“ I saw it.”
Over the course of the rest of that night, any pleasant dream Jessica conjured churned itself into, a convoluted nightmare, her rest shattered by the screams of modern human sacrifices.
Now bleary-eyed, Jessica sat in the lab, contemplating microscopic trace evidence taken from the victims and at the same time recalling Dr. Kim Desinor’s psychic and psychological profile of the killer. They seemed no closer to catching this cretin than the day they’d arrived in Florida, and this frustrated her to no end.
A lab technician called to Jessica, bringing her out of the scope and her reverie. “There’s a phone call for you. Press three,” said the Oriental technician, a small woman with a sweet smile and smiling eyes.
She lifted the phone beside her to hear the warm hello of Dr. John T. Thorpe. J.T., her lab director and friend back at Quantico, had been put onto something which he had kept secret from Jessica up till now.
“ Your timing is impeccable, J.T.”
“ As always,” he joked.
“ I’m right this moment staring into my microscope, looking at the slide which you FedExed me yesterday.” With the phone in one hand, her microscope at the other, she and J.T. talked about the strange new findings in the Night Crawler case.
“ What does this mean, J.T.?” she asked even though she knew.
“ You tell me,” he replied. “I’m really in no position to say, Jess.”
“ Well, is it a case of accidental contamination somewhere along the journey of the evidence chain? Did the botching come as a result of those people in Islamorada Key, maybe?”
“ Well, they’re researchers; what do they know about handling forensic evidence?”
“ We’ve got to know if this was intentional-committed by the killer-or accidental, committed by Wainwright or someone in Coudriet’s lab, here in Miami.” J.T.’s voice was suddenly thick with disbelief. “Jess, if it’s intentional, then the chemical agents were introduced by the monster behind the killings…”
“ And what does that tell you?”
“ He’s into some sort of preserve-the-flesh fetish?”
“ On top of everything else. We have reason to suspect he’s a necrophile, and if so, attempting to preserve the body for as long as he can fits.”
“ So an icebox isn’t good enough for this guy.”
“ Cold bruises the skin tone, discolors the product.” She continued to stare through the dual ocular eyepiece of the electron comparison microscope, to assure herself that what she was looking at made sense in light of the information J.T. had found back at Quantico, where he’d put their best chemists to work on tissue samples she’d taken from some of the body parts found that day in Islamorada. There had been something peculiar about the isolated chemicals; they didn’t belong.
Now she had confirmation; the bizarre turn of events unearthed at the microchemical level brought about a shower of new and disturbing images of the killer. This new information showed trace amounts of chemicals routinely used in the mortician’s trade. Perhaps their killer had worked for a time in a mortuary. Such a fact would tie in with a fetish for preserving the tissue. “Listen, J.T., this is to be kept between us, understand?”
“ No problem whatsoever, Jess.”
“ We’ve got precious little to convict on if we ever do connect anyone with these killings. If a true confession is ever taken, and the killer opens up about this aspect of his fantasy, then we’ll know we’ve got the right man. At the moment, we have thirty-four confessed Night Crawlers undergoing various stages of arrest, booking, psychiatric testing, scrutiny and release.”
“ Damn, that’s amazing.”
“ What’s amazing?” she asked.
“ That anyone would confess to such heinous crimes.”
“ Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe the real Night Crawler will crawl up the MPD stairs and turn himself in today or tomorrow. But I rather doubt it.”
“ Yeah, don’t hold your breath.”
She involuntarily nodded. “He’s having too much fun to stop.”
“ But what about the letters? Isn’t that a subconscious cry for someone to stop him, a sign that he wants to confess?”
“ Like you said, J.T., don’t hold your breath. No, this guy’s letters are strictly to please himself, to taunt us and to vent more of his venom.”
“ Talk about confessions… Had a call the other day from a guy in Hawaii,” J.T. abruptly changed the direction of the subject. Jessica felt her heart skip a beat. “What? Really?” She wondered if she’d successfully kept her excitement out of her voice.
“ He was looking to talk to you, Jess. Maybe you should give him a call. Sounds like he really misses you.”
“ Good… he should.”
“ Hope you don’t mind, but I told him where you were staying. So be warned: He may call.”
She imagined Jim Parry, a hemisphere away, and she longed to be with him. “J.T., don’t go playing Cupid now. The role doesn’t suit you.” He laughed lightly and said good-bye and they hung up, Jessica left with this extraordinary new twist in the case, wondering if she should rush to share it with Eriq Santiva or hold the information in abeyance, at least until after the episode of America’s Most Wanted was aired, so that they might keep it under wraps for future use against the Night Crawler.
She could go to him, argue the point. And if she didn’t share with Eriq, her chief? She could get into a hell of a lot of trouble with him over failing to bring the news to his attention through the lie of omission. He’d be wanting soon to know also if she’d had contact with Kim Desinor.
Jessica rubbed her tired eyes, lifted her head and leaned back on the stool. She stared out through the glass partitions all around her. The partitions ran the length of the lab offices like a house of mirrors, each reflecting light from the other to create an illusion of endless corridors within corridors, an ev- erlastingness reflecting science- man’s need to know the truth at all costs. The Miami-Dade authorities certainly had spared no cost in building the new facility here.
Now, through the various partitions, Jessica saw Dr. Andrew Coudriet approaching. He seemed to be looking for her, so she waved. He came now directly to her and in a near whisper, he said, “I heard about your blowout with your partner.”
She frowned up at him. “The walls hear everything?”
“ Is there more? I heard you disagreed over whether to release the artist sketch and description.”
Jessica’s hands seemed to work independently of her at the lab table. She’d been made aware that all of Allison Norris’s parts were to be interred today, per order of the family despite what Coudriet or anyone in the FBI had to say about it, and personally, she didn’t have the strength or desire to fight the politically powerful family-not at this late point in time.
Finally, she looked into Coudriet’s eyes and replied, “It’s a sad day when the M.E.’s office can’t control the evidence it oversees.”
“ If you mean the Norris body, well… that’s out of our hands. If you FBI people wanted to contest it, then you have my blessings, but it sounds as if Santiva has already caved, as they say.” She shook her head. “There really isn’t much more that Allison can tell us now, is there?” He nodded. “Pretty sure she’s given up her last secret.” Jessica withheld even from her colleague the fact that the girl’s hand had actually been severed before she died and used in an unholy fashion, in the killer’s attempt to permanently preserve it. Little wonder that body and body part had become so separated in their quest for final burial. The killer had held on to the hand for a long time, along with the bracelet, before he gave up on it, tossing it overboard as shark fodder. And Jessica had no doubt that the killer had given up this trophy with the name bracelet intact- superglued, in fact, to the wrist-with thoughtful intent, for his own reasons; most likely, he wanted to tell Jessica-or someone like her-the truth. The monster wanted a voice, wanted to speak, wanted to communicate its plans.
The terrible truth told at the molecular level was that the hand had been severed while the girl remained alive and that very soon after the severed hand had been injected with embalming fluids.
“ So what are the juicy details surrounding this big problem that has arisen between you and your chief?” Coudriet asked.
Pretending busyness, Jessica returned to the microscope.
