Grave Instinct

SIXTEEN

Even in the darkness and the storm, Jervis Swantor had easily maneuvered his yacht, equipped with the best radar and sonar instruments in the land, through the treacherous canal. He had more trouble locating and docking the yacht in the boathouse than he had with the river and the canal. Down below, he'd re-chained Kenyon in his cabin, placing his tools just out of the man's reach. Now all he had to do was find Lara, whose small transport craft was tied to the dock. Once he found her, he would introduce her to his new friends Grant and Philip.

Knowing that the authorities were extremely close, and that they likely already knew of his final destination, he must act fast. Once the boat was secured, he climbed off and onto the boathouse landing. From there, he could see the house. A light was on in the master bedroom. From all appearances, Lara was home despite her ignoring the phone. Any servants would have gotten off the island by nightfall, especially with such a storm brewing.

Fighting the driving rain, Swantor made his way up the long flight of cedar steps to the house, lit by the occasional lightning bolt. Soaked, wild-eyed, he stared up at the bedroom light again. Some shadow moved across the room. Lara, he decided, unable to sleep. She had always hated storms.

Swantor meant to make his way around toward the back of the house. He had kept a key to the rear door.

“ Now, sweetheart, time for judgment day.”

Her dog, a Jack Russell terrier named Opal, began barking from her doghouse. He went to the dog and strangled it with his bare hands, silencing it. “Never liked that dog,” he muttered to the corpse.

Sheriff Danby Potter, fifty-nine, approached the house via the river directly across from the mainland, knowing the dock area well. His uniform covered by a yellow rain slicker, he warmed his insides with the moonshine liquor he sipped at. From what he had gathered over the phone with Sorrento, it appeared that Dr. Jervis Swantor was the butcher that the FBI was in search of. He knew Swantor on sight, and he knew the man's boat. He didn't need any pimply-faced young squirt of an FBI cop telling him how to proceed, and when he saw that there was no other boat at Mrs. Swantor's place other than her own, he knew he'd arrived in time.

He'd tried to telephone her from his cell phone, but he'd been unable to get through, getting a busy signal instead. He had pictured the worse, that Swantor was already inside the house, that he'd taken the receiver off the hook. This worried Potter.

He put in beside Mrs. Swantor's transport. He'd seen her car parked on the mainland at the marina. Grand Isle was a no-cars-allowed island, serviced by water boats for mail delivery and medical emergencies, and sometimes a medevac chopper was called in from upstate. He wanted to believe that she had taken the phone off the hook herself, perhaps wanting to get some sleep. If so, she'd not gotten the warning from the FBI people. He hoped to find her simply asleep with the phone off the hook.

Potter had heard the rumors of just how nasty her divorce from Swantor had gone, and that she was in a bad way. He now tied his launch to the wharf, got out onto the slippery deck and hitched up his britches and gun belt. As he did so, he thought he saw movement in the shadows up at the house, just going around back, followed by barking and then silence. He turned and secured his boat better against the wind and storm. It was a night no one should be out in, he told himself, but then he was the only law for a good fifty miles. He stared up at the house and studied it for any further sign of movement and checked his watch which read 7:05 P.M.

Must've been the dog, he told himself. Then he heard something odd on the wind, something like muffled shouting. Was it coming down from the house? No, his ear told him it was emanating from the boathouse.

He stepped inside to find the enormous yacht the Coast Guard was looking for. Dr. Swantor is here!

He slipped back out into the rain and telephoned the house again. Still no answer.

Again he heard a voice coming from the interior of the yacht inside the boathouse. It sounded as if someone were hurt somewhere in the bowels of the big boat. He wondered if the sounds might not be Swantor's hostage, the woman he'd heard about, abducted in New Orleans.

Potter climbed aboard, and made his way into the depths of the luxurious boat when his cellular phone rang, his emergency line. He cursed it for having frightened him, and he shut it down. No one could have a greater emergency than he had right here on his hands, he told himself.

Naked, James Harris had kept going down the hallway, despite Lara's objections for him to not leave her alone in the storm. He shouted back over his shoulder that he was hungry, and that they needed more wine, and that she had to confront her fears. He dripped — water and bubbles the length of the hallway and down the stairs and out into the kitchen. Stark naked, he began rifling the refrigerator when he thought he heard a key turning in a lock.

Looking across the darkened room and through a window on the back porch, James saw someone letting himself in. James grabbed hold of a bottle of wine and positioned himself crouching behind the kitchen cabinets where he felt himself shaking, fearful.

As he held that frozen pose, James Harris heard the door open and close, heard the footsteps as they neared him, and watched, unable to move or act, as the large man wandered through the kitchen and out to the stairwell, going up, going toward Lara. James didn't recognize the man but guessed that it was the ex. Lara had complained that he had harassed her throughout the divorce proceedings, and here he was, the bastard.

Then he saw the silhouette of a gun in the man's hand. James silently cursed, wondering what he should do, what he could do, but he was without an answer. One pretends to know what one will do in such a crisis, but one can't really know what one will do until one is in such a crisis, his mind said. Fuck that, he told himself, what do I fucking do?

He'd never imagined that such a crisis, if it were to come up, would catch him nude, but even if he had clothes on, he suspected he'd be just as paralyzed.

He held back, trying to muster his courage. Hadn't Lara said the guy had strange and bizarre ideas about getting even with her? What would he do to me? the new lover wondered.

When he stood up, James gazed out at the storm and down at his naked body. The only way off the island was Lara's transport, and that would strand her, but he could say he was going for help. He imagined sneaking about Lewistown in his birthday suit.

He took a deep breath of air and turned back to the interior of the house, still clutching the bottle of wine. Not much of a weapon, he thought. What the hell do I do after I hit him over the head with the bottle?

Then he began searching the kitchen for something to defend Lara and himself with. As he quietly searched for a knife, he lifted the telephone off the wall in the kitchen as well, dialing 9-1-1, but the line was dead.

Sheriff Danby Potter moved toward the sound of a man in anguish. As he did so, he passed through the living area on the boat, amazed at what he found. Computer screens displayed a room with a woman who had been butchered, lying chained to a bed, the sight making Potter ill, a healthy fear of the monster he was now chasing coming over him. On another screen, in another room, paced a man chained by one ankle.

Potter recalled the phantom figure he'd seen up at the house. The man on the screen, alive and in pain, was not Jervis Swantor. Potter had seen Swantor at such places as the Piggly Wiggly grocery store on the mainland on more than one occasion. He had heard rumors that Mrs. Swantor had taken a lover, and he had seen a man slip from sight when he had visited Mrs. Swantor the day before to ask after her husband's whereabouts. Potter now wondered if the man chained on the boat might not be Mrs. Swantor's lover, and he bloody figure in the other room with half a face, poor Mrs. Swantor.

He realized now he had stepped into a horror house, and he needed backup. He saw that the call he'd cut off had been from the FBI on the Coast Guard cutter who had called for Mrs. Swantor's number. He hit return dial to reach them. Meanwhile, breathless, he'd made his way toward the cabin to help the man there, stopping at the door when he got through to Sorrento.

He told Sorrento where he was and what he had found. “I need you people to get here as fast as you can. I think Swantor's inside the house. Phone line to the house is dead now. Think I'll be safe till you get here. It's too late for his wife. Located her mangled, disfigured body on the yacht, and he's chained her lover here, too. Can you get here before daybreak?”

Sorrento shouted back, “No, I mean yes, we can, but Potter, you need to get off that boat and to a safe distance. And whatever you do, don't touch anything on that boat or release-”

“ He's already killed his wife! Cut her head open here on the boat.”

“ No, that's not the wife, and the chained man-”

But Potter wasn't listening. “And he's got some poor guy locked in a room down here. I'm going to get him free. Get him to the mainland, and we'll wait to hear from you there.”

“ No, no, Potter, don't go near the other man! That's-”

But Potter had cut Sorrento off. He pushed open the door and said, “Don't worry, son. I'm going to get you out of here.”

“ The leg iron,” said Kenyon. “This maniac plans to cut me up like he did the woman. There's a key. Find the key.”

Potter rushed back to the living room area, frantic and searching everywhere for the key. He finally located it in a drawer below the computer, and looking up, he again saw the mutilated body on the screen but he could not look too closely at the horror. He grimaced and then rushed back to Kenyon. His phone began ringing again, but he ignored it for the moment.

“ Swantor's a madman,” said Potter.

“ Hurry! He could come back at any moment,” said Kenyon. “That maniac wants me to suffer before he kills me,” he continued as Potter worked the ankle bracelet off Kenyon.

“ My name's Potter. Sheriff from over on the mainland,” he said, still stooping, tossing the ankle chain away when he grabbed for his ringing phone. As he opened the line, Potter's phone was drowned out by the sound and pain of the bone cutter that split open the back of his skull, the thing sinking its teeth into the old sheriff s brain.

Potter went down like a stone statue, his every fiber stiff, his eyes thrown wide open.

Kenyon said to the dead man, “Thanks old-timer. Now, where's that motherfucking Swantor?”

Kenyon soon stood on the boat deck staring up at the mansion with its lone light. Bone cutter in hand, his angry features were lit up when a lightning bolt streaked across the sky overhead. “Swantor,” he muttered, staring up the long flight of stairs that spiraled their way up the hillside and to the house.

He began his long walk up the steps, thinking of what Swantor had done to him, how the man had ruined his plans, how the man had exposed him and used him. The bastard had displayed Kenyon cutting open a woman and feeding on her still-warm brain. Grant had had no control to stop Phillip at that moment, and certainly Phillip had had no control over himself once Swantor provided the venue to feed after withholding Selese from him for so long. By then, the hunger had again taken over, and the Seeker had no resistance once she was within his grasp.

By now the murder video was being beamed worldwide. Even if he could escape the FBI, he could not hide anywhere in the world, thanks to Swantor.

He had only one thought now. He wanted to kill Swantor and feed on his brain as his last act before being apprehended. Until then, he would remain here on this island to await the inevitable end.

Jessica impatiently paced the pilothouse as Captain Quarels's ship moved against the storm, the small crew pushing the cutter to its limits. Every man aboard had heard the news of what had happened on the computer screen, and a healthy hatred of their prey-both Kenyon and Swantor- had welled up inside them all.

Sorrento's phone call had determined that indeed Sheriff Potter had gone out to Swantor's island home, and that he'd found Swantor's missing yacht. But Sorrento's final call to Potter returned an ugly sound, the sound of the bone saw.

They had long since left the canal behind them and were now in the safer waters of Grand Isle Bay.

“ How close are we?” she asked the captain.

“ Quite close, a matter of twenty minutes perhaps. I'll have a launch ready for you and Agent Sorrento to board. I can't risk the cutter in this weather, and I don't think you want us taking time to make depth soundings. It can get extremely shallow along the banks.”

“ Where do we board?” asked Sorrento, turning from watching the storm.

“ Below decks. My first mate, Mr. Konrath, will guide you and take you ashore with two of my best men.”

A tall, uniformed officer with a boyish face, Konrath stepped forward, handing them each a rain slicker and saying, “This way, please.” Like the FBI agents, Konrath was armed and prepared to use deadly force.

Jessica and Sorrento followed him out into the storm, down the steps and past a bulkhead, and finally through a hatch and down into the ship. While topside, they had seen men working to lower a boat over the side. Konrath now directed them to an interior hatchway. On the other side of this door, they heard the pounding water and the thud of the lowered lifeboat.

Konrath checked his watch, went to a nearby phone and called up to the captain. “We're in position, Captain.”

“ Stand by,” Quarels said. “The island has come into sight. Searching for the right house and dock.”

“ We'll stand by.”

Moments passed like hours as the storm slammed the lifeboat into the side of the hull and they waited for the go sign.

Finally, the captain rang their position. “Konrath, we've located the dock-a police boat is tied there. It's directly off our starboard bow.”

“ We're on our way then, sir.”

“ Good luck and be careful. Keep in radio contact… Out.”

The two armed guards stood nearby. Konrath indicated the hatchway door, and one of the Coast Guard men turned the wheel on the hatch, and in a moment it was pushed open. Rain and wind stormed through the hatch, making it difficult to see, and just below the hatch, the lifeboat swung wildly in and out against the side of the cutter. Overhead, crewmen worked to hold tow cables firm to keep the boat from thrashing about wildly, but the cable was being given a battle by the wind and water.

Joe Konrath went first, leaping across the sometimes short and sometimes gaping space between the large cutter and the small lifeboat. Jessica was then helped across by Konrath onboard the smaller craft and Sorrento from behind. Finally, Sorrento joined them, along with the two armed crewmen. The only light Jessica could see at this vantage point was that coming from the hatchway they'd exited. A moment later even that small beacon was shut off when a crewman, struggling with the door, finally closed it from the inside.

The tow cables came off the boat and rattled upward and disappeared like angry snakes. The smaller craft bobbed and whirled uncontrollably at first, but in a moment the crewmen, under Konrath's orders, had manned the oars and stabilized the boat. Though they had an engine on the boat, Konrath suggested they go in as quietly as possible. The cutter overhead of them had long since shut down its lights.

When they pulled silently into the now-crowded dock, Konrath ordered the line secured. The nose of the craft nestled into the front of the dock and they disembarked from there. First Mate Joseph Konrath shouted over the wind, ordering his two men to follow his lead. He said to Sorrento and Jessica, “I'm taking my men with me up those stairs and to the house.”

“ Wait here until we've had a chance to check out the yacht,” said Sorrento, urging Jessica into the boathouse. The two of them climbed aboard Swantor's craft.

“ We've got to locate Potter. If he's still alive, we can get him medical assistance on the cutter,” she said.

“ And if he's dead, it's my damned fault. If only I could’ve gotten him to listen to me!” complained Sorrento.

“ Yeah, if the old fool had only listened to you.”

Sorrento insisted on leading the way down into the yacht. The rainwater dripping from their slickers puddled and ran down the steps ahead of them.

His gun in the ready position, Sorrento lost his footing, going to his back and sliding down the final stair and into the living room area. Jessica was blocked by his body. If someone should come from the control room the other side of the stairs, Sorrento was a dead man. She leapt over him and turned, her gun pointed into the control room.

“ Nobody here,” she told Sorrento.

Mike made it to his feet, his gun still held firm. Jessica looked about the room they stood in, filled with computer equipment and two screens she remembered well from Florida. Splashed across one screen were the remains of the Skull-digger's second-to-last victim, Selese Montoya. Jessica gasped anew at the sight and shut the screen off.

“ Oh, Christ… look at this,” said Sorrento, staring at the second screen.

Jessica gazed at the prone body in a yellow rain slicker with the letters that spelled out SHERIFF in black. The man's head was smeared with blood and bone that had caked his hair. Potter lay on his stomach, the back of his head splayed open, the wound obviously the work of the Skull-digger's bone cutter. “Sonofabitch,” Jessica muttered.

“ Was the old fool deaf? Why didn't he listen to me? Why'd he go near Kenyon?”

Sorrento went deeper into the bowels of the ship, kicking open each cabin door, his gun pointed and ready. Jessica sensed that no one but the dead were aboard. She held back, waiting for Sorrento.

When he was satisfied that there was no one else aboard, Mike relaxed his grip on the gun, put it away and returned to her.

“ Both Swantor and Kenyon must be up at the house. Potter must have helped Kenyon to get free, and that”- he indicated the screen displaying Potter's body-”that's what Potter got for his trouble. Damned old man. Why didn't he stop talking long enough to listen to reason?”

“ Shut it off,” Jessica said of the screen, but Mike continued to stare at Potter's body.

“ It's not your fault, Mike.” Jessica cut off the image on the second screen.

“ Tell that to my priest.”

“ You couldn't have predicted this. All you asked of the man was to give you a phone number. He wanted to play hero, get her off the island. You begged him to wait until we got here, and you tried to tell him to stay away from Kenyon.”

“ Let's get up to the house before these butchers kill someone else.”

“ Shoot to kill,” she told him.

He took a deep breath and nodded. “Count on it.”

Jessica and Sorrento made their way topside and off the death ship. Stepping out of the boathouse, Jessica and Sorrento found themselves in a renewed, vigorous downpour and alone. Konrath had taken his men up toward the house.

They rushed up the rain-slicked cypress boards of the stairs leading to the mansion. Jessica stared up at the house as she went. The place was cloaked in a kind of ethereal green darkness from all the ivy on its walls and the foliage all around the structure. All the lights were out except for one that appeared on the third floor. Ahead of them, they saw the cautious Coast Guard men inching ever closer to the house.

“ Wish we knew the lay of this place,” said Jessica, near breathless. She slipped but caught the handrail and continued. Sorrento had gotten twenty yards ahead of her. He stopped and turned, asking if she were OK.

“ Keep moving. I'm fine,” she called back softly. Looks like G.I. Joe Konrath intends a frontal assault on the place.”

“ He should've waited for us like we asked.” “Everyone wants to be a hero, bring down the Skull-digger.”