Bitter Instinct

FIFTEEN

Jessica and the team, man for man, woman for woman, felt stymied. Forensics had revealed little of the killer, and the poison he used continued to evade toxicologists at Quantico, Virginia, just as it had evaded DeAngelos's team. Another night had fallen on the case, and no one stood a step closer to ending the career of the strange Poet Killer.

Jessica looked up from her notes and the killer profile that she, Kim, and James Parry had prepared for the PPD. Lieutenant Sturtevante and her people continued to be cooperative, pleased for the most part with the FBI involvement. The case had simply ground to a frightful halt, and for a time, it appeared that perhaps the Poet Killer had either committed suicide or left the city, or perhaps been arrested and imprisoned on some other charge.

The PPD, under Sturtevante's guidance, looked over the suicide records and any recent arrests and incarcerations that might point to a suspect. With thousands of people leaving Philadelphia on any given day, there appeared little hope of locating the killer if the stepped-up pressure of police surveillance of Second Street and its nightlife had caused him to take flight. Jessica again looked up from her paperwork, intuitively feeling someone staring at her from the doorway of the temporary office she sat in. A squat little man with a cane who looked like Truman Capote, down to the dark glasses, stared back at her, giving her a moment's fright.

“Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you,” he said in a voice that sounded trapped in his windpipe, the gravelly sound requiring her to translate each word. “Bit of a cold,” apologized Peter Flavius Vladoc. “I've come to help you on the Poet Killer case.”

“That's a relief, because we do need help, sir.”

“Not every professional will admit such a fact. Sturtevante told me you were a beautiful creature, but she did you no justice. I wished to tell you as much the other night at Merlin's, but I did not wish to embarrass you or put you on the spot.”

“Thank you-for the compliment, I mean.”

“I looked over the material you forwarded me. We should talk.”

“Very good. What do you make of the killer?”

“I have looked closely at the poetry, you see, and it has meaning for me, and I have made some sense, I believe, of what he or she wants.”

“You think you know what the Poet wants?”

“It is nothing he wants of us; authorities can give in to no demands, for there are none being made.”

“Still the killer wants something,” she said.

Vladoc indicated the chair with his cane. “Do you mind?”

“Please, sit down. What's happened to your leg?”

“Degenerative condition; flares up now and again. Slows me down; makes me feel damned old.” He stepped slowly to the chair, banging the wooden cane against the chair legs like a blind man. As he came into the light, she suddenly realized that he was blind or partially so, but that he had hidden it well that night at the club-maybe because of the lighting, maybe because Jessica had had one too many. “Rheumatoid arthritis; can only get worse with each step I take. Eyes are going as well. Require a high-powered magnifying glass given me by Shockley to even read.”

“I'm so sorry to hear it.”

He waved it off as if it were nothing.

“So, what is it our killer wants, Dr. Vladoc?”

“Peace.”

“Peace? World peace, peace for himself?”

“Peace for his victims.”

“Peace…”

“And one other thing.”

“And that is?”

“Validation.”

The man had a fondness for enigmas, she thought. “Validation of what? His actions?”

“No, validation of myth, legend, fairy tale even, validation of a magical way of thought that he has fully given himself over to, you see.”

“I see, and this is your revelation for me?”

“Your killer is seeking his own peace and purification and the validation of his magical thinking.”

“And he does this by killing young people?”

“He kills in order to cleanse them and make them over as… well, in his or her mind, as the beings they were before being born into this world. Beings born of gods, not of tainted flesh-in other words not born into our tribe, the tribe we call Homo sapiens.”

“Beings… beings born of God?”

“More superior beings, better, yes.” The little man leaned forward in the chair, which was too large for him, knowing he had Jessica's attention now. “Not born of man and woman or flesh. In other words, angels. He's in the business of making, that is, creating angels of them, you see.”

She felt incredulity fill her mind. “He kills them to turn them into angels?”

“I know it sounds like full-blown madness, but there are precedents for such behavior. People have killed others to release them from the bondage of the human coil before, and in fact poetry and literature are filled with examples of such homicides. Look, it goes back to childhood fantasies and beliefs and upbringing, and you know how weird and warped and dysfunctional that can get.”

“Are we going to excuse the killer on the basis of his traumatic childhood, Dr. Vladoc?”

“I do not offer an excuse but an explanation, a reason why.”

“His motivation.”

“His or hers, yes. It could well be a woman.”

“Let's order in some food and talk about this further, shall we? I want to hear all you have to say on the subject. But I would like Dr. Desinor to join us.”

“Coffee and a sandwich would be pleasant, yes, and as for your associate joining us, I have no objections.”

Jessica made the arrangements.

After Kim came in to join them, Vladoc began. “The behavior exhibited by the Poet Killer-I have seen milder examples of it in my practice over the years. It is normally at its height in late adolescence when years of belief in magic are called upon to compensate for a person's having been deprived of it-”

“Deprived of it?” interrupted Jessica.

“-prematurely in childhood. Fantasy, I mean.”

“Bruno Bettelheim,” said Kim.

“I believe Bettelheim was right about the importance of childhood fantasy.”

“You mean the importance of fantasy in understanding and coping with the world.”

“Yes,” replied Vladoc, who returned to his exposition. “All of your victims as well as the poisoner here, I strongly suspect, these are young people who now feel that it is their last chance to make up for a severe deficiency in their life experience. You see, without having had a period of belief in magic-as all healthy children do in interpreting the world-they are then unable to meet the rigors of adult reality.”

“Are you suggesting,” Jessica said, “that many young people today who seek escape in drugs and other addictions were deprived of childhood fantasies?”

“If not drugs, then they will apprentice themselves to some guru, go crazy over astrology, engage in black magic, rites, and rituals, or some other obsession,” Vladoc assured them.

Kim explained further, in obvious sync with Vladoc on the subject. “Such deprived people are engaging in escape from reality into daydreams about magical experiences which they believe will change their lives for the better; drugs are an avenue for such thinking, yes, but those prematurely pressed into an adult view of reality can only sustain themselves through magical thinking and doing.”

“So the cause is in the formative years,” said Vladoc, “when experiences prevented early development of skills that can only be mastered later in life, in realistic as opposed to mythical ways.”

“And this is how the Poet thinks?” Jessica asked.

“He is committing their souls over to the angels. What does that tell you about his worldview?” asked Vladoc, shaking his head. “And that of his victims?”

Jessica leaned back in her chair, the movement making the old wood groan. “You're sure of this, are you?”

“Quite. I'm good at reading between the lines. Each poem is about a chance encounter that ends in his cleansing them-body and soul-in preparation for their return to their true reality, a reality populated by only the pure. That is, in a nutshell, this killer's pathological mind-set.”

“What did Sturtevante think of your interpretation?” Jessica took a leap, guessing that Vladoc had already shared his findings with the lead investigator on the task force.

“She agreed with it, of course. I have studied such lunacy for well over a quarter century. She has confidence in my judgment. ”Words like angelic and pure did seem to apply to the victims, she thought. Vladoc stood, his head barely above hers, although she remained seated. With a Danny DeVito-like glint in his eye, he half smiled and said, “I hope this information helps to stop this poor, driven devil.”

“You're not sure he's… that the killer is male?”

“It is impossible to say from what I saw in the writing, but you have handwriting experts who might help there, right? Don't graphologists claim to know how to differentiate a woman's handwriting from a man's?”

“Our experts have not been able to determine gender on the basis of the handwriting, no.” Not even Wahlbore's program made that claim.

“Perhaps the killer is like his victims in more ways than we think; perhaps he or she is androgynous,” Kim suggested. “We know that the less secure a man-or woman- is within himself, the more he cannot afford to accept an explanation of the world that says he is of minor significance in the grand scheme of the cosmos.”

“True, the one you are after believes himself or herself to be at the center of the universe,” said Vladoc. “Think of it. As long as a child is unsure of his immediate environment, that it will protect him, the more he must believe that superior powers, such as a guardian angel, watch over him, and that his place in the world is of supreme and paramount importance.”

“It's far preferable to zero security,” Jessica agreed.

“Imagine parents who make it their full-time job to denigrate protective imagery like angels and invisible friends as mere childish projections, the flotsam of immature minds,” added Vladoc.

“And you rob the child of one aspect of the prolonged safety and comfort he or she requires,” finished Kim.

“Precisely. To quote Bettelheim, 'The child knows that he was created by his parents, so it makes sense that, like himself, all men, and where they live, were created by a superhuman figure not so different from his parents-some male or female god.' “

“He comes to believe that something like his parents, only far more powerful, intelligent, and reliable, will care for him in the world-something like a guardian angel,” added Kim.

Vladoc launched into his conclusion. 'To feel secure on this planet, our killer needs to believe there is a place where the world is firmly held in place by rules and immutable laws, where terra firma means terra firma, and it's all held in place by loving, caring beings, or one super being who wishes to cloak and envelop him with love and an outpouring of concern, and a peace that can never be achieved in this life, not through thugs, not through preachings, not through sex or food or material wealth or fame. It is that which cannot be achieved on this plane that our killer is interested in, not unlike the desires of the great Romantics in art and literature, not unlike Byron's mad quest across the continent in search of the perfect love and the perfect peace.”

“Our killer has been given the unenviable chore of sending over those who believe strongly in the world of invisible spirit?” asked Jessica. “Do you think he hears voices telling him what he's supposed to do?” Of that I have no doubt,” said Vladoc. “Killer and victim share a faith in the angelic world, and magical thinking-taken to the extreme-is as dangerous as reality itself, or religious fanaticism, or any other ism you may go completely obsessive over.” With that, Vladoc bid Jessica and Kim farewell and good night.

The two FBI agents sat alone in the darkened office.

The phone rang, and Jessica picked it up.

“Jessica, it's James. I want to apologize for my behavior the last time we were alone together. I had no right to say some of the things I said. Certainly no right to hurl accusations at you.”

“Apology accepted, James.” She spoke his name for Kim's information. Kim stood, waved, and disappeared, giving her privacy.

James said, “Think for the good of the case, we need a reconciliation? For the good of the case. We must be able to work together.”

“Agreed.”

“So, it appears your visit to the university was pretty much a bust, from the report you and Kim filed.”

Jessica filled him in on their visit.

“Still, I think we need to follow up, talk to this Leare woman and this guy Locke. Shake some trees, see what falls out.”

“Jim, Vladoc has given us some useful insights into the mind of the killer. Now we must match a person to those insights, and I don't see Burrwith fitting in here.”

“Vladoc's pretty strange, Jess. Sturtevante filled me in on where he's headed with the case. You buy any of it?” She told him about Vladoc's visit and his strange but eerily on-target conclusions about the killer, drawn from his reading of the poems. “Kim and I think he's right on with this magical-thinking business being at the bottom of the killings.”

“Even more reason to follow up on our concrete leads. We need to talk to this Leare and Locke about Burrwith from my perspective, you know, one grounded in his reality.”

'Tonight-now?”

“Let's stay on the university poets,” replied Parry, after considering all that she'd passed along from the psychiatrist, Vladoc. “You got those addresses handy?”

Jessica hesitated a moment, wishing to go back to her hotel, call Richard, shower, and sleep. But she relented, saying, “No time like the present. All right. You're the boss.”

“I'll meet you out front of the crime lab in fifteen minutes with a sack of burgers and chili.”

“Sounds good. I'm starved. Bring enough for Kim, too. See you then.”

“She there?”

“Yeah.”

“You're on.”

But when Jessica hung up, she could not find Kim; the psychic had literally disappeared, but she had left a note on her office door for Jessica.

Dear Jess,

Took all my stuff to the hotel. In view of Dr.

Vladoc's findings, I'm going to retrace my steps, go back over all my notes on the psychometric readings to see what, if anything, jumps out. Need a quiet, secure, safe place to work.

Yours, Kim

“Dr. Plummer did say that Leare was out of town,” Jessica told Parry. They stood outside the professor's home on the northern outskirts of the city. Several days' worth of newspapers adorned Dr. Donatella Leare's doorstep. A weak light illuminated little of the interior, but to Jessica it looked dark and grim.

On the way to Dr. Leare's place, Jessica had confided in Pany exactly what Vladoc had told her. “I suspect the dwarf is onto something,” said Parry, “I just have trouble with such notions. I'm a pragmatic realistic myself. Can't believe a grown man or woman could buy into such thinking to the degree he kills-albeit benignly-over it.”

“Come on, Jim, it's not so different from Lopaka Kowona's trade winds god telling him to mutilate young women in the islands, or have you forgotten his magical thinking, his god, Ku, talking through the winds? And as for the strange little Vladoc, I don't think he's actually a dwarf, Jim, merely stunted. As to his theory, it plugs into our own theories about the killer rather well, perhaps too well.”

“It does fit with the known clues pretty neatly. What do you mean, too well?”

“I'm not sure, but Vladoc sees a lot of mentals; maybe he actually knows this guy and is bound by, you know, patient-client confidentiality.”

“That old twisted ethical argument that the doctor protects his Frankenstein at all costs, despite the fact that the insane monster is on the loose and killing people? I never understood that. Talk about magical thinking.”

“If it's true, we need to look at Vladoc's patient list, see who's on it. I don't know about you, but I'm generally skeptical of theories that fit too neatly.”

“Agreed. All the same, I suppose we have to entertain the notion that Vladoc's information is… well informed. Else, if it is not Que, then the killer wants us to believe that it is?”

“Perhaps to point the finger at someone else?”

“Perhaps. We'll have to keep an open mind to all possibilities. “Yes, as we should.”

Parry picked up a stone and threw it into the trees. “Don't you find it strange that both Locke and Leare are out of town at the same time?”

“You mean at the same time that the killings have stopped?” she asked.

“That, too, yes. You say the two are returning from some sort of conference in Texas?”

“College and university teachers' conference, yes.”

“And have been there for what-two days and nights?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“And from what you tell me, everyone in the English department is sleeping around. These two might be off screwing their intellectual brains out, mightn't they?”

“I have no idea if there's anything between them, Jim, other than a love of poetry. Any suspicions you have are all rather hypothetical, wouldn't you say?”

“Agreed. ”hey'd already tried Dr. Lucian Locke's residence, and had found it equally abandoned and nearly as dark.

Jessica took a deep breath. “I say we get out of here.”

“Where to?” he asked.

“That bookstore, Darkest Expectations, on Second Street. I understand it's open till midnight.”

“All right, I'm game if you are.”

As they climbed into Parry's official car, Jessica realized only now what Jim had hinted at earlier. “You're not suggesting that we might possibly have two killers, two poets poisoning kids, are you?”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“And you're betting on Locke and Leare as the bloody-minded duo?”

“Not necessarily, no, but Leanne knows Leare personally, you see.”

“Oh, yeah, I do remember her mentioning Leare as a friend the university to whom she was talking, an expert in poetry.”

Parry continued speaking as he drove toward Second Street. “And she's had discussions with her about the murders, you see, and when she spoke to Vladoc about the killings, well, she got it in her head that Donatella Leare knows something. Fact is, this Leare woman is one of Vladoc's private patients, and so is Harriet Plummer. He has a lot of female patients, according to Leanne.”

“It's a reach, Jim. The whole thing is a real reach. I've seen nothing to indicate two perpetrators here. Are you thinking Leare and Plummer, two women, could be the Killer Poet?”

“Other than your tearstained evidence, Shockley had found trace elements of two sets of DNA on one of the victims, and neither set matches the victim, or any known person on the evidence-gathering team.”

“Then the meeting with DeAngelos was meant to ask him to be on the lookout for two contradictory sets of information, and he was informed by Dr. Shockley of these suspicions? Suspicions I'm only now hearing about?”

“DeAngelos and Shockley have been working the case together far longer than we have, Jess. Don't go crazy over this little mix-up. The notion had life breathed back into it by Sturtevante, who, while she's looking at this poet Leare as a possible suspect, does not want to believe her friend is our killer.”

“I see, and when were you and Sturtevante going to inform Kim and me of all this?”

“When we got some evidence; we have DeAngelos looking into the possibility of separating out two kinds of poisons. One of Leare's poems is about someone poisoned twice, by two separate lovers. What more can I say?”

“Nothing… not a word.” he interior of the car remained icily silent the rest of the way to Second Street.

When they entered the bookstore called Darkest Expectations, they weren't prepared for the amount of dust and mildew, or for the prevailing motif-Early Draconian meets the Orgone Box. Fake blood wept from the walls and clotted in the iron maiden in the comer, the same one they'd seen in Maurice Deneau's apartment.

“Got her for seventy percent off at the Louvre, a furniture place around the comer,” said the young man covering the register. “Really brightens up the place, don't you think?”

Jessica stepped up to the guy, a bald, plump, earringed, postapocalyptic beatnik with a lot of facial hair and beady eyes; his nose had been buried in an Owl Going back horror novel before the jingle of a bell hanging on the entry-way door had disturbed him. When James Parry, standing beside Jessica, flashed his FBI badge, he said, “Hey, cool! Just like Mulder and Scully in The X-Files. Wow, wait till I tell DeWitt.”

Jessica introduced herself as an ME, which only heightened the young man's sense of awe. He dropped the Going back book on the counter, his tiny pupils enlarged, and with both of his hands propped on the counter, Jessica thought for a crazy moment that he meant to lean in to her for a kiss. “Wow… freaky, really, how can I help you?”

“I have a series of names and photos here,” she replied. “I'd like to know if you recognize any of them.”

“You mean did I know them personally, or as customers? Cops have already asked me the same-”

“Regardless, we're not the cops, and we'd like to know.”

“Sure, any way I can help. This is about those murdered kids, right? The ones the Poet Killer poisoned, right? Parry, reading the man's name tag, said, “Don't concern yourself with that, just look at the photos and names and answer the questions, Marc.” Parry's officious-sounding tone appeared to hit the young man like a blow, if Jessica read his reaction correctly; he seemed to lean back exaggeratedly, straighten, and take a deep breath, as if assessing the agents anew.

“Tamburino,” he said to Parry, “my name's Tamburino to you.”

As Jessica laid out the photos and names, she asked, “You always on the day shift, Mr. Tamburino?”

“Day, night, all the time. It's mine,” he said throwing his hands skyward. “Bought out the owner, Nelson DeWitt. Took every penny I had plus a major-assed loan I'll die paying back, but it's a living, sorta.”

“Do you recognize any of these young people?” she asked again.

“This one looks familiar,” he said, pointing to Maurice Deneau's picture, “and I remember this guy,” he added, pointing to Pierre Anton's image. “I like guys.” He eye-balled Parry hard now. “Hell, they all look familiar. One time or another, I do believe they've all been in my store… These two for absolute certain.” He again fingered the pictures of the two male victims. “And this babe, always in here-browsing and sitting on the floor and reading in-house mostly. Seldom to never purchased. Had the need but not the bread.” He indicated Micellina Petryna with a jab of his left index finger.

“What about the others?”

“Not so regular, but yeah, I'd almost swear all of 'em's been in at one time or another, sure. Why? I mean anyone living around here? They're going to be a full-or part-time student somewhere, and students read, and therefore they wind up at my store. I order books for the classes at the community college and at University of Philly, undercut their on-campus stores, you see. Everybody knows it, so they come to me for textbooks and they browse and buy other kinds of books while they're here. Doesn't mean 1 had anything to do with their getting themselves killed.”

“No one is accusing you of anything, Mr. Tamburino,” Jessica soothed.

“That'd be a switch,” he replied, and winked. “You can call me Marc.”

“The victims didn't have too far to come for reading material,” said Parry in her ear.

“Only decent independent bookseller in the area,” said Tamburino. “Nearest Barnes and Noble is out at the merchant mall at the Trump Casino Hotel. If somebody collects books, or just has a love affair with the printed word, and he or she lives on Second Street… well, eventually, they come to me. That's the store motto.”

“What is?” asked Parry. “Expect Darkest Expectations to book your darkest needs,” he said with a self-deprecating smile and shrug. “Made up the motto for DeWitt couple of years ago. Put it in the window. Told him he needed to get wired to the Web, that I'd put it on a Web site for him. But he's… he was resistant to change.”

“I don't see that you've got any computers here,” remarked Parry.

'Took all my cash to buy the store. Computers'll have to wait.”

“How long have you owned it?”

“DeWitt's just putting the finishing touches onto the sale. He's retiring to a farm he bought in Ontario.”

“Canada?” asked Parry.

“No Arizona or Florida for DeWitt. DeWitt's… well… different.”

“How long did you work for him?” questioned Parry Bout several years now.”

“You think he's strange?”

“Different. I didn't say strange.”

“How do you mean different?” Parry pressed.

Tamburino shook his head. “Contrary is all. Contrary as hell and with everything. You tell him Florida's warm year-round, and he counters with the body needs cold, not hot, to live a long life. Nonsense like that. You tell him that the moon's in the sky, he tells you it's a fake, created by the U.S. government to delude us into believing it's the moon. Different like that is all.”

“What can you tell us about these people?” Jessica pointed to the photos on the counter.

“Not a whole lot; some were heavily into the Romantics-the poets-while others liked Love craft, Poe, Kafka, even Chekhov, early Koontz, vampire novels, you name it. How should I know?”

“Do you have receipts that might tell us about their purchases?”

“Does this place look like I own the latest in merchandising software? Look around. I use an adding machine.”

“Did any of them, to your recollection, purchase any poems by Garrison Burrwith?”

“Who's that?”

“Donatella Leare, then?”

“Oh, sure, they were into Leare's stuff.”

“And the poet Lucian Locke?”

“Yeah, pretty heavily there, too. How'd you know?”

“Wouldn't Scully on X-Files know?” Yeah, you're good.” He smiled. “But you know I've had both Locke and Leare in the store to sign copies of their latest works, so a lotta people came in just for the wine, cheese, and signature, among them your victims maybe. Kinda undercuts your cool score, heh, Scully?”

“Then these two authors are big in Philly? Around this area, they're the biggest. Best thing since Byron, Shelley, and Keats in my humble opinion.”

“Do you have any copies of their books?”

“Right behind you, follow the poetry section to the Ls.”

As she and Parry searched for the slim volumes of poetry, Tamburino shouted, “You gotta love their dark sincerity, man. The dark sincerity of their profound words. It's like Poe and Byron all rolled into one.”

Jessica returned with the books. “Highly recommended, then? Are these signed copies?”

“Yes, they are.”

“I'll take them both.” To Parry she whispered, “A handwriting expert like Eriq might be able to do something with the signatures. Might even find match points between the signature of one of the poets and the killer.”

“Both of these authors have cult followings,” said Tamburino. “Lot of word of mouth about both. The kids around here love 'em like they love Ginsberg; really can't get enough, like what Burroughs these days is to kids who read novels.”

“Thanks, Mr. Tamburino, and how much?” she asked, reaching for her purse.

“I've got it, Jess,” said Parry, placing a twenty on the counter.

“For the two signed copies, it's forty-nine ninety-nine,” Tamburino informed them. “Signatures make the books more valuable, along with the fact they're first editions.”

“Forty-nine ninety-nine for two little books of poetry? That's like a dollar a page,” Parry complained. “Awfully expensive paper and ink.”

“Locke and Leare keep my doors open.”

Jessica snatched out thirty more dollars while Parry, digging for more bills, muttered, “We'll put it on the company tab.”

While Tamburino rang up the order, Jessica started to collect the photos of the dead young men and women when she noticed the walls. They had been done up with a gray, wrinkled wallpaper that created the appearance of leather or even stone. A sponge-painted finish picked up the light and reflected it back. Jessica looked about at the self consciously creepy, sooty store and realized that even the soot was painted on. So real looking, she thought. The place evoked the interior of a medieval castle down to the fixtures and the frames around the artwork. Wherever one found a break in the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a photograph was displayed, each depicting some dense forest or idealized landscape populated with mythological creatures, winged nymphs and fawns and angels. Stepping closer to one of these, she did a double take, realizing that they were not photographs at all, but paintings, meticulously rendered to resemble photographs, and displaying an ethereal use of light that bordered on uncanny. The term magical realism immediately sprang to her mind to describe the paradoxical mixture of “realistic” and fantastic in the pictures.

“Cool paintings, huh?” asked Tamburino, seeing her interest.

“Yeah, unusual.”

“Maxfield Parrish-inspired, I'd say,” replied the store owner. “My full name's Marc Maxfield Tamburino. Close look at the signature, and you'll see the artist's name. She's a friend of mine. I've had her in to sign prints and everything.”

Jessica read the signature-Samtouh Raphael, it looked like. This meant nothing to her, but her eyes locked on one of the more unusual paintings, which depicted a beautiful woman lying at peace in a coffin, her lover holding on to her with one hand, lightly setting a book of poems into the coffin with the other.

“Dante Gabriel Rossetti,” said Tamburino, a little shake of the head accompanying a large sigh. He lifted himself onto a stool, perching there like a heavy set contemporary gargoyle. “One of the most romantic gestures in all of history. He wrote a book of poetry, every poem inspired by her, his deceased lover. You see, when his love died, he had the poems bound and he placed his only copy into the crypt with her.”

“Big deal,” said someone who suddenly stepped from the stacks, a tall, gangly woman whom Jessica for a moment took to be Leanne Sturtevante until the woman's face came into light. She was athletically thin, her cheek and jawbones protruding sharply. Her movements gave the impression of a windup toy at first, but then their oddness meshed with the rest of her and one realized that she moved like a ballerina. Gangly like a giraffe but just as graceful, Jessica thought.

Marc Tamburino instantly assailed the woman, obviously well known to him. “Big deal? How can you say that? It was from the heart when the man did it. It was passion beyond anything in the modem world.” She instantly showed her teeth in a curling smile, and raised her hand like a menacing claw, showing her long nails, painted green and black, each finger alternating in color. “A few years later, on second thought, Rossetti had the eternal love of his life exhumed to retrieve the poetry. That kind of romantic love is beyond contempt.”

“Lucky for us the man retrieved the book,” replied Tamburino. “Else the world would be deprived of those fantastic love poems.”

“All the same, it tells you something about the value of grand dramatic gestures, including those of a poet smitten by love,” replied the book-laden woman, who was staring a hole through Jessica, as if determining what kind of underwear she might be wearing. The sexual interest in the stare was unmistakable. Jessica wondered how long the woman had been in the store and how much she had overheard. “That's a grim way to think, Doctor,” replied Tamburino.

“I do love a dark statement, indeed,” the woman replied, placing her books onto a nearby cart. Next, she opened her arms with an extravagant flourish and curtsied to Jessica, who noticed that the woman had had the crown of her head shaved and the tattoo of a bat inked on the bare scalp. Since, standing up, she was half a head taller than Jessica, the sight of the flashing bat came as a surprise. As she curtsied, the woman said, “Detectives, this creature before you is Dr. Donatella Leare, full professor at the University of Philadelphia. A fortuitous coincidence, a kind of Jungian synchronicity, finds us all here at the same moment. I hope it leads to something… fruitful.”

“Dr. Leare?” Jessica was surprised that this person, dressed in what appeared to be an Indian costume, with strings of beads and crucifixes snaking about her neck and wrists, could be teaching young people at a major university, but when she flashed on some of the unusual and eccentric instructors of her own youth, she put the prejudice aside. “This is indeed a fortuitous meeting. We have been wishing to discuss the spate of deaths in the area with experts such as yourself, people who have some connection with dark side poetry. In addition, we understand you may have known some of the victims. Isn't that so, Dr. Leare?”

Jessica had to pull her hand away, the professor was holding so fast to it, smiling as she did so. Jessica wondered what sort of relationship existed between Leare and Leanne Sturtevante.

“We've been anxious to meet you. Missed you at the university and at your residence,” added Parry, staring.

“Yes, well, I understand you wanted to speak to me. Dr. Plummer's message made that clear, but coming back to this dreadful, awful business, and the lateness of the hour, I simply did not wish to deal with it tonight, so instead I came to see Marc and purchase some books I'd been wanting to delve into, and to clarify my thoughts, cleanse my mind of the wretchedness of existence, the human condition, all that, so to speak. Books do that for me. Intoxicating, really. Some people call me a literary junkie.”

“Sounds like an escape,” replied Jessica, recalling what Vladoc had said about people who had an insatiable need to run away from reality. Did Leare do this through poetry, through teaching, through sex, or a mixture of them all?

“Yes, all the same… bumping into you like this… well, it's obviously positive karma at work-that is, I hope it's positive. The moment I began overhearing your conversation with Marc, I realized just who you were. Dr. Plummer told me I should expect a visit from you and another woman. You disappoint me, coming with a new partner in tow. Plummer told me of your visit to the school.”

Parry quickly introduced himself, his eyes still unashamedly taking in the strange-looking poet, her dress, makeup, and nails. “What do you make of the dean's claims against Garrison Burrwith?”

“Silly. She's really an intelligent woman except when it comes to men and managing her emotions. Dreadful what's going on here. It's like a totalitarian state where everyone is encouraged to squeal on his neighbor. As a result of all this, I found even the wasteland of Houston a relief.”

“You knew one or more of the victims?” Parry asked. He'd circled behind her, as if curious to see if there was any tattoo or lines of poetry scribbled on her back.

“You won't find what you're looking for on me, big boy. As to your questions, yes. I knew several of the victims. At one time or another, three of them were… had taken one or more of my classes. Aside from freshman English, I teach the Romantic poets, Women in Literature, and other classes. So now you have me cornered, what else can 1 answer for you? Am I upset over these awful killings? Absolutely. Do I know anything pertaining to them? Absolutely not. So, now you tell me, how can I help you? I do wish to be cooperative with you, Dr. Coran.”

Jessica pointed to the photos still spread out on the counter. 'Tell us what you know about these kids.”

“They all loved poetry-passionately, I'd say. Not your run-of-the-mill students when it came to beauty. Ironic, isn't it?”

“What's that?” asked Parry.

“That they should all die having poetry literally branded on them.”

“How did you get that information? It hasn't been publicly released.”

“You forget. I know someone close to the investigation, and I think we should leave it at that. Back to my point- perhaps your killer hates poetry lovers? Maybe a geek who failed a literature class miserably and is taking his revenge out on better students. That would certainly satisfy audiences of most TV mysteries, wouldn't it?”

“We'll take that theory into consideration,” said Parry- not meaning it in the least, Jessica surmised, on seeing the glint in his eye as he peeked over the professor's shoulder.

Stabbing at the photo array with her index finger, she said, “Did any one of the students you knew ever speak to you about the coffeehouse poetry fad going around Second Street?”

“Ever eat raw meat? Ever sniff glue? Ever do heroin?” Leare shot back, somewhat inappropriately. “The backside writings? Certainly. It became common talk at the university as just the latest thing to do. No one for a moment thought it would catch on the way it has, and certainly no one could have predicted that it might lead to… to murder.” She paused, removing the stack of books from the cart and placing them, one by one, onto the counter. Jessica noticed they were all old paperbacks with lurid covers, mystery and suspense novels by Glenn Hale and Stephen Robertson. “Lot of jokes about the fad.” She continued to talk in a casual, breathy voice. “You know, like how do you do a rewrite, anal alliteration, anal performance, do you show it on a first date, all that.”

“Any of the victims ever confide in you that they were thinking of having anything like this done?” Jessica inquired.

“No… never. It was, I believe, something done on the spur of the moment, like getting it on, getting a tattoo, a tongue, navel, or clit piercing, typically after having consumed a good deal of alcohol or having smoked mucho dinero in the form of grass.”

“ME's not seeing heavy concentrations of either in the victims,” said Parry.

“Which means these kids went into it with eyes wide open,” added Jessica. “Now, between the two of you, Mr. Tamburino, Dr. Leare, can you tell us anything about these victims in the way of character traits that might lead to such victimization?”

'Trusting souls, all of them,” said Donatella Leare. “Of course, I didn't know them all, but they're of a type.”

“Oh, and what type would that be?”

“Fragile, fragile as wounded birds, their hearts pumping far harder, far stronger than yours or mine, I can assure you, Doctor. No distrust gene. They open up to people immediately and deeply, which pleases most people but may well trigger your everyday sociopath, could it not?”

Tamburino elaborately shrugged, saying, “Victims. They were all perfect victims. I've read about the type. They lay down for anybody, man, except maybe this time it's for good.”

“Don't you find it odd so many in so small an area would so easily take on that role?” asked Jessica.

“Mr. Tamburino's crude assessment may not be to your liking, Dr. Coran,” said Leare, “but there is some truth to it. All of the ones I knew personally-that is, through my work-well… they saw life through rose-colored glasses, to say the least, and they are a product of a generation raised in the beliefs that, while beautiful in theory, can be deadly in practice.”

“Such as?”

“Such as all mankind has a purity of soul and goodness that need only be touched into life; such as there is no such thing as evil, only the absence of good-that sort of thinking.”

“Like there's no such thing as a bad kid?” asked Parry.

“Something like that, yes. No such thing as a natural-born killer, a bad seed, a killer gene,” added Donatella Leare. “We artists can portray such Utopias in our poems, books, paintings, but if you try to live such a life, you might easily be heading for disaster.”

Jessica agreed. “You mean these kids saw life like one of these paintings there done by… by…” She could not recall the artist's name.

“Samtouh Raphael, one of our local artists. It's computer graphics, really. She's become so successful that she quit her teaching job at Penn State to devote herself full-time to her painting, moved into a loft apartment here. A local success story.”

“Derivative of Maxfield Parrish,” repeated Tamburino, “only the brushstroke is that of a Macintosh PC.”

Tamburino's comment seemed to irritate Leare, who icily said, “Everything is derivative, Marc, if you scratch the surface; even Shakespeare stole plots from Plutarch. What's important is that the artist make his plunder his or her own. Obviously, Samtouh learned to create light in her paintings from Parrish, but regardless, she has found her own vision.”

“Some of the subject matter overlaps,” he argued.

'To hell with that; the woman clearly has something unique, quite her own, that has sparked a mad interest in her work, especially among the young.”

“I do real photography myself,” said Tamburino. “Been relegated to a hobby since I took on the store, but for a time, I was making good money, doing weddings and other tribal ceremonies.”

“You mean like that wake you photographed?” Leare asked pointedly.

“Hey, it was an interesting gig, and the customer paid well.”

She turned to Jessica. “I see you're delving into my work,” said Leare. “Do enjoy it.” She reached out and massaged the copy of her work entitled The Eternal Dream of Still and the Dream of Dirth.

“Interesting title,” Jessica said. “I'm given to understand many of the victims not only took your class but read and enjoyed your poetry, along with-”

“Lucian Burke Locke's, I know.” She now snatched Locke's book from Jessica, asking, “Which of his titles do you have here, his latest, ahhh, Sex-the Melancholy Distress. The man is obsessed with getting it right-sex, that is-glorifying it to a fever pitch that tries to reach a nirvana of absolute peace-in his poetry, I mean-a kind of death and birth through the penis. The perfect balm for mankind's ills and confusions, sex as the coiled snake, as in the Kundalini myths and religious beliefs of the East. That sort of thing.”

“But like the computer artist, he appeals to the young, yes?” Jessica asked.

“Why don't you talk to him about that? He's back, too. We made the trip to Houston together. Got back late due to an accident at the airport, huge delays. Only saving grace was that the conference was better this year than last.”

Jessica picked up the photos of the dead, telling Dr. Leare, “Please, you will make yourself available to us, Dr. Leare, should we have further questions.”

“Absolutely.”

The poet made her purchases and said her good-byes. At the door, she hesitated. “I dearly hope you catch this fiend and stop him before anyone else is harmed. It's terribly upsetting for all involved, the academic community and the young people who populate Second Street.”

'Trust me,” Jessica returned, “it's just as upsetting for law enforcement.”

The tall, domineering Leare, her gait that of a regal if somewhat ostentatious-looking bird, disappeared through the door. Jessica retrieved her books and photo file, and she and Parry bid Tamburino and his little shop of curiosities good-bye.