Absolute Instinct

SEVENTEEN

GILES Gahran made for a strange sight standing at the concrete barrier wall created by the Chicago Parks Authority, dressed in black with a long coat flapping around him in the breeze-Keanu Reeves in The Matrix, minus the cool elan. But he carried with him an interesting-looking, curiously irregular shaped, ornately ribboned leather-bound box. Where he stood staring out at the oceanlike enormity of Lake Michigan. Dusk had come on. He'd hoped for darkness by now as a blackening sky had rolled in from the lake to cover Chicago in a blanket of metal-gray turning to onyx.

His knuckles had gone white holding so tightly to his father-in-a-box, as he fully intended to do away with the parasitic mind-leeching holdover from his childhood. Mother's final gift to him.

He had come to the enormous great lake of the Great Lakes here in Chicago, with a wind whipping so treacherously up at him from the stone barriers erected along this section of Lincoln Park that he felt as if the Devil of the wind wanted the box, that it meant to rip it from his hands and do with the box what it willed rather than see him throw it into the pounding waves. He imagined the contents spilling out and flying in all directions, flyers to the world here disseminating who he was-the sins of the father making tomorrow's Tribune and Sun-Times. He clutched the box against the wind even tighter. If he pitched it whole into the water, it might float for hours, and some fool might fish it out. But if he dared open it, the wind would stab at its contents with its draconian fingers and lift out whole sections of loose news clippings, photos, documents and send them off like blind birds in a fit of flapping and squawking.

A true Chicago storm was brewing overhead. A darkness like night had crept like evil itself over the city as if to hold it ransom to darkness, Chicago turning from daylight to midnight within the hour owned now by the power of the storm edge.

It seemed to Giles that all the forces of nature had aligned with him to be in agreement, in sync, chanting in the powerful wind and the threatening lightning streaks out over the water, and in the rolling thunder, all as if to say, Do it! Do it! Do it now, Giles! Fuck the consequences, just rid yourself of Mother's nasty little legacy box, bequeathed from so enormous a hatred as to set your backbone to quivering.

The voice in the wind now pounded his psyche and inner ear. It sounded like his dream father's voice from the far off other side, telling him to go ahead and hurl any and all knowledge locked away in the box into the raging waters to be swallowed whole there in the pounding waves, that it wouldn't float, that no one would ever find the box buried below the lake.

He lifted the box overhead, preparing to do as all of nature and all of his instincts told him; an it was to destroy any vestige of the carefully guarded, carefully accumulated, carefully passed on reams of information detailing the man who had fathered and abandoned him.

“Sonofabitch… son of one motherfucking bitch is what you are!” he shouted at the box as a female jogger hastened her speed to get past the strange figure in black with the box held overhead, talking to himself.

A second jogger along the lake path stopped and stared. The man faintly asked against the wind, “Hey, buddy, you all right? Not thinking of jumping, are you?”

Barely hearing this, Giles turned to the sound, half expecting to see his dead mother or his living father. His mother had told him that his father would live on forever. Somewhere in the box. Also somewhere in the cumbersome box-no doubt-she had left Father's last known address here in Chicago. Mother had said he'd once lived in Chicago, and that he was killed under strange circumstances in New Orleans, but that could all have been fabricated, he imagined. Perhaps Father was as alive as Giles and living right here in the city? Perhaps his address lay just beneath Giles's fingers, in the box. He imagined a large house filled with rooms, his father coming to the door and welcoming him in with open arms.

Subconsciously, he supposed it a reason underlying all others for his coming to the Windy City. To finally face his father. To see if he was the monster Mother portrayed after all, and to ask him why he had left Giles with so vile a creature.

She'd said his father liked hurting people, that he had even killed some people and was thrown into a prison for the mentally insane. “That's why I say, boy, you're just like him, killing my goddamn cat, my innocent cat, and for what? So you could suck out its spinal fluid and its bone marrow! My dear God you are born an evil spawn of Satan, evil incarnate, and I can't stand the thought of your having once occupied space and time in my womb! Like some fucking real-life Rosemary's baby is what you are.”

He reached out to her, trying to calm her in her last moments, but she spat in his face.

“Just like your father,” she repeated the endless mantra of his childhood. “Gives me the dry heaves just to think he had his thing in me even once, much less a dozen times before he could impregnate me. And then he runs off. All because he got a little ill in the head and began to think he had some sort of cancer or disease 'cause some asshole doctor tells him he's losing red blood cells or some such shit, and then in the end, he checks outta reality altogether… becomes a total fucking murderous maniac and winds up in the loony bin in of all places Philadelphia, from where he escaped in a blood bath and-”

“I don't wanna hear no more, Mother!” he'd shouted at her. “Just go die of your own foul disease!”

She didn't miss a beat. “-and you, you know what they say about the acorn not falling far from the tree, and if you want to look up your genetic freak of a father, you only have to look, in the box, boy.”

She finished with another coughing jag, blood coming up. So apropos to her cursing Giles.

That had been years ago, the year of Mother's death that somber November day and night while he kept vigil at her bedside, not to ease her mind or as the obedient son but to be sure she was really dead when she finally took her last breath. He'd so wanted to open her up, remove her spine and feed on it as he'd done her cat, but he never got the chance.

Afraid of him, afraid of what he might do to her after death, she had ordered up her own cremation and the funeral home placed in charge, a place called French and Parker's back in Millbrook. The funeral boys rushed in like ghouls on automatic pilot and whisked her off straightaway on the basis of a court order she had made out in the event of her death to be cremated. French and Parker did not disappoint Mother. They did the cremation within hours according to her wishes, no wake, no fanfare, no candle burning, nothing. Mother's lawyer worked in close conjunction with the funeral home, overriding Giles's wishes for an old-fashioned, closed coffin wake, thinking he might get at the body sometime between its being embalmed and put out on the floor, thinking the spinal fluid and bone marrow from the backbone ought rightly to be his.

The thoughts most certainly frightened him, galled him even, but worst of all, the thoughts of doing this to Mother, extracting her essence, her luz, her al abj, her strength and her power to make it his own made him wonder even more deeply than ever about his father's identity, his insanity, his urges and actions. Only hinted at all these years by Mother but now handed over to him all wrapped in ribbon as a fucking nasty awful joke of a gift. Like handing someone a gun used by a suicide victim and calling it a gift that potentially “keeps on giving.” But that was Mother.

How much of his ill thoughts, his satanic and draconian urges had he in fact inherited from her and not Father? Why hadn't she bequeathed two boxes? One filled with dear old invisible Father and one filled with dear old venomous and quite visible Mother?

Giles had been given only a moment with her after she died there at the hospital, and he knew he had no chance given the openness and busyness of the place to take what every fiber in him craved. And the strict record kept of who was in and who was out of the rooms at any given time discouraged the violence he wanted to do. And with security just down the hall, he struggled mightily to restrain him-self, thinking he'd have his chance to break into the crematorium at Frenchy's, as it was called in the neighborhood, and attack the old crone, dead at forty-eight, that night. But the damnable partners at the funeral home acted quickly, paid well to do so.

Even in death she had cheated Giles of all he needed or ever really wanted. No matter now. He had killed Mother many times over now, and even Lucinda, in her way, was more like Mother than she was unlike Mother. And now all of his many Mothers dangled over his sculptures like long sleek egrets at full wing gliding over the mores of a strange sanctuary.

Unlike his other victims, he had only an opportunity to sketch Lucinda in death, never alive like the others. Sketches he had thrown into his own box along with news clippings and stories and materials and journal entries about his own exploits to rival those of dear old Dad.

Mother he had sketched many times over both alive and dead, depositing her into the box many times over, feeding birds in a park, petting a dog, walking a horse.

“Perhaps Father is here someplace in Chicago,” he said aloud to Mother on the wind over the lake. “But so long as I don't know who the fuck he is, I really don't have to know, now do I?”

A voice from behind Giles interrupted his audible thoughts. “Whatcha doing with that box?” asked the nosey male jogger who'd stopped to tie his shoe as if an undercover cop. He was clean cut and bulked up from lifting barbells. He looked like a cop.

Giles lowered the box. “It's my fucking box. I'll do whatever the hell I want with it.”

The jogger nodded successively and rushed off.

“Not a cop after all,” Giles told himself.

He then tucked the box under his arm as the first raindrops fell. He walked across the great expanse of the park, the grass growing wetter and wetter as he passed until his pant cuffs soaked through, even though the drizzle had remained light. The wind at his back pushed him hard as if a pissed off Satan were shoving, angry that he had failed to carry through on what he'd thought was a firm, final decision, one he would act on. The thunder overhead roared again and while his back was turned to Lake Michigan, he saw the flashes of lightning reflected in the thousands of blinking windowpanes ahead of him along Michigan Avenue. Cars whizzed past on the Outer Lake Shore Drive. When he finally arrived at the overhead bypass and the traffic at the terminus of Fullerton Avenue, the mild drizzle had become a steady beat like insistent pellets fired angrily into him. All of nature had agreed with him moments before, but now all of nature disagreed vehemently and the downpour felt like a power pressing in on him, all the divine and all the satanic at once mad with anger at his inability to follow through on a simple decision.

He'd made the decision only after arranging for a debut showing of his artwork at Cafe Avanti, where he had already set up his “unique and ingenious” sculptures-words of praise from the owners of the premiere artist cafe and art gallery across from the Music Box Theater.

He found a bus going west that would take him to Southport where he could exchange for a bus running to the 3000 block and Cafe Avanti. As he rode the bus, his pant legs dripping a puddle where he sat, he thought of Cafe Avanti, how fortunate he was to be showing his work there in the shadow of art history in the city and in the cafe's somewhat cramped and stuffy, dungeonlike rear rooms that formed a kind of myriad labyrinth that art patrons, and the curious numbers floating in and out of Avanti could wander through to Giles's delight. In a sense all of them, Mother, Sarah, Joyce, Louisa, and Lucinda Wellingham as well, must be seeing at this moment the fruition of Giles's work.

The bus arrived at the stop nearest Cafe Avanti, and Giles, his box safely in hand, deboarded the bus and walked proudly into the cafe, wondering if anyone viewing his showing with the brief descript and his photo would recognize him, and if his work would be rewarded with accolades from men and women who mattered, those in a position to help his career along.

Oregon State Penitentiary November 12, 2004

The video cameras were disengaged by the bogus actors wearing uniforms of the power company that served the penitentiary and most of Portland, The Yakima Valley Power and Light Company. They'd come in on the heels of Sharpe, Reynolds, and Dr. Coran, all here for what appeared to be Robert Towne's last good-bye to his brother.

Inside the visitation room, Jessica, Sharpe and Darwin went into immediate action as soon as the cameras went down. Darwin began to strip off his clothes and throw them at his brother. Richard kept vigil at the door. Jessica explained to Towne what was going on.

“Oh, no! No way! You going to get Darwin killed. No matter what, they're going to put a man to death here tonight at midnight. It ain't going to be Darwin.”

“It ain't gonna be anyone, Bro. We've got it planned out. News that I am in and you are out is going nationwide today, long after you've been stashed.”

“Strip off that prison jumpsuit, Mr. Towne,” Jessica ordered drill-sergeant fashion. “We only have minutes before the cameras are up and running again.”

Towne stared around the room at the still cameras, their lenses closed. “You're all crazy. You'll all be thrown into jail.”

“Just do it, Robert!” Darwin's angry face was within inches of his big brother's. Jessica thought it like pressing one's face against a mirror. Their profiles perfectly matched, and Darwin had found a pair of glasses to match those his brother wore.

“I can't let you do this, Darwin.”

“Get the fuck outta those clothes, man. Now!”

Darwin stood in his underwear, his fists clenched, his chest heaving. “Let me do something just this once for you!”

A long moment of silence passed between the brothers. “They're getting damned restless outside,” warned Sharpe from the window in the door.

“Please, Mr. Towne,” Jessica pleaded.

Towne raised a huge finger to the two-way mirror. “The screws are probably watching this whole damn foolish scheme right now, so just back off, Little Brother.”

“We disconnected the two-way before we entered,” Jessica assured him. “Along with the cameras, all save that one.” She pointed to a single camera still operating. “We want to tape this, to insure Darwin's life.”

“We'll get the tape,” Richard assured Towne.

“They think it's the power company,” explained Jessica.

“Now please, Robert, just do as we say,” began Darwin.

Jessica pleaded, “Put yourself… your life in our hands.”

Towne continued to stare at them all as if they were lunatics.

“We've exhausted every other avenue, Rob. Let us… let me do this thing.”

“It'll mean an end to your career, Darwin. You know that?”

Darwin slapped him hard across the face, drawing blood from his lip. Robert Towne hardly flinched, standing his ground, glaring into his brother's eyes, searching them for something. “I guess I had that coming for letting you down, Dar-”

“What the hell're you talking about? Letting me down?”

“I couldn't hold us together. They split us up, and I couldn't stop them. Couldn't never find you all those years I tried, and then I gave up hope of our ever being a family ever again.”

“I never once felt you betrayed me, Robert, or gave up or did anything to hurt me, not once.”

Robert Towne hugged his brother to him. Darwin pushed away after a moment and said, “Now give me those goddamn prison clothes.”

They exchanged clothes and dressed quickly, still but toning up when the cameras began to pan around the room again.

Darwin went immediately into character, picking up a chair and hurling it at his brother, who was now in a three-piece Brooks Brothers suit.

Towne, as Reynolds, deflected the chair and charged at Darwin, now in the orange jumpsuit. Richard grabbed the false Darwin's arm before he could land a punch and shoved him hard against the two-way mirror. “Stand down, Agent Reynolds! This isn't Dodge City, and you're not Wyatt Fucking Earp!”

“We're outta here,” Jessica announced, knowing the audio and video equipment in the room was again operational. Two guards pushed through the door and ushered Darwin, in jumpsuit, out.

“Stay in character,” Jessica said in Towne's ear.

“Let's get the fuck outta here. He don't wanna talk to me, then fuck Robert Towne.”

They leap-frogged the power and light workmen who busily cleaned up after themselves. The party of three apparent FBI agents stopped at the last inside checkpoint where their telephones and guns were returned to them.

Jessica exchanged a look with Richard as Robert Towne hefted his brother's weighty.43 Smith amp; Wesson, a half smile creased the giant man's features.

The power and light people passed them now carrying out their cables and tools. The three FBI agents signed out and marched down the corridor, falling in behind the men wearing the brown uniforms of the local power company, each carrying cables and strange handheld gadgets. Jessica had earlier found these willing activists among the mob at the gates, wooing them away and striking a deal with them. They not only wanted to help but to film as much as possible of the event. Death-penalty opponents, they were also film students and actors who had grown up with computers and media. “Don't get complacent, Towne. We still have three checkpoints to get past,” said Sharpe.

“Yeah,” replied Towne, “but I got my FBI badge and gun.”

“Under no circumstances, Towne, do you use that gun,” warned Sharpe. “It would only destroy our chances of making this work.”

“Besides,” added Jessica, watching his fingers itch over the bulge of the holstered gun, “it's not loaded.”

He broke into an enormous laugh which he suddenly stifled. “Figures… goddamn just figures.”

A couple of guards stared in reaction to Towne's outburst.

“The way he deals with grief,” said Jessica aloud. “Who can figure how a man's going to deal with the death of a loved one?”

Sharpe whispered to Towne, “A little grief for your brother's plight, Darwin, might be in order here.”

“He dies in this fucked up place from listening to you two, and I'll fucking show you grief, Agent Sharpe, you and Agent Coran both.”

In the car, Towne breathed the air as if he'd never had the experience before, but his deep inhalations became near gasps as they began to make the first hurdle past the first outside checkpoint and he heard and saw the enormous crowd gathered outside the prison-90 percent screaming for his blood while waving homemade signs that called him filthy names and asked that he burn in Hades. A small contingent of others waved the signs of those opposed to any sort of capital punishment.

“What the fuck have you people got my little brother into. Turn this car around and take me back! I won't abandon him like this. I can't!”

“Shut up and see this thing through!” shouted Jessica over the noise of the protesters and the blood-for-blood revenge crowd that mistook vigilantism for justice.

“Play it out, Towne,” shouted Sharpe sternly, his face livid. “Damn it, man, we have a foolproof plan to keep Darwin from any harm. You've got to trust us and trust Darwin.”

Towne calmed and fell silent in the back seat. “One more checkpoint and it's a hotel room with a meal and TV and freedom, Mr. Towne,” Jessica assured him.

“Tell me how you plan to keep Darwin from becoming a dead man at midnight?”

“We've sent the truth to all the news agencies and newspapers, marked to be opened at 10 P.M. The shit will hit the fan and everyone in Oregon and the country will know that J.J. Hughes literally has the wrong man in custody. This he'll be forced to deal with; this will force an end to the execution. It's a perfect plan.”

“Foolproof, huh? Have you considered the fact that James Hughes is a fool?”

“Of course we've taken that into consideration.”

“But you can't predict what a fool will do! Besides, why should he… how can he be persuaded that Darwin is Darwin, and that a switch was made?”

“Two pieces of evidence will convince the press and Hughes,” she fired back.

“You are dealing with Dr. Jessica Coran, Mr. Towne,” said Sharpe. “She has thought of everything, every contingency.”

Towne flashed on the power and light men. “They have a tape of the switch as it went down, the power and light guys working for you?”

“That's right. Walked right out with it.”

“Will that be enough?”

“There's one other exhibit for the jury.”

“His blood type… of course. You've got his blood type on the record.”

“Courtesy of your friend Dr. Waters, who will attest to it as a disinterested party, who, in giving Towne a routine blood exam discovered it could not be Towne's blood, thus staying the execution of Darwin as well.”

“This state means to kill somebody. I'm still not going to rest till we get Darwin outta here.”

They got past the last checkpoint and Towne's deep inhalations grew even greater as they pulled out onto the highway leading away from the prison.

“We have one more tape to make, Mr. Towne,” said Richard.

“A tape of you, dated, showing that you are in federal custody, Mr. Towne.”

“I think you two have earned the right to call me Rob,” he replied. “And even though it's belated and sounds pretty pitiful… thanks… thanks a whole… a whole heap. But I still won't rest till I see Darwin again outta that hellhole and off death row.”

“Then you have a crusade, Rob. Something to live for,” said Sharpe.

“And we have it on good authority that the lab in Minnesota will have a DNA string to match against yours within twenty-four hours.”

“Lotta good it'd have done me tonight at midnight.”

Jessica replied, “Precisely why we have put everything on the line.”

“Where're we going now… I mean to hide out?” he asked.

“Taking a flight out,” said Richard, “all arranged.”

“Getting you out of Oregon altogether.” Jessica looked over her shoulder and watched the power and light van following them to the airport. She dialed a number for the van. “Are you all set back there?”

On the other end she heard cheers and put the phone up to Towne's ear. “Not everyone in Oregon hates your guts, Rob.”

“That's a comfort. Now where're we going?”

“Chicago.”

“Chicago?”

“Everything is pointing to Chicago, yes. We have agents on the trail of a man believed to have killed a woman in Milwaukee and-”“But the cops in Chicago released the guy!” protested Towne. “Said he had proof he didn't kill that girl.”

“Darwin had a long talk with Agents Petersaul and Cates just before we came to see you, Rob,” countered Jessica.

“Petersaul and her partner are closing in on another suspect,” added Richard.

Towne looked hopefully into her eyes. “Who is this guy?”

“A kind of shadowy second to Orion with whom Lucinda Wellingham had spent a little time close to the end of her life. Likely grooming him for his own showing.”

“Another artist… fits in with the sketches. I tried to tell these fools here I haven't a lick of artistic talent but-”

Bouncing through a bit of turbulent roadwork, Jessica added, “We suspect this guy reacts badly to major events happening in his life.”

Richard told him, “We suspect that his mother's death rather unleashed him on the world. His chance at a showing in Milwaukee, perhaps out of some sudden incident that set him on a rage, perhaps fear of success-who knows-precipitated his killing of his benefactress. Perhaps your wife and Louisa Childe in Millbrook were in a sense benefactors.”

“We've uncovered an unsolved case connected to him as well, years ago in Millbrook, the disappearance of an art dealer-agent type who had some dealings with Gahran. Male this one.”

“Most of his victims,” added Richard, “we again suspect were fill-ins… ahhh… stand-ins for Mommy Dearest, Nurse Ratched, the Evil Queen or whoever he hates most in this life.”

“And a study of the victims not only shows how close in age they were but in matronly appearance, all save Lucinda Wellingham, and this other art dealer, of course, but these two also represented power, authority figures who held his future in their hands, like his mother, we surmise.”

“Big events set him off?”

“One reason he takes months, sometimes years to strike again,” she said. “He lives a quiet, patient, long-suffering lifestyle between in which he buries his urges in his artistic endeavors-puts them in his work, so to speak.”

Clearing his throat, Richard smirked. “He literally puts the 'objects' of his rage into his work.”

“Sounds better and better for this, doesn't he?” asked Towne, a half-satisfied smile creasing his stern features. “How… what else you got on him?” pressed Towne.

“Not to get your hopes up too high,” Jessica said, sipping hot coffee from a Thermos, “but this guy was born in 1980 to a single mother, Larina Gahran. Ring any bells?”

“Gahran… Larina… son named Giles? No, none.”

“Didn't mean a thing to us, either. You see, he's remained under the radar. Never been arrested, so he shows up on no one's screen. Certainly not the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program-VICAP.”

Outside the tinted car windows the black landscape of Oregon turned to lighted strip malls, gas stations, fast-food restaurants and the debris of urban sprawl as they neared the airport.

In the darkness of the cab, Richard again broke the stillness. “Guy's mother is said to have berated him all his life, or so school records show a distinct psychosis involving his relationship with her-was a disability check recipient, former nurse, in of all places, Millbrook, Minnesota.”

“How do you know all this now and not before?” asked a frustrated Towne, accepting a cup of the hot coffee from Jessica.

“Once Petersaul and Cates got on his trail, it led back to Millbrook,” began Richard, “so I called my contact there, Brannan, and he dug up all he could find on Giles Gahran and faxed it to Petersaul, who in turn, contacted Jessica on her cell just before we arrived at your address, Mr. Towne.”

“Then it's all good, solid information, right? All to the good, right?”

“You tell me. Born and raised in Millbrook with a history of medical problems, yes.” Richard held a smug look of assurance. “Everything points to Giles Gahran.”

“That's his name, Giles Gahran,” repeated Towne.

“Now Darwin's got to play out his hand first, and as soon as possible, we will bring him home, too,” Jessica assured him.

Sharpe continued with, “Records show that Gahran attended Millbrook schools, and Brannan's got hold of a yearbook photo he's forwarded to Chicago PD and FBI.”

“Our first victim, Louisa Childe was killed only blocks from where this kid went to high school. He has no college record other than a Portland arts school-”

“Wait… whoa up there. You have him in Portland? at the time of Sarah's murder?” asked Towne.

“We do,” replied Sharpe.

“And this only after his mother died and Childe was killed,” added Jessica. “His tuition in Portland was seeded by money coming out of her estate, the house sale.”

“Sold out and moved to Portland soon after the Childe killing,” Richard said, his hands like fluttering birds, insistent of the truth. “Only weeks after Giles Gahran's mother dies, two years ago, Louisa Childe's mutilated body is discovered in late November, determined to have been killed in mid-November.”

“Your wife was murdered in mid-November too,” added Jessica. “Joyce Olsen murdered in Milwaukee in the same manner in mid-November.”

“Records also show his having attended Portland's prestigious Kanar Institute of the Arts. While in attendance there, your wife is killed.”

“Damn… Sarah was taking classes there…”

“Gahran next shows up in Milwaukee, having not quite completed his studies in Portland, and now we have not one but two killings using the same MO in Milwaukee.”

“Sounds like you're all over this guy now like he fell outta the sky. Where they hell was all this when I was locked up all this time?”

“He's disappeared into oblivion each time,” Jessica's tone turned from excited to apologetic, “and he allowed so much time between his killings.”

Sharpe said, “Now he's become part of the Chicago cityscape. Still very much at large, but he will surface.”

“It's only a matter of time and credit-card use,” Jessica assured Towne, “a registration record, signing a lease, a lot of interviewing and footwork in the arts community on our part.”

“Besides, Chicago's as good a place to stash you as any,” added Sharpe.

“When do we make the tape?” he asked.

“At the airport, back of the van. It's all set up. Plan is to keep you mobile.”

“You musta paid those boys good.”

“Yeah, we did pay them well,” replied Jessica, “using my FBI MasterCard, but they are also anti-death penalty advocates.”

They pulled into a Flying Tigers airport hangar, the van following. The hangar door came down on cue, just as Richard had promised it would. “That credit card's going to be maxed out anytime now.”