“And you think him capable of poisoning young people in order to… to get back at you and the university for feelings of having been wronged?” asked Kim.
“Poison would be just like him, don't you see? You saw how he sneaks up on you. Beneath that calm exterior lies a volcano waiting to erupt.”
“We'll keep an eye on him for you.”
“Thank you… thank you. And I wanted to tell you out of Dr. Burrwith's hearing that both Locke and Leare are out of town at the moment-an academic conference in Houston.”
“When do you expect them back?” Jessica asked.
'Tomorrow, for their classes. They'll likely return sometime late today or tonight.”
Jessica took down the addresses of the two professors. The three women shook hands and Dr. Plummer made her way back up the stairs and into the airless castle where she worked, a fortress no architect would construct outside a university campus. She was not a beautiful woman in any sense of the word; her legs looked like stuffed sausages, her waist had lost the battle to differentiate itself from her hips, and her hair was from another generation, down to the bangs and flip. She dominated these men through her power in the department, Jessica imagined, but now, with Locke's having won a lucrative if not prestigious award, he likely no longer needed her or the university.
“Whole lotta shakin' goin' on here, wouldn't you say?” Kim asked, picking up on Jessica's mood. She had also picked up on the same vibes about Plummer. “That woman appears to rule here.”
“Soon, I imagine, she will be repaid in kind by the men she uses.”
“Some piece of work she is,” Kim agreed, the sun reflecting a glint in her eye just before it sank below the horizon.
“Yeah, let's get out of here before she comes back with another bogus eyewitness.”
“What about Leare and Locke? Do you think we should talk to them sometime soon?”
“Academics are scary, aren't they?”
“Yeah, you got that right.”
“Imagine, this woman has concocted this fantastic modus operandi and motive for the killer, and it all revolves around her love life, her scorned lover. She believes herself the center of the universe?”
“Yeah, it all revolves around me, me, me.”
“How're we going to write up this report?”
“Get in the car, and let's get out of here, shall we? We'll worry about the particulars later.”
FIFTEEN
Indolence is heaven's ally here,
And energy the child of hell;
The Good Man pouring from his pitcher clear,
But brims the poisoned well.
Jessica and the team, man for man, woman for woman, felt stymied. Forensics had revealed little of the killer, and the poison he used continued to evade toxicologists at Quantico, Virginia, just as it had evaded DeAngelos's team. Another night had fallen on the case, and no one stood a step closer to ending the career of the strange Poet Killer.
Jessica looked up from her notes and the killer profile that she, Kim, and James Parry had prepared for the PPD. Lieutenant Sturtevante and her people continued to be cooperative, pleased for the most part with the FBI involvement. The case had simply ground to a frightful halt, and for a time, it appeared that perhaps the Poet Killer had either committed suicide or left the city, or perhaps been arrested and imprisoned on some other charge.
The PPD, under Sturtevante's guidance, looked over the suicide records and any recent arrests and incarcerations that might point to a suspect. With thousands of people leaving Philadelphia on any given day, there appeared little hope of locating the killer if the stepped-up pressure of police surveillance of Second Street and its nightlife had caused him to take flight. Jessica again looked up from her paperwork, intuitively feeling someone staring at her from the doorway of the temporary office she sat in. A squat little man with a cane who looked like Truman Capote, down to the dark glasses, stared back at her, giving her a moment's fright.
“Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you,” he said in a voice that sounded trapped in his windpipe, the gravelly sound requiring her to translate each word. “Bit of a cold,” apologized Peter Flavius Vladoc. “I've come to help you on the Poet Killer case.”
“That's a relief, because we do need help, sir.”
“Not every professional will admit such a fact. Sturtevante told me you were a beautiful creature, but she did you no justice. I wished to tell you as much the other night at Merlin's, but I did not wish to embarrass you or put you on the spot.”
“Thank you-for the compliment, I mean.”
“I looked over the material you forwarded me. We should talk.”
“Very good. What do you make of the killer?”
“I have looked closely at the poetry, you see, and it has meaning for me, and I have made some sense, I believe, of what he or she wants.”
“You think you know what the Poet wants?”
“It is nothing he wants of us; authorities can give in to no demands, for there are none being made.”
“Still the killer wants something,” she said.
Vladoc indicated the chair with his cane. “Do you mind?”
“Please, sit down. What's happened to your leg?”
“Degenerative condition; flares up now and again. Slows me down; makes me feel damned old.” He stepped slowly to the chair, banging the wooden cane against the chair legs like a blind man. As he came into the light, she suddenly realized that he was blind or partially so, but that he had hidden it well that night at the club-maybe because of the lighting, maybe because Jessica had had one too many. “Rheumatoid arthritis; can only get worse with each step I take. Eyes are going as well. Require a high-powered magnifying glass given me by Shockley to even read.”
“I'm so sorry to hear it.”
He waved it off as if it were nothing.
“So, what is it our killer wants, Dr. Vladoc?”
“Peace.”
“Peace? World peace, peace for himself?”
“Peace for his victims.”
“Peace…”
“And one other thing.”
“And that is?”
“Validation.”
The man had a fondness for enigmas, she thought. “Validation of what? His actions?”
“No, validation of myth, legend, fairy tale even, validation of a magical way of thought that he has fully given himself over to, you see.”
“I see, and this is your revelation for me?”
“Your killer is seeking his own peace and purification and the validation of his magical thinking.”
“And he does this by killing young people?”
“He kills in order to cleanse them and make them over as… well, in his or her mind, as the beings they were before being born into this world. Beings born of gods, not of tainted flesh-in other words not born into our tribe, the tribe we call Homo sapiens.”
“Beings… beings born of God?”
