Killer Instinct

SIXTEEN

He knew that he suffered from two rare diseases, both of which made him angry and both of which made him a blood-drinker. He had read all there was to read on his conditions. He knew that his adrenal cortex was steadily atrophying, and that only cortisone helped. It was a hormone that regulated the electrolyte balance between sodium and potassium in the body. An imbalance caused progressive fatigue, weight loss and eventual death. At one time Addison's disease was fatal, but now you took cortisone to replace the body's supply. But the damnable cortisone caused weird fatty deposits in his back, turning him into a kind of Quasimodo, bending him over. It showed up in his buttocks and his cheeks as well, giving him a John Kennedy or Jim Belushi appearance about the face. He had gone to a doctor friend who had X-rayed his pituitary gland at the base of his skull, the gland that controlled the adrenals. The pituitary was shriveled, the adrenals tiny. The disease had done its work, marking him both inside and out.

Other symptoms were anxiety, depression and an acute sensitivity to cold.

Blood, he reasoned, helped to hold the disease in check, as it warmed him both physically and spiritually.

Blood also helped combat his second disorder, porphyria, called by some the vampire disease, in which large amounts of white blood corpuscles were wildly manufactured in the bone marrow, leaving red corpuscles in short supply. The bone marrow defect led to a lack of heme, a pigment in the blood's oxygen carrying cells as well, and this gave him a pallor. Occult historians believed that porphyries attacked and drank the blood of others in a desperate attempt to get healthy hemoglobin into their systems. Nonsense, he thought. If that were the only reason he killed, he could stop tomorrow, go into a clinic and get all the hemoglobin he required-and he had done exactly that on more than one occasion. He knew a lot of doctors. He went to them whenever he could. He liked to watch them work, and, for the most part, he liked them.

A key symptom of his disorder was a sensitivity to sunlight, which caused scabs, scarring and sores over his skin. His gums, too, had receded as a result of the disease, exposing his teeth to such a degree that they appeared to the casual observer to be fangs.

Some people had cancer. Some were afflicted with other debilitating diseases. He counted himself lucky. His diseases could be held in check, both by cortisone, which was in plentiful and cheap supply, and by blood.

He had earlier packed the van, before the sun had come up. He had clients to see in Indiana, up and down the state, and he might get over to Ohio and down to Kentucky, if he could manage it. On the company car phone, he kept in touch, but the range wasn't as far-reaching as he and his van. He placed his heavy cases into the van, his samples, all the various brochures and catalogues provided by the company. He then stocked the rear of the van with his own, private goods, the items necessary for taking the blood from another Candy or another Renee. All he needed now was opportunity, and he would help opportunity along, knowing that it would present itself somewhere in Indiana tonight.

It was midmoming when he pulled from the driveway, waving to a few neighbors who, retired, had nothing to do beyond tending to crabgrass and their tomato plants. Somewhere a dog barked.

He pulled from the little subdivision of houses onto the main road, then took Interstate 294 in its wide arch around the sprawling city. He wanted to find a good place in Indiana to post his letter to Dr. Jessica Coran and eventually mailed it from the small post office in Hammond. People stared at him with his hat and sunglasses on, since it had become overcast. He got back into the dark interior of his van and hid behind the black-tinted windows. From there he watched a young woman pull up, get out of her car and go into the post office. She was, to him, a bucket of blood. Everyone walking before his gaze was a bucket of blood. But young girls were prettier buckets. He stayed long enough to watch the girl exit, get into her car to leave. He fell in behind her, fantasizing about doing her.

But he had a schedule to keep, and he knew that schedules could be checked, and so when the red Firebird ahead of him turned off onto a residential street, he kept pace with the traffic going back toward the interstate and Indianapolis.

At least the letter got off.

He switched on his cassette player and listened to the Blue Danube to combat the jackhammers and noise of busy Hammond. Hammond was bustling with sound and pollution and he hurried to the interstate. But he was careful not to go through any yellow lights, to lane-change or to cut anyone off. He certainly didn't want to be placed in Hammond, Indiana, by some stupid traffic ticket on the same day that a certain letter was mailed to the FBI's premier forensics investigator. If he was going to play games with the authorities, rub their faces in their helplessness against him, he meant to do it right.

On the seat alongside him was his brown leather briefcase. Inside the case were his special blood-tapping tools. Behind his chair was his cooler, stocked with empty jars anxious to be refilled.

Dr. Grubber was waiting for him, and following that a new client in the Indianapolis area.

The sunlight had not been harsh or glaring when he got out of the van to post the letter, and yet it still had hurt his sensitive skin and eyes; it'd bring the sores and scabs if he was not careful. Dr. Leonard Grubber would supply him with more of his concoction of proteins and carbohydrates which the man claimed was the best single source of relief from porphyria as well as Addison's disease. Grubber had been seeing to his needs since he met the man his first day on the Indiana run. Grubber was fascinated by his case and wanted to do a case study. It took a long time for the confidences and assurances to be bonded, but now he saw Grubber as a harmless medicine man who wanted to conduct his experiments. It was a trade-off, a kind of symbiotic relationship. He'd give Grubber the use of his body for study, if Grubber provided him with the medications he required to hold the diseases that ravished his body in check.

Grubber was, in fact, the closest thing he had to a friend.

Grubber's records were interesting. He had picked them up once and read about himself. Grubber had not been able to get the research and his paper published in any medical journals yet, but he kept trying.

He found his way back to the interstate and pulled into traffic. If he made good time, maybe he'd get lucky later on this evening.

Late in the day at Quantico, Teresa O'Rourke claimed that the killer lived in or around the Chicago area. This pinpointing of residence was important for several reasons, and despite her methods, everyone wanted to believe she was accurate. This would narrow the focus considerably. Records could be more easily checked, DMVs, registrations of all sorts. The Chicago FBI field offices were very professional, very good. Everyone was elated when O'Rourke demonstrated how she had arrived at Chicago. She had taken a radial scanner and had drawn circumferences of twenty, thirty, forty, fifty and one hundred miles from the kill sites, and all of them at the one-hundred-mile range intersected at or near Chicago.

It was late, however, and other than contact the bureau offices in Chicago, there was little else they could do tonight. Besides, everyone had plans to be at the wake for Marilyn Boutine. The meeting broke up with everyone having a job to do. Byrnes was to be a catcher-in-the-rye back at Wekosha, digging deeper into the life of one Candy Copeland, and to keep a watch on her haunts for anyone who might have known her. He would even go so far as to place a recording device on her headstone, he had said.

Schultz was to work with the newspapers in an attempt to stir the killer to some foolish action that might reveal more of his identity.

O'Rourke was to fly to Chicago to give the bureau there the details of the P.P. team's work, and to share the forensics information amassed against the killer.

Boutine and Jessica would remain in Quantico to coordinate any further “troop movements.” Everyone was feeling hopeful; everyone was sure that the noose was tightening, but everyone also feared the next telephone call from some law enforcement agency in need of FBI assistance on a Tort 9.

# # #

The phone call came while they were at the wake. People started disappearing early, Boutine telling them that he understood and would soon follow. Jessica stayed on with Boutine until he himself decided to put an abrupt and early end to the wake. There was too much at stake. News had come in from Zion, Illinois, of the discovery of a mutilation murder that fit the M.O. of their Tort 9 killer. Otto had put it out on every wire, and everyone in a law enforcement position in the nation, and particularly the Midwest, was watching, and while they'd had some sixty maybes, this one sounded like a certainty, down to the near spotless condition of a white to beige rug over which dangled the body from its heels from a chandelier cord. The chandelier had been torn down and cast into a heap in a corner. “I'll fly out tonight, Otto. No need for you to go,” she told him.

“ How're you going to get on without me?”

“ Our Chicago guy's have it. They'll be there.”

He looked back at the open casket, into the face of his dead wife, nodding. “Thanks, Jess, for being here for me. Can you arrange a flight and-”

' 'Leave it to me. You just see to what you must here, and I'll see you when I get back.”

She quickly made her way back to her place, packed and made the necessary calls. She'd be on a transport within the hour, military again. She had hoped to be able to avoid the uncomfortable military transport for the plusher Lears of the FBI, but these were all in use.

At the airfield she had another uncomfortable shock. Both Kaseem and Forsythe. They'd gotten the word on the Zion killing, and they had orders to proceed there themselves, and they had booked the same transport. She gnashed her teeth and managed a catlike grin when Kaseem extended his hand and said, “Looks as if we will be working together again.”

“ What is your interest in this case. Dr. Kaseem?”

Kaseem's eyes gave him away. He did hold some secret. The black orbs flashed for a millisecond, and Forsythe became uncomfortable and worked toward finding a seat.

“ There is something more to your interest in these vampire killings than you've told me, isn't there? Isn't there?”

“ It's a long story.”

“ We have a long flight ahead.”

He took a deep breath. “All right, we'll talk.”

During the flight, Kaseem painted a bizarre picture of a young medical technician in the marines who had a taste for blood. When caught at his peculiar addiction, the marine was removed from all medical areas, given other work to do. Stationed in West Germany in 1976, at the age of eighteen, still a private, a man named Davie Rosnich had successfully eluded military and civilian police after mur-dering a bunk mate in a bizarre fashion deep in a wooded area far from the base. Rosnich had convinced the other man that he was interested in him sexually, had convinced him to furlough the weekend with him and had then rendered him helpless, and finally took from the other man all of his blood.

“ To this day, Rosnich has eluded capture,” finished Captain Kaseem. “I… I was the man called in to examine the body. When I heard about your vampire killer in Wisconsin, I naturally became interested, and when I contacted my superiors, they contacted Leamy, and Leamy asked us in.”

“ Asked you in, I rather doubt.”

“ All right, so Leamy owed a favor. Nonetheless, we're here, and at least now you have a suspect.”

“ You should have told us about this suspect a long time ago.”

“ We did.”

“ Through whom?”

“ I am not at liberty to say.”

“ God damn you, Kaseem, you'd better get at liberty to say, or I'm calling your bloody superiors and Chief Leamy and anyone else I must! Now, who?”

Kaseem sputtered a name, saying, “Teres…”

“ Teres? Teresa? O'Rourke?”

“ Yes, Teresa O'Rourke.”

“ O'Rourke?” she repeated, dumbfounded for the moment.

“ She and I… we've been seeing each other for some time.”

She dropped her gaze, nodding. “Your search for Rosnich, has it zeroed in on Chicago as possibly his current stamping grounds?”

“ It has, yes.”

“ So O'Rourke is smarter than even she knows.”

Kaseem became indignant at this. “Look here, what is wrong with two law enforcement agencies working together?' '

“ Working together? Had you given us this information on Rosnich, we might have already done a blood check with military records on him, and a fingerprint check, and a-”

“ O'Rourke said she would see to all of that.”

“ She did?”

“ Yes, and it was my understanding that your forensics people have it.”

“ Christ, then why don't I know about it?”

“ I might assume you've not seen the forest for the trees.”

“ No, you may not. What I haven't seen has been kept from me. That you may be sure of.”

She stalked to the cockpit and demanded to use the comlink with the ground. She asked to be patched through to the forensics lab at Quantico, preferably John Thorpe. Thorpe was out. She was put through and recognized Dr. Zachary Raynack's voice on the other end asking how he might be of service.

“ You might begin by faxing every fucking thing you have on Davie Rosnich to Chicago and being damned certain, Doctor, that it is waiting for me there, you old sonofabitch!”

“ Now, just a minute, young woman-”

“ I am not your young woman, Doctor! I'm your boss, and if you can't live with that, if you think you can work around me, then you've got another think coming.”

“ I am carrying through only on what Chief Leamy had asked of me.”

“ Leamy, no. O'Rourke, yes.”

He was silent at the other end and she knew she had him. “Now, I want that information, in full, waiting for me when I get to Chicago. Fax it to our bureau there with a request it get to me in Zion. Do you follow, Doctor? Zach? Do you copy that?”

“ Yes, yes,” he grumbled, and hung up.

“ Bastard,” she muttered under her breath, seeing the two flight crewmen smiling at the show they were privy to. She stormed back to Kaseem. “Your girlfriend must want to crack this case very badly, Dr. Kaseem. She's quite an ambitious woman, isn't she?”

“ Teresa has only one goal, and that is the same as yours. We were not exactly welcomed in by you and Dr. Thorpe, and so I went to her. I see no problem with working around you if you are not interested in working with the military.”

“ AFIP, Doctor. Not the military. I have a great deal of respect for the military usually, but the AFIP tried once to ruin my father's reputation, and no, there's no love lost between us. As for cooperating, what were you doing in Iowa City, looking over my shoulder at that dead girl we had to exhume, knowing about this man Rosnich and not saying a word to me about it?”

“ Your attitude dictated my attitude, Dr. Coran.”

She soothed a bit. “How old would this Rosnich be now?”

“ Twenty-nine.”

“ The approximate age of our killer, possibly in Chicago, with some medical training. Christ, if a fingerprint or a blood sample links this man to the victims…” She allowed her thoughts to trail off. If O'Rourke got the killer, independent of Boutine, while Boutine was too involved with personal difficulties from being at his wife's bedside to burying her, O'Rourke would shine in Leamy's eyes. Otto had said there was some talk of his being forced into an early retirement, a rumor saying he was burned out. Had O'Rourke seen her chance and simply stepped into the breach, or had she started the rumors?

“ I want to see what photographs you have of Rosnich, and anything else you have on him,” she demanded of Kaseem.

“ Then we are finally working together?”

She felt her jaw tighten and her chin quiver. “Yes, if that's what it takes.” Uncanny was how she had felt about O'Rourke's pinpointing where the killer must live, and the other assessments she had made about him, including his age, and the reason they should go with profile three. If it was all based on Rosnich, it could well be the wrong man and the wrong profile. Otto must be told. Otto must deal with O'Rourke and patch up the shaky profile and the team itself.

She looked at the picture of the soldier turned killer in West Germany wondering how he had eluded police and had gotten to America, if indeed he was the vampire who found Annie Copeland in Wekosha, Wisconsin. The face was young and the eyes questioning in the photo that Kaseem handed her. The hair was wild, unkempt, and the mouth was set in a little, derisive half-smile at the cameraman. It was a military mug shot. Rosnich had been in the guardhouse more than once for fighting and thievery.

She tried to imagine what he would look like today. The photo almost masked a scar on his temple. Rosnich was bom in a suburb of Chicago called Wheaton. Could Wheaton be the home of the blood addict?

She asked Kaseem about the details of the killing in West Germany and the investigation itself. She was trying to tie these details to what she knew about the killer.

“ Was the victim hung upside down?”

“ By his heels, yes. That's what first attracted us to your case.”

“ Were the victim's tendons cut?”

“ No.”

“ What kind of knot was used?”

“ Sling knot.”

' 'And the slash, was it a left-handed cut or a right-handed cut?”

“ Left-handed.”

“ Was there an unusual absence of blood?”

“ The man drank his blood.”

“ How do you know that?”

“ He was seen doing so by some children hiding in the bushes.”

“ All right, but was the cut to the jugular a deep penetration, and was there much pooling of blood below the corpse?”

“ Sure, lots of blood, but that's only because the guy was just a kid, new at it. He hadn't thought it out. It was just a sudden, impulsive act that-”

“ But not so impulsive that he didn't plan it? He did lure the other man out there,” she countered.

“ We still believe it could be the same man.”

“ So it could be. According to the experts, there are maybe three hundred blood-drinkers in the U.S. and Canada, so he could as well not be our man.”

“ Experts? What experts?”

“ Otto Boutine. He knows more about Tort 9s than anyone.”

Kaseem nodded respectfully.

' 'Look, we can put out an all-points on your man, get an FBI artist on this photo, touch it up, age the guy appropriately, and maybe even get a bust made of him. If he is our killer, we'll do whatever's necessary to get him. This is not a contest to see who gets him first, Dr. Kaseem; it only matters that he is stopped.”

“ The military wants him.”

“ The FBI wants him.”

“ The two do not have to be mutually exclusive, Dr. Coran.”

“ Just the same, you people play false with me again, and you can forget any cooperation whatever with the agency. And that's no threat.”

Kaseem took her hand and she shook his.

“ Good,” he said.

“ Then we understand each other.”?