“Flying's one thing, hovering Peter Pan fashion in something like a spinning top is quite another.”
“No, it's more like a magic carpet ride or a floating platform. Come on, you'll love it. I think they've got clearance.”
“Why do we have a Soviet helicopter?” Kim asked.
“Part of the struggle to fight boredom, the struggle to stomp out ignorance, all of it. We swapped ours for theirs. Happens all the time. They have our technology, we have theirs, everyone's happy, and no need for the spy business.”
“With the Russians? We do this with the Russians?”
“KGB, Russian military, sure. Look at this machine, will you?” Kim glared at the thing like an angry cat.
Jessica, ignoring this, said, “I've only had the privilege of flying in her once before. She's decked out with lounge seats and a Bureau VIP bar-at a cost government watchdogs must never know about.”
“So, I see you've already met the pilot and crew, as usual. Are you staking a claim?” Kim knew of Jessica's love for flying, one of her many passions. In fact, Jessica had earned her pilot's license some years back.
“Staking a claim? I'm spoken for, remember? Richard Sharpe. You're not still sore about New Orleans, are you?” Jessica recalled how on first meeting Kim, she had behaved badly. Not in the best frame of mind, knowing she was being stalked by an escaped convicted bloodsucking killer who had fixated on her, her nerves shot, Jessica had drunk too much on the flight, and she had flirted with the pilot. She recalled how wrong that first meeting with Kim had gone, and how patient Kim had been with her, showing her great understanding and giving her the benefit of the doubt several times.
“All I know is that every time you fly off someplace, you cozy up to the pilot or you wind up at the controls of the plane.”
“Come on. I wasn't at the controls for more than ten minutes.”
“Or you land yourself a new bureau-chief boyfriend, or a boyfriend who happens to be Scotland Yard. I'm so impressed!” She did a mock curtsy right there on the airstrip.
“You make me sound like a loose woman on the prowl!”
Kim laughed. “Not at all. Liberated, a role model for others all over the globe who have succumbed to the stereotype of barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen.”
“Please, give it a rest, Kim. What about your love life? You still seeing Alex Sincebaugh, or has he uprooted himself and returned to New Orleans?”
“He's holding on in Baltimore, but he hates his situation. I'm not sure how long he's going to fight it.”
“You can take the boy outta the bayou, but you can't-”
“I see him most weekends and holidays. Some truth in that old saying 'Absence makes the heart grow fonder.' “
“That's crap and you know it; only works for a while before the charm of the distance between you wears off. I know from experience.”
“The alternative, cohabiting, is just as impossible, if not more so.”
“What's a girl to do?”
Boarding the wide-bodied helicopter, Jessica patted her inside suit pocket to be certain she hadn't forgotten her special scalpel; her father had given it to her the day she'd told him she meant to go to medical school. Nowadays, she never left home without it. In fact, she felt downright superstitious about having it near at hand.
Jessica and Kim looked at each other in the modified, VIP interior of the monster chopper. While they worked together at profiling sessions in the same building and in the same unit, each saw surprisingly little of the other. “Pity the bar's not open,” Kim lamented.
“And what would you do with an open bar this ungodly time of morning?”
“Not the bar, the bartender, dear. You like pilots, I have a weakness for bartenders.”
Jessica laughed. It felt good after the tension of the day before. “Here, have some coffee.” Rolls and coffee lay on the table between them. “Eriq's so thoughtful.”
After they sat down, Jessica watched Kim gulp back stomach bile instead of the rich coffee as the churning blades suddenly roared to life. An attendant young enough to be Jessica's daughter quickly secured the coffeepot and soon they felt themselves slowly rise above the airstrip. With a sudden, violent jerk, the helicopter veered to the left and sped diagonally upward.
“What the hell's that pilot doing?” Kim shouted over the thrum of the MiG.
“His job!” Jessica smirked.
Next the chopper pilot poured on the speed, plastering them to their seats. “Like a carnival ride,” Jessica shouted.
Kim felt every cell in her body tug outward. “I feel like a piece of cargo being tossed around in the hold!” This despite the seat belt she wore. “What did you tell the pilot, Jess? You didn't tell him that you wanted a wild ride, did you? You did, didn't you! Tell me you didn't!”
Jessica's smiled and her eyes lit up. “Doncha love it?”
In a moment the helicopter leveled out. The noise of the rotors took on a new pitch, the sound a whisper by comparison. Next the helicopter took on a new feel-that of a bird in flight, smooth and controlled.
At this point, Jessica unfastened her seat belt and said, “Maybe I'll just have a word with the pilot.”
“It's a little too late to tell him to take it easy on his joystick, wouldn't you say?”
“I won't be but a minute.”
“You're incorrigible, you know that?” Kim protested as Jessica made her way to the nose of the helicopter. “Why don't you tip him?” she shouted, knowing the sound of her racing heart and the rotor blades only drowned her out.
Kim opened a briefcase she'd carried on board and drew out a manila folder. She was opening it just as Jessica returned with the coffeepot. Jessica again saw the three victim photos that Eriq Santiva had shown her earlier, but included in this group were blown-up shots of the backs, the rust-colored, near-red lettering left behind by the killer. “Damn but this looks like something out of an Edgar Allan Poe story.”
“And the narrator of the tale, this Killer Poet, has to be as mad as one of Poe's narrators,” Kim agreed.
“It's likely a selective madness, one he controls when in the company of others. He's got to be some kind of sadist beneath it all, a true sociopath.”
“Maybe not, Jess.”
“What do you mean?”
“Read the poems. They're hardly sadistic or evil in intent; our boy or girl is-at least inside his or her mind- doing good, perhaps doing God's own work.”
Jessica recognized the one poem as the eulogy that Kim had already read to her over the phone. The other two began with the same three lines about chance meeting innocence.
“Read 'em through,” said Kim. “Familiarize yourself with the style, the voice, whatever you want to call it. After a while the poems get a little scary and… and something else, but I'll let you decide.”
“Scary?”
“I don't know… disturbing, like they have a life of their own. This murdering poet writes some truly engaging stuff; it catches you up so much that you actually forget that it was used as a murder weapon.”
“I'll have another look.” Jessica read the two poems she hadn't yet seen or heard. The first read:
Chance… whose desire is to have a meeting with stunned innocence… is a humming that wells up
In silver moonbeams appearing to the eyes like twin specters softly caressing the drapes, trembling, yet unafraid, languorous and expectant of a touch in return.
Beneath it all: a bed of fibrous dictation.
I am drawn forth, found out brushed with the feather of your glance.
Speaking to a mirror sparkling with never- before phrases, all against the marble life flickering.
Strangely sonorous stuff,” offered Jessica, nodding. “I see how you might get caught up in it, but not enough to allow someone to Etch A Sketch on your back.”
“The poetry is so… melodic and obtuse at once, so that while I'm not always sure what's intended, I don't much care so long as I can hear the music.”
“You mean it's kind of like reading Carl Sagan on the universe?”
“Maybe.” Kim laughed. “I mean that while he's difficult at times to follow… what a way this guy has of
