twice over. I once heard him speak-brilliant man-and once I met him at a gathering in Oregon.”
‘ ‘ We… the family was stationed there for some time in the late fifties,” Jessica offered. She noticed that Coudriet smelled of musk oil. Or was it a natural musk odor? That was it. The good M.E. had just come from having had sex with someone. He was aglow in the wash of it, and could no better hide it than he might his red hair.
“ Tell me how you learned about the disagreement between Eriq and me.”
“ News travels fast around here,” he commented, stepping a little away. “When people learn that this fiend is embalming his victims atop everything else…”
“ That news stays within these walls, between you and me, Doctor.”
With a solemn bow of the head, he nodded his agreement. “Will you then at least do the right thing, Jessica Coran?”
Damn, she thought, he sounds like my father. “And exactly what is that?”
“ I’m in utter and complete agreement with you, Dr. Coran. What little information we have on the killer’s identity and the threat he poses to certain victim types, that all this information be released to our still largely unsuspecting public, many of whom-many of whom-could fall victim to the killer before daybreak tomorrow. My God, he released three bodies to us yesterday. That clearly tells us that he means to replenish his supply.”
Coudriet was right; the killer meant to start over, she thought but did not say. “I’m not in a position to authorize-”
“ Damnit, Jessica, someone’s got to authorize it; we can’t wait for the governor or the mayor or the fucking Boy Scouts!”
“ That’s enough!” Jessica weighed the decision for a long moment. She lifted the computer-enhanced image of the killer before her eyes and stared at the dreaded and hated creature, the Night Crawler, known now also as Patric Allain. He was, as Judy Templar had attested, a handsome and alluring creature of dark, mysterious features. The shock of boyish hair over the forehead, the telltale birthmark peeking from beneath, the thin jaw and even teeth, the somewhat weak upper lip and sensual lower lip. But it was in the eyes that she saw the allure. These eyes of a madman, filled with mystery. “You have E-mail,” she stated. “I do.”
“ I’d like to get in touch with Scotland Yard, an Inspector Moyler there, about the case. Tell him our man speaks with a British accent and uses the name Patric Allain. See if it turns up anything there.”
“ And what about here, closer to home?”
She breathed in a long breath of air, weighing her friendship with Eriq and her loyalty to him as a superior. The whole thing felt like a cracked mirror, a wingless bird, a blind owl, a dolphin without sonar. If she pushed Eriq far enough, he might send her packing; she’d be off the case, possibly up on disciplinary charges. But then, maybe that would give her reason to walk away from Quantico altogether, to rejoin Jim Parry in Hawaii…
“ You get me through to this fellow in London, and I’ll release the damned police sketch. But it goes first to the Herald.”
“ Other law enforcement agencies throughout the state, up and down the coast, first,” he countered.
“ That’s been done already.”
“ No… no, it hasn’t, I’m afraid.”
“ What? Damn…” Jessica now saw with certainty that Eriq Santiva would continue in his conservative approach to catching the killer. “The Herald first.” She stood firm.
Coudriet read her face. He realized that she was stepping out onto a shaky limb. “All right; done.”
“ Let’s get to work then.”
TWELVE
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
An hour later, all was accomplished-or demolished; it all depended on how one looked at it, Jessica thought. While Eriq was busy appeasing the big boys, she had taken the dangerous step of crossing him and whatever superiors he was presently kowtowing to.
To hell with it, she recklessly told herself, a part of her secretly hoping to get into enough trouble to stir the pot. If she was blackballed, if her reputation was besmirched by a healthy bit of insubordination, then perhaps she could trade in her “celebrity” status in FBI circles for a commonplace job in the agency where she might work in a lab twenty-four hours a day, to never come out to hunt another human monster again. She’d be perfectly happy to do so. Who needed the kind of stress she’d been working under for the past five years? And perhaps a move to Hawaii then would not be out of the question… Now she said aloud, “To hell with it.”
“ What’s that?” asked Coudriet, still in an unusually upbeat mood, like a kid pulling a high school prank and enjoying the exquisite moment in which his plan comes together.
“ Nothing… never mind,” she replied.
“ You know you’ve made the right choice; you’re doing the right thing here,” he told her. He was about to shut down his E-mail when a message for Jessica came over. “Something for you here… from London… that fellow Moyler.”
Nigel Moyler said that he was sending a fax over, a description and police sketch of the man who had terrorized the White Chapel District for four years only to suddenly cease, desist and disappear last year.
“ It should be coming over your fax there any moment now. Sorry it took so long to get back to you there. Took some time to locate the file. It had gone to our dead file office. But now here it comes, and I daresay you will find it of peculiar interest.” He signed off as Insp. Moy., Scotyd.
The fax machine began a staccato chorus of cranks, churns and beeps, the paper crawling ahead like an inch- worm, too slow for Jessica’s patience. “Come on… come on,” she nursed it along before ripping it out.
The likeness was remarkable, stunning and stark.
“ Send Moyler a message. Tell him we are ninety-nine percent sure that his man is here. Ask him to find out what he can about a Patric Allain over there. Anything on file- police record, prints, anything at all.”
“ Where are you going?”
“ Going to find Santiva, tell him what I’ve done and inform him that this bloody case has greater jurisdictional boundaries than he imagined.”
“ Yeah, right.” Coudrient chuckled lightly. “What’s so funny?”
“ Santiva… He may just want to get the Queen of England’s fucking views on the case before he steps on her bleeding toes.”
“ Hey, just a minute, Dr. Coudriet,” she brought him up short. “It’s not Santiva’s fault that your local politicians are more concerned about the blight on their tourist trade than the lives of the victims. Or that only Allison Norris, of all the victims, counts!”
“ What are you saying, Dr. Coran? That it’s hardly so simple as all that?” Coudriet was being facetious now, still on a high.
“ If Eriq hadn’t had his hands tied by others, that electronic wanted poster we just sent would’ve gone out twenty-four hours ago.”
“ You think for a moment that he’s going to place the safety of prospective victims of this madman ahead of his own ambitions? Think again. I used to be him. I know. It comes with the territory.”
“ That’s not Eriq.”
“ Power seeks out power, corrupts the soul and-”
“ You don’t know what you’re talking about, Doctor, so please be silent!” She stormed from the laboratory offices and took the elevator to the top floor, where she got out, located a stairwell and climbed to the roof. There she breathed in the night air and stared into the blinking eyes of the black firmament overhead. She felt tears welling up-tears for the victims, their families, Judy Templar, herself-and she wondered little why she’d so easily and readily sided with first Donna LeMonte and now Coudriet against Eriq Santiva. Still, she felt a wave of remorse flow over her, and she silently wondered, Why am I being so self-destructive? But neither the stars nor the land or
