“Pay for, you mean? You're suddenly getting very good at digging up stuff, Marc. I think we've discovered a hidden talent in-”
“I located information about how the Philadelphia fad of writing poetry into the skin began.”
“Is that right? Go ahead,” she told him, curious now.
“There've been several explanations over the years that have attached themselves to the fad, but one in particular I found in my research… well, it's weird enough for The X-Files, and I wanted to share it with you.”
She took share to mean sell.
“Does it have anything to do with a bizarre suicide pact in George Gordonn's past?”
Tamburino's silence clearly meant yes.
“Do you know this guy Gordonn?” she asked.
“Are you kidding? He's the leader of the Locke and Leare groupies. He never misses a signing, and he's taken a lot of pictures at them. Hey, just remember, without me, you'd be nowhere on this case. ”So why wasn't he on the list of names you gave me earlier.”
“It never occurred to me to list him. I thought you wanted pros! He's an amateur, a goofball, a weirdo, but not the kind you'd notice particularly, and certainly not the kind who you imagine could kill somebody.”
“Your information is a little late, Marc and frankly it sucks. No deals this time. In other words, thanks but no thanks.” She hung up on his protests. While plainly useless at this point, Tamburino's phone call at least added to their conviction that they were on the right path.
“We're wasting time here,” said Sturtevante.
“I want to see if Gordonn shows up on anyone else's class list, say like Garrison Burrwith's, Leare's, or Locke's,” Jessica protested. “It won't take long.”
“Grab the lists; bring them along,” Parry suggested.
“They're in lockup,” Jessica told him, “along with all the other evidence we have. It'll take a while to get my hands on them. Go ahead. I'll catch up.”
“Let's hit the streets, people,” said Parry. “Get on the track of this creep. Tonight I feel lucky.”
With that, everyone but Vladoc and Jessica hurried out of the office. When they were gone, Vladoc muttered, as if to himself, “I still can't believe it of George. He's so mild-mannered and pleasant.”
“So was Ted Bundy, Doctor.”
Jessica left the police psychiatrist and went to the evidence room, where she signed out the class lists they'd acquired from the university and quickly scanned for George Gordonn's name. It appeared three times. He'd taken poetry classes with Locke, Leare, and Burrwith.
She ran into Kim on her way toward a waiting car. “Thought I'd ride with you,” said her psychic friend. “What did the class lists reveal about George's career as a student?” He took classes with the whole triumvirate-Locke, Leare, and Burrwith.”
“Why didn't we see this before?”
“It's not unusual for the same students to be showing up in a series of lit courses, especially when one is a prerequisite for the other. A lot of the names on the lists were repeated.”
“Including those of the victims. George Gordonn knew the victims.”
“He took Burrwith first, a year ago, followed by Locke last summer, and then Leare most recently, fall term. After that he signed up for Goldfarb's film class. He's been busy.”
“It would seem so… researching the life of Byron perhaps?”
“It would seem so…”
As the car pulled out of the underground lot, Jessica at the wheel, Kim said what both of them were thinking. “It would appear that we are finally on the trail of the Poet Killer, Jess.”
George Linden Gordonn, it seemed, having somehow learned of the police's interest in him, most likely from noticing that he was being followed and watched, had fled. At first, this presented no problem to the surveillance team, as they had him in their sights, driving his sedan. It was only when he slipped out of sight, veering into an underground lot and speeding out at an exit around the block, that it became a problem. But when they went to round him up-they figured he'd shot himself in the head or something-they found an empty car.
“How the hell did he just vanish?” the police chief, Roth, asked, having joined them at the car with a warrant in hand to search the vehicle, “and exactly how did Gordonn know that we were onto him?” He'd been kept apprised of events by Sturtevante. Angry, he shouted, “The surveillance team was never compromised, and yet he knew he was being watched. How?”
“Perhaps he simply felt the police presence everywhere, picked it up in, I don't know, some supersensory way,” Jessica wondered aloud. “Perhaps that's how he's stayed a step ahead of us.”
“You saying he's psychic?” asked Kim.
“That or very 'blue-sensed.' “
Roth and the others knew she was referring to police jargon for a cop's instincts. Sturtevante offered another possibility. “Maybe someone's keeping him informed.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe someone close to the case is in some way close to him. I'd thought that was the case when… when I suspected Leare, that she was getting the information from me.
“Pillow talk?” asked Parry. “You think Gordonn is sleeping with someone close to the investigation? Who?”
“I don't know. Someone on the task force, maybe, someone in the ME's office. I'm just grasping at straws here, Jim.”
“Like everyone else,” Kim commented.
Jessica said, “If so, then he knew when we were on, when we were off.” She wondered if some more mundane answer was closer to the truth. “At any rate, it's as if the city has swallowed our boy up. He won't easily be located.”
While Jessica and Parry cruised in Parry's car, FBI dispatch alerted them to an urgent call from Dr. Coran's “snitch,” Marc Tamburino.
“I've got more than you bargained for this time, Dr. Coran.”
“No games, Marc. I've got no time for nonsense. What is it?” Gordonn is being helped out of the city by well-meaning friends, friends who have already had their asses in a sling thanks to the police, if you get my drift.”
“Are you telling me that Leare is protecting Gordonn? That she knows him well enough to help him escape?”
“All I know is what I hear, and what I hear is that the poets of this city are fed up with your gestapo tactics, and they've banded together to help Gordonn out. How do you think he so thoroughly disappeared while under surveillance?”
“Some poets did this? I've never known poets to be so militant, Marc. What exactly are you telling me? No riddles, okay? Tell me, how did Gordonn learn that he was under suspicion?”
“I haven't a clue, but I do know that what I've heard is accurate information. I'll expect a healthy check for this piece, love.”
“So, a group of right-thinking, well-meaning artists have banded together to protect Gordonn.”
“He's like a cult figure to some of them, like a symbol or something. The founder of the fad, don't you see? It's earned him a measure of respect.”
“And his poisoning people to death?”
“That, too, with some in this crowd, believe me.”
“All right. Marc. Thanks for the lead. You'll be hearing from us.”
Jessica conveyed Tamburino's information, and while Parry admitted to being skeptical, he could not argue with following up on it. “We go back to Leare, Locke, possibly Burrwith, Plummer, and the photography people.”
“Well-meaning friends who cannot conceive of his guilt in this bizarre business are hiding and abetting him?” Kim asked when she heard the news. She had a sudden flash of how they all looked from afar, a flock of buzzards standing around Gordonn's vehicle as it was searched from top to bottom before being towed to the police lot. Aaron Roth put an APB out for Gordonn, and he arranged to have all highway entrances from the city closed off and roadblocks put up. Photos of George Linden Gordonn were circulated. All this, and still George did not surface.