitable, someone with a lot more fight in her…

So now Warren and the Tau Cross cruised the Naples area shoreline for nightspots suitable for and frequented by such tramps as his mother might appreciate. Gulls called out; the sunset sent up a shower of colors that ran the gamut from yellow-gold to bloodred; smatterings of lavender coated the underbelly of scattered clouds over the Gulf. Naples looked like an inviting community. The welcoming committee was a gaggle of pelicans soaring straight over the boat in a half-V formation. He’d cleaned himself up, making himself presentable, and was sporting a beard now, giving him a more dashing and distinguished appearance, he believed. He was hoping his prey would be in abundance here when he killed the engine completely and steered the now-floating Tau Cross tightly and neatly below the lights of a place called Bay- front Charlie’s. The Cross fit snugly into a wide slip on the end, begging him to take it. Warren was just in time for happy hour, the two-for-one drink deal ending at sunset at Bayfront Charlie’s. There was much to be grateful for; America had been good to Warren.

Jessica had been to Key Largo once before, during a vacation. She’d flown into Miami with friends and they’d driven to Key Largo, where they’d dived the famous John Penneykamp underwater preserve and coral reef park. They’d taken two dives the first day, one beyond the barrier reef in rough, wild waters which were dangerous even for seasoned divers. She believed the sea captain who guzzled beer from the moment they boarded to the moment they returned to shore was not only a derelict but was derelict in his duties and responsibilities to the divers, most of whom had become too ill to dive in the waters beyond the barrier reef and did not enjoy themselves in the slightest. Jessica had ushered her party into the wild waters before seasickness could reach out and grab hold of her, and once in the water, everyone felt a hundred percent better, but diving was treacherous, the current a good thirty-plus miles an hour as seaweed and even sea life caught up in it went racing by Jessica’s mask, and the coral reefs were a hundred feet down.

Returning to the boat had been an exercise in frustration. It was near impossible to get back aboard, the boat’s ladder shifting like a wild schoolyard swing. Each diver had to time his jump onto the ladder exactly right, and most were thrown clear of it repeatedly before they could get a foothold, especially with their ungainly flippers in the way. The first mate stood at the back of the boat, coaxing the divers back on, doling out advice and warning them to keep their fins on lest they drop them and lose them for good. Meanwhile, the two-ton, bare-chested captain was on his ass at the bow, drinking more suds.

When Jessica had boarded, she’d decided to throw a scare into the fat-assed captain. She went forward, flashed her badge and said, “Take us to where we can all enjoy our dive, Captain.”

The bulging-eyed response had said it all. He tossed his beer into the big wastebasket and went straight to work. The second dive had been in calm, glass-clear waters, and everyone had a good time in a picture-perfect, thirty-foot- deep, magnificent coral reef. Reboarding, Jessica found that the captain had even donned a shirt for her. Looking back now on her last visit to Key Largo, Jessica had nothing but exciting memories of her earlier time here, but this afternoon, she was here for anything but a holiday. She and Quincey found the body dredged ashore in Key Largo at the local hospital morgue, where the pathologist friend of Dr. Coudriet’s, a colorful, stomach-protruding little man named Maury Oliver, led Jessica and Quincey past a handful of other corpses, old men and women from the look of them, people who’d lived a long life, retired to Florida and were now awaiting shipment “home”-wherever that destination might be. The pathologist joked, saying, “Here we have Florida’s largest export. You probably thought it was oranges and grapefruit, but no… it’s dead bodies. Ask any airport in the state.”

Jessica spent only a couple of hours with the more bizarre, more morbid case of the girl who’d washed ashore here, her body stiff as though rigor mortis had clutched her and would not relax its grip-as is normal after a few hours. But this body was stiff due to preservatives, and they had preserved the floater’s facial features and body far better than those of her sisters in death farther to the north.

The pathologist, a little man who resembled a gnome in a children’s storybook, smiled as he watched Jessica examine the body, saying, “There’re a few more surprises on the other side.”

“ Roll her,” Jessica asked of two attendants who stood nearby.

The men did so, each swallowing hard, still capable of some empathy with the hardened corpse.

“ Hell of a strange wound, wouldn’t you say?” asked Dr. Oliver, in his best Sherlock imitation, his hands rubbing, scrubbing over one another in teasing fashion. “Care to make any guesses?”She thought she saw slaver drip from the little man’s mouth, as if he found the wound a turn-on. Oliver continued, “It looks like some sort of hook, piercing here and returning here. Maybe wrapped around the spinal cord? We could tell in a jiffy, if you’d like a look inside at the bones?”

She conceded the ugly truth. “Right along the spine; just like he racked her to a wall.”

“ So, do you want a peek inside, at the spinal cord, or no?”

“ I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” she bluntly replied.

“ Coudriet said you were thorough, so I want to be sure we’re-”

“ I don’t think it’s necessary,” she repeated, losing her temper.

The sight of the wound at the back, where obviously she’d been “hooked,” as it were, made Jessica think of Lopaka Kowona, the Hawaii serial killer she had run down and helped put an end to two years before. He had had a rack on the wall in his black hole of a bungalow overlooking Honolulu from the mountain foothills-his deadly killing ground. Kowona’s rack was made of bamboo, and his victims were tied by rope fashioned from hair taken off previous victims. Kowona had been a fetishist and a cutter, using blades of various sizes and shapes to carve his victims slowly, methodically and ritualistically while they helplessly dangled from his rack. The similarity was in the trophy-making. Kowona always’held on to something belonging to his victim, and Jessica believed the same was true of Patric. His was the work of another trophy maker, and if what Dr. Oliver was surmising was true, then the body itself had become for Patric the ultimate trophy, so that now he sought to preserve his victim in her entirety. Obviously, he’d given up when the stench had become too overpowering and he’d realized he’d failed in the preservation attempt.

“ It reminded me of a mark I saw once made on a sailfish, one of those giants. It was done on the side turned to the wall, to create a hook to fasten it to the wall,” said the pathologist. “ ‘Course, it was a botched job, and ‘course this ain’t no fish… or is it?”

“ Have you taken photos of this wound?”

“ Of course.”

“ I’d like a full set, the wounds along with the woman’s features.”

“ Sure thing, Dr. Coran.”

Something about the man reminded her of C. David Eddings; she wanted to get away from him as soon as possible.

“ Will you be doing a complete post-autopsy? I understand you do a lot of that.”

“ And how long have you and Dr. Coudriet been friends?” Jessica countered.

“ We go on the occasional fishing trip when he blows through on his way to Key West or some such glamorous point. Key West… now that’s some place. You mustn’t miss it. Most expensive place in the nation to lay your head. Did you know that? On average, cost of a bed is a hundred fifty dollars a night if you figure year-round, so just imagine how astronomical it is during the height of tourist season.”

“ I don’t think we’ll be going to Key West,” she replied, thinking their next stop would be Lower Metacumbe Key. “That’s too bad. You’ll miss the Hemingway Festival, the Hemingway home, his cats!”

God, this guy’s as annoying as Gilbert Gottfried, she thought.

He pressed onward. “And the sunset street festival, performed every night as a kind of semipagan, almost tongue- in-cheek tribute to the sun god. And the place has such charm, if you can overlook the tackiness, the human misery and filth, and if you can stay focused on the cute trolley cars and the boutiques and street vendors and perform-”

“ Where on this island might we locate the electronic capability to get photographs of this new Jane Doe’s face, along with a detailed description, sent to authorities all along the coast, north and south?” she asked, ignoring his Key West chamber of anti-commerce prattle.

“ We’ve got a state-of-the-art scanner, fax and modem setup right here, just upstairs. Dr. Coran,” he countered with a rakish grin. “We’re not Miami or D.C., but we aren’t without our electronic gizmos and-”

“ That’s perfect.”

“ The pictures are in my files. I’ll get them for you.” Soon Jessica was sending a detailed photographic depiction of their latest Jane Doe to every law enforcement official in the state, asking Missing Persons departments across the state to seek a match. Given the condition of the body, Jessica had little doubt that this one would soon be identified.“Sad business,” said Quincey, sounding as if someone had let the air out of him.

“ You’ve been a rock throughout the investigation, Quince,” she volunteered.

He managed a smile. “I’ve watched you, Dr. Coran. You… now you’re a rock.”

“ Hardly. How far’s Matecumbe from here? Can we reach it tonight?” It was already dark out.

“ Sure, no problem.”

“ Then let’s push on.” When they arrived in Lower Matecumbe Key, it was pitch-black out, so dark in fact that the sheen of the waters all around the enormous Florida Bay to their west and the Atlantic on their east were brighter than the night sky. The darkness of the heavens was due to low-lying clouds, and not a star could be seen in the heavens. Water surrounded them on all sides as they made their way along U.S. 1, the Overseas Highway, spanning what seemed one interminable bridge after another.

The sand-laden land mass they drove across narrowed to a strip of ribbon fronted by an occasional gas station, a boat rental and sales office, a wharf surrounded by patient vessels of every size and type, a surprising number of beer joints and hidden homes, huddled amongst saw grass and giant palm fronds. Only the reflection from glowing orange vapor lights lining the bridges gave any respite to the bleakness, the building fog and the general feeling that they’d come to the end of the continent.

The watery landscape, dotted by uninhabited keys off in the distance, each with its own strange-sounding name, looked as if it might at any moment erupt and engulf and swallow whole the puny land mass here. The place was not very different in appearance from Islamorada Key at night, although she hadn’t seen very much of Islamorada by night on her earlier visit to the Keys.

Detective Charles Quincey became lost only once in trying to locate Aeriel Marilee Lovette Monroe’s residence, and this with a guide from the local police station. On the trip down, Quincey explained that Aeriel actually went by two names, depending on where she was and with whom she stayed. Aeriel Monroe was her legally changed name, but when she was home with family, she went by her given name, Marilee Lovette. This was one of the many causes for confusion in her case, and one reason why she’d been so hard to relocate.

Side streets here were paved only so far, turning into dirt roads-sand, actually-and pinching down to paths. Sandy, tree-lined, overgrown paths down which men in cars and trucks ventured at their own risk even by day was the rule and not the exception in Matecumbe. Surprisingly, a large population was hidden within the sanctuary of this world, which rejected middle-class America and all her values for life on the edge of poverty and beauty, meanness and abundance existing side by side here. A whole village of boat people-Quincey called them squatters-lived along the interior bays here, most living on their houseboats, some just off the water in the kind of “sugar shack” Linda Ronstadt’s song had glamorized in popular music. But there appeared little or no glamour in the hovel where Marilee lived here in the backcountry of Matecumbe Key. In fact, it looked like a rough, grueling life where existence was eked out with each passing moment.

One major storm-and not necessarily one of a hurricane force-could wipe out the entire island, every house of strav/’ easily coming down and its floating counterpart quickly engulfed by a patient, hungry wolf at each door- the Atlantic on one side, the Gulf of Mexico on the other. Not unlike living near a dormant volcano biding its time, awaiting its moment of supremacy. These were Jessica’s thoughts as they pulled into the dark shadows of this isolated world.

Their car and that of the local deputy did not seem to disturb the solitude here in the least, and no one came out to greet their headlights. They climbed from their vehicle and followed the silent deputy to the door.

No one met them at the door, but on the inside, TV voices fought for preeminence with children in various stages of yelling, laughter and complaining; the household seemed bent on sending its industrious noise out into the world, but when the deputy knocked, the house fell as silent as a tomb, and when the man of the house cracked the door, he did so with a sleek-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun firmly in hand.

“ Whataya want? Oh, it’s you, Carl. What the devil brings you out here after dark?”

“ Got a couple people here from Miami to see Marilee.”

“ Miami?”

“ Detective Quincey’s with the metro police up there, and

Dr. Coran-she’s from the FBI, Mr. Lovette. They want to talk to your niece Marilee ‘bout-”

“ Reckon I know what it’s ‘bout, Carl.”

“ It’s official business, Mr. Lovette. They need to interview her about what she knows… you know, all that business on America’s Most Wanted?’’

A glance around the grounds showed Jessica that these people hadn’t completely ignored the American Dream. They were wired for cable via a satellite dish, and a broken- down, used ‘67 Cadillac sat alongside a pickup under trees beside the house.

“ They got the reward money with them?” he asked.

The deputy dropped his gaze. “It don’t work that way, Carl. They talk to Marilee, and if it leads to this pervert, then you’ll see some reward come of it.”

Jessica and Quincey had been told by Carl the Deputy that Marilee had refused any interview outside her home with anyone but America’s Most Wanted or Unsolved Mysteries, both TV programs having been contacted with her story. Jessica immediately understood the situation. Her uncle, a man in his fifties, was trying to sell her story to the highest bidder, the American path to riches. “You can’t withhold information from these folks, Mr. Lovette. You do and it’s called obstruction of justice, interference with an ongoing investigation, Jake.” The door remained closed, a chain still between them and Marilee. The deputy warned the man, “Jake, you really don’t wanna climb into that hole… Trust me, Jake.”

“ Don’t worry,” added Quincey, “whatever the girl tells us stays confidential.”

“ You can still work out whatever deal you like with any of them TV producers you like, Mr. Lovette,” added Deputy Carl Wotten.

Jake Lovette sized Quincey up, paying no attention to Jessica at the moment. He then unlatched the door, slowly stepped back, and lowered the shotgun to its resting place beside the door, telling them they were welcome to enter. When Jessica stepped into the ramshackle little house, she immediately noticed the number of babies and children littering the floor, which was plenty littered enough already. Marilee was the eldest child and the woman of the house, it appeared. She was shy, hardly capable of looking at the intruders, fearful of them, keeping her eyes pinned on Quincey as if he were the enemy. Jessica only now felt the lascivious leer of Jake Lovette pass over her. She tried to ignore the man, who smelled of stale beer and perspiration. The air inside was thick with smoke and the odors that come with dirty linen and dirty children.

“ You’re Marilee?” Jessica asked the tall, thin and emaciated young woman who was desperately trying to clean up the place and losing the battle.

She turned, faced Jessica and replied, “Yes.” Her voice was raspy.

“ Also known as Aeriel, Aeriel Monroe? You resided for a time in Miami?”

“ When I run off from home, in Screven, Georgia, I did, yes.” She spoke in a thick Georgia accent which was further hindered by her constricted vocal cords, scars left from her encounter with a man bent on her destruction, if her story could be believed. She hoarsely chastised the children to remove themselves to a back room and to play quietly. It appeared she was not so much being taken care of by concerned relatives here as she’d become, by some mutual consent or contract, her uncle Jake’s live-in maidservant, bottle washer and cook. Jessica momentarily wondered where the children’s mother had run off to.

Marilee/Aeriel had been expecting them, for she wore a flower in her hair, and she’d donned her best, perhaps her only dress which wasn’t a uniform from Nomad’s Pillow Motor Inn, where she worked by day. She wore a cloth choker about her neck in an effort to conceal both the visible and the invisible scars left there after so long a time, and her voice was smoker-thick hoarse, hardly above a whisper. Jessica didn’t need to ask why; it was painfully obvious that she’d lost partial use of her vocal cords due to the murder attempt, which had left her partially obstrutted physically and perhaps permanently scarred psychologically. Whether it was due to Patric Allain or some other monster she’d encountered in the world to which she had run away, this much of her story appeared painfully obvious. Marilee was in a hell of a lot worse shape than Judy Templar had been, Jessica told herself as she dug out a tape recorder from her bag and held it up to everyone’s eyes. “I need your permission, Marilee, to tape our session, for the record.” She looked to Uncle Jake before responding. “I ghat no pro-lem wif that.” Her voice was grating to the ear.

Jessica placed the tape recorder on the water-ringed, wobbly wood table between them, introducing herself and Quincey by their titles and for the record. “You are willingly giving your consent to being taped, Ms. Lovette?”

“ I… I do,” she replied like a nervous bride.

Jessica added, “And we would like to thank you for your cooperation.”

Again Marilee glanced up at Uncle Jake, who hovered about like a second conscience. She asked, “There be henny ra-ra-ward money in dis?”

“ Perhaps… if it leads to an arrest,” Jessica assured both Marilee and her uncle, who winked and smiled back when Jessica looked up at him.

“ Lady, we could sure use it,” Uncle Jake replied, his face and arms tanned so darkly that the skin had become a leather sheath with wrinkles and worry lines as deep and long as wagon ruts. Uncle Jake had been chewing on tobacco the entire time, and now he coughed up a wad of disgusting brown bile and spat out a nearby window. Through the window, Jessica could see the requisite row- boat bobbing, tied to the shack. “Guddem Florida Lottery ain’t worth spit,” Jake added.

“ Marilee, would you tell us now, in your own words, what happened the night of the fourteenth of May when you said you encountered a man who abducted, raped and choked you?”

“ He was the Night Crawler. One I’ve read ‘bout, butatta time, no one… give him a name. He near’t kilt me; it’s a miracle I’m still alive.”

Her lines sounded practiced, Jessica thought, and her voice was sounding more normal as the interview progressed. With Jake hovering nearby, Jessica didn’t doubt Marilee had had plenty of practice. Maybe this was a wild- goose chase. Jessica next asked, “He picked you up at a bar in South Miami?”

“ Tollee’s… I was working nearby.”

Jessica had information that she was hooking nearby and had sat down at the riverside bar to rest her feet and have a beer. “You went to the bar and had a beer, and then what happened?’’

“ He seemed nice; real polite.” She had to speak at an excruciatingly slow pace, each word painful. “Thought he must have money; he was well-dressed, you know, so when he offered to take me river-riding, why, hell… I said, why not? So I went with him.”

“ Did you ever tell the police this?”

“ Sure I did, but they didn’t any of them want to hear it, not from me… not at the time.” Jessica realized why. The girl had been found naked, swimming in from the sea. Police at the time quickly determined that she was new to the area, an “out-of-town prostitute” with an arrest record. Detective Mark Samernow took her “story” of innocence and filed it away and forgot about it. It explained Samernow’s sourness from day one. He’d had information relative to the case but hadn’t recognized it at the time. He knew later, long after losing Marilee’s trail, that he’d had an eyewitness and that he’d let her go. But Marilee was among the first whom the killer had taken in Samernow’s jurisdiction. Samernow, having a daughter of like age and appearance, was likely sickened and disgusted by Marilee and wanted to be shed of her as quickly and efficiently as the system allowed, and so it went.

“ Go on, tell us what happened,” encouraged Quincey, whose size made the walls here bulge.

She got up, paced to the door leading to the bedroom; she closed it on the children. “Don’t want them to hear this. Told it all to Uncle Jake.”

The man was her senior by perhaps twenty-five or thirty years, and Jessica realized that Marilee had literally turned herself over to him for a roof over her head, and food to eat. “Go on,” Jessica gently repeated.

She told of her seduction in broad strokes, embarrased still before Uncle Jake. Jessica kept interrupting, asking questions, searching for specifics. ‘ ‘What exactly did he say to you? What promises did he make?”

“ Promised to take me all around in his boat.”

“ All around where?”

“ Everyplace.” A bit exasperated with the girl, Jessica again asked, “Around the harbor, around Miami, the state?”

“ Said he’d take me to places I never heard of before.”

“ What places? Do you remember any of the names?”

“ Carmen islands, I think he said, or maybe Caramel or Caravel?”

“ Cozumel, maybe?”

“ No… not that. Someplace in the Caribbean, he said.”

Jessica didn’t want to lead her, but she wanted the girl to corroborate what their other witness, Judy Templar, had said about the Cayman Islands, but Marilee simply could not recall the exact name on her own.

“ Go on,” Jessica gently nudged her on.

Marilee described how the romantic moment turned sour in a sudden blink; she told of his brutality toward her, his repeatedly choking her and how ferociously she had fought back. She told of waking up in the cabin of his boat and pretending she was not yet conscious, and how she could not swallow. She knew instantly that he was dangerous, and that she had been choked near to death more than once by him. A clock on the wall told her that hours had passed.

“ Where did this happen?”

“ On the river.”

“ Just offshore?”

“ Yeah, he never lef sight-a land. Houses, beautiful hotels not two hunerd yards from the boat.” Her hoarse voice caught, snarled on every syllable in the river of her speech. She sounded like a stuttering computer.

“ What else did you see in his cabin?”

“ Nothin’ much… the usual stuff. A bed, a dinin’ area, but I was flat on my back on the floor, without… without no clothes on. He’d torn off my clothes, had raped me and beat me and choked me. I thought he was through with me then, that he thought I were dead, you know? I thought he was sittin’ there wondering what to do with my body by then, but I was wrong.”

“ What do you mean?”

“ He… he had me come to; poured water-damned cold water, salty water from the river-down on me to bring me round.”

Jessica and Quince both knew that the Intracoastal river fronting Miami, as in most areas of the Intracoastal, linked as it was with the sea, was, during high tide in particular, a salty environ.

Jessica put her hand on Marilee’s and gently pressed. “And then?”

She was crying softly now. “I… I…” The stammer, the tears and her now naturally hoarse voice conspired to outwit the tape. “I was choked.”

“ Choked by hand?”

“ Again, yes. He brought me around so he could do it again-even said so. Said I pleased him; said it-killing me over slowlike-it pleased him. Said he liked how I fought.”

“ Then you held a conversation with him?”

“ I pleaded with him, but it only made him wilder.”

“ What kind of voice did he have?” Jessica asked.

“ Mild, pleasant… never above a whisper… as pleasant as pie. All in a pretty accent. English, I think.”

“ How did you escape?” asked Quincey.

“ Second time I came around; it was nearly dawn then, but he was up on deck, tending to something or other there. I… I got up all my nerve and slipped up on deck. My hands were tied with rope, and he had a noose around my neck-a hangman’s noose! I knew if he found me alive again, this time he’d kill me sure. So, I just got out of there. I got up to the top and… and… I ran like a banshee, screaming, and hit the water.”

“ With your hands tied?” asked Jessica.

“ No, no… I found a knife… on the counter, cut the rope ‘n’ got outta there soon as I… I snatched off the noose. But I didn’t have no clothes. Swum ashore stark naked… run up to a house and begged help. Thank God they didn’t turn me away. They give me a blanket and called 911.”

“ He didn’t pursue you?”

“ Sure he did, but by time he’d turned the boat, I was long gone.”

“ Marilee’s as strong a swimmer as ever I seen in a woman,” added Uncle Jake. “Then when you awoke, the motor was chugging?” asked Quincey. “He was taking the boat out of the Intra- coastal? What kind of boat was it? Was there anything special you recall about the boat?”

“ Big is all I know… and no, I don’t know where he was taking it, but we were moving, yes.”

“ Tell me, Marilee, and think hard now,” began Jessica, “when you were in the man’s cabin, did you see anything-anything-the slightest bit out of the ordinary?”

“ What do you mean?”

Jessica tried another tack, asking, “Can you tell me if you saw anything that might tell us something about this monster or his habits? What did you see lying around that cabin, on the bed, on the countertops?”

“ Place was full of instruments.”

“ Instruments?”

“ Computer stuff. A lot of blippin’ and mechanical stuff.”

“ State of the art, would you say?”

“ It was… seemed so, yes.”

“ Anything else catch your eye?” pressed Jessica.

“ Besides the knife? I thoughta using it on him. But jumpin’ for shore seemed the wisest choice I had.”

“ Did you notice anything else unusual before leaving the cabin?’’

“ Well, there were some sewing things.”

“ Sewing things?”

“ Like they use making nets, I think.”

“ Anything else?”

“ Some papers; you know, magazines and stuff like that.”

“ What kind of magazines and papers?”

“ I couldn’t tell you, but they all had to do with fishing and boating, I think.”

Uncle Jake prompted with, “Just try to remember, sugar.”

“ I was half crazed with wantin’ to get out of there. I didn’t look at no damn papers, so how’m I ‘spose to recall… something ‘bout…” She suddenly stopped, as if a flashbulb had just exploded on the horizon of her brain. “What is it, Marilee?” asked her uncle Jake. “Oh… oh, Lordy, God, yeah, he kept sayin’ I’m goin’ to mount you… goin’ to mount you… I took it he meant he was goin’ to rape me again, but… but…”

“ Try to remember,” Jessica encouraged. “It could save lives.”

“ Bastard… bastard… said he was going to stuff and prepare me for mountin’ on his wall, like I was some goddamned billfish or marlin. One of those papers was on how to prepare game fish for… for mounting. I… I guess I forgot ‘bout that part. Maybe, maybe I wanted to forget.”

“ Are you sure that’s what he said?” pressed Jessica, excited by this unsolicited corroboration.

“ I’m more than sure. He… he even said he had experience ‘cause he worked at a place once where trophy fish were done up.”

“ Are you sure he said that?”

“ Said they were turned into works of art, and asked me if I didn’t want to be a forever work of art as a sacrifice for his god, something like Thou or… Thor or something.”

“ Did he say where this place was, where he learned to mount trophy fish? Did he give you a name, anything?” Quincey pleaded.

“ No, nothin’.” Marilee had become too distraught over the memory to go on now, and Jessica felt they had gotten all they might from the young woman who-although far from robust since her encounter with the killer-fit the victim profile preferred by the Night Crawler. Jessica imagined her as having had natural good looks before all this had happened, but the debilitating aftermath of her encounter with this fiend had worked dramatic effects upon her appearance, as well as her self-esteem and confidence as a woman. Of this, Jessica had no doubt. They said their good-byes to Marilee and her uncle. Just outside the cabin, they said good-bye to Carl Wotten, the deputy, who wished them success. His final epitaph: “I hope you catch this sonofabitch and fry him several times over in the chair.”

The night sky was impenetrable, the ocean breeze a purring, sniffing cat, and Jessica, on first hearing the unmistakable sound of soaring tobacco spit thudding into dry leaves, now saw that Uncle Jake was leering out a window at her. She shivered and thought only of getting back to the blacktop safety of U.S. 1.

“ Let’s get to a motel, get some rest,” Quince suggested, his eye resting on Uncle Jake for a moment as well.

“ I’m with you.”

“ You-all don’t forget us now when it comes time to divvy up the money,” Jake called out after them.

Climbing into the car, Jessica said to Quincey, “We’ve got a long way to go to Naples, catch up with Eriq and your partner on the other coast.”

“ To hell with driving,” countered Quincey. “I’ve got a friend on the key who’s a charter captain.”

“ Really?”

“ Old war buddies. Toured in Nam together. He’d do anything for me, drop whatever he’s doing, if we meet his usual fees.”

“ What’re you suggesting, Quince?”

“ Why don’t we see if we can’t get into this creep’s wake, and then maybe his face.”

“ What have you got in mind, Quince?”

“ Elliot Anderson knows these waters. Since the last body washed up at Key Largo, and now our guy is in Naples, the bastard had to’ve taken to one of the channels. Teatable Key Channel is just north of here. Elliot could take us along that tack. It’s got to parallel the path the Night Crawler took in getting to Naples. Along the way, we can flash his picture. See what comes of it…”

She looked out at the darkness and the water lapping at the land. “All this water out here… Guess it is a waste not to use it. All right, you’re on. Quince.”

Quincey’s smile was wide and endearing. “Great choice. You won’t regret it. But tell me: Did you believe every word of our Junior Miss Clueless back there?”

“ She couldn’t have known about the mounting, the trophy fish business.”

“ I don’t know. These people have their own telegraph system, and Key Largo’s on the wire.”

Jessica bit her lip and asked, “You think that news is out already?”

“ If some of the doctors or cops up there at Largo are talking about the hook in that Jane Doe’s back-and I can’t see that Dr. Oliver being shy about talking it over with every Tom, Dick and Harry-well… it could’ve filtered down this way.”

“ But what would the girl gain by lying?” Stupid question, she told herself even as she spoke it.

“ Reward money and a moment on prime-time TV’s enough incentive for most.”

“ I don’t know… I didn’t get the impression Marilee was acting,” countered Jessica as Quince pulled away from the house, sending a sand and pebble cloud in their wake.

“ Maybe not…”

“ I tell you this much: I’m beginning to get a hell of a picture of our Night Crawler, Quince.”

“ Know what you mean.”

“ A picture of a guy who wants to create the perfect trophy for his wall.”

“ But why?” he asked as he located a broken-down sign for U.S. 1.

She didn’t skip a beat. “So that he will no longer have to go on killing.”

“ Really?”

“ Once he has the perfect prize, then there’s no use in continuing; at least that’s what he’s telling himself now.”

“ So, he thinks he’s getting closer with each new victim?”

“ That’s what I think he thinks. Remember, there is no new victim to him, because they’re all the same. That is, he thinks they’re all the same. Treats them all the same, as if they are the same object. They’ve all become objects of his obsession.”

“ How can a human mind get so freakin’ warped? And how can such a beautiful lady such as yourself think like such an animal?”

She slapped him on his considerable shoulder and said, “Quince, really… and you’ve known a few crazed and obsessed sportfishermen? And you can, if need be. think like them?” Quincey laughed a full, hearty laugh in response. “Damn, you’re something, Dr. Coran.”

“ Listen, Quince, do you think your charter captain friend’ll know any of these fish-trophy taxidermists working the area?”

“ There’s quite a few freelancers and little shops all up and down, but Elliot, he’ll know the majors, sure.”

“ Excellent.” She flipped now through the pictures she’d taken with her from Key Largo, pictures of the latest victim. “We’ll see what your friend makes of the marks on the Key Largo Jane Doe’s back.”

Jessica leaned her head out the window, realizing only now how awfully warm and red-faced she’d become while in Uncle Jake’s presence. “That Jake Lovette made me feel like a piece of meat,” she confided in Quincey.

“ Yeah, I got that impression. The man even made me feel like a piece of raw meat. His eyes actually seemed to be asking the question, ‘Ever ‘et raw meat afore?’ “ He laughed at his own summation, and Jessica joined him.

“ I got another impression about Uncle Jake as well- one not so funny,” she added after the last guffaw.

“ I asked the deputy about the arrangement.”

“ What’d he say?”

“ He said they’re building a case against Jake on a drug charge, but that without Marilee’s testimony or some of the other, older children, that child abuse charges aren’t going to stick. But after tonight, Marilee asserting herself a bit, who knows?”

Jessica winced up at the night sky, so filled with thickening clouds and with not a star in sight. “Damn but this world gets ugly and uncaring at times, doesn’t it, Quince?”

He nodded, understanding.

“ Wish we could save all the children and right all the wrongs,” she mused. “I guess there’s really no Catcher in the Rye, save God.”

Quince didn’t understand the allusion to J. D. Salinger’s novel, but he didn’t let on. “Appears we’ve got larger fish to fry than a child abuser, so to speak.”

“ Yeah, and meanwhile the bottom feeders carry on.” Her fatigue and frustration with the case was showing through. She sank deep into her seat, resting her head against the headrest and closing her eyes.

“ That about sums Lovette up.” Quincey was going five miles over the posted limit in search of his friend’s boat. “We find Elliot home, he’ll put us up on the boat tonight and we can both catch some Zs, Doc.”

But Jessica was already asleep.