“ It was a publisher’s idea, something to put a spark into a dying art form-or rather to gather in more sales,” explained Eddings. “Same publisher, two sides of the Atlantic.”

They were inside the mammoth Miami Public Library, where the solemnity of the place was at direct odds with the bright, even blinding sunshine pouring through overhead skylights. The architecture reminded her of the airport. The large, open area at the center of the library was filled with palmetto plants and palm trees, basking beneath the skylights. People going about their interests created a tapestry of tap-dancing noises along the marble floor. Eddings went directly for the nearest unoccupied computer terminal. He brought up the screen he wanted and began his search through the mammoth archives for the long-forgotten poet. Jessica held her breath for a moment, believing hellering would have so much dust on him, there would be no way he could be brought to light.

But in the next instant, with C. David Eddings pounding rapidly from one key to the next, his mouse going at lightning speed, he announced, “Aha! Ahh, here it is.”

Eddings was obviously enjoying his sudden and surprising celebrity as the poetry guru or Obi Wan Kenobi of the moment. He gathered the call numbers with his Citizen pen, scrawling them down on a scrap of paper, and again they were off, this time for the basement and the stacks.

Eddings went directly to the book, as if this entire moment had been choreographed many times over. He smiled up at them as he flattened out the book of poems, and went right to the exact page to reveal the full poem and its title. Jessica and Eriq stared for a full five minutes at the complete poem, entitled “to breathe as’t’.”

“ This is incredible. Let’s make a copy,” suggested Santiva.

Jessica, annoyed, trying to read the verses, shushed him and returned to the poem. It read: to breathe as’t’ by e.j. hellering son of t whilst t feeds on feeds the soul those hungry of woman for touch, in the theatre… t requires little much: in the theatre your sweet jasmine of want gone sour, and sacrifice, your sweet belle whilst t strikes gone dully silent out for the highest in her last hour calibre of moment: sacrificed twice when breath and thrice and life are one. and given power each sacrificed unto t in her final breath as he deems as t deems all the whores to be… all the whores to be… t gives back t tenderly floats all the little girls all the little girls in the sea in the sea an opportunity… as opportunity… opportunity to be opportunity to be if only for a singular if only for one magnificent moment inclusive moment the daughter of t the daughter of t and to breathe as he… and to breathe as he… when audience cries, lungs full with venom and foam and lies, moments before she dies, an applause, a bow, arise! for t smiles down from taurus’s distant eyes! as t deems them all to be flush with his breath, so washed by his empowering hand they will be flowering and cleansed.

“ Jeez, and you say this was written in 1930?” asked Jessica.

“ Late thirties, thirty-seven or — eight.”

“ Here I thought sheer hatred toward women was a more modern development, along with gang rapes, wife battering and nasty lyrics out of rap groups like 2 Live Crew,” Jessica confessed.

“ A man ahead of his time, perhaps,” suggested Eriq.

“ Oh, no… no… no, hellering was a gentle man, a kindhearted man. This hardly reflects his feelings, but rather is a lament of twisted souls which he simply crystallized in a moment of artistry.”

“ You’re saying he could write this stuff objectively? That he didn’t feel the rage that he wrote about? Or that he was in control of that rage?”

“ I’m saying all of the above.” Eddings nervously wiped sweat from his brow. “Warm in here, isn’t it?”

“ Yes, it is uncomfortable,” Jessica agreed.

“ You’re a very lovely woman, Dr. Coran,” he near- whispered.

“ Tell me more about this guy hellering.”

“ He was a small man in stature, extremely bookish, not… not unlike myself; thin, however. A quiet man, no doubt, extremely controlled-tightly wired, as they say… but he had fun, his own brand of fun…”

“ Really? Then you see this poem as an exception to his major work?”

“ Oh, quite certainly. Although no doubt every man feels some rage toward women, as every woman feels some rage against men-and deservedly so, wouldn’t you say?”

The remark caught Jessica’s breath as she contemplated Jim Parry, how much she both loved and hated him at the moment. “Yes, I suppose I might say as much.”

“ But you are in control of your faculties, and you would not murder a man because of the arrogance or stupidity of his sex, am I right?”

“ Agreed.”

“ Like the artist, you do something constructive with the rage,” Eddings continued, going to a nearby copy machine to make duplicates of the poem.

She followed while Eriq, tiring of the little obit man, began to wander the lush stacks and stare at the old pictures on the walls.

Jessica shadowed Eddings and asked, “Do you mean then that the artist releases his anger in the process of, say, sculpting, painting, writing?”

“ The true artist works with his emotions-all of them, the entire cascade of feelings, don’t you see? Both light and dark are released through and reflected in his art.”

“ Released… reflected?”

“ Yes… placed through a prism, released out into the world and out of himself, perhaps to save or at least hold on to his sanity.”

She nodded and probed further. “And you’re saying this is a healthy exercise?”

“ Oh, extremely… like writing out one’s anger or fears for the purpose of releasing the demons. Excellent and cheap therapy, if only people knew.”

She thought of her sessions with Dr. Donna LeMonte, which had come to an abrupt end when Donna decided that seeing her any longer would only turn the psychiatrist’s couch into a crutch. At first Jessica had been infuriated, but it had actually proven beneficial when they struck a compromise and Donna began accepting her letters as therapy, an outpouring of all her grief, guilt, remorse and anger over the years since she’d become an FBI agent.

“ The criminally insane, however, don’t know what to do with art; they must have a real time forum, a tangible medium, something other than clay to carve on, is that it?” she asked.

“ Uncontrolled, unfettered madmen make poor music, the Mozarts and the van Goghs notwithstanding. The criminally insane take artistic license beyond sanity.”

“ And therefore are no longer involved in pure art but in a tainted, compromised danse macabre wherein victim becomes medium, weapons tools and materials to reach not creation but destruction?”

“ Creation is turned inside out, yes; destruction becomes the demented means to creation, and that is why he is no longer a true artist, for now he is working less with art and the stuff of dream and nightmare to mirror his soul as he is with real time and real victims, and art becomes skewered on the lance of insanity.”

“ You’ve given a lot of thought to this, haven’t you?” she asked.

“ I have…” He hesitated. “Since these killings began, yes, I have.”

“ So, if I’m understanding you… the artist on a subconscious level may feel, for instance, that his mother was a victim to his father all his life, and this incenses him as much toward his mother as his father?”

The final copy Eddings needed required another dime, but he didn’t have it. Jessica fished in her purse for change and came up with a quarter, which the machine gobbled down.

“ Every monster has to have a willing victim,” Eddings agreed. “The artist has a powerful sense of justice”- the hum and flash of the Minolta copier punctuated his words-”and the fact that the monster’s mother, the creature who brought him into this world, nurtured or neglected him, the fact that she allows herself to be humiliated and whipped like a dog all the child’s life then leads him to ambivalence, yes. By the same token, a parent, mother or father, who physically or sexually abuses a child sows the same sort of seeds of hatred, which in later years spring forth full-blown as rage.”

She wondered how much Eddings was speaking of their phantom killer and how much of himself. He seemed turned inward for the moment, as if searching in some secret looking glass of his own.

“ By ambivalence, you mean he finds himself in the unenviable position of having to both protect and cherish his mother right alongside detesting and hating her?”

“ She asks for it! She steps right up to it; she allows herself to be a victim, and this feeds his rage toward all women.”

“ I see, I think…” “Instead of going out to victimize other women as some men would do, the artistic-minded

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