“ Well, screw the whole lot of them,” he told the empty expanse of ocean where he stood, Madeleine’s body fighting him, the gravity pull on it so powerful it felt like lead. For a moment, he wondered if the pull wasn’t from the hand of Mother, ever-teasing bitch that she was. He looked out over the side, saw the rushing wake and realized his ship was moving at quite a clip and that he must return his attention to the helm. Earlier he had set sail for the south to see where the winds of fortune and fate might take him. And now what had begun as a mild tropical wind had become a strong southeast tack that had tagged his T-cross, filling out her sails, the breath of his god speaking to him, telling him it was time to return to more southerly regions, cast his fate in another direction, see what might come of it. He was, after all, a free soul now.

“ Free of the past?” he asked himself as he struggled with the body, working it up and over the lip of the ship’s starboard side. “Not hardly… not until Mother comes for Hers,” he reminded himself, talking to the stiff body he continued to struggle to bring to the rail.

He’d readied to send the body over when it spoke to him. “You’ll never be free of me, Warren dear…” The weight and gravity pulled the body from his grasp, but Warren held on to it by a thread, by the single hook in its back. It dangled over the side precariously, trying to pull him into the depths with it.

“ Mother, you dirty, filthy, whoring bitch!” he shouted at the corpse, feeling the sting of a psychological imprisonment he’d endured all his life.

She just purred up at him from the well of the dead carcass, speaking in her cockney English brogue, “Not bloody likely you’ll ever be free of me, dearie… not yet, anyway…” The dead lips mouthed the words as Warren blinked back saltwater spray and tears and the ship bounced wildly against the increasing waves.

Perhaps, he thought, / won 7 ever be free… can 7 be free…

“ Not until you’re dead, dear,” the corpse said in his head.

“ Mother, it isssss you! It is you! Finally come…” He held insanely to the body with all his strength as it fought to find the water. He struggled as the ship lurched now against the sea, threatening to claim his mother, his hard- won prize. He held on to the corpse, cursing it. “Damn you, I’ve finally got you, and I’m holding on!”

He almost fell into the ocean with the corpse, but suddenly the hook around the spinal column held, despite the yielding, no-longer-devoted flesh, and Warren Tauman and Madeleine careened against the deck, flailing like two fish there beneath the rain that had begun to fall.

He screamed up at the heavens, cursing Mother over and over again, saying, “Ugly hag bitch! I’ve got you now! I’ve finally got you now!”

He lay on the deck, his forehead split open from the impact of the hard shell that had crashed into him. When he realized that he had won the battle, he began an uncontrollable laughing. The sea had turned against him, churning the ship now like a corkscrew in a whirlwind. He’d entered a storm, and rain continued to pelt him where he lay on the deck with Mother.

He went instantly to the controls below and corrected his course, set the ship on auto again and returned to the corpse on deck, where it was washing from side to side. He had to secure Mother. “You won’t get away from me so easily this time, Mother,” he told the body. He then lifted it and carried it back down into the cabin.

TEN

Thou has betrayed thy secret as a bird betrays her nest, by striving to conceal it.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“ Clever of you to get Dr. LeMonte here in so timely a fashion, Jess,” said Santiva. “How’d you manage it?”

Jessica Coran and Eriq Santiva sat opposite one another in a small and unhealthy little room which the MPD called their task force ready room. Surrounding Jessica, on every wall, were blowup photos of the Night Crawler’s victims and a gallery of other, up till now, only missing young women. Some, Jessica had mentally ruled out as simply missing persons, since they were obviously not of the type that he preferred. Blondes, raven-haired women and ordinary brunettes were not targeted, and this was likely why Judy Templar-more brunette than auburn or redheaded-was spared while her more auburn- haired friend Tammy was taken. In fact, the young victims seemed to bear a haunting similarity to Jessica as a younger woman; it was a disturbing similarity, one she’d kept to herself, one which no one else, apparently, had noticed.

“ I had to bribe Dr. LeMonte to get her here,” she told Eriq.

“ Bribe? How?”

“ The FBI’s picking up her tab.”

He cleared his throat. “A considerable one, I’m sure.”

“ You can bank on it.”

“ What else did you promise her?”

“ A week in Miami.”

“ Jesus, at our expense?”

Jessica nodded.

“ I thought you and Dr. LeMonte were friends.” Between them a VCR remote lay waiting for Quincey and Samernow to arrive for a viewing of the taped session between Dr. LeMonte and Judy Templar.

“ We are friends,” she told Eriq.

He laughed heartily at this.

“ After all, she had to put all her regular patients on hold to fly down to meet with Judy Templar.”

Quincey burst through the door with his usual aplomb and sat heavily in one of the chairs, which hadn’t given an inch for anyone else but made an exception in Quincey’s case. Samernow slowly followed, eyes averted, head bowed, again looking despondent. Jessica wondered at his mood swings.

She got right to business, telling the others why she had called them all in to view the tape. “I think Judy Templar saw the Night Crawler and that inside her head, she has a physical description. Dr. LeMonte and a police sketch artist are working on that as we speak. For now, I would just like you to listen and learn what you can about Patric-”

“ Patric?” asked Quincey, his brows arching.

“ It’s what he calls himself; at least, it’s what Judy Templar knows him as.”

“ No last name?” asked Samernow, alert now.

“ ‘ Fraid not.”

“ Didn’t we have another so-called witness to ID some guy named Patric, Mark?” Quincey asked, searching his memory and his partner’s bloodshot eyes.

“ I don’t know… maybe… Yeah, one of our hundreds of so-called eyewitnesses,” he sarcastically replied.

“ I’m talking about the one you’ve expended so much energy in trying to locate again, Mark.”

Samernow glowered at his partner, then slowly began to talk about the circumstances. “Said she’d been abducted by this beautiful man, taken to a boat and tied up for several days while he repeatedly raped, sodomized and choked her. Said she survived only by faking unconsciousness and escaping and swimming a hundred yards to shore.”

“ When did this happen? Why haven’t you told us about this witness?”

“ She disappeared on us. Left the state, but we have notes.”

“ Get them-after you listen to this.” Jessica clicked on the VCR and TV screen. On the screen were the distressed teen and the exquisitely dressed, very chic psychiatrist, Donna’s hair still with its salon patina and curl.

Jessica then got up and left the men to view the tape alone. She had already been through it three times. She went for a cup of coffee, running the entire scene described by Judy Templar in her mind’s eye. Hearing Judy Templar’s hypnotized drawl in her ear.

Donna had drawn on Judy’s considerable memory of that evening when her best friend. Tammy Sue Sheppard, disappeared down a wharf and to her death.

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