Absolute Instinct

ELEVEN

On the train to Chicago, Giles slept sitting up. He hadn't had much sleep since killing Lucinda, and fatigue now washed over him in waves. Drowsy, his eyes glazed over and his mind went numb with the steady sound and vibration underfoot of the train as it wended its way along the tracks toward downtown Chicago. As the train picked up speed and stormed toward the Windy City, he replayed the way things had unfolded, how he had killed Lucinda, his own benefactress.

He had thought her knocked unconscious with the hammer blow, but when he'd relaxed his vigilance, believing her completely subdued, she'd pulled free and rushed to his workbench, frantically searching for a weapon among his tools, knocking over an array of knives and sculpting tools. She screamed amid the panting, but she couldn't get enough breath to do a good scream justice. In fact, it sounded like the scream of a woman in the throes of love. Maybe she did love him. She swiped at him, grimacing, hissing catlike, an animal ferocity that screamed her desire to live in her eyes.

He backed momentarily away, studying her contorted features. They were like those of a young nurse he'd seen once in a photograph hidden away among his foster mother's things, a photo of Mother at about Lucinda's current age. “You're not doing yourself any good this way, Loose. Only prolonging the inevitable.”

As he backed off, she came at him, the raised sharp end of the triangled spade coming at his eyes. A dodge and a grab, and he had her arm in a viselike grip, all the while she screamed, “I'm not going to die like this! Like some victim in a goddamn horror movie! Damn you, Giles, may God damn you!”

His weakened arm could not hold her as she pulled free and brought the glinting spade down at his chest, but he grabbed her arm and locked it, wresting the weapon from her grasp and tossing it aside. She found the air and screamed at the top of her lungs for help.

She felt the stun to her temples as he brought a fist to her head. Lucinda Wellingham fell to the floor a second time amid the rubble of art supplies and tools there. It had all happened so fast, Giles could hardly recall the exact linear thread of events, but he recalled how she fought for her life. Desperate, dazed, she again managed to wrap a hand around the pointed spade, the one he used for special line effects- perfectly aged skin, like parchment, on the late-forties figures of the women depicted in his sculptures, likenesses of Louisa Childe, Sarah Towne and Joyce Olsen in his final plastering on of the last layer of “skin”-the epidermal layer. They all looked, after a fashion, like Mother, even Lucinda's general features matched Nurse Gahran from the photos of Mother when she was Lucinda's age. Mother and Loose… Mother was loose, Loose was a mother.

Yes, Lucinda had fallen beside the spade and grabbed it up again, jabbing at him with it.

Giles tried to wrench the spade from her a second time, Lucinda now on her back, pointing it menacingly up at him. He stood over her with a hammer in his hand, and then he kneeled down to administer the blow.

She stabbed out at him in an attempt to put the spade into his heart. He somehow grabbed her wrist as the shining spade came barreling forward, and she screamed at the pain he caused her wrist, twisting it until the stubborn fingers popped free of the handle, and it fell away with a clanging complaint.

Giles instantly choked off her screams with one hand over her mouth, and he fought for control of her struggling body by strangling her. Blood-his blood-dripped down over her from a flesh wound she'd inflicted in her repeated jabs at him. His arm had been seriously cut. In the excitement of the moment, he hadn't felt a thing, but Lucinda had nicked him badly. The bleeding bothered him. He didn't do well seeing his own blood spilled. It made him feel heady, giddy, filled him with nausea and threatened to send him into a shiver leading to a possible blackout. He fought this. Fought it hard as he held her down, kicking and attempting to scream, his hands cutting off her air supply at two points.

He finally squeezed off her air supply altogether, so tightly that her eyes rolled back in her head, her tongue lolled out. She had passed out.

It gave Giles some respite. He rushed to the bathroom and cleaned off the stinging, bleeding wound to his forearm. This left Lucinda's unconscious form lying nude amid the debris field and ruin of his tools. He glanced over at her and in that moment of seeing her nude, silent, looking dead amid the scattered bones against the now slick, wet wooden floor like a crocodile out of its element, he thought how beautiful the sight, that it would be in this fashion he would pose her sculpted form alongside her backbone as if it had leapt from her evil body to disown her. It was then that he noticed water leaking through the floorboards, seeping through grooves and cracks. He rushed to throw towels over the epicenter of the spill, attempting to dry up the damnable swimming pool she'd made of his living room. He feared it might seep through to the apartment below, and lead to bad consequences involving others below. He didn't want unwelcome visitors anytime.

His arm continued bleeding into the one towel he'd wrapped about himself. He returned to the bathroom and turned on the shower to run cold water over his arm. The blood and water meshed in a swirl of ribbons, intermingling and washing down the drain, the blood of his mother and father and himself, but only God alone knew what Father was, Father all wrapped up in that box below his bed, tied tightly and held at bay, yet always asking to be introduced to his son. Family ties… blood ties… everybody has 'em. The blood of the fathers shall be upon the sons, he thought, watching it flow from him.

Dropping the bloodied towel into the bathtub, Giles had grabbed a fresh one, dabbing as the blood flow lessened. He found a first-aid kit he kept for whenever he nicked himself while working, and he plastered the wound with salve and covered it with gauze and bandage.

He thought he heard Lucinda moan, and he heard her scratching along the floor in an attempt to move once more toward freedom and life. He returned to stand over her, watching her crawl. It brought to mind an old fantasy of his: seeing Mother in the same position, crawling, mewing, begging his forgiveness, pleading for her life.

Giles then lifted a handheld mirror up to his features.

Dark circles blotted his eyes. That old pallor, white and pasty, had crept back into his epidermis. What the hell was that all about? He felt lethargic. More and more, the sunlight of day became intolerable.

“Maybe I should just sculpt my own backbone. Put an end to this aberrant behavior. I could do it if I put my mind to it. It's not like I need to do this to feed myself. But then again… perhaps it does feed me… in ways I don't even understand.”

Then he saw his form in the mirror retreat backward until it was sitting in the lotus position, bent over the broken vertebral rack that once belonged to Joyce Olsen, struggling to get the glue down in the joints, struggling to get the C-clamps on just right, when an army of Milwaukee firemen stormed in and attacked him with untold fire axes, screaming obscenities at him as they hacked him to pieces, shouting, “Die monster, die!”

He came awake with a start, finding himself on the outskirts of Chicago, Illinois, the train having slowed, the rhythm of its bounce along the rails having dramatically changed. In the near distance, he saw the mammoth John Hancock Center, and beyond this the even taller Sears Tower. “A new home,” he muttered.

“Say what, son?” asked a passing conductor.

“Chicago, sir,, my new home.”

“Well, welcome home, son. City of Big Shoulders and Wide Arms, I always say. Greatest city on the planet. You'll love it here.”

“I'm sure I will get acclimated.”

“Well, son,… I don't know nothing 'bout where you'd begin to find anything like that!” the conductor joked. “Who is this ac-climb-ated, huh?” The conductor moved on, laughing at his own lame joke, a man singularly in love with his work, and shouting now, “Chicago downtown! Union Station! All Out!”

The monotonous thrum of the public-trust FBI jet, a state-of-the-art Beechcraft had put Jessica at such ease that she began to doze as they sped toward Portland, Oregon, at sixty thousand feet. The much-deeded nap had crept over her without warning. Leaving Milwaukee for their scheduled meeting with Governor James Jason “J.J.” Hughes in Portland had been difficult after what she and Darwin had found in the darkened corridors of the Orion showing at the Fine Arts Center. She had had to convince Darwin to take no immediate action against Keith Orion. Darwin, bent on arresting him on obscenity laws dating back to the 1800s was too willing to tip their hand. They compromised, and so Darwin instead set in motion a surveillance of Orion and a full background check in an effort to gain enough information to warrant going to a federal judge for a search-and-seizure order.

Meantime, she got him on the plane for Portland as planned. Slumbering now, Jessica revisited Keith Orion's showing, her mind playing over the dark and sinister images created by the artist, some of which had startled them both into suspecting Orion of being the Spine Thief.

Orion's work was created for one purpose only, to shock and chase people from the gallery, his underlying theme the humiliation of women. His work depicted women in all manner of degradation, all poses of disgust. So ugly and distasteful was the work that Jessica had to force herself through the motions alongside Darwin.

Orion's palate ran to stark blood-orange, an array of red, deep ochre, shades of black and gloomy grays. Special-effects lighting, lasers and strobes shattered the otherwise utter blackness of the cave created for the showing. Blaring heavy metal music further attacked the senses.

Darwin, too, had felt uneasy. “You want to skip this?” he'd asked early on, seeing that the exhibit was not much different than viewing an array of crime-scene photos.

“I can see this on the job,” she had replied. “Let's give it a little more time. Maybe there's something redeeming just down from the next painting or sculpture.”

But soon they had agreed that there simply was nothing redeeming in Orion's work, and they were on their way out when she was stunned by a small painting that'd been left un-illuminated, alone in a corner. What had caught her eye had also immediately caught Darwin's as well. The painting depicted a woman lying facedown, a huge black abyss of a gash, bloody along the edges, taken out of her back from shoulders to backside.

They continued to stare, examining the strange oil on dry wallboard. It was dated 2001, the same year Louisa Childe had been murdered.

“My old grandfather would call this coincidence paaaar-tic-cularly peculiar,” Darwin said as they stood before the painting.

“Certainly bears looking into. Can it be this serendipitous? We come in to see an art exhibit and we discover our murderer is this close, this public?”

“Nobody's that lucky. Still… damned eerie isn't it?”

Jessica cautioned, “Could be a thousand explanations. Could just be representational, symbolic to Orion alone and meaningless to anyone else, and so it's a very personal expression that has nothing whatever to do with our case, Darwin.”

“Sure… of course…” But Darwin was ready to put the cuffs on Orion.

Jessica had simply continued to stare long at the strange painting, seeing a child in the gloomy darkness of the backdrop at what appeared at once the distance and up close in a kind of optical illusion. The child stood as a ghostly shadow over the body of the woman with the huge gaping blackness running up and down her spine. “You see the kid standing in the gloom? Staring down the length of the dead woman?”

Darwin squinted. “Now that you point it out, yeah. I could've easily missed it.”

“Self-portrait you think?”

“You think?”

“Could be… could also be homage to Dali.”

“Dolly? You talking about the cloned sheep?”

“No, the artist, Salvador Dali. He put himself into each of his paintings as an observant child.”

“I see.”

“I think we need to learn a great deal more about this so-called artist, Orion.”

“Sounds like a stage name, Orion.”

“We'll find out.”

“Agreed.”

She checked her watch. “Getting close to takeoff time. We've got to grab a cab, but before we do, let's talk to the museum people, find out what we might about this character. On our way to the airport, I'll make a call, order an FBI background check.”

“To hell with that. I can put a surveillance team on his ass.”

“Sure, okay, but Darwin, we don't want to tip our hand to him. We want to-”

“See what kind of snakes come crawling out from under this rock. Like I said, I'll put my people on a twenty-four-hour surveillance of Mr. Orion.”

“That's good.”

“While we're in Oregon, he won't be disappearing anywhere, and from his MO, we know he doesn't kill again for a long time,” Darwin thoughtfully reminded her.

“If our guy sticks to pattern.”

“He will. He has so far,” Darwin assured her as they found the museum curator's office.

After finding out all they could about Orion from museum authorities, they were referred to a woman named Lucinda Wellingham. “Daughter of a major contributor to the museum,” said Karen Quinelson, the curator. “Lucy… Lucinda runs her own art gallery at this address and number,” she finished with a flourish by ripping off a notepad with Lucinda Wellingham's logo, address, E-mail address and fax number. Get in touch with Lucy if you want to know more about Orion. Trust me, the rest of us had very little to do with Mr. Keith Orion-nor would he be showing here in this life if her father hadn't made a sizeable donation.”

Jessica and Darwin had next rushed out for a cab to make the airport, stopping only to pick up his bag at FBI headquarters and hers at the hotel.

They had made their respective calls from the cab on the way to the airport. Keith Orion's life was about to become an open book.

Now, her eyes closed, her head resting against a pillow, Jessica's mind filled with the vile shapes, forms and splatterings of lurid color and oils of Orion, the trash some dared call art, Keith Orion's most outrageous splatter-punk paintings. And while some of his work appeared less bloody and vile and disgusting, even these depicted rape, sodomy and torture against women. In one painting not one but three women were hanging as if crucified, their toes just touching pedestals, and all three appeared to be in the final stages of life, all three having been “simultaneously” tortured by electric shock, and an array of horrid instruments laying about on tables and on the floor, including a pressure washer. The caption on the painting read Homage to Author Joe Cur tin.

It could not be called disturbing in the Clive Barker fashion of disturbing literature that ripped at the core of being human. Disturbing was too high a word for it. Disturbing art at least had purpose, meaning, depth, a reason for being, a spine. Ironically enough, Orion's work lacked backbone, along with artistic worth. No, it did not even rise to the level of disturbing due to its own level of disgusting filth and hatred of the world and women in particular. In panel after panel of work that was meant to be episodic, each painting adding more to the story, Orion depicted women in various frescos of being slashed to pieces. The total effect was one of a mural of horror, thus the name of the exhibit: Horror's Raw Mural-The Downside of Being Dead.

Jessica normally enjoyed dreaming while cruising at sixty thousand feet, but she didn't care for the lingering imagery of Orion's exhibit impacting her nap, insinuating itself on her in its tastelessness, its sheer crudity. She awoke to Darwin's shaking her and saying in her ear, “Heads up. We're landing. Get your seat belt on.”

“I dreamed bad things about that Orion guy, Darwin. If he isn't the killer we're looking for, he's sure doing a hell of an imitation.”

“Thank God we can't convict a man on our dreams. Still, I like him for the murders, too.”

“Yeah… spectral evidence was thrown out in 1693 with the end of the Salem witch-hunt. Still, sometimes your gut knows what you instincts are talking about long before there's a dialogue between the two.”

“We've got good people on Orion. They're not going to lose sight of him. Right now, I want your mind focused on getting a new trial for Robert.”

“Sure… you're right, of course. Don't worry.”

The plane began its descent.

“Local field ops're set to meet us and run us out to the governor's mansion.”

“We've got our ducks all in a row. We're ready for Hughes and anything he can throw at us, Darwin. Rational thought will prevail.”

“I wish I were as confident as you. Forty-eight hours. We've got a lousy forty-eight, Jess.” Again his eyes glazed over with glistening wetness, threatening to tear.

She placed a hand over his, recognizing his distress. “It's going to be all right, Darwin.”

“Sure… sure it is.”

“The cavalry has arrived. Your friend, Towne, is not alone anymore.”

“Friend? I never said the man was my-my friend. He's a wrongly accused black man, who… who deserves better… a better shake. That's all he is to me, Dr. Coran.”

“No. No, he's much more to you than that. Darwin, are you related to Robert Towne?”

His gaze met hers, and he swallowed hard. “You can't let anyone else know.”

“I understand. I also understand why you wouldn't want Govenor Hughes to know that.”

“Press gets hold of it… that Robert's my half brother… and what credibility does that leave for my fight to free him? None, not a scintilla. Everyone would simply believe I had no evidence, only a blood tie.”

“You could have trusted me. You might've given me the benefit of a doubt.” She felt betrayed, hurt.

“Don't take it personally, Doctor, but if I'd have told you on our first meeting, would you have worked so hard on Robert's behalf? Would you have sent Richard Sharpe to Minnesota? Would you even be here now?”

“I'd feel better if Sharpe had something concrete in Minnesota.”

“He's on it, you said.”

“Best man we could have put on it. Think Gary Cooper, High Noon, who else could've played the part?”

FBI Agent Richard Sharpe felt he might go mad in Millbrook. Nothing had gone well. The lab had not completed even the preliminary work on the scrapings taken from Louisa Childe's nails, cellular tissue almost invisible to the naked eye with an infinitesimal amount of dried, degenerated blood clinging to it.

In Dr. Herman Krueshach, he had a real winner. Krueshach had shopped out the work to Minneapolis, only now telling Sharpe that Millbrook wasn't big enough to handle the process, not without taking chances, not with the limited and limiting equipment, and not with the limited amount of material taken from Louisa Childe that they had to work with. Much of the substance they'd scraped had been compromised and broken down over time due to the poor quality of the coffin, allowing dampness and water to seep in.

“That's what the bird on the overhanging branch wanted,” Richard had decided, stating it aloud now. “The water she… the corpse… had been lying in.” To Krueshach he added, “So everything has been transferred already to a lab in Minneapolis?”

“Ahhh, St. Paul to be exact.”

“Christ, you might have consulted me.”

“This decision is mine.”

“Give me the information. What's the name of the lab?”

“Cellmark of St. Paul. They're quite reputable. Do a lot of work for the Mayo Clinic.”

“And they have a backlog and Mayo's at the top of their list of clients. Shit, gaw-blimey for a fool!”

“No, Agent Sharpe, they promised to put it at the head of the line.”

“And can you trust that? I'm going there to await results. To sit on them.”

“Suit yourself, Agent.”

“I damn well will.” He stormed from Krueshach's lab and shoved past Brannan as he was entering. Brannan threw up his hands and asked Krueshach, “What gives?”

After Krueshach explained, Brannan rushed after Sharpe, catching him on the steps of the police station. “I'll arrange to drive you to St. Paul,” he offered. “Don't do me any favors.”

“Goddamn it man, I'm not doing shit for you. I want this freak that killed Louisa Childe more than anyone, and if it's not the guy in Portland, then by God, I want his execution set aside, so we can search for the real motherfucker!”

The two men glared at one another, their eyes boring in, twisting and turning before they mutually pulled back. Finally, Richard said, “Then it would appear we both want the same thing.”

“Exactly.”

“All right then… all right, I accept your offer to drive me to St. Paul.”

“We'll sit on their doorstep until we get results.”

“That's my plan, that and a call from the director of the FBI.”

“That oughta cut some ice.”

“We can only hope so. Where's your car?”

“Whoa up there, Sharpe. I've got to clear all this with my superior. Even in Millbrook, there's such a thing as protocol and channels.”

“And how long has that been the case?”

Brannan glared, but then he burst into a hearty laugh. “It won't take long. In and out, especially if you're 'longside me with that mug of yours. My boss is a sucker for higher-authority types like you. Come on.”

Darwin and Jessica disembarked and stood on the runway with bags in hand, no one to greet them. Darwin looked off into the distance at a row of other hangars, searching for the FBI car that was to take them to the governor's mansion. Jessica looked at her Citizen watch. “Time's running low. If we miss the meeting, there might not be another shot, at least not today.”

“Damn it, I was told the local field guys would be here to greet us.” She handed him her cellular. “Get on the phone and call them,” she urged. “Tell 'em to haul ass.”

Darwin pushed her phone back into her hands, and pulled out his own. He got right through to someone, but in a moment Jessica saw Darwin's brow crease, first in confusion and then anger. “I don't give a damn about your motor pool problems or your mother's gallbladder, Agent Riley. Get us transport and do it now!” He swore under his breath and shook his head and stepped about in a tight little circle of indignation and rage. “Fucking bastard says they didn't expect us for another two hours, some shit about logging it in as A.M. instead of P.M., so a car was waiting at 4 A.M., and some shit about since we did not show, blah-blah-blah.”

“A car was waiting for us? At four this morning?”

“Was being the operative word. It obviously didn't wait for us.” His attempt to lighten the situation didn't improve either of their moods. Darwin's mood had darkened to the hue of his skin, and he sent a fist into a sign on a chain-link fence, rattling the entire fence and denting the sign that read: No Loitering on Runway.

“There's a cab stand the other side of the fence. We can grab a cab, Darwin.”

“No, the car's on the way. It's on the way.”

Ten minutes passed.

Sitting on her bags, Jessica finally said, “Let's catch a damn cab, Darwin.”

“There, there it is!” he pointed to a car pulling out onto the runway. It carefully made its way toward them, two agents inside. These two appeared pissed off at pulling this duty; they looked deeply glum, deadly serious and terribly unfriendly.

“These boys look unhappy in their work,” she said in gross understatement.

“They're going to be a lot unhappier when I get through with them.” The car halted, the trunk popped open and the two men climbed out.

“Let's just get to the wedding on time, Darwin,” Jessica cautioned. “Let it go for now.”

“All right, agreed, for now.” He hefted their bags and tossed them into the trunk as the two Portland field agents flashed their badges and offered their halfhearted cliches about being at their disposal while in the Portland area, while at the same time offering no help with the bags.

“Save it. We've wasted enough time here, gentlemen,” Jessica said, fearful of losing her own control at their attitude. “We're only here to save an innocent man's life.”

Darwin added nothing but an approving look.

Jessica quickly climbed into the rear of the luxurious Lincoln Town Car, not wishing to be witness to Darwin's rage at the two should he decide to unleash it. But while she heard him use the term jag-offs moments before he climbed into the rear himself to sit alongside her, she was proud that he'd held himself in check.

“You know what's going on?” he asked her as the Portland agents climbed into the front. “These men don't want us here. They're perfectly happy to let Robert Towne die. In fact, they think the way he's going to be executed by the state is weak and flimsy final justice for the man. Isn't that right, gentlemen.”

She said quietly in his ear, “Sounds like the entire state has him down as guilty.”

“Why not?” he shouted, his booming voice taking off the lid of the car, startling the two agents in the front seat. “Robert's been judged guilty by twelve of his 'betters,' not to mention all of law enforcement in Oregon! Including the FBI.”

One of the agents turned and shouted back, “Look, man, some of us saw what that bastard did to his wife.”

“You mean that white woman, don't you?” Darwin shot back. “Might as well be in fucking Alabama or goddamn

Mississippi in the fucking forties as be out here. Goddamn no-man's-land between prejudice and racial hatred.”

“Whoa up, Agent Reynolds! Nobody's talking race here but you,” said the driver.

“You play that race card, you play it alone,” added the other.

“Fuck you both. Just drive.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jessica realized only now that Darwin was right, that Towne, in large measure, had been found guilty by these field ops largely on the basis of his race. “Take it easy, Darwin. We've just got to get to the governor. He's got to have more on the ball than these yahoos.”

“Take the fastest route you know, Agent Barnes,” ordered Darwin.

“Right on it.” Barnes eyed Jessica in his rearview, almost striking an oncoming mail truck.

“Look out there, Barney!” shouted his partner. “We don't want to delay Agent Reynolds and Dr. Corman any further.”

“It's Coran, Dr. Coran,” she corrected the agent in the passenger seat. Jessica read between the lines that the two had engineered this delay, and each felt quite good about himself as a result. A glance at her watch told her they were already late.

The car sped toward the governor's mansion.