Absolute Instinct (17 page)

“
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Will you arrange for an exhumation today?”

“
The earliest would be tomorrow morning,” said Dr. Krueshach. “But the order must come from the chief of police recommended by the principal detective on the case. Other than that, you'd have to go through your federal channels.”

“
Then that is what I'll do.” Sharpe pulled out his cellular phone and dialed Eriq Santiva to wake up and get a court order. He was in mid-sentence, having awakened Eriq, when Dr. Krueshach waved Sharpe down, protesting.

“
All right! All right, I'll sign off on an exhumation.”

“
Then do it,” he said to Krueshach. Turning to Brannan, he stated, “Detective, are we agreed?”

“
All right, all right if Herman's going to sign off on it. We don't need to involve a lot of people. I'll make the necessary phone calls.”

Krueshach had gone to his file cabinet and pulled out a blank document. “Here's the exhumation order. You'll need to sign alongside my signature.”

Sharpe took the form and signed it, handed it back and thanked him. “I'll see you at the exhumation.”

Dr. Herman Krueshach nodded but said nothing. A man of few words, Sharpe thought, or a man with a guilty conscience. Jessica would call him incompetent to lose so much in the way of evidence.

Brannan said he'd awakened the mortuary and cemetery people who would meet them at the burial site on the out skirts of Millbrook. Together Brannan and Sharpe exited Dr. Krueshach's office.

As they climbed into Brannan's Oldsmobile, the Millbrook detective softly excused Dr. Herman Krueshach with something about incompatible software systems, horrible budget cuts, little assistance, and no incentives.

Sharpe didn't want to hear it.

EIGHT

Infernal or heavenly, divinity itself is transitory.

—
GERALD MESSADIE

Milwaukee, Wisconsin Same night

A shadow moved across the page she sat reading. Looking up, Jessica found Reynolds staring down at her in a kind of silent examination. “I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I was hoping we'd have come to some conclusions about what next.”

“
What next?” He seemed awkward, his white shirt open, the linen contrasting sharply with his black chest. “Where do we go from here.”

“
Enough with the arcane science lesson, huh?” she replied. All the wine was gone, but she tipped the bottle anyway, studying it as if to have some focal point. “I think to bed is where we go.”

“
What?”

“
I'm sorry. I meant to sleep, to sleep.”

“
Oh, yeah. What time is it anyway?”

“
Three, three-ten in the A.M. Not even conventioneers... not even God is awake at this hour,” she lamented.

“
Let's just go over the Sarah Towne killing one more time.” “I can do it in my sleep, I promise you, Darwin.”

“
They're still taking orders at room service. I can get us another round of drinks. Whiskey sour, right? Jack Daniel's with a lime, lemon, cherry and an orange slice.”

“
You are a quick study, Detective. Know just how to tingle a girl's backbone all right, but no, no, and no.”

“
I'll just order that right up.”

“
Along with your gin and tonic.”

“
Hold my seat.”

“
Will do.”

With his return, again dropping into the chair opposite her on this cool night, Jessica again noted how tall and imposing a man Darwin was. She watched him grab his shirt for an invisible pack of cigarettes. “Trying to give it up,” he muttered.

Somewhere from another balcony, a piano player made beautiful music, reminding her of Billy Vaughn. Whoever this imposter was, he proved extremely good on the ivories, now playing “Danny Boy.” No doubt a music student.

Whoever he or she was, the pianist slipped unnoticed into an equally beautiful rendition of “I Can't Help It (If I'm Still in Love with You).” The melody made Jessica think of how far apart she was from Richard.

“
I wonder why the hell I'm here in the beer capital of the world chasing yet another monster,” she confided in Darwin. “I'm not sure I have the stomach for it any longer, Darwin—the process necessary to locate, capture, and put an end to the career of a man bent on ripping out people's fucking spines. Maybe this is a job for younger—”

“
What the fuck is this, why-me-whine-fest time?”

The fatigue and the booze conspired against her having any reply to this.

Darwin firmly added, “You are here, Dr. Coran, to teach me, remember? And because you're needed.”

“
You have any idea how tired I am of chasing down these fucking freaks, these inhuman humans? And in the chasing, how often I've lost myself, my own soul, Darwin? And you keep at it this way, you'll join me in hell.”

“
How can you say that with your record of—”

“
The price is high, Darwin. No winning. You lose even when you win. You lose repeatedly. Repeatedly you lose a larger and larger portion of yourself—”

Darwin stared, momentarily stunned at her admission.

“
Along with family, along with lovers, along with any chance at happiness, two point five children, a white picket fence, a lapdog, a home and roots?”

“
Sure, I understand, Dr. Coran.”

“
The hell you do.”

“
You got so close to evil, close enough to touch it, and the closer in you get, the closer you are to... to accepting it as... as normal.”

“
Then maybe you do know something, young Xavier Darwin Reynolds.”

“
I know what I've read in your books.”

“
As normal... the things you begin to accept as normal as Mom's apple pie—evil plunked down and hunkered like a gargoyle right in our faces, but it is all verboten for us to fathom why because it's all part of God's grand schematic plans. His unknowable design, and so the sickest most twisted things man can do are all in the human makeup, and so this is indeed normal. And then it gets scary.”

“
Scary? You want scary go to the neighborhood I grew up in. Come on, Doc, maybe you've had a little too much to drink.”

“
I see it in myself, you see it in yourself, in our species, Darwin, in our race, and in our self-of-selves, where we can't hide... And, yeah, we see it in our cells, our collective, unconscious DNA cells, and so I give you particularly scary.”

Room service arrived with additional drinks. Darwin saw to it, tipping the bellhop. When he returned with her drink extended, he said, “Perhaps, Dr. Coran, we both ought to call it quits on the alcohol after all and get some sleep. We have the follow-up postmortem scheduled for eight-thirty sharp.”

“
Sharpe, how I miss Richard Sharpe.” Jessica was beyond exhaustion now. She only grunted and sipped at her whiskey sour. Darwin's eyes lingered over his glass, then at her as he sipped at the ice tinkling at the bottom of his glass. He next exchanged it for his new drink.

“
Don't worry about my getting up in the morning,” she said, “especially since it would appear I am not going to sleep anyway. Don't worry. I'll be there on time,” she assured him.

He gave her an approving nod, hefted his glass, waited for her to do the same and toasted, “If you're sure, then, to a speedy end to this, and to saving a man in Oregon from state-sanctioned murder.”

“
I don't know that we can save Robert Towne, Reynolds.”

“
We can and we will.”

“
Oh, yes... of course. All right, Darwin. I do like your enthusiasm.”

“
I had hoped to find more fire in you for the case.”

“
Fire... me... oh, sorry. Guess I'm fatigued from the flight, all that we saw today, and maybe, just perhaps a little .. . just a little jaded.”

“
That might explain the book in your hand, and you sitting working this case alone as if I'm not even here.”

“
Just looking for answers.” She held up the book's back cover to show him Holcraft's photo. “One of the best men in forensics I ever had the pleasure of working with.”

“
Really? I wouldn't've guessed it on my own since I'm only an FBI detective. From his picture, your man Asa, looks like Santa Claus incognito—donning a suit and tie but failing miserably to fool anyone.”

She glared at his irreverence toward her American idol.

He took the book from her and examined the write-up, the cover and then the marked page where she had left off.

He began to silently scan its pages, physically jolted by something he read. “Oh Christ.”

“
What is it?”

“
Listen to this,” he ordered and began reading. “ 'In Hindu esoteric physiology the spinal column has an astral counterpart in what is known as the brahmadanda.'“

“
And that is?”

“
According to your friend Holcraft, 'the Rod of Brahma, an invisible shaft, which starts from a place between the anus and the tailbone, and proceeds upward along the spine to the base of the skull'.”

“
Yeah, I was reading that part when you interrupted me. So?”

“
So, 'within this shaft is the sushumna,'“ he continued reading.

“
Meaning what?”

“
Something to do with the pleasure centers in the brain... means 'pleasing,' something about the largest of the subtle arteries of the body. But what the hell is a subtle artery?”

“
A 'subtle artery' is a mythical medical belief in an invisible system of connecting arteries between major organs, the eyes, the phallus and the brain.”

“
I think I see...”

“
No, you don't. It's a fallacy. It does not exist except in the minds of some Hindu clerics who have never let go of the past, including medical misinformation.”

“
Medical mis-in-for-ma-tion,” he slowly intoned.

“
At one time, there was a generally held belief that the soul resided in the pancreas, too.”

“
This guy Holcraft... He didn't believe all this shit, did he?”

She shook her head vehemently. “No-no-no, but there are people who do, and that's the point... that some still do.”

“
You mean it was a kind of hobby of his to collect this kind of stuff even though much of it is a pack of lies?”

“
Asa was fascinated with what people could make of something as simple as cartilage and bone, the human nose, the ears, the eyes, the skull cap, you name it.”

“
Is that right?”

“
From A to Z, he researched all this arcane information about scatological practices and beliefs from every culture, race, religion and time period.”

“
Scat-o-logical? Does that mean it's logical to scat?” he joked, but she could hear the fatigue in his voice.

“
Scatological refers to bodily functions, autonomous stuff, weird shit.”

“
Got that right. This is some weird shit. Says here, 'According to the Chinese system an exceedingly fine tube starts at the sacral'—whatever that is—'extremity and goes up the spine and enters the skull, and is connected with a reservoir of marrow called t-t-t-t'ung te situated at the back of the head.'“

“
From tailbone to skullcap,” she commented, nodding. “Pleasure points in body and mind.”

He read on, “ 'The Tibetans took over this notion and added a refinement by introducing a system of boo... ahhh... bu-gu-chan veins.' Sounds like moo goo gai pan.”

She frowned and took the book away from him. “ 'These veins,'“ she read, “ 'branch out of the spinal column and then loop back again forming a network of tiny channels filled with a vaporlike essence. This system of veins is responsible for vitalizing the blood, semen and other “wet” elements of the body.'“ She lifted her final dram of whiskey sour to toast these words. “And here's to wet elements.” She downed the whiskey. “And I do believe it is time for me to retire.”

“
I appreciate all the time you've taken, Dr. Coran.”

“
On the case or on your crusade?”

“
I assure you they are one and the same.”

“
Then we will make it so, one and the same.”

She staggered, dog tired and tipsy, back into the room. He followed. “Lock that window up for me, will you? And get outta here, will you, Xavier Darwin Reynolds? I'm off to see the wizard.” She set her alarm as she spoke. She laid across the bed as he made his way toward the door.

“
Good night or rather morning, Dr. Coran.”

“
You know, Darwin, you could be wrong every step of the way on this thing, and especially the part about an aging FBI M.E.'s having any sort of clout with authorities in Oregon to get a man off death row.” In her foggy mind, she once again rifled through the photos as she spoke. “Still, there are some damn striking similarities here, even to time of year. Another pattern. Always in the fall, mid-fall, right? Only a year apart...”

“
Two years ago come November fourteenth in Millbrook, Minnesota.”

“
Yeah, Millbrook... How big is this place, Millbrook?”

“
Size of my left toe. One fire hydrant town. Farming community. More cows than people. I figure our guy may've just been raised there, and with too much time on his hands... who knows... maybe he read your friend Asa's book or he's read Evan Kingsbury's god-awful novels depicting Lovecraftian monsters feeding on human beings.”