She knew she must send her findings to such an expert once she had something concrete. Another trained person, someone other than Kim Desinor, who had up to this point agreed with Jessica's speculations-someone removed from the case, without emotional involvement, might help Jessica hone in on the killer's thinking and motivation. This could have a great impact on the task force's success in identifying and locating the Poet Killer.
This murderer preyed upon men and women of a distinct body type and look. If the investigators learned the killer's habits, they could begin to follow the right path to a logical conclusion. There was no scientific certainty in such procedures, but years of experience had taught Jessica truths that others either did not see or ignored.
She entered her findings on a computer, saved them to disk, and was wondering exactly who to send them to when the phone rang beside her. Lifting the receiver, she heard Chief Santiva say, “You're working late.”
“Yeah, well, I think it's called for. The Poet has been busy.”
“Anything give in the case so far?”
“Aside from my nerves?”
“Anything we can hang our hats on?”
“Who wants to know, Eriq?”
“We all have people we have to answer to, Jess.”
“They don't really expect anything this soon, do they?”
“I told them we have our best working on it, so they have high expectations. Tell me what you've got. I'll take it from there.”
“Watch for a packet of photos I put in overnight for your attention, boss. I want you to tell me what you can extrapolate from the handwriting.”
“Photos of the latest poems?”
“Straight off the backs of the vies, yes.”
“I'll give them my fullest attention and get back to you. Meanwhile, do you or Desinor have any general impressions I should know about?”
Jessica's assessment of the killer thus far initially left Eriq silent. Then he asked, “Are you both getting the notion that this guy kills people so as to save them from living 'trashed lives'?”
She looked down at the list she'd composed of the victims' characteristics. “Not sure. At least one of the vies was homosexual, they were all Caucasian, no crossbreeds but one cross-dresser. No people of foreign origin, no drug users, no addicts, no drug dealers, pimps, prostitutes, deviants with records, nothing unsavory so far as I can see.”
“You don't make a cross-dresser out a deviant?”
“Just a confused kid looking to establish a sense of his own identity. They-all the victims-had that in common, I'm beginning to believe. They were into playing musical chairs with their names, for instance.”
“What about musical body art? Were they into that scene?”
“Sturtevante tells us they frequented the clubs that catered to the body poetry fad going on here, yeah, but previous to their deaths, so far as autopsy shows, none of them were into tattoos or body piercing; no tongue or nose piercings-”
“But they all would have known of the urban legend, the roots of the fad, and they all would have consented to the one tattoo that killed them?”
“Our guy has to be quite persuasive. To be blunt, any corpse candidate not deemed 'proper' or 'worthy' by his standard wouldn't get his backside poetry.”
“Anything else strike you?”
Jessica told him of her growing belief that the killer preyed on people who, for whatever reason, looked the part and played the part of willing victims. “The dead are men and women who fell under the spell of a kind of old-world charm and beauty of spirit-all romantics who saw the world through ideal-clouded eyes-even here, in a place that supposedly enshrines the opposite of such notions.”
“Interesting. Our killer is into charm and beauty, then?”
“Actually, the vies are perfectly androgynous. The males could pass for female, and vice versa. I think that's the physical look that attracts our guy, while the mind-set is that of mystical romanticism.”
Eriq sounded like a big brother when he asked, “Are you alone there in the lab? Where's everyone else?”
“Yeah, pretty much for the moment.”
“Go get some dinner and rest. That's an order.”
“One I happily accept.”
“Everything go okay between you and Parry?”
“Sure, why wouldn't it? You hear anything to the contrary?”
“No, no… just asking. I'll check in later, Doctor. Good night.”
“ 'Night, Chief.”
“Damn,” she cursed herself after hanging up. Why had she made such a to-do over his question about Parry? She looked around the lab and other offices. “This place is like a morgue,” she gently joked, wanting to hear herself speak. Everyone on the day shift was long gone, leaving the lab area as abandoned as the proverbial country cemetery, and the lights in areas not in use had been dimmed. Jessica felt a sense of aloneness begin to creep into her skin, and again she wondered why she had seen and heard so little from James Parry.
“We're not making much of a team,” she lamented aloud.
Kim, too, had confided that she had seen little of Parry in the days since their visit to Maurice Deneau's flat.
It didn't help matters to learn that Parry and Sturtevante were independently scheduling meetings with the toxicologist DeAngelos.
She toyed with the idea of calling Jim, forcing things. She lifted the phone, put it back, lifted it again, finally returned it. She paced the room, thinking, angry that Parry had excluded her from his lunch meeting with DeAngelos; then she wondered if DeAngelos had called the meeting to “report” on her?
Jessica looked at the clock, seeing the hour hand inch toward six p.m. She again wondered why she was still in the lab. She knew why. Something nagged at her, something about the deaths and the manner of the killer's writing, something trying to get out, something trying to talk clearly to her, but she couldn't read the garbled signs. She felt so damnably handicapped, as if some vital fact floated just out of reach. All the parts were here, before her, yet they refused to coalesce into a larger configuration, like a puzzle with all of its hundreds of pieces present, but each an ill fit.
“What am I missing?” she asked herself over and over. Frustration weighed heavy on Jessica's shoulders, while anxiety watched in the background, whispering, “The Poet Killer's going to strike again and soon… very soon, but when, where, how, and why? Why indeed does he kill, and why in such a manner as this?”
TEN
Like a fiend in a cloud, With howling woe. After night I do crowd. And with night will go…
Jessica lifted the phone on her desk in the makeshift office that had been provided by the Philly ME's office and asked the operator to put her in touch with Dr. Arnold Heyward. When he came on the line, she said, “Dr. Heyward, this is Dr. Coran. 1 fear I won't sleep tonight without some assurances that-”
“Thought I was the only one left in the building,” he said, cutting her off. “I mean other than the maintenance crew.”
“Had some loose ends to tie up,” she replied dryly. “Did you get it all out to Parry's people?” She needn't explain what it was to Heyward, not since DeAngelos had given the order.