Jessica stepped around the desk and walked over to Kim, taking the coffee and sipping from it. “Thanks, I needed that.”
“Hey, go get your own.” Kim retrieved the cup.
“There's been another killing, Kim.”
“Oh, Jesus. Our boy has gotten busy since our arrival, hasn't he?”
“Yeah, I'm afraid he's been bad again-”
“Damn him-or her,” Kim corrected herself. “Damn.”
“In any case, the killer has struck again, and we're up to bat.”
“What about Shockley?”
“This one's our house call. I think Shockley knows it. They already have a car waiting on us at the east exit of the building. Let's go.” Jessica grabbed her medical bag and a lab coat.
“Right behind you.”
Shockley saluted them as they passed by his office and found the elevator. Jessica got the distinct impression Dr. Leonard Shockley looked upon all the care and political tiptoeing being done around him as so much silly cloak- and-dagger.
“Have a good time at the show,” he called out to the two ladies standing before the elevator.
Jessica and Kim smiled. The elevator arrived and they stepped aboard.
“What do you think of old Dr. Shockley?” Kim asked.
As the elevator descended, Jessica replied, “I think he's good for my ego.”
“That goes without saying.”
“But he's also shrewd, and I believe at some point he'll declare himself.”
“Declare himself?”
“Show his true colors, make his professional move. He has great acumen. That much he proved with the tear find.” 'True enough, but you've got to believe that some of us co-inhabitants on the planet are genuine, Jess.”
“Some few, sure.” Jessica placed a hand on Kim's shoulder, reassuring her. “You know I'd trust you with my life, as I have in the past.”
“Same here.”
SEVEN
Instinct is the express train-no stops, no detours, no layovers nor delays… Instinct is knowing without knowing why.
Like everyone else entering the murder scene at 1102 South Street, Suite 3-35, Jessica felt an eerie sensation of disbelief that anyone here lay dead, much less murdered. The music and odors coming from the room were pleasing to ear and nose. A Loreena McKennitt CD had been set on continual play-presumably set in motion by the deceased or his killer-and one haunting melody after another softly caressed the ear. As sandalwood incense burned, McKennitt's dulcet voice and heartfelt lyrics sounded like the wail of the dead man's spirit, the sad Celtic strings and flute filtering through the window and onto the street below.
This strange feeling came from what was missing at the scene of the murder of Maurice Deneau. The place proved to be chillingly pleasant, normal and calm; nothing appeared out of the ordinary, nothing the least disturbed in the apartment, and the body lay posed, facedown so that anyone discovering Maurice would first be struck by the etched poem on his back. The body, thus posed, appeared in deep, comfortable slumber. Beside the dead man, on his nightstand, lay a book of poetry, a gilded marker inserted three-quarters of the way through Lord Byron's Childe Harold, Canto II, and the book was dog-eared at the opening of his famous long poem, Don Juan. Other books on a nearby shelf showed Maurice to be a lover of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, as well as Pope, Swift, Voltaire, Milton, and two of Jessica's favorite poets, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Robert Browning. Two modern poets graced the bookshelf as well, one named Lucian Burke Locke and the other named Donatella Leare, the poet and professor at the university, Jessica recalled, that Leanne Sturtevante was using as an expert and consultant.
Jessica was taken by the dark, layered cover art on both Leare's and Locke's books, a gut-wrenching Hieronymus Bosch landscape of hell on Leare's cover, the dark and sinister wasteland of a bleak cityscape on Locke's.
The walls were lavishly hung with large prints by the famous Edward Burne-Jones, G. W. Waterhouse, and other Pre-Raphaelite artists. In the hallway, a tearful male friend, Thomas Ainsworth, who had discovered Maurice's body when he had let himself in with a key, kept up a constant, heart-wrenching wailing, like an ancient requiem, over the death of “Mayonnaise”-as he called the victim. When pressed to explain why he called Maurice Mayonnaise, he said the term was his on-line moniker. From all appearances, Thomas loved Maurice and would not harm him for the world, and he knew no one who had any reason whatsoever to harm Maurice.
“We'll confiscate the computer and any disks,” declared Parry, guiding a pair of FBI agents to the machine. “Have them checked for anything that might help determine when, why, and how Maurice came to this end.”
“Why Mayo as a moniker?” Jessica wondered in a near whisper to Parry.
“I dunno. Maybe he 'spread' for everybody?”
“Not if he's anything like the other victims,” replied Sturtevante, who had left Ainsworth for now, joining them in the death room. “All the victims kept tight rein on who they slept with, according to all and everyone who knew them. Ainsworth is saying the same about Maurice here.”
Ainsworth's wailing rose to a frightening level. “I'd better stay with the friend,” Sturtevante said.
“Question him further for any word the victim might have had about a rendezvous with a sponsoring poet,” suggested Parry. “He's got to have told someone of his great achievement.”
Kim and Jessica turned their attention to the clean and perfectly healthy-looking dead man on the bed, his beautiful hair and skin at odds with his condition. Looking about the room, Jessica's trained eye saw nothing untoward, nothing out of place, knocked over, or shattered. This tidiness was reflected in the bureau mirror across from the bed, along with the image of Maurice's cadaver.
“How oddly strange and peaceful it all feels,” she found herself whispering to Kim, who nodded, agreeing.
“And green,” Kim pointed out. Drapery and floor rug were lime green. “It's a significant hit. The green pool I saw in my last vision.”
“Yeah, it's almost creepier than walls and windows splattered with blood.”
None of the usual elements found at a murder scene were in evidence: no blood-drenched sheets or carpets, no walls stained with sputum or brain matter, no overturned furniture, no drawers turned out, and a victim without ugly, gaping gunshot wounds, without the usual missing face or limbs. The crime scene didn't present a mutilated body or deep slash wounds. Why are we here? and what's going on here? were the first reactions of the investigators.
Sandalwood incense had struck Jessica's nostrils when she'd first entered the crime scene, and she saw fat, squat candelabras hunkered like strange pronged little beasts from a Tolkien novel on each bedside table. In fact, the home was filled with candles-large, small, thin, wide, and of every color. According to the first uniformed officer on the scene, some of the candles in the bedroom had been burning when he arrived, while some had been extinguished, presumably by the breeze at the open window. This meant that the discovery of the body had come on the heels of death.
Jessica hardly knew what to do with so pristine a crime scene. She had become used to horror, terror played out on a victim, hours of torture and mutilation. This… this felt more like a wake. Peace, serenity, acceptance seemed to be the rule here, as opposed to battle, chaos, or disharmony of any sort.
The open window allowed the hum and rhythmic noises of the city to enter along with the night breeze, a kind of beautiful noise of life that wafted through. Large paintings done by Maxfield Parrish, depicting serene and
