Darkest Instinct

TWENTY

The wind itself-sometimes called Satan’s leash dog- seemed now to Warren Tauman his ally in escape, for it had risen with the saving fog that masked his escape to now send him at twice and thrice the speed he would have been making without its help. He needed to conserve on fuel. It was a long trip to where he was going, and he knew his route was at best a circuitous one, no beelines since Cuba lay in his path. Although he felt certain that he had all the time in the world to get to where he was going, since no one knew his plans or his destination, he wished to be out of American waters, and he wished to start over elsewhere, even as he meant to convince the authorities anxious to see him dead that he remained in Florida. He had a plan for that, too. He had paid well to have a final letter delivered to the press. This one would be sent to Florida’s panhandle to throw police and FBI off his trail. When news that the Pensacola Democrat had received another letter from the Night Crawler, everyone would scurry to that location, thinking he was headed west along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

Still, the incident in Tampa had frightened him, and it had put his mind to work. He must do what was necessary, if he were ever to get Mother back, to control her. He probably needed to cut his losses for a while, and he’d done just that. To keep the Tampa area cops on hold, he’d cut loose the dead girl who had been dangling off the aft side. With a body bobbing about in the water during their search, the cops would focus more on it and less on him.

They could send out all the radar equipment in the world against him in that fog, and with his ship’s built-in radar scrambler, he could just bounce signals right back at them. The authorities had only proven once again how inept and inadequate they truly were.

He’d heard news reports of how an FBI forensics expert had been put on his trail, how she was supposedly the best in the land; he’d seen the tabloids in supermarkets which claimed that in their frustration, authorities had turned to such nonsense as psychics and handwriting analysis to track him. If that was the best they could do…

The wind continued at his back even as he neared the northwest tip of Cuba off in the distance. Southward, a hundred miles south of Cuba to be exact, he would come into sight of the Caymans. He’d come through the roughest of the storm, which had moved northward as he had maneuvered along the backlash at its southeastern edge to turn into his now southwest course. And with the storm winds around him having abated, Warren switched on the two-diesel engines which powered the boat onward. He turned on the autopilot and finally had a moment’s time to relax. The odor of diesel wafted across the water, but due to a state-of-the-art air filtration system in the cabin below, the odor did not linger as in most sailing vessels.

He went below, relieved himself in the head, located a beer in the fridge, and although he wanted to lie down, rest, there was too much yet to do. He wished now that he’d kept the body he had forfeited during those first moments of decision after killing those two nosy FMP officers. It would have given him pleasure to pass the time with her body now. Still, he knew it had been wise to cut all his losses.

The speargun killings had been a rush. He hadn’t expected it, but it was true-a real rush. Maybe killing people in any way whatsoever was exciting, stimulating, fulfilling for someone like him, he now thought. The sight of the FMP officer’s blood on deck the entire day recalled to his mind the geyser spray of it at the moment the spear had opened a hole in the big man’s chest. Most of the blood had been washed off by rain, but the original blood loss had been tremendous; it had come spurting out across the Tau Cross. He had never cared for the sight of blood, especially his own; it had always made him nauseous, even a little finger cut, but the speargun killing had changed his mind in an instant. There was something extraordinary about punching a hole in a balloon and seeing the air explode, and so too with the human heart.

He was no fool; after a brief moment of lying on his back, and a bite to eat, he knew, he must scrub down the boat, erase every inch of blood and other evidence that might link him to murder. He seriously doubted that anyone could put him and his destination together, since no one had all the pieces. Still, there was that someone who could place him on the route he had chosen, there was at least one man who knew about his liking for the Cayman Islands-that old fool in Key West. But it seemed highly improbable that authorities would learn of his connection with the taxidermist.

He now planned to take all the materials he had collected to preserve the bodies of his victims for Mother’s reappearance and throw them into the sea. It would be difficult to do so, not only because of the physical labor-cleansing the ship of his secret identity, forever altering Tau’s haven and thereby the Night Crawler’s workplace-but because of the momentousness of the decision as well, asking Tau to wait, asking Mother to wait. But there was no hope for it otherwise. Common sense dictated that he find a new ship and a new killing ground.

He quickly got together a bucket filled with cleaning fluids and ammonia, carried this out on deck and scrubbed away any evidence that the FMP officers had ever stepped foot on his boat. Finishing this, he returned to autopilot check at the controls below. Seeing that his ship was on course, he then returned to the scrubbing, but this time he worked the interior cabin. He scrubbed the floor and the walls where stains from previous kills had remained as memory prompters for his fantasies. It was painful to see all his fondest memories disappear before him, vanish without a trace, but his sense of self-preservation was strong, so he scrubbed until his hands became raw, until every stain was invisible to the naked eye.

He planned, once he reached the Caymans, to purchase some marine paint and paint over all these areas as well. As it was, all he had was a partially used, small can of black stenciling paint, and he planned to use it to paint over the name of the boat and rename her, which he’d begun doing last night only moments before hearing the siren and seeing the approaching strobe light of the Florida Marine Patrol boat.

After a brief respite from the intense work, he got a little sun and sea topside, lying out on deck. He seldom partook of the sun, but he wanted to appear darker-skinned, to accentuate the beard he’d begun to grow. Returning to the controls below, Warren next checked his course against the maps he used. He had another job to do which couldn’t wait for tomorrow. He set the ship on her own once more, the two diesels pushing the craft over the glassy surface of the Caribbean easily and smoothly now. Then he went about collecting up all the items aboard that could implicate him as the Night Crawler. He tossed trinkets taken from his victims into a single box. He added to the box as he moved about the cabin, collecting all the skinning knives and loose rope and embalming fluids he’d collected over the months and months since he’d left England. Going now up the stairwell deckside, he went directly to starboard, where he dumped boxful after boxful of incriminating evidence, the sea gobbling it all up.

When he reached the Caymans, Warren planned to sell the boat or trade it in, get a new one, something less of an attention-getter. Then he might more easily fade into the background and out of the light. The light was his enemy, and he normally slept during the day, ill at ease with the brutal sun here, his eyes sometimes so swollen as to be shut, so irritated were they by the wind and sea air. But he needed the tan as part of his new disguise, so he worked shirtless in shorts on deck, looking over what needed doing next.

Over the side went the recent additions to his chemical collection, what the taxidermist shop and the funeral home in Naples he’d broken into had profited him, including a huge bottle of what was labeled’ ‘Perma Glow,’’ fluid which was pumped into the dead to preserve the body for the wake, organs intact. He had been mixing chemicals, trying to find the exact right solution, like an alchemist in search of gold. His chemical gold would have to wait until better days. There would come a time; there would be other opportunities.

With so much daylight left him, he decided to complete the look of innocence he wanted for his ship and himself when he went to sell her. So he worked under the intense sun behind his dark glasses to repaint the registration number on the ship and to give it a new name, using stencils and paintbrush. All of this he did while the ship continued relentlessly forward, no small feat in itself. He first obliterated the original registration numbers and the name of the boat. He then taped on the stencils with care, changing the registration numbers, the port of origin of the ship and finally the name. The work took well over an hour and a half. He went to check the con panel from time to time, resetting his course as necessary while he worked. Later on, he’d do the necessary paperwork.

Once finished with the painting, he tossed the near-empty bucket of paint over the side, got painfully to his feet and made his way below deck again. There, with a cold beer at his side and using his computer, he worked on creating new documents of ownership of the boat. He had purchased an official-looking seal from a street vendor in Cayman which was in fact a seal of government inspection from Grand Cayman, where ships were built. His ship’s registry now was George Town, Grand Cayman Island. He figured he’d have no trouble bartering there.

Once finished with the serial numbers and the boat name, which was now Smiling Jack, he began again to maniacally scrub away at Manley’s blood, seeing a tint of red, like a twelfth shade of gray, clinging to the deck. Angered by the spot, having to go back for more scrubbing materials, he began to mutter to himself now as he scrubbed anew. “Taught that nigger cop a lesson that he won’t forget. Oh, he’s dead… I guess that he won’t forget in the next life?” He laughed at his own crude, little joke.

Now he scrubbed and scrubbed at the blood on deck, but the deck was made of a porous material into which the blood had soaked. Oh well, he told himself; fish blood had stained the boat before, and this pinkish-gray hue looked no different.

He continued to scrub nonetheless, his fingernails breaking, his hand rubbed raw by the force applied to the brush. “Soap, water, ammonia,” he kept repeating like a mantra, “soap, water, ammonia… best way to a clean the rascal,” he added, recalling one of his mother’s more favored sayings.

“ Soap and water… No amount of soap and water can clean out the rotten core of your heart, Warren Tauman, you rascal, you devil, you serpent, you Satan seed…” he heard Mother say in his ear.

Santiva got on the headphones, likely to keep busy in his futile attempt to control his airsickness. Conferring with Jessica, he said, “See anything?”

“ It’s still like soup down there.”

“ What is it you’re looking for?” demanded Don Lansing.

“ We’re searching for a boat.”

“ A boat? A particular boat?”

“ That’s right.”

“ We’ve been following the coast in pursuit of some guy on a boat?”

Santiva barked, “Yes, is that so hard to understand?”

“ What happened to your accent?” Lansing wanted to know. “Look, Mr. Lansing…” began Jessica, realizing they’d traversed nearly a third of their journey to the Caymans now, “I think it’s time you knew the truth.”

“ Truth? What truth?” We’re not being chased by anyone, especially not the cops; we… Eriq and I-are FBI, cops you might say…”

“ What?” His look of shock seemed out of proportion to her revelation.

Eriq explained, “We didn’t lie back in Tampa to the tower guys.”

“ Whataya saying?”

“ We are FBI agents.”

“ Oh, Christ, you’re shitting me. Holy Mother, Pete’s going to kill me when he hears about this. I’ll be damned. How in hell’d I not see it?”

“ We’re good at what we do. But really, Don, we are really FBI, and we’re really in pursuit of the-”

“- the Night Crawler,” he finished, the light coming clear on. “Sure, why not? Story of my life. Always in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“ Mr. Lansing… Mr. Lansing…” Jessica tried to quell his concern, but he kept babbling to himself through the headphones. “I must not live right. Something I did once to my mother, maybe. God has a way of punishing even the blind and ignorant…”

“ Sorry to burst your bubble,” she weakly apologized.

“ Then one of the two stories you made up back at the airport was… was the truth?”

“ ‘ Fraid so.”

“ Damn… damn, you must think I’m some kinda fool. Hey, I want both of you to know that I’m nobody’s fool.”

Jessica realized that Lansing didn’t believe them now any more than he had on takeoff.

“ Whatever your game, I’m not interested. All’s I want is to set down in Miami and we can settle up there. Plenty of guys in Miami’ll be happy to take you on to the Caymans. Just don’t tell ‘em you’re the fuzz, all right?”

“ Miami? We’re not going to Miami,” she countered.

“ It’s on our flight pattern to the Caymans. It’s the only safe way. We attempt another way and we could get in trouble over Cuba. Trust me. Besides, like I told you, we need to stop at Miami to refuel and get in the flight path over Cuba to the Caymans, so we log where we’re going in case of problems.”

“ Do you always follow such rules to the letter?” asked a suspicious Santiva.

“ Always,” he lied.

“ Mr. Lansing, we want you to take us all the way to Grand Cayman,” Jessica pleaded. “I don’t know…”

“ We’ve offered to pay three times your normal rate,” she reminded. “Three times?” asked Santiva, whistling into the headphones.

“ Not if we’re dumped in Miami, no,” she responded.

Lansing broke down, saying, “All right, but we stop over in Miami to refuel and file a flight report, and once we touch down in Cayman, I collect my dough from you people and wave bye-bye.”

“ Agreed,” she assured him, and the cockpit grew silent now as they soared over scattered cloud cover.

“ Can’t you get us down a little lower, so we can see better?” she asked.

“ Lower means more turbulence right now,” he countered, “and your so-called hotshot FBI agent friend is already three shades of green.”

They were on a due-south tack now, coming out of the storm clouds, getting beyond the front. There was bright sunshine and gleaming blue waters ahead. “You can start bringing us down now,” she ordered.

Perhaps to test just how honest or dishonest she’d been with him, Lansing frowned and let go of the controls. “You take the controls,” he said. “Seems to me that’s what you like, being in control.”

She grabbed on to the controls almost immediately, but the plane was already in a screaming nosedive, everyone but Lansing losing his stomach to the cockpit ceiling, Eriq shouting through his headphones, freaking out while Jessica grabbed and then pulled hard on the controls, bringing the plane back under control, leveling her out, tiger stripes and all. The plane was a twin-engine Beechcraft Baron, Lansing having chosen to take it over the smaller, modified Sandpiper back in Tampa. The machine was not nearly so old as it was made to appear. Lansing, or more likely his boss, Pete, had painted the Baron to appear older and perhaps more romantic than it actually was. The seats were plush, the controls state of the art. The World War II look of the tiger stripes, the lettering of the call numbers-all a ruse to mirror what? Experienced, vintage fliers? Lansing was too young for vintage, she thought.

“ What the hell’re you trying to do, Lansing?” Jessica shouted now.

“ Wanted to see if you lied about being a pilot, too. Guess not.”

She shook her head and gave him a half smile, to which he responded by frowning. He wasn’t amused at having literally been taken for a ride. His arms were folded tightly against his chest as he watched her take the bird lower over the water.

Jessica had felt the power of the light plane the moment she’d grabbed the controls. It was a feeling like nothing else she’d ever experienced-flying. She couldn’t hold back the sense of wonder, or her smile.

Lansing, looking at her reaction as she soared ever closer to the emerald waters of the Gulf of Mexico below them, suddenly broke into laughter.

“ What’s so damned funny?” demanded Eriq from the rear. Then Jessica began to laugh. “Go ahead, enjoy yourself for a while, and buzz every damned boat you see down there for all I care,” said Lansing, “but give a thought to the fuel gauge while you’re doing it, all right?” Behind his protestations lay an understandable frustration. He didn’t know or trust them; he didn’t know what their game was; he didn’t know who they were chasing; he didn’t believe they were FBI agents in pursuit of the Night Crawler any more than he believed her Alice in Wonderland and Eriq the Wizard of Oz.

But something in his tone told Jessica that he did care. that he was worried about who they were and what they intended. “Look, reach into my bag and pull out my wallet, Mr. Lansing,” she told him.

“ What for?”

“ You’ll find my badge there.”

He looked from her to the bag that’d been jammed into a space too small for it just beside her ankle. While he went for the bag, he admired the creamy-skinned legs below the skirt she wore. He rummaged about, feeling the cold metal of a gun, which he lifted along with her wallet. “What the hell’s this?”

“ Be careful with that; it’s a Browning automatic, same gun I used to kill Matthew Matisak with in New Orleans last year.”

He looked at her as if she were mad. She wished now that she had brought along that stupid Enquirer story with her picture for this show-and-tell moment. “I really, truly am Dr. Jessica Coran, and this is Chief Eriq Santiva of the FBI.”

“ And I’m supposed to believe that?”

“ Yes, damnit, it’s the truth.”

He raised both hands to run through his hair, as if to do so might ease his consternation. But the gesture had little effect. “You now want me to believe that you… that you’re an M.D. with-”

“ An M.E. for the FBI, yes.”

“ The one who caught that heart-eating, banshee killer in New Orleans last year?”

“ One and the same,” added Eriq from the rear.

“ Same one who also cornered and killed Mad Matthew Matisak there?”

“ That would be me, yes.”

He reserved judgment as he opened her billfold and closely examined her FBI photo ID and badge. Then the light in his brain finally flickered on. “Damn, hellfire, unbelievable… here in Pete’s plane, sitting just across from me. Well, here, let me shake your hand, Dr. Coran.” He extended a hand and took hers, shaking so vigorously she had trouble holding the plane steady.

“ Then you’ve heard of me?” she unnecessarily asked.

“ Are you kidding? I mean, who hasn’t heard about you? The Eskimos? But why didn’t you just tell me who you were in the first place? I wouldn’t’ve balked a moment taking off at the airport the way I did, had I known it was you…”

Eriq grumbled through the static of his headphone upon hearing this and added, “Does that mean you won’t charge us triple?”

“ No, no… didn’t say that.”

Again they laughed together, now with the plane coming in over the water at seventy feet above the surface. They saw a few scattered boats, but most boaters had wisely chosen to steer clear of these waters for the duration of the storm retreat.

“ Look, over there in the distance!” shouted Eriq, blowing out their ears through the phone sets.

“ Where?” asked Jessica.

“ Over there!” repeated Eriq.

“ Give us a direction, Eriq. Ten o’clock, two o’clock, what?”

“ Oh, yeah… ahh, three o’clock.”

Jessica and Lansing looked immediately to their right, Lansing leaning in and over Jessica a bit, catching her perfume as he did so. “Small craft, nothing like what you’re looking for,” he advised.

“ How would you know what we’re looking for?” countered Eriq.

“ Hey. I listen to the news reports. I read the papers. They say it was a schooner-class ship, and that thing down there’s no schooner. A schooner has three masts, for one thing, and it moves over the water differently…”

“ How can you possibly tell from this distance?” Jessica wondered aloud.

“ The way she moves in the water. A schooner slices through the water. She doesn’t bounce atop the waves.”

“ You’re sure of that?”

“ I am, so don’t waste your time or our fuel.”

“ Looks pretty impressive to me,” countered Eriq, still staring at the boat below. They were south of Naples now, out over the water, nearing the straits of Florida. “Jess, what do you think?”

She had to crane her neck to see back over her shoulder now, twisting in her seat, showing some backside to Don. Lansing encouraged her to release the controls and rise out of her seat to lean over for a better view while he took in his own better view of her form, all the while telling her that it wasn’t a large enough boat.

“ I can’t tell from here,” she confessed.

“ Then take her in for a closer look,” Santiva said, his voice grating now, giving way to his stress and fatigue.

Jessica brought the plane around, and they gently glided in over the boat and saw her markings clearly enough. There were several people aboard the large two-masted sloop, all waving in wild abandon at the buzzing, puzzling plane some thirty-five-odd feet above them now.

Don Lansing had been right: They needed to pick and choose better. It wouldn’t do to waste fuel on so many red herrings, especially if the killer arrived at Grand Cayman before them and managed to unload his boat for another one while they were uselessly shopping the sea from boat to boat.

“ So you’re Dr. Jessica Coran; damn…” Lansing said as they climbed to a safer altitude.

“ Are we back to that?” Eriq irritably asked.

Lansing ignored Eriq, continuing, “Pete’s just not going to believe this. But I gotta tell you, even if he cans my ass, it will’ve all been worth it. Something to tell my kids someday.”

“ Oh? Do you have children?” Jessica asked.

“ No, not at the moment, but someday I suppose I will.”

Jessica smiled back at her newfound admirer and tried to simply enjoy flying the craft. But his remark stuck with her, that someday he supposed he would have children. Something about him said otherwise. And she thought of her own someday plans, the ones she had made with James Parry. They seemed now like clouds that had dissolved and floated off over the cerulean-blue sea and into oblivion. She felt a pang of loss. To combat the feeling, she concentrated on the sense of power and sheer delight in manipulating the aircraft. She was a beauty, this little plane, and Lansing, smiling over at Jessica, understanding her rush of emotions, didn’t seem in the least concerned about reclaiming the controls.

“ We’ve got to turn her due east, Dr. Coran,” he told her now.

“ For Miami?”

“ It’d be the safest and best route.”

“ But it seems so indirect. Why can’t we refuel in Key West?”

He hesitated a moment. “You don’t want to be with me the next time I touch down in Key West. Trust me on this one.”

She looked into his eyes, saw the sincerity there and relinquished, turning the plane’s nose toward the sun. “Miami it is. We can check in with the MPD while we’re there, Eriq. Let them know of our whereabouts.”

“ Yeah, I suppose that’s a good idea.”

“ Going over Cuban airspace is a little tricky,” confided Lansing. “We’ll do much better getting into the established flight lanes.”