Jessica stared at the young man again, wondering if he was a nutcase or a connoisseur of this newfound art form.
Jessica studied the young women and teen girls who placed themselves on display here. They were young, nubile, innocent-eyed, hardly aware of the power they wielded over the men who ogled them.
“Where to next?” Kim asked.
“We're going coffeehouse crawling, it would appear.”
“Why do we do this, Jessica?”
“Do what?”
“Make a living this way, on the trail of maniacs and murderers? What possible reason can we have to justify this life we lead?”
“Who else is going to do it? And if we don't?”
Kim didn't answer. They went to the next coffeehouse, the local Starbucks, which was situated on a comer. No poetry nights here, they learned, just cash and carry latte and cappuccino. When Jessica asked what was the hottest place to hear good poetry read in the area, the kid behind the counter shrugged and said, “Merlin's most likely.”
“Then we're off to Merlin's. Which way?”
“Straight up two blocks that away,” the young man said, pointing. Can't miss it. Exterior's done up like a castle- you know, Camelot, round table, knights, damsels in distress, all that shit.”
They spent the rest of the evening watching and listening to poetry written on the backs of young people at Merlin's Caf6. Here, exposing breasts appeared taboo, and this fact, along with the stone-tiled floor and castlelike decor, lent an air of respectability that somehow spilled over into the caliber of the poetry, or so it seemed to Jessica.
Again, no one working in the place had any useful information. The evening was beginning to feel like a bust when a stunted little man with short stubby legs waddled in like a penguin, his slight stature and strange appearance-he was impeccably dressed in a three-piece suit- calling attention to him. Everyone in the place waved to him and called his name-Vladoc. He seemed to enjoy his notoriety.
I was told I might find you two here,” said the small, dark-featured man, walking up to Jessica and Kim and joining them in their booth. “I am Peter Flavius Vladoc, Philly police department shrink. Please, don't be alarmed to see me. Leanne Sturtevante put me onto you. In fact, she has had you put under surveillance so that I could find you. She knew you'd be in the vicinity, called me up. I maintain a flat here, sometimes working late hours, especially around holidays, and sometimes it's just absolutely necessary that I have privacy, and it's far closer to the campus where I teach than my house in the 'burbs.”
Kim raised the glass of dark Guinness she'd been nursing and muttered, “I think, sir, you have some catching up to do.” The two psychiatrists appeared already to have sized each other up, and apparently liked what they saw; Jessica guessed that Kim had done her homework on Vladoc.
“We're only human,” she said, smiling. “Something to bolster our courage for the ordeal ahead of us.” She then toasted and drank as well.
Vladoc nodded, gestured to a waiter and ordered, then said to the ladies, “The poetry, the wine, the camaraderie followed by murder-this is indeed a strange case. I confess, I am envious of your work. Weird fellow this Poet Killer. I wonder if he might not be an academic intellectual type.”
“I'm not yet convinced his motive is mercy, Dr. Vladoc, but it sounds as if you have familiarized yourself with the details of the case.” Although such details had been kept from public and press, Vladoc, as a police psychiatrist, would have no trouble gaining access to them.
“Word spreads here like spilled wine on a white tablecloth, believe me,” the psychiatrist said. “The people here in this establishment know more about the details you think you're keeping secret than you can imagine.”
Kim yawned and stretched out her legs, kicking off her shoes.
“Not getting enough sleep, I see,” Vladoc said to her.
Jessica added, “Don't get too comfy. I don't want to have to carry you home.”
“Caseload back in Quantico is up to the rafters, and Serena Lansforth, my best and brightest up-and-coming talent, has decided she wants no part of this line of work ever again, not since the Milwaukee Mauler,” Kim lamented.
The little man laughed lightly-a throaty, big man's laugh. “And weighing in at 289 pounds… the Millllwaukeeee Mauler! Sounds like a Wrestle Mania guy to me.”
“God, that man was into mutilation.” Kim shook her head, remembering. “Just the opposite of our boy in the City of Brotherly Love.”
“Serena having nightmares?” asked Jessica.
“Daymares, nightmares, all of it, yes. Sent her to your friend Lemonte to talk it out. She's stopped listening to me.
“Have Philly authorities allowed you some private time with the physical evidence and items that belonged to the victims?” Vladoc asked Kim. “I should say I'm terribly curious about what you two have come up with thus far, and if it is to your liking, I would be extremely glad to go over any and all of my findings with you-put in my two cents, as it were.”
“They have precious little evidence,” Kim confided in the man, “and they're being stingy with what little they do have. But I've had assurances from Roth that that'll change tomorrow.”
“You think the killer might be close in age to the victims, who were all barely out of their teens?” asked Vladoc.
Jessica found herself at ease with the odd-looking psychiatrist, who reminded her of the mayor of Munchkin land in The Wizard of Oz¦ She told Vladoc, “I gave that some thought, yes… kind of an acting out of teen angst, or should I say-dare I say-Generation-X angst or goth angst?”
“You into labeling now, Jessica?” Kim scoffed. “At least get with the times. X is out, traveled on down the time line, and we're well into the Double Ought Generation now, the Y2Kbies.”
“All right, whatever you want to call the current generation.”
“Well, actually,” Vladoc said, as if beginning a lecture, “many generations now have grown up with the gothic symbols of dark beauty that have been in existence since before Dante wrote The Divine Comedy.”
“Part of which is Dante's Inferno,” Jessica put in. “Otherwise known as hell.”
“Yes, as well I know; at any rate, these 'dark side' symbols have been around forever-cabalists, necromancers, alchemists, you name it-but in modern America, where the normal rituals of Homo erectus have vanished, we now embrace the ancient rites and rituals, no matter their erotic and pagan beginnings, and we do it with a passion beyond all reason, and so these symbols and rituals and various occult businesses are thriving, especially among the young and on the Internet.”
“The ancient religions and beliefs have taken on new power for the young,” agreed Kim. “For some, this is good, a faith in something being, for most of us, far better than nothing. For others, however, such beliefs can be a kind of slow poison, if you will.”
“Precisely,” said Vladoc, his teacher's voice easy to hear over the reggae band that was now onstage. “Nowadays we have whole mall unit stores devoted to the romantic idea that being chained to a wall in an oubliette beneath a castle is… well, you know, cool…”
Taking a page out of Kim's book, Jessica kicked her shoes off and lifted her feet onto the cushions of the bench opposite her. “I see, I think.”
“And this generation, whatever you wish to call them, has a love affair with dark and gothic symbols, instruments of torture, pagan beliefs, mystic places, practices, and magic,” continued Peter Vladoc. “In fact, they would return to the Middle or even Dark Ages if they could, just on the off chance that their romanticized notions about such times are true.”
“You've seen some of the trappings the victims surrounded themselves with?”
“Leanne walked me through the last crime scene, yes. We talked long on what the task force has thus far learned… and failed to learn.”
“Of course, going to the crapper in the Middle Ages couldn't have been much fun,” Jessica interjected, somewhat off the point and clearly beginning to feel no pain.
“Yes, well,” Vladoc said in his mellowest voice, “with indoor plumbing centuries away, and the almost knighted Thomas Crapper having not yet been born, you can assume all toilet facilities were outdoor affairs, the
