Absolute Instinct (45 page)

She next examined the wound to the back, withholding a sense of rage and tears and stomach wrenching sickness. She wondered if Gahran had done these killings just to seed her interest in putting an end to him, just to taunt her and as a warning. If so, his mother had been right about one thing— it'd be his father's way. Just like Matisak.

Paramedic Bill Waldron brought her up to date as he and his partner placed Petersaul on a stretcher. As they did so, Jessica watched the boat of cutaway flesh down her back shake like Jell-O.

“
She's in good hands, Jess,” said Sharpe, placing his strong arm around her as the helicopter descended.

Dean and Stan had by now gotten all the various vehicles out of the chopper's way.

“
Caretaker's had a heart attack. The second guy cut open was a pal of his, I gather,” said Dean to the feds. “We've already thrown up a perimeter search, a ten-block grid. The old man”—he indicated Milos, where he was being placed in an ambulance—”says he thinks he saw someone slinking off as he drove up. Says maybe some guy squeezed through the gate end where a thin man or boy could fit.”

“
How's the old-timer doing?” asked Sharpe.

“
He's regained consciousness. That shot to the heart hit him good.”

“
Epinephrine,” Jessica said. “Did he say it was Gahran when you showed him the composite?”

“
Said he was just a shadow. Said he wasn't even sure at first he'd really seen anything, just a trick of light, until he saw the bodies. Nice old guy. Only wants to know if the girl will live. No thought to himself except to call the wife.”

“
I want this cemetery combed, men and dogs, the works,” said Jessica. “He's at home in such places, just like his father.”

She recalled the games Mad Matthew Matisak had played in New Orleans, how he had had her canvassing a Metairie Cemetery at midnight on the promise he would be there for her, a ruse as it turned out, another dead end. This could also end in a dead end in a cemetery, or another death if not the arrest of Mad Matisak's crazed kid.

“
Sun'll be up soon,” said Stan, the uniformed cop. “If he's within these walls, or tries to climb over them, we'll get him.”

Dean added, “We've got squad cars encircling the place from here to Petersen and Western. Got the North Side wall covered, too.”

She stared in through the bars where the sonofabitch of all sonsofbitches had possibly escaped. Already they had given him too much time. She disbelieved he'd be foolish enough to still be in the area. However, he'd obviously lost the usual disciplinary controls he had maintained over himself all the years since Millbrook. His newfound madness, likely a response to his having learned who his father was, may have triggered the belief that he was invincible. If Gahran thought for a moment of coming back to finish his carving and raising of Petersaul's spine—the thing he apparently, madly and wantonly had to have in numbers now—-the flood of need beyond any control he had once exercised—he might have hesitated long enough to find himself surrounded by the quick response of the Chicago Police Department.

Else he was smoke again... gone.

TWENTY-ONE

May your own blood rise against you... and may the hearthstones of hell be your best bed forever.

—
FROM A TRADITIONAL WEXFORD CURSE

WITH nowhere else to go, Giles found himself at Cafe Avanti, ringing the doorbell belonging to his two benefactors who lived overhead. At four in the morning, Giles had arrived carrying two spines in his blue easel bag slung over his shoulder, the bones rattling against one another, sometimes noticeably. He'd been wandering the streets of Chicago since his escape from the cemetery. He'd located the old homestead where his demonic father had lived once, but it was occupied, turned into a loft-styled duplex. Warm lights, pleasant to view from the street, trees all about. No one would ever guess that a serial killer had once lived there. Then he saw the unmarked FBI car cruising near. Jessica, no doubt, had sent some of her legions to keep an eye on Matisak's old place, just in case he should show up, and he had. The M.E. was sharp. He'd ducked into shadow, made his way off through alleyways and was gone.

Now Conchita Raold came to the upstairs window and called down, asking, “Is that you, Murphy? Who the fuck's ringing my bell? Is it you, Murph? You Fuck! We're through! So over! Get it?”

Giles backed away from the cafe doorway to stare up at the woman in the window. “It's me, Giles! I need a place to stay. I was thrown out of my apartment. Too much noise making my sculptures! I... I have to get some rest, and I have to see my sculptures.”

“
We have the big-big opening tonight! You'll need to be alert to talk to visitors to the exhibit! Help me sell more coffee. You can't be hungover or nothing. It is tonight, isn't it? We agreed to the showing, tonight!”

“
All right... OK, but I have to add something.” He held up the easel bag.

She could faintly hear the rattle of bones. “What is it?” she asked.

“
More bones. The showing needs more bones.”

“
All right. I'll come down and open up for you.”

Giles felt a great wave of relief come over him. It was a place where he was welcomed in, a place where he could hide, a place where they didn't turn him away, a place where they knew his name and it didn't frighten them.

It reminded him of the story he had read about how his father had killed two Cherokee Indian people, a man and his wife, living on a farm on a desolate section of a reservation in Oklahoma. How Matisak had been welcomed, fed, given a place to sleep the night, only to turn on the old couple like a viper, taking their lives for their blood, and for a long moment, he hesitated now at the door, fearful of something similar happening here, that he would wind up killing these people who had so fallen in love with his sculptures. At least Conchita had; Murphy reserved judgment, remaining aloof, cool. Giles didn't want what had happened with Lucinda to happen here. He hadn't wanted to harm Lucinda, either, but she'd really given him no choice.

Why had she been so wakeful that night? Why had she been such a snoop? Why did she have to pry and pry until he could no longer have her walk freely out his door?

Conchita stood in the doorway in her untied robe, inviting him in, telling him in no uncertain terms that she was alone and she could use a man.

“
Where's Murphy, your husband?” he asked.

“
We had another big fight. Whole thing... the marriage, the cafe, all of it's shot to hell. We really aren't what you'd call compatible. It just took us six years to find that out. Conchita's out of the box, Giles, out of the box.”

He thought of his box at the reference.

She continued nonstop, “And for the first time in a long time I can breathe.”

“
You two seemed so... so...”

“
Together?”

“
Like really in love, yeah.”

“
Front we put on for all our friends and the clientele, you know? You know how it is. In private we make war like fucking Indians on a tear! Damn that Murphy!” She laughed. “Only man who can make me see red. Didja know we both have some Native American in us?”

“
No, I didn't know that.”

“
That big black Murphy's a mutt. He's got some Blackfoot and Crow. Me, I'm Eastern—a touch of Pottawatomie—Blackhawk's people—-aside from Mexican! And proud of it. You ever... ahhh... you know, make it with a Native American-Mex mix before, baby?”

“
Ahhh... no, can't say as I have.”

She grabbed hold of Giles by his shirt and hauled him through the door. “Then you ain't really lived yet, white boy. Come with me.” She led him up to her bed, saying, “I liked you the moment I saw you.”

“
My mother told me I had a little Cherokee in me... on my father's side. Told me how he got the blood and everything.”

“
Cool... you'll have to tell me all about it sometime. But for now, I need your mouth on me, not flapping anywhere else. Come on!”

Giles saw not a single television in the place, and he asked about it.

“
Fuck I want with that white man's opiate, sweetheart? Don't read his papers, don't listen to his bullshit radio, not even Rush Limp-baugh.”

She pushed him onto the bed, stripping him. Giles, fatigued, only marginally awake, laid back and enjoyed it, falling into a deep slumber even as he came in her.

GILES Gahran had vanished. It seemed he had again disappeared off the face of the earth. Jessica and Sharpe had been to see Petersaul to tell her that Darwin was safe, that Warden Gwingault had acted on the evidence twenty minutes before the scheduled execution, ten minutes before he got the call from Governor Hughes, who apparently had thought that he'd make FBI Agent Reynolds sweat out the end as if he would surely die. From what Darwin told Jessica, a major rift had resulted between Gwingault and Hughes, and the entire state was in an uproar and many residents wanted to see Darwin hung or drawn and quartered, or at least thrown into a cactus bed for his part in the hoax.

Darwin had been released pending any charges. It seemed no one knew exactly what the charges would be or how many would be leveled.

Jessica gave Darwin the number where he could talk to his brother, still in hiding.

“
Then I'm on my way to Chicago. I want in on the kill.”

Harry Laughlin showed up at Petersaul's bedside as well. She had lost a lot of blood, and while weak and doped up, doctors had been able to repair the damage Gahran's scalpel had done her. It would take a long recuperation and some skin grafts, and even now she could not lie on her back, but they must all be thankful she was alive and in one piece.

“
Get this bastard for Cates and for all his victims, Jessica,” Petersaul said, her voice quivering with pain, despite the drugs.

Laughlin took Jessica and Sharpe aside and said, “I've got bad news.”

“
Now what?”

“
Orders from Quantico passed along from D.C., you and Sharpe are off this case, ordered off. I'm to see to it you two get on a plane for HQ. Seems they're taking a dim view of the fun you had with Oregon Governor Hughes... that stunt you pulled, and the fact you are holding Towne in an undisclosed location believed to be somewhere along the O'Hare Airport hotel strip.”

“
You don't think we'd have him anywhere within a thousand miles of Chicago, do you, Harry?”

“
Don't play me for one of them. I applaud what you people did, but you did break the law, regardless.”

“
To save an innocent man from certain execution!” countered Sharpe.

“
I'm on your side, just not officially. You don't need to drag any more asses down with you. Now, you gotta turn Towne over to me, and you two have to be standing before Eriq Santiva and his boss, Hemmings, and maybe even Fischer this afternoon. Santiva said, 'No ifs, ands, or buts.' I guess you've been cornered.”

“
We'll have to make arrangements to get Towne here to turn him over to your custody.”

“
After all,” continued Laughlin, “he's got to be returned to Oregon.”

“
Sure... I expected as much,” she said.

“
Meantime, there's been some buzz on the street about our guy. People have his face now in their homes, on the tube and on the front pages of the papers. He was spotted early this morning on Southport in the Lakeview and Wrigleyville area at the same time.”

“
So reliable.”

“
More than one source. One a newspaper delivery kid, another a shopkeeper, bakery guy just opening up. They each reported a man looking like Gahran with an oversized, stuffed blue bag slung over his shoulder.”

“
That's good. Give us the location. Hell, run us there.”

“
But you're off the case.”

“
Not until we get on the plane.”

“
Guy at the Greyhound terminal also spotted someone fitting our yearbook photo from the Tribune s page one. Again a guy with an oversized blue bag using a locker there last night, stowed the blue bag there and picked it up early this A.M.”

“
Traveling light,” commented Sharpe.

“
But where are his sculptures? The crates?” she asked.

Sharpe began musing aloud. “Maybe in storage or... If... just suppose Wellingham had gotten him a gig here? Introduced him to someone in Chicago for a showing? That would explain where all his stuff might be.”

“
If he's rented space, he'd have stowed the blue bag somewhere other than the bus station,” Jessica said.

“
I can tell you none of the major galleries would touch his stuff if it's anything like Orion's,” Laughlin assured them.

“
But a medium-sized gallery, a small one... and there are countless other venues where art or so-called art is displayed.”

“
No way to cover them all,” said Laughlin. “Certainly not before you guys have to board that plane.”

“
We can start with all the papers, including the neighborhood papers, especially those covering Wrigleyville and this Lakeview area you mentioned.”

“
That'd be one way. If his stuff has been advertised or given a freebie mention in a 'Who's Who' or 'What's Happening' column.”

“
Even so... he'd never be so foolish as to stick around for a showing of his art, would he?” asked Petersaul from her stomach at the bed, having overheard everything. “I still have twenty/twenty vision and my ears ain't bad, either,” she joked.