Killer Instinct

THIRTY-THREE

She showed him the tape recorder. It was her stipulation that she would come only if he would allow it. She said nothing to him, not wishing to initiate anything with Matisak. Rather, she spoke into the microphone her intentions as he leered out at her, his dark blue eyes like crystals, the only feature about him that might be called redeeming, and yet they were filled with a kind of unfathomable mad light.

“ I knew you'd come… couldn't help yourself,” he was saying as she pressed the go button on the recorder.

“ Let the record show that on this day, August 13, 1992, prisoner AK2115 of the Pennsylvania Federal Penitentiary at Stony Meadow, Matthew Matisak, here on three counts each of homicide-”

“ Never mind all that, Dr. Coran.”

“- and serving two life terms consecutively-”

“ I understand your father was also a doctor, a coroner, in fact, like you.”

“- had indicated a wish to talk openly with agent Jessica Coran, also Dr. Coran, Chief Medical Examiner, Division-”

“ He was a good man, your father, wasn't he?”

“- that said prisoner has agreed to this taping. Say it now!”

“ I've read one of his books. Kind of obtuse writing, but very inform-”

“ Say it, damn you!”

“ All right… all right, I agree to this taping.” 321 “Now, will you tell me what it is you wish to discuss?”

“ You.”

“ No, no, we are not here to discuss me, Mr. Matisak. If that is all you wish…” she started to get up and ring for the guard.

“ No, no! Don't go!” His voice was filled with a pitiable sob that seemed to her rehearsed. “I meant only to ask… how you are.”

“ How I am,” she repeated, almost laughing at the irony of this man's asking her how she was. “You bastard.”

He stared at her, his eyes riveting hers. “I fully understand your hatred for me.”

“ Good. Then we know where we stand with each other. Now, shall we continue with this… this interview?”

“ Yes.”

“ Are you prepared to talk seriously?”

“ Yes.”

“ All right. Why? Why did you ask to speak to me?”

“ To… to first say that I… I meant… At the time, I was not in control of my… my blood craving. The doctors here understand that; they understand my physical need was quite real.”

Her jaw tightened. She knew he was just toying with her again.

“ And maybe… maybe one day I'll be a free man again… cured, on proper medication for my addiction. It was… is an addiction, you know.”

“ No one can cure you of what you are, Matisak. No one can. They can feed you the blood of an ox if that helps your cravings; they can ply you with proteins and hormones and medications of all sorts, but you and I know that if you had the opportunity today to do to me what you did-”

“ No, never… never again.”

She realized he was going for the model prisoner, the one out of thousands the system could help; she realized he was very adept at it. “You're incurably insane, Matisak.”

“ I'll be up for parole in twenty years. You'll change your mind toward me by then… especially if I help you.”

“ Help me?”

“ Yes, help you.”

“ There's nothing you can do for me.”

“ The FBI, then.”

“ You don't give a damn about me or the FBI, and if it had been up to me you would not be here now; you would have been dead of electrocution.”

“ The FBI wants to know why,” he said with just the trace of a grin.

She stared across the whiteness at him. The room became insufferable. He was insufferable. For a moment, she feared that the Plexiglas was not between them, and that she had been fooled into being here and that he was about to leap across the chasm between them and go for her throat. The burning whiteness of the place saw her reach to her purse and bring up the gun, which she aimed. He stood there frozen, wide-eyed, expecting the bullet aimed at his brain. She squeezed the trigger slowly, enjoying the moment, savoring the image of his brain splattering onto the white wall. She fired in her daydream and his entire body flailed and splatted against the wall of his cell, his vampire's teeth bared, in a death grimace, and she felt an overwhelming feeling of closure, that it was finally over. Then she looked up at the real Matisak in the real cell and found him looking quizzically at her, her dream over.

She knew what the agency wanted; she knew what Otto would want of her. She said calmly, “Let's get to the point, Matisak. You want to confess to additional killings, don't you? Some in Kentucky, Ohio? Elsewhere?”

“ Perhaps,” he replied, “someday.”

“ What, then, damn you?”

“ I want you… I want your… forgiveness.”

“ Bullshit, and you'll never have it.”

“ Then at least let me explain why.”

“ Why… why?”

“ For the blood… the addiction.”

“ Liar.”

“ I am telling you how it was.”

“ Liar.”

“ If not for the blood-”

“ The power, you bastard. You wanted the power, to hold the threat of death over another-”

“ No, I–I-I-”

“ The power of feeding on another life; taking life through your mouth, down your fucking gullet. You thought it made you special, didn't you? Didn't you?”

“ I was addicted.”

“ Didn't you!”

“ I thought it made me immortal. That tells you the extent of my… my addiction.”

“ So you're no longer crazy?”

He said nothing to this.

“ You're no longer going crazy?”

He refused to reply.

“ Now, you're going sane? And we're supposed to believe you?”

“ If you cooperate with me, and I cooperate with you, as my mind improves, then perhaps you can learn something about Kentucky, Ohio, other places. The question,” he said, standing now, pacing in his cell, “is whether or not you want that information unlocked.”

“ You're in no position to blackmail the FBI, Matisak.”

The madman's scars were on her body, but the deeper scars were those done to her psyche and her soul.

“ There are others, you know,” he teased.

“ Other bodies, yes.”

“ Others like me. Vampires.”

It dawned on her what he was saying. “Do you really believe for a moment that the Federal Bureau of Investigation would ever in a million years, Matisak, ask you in on a case involving vampirism? Is that really what you expected of this meeting here today?” There are a lot of others like me, spread across this country, and when another one's craving and addiction reach the heights of mine, nothing will stop him from killing for blood, and you and your agency will come crawling to me for help. Do you hear me? Do you hear?”

“ I think I've heard enough of your rantings, Matisak. This interview is over.”

She clicked off the tape, stood up and rang for the guard to open the door and let her out. Behind her he said, “Look in the woods in Kentucky off 1-75, about a mile from the intersection of county road 54 near Lexington. You'll find a shallow grave not a hundred yards from an abandoned old farmhouse.”

Her jaw quivered where she stood. Without turning back to face him, she said, “I'll see that it is checked out.”

The door opened and she hobbled out on her crutches to his final words to her. “I hope you're healing well.”

The door closed with a resounding echo and his laughter. He had just posited information with her that only she knew about. It hadn't been taped. He had waited for the tape to be turned off. He had baited her intentionally. With this new information she had a choice to make. If she told O'Rourke and the others and a search actually turned up a body, then she would be sent back again to speak with this devil, and the more he cooperated with the FBI, the more likely he would be viewed by prison officials as a rehabilitated man. The body in Kentucky was most likely Julie Marie Hampton, missing for over two years, a time when Matisak took many more precautions, before he began to feel supernormal and invincible.

As she made her way back down the long white corridor she struggled with herself about what to do, knowing that in the end she must do the right thing. The Hamptons in Kentucky had to know; O'Rourke had to know, along with the others; and if she could get more information out of Matisak, then she would have to come back to this awful place again and again, consigned to this hell by her counterpart.

She could still hear his laughter.

She could imagine the official stance on this one: play out the bizarre game that Matisak had initiated… see where it leads. But she feared it would lead to no good. And she feared his games and where they had led in the past, and she feared that he might get what he wanted. There was nothing in this life that she wanted him to have; seeing him stripped of his personal freedom was not enough. Like the dream of carrying in the concealed weapon and blowing his head off, she feared that her cooperating repeatedly with him as he cooperated with the agency would lead to her one day carrying out that dream for real.

There would be other cases of Tort 9 level, and even some cases of a lesser degree-cannibalism, for instance- in which information gleaned from the mad mind of Matisak could help in the pursuit of an equally deadly killer that was not in a federal facility but walking loose on the streets.

Jessica had made the distance from Matisak's cell to her car in the lot with great effort both physically and mentally. She chugged the crutches into the rear seat and got into the car, where J.T. had fallen asleep at the wheel as he waited for her. He was instantly awake and when she slid into the seat beside him, he asked if she was all right.

“ I'll never be all right again, but for now… yeah.” She held her tears in check.

“ What did he want?”

“ He wants to use us.”

J.T. frowned. “Then you were right all along. Prick bastard.”

“ And O'Rourke's going to want to use him.”

“ How can you be so sure about O'Rourke?”

“ Oh, something Otto told me once about her.”

“ Which was?”

“ That she played like him; that he admired her for being as ruthless and as tough as him.”

“ So where to next?”

“ Lexington, Kentucky.”

“ He opened up about Kentucky?”

“ He did.”

“ Holy shit, Jess. Do you know what that means? Boy, you really got to him, then, didn't you? You really got him talking. Got it on tape?”

“ Let's get to the airport, shall we?”

“ You're really good, you know that, Jess?”

“ Yeah… yeah, I know, I know… I'm good… Wake me when we get to the airport.”