Absolute Instinct

TWENTY-THREE

The Chicago Field Museum had a long and distinguished history as one of the original buildings of the famous White City of 1893, created for the Chicago World's Fair Columbian Exposition of that year. It had stood sentinel at 1400 S. Lake Shore ever since, and millions annually flocked to its doors to see the wonders of the natural world.

Ironic, Jessica thought, that her chasing down Giles Gahran, the son of her worst nightmare, should end here in this palace devoted to all things natural-its other name being the Museum of Natural History. But then there actually was something natural about the development of the criminally insane, too… How natural it all was, despite what people wanted to believe to the contrary. The criminal mind was as old as man himself, and like an ancient, persistent, resistant virus, it resided-sometimes dormant, sometimes active, but always present-within every developing human brain, the paterfamilias of evil. Like a new layer or patina over an old deck, the rotted original boards remained.

Still, a part of Jessica recognized the role that Larina Gahran had played in creating the monster Giles. No matter his genetic makeup, no matter the mark of Cain on his soul, no matter his predisposition toward blood and violence and that which could not be predicted, his sick fascination with spinal fluid, bone marrow and bone, fed as it were by the rare esoteric volumes he'd collected over the years. Despite all of it. Despite what he may or may not have done as a child to make Larina believe him the spawn of Satan himself, Mother Gahran could have gotten him help, she could have shown an inch of compassion, she could have shown a modicum of love at least for that part of the child that was good and innocent, but she chose instead to pour poison over poison.

It reminded Jessica of a story of child abuse written decades before it became commonplace news and TV and radio talk fare. The tale entitled Born of Man and Woman was penned by the master storyteller Richard Matheson. Matheson's monster, too, was created of poor parental attitudes and behaviors as much as the boy's birth defects.

These thoughts swam about in Jessica's mind even as she keenly and warily watched her every step now that she'd entered the museum. She was suddenly barred from going farther by a hefty black woman in security guard uniform. When she flashed her badge, the woman didn't budge from her path. “Everybody pays same here, cops, no different.”

“I'm on the job here, in pursuit of a fugitive.”

“How do I know that?”

“Fucking… Christ lady look…” She read the woman's nameplate, “America? Is that your name?”

“That's right. Mama was a marine, first lieutenant.”

“Well, listen, America, I need your help on this case.”

“My help?” “That's right.” Jessica pulled forth a folded sheath of papier. “Wanted poster,” she added.

“This looks like just a kid,” she replied.

“His high-school photo. It's all we've got to go on. Look, America, I want you to make copies of this picture on your museum copier and get it out to every security guard in the place for me. Can you do that? And can you let me have your radio in order to keep in touch with all your personnel?” Jessica pointed to the state-of-the-art earphones and mouthpiece.

America nodded and handed over the radio and said, “Does it rain in a rainforest? I'm a law-and-order woman.”

“But no one is to go near this guy. He's armed and dangerous.”

“No way he got through our screening with a gun,” she countered.

“Perhaps not, but he is a multiple murderer.”

“I see.”

“Point me in the director of the Lovely Bones exhibit. I'll start there.”

“Straight ahead. That big mess, you ain't gonna miss.”

Jessica started out alone save for the headphone hookup. She wondered how quickly and efficiently America might act or fail to act. She entered the huge, marbled concourse of the Field Museum, the lights turned down for effect over the simulated dinosaur boneyard created for the exhibit at the center of the concourse rear. Instead of a museum, she had walked into the Mojave Desert. Leading up to the bone yard itself a simulated dusky red earth trail. On all sides, an impressive illusion, created masterfully with Hollywood effects and lights made Jessica feel herself in a strange desert filled with people in black tie and evening gowns toasting the museum's latest major opening, celebrating an enormous find in the Mojave. From what she gathered, the find had come of a vision. This vision had led the chief archeologist in charge, a millionaire named Abraham Stroud, to the exact spot and layer below the surface, and aside from the dinosaur find, it had also uncovered evidence of an early race of forgotten people, the Mojaves, Stroud named them.

Jessica meandered through the desert on the Field Museum marble floor, and she wondered what the effect had had on Giles, and where he might be at this moment. Certainly, he hadn't donned white shirt, coat and tie. He should, like herself, stick out in this crowd. But she could not find him.

Her phone rang, annoying people closest to her, milling about the complex recreation of the dig.

It must be him. Still playing games.

She let it ring until other patrons showed their annoyance. The man of the hour, Abraham Stroud-a bifocaled elderly Kirk Douglas look-alike, in need of a good tailor- looked ill at ease with unkempt hair and a scraggly beard at odds with his baggy tuxedo. He addressed the crowd in a warm and unpretentious manner, folksy in his approach, befitting the string tie, Navajo jewelry and western boots he wore with the tux.

“The find at Mojave is perhaps the most important single…”

Jessica answered the phone and heard Richard's voice, angry at her sudden disappearance. He did not disguise his anxiety. “Are you mad? You've gone after him alone, haven't you? Where are you?”

She pointed the camera and panned the museum. “Field Museum,” she said. “He's here someplace, Richard, and he insisted I come alone.”

“Damn you, Jess! You have no bloody right to endanger yourself in such a way, not now, now that you've made me love you.”

“He's close, Richard, and he thinks we have some sort of connection due to-”

“Foolish, Jess! He's a mad hatter, and you are following his lead! Harry Laughlin and I are on our way now. Stay put. Stay close to that crowd there.”

“I'll be careful, of course.”

“Don't hang up, you! Keep this line open, and keep the camera filming. I swear this will not be our last conversation. After what this monster did to Amanda Petersaul, Cates, all the others… how could you be so foolish as to go off after him alone, Jess?”

“Richard, had I come with an entourage… even being on the phone with you now compromises my deal with Gahran.”

“You cannot make a deal with the Devil and come out unscathed, Jess. You of all people know that!”

She thought of her many scars over the years inflicted by others such as Matisak, both physical and psychological.

The radio earphone crackled with a voice now, Giles Gahran. “We don't have a lot of time left, Jessica-darling of my father's wet dreams. I want you with me now. You'll be the prize Father could not have, but I will possess. Make the old man proud, wherever he is.”

“Giles, where are you? I'm here. Just direct me… guide me.”

“You almost sound willing.”

“Maybe I am. Maybe I should have gone out of this world with your father, Giles. I haven't exactly had the best life since then. Filled with depression, fear, anxiety, night sweats, nightmares, visited by your father's spirit.” She hoped the lies would keep him off balance.

“Come to the top floor, rear stairs, directly on your right or left, either way… but no elevators. And come alone. Remember, I can see you from here.”

She looked up far overhead, but she could not see Giles on the overhead promenade due to the lighting around the Mojave boneyard exhibit. The Lovely Bones banner lifted and lowered with the air spilling from nearby ducts, sending a shiver through the canvas sign. The smooth river of movement and ripple reminded Jessica of how at the lightest touch of the brush her horse's back rippled with feeling from hoof to ear. How could a horse have more feeling in its epidermis than a man had in his entire being, she wondered as she took the first white marble step toward her and Giles's fate.

As she made the half-landing, she could see down over the crowd. The speaker continued to gloat and praise fellow archaeologists working the dig back in the southwestern desert. He was working up toward the money pitch, she realized. Looking down from the second landing, she saw the enormous boneyard from straight over the top now. It looked like a jagged pile of arrowhead shaped glass. It's centerpiece appeared to be what the speaker referred to now as the diablo spinata, and with a long pointer, he touched it and added, “The Devil's Spine, we came to know it as… called it that when it began to take full shape from out of the eons-old layers of rock and sand around it. And I can tell you, ladies and gentlemen, out under a Navajo moon at night with that thing staring up at you for what seemed a half a mile at the time, I can tell you, it began to smell of sulfur, it had so convinced us of its namesake… that we knew we were indeed tugging on Satan's own tailbone.”

The laughter rose up to Jessica as she made the third landing. The boneyard looked smaller from here, all save the diablo spinata section.

“Aren't you curious how I came by the radio, Jess?” asked Giles in her ear.

“Yes, I am.”

“And how I knew you would be on this frequency?”

“Wise of you, Giles.”

“Tell me, Jess. What did you think of the showing?”

“The showing?”

“Don't fuck with me.”

“Oh, yeah… the showing in the back bargain basement area of the Cafe Avanti, yeah, not a large crowd but quite an enthusiastic one. Especially for the locked door exhibit, your last victim. Richard said your work was a bit off the usual trodden path. But you know how low-key those British are. Myself, I thought it curiously derivative of Keith Orion.”

“Derivative… Orion! Bullshit! You're such a lying bitch. How many lies did you tell to my father to lure him away from Mother?”

“Oh… is that what this is all about?” she replied, knowing all that she said was going over the line to Richard and Laughlin on the open line. “You think Matthew left your mommy to fuck me?” Her voice had taken on a teasing tone.

“He wanted eternity with you,” Giles replied. “Maybe if you weren't around… who knows? Maybe he could have loved Mother. As it is, she became a diabla to his diablo. Maybe the two of them reign in hell now.”

“Sure… and if we all lived in a dream world, Giles, life wouldn't suck for so many of us, would it? You don't get any fucking sympathy from me, Giles.”

“Why don't you call me Matt Junior. By the way, what did you think of the sculptures, really? I want an honest answer.”

“They were curiously lacking any of the haunting quality or humanity I had anticipated and you were obviously going for.” She lied, describing her true reaction in the opposite.

“Lying slut cunt… that's what you are. You're just denying your true feelings, ashamed that the sculptures moved you, touched something in you. I know you liked the artwork.”

“I wish I could say that was so, Giles, but-”

“Liar! You found my art, the spines included, fascinating, didn't you, Jessica? You're an M.E., hell, you've got to love it. The panache of it alone, the daring, the abandon.”

“Are you trying to convince me or yourself, Giles?”

“Just get the fuck up here and tell me to my face. I want to see your eyes when you lie, just how cold they can be.”

Jessica did wonder who had given up the headphone and mouthpiece set to Giles. She prayed no one else had lost a life due to Giles Gahran's kill spree.

“Curious thing you did out at Navy Pier, Giles. Tell me, were you going to jump?”

“I just had an accident with the box is all.”

“Not the way I heard it. You stood up in the gondola, began rocking it. Like you were going to take a swan dive. You like heights, Giles?”

She made the last and final landing. Wearing jeans, she'd placed her camera phone face out and anchored in her hip pocket. She knew that Laughlin and Richard could see what she now saw. Across from her on this lonely final floor of the museum, Giles Gahran held hostage a young black girl barely out of her teens wearing the uniform of a security guard.

He held a small caliber weapon to the terrified girl's brain. Jessica could see bruises on her forehead where he had burrowed the muzzle into her to make his point, and the girl had gone limp, fainted, so that Giles had to drag her about with him like some enormous other self.

“She's not dead,” he said immediately to clear this up. “Just went out like a light. I may've choked off her air a bit too long. But she's very much alive.”

“That's good, Giles. I know you want to do the right thing here.”

“Yeah… I do. Now take out your weapon and kick it back down those steps you came up.”

“For the girl, OK. You let her go, I kick away my weapon and become your hostage.”

“That might do except for one thing. You toss the weapon first. Then I let go of her.”

Jessica took in a long deep breath of air as she cautiously took her coat off and discarded it, displaying her shoulder holster. This she then unstrapped and tossed down the stair well to the half landing below. It made a resounding echo, causing some in the crowd below to look up at the unfolding drama overhead as if it were part of the planned activities of the evening. Stroud's voice wafted up and echoed off the marble columns here. “The Mojaves had a strange ritual and an even stranger deity…”

“Satisfied?” Jessica asked Giles. “Now let the girl go.”

Giles smiled and eased the unconscious girl to the marble floor. Jessica took a tentative step toward the girl as if she might help her, but Giles jammed the gun in her face.

“Forget about her. She's nobody. It's you and me now, and it's time. Our time, Jess. Something I do to make Father proud.”

“Time for what, Giles?” Jessica reached hands out to him. “You going to shoot me? If so do it now, because I'll be damned and dead before I go to any other location with you. I'm no fool to wind up facedown under your bone saw for a slow death.”

“Bet you have exquisite spinal fluid running through you, Jessica Coran. Juicy and thick. Thick yellow is… healthy. And marrow. I could really enjoy sucking on your-”

“It's not going to happen, Giles. It's here and now. One shot and every policeman and FBI in the building descends on you.”

“You came alone. I saw you.”

She lifted the phone and spoke into it to Richard. “Richard, where is your location?”

“Main lobby downstairs.”

“Lies,” countered Giles.

“Richard, show me your location on the camera.”

She held up the camera phone to Giles's eyes, and he saw the show of force, uniformed and plainclothes cops spreading out across the museum and covering every exit.

Jessica took this moment of surprise to drop and yank his ankles from beneath him. Giles came down hard, striking his head on the marble floor, his gun skittering away, rattling crablike as it raked across the marble floor.

“I got him!” shouted Jessica who'd snatched out her second weapon. “The same gun that ended your father's life, Giles. One fucking wrong move from you, and I put you out of your miserable fucking excuse for a life. Now get up!”

Jessica heard the elevator rev up, knowing Richard and others would spill out any moment to relieve her, Richard to scold her further. She heard others racing up the stairs to the collective shock of the crowd below. She took a moment to gather in her breath when the girl on the floor moaned, and Jessica took her eyes off Gahran for a millisecond.

Giles had been pulling himself up with the help of the balustrade, and suddenly he stood balanced atop it, threatening to jump.

The others spilled from the elevator and Jessica shouted for all to stop. She pleaded with Giles to come into her custody. “I'll see you aren't harmed, Giles, and that you aren't treated-”

“Like some sort of freak?” He laughed and sent a colorful bubblegum card billowing her way. As the card fluttered birdlike toward her, Giles shouted, “I'll see you in hell, Doctor!” And he dove swanlike out over the railing. She rushed to the edge, irrationally shouting no even at this juncture, just in time to see him pirouette onto his back and land face up, his entire back splayed open in a series of stabbings from the diablo spinata. The splat and the spatter of blood on white shirts, eyeglasses and evening gowns combined with the horror of Gahran's sudden arrival amid the elite of Field Museum donors sent up a collective terror-layered gasp.

Even from her distance, Jessica could make out Giles's open eyes staring back up at her, and she heard a whisper in her ear, not Giles's voice, but that of Mad Matthew Matisak's, quietly, eerily saying,Join me here, Jess, on the spine of Satan. She could even hear his maniacal laugh, a sound she had thought long before banished from the last corridor of her mind, vanquished years before by her heart.

Apparently not so.

“Diablo spinata,” she repeated the archaeology professor's term for the dinosaur bone that had claimed Giles Gahran, just to hear the sound of it again, she imagined, and just to weigh the sheer irony of it all as she stooped and lifted the bubblegum card he'd contemptuously thrown in her face. It proved a card depicting none other than Mad Matthew Matisak-crime statistics, the man's ranking according to body count listed alongside his brief biography with a notation of his unofficial official website all on one side, while his grim, ruddy and handsome features as a young man before the ravages of his disease graced the front. A sick society had made of Matisak a cult hero.

Laughlin now stared matter-of-factly down at the dead man and said, “Damn, looks like a picket fence went through the creep. Good riddance to rubbish, heh? One for the M.E.'s to yammer about over drinks at the convention, heh, Dr. Coran?”

“That could've been you down there, Jess. It's obviously what he had in mind, send you over to join with his father in a pathetic attempt of one monster trying to please another,” Richard said.

“A son trying to please a father, a son who could never please his mother,” Jessica replied.

“Why don't you write it up in another of your case file books, Dr. Coran,” Laughlin sardonically suggested. “Given the bizarre nature of the case and all, it oughta make a bestseller.”

“I'll likely have all the time in the world to write. Gods of the FBI are going to come down hard on us, Richard, when we return to D.C.”

“Perhaps… perhaps not,” Richard replied, holding her close to him.

“Do you know something I don't?”

“Before I discovered you missing at the cafe, I got a call from Eriq Santiva.”

“And?”

“He and Hemmings had it out right in the middle of Fischer's office, heated battle as they say, and Eriq came out on top defending our actions, reminding them of your previous successes in New York, Philadelphia, Miami, twice in New Orleans, D.C., Houston, Hawaii and London.”

“Did Eriq go so far as to say he condoned our actions in Portland?”

“Better yet.”

“What?”

“He brought in Xavier Darwin Reynolds who so impressed Fischer that Hemmings was blown out of the water. Darwin pointed out that the FBI came out as the hero all across America thanks to us yanking an innocent man off death row at the thirteenth hour. And the kid's persuasive, as you know.”

“But did Eriq go so far as to tell Fischer that we had his blessings?”

“He went further. He claims the glory. It was his idea.”

“My God, Eriq did that?”

“To save our asses, yes. Said he will take the brunt of any disciplinary actions Fischer might want to take, including his dismissal.”

“Geez, we can't let Eriq take this on himself this way. Did you tell him I was thinking of taking that position with Virginia state? Did you?” She grabbed her phone up and pressed speed dial for Santiva in Quantico.

Richard stopped her, pressing the phone's off button. “Calm down. There's something else.”

“What?”

“Eriq won a 155 million dollar infusion of funds to be used for the Behavioral Science Unit and the FBI M.E. programs to be administered at your discretion, Jess. You're on the board that decides just how this money will be used.”

She stared at Richard, disbelieving. “I–I don't know what to say.”

“Jessica Coran? Without words? Mute? The world's turned upside down.”

“I'll take that as a compliment, I think.”

“Does this mean you'll stay with the FBI, Jess?”

“No… no amount of money is worth going through this again. Look down there at that lost soul, Richard.”

Sharpe looked again at the battered, torn body of the dead young man still in his early twenties. “The kid lived such an unrelentingly brutal emotional nightmare, constantly under assault by his own mother.”

Then he saw movement.

At least he thought he saw movement.

It appeared imperceptible, but yes, Giles Gahran Matisak began to slowly squirm.

“God blind me for a fool, Jess, he's alive!”

“What?” She stared down to the body splayed swastikalike and bleeding all over Dr. Stroud's bones, which were apparently the only thing in the exhibit not simulated but the actual diablo spinata transported here from the Mojave.

Now Jessica, too, saw the pinned Devil's child squirm in pain. “Someone ought to put the wretched thing out of its misery,” she muttered, her gun pointed.

Richard put a hand over hers, taking the gun from her, saying, “No, Jess. It would only add to your nightmares. Leave it in God's hands.”

“He's suffered enough.”

“It is rather like watching a rabid animal, isn't it?”asked Laughlin.

“You're right, Richard. I won't do it. I won't do it.” She holstered her weapon.

Laughlin said, “If we can save him, you could study him, as you did with Matisak before him.”

“What good came of it? Studying this kind of evil does not make it go away, and neither does burying it. It just keeps coming back, and I'm walking away on two good legs from it now for the final curtain.”

Richard draped his arm about her and placed her head on his chest. “Whatever you decide, I'm behind you one hundred percent, Jess.”

“With you at my side, Richard, I want to enjoy life more.”

“As do I, of course.”

“I want us both to escape this madness that surrounds us. We've paid our dues many times over, you in London, me here.”

“Time for a little peace and paradise, you mean?”

“We'll never find it on the path we're on, not as FBI agents without a semblance of normalcy in our lives.”

“All right then, it's settled! But we must make a pact. Neither of us shall ever be lured back in once we've stepped out of it.

“Done!” She hugged him to her. “Thank God I have you.”

“Perhaps I'll find time now to write that book I've carried about in my head all these years.”

“By all means, Richard, do it,” she said.

“I love you, Jess. I've loved you all my life.”

“But you haven't known me all your life.”

“Doesn't matter. I've loved you-”

“-all my life!” They said it in unison.

Richard kissed her passionately while the milling confusion of humanity's floating opera here in the museum continued to file past Giles Gahran Matisak's now-still body. Giles lay still now, beyond caring about the amateur photos being shot or where they might wind up. For a moment, Jessica watched men in tuxedos and women in sequined evening gowns all rubbernecking for a better view of the monster who suddenly let out a final death rattle and was gone.

“Horace Keene and his team can take care of this untidy mess,” Sharpe firmly said, guiding her along the promenade farther and farther from the horror below. Jessica, nestled in the crook of Richard Sharpe’s embrace, allowed him his way toward the far stairwell and exit. She consciously fought the urge to pull from him and go back to take control of the crime scene. But no, she would not do that, not this time. Fuck them one and all, the FBI, Portland authorities, all her critics who felt she had, over the years, developed a heavy-handedness that put others off, and those who felt she had nothing but a cold sociopathic mind herself to be able to function in this man's world.

She liked the feel of her feet moving her body out of this lifestyle here and now. She could do this, easily, with enthusiasm simply turn and walk away. Mentally, she had also turned a corner deep within, one camouflaged all these years by ultimately meaningless cliches about duty and honor and integrity and loyalty to something she had no reason to turn her entire life over to, and to a profession that only rewarded in order to take away later, a profession that constantly asked, What have you done for me lately?

Inside her head, she felt a great sense of freedom rush in to replace all the mendacity that thrived on the system like parasites, fat cutworms, slugs, leeches and lampreys. The freedom she felt allowed her to walk off without a care and to not once look back, but to think only of her future at the ranch with Richard and their animals. To think herself and her sanity and good health and as small a thing as her smile might actually be more important than the next autopsy, than doing an autopsy on the son of Mad Matthew Matisak. Something any competent autopsiest could do.

“Yeah, Horace Keene can take care of this mess,” she said, stopping Richard in his tracks. She hugged him close. “I want to live now, really live.”

“Cancun's got great airfares right now, and it's been a while since we've gone diving.”

“No… maybe later in the year, but now it's home. We do have a wedding to plan.”