“ Consider it done. I read all about how she helped you in N’awlins last year.”
“ You have no idea.”
I have every confidence that our psychic sector will flourish in the coming years. Say, Jessica, do you think that Eddings was any help? He sure was a sad sack.”
“ Yeah, something melancholy about him, that’s for sure, Eriq. As for being a help, who knows. Although in a sense, he’s predicted for us what the Night Crawler’s next love note will contain.”
“ The second stanza?”
She nodded, a chill running up her spine.
“ Spooky, huh? And the guy was kinda spooky, too. You don’t suppose he’s the Night Crawler, do you? That would tie in with the Herald connection.”
“ Sure, he chooses to send his murder messages to his own paper, then identifies the source for us. No, I don’t think so.”
“ Strange little guy in a way, kind of a mix between Peter Lorre, Wally Cox and Bela Lugosi, wouldn’t you say?”
This made her laugh, which felt good. There hadn’t been much to laugh about in a long time.
“ Did I hear him say something about writing a book?” Eriq asked between laughs.
“ As a matter of fact-”
“ What could a guy like that have to say that anyone would want to hear?”
“ Well, it takes a certain amount of arrogance on the part of anybody to write a book, to believe they have enough to say to the world and that people-strangers to them- are going to actually be riveted to ink markings on a page. But you’ve got to admit, he was the only one in that room who knew about hellering’s bizarre little poem, if you remember,” she defended, not knowing why.
“ Yeah, yeah… I stand corrected. He wasn’t like, you know, hitting on you, was he?”
“ And what is it with you men who feel threatened by a little man like Eddings, or… or a woman with a brain, anyway?”
“ Threatened? Who feels threatened?” Eriq threw up his hands.
“ Forget it. Just get me back to Miami Crime Lab; I’ve got lots to do there. You promise now to get the killer’s note, the original, off to Kim as-” “Like I said”-he was annoyed-”consider it done.”
SEVEN
When, on the road to Thebes, Oedipus met the Sphinx, who asked him her riddle, his answer was: Man. This simple word destroyed the monster. We have many monsters to destroy. Let us think of Oedipus’ answer.
The Following Morning
Morning came to Miami as if all of nature’s most peaceful and warm and beckoning best had come knocking at the door of mankind’s most striking artifices-the towers of the modern city. A brilliant, blinding Florida sun omni- sciently and without struggle won the battle for hierarchy here, alongside an equally rich and stunning blue sky, a sky which acted the foil for the creamiest, whitest clouds Jessica had ever seen in any place other than Hawaii, all vying for attention amid a lush cityscape of skyscrapers and man- made spirals and pinnacles. For a moment, looking out over the pearl-white sand beaches, she thought that she was back in the paradise which she and Jim Parry had shared; imagined for a moment that he would step out onto the wraparound balcony here with her. A part of her soul went out to him. He had to be feeling her, even from this quantum distance.
But she stood alone on the Fontainebleau balcony overlooking a fresh, new paradise which was compromised once again by the stain of human passions, and unable to answer her own questioning heart, she wondered anew why she had chosen to be so alone. Was there some truth in what C. David Eddings had communicated to her, all that about male/female roles and how you could no more escape the hatred and contempt than you could escape the allure and fascination, unless you were a bona fide third sex maybe? She imagined it might be called a UNIX-a completely combined mix of the female and male sides of the species coming together as in some bizarre and wonderful Clifford Simak science fiction tale.
Perhaps that was what she was-what she’d become over the years, so that she was unfit company for either male or female friends; but if so, why did she still feel so much anger from her encounter with Jim Parry, as if all the misunderstanding was his fault alone?
She nestled into a chair at a small table on the balcony, nursed a cup of coffee and nibbled at a croissant sent up from room service. Miami was a beautiful lady, but she was also an ugly lady, unfeeling with an unadorned growth across her belly. Like all American cities, Chicago, New York, New Orleans, L.A., Honolulu, Miami ate its young.
Jessica stared long and longingly out over the pristine, sun-dappled, sea-splashed, ever-renewing bay, and from this distance it created a magnificent still life; she found the ocean an immense cradle which both supported and destroyed life, its white-tipped waves beckoning and constant, and the horizon above the sea a fresco of thunder- heads poised in a moment of time, painted there by some artist of colossal size, his brush and palette beyond all human proportion. It made her think of what Eddings had said about creation and destruction, giving life and taking life.
“ If the Artist of creation cannot kill,” she prayerfully whispered to the wind as it rushed around her on the balcony, “then God does not kill; so then God is not synonymous with nature or mankind, for both nature and mankind kill indiscriminately. Therefore, God is without guilt.”
Believing the syllogism she had just created might assuage some of the pain she had stored up over the years, since her first encounter with her first serial killer in 1992, she had begun to pursue this notion when her peace was shattered by the telephone.
She reached the phone on the fourth ring, hesitant to answer, wishing for a little more time with the blue, the stark white and the brilliant pinks and yellows of the Miami morning. Still, she acted.
“ Yes. Jessica Coran. Can I help you?”
Detective Quincey’s overwrought voice fired back, “Dr. Coran, you gotta coine right away. I can pick you up in five, maybe ten minutes. There’s been another killing. The body’s washed into Silver Bay, near Virginia Key.”
“ Give me time to dress. I’ll meet you in the lobby. Have you notified Santiva?”
“ I’ll do that now.”
“ Good.” She hung up and dressed quickly, glad that she’d showered the night before. She knew she’d be wading in water, so she pulled on a pair of lightweight jeans and a loose-fitting shiit. She didn’t have time for makeup, but she brushed out her hair, grabbed her bag and was in the lobby before Quincey arrived. Standing on the street corner just outside was Santiva, who had also hastily dressed. But she liked the fedora. He was going native, it seemed.
The standing order to all law enforcement that they be notified immediately of anything smacking of the work of the Night Crawler was obviously being observed. It was 7:03 a.m. when Charles Quincey and his partner, Mark Samernow, pulled up to the hotel lobby.
Santiva had had his car brought around. “You ride with the detectives. Find out whatever you can about the circumstances of discovery and make sure they’re-”
“- following our request that nobody touch the body before I get at it,” Jessica finished for him. “Right, I know. Chief. See you at the scene.”
“ You all right, Jess?”
“ Yeah, I’m… I’m fine, Chief. Just that sometimes…”
“ Sometimes what, Jess?”
“ You ever feel like a ghoul? What we do, I mean… sit around knowing there’s going to be another victim, knowing and waiting, knowing and being unable to stop it, knowing and being unable to do anything.”
“ Get control, Agent Coran,” he firmly said. “See you at the scene.”
