Absolute Instinct (38 page)

“
What the fuck have you people got my little brother into. Turn this car around and take me back! I won't abandon him like this. I can't!”

“
Shut up and see this thing through!” shouted Jessica over the noise of the protesters and the blood-for-blood revenge crowd that mistook vigilantism for justice.

“
Play it out, Towne,” shouted Sharpe sternly, his face livid. “Damn it, man, we have a foolproof plan to keep Darwin from any harm. You've got to trust us and trust Darwin.”

Towne calmed and fell silent in the back seat. “One more checkpoint and it's a hotel room with a meal and TV and freedom, Mr. Towne,” Jessica assured him.

“
Tell me how you plan to keep Darwin from becoming a dead man at midnight?”

“
We've sent the truth to all the news agencies and newspapers, marked to be opened at 10 P.M. The shit will hit the fan and everyone in Oregon and the country will know that J.J. Hughes literally has the wrong man in custody. This he'll be forced to deal with; this will force an end to the execution. It's a perfect plan.”

“
Foolproof, huh? Have you considered the fact that James Hughes is a fool?”

“
Of course we've taken that into consideration.”

“
But you can't predict what a fool will do! Besides, why should he... how can he be persuaded that Darwin is Darwin, and that a switch was made?”

“
Two pieces of evidence will convince the press and Hughes,” she fired back.

“
You are dealing with Dr. Jessica Coran, Mr. Towne,” said Sharpe. “She has thought of everything, every contingency.”

Towne flashed on the power and light men. “They have a tape of the switch as it went down, the power and light guys working for you?”

“
That's right. Walked right out with it.”

“
Will that be enough?”

“
There's one other exhibit for the jury.”

“
His blood type... of course. You've got his blood type on the record.”

“
Courtesy of your friend Dr. Waters, who will attest to it as a disinterested party, who, in giving Towne a routine blood exam discovered it could not be Towne's blood, thus staying the execution of Darwin as well.”

“
This state means to kill somebody. I'm still not going to rest till we get Darwin outta here.”

They got past the last checkpoint and Towne's deep inhalations grew even greater as they pulled out onto the highway leading away from the prison.

“
We have one more tape to make, Mr. Towne,” said Richard.

“
A tape of you, dated, showing that you are in federal custody, Mr. Towne.”

“
I think you two have earned the right to call me Rob,” he replied. “And even though it's belated and sounds pretty pitiful... thanks... thanks a whole... a whole heap. But I still won't rest till I see Darwin again outta that hellhole and off death row.”

“
Then you have a crusade, Rob. Something to live for,” said Sharpe.

“
And we have it on good authority that the lab in Minnesota will have a DNA string to match against yours within twenty-four hours.”

“
Lotta good it'd have done me tonight at midnight.”

Jessica replied, “Precisely why we have put everything on the line.”

“
Where're we going now... I mean to hide out?” he asked.

“
Taking a flight out,” said Richard, “all arranged.”

“
Getting you out of Oregon altogether.” Jessica looked over her shoulder and watched the power and light van following them to the airport. She dialed a number for the van. “Are you all set back there?”

On the other end she heard cheers and put the phone up to Towne's ear. “Not everyone in Oregon hates your guts, Rob.”

“
That's a comfort. Now where're we going?”

“
Chicago.”

“
Chicago?”

“
Everything is pointing to Chicago, yes. We have agents on the trail of a man believed to have killed a woman in Milwaukee and—”“But the cops in Chicago released the guy!” protested Towne. “Said he had proof he didn't kill that girl.”

“
Darwin had a long talk with Agents Petersaul and Cates just before we came to see you, Rob,” countered Jessica.

“
Petersaul and her partner are closing in on another suspect,” added Richard.

Towne looked hopefully into her eyes. “Who is this guy?”

“
A kind of shadowy second to Orion with whom Lucinda Wellingham had spent a little time close to the end of her life. Likely grooming him for his own showing.”

“
Another artist... fits in with the sketches. I tried to tell these fools here I haven't a lick of artistic talent but—”

Bouncing through a bit of turbulent roadwork, Jessica added, “We suspect this guy reacts badly to major events happening in his life.”

Richard told him, “We suspect that his mother's death rather unleashed him on the world. His chance at a showing in Milwaukee, perhaps out of some sudden incident that set him on a rage, perhaps fear of success—who knows—precipitated his killing of his benefactress. Perhaps your wife and Louisa Childe in Millbrook were in a sense benefactors.”

“
We've uncovered an unsolved case connected to him as well, years ago in Millbrook, the disappearance of an art dealer-agent type who had some dealings with Gahran. Male this one.”

“
Most of his victims,” added Richard, “we again suspect were fill-ins... ahhh... stand-ins for Mommy Dearest, Nurse Ratched, the Evil Queen or whoever he hates most in this life.”

“
And a study of the victims not only shows how close in age they were but in matronly appearance, all save Lucinda Wellingham, and this other art dealer, of course, but these two also represented power, authority figures who held his future in their hands, like his mother, we surmise.”

“
Big events set him off?”

“
One reason he takes months, sometimes years to strike again,” she said. “He lives a quiet, patient, long-suffering lifestyle between in which he buries his urges in his artistic endeavors—puts them in his work, so to speak.”

Clearing his throat, Richard smirked. “He literally puts the 'objects' of his rage into his work.”

“
Sounds better and better for this, doesn't he?” asked Towne, a half-satisfied smile creasing his stern features. “How... what else you got on him?” pressed Towne.

“
Not to get your hopes up too high,” Jessica said, sipping hot coffee from a Thermos, “but this guy was born in 1980 to a single mother, Larina Gahran. Ring any bells?”

“
Gahran... Larina... son named Giles? No, none.”

“
Didn't mean a thing to us, either. You see, he's remained under the radar. Never been arrested, so he shows up on no one's screen. Certainly not the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program—VICAP.”

Outside the tinted car windows the black landscape of Oregon turned to lighted strip malls, gas stations, fast-food restaurants and the debris of urban sprawl as they neared the airport.

In the darkness of the cab, Richard again broke the stillness. “Guy's mother is said to have berated him all his life, or so school records show a distinct psychosis involving his relationship with her—was a disability check recipient, former nurse, in of all places, Millbrook, Minnesota.”

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How do you know all this now and not before?” asked a frustrated Towne, accepting a cup of the hot coffee from Jessica.

“
Once Petersaul and Cates got on his trail, it led back to Millbrook,” began Richard, “so I called my contact there, Brannan, and he dug up all he could find on Giles Gahran and faxed it to Petersaul, who in turn, contacted Jessica on her cell just before we arrived at your address, Mr. Towne.”

“
Then it's all good, solid information, right? All to the good, right?”

“
You tell me. Born and raised in Millbrook with a history of medical problems, yes.” Richard held a smug look of assurance. “Everything points to Giles Gahran.”

“
That's his name, Giles Gahran,” repeated Towne.

“
Now Darwin's got to play out his hand first, and as soon as possible, we will bring him home, too,” Jessica assured him.

Sharpe continued with, “Records show that Gahran attended Millbrook schools, and Brannan's got hold of a yearbook photo he's forwarded to Chicago PD and FBI.”

“
Our first victim, Louisa Childe was killed only blocks from where this kid went to high school. He has no college record other than a Portland arts school—”

“
Wait... whoa up there. You have him in Portland? at the time of Sarah's murder?” asked Towne.

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We do,” replied Sharpe.

“
And this only after his mother died and Childe was killed,” added Jessica. “His tuition in Portland was seeded by money coming out of her estate, the house sale.”

“
Sold out and moved to Portland soon after the Childe killing,” Richard said, his hands like fluttering birds, insistent of the truth. “Only weeks after Giles Gahran's mother dies, two years ago, Louisa Childe's mutilated body is discovered in late November, determined to have been killed in mid-November.”

“
Your wife was murdered in mid-November too,” added Jessica. “Joyce Olsen murdered in Milwaukee in the same manner in mid-November.”

“
Records also show his having attended Portland's prestigious Kanar Institute of the Arts. While in attendance there, your wife is killed.”

“
Damn... Sarah was taking classes there...”

“
Gahran next shows up in Milwaukee, having not quite completed his studies in Portland, and now we have not one but two killings using the same MO in Milwaukee.”

“
Sounds like you're all over this guy now like he fell outta the sky. Where they hell was all this when I was locked up all this time?”

“
He's disappeared into oblivion each time,” Jessica's tone turned from excited to apologetic, “and he allowed so much time between his killings.”

Sharpe said, “Now he's become part of the Chicago cityscape. Still very much at large, but he will surface.”

“
It's only a matter of time and credit-card use,” Jessica assured Towne, “a registration record, signing a lease, a lot of interviewing and footwork in the arts community on our part.”

“
Besides, Chicago's as good a place to stash you as any,” added Sharpe.

“
When do we make the tape?” he asked.

“
At the airport, back of the van. It's all set up. Plan is to keep you mobile.”

“
You musta paid those boys good.”

“
Yeah, we did pay them well,” replied Jessica, “using my FBI MasterCard, but they are also anti-death penalty advocates.”

They pulled into a Flying Tigers airport hangar, the van following. The hangar door came down on cue, just as Richard had promised it would. “That credit card's going to be maxed out anytime now.”

EIGHTEEN

Evil is easy and has infinite forms.

—
BLAISE PASCAL

WITH the exhibit up and already looking like a hit among cafe patrons at Avanti, Giles wandered outside to gaze at the cityscape and found himself and his box parked on a bench at the terminus of Oak Street overlooking the lake again. He kept staring up at the enormous, lovely, revolving, lit-by-a-million bulbs Ferris wheel at Navy Pier. The lights and sounds wafting across the lake from the joyous time people—normal people—were having there seemed so close, so within his touch. And yet so far from it.

A well of sadness balled up inside Giles for all the harm he had done in this world, in this life given him by some deity somewhere who must have known... had to have known what he would do with it, how he would ruin it, given all that he was even before exiting his mother's womb, and all that she molded him into; after all, such a deity did play with people's lives. He put Louisa Childe in harm's way, in Giles's path. He put Sarah Towne at that right juncture along that riding path in the park in Portland within miles of the Kanar Institute. He had placed Joyce Olsen at that park just as Giles had passed by, and he had molded the faces and bodies of these women to look and move just like Mother. After all was said and done, God had placed all the others within Giles's reach as well, Lucinda and that fool in Millbrook, the one who would never be found. His spine, along with all else, had been dug up by roaming animals, quarry dogs most likely, and dragged, he supposed into some deep cave or burrow to rot there—a waste of a good spinal column, but at least no one had ever discovered Cameron Lincoln's body. Not even Giles. By the time he'd gotten nerve enough to go back to where he'd hurriedly buried the art exhibitor, below a scattering of twigs and leaves, the dead man had disappeared into the deep Minnesota woods.

Giles stared up into the heavens at the night stars, the constellations winking in a clear, bright sky. “You planned all this right, God? You got those mysterious ways for us not to question, so whatever else, You—you're at back of all of it, invisible strings attached to our spines, manipulating all of it. Used to think it was Satan pulling my chain.”

He stood and lifted the opened box, the one with all the news clippings and the letter Mother had carefully typed out and lain across the pile of horror stories that explained who his father was. The one with the heavy metal and glass object lumbering about inside it.