cross and an olive branch.
“Religion or religious icons your killer is interested in particular. Icons, particularly art depicting divine beings. Narrowing that”-he stroked the keys and added-”angels come up. Angels and the angelic, it holds a peculiar, perhaps perverse interest for him.”
“How can your program get that from his handwriting?” Jessica asked.
“Analyzes content as well as the handwriting. Each of poems speaks of flickering life, and many of symbols and images used are to do with life in another dimension. Recognized and pinpointed the symbolic language as pertaining to magic and angels.”
“Michael, Raphael, Gabrielle,” said Kim, remembering her Catholic upbringing in an orphanage in New Orleans. “None of the archangels are mentioned in the poems. How can your program say they are alluded to?”
“A fixation it appears for him, your killer, according to Rocky. In images speaks Rocky. Images of the transmigration of souls, the ones your killer takes.”
“Anything else?” asked Jessica.
“Without someone's poetry to compare and contrast it to, no. 'Fraid not.”
Jessica studied the program's analysis of the killer's handwriting. It gave them a list of characteristics of the writing from the size of letters to the degree of coherence and legibility. The program also told them some of the character traits they might look for, but nothing proved conclusive. Without a suspect to match the writing to, it was impossible to summon up much excitement for Dr. Wahlbore's findings. Still, Jessica was more impressed than she'd imagined possible. Should they narrow the field and come up with a suspect, this information might be used in an interrogation. If shown that a machine had outwitted him, an intellectually arrogant person, as the killer seemed to be, might conceivably break down and confess. Such an approach had been used in many an investigation, using far less sophisticated machines, from lie detectors to Xerox copiers to fool suspects into confessions.
“The analysis does point to a highly educated, intelligent killer,” said Kim.
“We have that task-force meeting to get back to. Dr. Desinor,” Jessica reminded her. “We'll certainly keep your suggestions in mind and pass them along, Dr. Wahlbore.” She stood to leave, again shaking the linguistics professor's hand.
“Correct Dr. Desinor is, as my Rocky is accurate, that killer is a highly polished individual, well educated, gifted in fact with words. He is, and he will be, cunning, and as for themes and patterns, recurrent in the work, there are a number of these: reflecting pools, mirrors, flickering light, which Rocky takes as metaphor for fragility of life, you see. Here, look at the lines Rocky has culled as repetition, the same nails being hammered by the author.”
He showed them a printout of the lines the program had selected as revealing “high-level figurative language,”
“symbolic resonance and depth,” and “complex associative clustering.”
From poem #1…
…The cut of it against my back marks time
… the time it takes to retell a new breath.
From #2
… luminescent green
… color of script,
… ice-blue hues embrace… images.
They make skin crawl with miniature electric devotions…
From #3
Beneath it all: a bed a fibrous dictation.
I am drawn forth, found out…
Speaking to a mirror sparkling with never- before phrases, all against the marble life flickering.
From #4
… to fall into the mirror pool, through meshes of metaphor…
The breath that exhales across the candle fails, and so it remains, flickering.
From #5
… Pools of sensation
… swirl… orange to swallow and overflow in the center where toucher becomes touched, texture vibrating chords of the unconfined delicate.
… closed eyes undulating within a seashell sigh, entwining in airy depths, waning in flickering light.
From #6
… surrendered like an ink mark to a page; one dot is all that is said.
Flickering light haunts a chamber formed of delirium left to feel out the evening, while an opera of soft words etch across a mile of skin…
Jessica could readily see the mystical-romantic themes and patterns that emerged, particularly the combination of cutting into flesh to rend a swirling eddy of delirium, and the idea of a flickering soul, whose light, even in death, could not be wholly extinguished, as its fairy light transmigrated to another form. Mirrors held up to mirrors, time endless and boundless. The green luminescence and icy-blue hues paralleled Kim Desinor's psychic hits.
“What do you suppose the Poet means by unconfined delicate Kim asked of Jessica. “Private parts unfettered?”
“Actually sounds to my ear more an oblique reference to his victims, that they, while always delicate, were now released-no longer constrained by this life and dimension.”
“They are freed through their death.”
“That's be my guess.”
Dr. Wahlbore began to obsess over a single line, going over it repeatedly as if to choke some useful information from it.”Opera of soft words is like his meshes of metaphor; he thinks a great deal about how language has a powerful connection to all that we consider psychic phenomena.”
Jessica tried to imagine being a student in this man's “Language Is Thought” class, listening to his foreign syntax and trying to translate while taking notes. “I would like to take a copy of all your results. Dr. Wahlbore,” she said. “They may well prove useful for our investigation.” She was not simply humoring the older man. What if the linguistics professor and his strange program were right on? she found herself wondering.
As they found their way to the door, Dr. Wahlbore asked, “About Rocky, my program, what?”
“What 'what'? I don't understand.” Jessica looked at him in bewilderment.
“Whatabout my program? Will FBI be interested only if it cracks case wide open?”
“I'll report your findings and how you arrived at them to my superiors, sir,” she assured him as she lifted a handkerchief and sneezed into it. The little office of the professor was mildew-ridden and dust-laden. Jessica decided the environment must be hell on the man's computer, if not his sinuses. “We must be off to a task-force meeting, Doctor.”
Outside, Kim asked, “What task-force meeting?”
“I just had to get out of there.”
“Then you don't believe his findings?”
“I'm not sure, but it was so stuffy and dusty in there, I felt an allergy attack coming on. Can you imagine being a student in that man's linguistics class?”
“Yeah, and I'd cut my throat,” Kim replied.
“A case like this, all the kooks come out of the woodwork.” Still, I see what he means by the poetry's imagery; it speaks of life passing into another form, and it speaks of angels. A close look at the poems will reveal that that little Rocket J. Squirrel computer program may well be right.”
“You think so?”
“I think so. I'll go back over the lines, try to look at it from the program's perspective. Hopefully see what I didn't see the first time around,” Kim said.
“I think we need an outside opinion from a forensic psychologist.”
“What am I, chopped liver?”
