Darkest Instinct

FIVE

Jessica stared momentarily at her watch as she made her way from the bowels of the teaching hospital’s morgue and back toward Miami-Dade Central Police Headquarters through a series of tunnels, stairwells and twists and turns that eventually brought her to ground level. She wondered why morgues were always located below ground, as if in constructing them a kind of subconsciously created perdition was ever the aim, but she also knew two truths which led architects and builders to place morgues at the base of modern buildings. First, like their Egyptian counterparts who placed their most distinguished dead in secret chambers where cavernous mazes terminated, modern builders utilized the principles of cold storage, and nature provided the first refrigerator in the earth itself; and second, everybody knew that no one really wanted to be reminded of the dead on a daily basis, even if those dead were frozen or mummified. Out of sight, out of mind. Nowhere was that truer than in modern America.

Jessica had made arrangements to have dinner with Eriq Santiva, so she located Detective Quincey to take her back to the hotel. Quincey didn’t know how to be subtle. In the car on the way to the hotel, he wanted to know her and Santiva’s relationship; wanted to know the outcome of the trip to the Keys; wanted to know the outcome of the second autopsy performed on Allison Norris; wanted to know if Dr. Coran had a dinner companion for the evening. She managed to dodge all his questions with the vague generalities she had come to rely on in the early stages of investigations, knowing he’d hear soon enough through Thorn, Powers and possibly Coudriet her views on the crime. She managed to keep the detective happy and satisfied that she was cooperating on the case, yet confused enough to think she might still have some answers forthcoming.

‘‘ Then there is a connection with some of the body parts found in Islamorada?” he pressed. “And not just the Allison Norris/Precious connection?”

She conceded this, saying, “It appears so, but it’s too soon to be a hundred percent, Detective.”

“ Quince… you can call me Quince, Dr. Coran. How much more percentage do you need? I mean, the word Precious on that bracelet turning out to be the girl’s nickname, an endearment from her father?”

“ I take it her father’s whole life is politics, like her grandfather’s and uncle’s?”

“ No, no… not entirely.”

“ What else does he do?”

“ Owns a string of boat lots, yachts and sailboats.

“ Boat lots?”

“ He sells sails-sailboats. You name it. Sales, repairs, outfitting, but he’s never there any more than he was at home.” She wondered if there might be some connection between Allison Norris’s disappearance and her father’s connection with boats.

“ Why? Whataya thinking?”

“ Did Allison perhaps work for her father?”

“ Yeah, out of the Biscayne sales office, as a matter of fact. But we covered all her boyfriends.”

“ She had more than one?”

“ Hey, she was a hot property, quite well-off by most standards.”

“ During your inquiries, did anyone see her get on a boat with any of these boyfriends-before she disappeared, I mean?”

“ Nothing like that surfaced. You think she was killed on a boat?”

“ I’m beginning to think so, yes. Why don’t you and your partner-what’s his name? — Samer…”

“ Samernow-Sam, I call ‘im.”

“ Why don’t you revisit the boatyard, ask around about any recent flame, someone who might’ve brought a boat in for repair or had recently purchased a boat and was hitting on her.”

“ What kind of boat?”

“ Anybody’s guess at this point.”

“ I hear you.”

If nothing else, this line of investigation might get Quincey off her back, she thought when she saw in a flashing light that reflected off the darkened windshield that the detective was grimacing. “That is, if you think it’s worth the effort. Quince,” she qualified her request to make it more palatable to the male of the species.

“ No, no, that’s no problem.”

“ What is it, then?”

“ Sorry, but I’m afraid the smell of the morgue has attached itself to you, Doctor. Sorry I’m so crude.”

“ I’m sorry. I would’ve showered at the lab, but I was a little uncomfortable doing so with certain live stiffs around.”

Quincey laughed appreciatively, knowing that she was referring to Dr. Coudriet. “Then you met Doc C? He never was one for bashfulness, and he has a keen eye for the ladies.”

“ Yes, I made his acquaintance, and we’d best leave it at that, Quince.”

“ He likes the ladies,” continued Quince. “But in your case, it’s probably purely professional, Dr. Coran, although I could understand why… I mean, how…”

“ Quince, let me suggest that we leave this subject alone.”

“ You got it, Doctor.” She was never so glad to see her room before, to shut out the world. Once behind closed doors, she freshened up, scrubbing away the smell of the morgue, she prayed.

Jessica met Santiva in the Blue Piano Room, a restaurant fashioned around a baby blue grand piano. A talented pianist was playing some Yanni as if it were his own, the melody hauntingly filtering its way through Jessica’s entire being and somehow relaxing her. The entire atmosphere was perfect-a fitting place for Jessica Coran to remove herself from her professional life, she mused.

She spied Eriq at the bar, throwing back a shot of what appeared to be either bourbon or brandy. She guessed it to be bourbon, and she guessed from the look of him that Eriq had spent as frustrating and dismal a day in Miami as she had, that he had not seen any of the renowned sugar-white beaches or any girls in bikinis, but rather only the inside of an institutional-gray or — green room, swapping leftover information with Quincey and his reluctant partner. He could probably match her item for item on distressing moments, despite the fact that she’d spent her day with a revolting corpse and a peculiarly male bastion of doctors whose leader was a kind of modern-day failing Genghis Khan. No doubt Eriq had spent his day with a revolting pack of local politicos and press harpies calling for someone’s head.

She waved across the room when he looked up in search of her. He returned the salutation and came across the floor to greet her, commenting on how different she appeared tonight.

“ Different? What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“ I don’t know, so Cosmo and beautiful. It must be that stunning dress.”

The way the compliment was phrased, she wasn’t sure whether to thank him or slap him, but she chalked it up to male stupidity and let it go at that.

After showering and splashing herself down with jasmine, she had slipped into her best dress, a sleeveless, strapless black affair, only because Eriq had booked them into the most prestigious hotel in the city, the Fontaine-bleau. Santiva obviously liked his accommodations first- class.

“ This place is a palace,” she said to him, thinking the prices were going to be astronomically high. “Paul Zanek would’ve blown his stack if I’d ever dared put in a voucher for this.”

“ As it is, the accountants’re going to be screaming,” he agreed, hefting a half-empty glass.

“ But since you are the boss…”

“ Quit worrying,” he advised. “We may as well be de- cadently comfortable. After all. our days are filled with so much…”

“ Shit. Say it, Eriq, but tell me, which is it to be? Decadent or comfortable? I think that’s what we call an oxymoron. The two don’t go hand in hand. Comfortable is Holiday Inn, comfortable is Best Western, comfortable is-’’ “This business we’re getting ourselves into is going to become more and more horrendous as we go on. But of course, we both knew that going in, didn’t we?” From the tone of his voice, she’d been absolutely right about the bourbon and his day. Eriq had his own monkey on his back.

He located a table, a waiter and menus, all in one fell swoop. Seated now, enjoying the lovely music and delightful atmosphere, Jessica tried to forget for the moment the reason they were in the tropical city of golden sunsets- the Gold Coast, it was called, nestled as it was on an enormous blindingly white-and-yellow sand bay where cruise ships formed a large part of the skyline.

“ So, how’d it go in your sector today?” Santiva’s question felt like a tentative probe, and no doubt he both needed and wanted answers; his tone also conveyed the tenor of his day, and it didn’t sound upbeat.

She shrugged, saying, “Ahh, all right… Got my feet wet with the boys.”

“ Three against one, huh? Some odds. Can’t say that I fared much better.”

“ Well, Coudriet found some excuse to be away for most of the time I was there, but I later found him eavesdropping, if you can believe it. But mostly I just had the two assistants, Thorn and Powers, to deal with until the last twenty or thirty minutes. Coudriet’s gotten rather colorful since the last time I saw him speak.”

“ That makes him better or worse?”

“ Different.” She used Coudriet’s word against him.

“ Hmmmmm.” Eriq didn’t know quite what to make of the assessment, so he asked another question altogether.

“ His staying out of your way, how’s that? Good or bad for our case, I mean.”

“ Better would be my guess.” She glanced about the room, allowing the live music to continue its path over her mind, to soothe her frayed nerves. She was still wondering about Coudriet when she asked Eriq, “How about you? You get your feet as wet as your throat?”

“ Drenched, actually. Damned fools. Near as I can tell, they’ve been dragging their asses on this for some time, letting this SOB work freely up and down the coast from here to the Keys without once putting it together.”

“ That’s not atypical of local jurisdictions,” she said while glancing about, people-watching.

“ Too many little jurisdictions all along the seaboard and damned little in the way of cooperation or coordination of effort. You’d think Miami could get it together, but-”

“ But somebody obviously did put it together,” she interrupted. “Coudriet, actually, the M.E.”

“ Really?” She was both curious and impressed with Dr. Coudriet all over again.

“ Seems he was on vacation, a fishing trip down in the Keys-Sugarloaf Key, about a hundred twenty miles south of here, when a floater came ashore in the same condition as two others he’d seen earlier. He put two and three together, put out a call to all PDs along the coastal cities, asked for any information on similar cases, placed all the information in his Hewlett-Packard and voila!”

“ The similarities were, as they say, too close for comfort… too close to ignore.” Her tone made it clear she didn’t question it in the least. “So Andrew Coudriet next contacted all the pathologists and detectives along the waterways.”

“ He already tell you all this himself, did he?”

She shook her head firmly. “No, he didn’t. Quite self- effacing of him. He didn’t tell me any of this. Maybe he’s more modest than I’d given him credit for. I don’t quite know what to make of him.”

“ Did he tell you that there’s an entire highway of water-the Intracoastal Waterway-which sweeps from Key West north to Jacksonville and beyond?”

“ Which all experienced seamen and weekend warriors use regularly, I’m sure.”

“ You suppose right. Traffic is as heavy here as on the damned Mississippi River, but here most of it’s pleasure craft.”

They had expensive appetizers and wine before ordering dinner, and Eriq talked about his day with the deputy mayor, the police commissioner and William DeVries, the Miami FBI field chief who’d met with him despite his being in a recuperative condition, something to do with surgery to the small intestine, all in the company of Quincey and Mark Samernow, the two chief detectives for Miami. “Good man, Will,” Eriq commented of DeVries. “Been on top of this thing from the moment he learned of it, saw the serial nature of it. Gave me some good insights into what’s been going on down here, politically, that is… Nobody can say precisely what’s actually going on with the killer.”

Jessica had heard DeVries’s name in connection with the case before. It was Will DeVries who’d first alerted Santiva to the situation brewing in Florida, and when Jessica had gone to Eriq to give him the particulars of the strange phone call she’d taken from Islamorada, Santiva had surprised her with his instantaneous response-a single curse word suggesting both exasperation and procreation. His next response had been a question: “How soon can you be packed to leave for Florida?”

“ We haven’t left yet?” she’d countered that day in his office at Quantico. Later, on the plane, he’d confessed to having put the call from Islamorada through to her. Her involvement in the case had been carefully orchestrated. Now, here in Miami, she wanted to know, “Why didn’t DeVries’s men meet us at the airport when we first arrived? Why MPD detectives?”

“ Every agency in the entire state is antsy and sensitive at the same time over this one. There isn’t a jurisdiction along the entire Eastern seaboard of the state that isn’t missing some little girl. And as you know, the latest victim, the Norris girl, was highly connected, so it’s become a real bone of contention as to who exactly is in charge, and Will’s become disenchanted with the local authorities.”

“ Pissed off, you mean? So everybody’s scrambling and watching his own ass?”

“ Something like that.”

She bit her lower lip and added, “Meanwhile it’s all to the killer’s advantage that law enforcement can’t get its collective act together.”

“ Enjoy your appetizer,” he told her, his tone still that of the boss and dictator. It was his show now, no mistaking that. “Will didn’t want any sort of scene between the MPD and his guys out at the airport, not with so many cameras around.”

“ What’s the connection with London?” she asked.

“ DeVries has a friend at Scotland Yard. I mentioned him to you earlier, Nigel Moyler? Anyhow, they’ve worked a few international cases together. I’ve got a few contacts in the mother country myself, but these two guys realized that what happened a year ago in London was being duplicated here-or so it seemed to Moyler. But I believe he’s not quite seeing this with twenty-twenty vision.”

“ Something’s cast doubt on the connection?”

“ Not something-me. I pointed out some glaring differences in the two cases, and the single fingerprint they have is a partial and is practically useless, and the notes they were supposed to’ve forwarded haven’t arrived yet, so who knows.”

“ Glaring differences? Like what?” she asked while enjoying the fried zucchini appetizer.

“ Well, I can sympathize with Moyler. The London murders were never solved, but the victims there were all of a type wholly different from our own.”

“ Wholly different? Were they men?”

“ No, no… they were all women,” he conceded.

“ Were they all strangled?”

He nodded. “All strangled and-”

“- their bodies all thrown into the water?” she finished for him.

“ They were all determined by authorities there to’ve been drowned after repeated strangulation, yes.”

“ Really?” She kept her counsel.

“ But there are more dissimilarities than similarities, I’m afraid.”

“ For instance?” she asked between bites and sips of wine. “No poems to the authorities, for one.” She nodded. “Go on.”

Santiva’s eyes were busy. They followed people about the room. “Our victims are young women, hardly out of their teens. So far as I can tell, the English victims were all a good deal older, all with similar facial characteristics and body builds. Ours are younger, sweeter, more naive, thinner and a great deal more upscale.”

“ Well, you may well be right, Eriq, about there being no British tie-in here.” She watched his eyebrows take an inquisitive leap.

“ What’re you saying?”

“ Hold on to your modus operandi theories, Eriq, because Allison Norris was definitely choked, but not to death; she drowned after having been repeatedly choked by hand and by rope. But she was alive when she hit the water. Does that sound like our British killer, Eriq?”

“ They’ve listed them all as having drowned after repeated strangulation, yes, but I thought Coudriet’s report said she’d been strangled and the body discarded in the ocean,” replied Eriq.

“ Actually, if you read Coudriet’s report carefully, you’ll note he fudged on whether she was dead or alive when she hit the water. I think since then he has amended his reports to certify that she was alive when she inhaled all that water. At least that’s what I got from the team tonight. The report sent to us was a rushed job, corrected later. She was alive in the water, her lungs filled to bursting with microscopic sea life and saline. There’s also evidence pointing to the killer’s having dragged her bodily through the water.” Jessica finished her drink and sucked on an ice cube.

“ Damn, that puts a different color on things. Dragged her through the water? That means he used a boat of some sort, and that’s how he moves in and out so quickly and easily. Think of it-a floating lair, a floating kill scene. Little wonder we have so damned few clues to go on.”

She dropped her gaze. “It’s made him brash, cocksure. He travels with his incriminating evidence, keeps it close to him. It makes him feel safe to know where it all is, so safe he sends us word to tell us so…”

Eriq seemed caught up in an image building in his mind. “Imagine this bastard hauling them through the water like so much garbage.”

“ What did you mean that the London victims were upscale?” she asked.

“ No, I said that our victims were upscale compared with those found in England.”

“ Ahh… meaning?” Jessica asked, her eyes fixed on him, alert and waiting for his answer.

He shuffled uncomfortably in his seat, finding some modicum of repose. “So far our victims haven’t been prostitutes.”

“ I see.”

“ Most of the London victims were rough street girls, women actually… like I said, average age thirty thirty- five. Our girls here are ten, twelve years younger on average with no history of prostitution, no more promiscuous than most. There was one arrest of a prostitute who claimed to’ve been a near victim of the Night Crawler early on in the case, but she was kicked loose for want of verifiable evidence.”

“ Averages can be misleading, Eriq. Suppose the killer’s taste in victims has changed over time.

“ An evolving fantasy’.’“ asked Santiva. “I guess we might consider it, but the British connection seems tenuous at best even so, and it could lead to a dead end and a great waste of time and effort.”

“ So. your mentioning a possible British connection earlier was just to get me interested?”

He shook his head. “Not entirely, no…” She let it drop. “So. tell me more about your day,” she suggested, a waiter now clearing away their dishware and providing more wine. Eriq told her how he’d spent much of the day walking through police reports with various homicide detectives working the cases, explained that Samernow and Quincey were but two of some thirty detectives from fifteen different municipalities dotting the coast who were all interested in the case, all with their own separate lists of missing persons, and he further informed her that they had all come to the city to see what the FBI could do for them.

“ So what have we done for them lately, Chief?”

Santiva exaggeratedly scratched behind his ear and said, “Duuuh… well… ahh… hmmmm.”

“ I hope you didn’t use that line with them!” She was now laughing. He shook his head, smiling, playing with the lit candle in the bottle that was their centerpiece. “No, that’s what I told the press.”

They laughed together now.

“ You can bet I talked you up, Jess. They were cheered to have our forensics capabilities, and I promised that our Behavioral Science Division profile of both killer and victim type would be circulated among them all. I strongly urged, called for, pleaded for a central clearinghouse and a task force to be put together in which FBI, state and local officials would cooperate, sharing and pooling information.”

“ And how’d that go over?”

“ The PR cop liked the idea “

She laughed and knowingly nodded.

“ Said it was something they could feed the press, show the outside that the MPD was doing something constructive. Said the Herald’s been raking their rocks… raking them over the coals.”

They ordered and ate a wonderful meal, Jessica enjoying the native grouper, sautfed in garlic and butter. Santiva, the philistine, had filet mignon, despite her protest that he could get steak in D.C.

“ I can get fish in D.C., too.”

“ Not fish native to these waters,” she countered. “Don’t tell me how to eat, okay?” His Latin blood had been fired up by the idea that some woman was telling him what to order.

After dinner, Santiva, who was part Cuban and who knew Miami well, showed her some of the nightlife, taking her to South Beach Street, Cocowalk in Coconut Grove, showing off the Art Deco regions and Little Havana. In Little Havana, she learned why Miami was called the Capital of Latin America. It was wild, raw and romantic all at once, their trip punctuated by perpetual stops all along the way for small cups of cafe Cubano. They visited Ayestaran, El Meson Catellano, Malaga and Casa Juancho, all in that order, and she had to keep up with Eriq. Some of the furnishing and the Art Deco seemed out of time, as if 1950 still held sway here.

Miami was every bit the wild, raucous city that it was purported to be-a multifaceted city, a place of dizzying, dancing lights, too many signs, too many twisting, confusing streets and other more sinister mysteries. It was an international city, filled as it was with the fashions, foods and faces of many nationalities, but the Cuban influence-at least in the circles Santiva took her-was most strongly evident at every turn.

One place where they had drinks appeared to be full of Mafia types who suspiciously eyed them the whole time. Santiva left her alone for a moment and bullied right up to the head man of this “tribe,” flashing his badge, talking loudly and holding back nothing, explaining why he was in the city. Soon he and the others were talking like old friends, with Eriq repeatedly pointing at Jessica as if she were some prize he’d won in a raffle.

He’s just playing his part, getting on their good side, she kept telling herself, but she didn’t care for being made to feel like a piece of merchandise. She had read a line once from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edna Buchanan of the Miami Herald that called Miami home to big-league football, basketball, baseball and motorists who’d kill for a parking space or simply to prove quien es mas macho. She wondered if that wasn’t exactly what Santiva was trying to prove here tonight, just what a tough guy he was, or if there wasn’t some other hidden agenda. The strangers wanted to know where Eriq and his family had originated, what part of Cuba. Eriq didn’t tell them that he was born in Sioux City, Iowa, but rather bullshitted his way through, having learned Cuban geography long ago.

By the time Eriq returned to Jessica, where she sat all alone at her table, Jessica had had enough of bar-hopping and dancing, but he insisted they have one last dance.

“ For mis amigos,” he said, pointing. He then turned back and said conspiratorially, “Make me look good in their eyes. It’s importante.”

She shook her head, sighed heavily and stood, replying, “This better produce something, Eriq. I’ve been on my feet all day.”

He swept her up in his arms and moved her about the dance floor with a grace and panache she didn’t know he possessed. The Latin in him had surfaced fully, and she found herself twirling and dancing to a fast-paced mamba that steadily increased in tempo as the music from a live band threatened to blow out the walls. When the music finally came to an abrupt halt, Jessica felt as if she ought to have a rose between her teeth, but the “hombres” didn’t seem to mind the omission as they roared their approval, some high-fiving others.

Eriq waved to them as he and Jessica made for the door.

“ What was that all about?”

‘ ‘ They know every fishing fleet, cutter and pleasure craft that comes and goes from the ports here, and how a manifest is doctored and who gets paid off and-”

“ I thought we had the Port Authority Police for that.”

“ — and if we can get them on our side… well, let me put it this way: They have more eyes than do the police.”

Both Eriq and Jessica knew that the majority of victims had last been seen at one of the countless oyster bars and pier restaurants around the state, and that the killer might well be coming and going via the waterways. “Well, the more the merrier,” Jessica finally conceded.

“ If this guy is using a boat as his killing ground, maybe someone in the Cuban community has seen something odd somewhere along the line.”

“ I get the picture, but Eriq, I’m beat and I have to get an early start tomorrow with the MPD guys and the M.E. so-”

“ Coudriet, yes. Don’t be intimidated by him.” Eriq handed the valet his car tag and the young man in white jacket and tie rushed off for their car, leaving them standing before the Havana Tocador nightclub.

“ Me, intimidated by the M.E.?” A light sea breeze lifted Jessica’s now damp hair from her brow. The night air felt deliciously cool.

“ Yes, well, I understand he’s something of a giant, physically.”

“ He’s no taller than you, Eriq, and he vaguely resembles Andy Griffith when he was sheriff of Mayberry, and he’s about as folksy, and he has freckles.”

“ All that and red hair. I can picture it, but what I meant was his professional stature. Don’t let his professional stature-”

“ Influence me? Not to worry, Eriq.” She then asked, “What does it mean, Tocador?”

“ Good move regarding Coudriet, but he’s very good at what he does. He’s your senior by fifteen years, and he is used to being looked up to, or so I’m told.”

“ Most tall people are. What does the name of the nightclub mean? Havana Tocador?” she repeated.

The car shot to a halt in front of them, and Eriq opened her door for her, tipped the valet and off they drove. “Tocador. It means one of two things.”

“ Yes?”

“ Boudoir, but it has also a sexual connotation as dessert.”

She looked askance at him, her eyes asking before her mouth, “No lie?”

“ Yeah,” he confessed, “I’m just teasing. Hey, before going back to our separate, lonely hotel cells, how about maybe-”

“ Cells? You call those rooms cells?”

“- how about a walk on beautiful Miami Beach?”

“ Eriq, Eriq… don’t you ever run out of steam? Wha- taya got, a sleep disorder or something? Insomnia or something?”

“ Something,” he muttered in return.

“‘ Cause that I can understand, but Eriq, it’s past two a.m., and I have to be in early tomorrow if I’m going to be in any kind of shape to duke it out again with the big guys, to stay ahead of Coudriet and company.”

“ All right, then… I will escort you back to your hotel and say good night like a decent fellow.”

His slight tone of irritation sounded both sweet and sophomoric at once, she thought, wondering just what was on his mind. He certainly had had enough to drink. “I did have a… an interesting time, Eriq, and I do appreciate your having shown me a side of the city I would not have seen otherwise.”

“ Don’t mention it. I had a good time, too.”

“ Frankly, in this town, I’m lost.”

“ So are several million others.”

A light sprinkle began, like the spray from a partially opened nozzle, and suddenly the streets were slick with water, reflecting car, billboard and neon lights, painting Miami in the fluid rainbow hues of quicksilver and mercury. Headlights flashed by them like speeding ghosts, and the dark interior of the car grew smaller, denser-an enclave against the artificial light of this place.

Eriq turned on both the radio and the defrost, clearing the fogged-up windows to the beat of a mellow Johnny Mathis song, a welcome respite after the noisy restaurant music.

Jessica laid her head back, trying to empty it of all thought, all pain, when out of nowhere Santiva said, “Look, I don’t think I’ve expressed my deep regret about your recent loss, Jessica, and I want to now.” He had had too much to drink. He was getting schmaltzy, his voice slurred, and she hadn’t any idea in the world what the hell he was talking about. “I’m extremely very sorry that Parry took that bullet.”

“ What the hell are you talking about, Eriq?”

“ I was told that this guy you were seeing, that you were going to chuck everything for, was shot in the line of duty, killed.”

“ When? When did you hear this?”

“ Two weeks ago. It was going around Quantico.”

“ That’s the craziest piece of bullshit I’ve heard in a year.”

“ Then it didn’t happen? But I was under the impression you were… that you two were… and then suddenly you’re back as if nothing had happened, so I asked around and somebody said-”

“ Somebody’s full of shit, Eriq.” She gulped back the rest of her reply, not knowing what it ought to be, and she fought back hot tears. “It’s rather old news now, Eriq, but we simply broke up. Nobody… no one was shot. At least no one that I love… not this year…” She imagined that someone had somehow scrambled the story of Otto Bou- tine’s death with the story of her recent breakup with James Parry, and that somehow Parry’s obituary had been written. As Mark Twain would’ve said, the reports of Parry’s death were greatly exaggerated. “Can we now get back to the hotel, please?” she asked.

He drove on, saying something inane about having to use a rental, that the dummies in the bureau hadn’t been organized enough to get him a radio car, “but that’s going to change tomorrow!”

After this, the silence between them was like lead inside glass. When they got back to the beautifully lit palace of the Fontainebleau, he parked the car and grabbed her hand. ‘ ‘In the interest of doing a good job down here, I’m going to support you in every way possible, Jess.”

“ Thanks, Eriq. You’re doing fine.” She wondered what he meant by in every way possible.

“ Jess, I’m faxing all we have first thing tomorrow. Anything else I can use in the report back to Quantico?”

“ I can’t be certain, Eriq but…” She hesitated.

“ Go on, what?”

“ They were strangled, that’s certain, but I have a sixth sense about this guy.”

“ Whataya mean?”

“ I have to run some tests on the Norris body first, but I’ve got a sensation that this guy is very controlled, and that he wouldn’t be satisfied to just kill his victim by strangulation or drowning. Not this guy.”

“ What’re you getting at?”

“ I think-and it’s just conjecture until I can run some tissue samples, check out the lungs, that sort of thing-but it’s just possible that he watches his victims drown, to get a full charge; you know, watching their struggles in the water.”

“ Can you prove that? Damn, if you could prove that, once we get this sicko-scumbag-bastard into custody, it’d go a long way toward the death penalty with a Florida jury.”

“ I think I can prove it, yes.”

They walked from the lot to the hotel foyer, where Jessica said good night.

Eriq again apologized. “I’m sorry about my blunder earlier, for my error regarding Jim Parry.”

“ Forget it, Eriq, and get some rest. You’re going to need all the rest you can get for this case.” She started straight for the elevator and her room.

Once alone, Jessica kicked off her shoes and tore away her clothes, anxious for a shower and rest. She walked to the bath, where she and ran the hot water, catching a glimpse of her slim body in the quickly fogging mirror. She watched the smooth film of condensation create a mosaic of the mirror-lines, veins, arteries of condensation forming nectarlike before her body, erasing her, making a ghost of her before her own eyes. She gave a thought to Allison Norris’s last involuntary pose before the camera; somewhere in the thick protocol and information on the victim, Jessica had read that she was a part-time model, so she had worked as daddy’s little girl in the boat sales showroom, just waiting to be discovered by Hollywood East- Orlando. Sadly, her final photographs taken on this earth found her the victim of a cruel death which robbed her of beauty and dignity, her backdrop the Miami city morgue.

Now all that Jessica could see in the fog-laden mirror were her hands reflecting back at her where she reached out to touch the intangible image of her self lost inside that mirror. She wondered how lost Allison Norris must have felt the night she died.

Jessica tore herself from the mirror and stepped toward the shower. She tried to shake off the dark, dreary images by recalling to mind her lover, Jim Parry. She gave Jim a long and thoughtful moment, recalling the warmth, the gentleness they had shared, the explosive sex that was beyond any lovemaking she had ever known. She arched her body toward his memory, the memory of his touch. In her waking dream, she pressed her lips to his and all of an instant, she was making passionate love to him again. It was a deep, abiding love which rivaled the Hawaiian trade winds in sheer intensity and duration.

She recalled how deliciously their lovemaking had progressed, gaining momentum, getting better, better, better each time she found herself in his naked embrace. The loving went in measured point-counterpoint fashion, an unfolding melodic composition, a choir of rising and falling crescendo with the ebb and flow of the midnight-blue waters on the black-sand beaches of Maui. For a brief moment, she recalled how she and Jim had become one out there on the beach, not only with one another but with their primeval setting, and how they had flown together, having become the very air they breathed in and out of one another.

That morning on the beach, she’d awakened and begun to tease, saying, “Now that’s the way to welcome a girl to paradise, James Parry.”

He had laughed lightly, taking her again in his arms and kissing her in response. Then he’d said, “I’ve loved every moment of our time together, Jess.”

Looking around at the empty little room she now stood in, Jessica wondered if she’d been wrong to stay away from Jim’s recently arranged and fully bogus funeral, the one the gossipmongers had created for the gullible likes of Santiva. Perhaps she ought to’ve hopped a jet for Hawaii, shown up unexpectedly with a wreath and a bottle of cognac so they could toast his demise. With Jim ostensibly dead, their lovers’ quarrel might have evaporated.

She laughed at the idea. Then she stepped into the shower and felt the warm spray drain the excesses of the day from her bones.

No doubt there was talk about what kind of woman she was to’ve not attended James Parry’s funeral. She wondered if he’d been cremated, his ashes dropped over Mount Haleakala on Maui from a police helicopter, or if his body had simply been laid out in the bottom of an outrigger canoe and cast off into the cradling arms of the forever sea. Either way, she had missed the romantic ceremony and was, no doubt, being crucified for her stony heart.

She wondered if Jim knew he was dead; wondered if he’d seen or heard his obituary reported, and if so if he would immediately call her to allay any concerns she might have? Most likely he’d get a good howling laugh out of the entire matter, she told herself as she lathered her hair and body with soap. Perhaps he could no more deal with the greatly exaggerated reports of his death than she. On the other hand, it gave him a damned good excuse to contact her, so why hadn’t he?

Perhaps there was a guiding hand in all the world’s frenetic activity and business-maybe. A hand reaching down into the lives of individuals like herself, a hand that kept turning her in this single-minded direction; a hand directing her, telling her that she was meant for this one path, this single road, and that she must travel it alone. That there was no room for Jim; no room for her personal happiness and peace of mind.

Perhaps her star, the one she was bom under, made of her some sort of crusader of right and justice, perhaps even divine vengeance, or at least intervention. But maybe that was sheer and absolute nonsense, like all else; certainly it was stretching a point to call it divine, but there did seem to be a hand that sometimes not so gently forced her back to her never-ending toil as an FBI medical examiner, forced her onto the trail of the most brutal monsters roaming the darkest corners of the planet.

So here she was again… showering, toweling off, readying for bed at the moment, yet readying also for an arduous search for a sadistic, unfeeling sociopath with a fixation on young women and his own brutal, ritualistic game of destruction; a psycho who believed in his heart and brain that he was placed on this earth for the sole purpose of meting out a brand of justice all of his own creation, an evil passed on to him by some demonic force that controlled his intentions, his actions and his perverted pleasure- seeking. He, like her, was on a mission; he created her mission as he wreaked death on others.

Allison Norris had not stood a chance against such a foul creature as stalked her, at least not while she was alive; but maybe, ironically, she stood a chance against the monster now that she was dead. Allison had come to them-to Jessica in particular-washing up on South Beach that bleached-white morning here in Miami, followed by her missing part, deposited before Dr. Wainwright’s astonished gaze from the gut of a shark some forty miles south of the city.

Allison had somehow demanded to be seen, to be ignored no longer. She demanded it here and in Islamorada. She demanded justice, and in her death, she held up a dirtied, bloodied and opaque-looking glass through which Jessica must now step.

But for now, weary and needful of sleep, it took all Jessica could do to step from the shower, towel off and find her bed. She stretched out, her body pleading for REM sleep. However, Jessica’s mind, helplessly driven, played over the events of the day. and Allison in particular.

Allison’s body-such as it remained-on ice at the MPD morgue, had spoken its death song to Jessica Coran. Why else was Jessica here, why else than to take up this young woman’s haunting cause? Allison Norris deserved to rest in peace. She didn’t deserve to waft about in some ethereal purgatory, to remain so much flotsam to haunt those left in the wake of her sadistic murder. But the sheer duration and intensity of Allison’s suffering wouldn’t allow anything but a purgatory at this point, and nothing would change that- not until her killer was brought down. Only in some measure of justice might Allison and her family find peace, along with other victims who’d suffered at the hands of the Night Crawler, or Tidewater Killer as the phantom trawler of souls was also being called-not to mention future and potential victims of this fiend: young women who might otherwise live long, fruitful lives if this monster were caught, put away or put out of his primeval misery.

It was up to Jessica Coran to put an end to this monster’s patterned, ritualistic assassinations.

And on this troubled thought, her eyelids firmly but independently closed, her brain seeking out and finding slumber, her soul patiently waiting like a Nostradamus come to dream visions from the fabric of moonlight, mist, smoke and mirrors.