Absolute Instinct (21 page)

Sharpe hated the damp earthy smell of cemeteries. He tried to focus on the work of the backhoe as it systematically uncovered Louisa Childe's crypt. The workmen then got atop it and removed the concrete lid with pulleys. Then they climbed atop the coffin, working like hunched-over gargoyles to inchworm thick old world hemp ropes beneath it. Then the coffin was lifted and gently placed on level ground.

The workmen pried open the lid, and inside they found the skull's empty eye sockets staring back. The corpse still had swaths of skin here and there, and some strands of wispy hair went fluttering as the wind dove into the coffin and sifted through it. Sharpe felt a pang of sympathy for the woman, and he was suddenly struck with why Krueshach wanted the fingertips returned to her—after all, she'd gone to eternity without her vertebrae. The least Krueshach could do to restore some dignity to the corpse was to return her fingertips—all but one that was never recovered.

Now they had dishonored her grave. Violated its below-ground sanctity. No one was happy about this, least of all Richard Sharpe.

Sharpe now watched Krueshach lift the bony hand and pry it open, first from the sketch that Lieutenant Dan Brannan had returned to her, and then from its three-year position of a hard fist. Sharpe lifted the bloodstained sketch of the woman in her lifelike pose feeding the birds. Strangely, save for some splotches of now-brown blood and insect activity about the edges, the charcoal drawing appeared as fresh as the day it had been rendered. Sharpe thought it the most peaceful scene he'd ever laid eyes on, not unlike a Hogarth portrait.

Her right-hand nails remained barely intact, coming away with Dr. Krueshach's tweezers. The sun had come up while the backhoe had completed its work, and the light— made to dance through the flurry of leaves—caused each fingernail to wink like mother-of-pearl. Krueshach bottled each nail separately, and for good measure, he took scrapings of the area below each nail, all bone now, and each of these scrapings he bottled, labeled, and capped. Sharpe, no longer able to stare at the corpse, saw the sad, small evidence bag filled with fingertips that had been placed alongside the body. Krueshach offered up a silent prayer, his lips barely moving. When he was finished and back on his feet, the little M.E. in wire rims shouted, “Place Miss Childe back into her earthly chamber!”

Before the workmen could do so, a small swarm of chirping meadowlarks appeared, flew about the scene in a circle and as quickly disappeared, all but one. The straggler landed on a low-hanging tree limb overlooking the coffin, silently staring down at Louisa Childe, as curious as a Minnesota farmer, rubber-necking, tweeting as if a lone voice in the desert, wailing a cosmic complaint that Richard Sharpe himself felt like making.

TEN

Just a line to let you know I love my work.

—
JACK THE RIPPER

Apartment of Giles Gabran, Milwaukee

THE apartment smelled so strongly now of bleach and ammonia and muriatic acid that it'd gotten into the air ducts and visited apartments throughout the building. People began pouring past Giles Gahran s door, exiting the building, fearful some sort of terrorist attack had been accomplished, fearful their lungs were already in advance stages of collapse and decay. Even Mrs. Parsons was ambling past his door, and seeing him peeking out, shouted, “Giles! Get out of the building! It's awful. Some sort of airborne poison has been let loose in the building. Get out! Get out now!”

More people filed past as firefighters in protective gear rushed in, searching for the source of the disturbance. Giles slammed his door, gritting his teeth. He cursed himself for having overdone it with the cleaning fluids.

“
Fuck me! Damn! All right... just have to remain calm. Guy's got a right to clean his place, even if he is moving out. Just tell 'em it's a compulsion, one of those anxiety things, a phobia of germs, microbes, dust mites. A personal war. They'll buy it. Hell, it's partially true. Hell, it's entirely true.”

A thundering pounding against the door through which Lucinda had attempted escape the night before now filled the room along with the pungent odors of the cleaning fluids and rags he'd used. Giles lifted the cleaning rags and the mop to the door and cracked it open. He stared out through the crevice at a huge, imposing fireman whose flat, black visor looked like the face of death, like Giles's dead, faceless father come to visit. Amadeus in a Milwaukee firefighter's biohazard suit.

Through a mechanical speaker below the visor, the man inside the suit, sounding like Darth Vader said, “Sir, we've traced an odor emanating from this unit that has disturbed all the inhabitants, most of them aged and now on the street awaiting our clearance. Can you give an explanation of what that odor is, sir?”

Giles smiled and chuckled.

“
Something funny about all this, son?”

“
No, no, of course not... Sorry, it's just that some old fool in the building called you guys out on a wild goose chase, I'm afraid, and it's... well... it's silly.”

“
The odometers are registering high, son. So no one's thinking this silly, least of all the Milwaukee Fire Department.”

“
But it's just my fucking cleaning fluids is all.” He pulled the door wider, showing off the mop, a bucket of water at the center of the room near all the crates, boxes, bags and luggage. Giles held out a handful of dirty rags toward the black-visored, tall man, now being joined by his fellow firefighters, curious and staring past the door and into the apartment.

Inwardly, Giles quaked. They stood only feet from Luanda's body, all his collection of spines and jars of blood-paint, all his sculptures. In a matter of minutes, if they chose to barge in and do a thorough inspection, Giles could be found out, more authorities called in, his crates ordered opened by a search warrant. In his mind's eye, Giles saw it all happening, a complete, total end to his quest to one day display all of his work in a glorious opening of his own choosing, his own time and place.

The big man with the dark visor finally removed his protective helmet, his ruddy good looks rivaling anything Giles had ever seen in the way of a magazine model. “We're just going to take these soaked rags with us, if you don't mind, Mr... ahhh?”

“
Gahran... Giles Gahran.”

“
Yes, Mr. Gahran, and if you don't mind, would you remove the mop head, and we'll remove that as well. It'll speed up the process of the odors dissipating in the building.”

“
Oh, sure... absolutely... and I'm so sorry about all this. Really had no idea—”

A second, older fireman with gray-black hair pushed past the younger man, taking everything in, his uncovered nose sniffing. “You using some form of marine pool deck cleaner in here, young man?”

“
Ahhh... yes, sir. Muriatic acid. Guy at the hardware said it'd get off any mildew on the planet and the moon. That's the way he put it. Said it'd clean a gravestone with a century's worth of mildew on it. So I got it.”

“
Smell bleach, too,” replied the man.

“
Yes, sir. I... I didn't entirely trust the hardware guy and the acid, so...”

“
Son of a bitch... you mixed muriatic acid and bleach? What the fuck else did you throw into this cocktail? No wonder the odor don't bother you, boy. You've burned out your olfactory instruments, scudded out the lining of your nose, blown it out your ass. Fucking fool. Getting us all out here with all this gear and equipment, sending everybody in the fucking building into a panic. Christ, don't you watch the news, kid?”

“
I don't, sir. No TV. Come in and have a look!” Giles stepped aside, inviting the man into the apartment, pointing to the interior. “A war could be going on and I wouldn't know. It's all negative vibes I just don't allow into my life.

“
There is a goddamn war going on! We're sitting on a terror alert stage orange, fella! Get this out to the media, Tom,” said the older firefighter to the younger fireman, “and round up everybody.”

“
Code thirteen, sir?”

“
What the fuck else? We're done here! Christ, this is going to bite the budget.”

“
Yes, sir, Chief. Right away, Chief.” The younger firefighter rushed off with the rags in hand. Giles heard him on the landing, shouting to other firefighters up and down the stairwell, “All's clear! That's a Code thirteen. We're outta here!”

The older man did a quick walk through of Giles's apartment, cursorily looking here and there. He noticed the ornate box on the kitchen table, commented on what a nice-looking box it was, and continued on. Giles popped open one of his crates and told him to have a look at one of his sculptures. The big fireman leaned in over the crate almost as tall as he, and stared down at the statue of a woman. “Looks inter-estin',” was his comment.

“
Oh, it is, sir. And fulfilling, very fulfilling if you don't mind not eating that is.”

“
The mop head, young man.”

Giles had been carrying the mop around with him, and now he stood with it and stared at the chief. “What?”

“
Remove it and hand it over.”

“
Oh, yes... absolutely... and I truly am sorry about this.”

“
You might wanna get yourself to a hospital, kid.”

“
Sir? I'm fine, really, but thank you for your concern.”

“
Concern? Damn you, fella, I'm talking about when my boot goes up your ass. We're both going to need a medical professional to get my foot out your hole! Now give me the fucking mop head.”

Giles pushed the entire mop, handle and all, into the fire chiefs hands. “Take it. I'm moving out anyway. Won't need it.”

“
Weird is what you are, kid. Who cleans up a dump like this while moving out?” He started away, in his huge boots, white biohazard suit, holding his visor in his right hand like the helmet of a knight, and the mop head flowing over his enormous gloved left hand as a scepter. If all of this incident hadn't so terrified Giles, he thought it would be laughable.

“
Just my own concoction of cleaning fluids,” Giles said to yet another passing fireman.

“
Some concoction, son.”

“
My cleaning cocktail, I call it.”

This fireman also carried his helmet in his gloved hands, perspiration dripping from his face. “Enough kick in it to knock over a horse,” the stranger replied.

Giles closed his door on the retreating army. He took a whiff. It didn't seem so bad to him. Maybe the fire chief was right. Maybe he had blown out his olfactory senses.

The other side of the door remained noisy as more men filed out and the first brave souls of those who lived in the building began to trickle back. Giles pictured Mrs. Parsons as she'd looked going down those stairs. He'd never known the woman to move so fast. The image made him smirk and shake his head.

UPS would be here soon.

He still had as yet to clean out his bathroom medicine cabinet. As he did so, he breathed a sigh of relief. Things could have gone badly, but it seemed fate remained his friend.

Later the same morning in Milwaukee

Exhausted but so over tired he could not readily sleep, still pumped up from the excitement of discovery at the cemetery, Richard Sharpe telephoned from the privacy of his room at the best motel in Millbrook, the Minnesota Motorlodge. He stood staring out at the flat terrain overlooking a calm stretch of water the shape of an hourglass here in the land of ten thousand lakes, wondering what the locals had named the hourglass lake, or if they were in the habit of renaming their lakes like they did their cemeteries. What a spin they had put on the potter's field.

No answer at Jessica's end. Where the hell was she? Already out, at the crime lab in Milwaukee, he assumed. Still she should have her phone with her, and if so, on vibrate in her pocket.

Richard continued to stare out at the calming water, his thoughts going back to the lone meadowlark on the branch overlooking Louisa Childe's remains. How ironic, given her predilection for feeding birds. The exhumation and “theft” from the body concluded, he had an insistent urge to contact Jessica, to let her know of his progress, but mostly just to hear her voice.

The phone rang a fourth and a fifth time. The thing must be out of Jess's ear shot, ringing incessantly somewhere. Perhaps she was in the shower or otherwise indisposed. He flashed on the notion of seeing her in the shower via her cam-phone.

Finally the ringing ended and she was on, sounding a little winded as if she had just finished climbing stairs. Clearing her throat, getting her bearings. Another noise he could not place, an incessant knocking on a door, and then a sound like a grunting animal.

“
Richard, it's you again!”

“
Surprise, yes. Just got into my room here,” he replied. “Why is your cam off? I want to see you.”

“
Ahhh... food is... room service just arrived.”

“
That's a good thing normally.”

“
And I'm running late. Lots to do at the lab. Lots to process, and I want to go over the evidence gathered and the body once again.”

“
I'm going to sack out for a few hours, catch up, but I wanted to see you again before doing so. A funny thing...”

Something crashed to the floor at Jessica's end like silverware hitting one another.

“
Please! Keep it down,” he heard Jessica say.