Absolute Instinct (41 page)

“
Yeah, tell your bartender to mix Johnnie Walker Red in equal parts with a tumbler of Absolut Vodka, J&B Scotch, gin, vermouth and three inches of white grape juice—and you got Spinal Fluid.”

“
I better write that down!” she joked back.

The boat began to move away from the dock, the pull of the current wanting to take it opposite of its engines, but the engines revved and they were off to follow the coast of the lake first south toward the museums to see the magnificent multicolored Buckingham Fountain and the skyline of Chicago, for the photo-obsessed tourists, and then they would turn and do the shuttle run north.

The city lights twinkled as if alive in the distance. Beautiful beneath a warming breeze. How Lucinda would have loved this boat ride, Giles thought.

NINETEEN

We must be still and still moving

Into another intensity

For a further union, a deeper communion,

through the dark cold and empty desolation.

—
T.S. ELIOT

SURVEILLANCE of Giles Gahran's rented apartment in

Chicago continued. Watching for any sign of him, Petersaul and Cates spent the time discussing and arguing their next step.

Petersaul shook her head from behind the wheel of the unmarked sedan. “No way we collar him without a warrant or provocation.”

“
We approach him, he runs, you got provocation.”

“
Yeah, but suppose he never comes out?”

“
We don't know that he's even inside there, Pete. If the local PD has him at Michigan Avenue!”

“
Do you really think they actually spotted him, or someone who looks like him? Our collaring this bastard will make up for our screw up with the governor in Oregon, Cates.”

“
Wait a minute! We didn't screw up. How'er we to know the governor of Oregon is a prick? When Darwin didn't give us a heads up on the guy, Pete? All we did was report the facts. Hell... people sure can distort the facts.”

“
We get a collar that turns out to be this brutal guy who's ripped out the spines now of four women in four separate venues...”

“
Three venues. Two were killed on our watch in our town, Olsen and Wellingham, and let's not forget the reward for the arrest and conviction. Honey, with that kind of money I might even begin to look good to you, and we could retire to Acapulco until we got our heads straight and want to surface. I hear the diving there's great. You scuba? Snorkel? Have any desire to see me in a bathing suit?”

She exaggeratedly shook her head and pulled at her ears and hair. “God let me get that image outta my mind.”

They laughed at the good-natured ribbing.

“
I'm serious about you getting interested in a nice guy who is unattached, though, Petie girl. I mean—”

“
Will you stop mothering... I mean fathering me! You keep it up, I'm going to put in for a new partner.”

He raised his hands in mock surrender. “Hey, God forbid someone tell you what's good for you, and all 'bout the pain of forbidden fruit from one who knows. Experience, baby, nothing like it, along with adversity in human relationships.”

“
Adversity? You?”

“
Adversity—father of invention I say, and damn sure the invention of the lie, and the biggest of all lies, the one we tell oursel—”

“
Shut up! There he is! It's got to be him. He fits Gahran's description and he's carrying an oversized bag.”

“
The easel bag. He's got it on his back.”

“
You reckon it's chock-full with another spinal rack?”

“
That'd give us all the evidence we need,” replied Cates, “unless he's carrying art books.”

“
How do you want to approach? You front, me back or vice versa?” “All the evidence we need could be sitting up there in his apartment. Maybe we should let him go in, knock on the door.”

“
We need that fucking warrant!”

“
A warrant can take hours if we get a liberal judge, and even then it won't give us the latitude we need. Better to get him to invite us in,” advised the senior agent, Cates. “Then anything in plain sight is fair game.”

“
But he's not likely to do that.” She whipped out her ,9mm automatic and taped it to her leg. “Here's my invitation, and besides, who can resist a long-legged, young, impressionable, shapely art groupie? I'll tell him Lucinda Wellingham sent me. He'll be so freaked by that—”

“—
that he'll kill you, Pete!”

“—
that he'll invite me in to see his etchings. He makes one wrong move, and that's when I drop his ass, cuff him and call you in to help me search.”

“
Sounds fuckin' risk free, sure. No, Pete... can't let you do that. I let you do that, and you get even a scratch on your pretty little derriere, and Darwin'll have my ass.”

“
It'll just require a little undercover work. It's legal. It won't come back to haunt us. I follow him to the local bar, get him to pick me up. What could be simpler?”

“
All right... if you're sure, but the moment I think you're in danger, I come crashing in with guns blazing, you got that?”

“
You're on.”

“
Gotta treat this guy like the snake he is,” began Cates. “And dead or alive, I don't care how we do it, Pete, but I do say we nab this guy, take the glory ourselves.”

They sat huddled in the chilly sedan outside the apartment rented to their quarry, a cold wind whipping around the car, fingers of cold drafting up through every vent. “You ready to go knock at the door of the supposed son of Mad Matthew Matisak?” “Yeah, sure... but we call Darwin first. We let him know our every step, just as he ordered.”

“
Come on with that shit,” Cates complained, his curmudgeon features pinched in consternation. “He ain't here to blow your nose, Pete.”

Amanda Petersaul frowned, ignored Cates, and dialed Darwin's number as the suspect, one Giles Gahran, went through his front door without noticing them, straight up to his room where a light came on.

# # #

THE phone rang in Robert Towne's pocket inside the van, inside the hangar as the filming of his brief statement was underway.

Towne raised his hands in a gesture of confusion as the phone continued to ring.

“
Shit! Cut! Cut!” shouted the serious young man directing the tape who had played one of the power and light decoys at the prison. “Can't work like this, people,” he kiddingly said.

“
Answer the call,” Jessica said. “It could be Petersaul in Chicago with good news.”

“
Maybe you should answer it,” countered Towne. “She's not going to recognize my voice.”

“
Are you kidding? You sound just like Darwin.” Still, Jessica took the ringing phone he extended. She announced herself to the caller, adding, “What can I do for you?”

“
This is Petersaul. Where's Darwin? I've an update for him. It's urg—”

“
He's somewhat indisposed at the moment.”

“
Indisposed? How so?”

Petersaul's tone gave her away in the slight twinge of building anger. “This is urgent,” she repeated. “Put him on, Dr. Coran.”

“
I'd have to smuggle the phone into the Oregon state pen to do that.”“

What? What are you talking about?”

“
He's exchanged places with his look-a-like brother, Robert—”

“—
Towne, I know... I know they are brothers. Now please explain to me whose brilliant idea it was to put Darwin on death row! Are you people all as crazy as... as...”

“
As Darwin? It was my idea, but Darwin is loving it, and we have everything under control. He's not going to be executed, and neither is his brother.”

“
So you're all now fugitives?”

“
One way to look at it. So, what have you got for us, and how soon can we take this guy Gahran into custody and start sweating out a confession?”

“
We're sitting outside his apartment.”

“
Really! Excellent! How did you locate him?”

“
Followed the trail of a train ticket to a taxicab that brought him here. It helped that we had the composite drawing got up from the fire marshal and the landlady in Milwaukee.”

“
Do you have a warrant for search and seizure?”

“
Not yet, but we've been here less than an hour, trying to determine if he's in or out. Now we know he's in. Meanwhile, the field office is working on a search warrant, yes.”

“
Don't move on him without the warrant and backup. We don't want this creep slipping through any legal loopholes later, and you certainly don't want him giving you the slip.”

“
Don't worry. Like I said we're all over this guy and he doesn't even know we're parked on his—”

Two gunshots rang out along with the sound of shattered glass and a scream—Petersaul's scream, then silence.

Jessica shouted into the phone, calling Petersaul repeatedly but to no avail, when suddenly a male voice with a slightly familiar, irritating motorboat-like gravelly sound behind it said, “Is it you, my might've-been Mother? Dr. Jessica Coran?”

“
Gahran?”

“
The one who killed my father?”

“
Listen to me, Giles.”

“
Giles is it? Do you have any idea how much I hate you? Be wise. Don't come looking for me, or you will lose a major portion of your skeletal makeup like these two when I'm finished with them.”

“
Giles, you need help.”

“
Help? I've done quite well without anyone's help. Or do you mean to say that you wish to help me debone these two?”

“
Giles, I know why you hurt, how deeply you hurt. I know how awful your mother—”

“
Do you now understand me—you—Father's obsession?”

“
I do, more than anyone on the planet, I do.”

She struggled to keep him engaged, her mind doing cartwheels. She wrote out a note telling Richard to call Chicago PD to get a car immediately to the address where Petersaul and Cates had staked out the apartment. Richard was immediately on it.

Giles said over the phone, “Have I become your obsession, Jessica? You keep coming at me like it's so, like you're looking for Father in me. If so, there's no stopping the inevitable, is there, and you become my obsession, and together, we are both mad.”

“
Giles, there's a name for what you have, a mental disorder, and there are drugs and therapies, and we will get you the best doctors in the—”

“
Only doctor I want is you, Jessica. You'd make a wonderful gift for dear old Dad.”

“
It does not have to come to that, life or death for either of us.”

“
They say history repeats itself. It happens all over again like New Orleans in that Mardi Gras graveyard where you almost died. We'll just have to find the proper time and place, you and me. But I won't take just your blood like Father.”

“
You don't have to be like him, Giles!”

“
But I am... just like Father. And I will take all of you. I'm going to cut out”—she heard him rummaging through Petersaul's wallet—”to cut out Agent Petersaul's spine like the others, you can be sure, along with this fat man, Cates.”

Jessica heard the sound of the car's ignition, and then Giles Gahran came back on. “I know you've been chasing me just as you chased my father before me, as you've chased all the truly brilliant and ingenious monsters, all the heirs to Jack the Ripper, all of us. But if you come after me, I will debone you, do you understand? Debone you.” His laughter was the last thing she heard before the phone went dead.

“
Christ! I don't even know the address.” Jessica was rattled, but she knew she had to remain calm.

“
Chicago field office agents are racing to the scene now,” Richard told her. “They're on it, Jess. Nothing we can do but pray they cut off his escape and that our agents are not dead.”

“
Not sure I want to wish them alive in his hands,” she replied.

Robert Towne listened closely to the terrible turn of events.

“
We've got to get to Chicago without any further delay!” she announced once off the line with Chicago FBI, who were on the lookout now for the car, the apartment at 3010 North Sheffield, the Hermitage Apartments, in the Wrigley Field ballpark area known locally as Wrigleyville.

“
They're going to treat the apartment as a crime scene. We'll see it as is, untouched. They hope to have word on the missing field vehicle, Agents Petersaul and Cates, and the suspect by time we get there.”

“
What're we waiting for?” asked Sharpe. “The jet is juiced up.”

“
What about our video?” asked the young director. “This is going to go to CNN, Fox, MSNBC, all of 'em. It's going to put Scorp-Ion Productions on the fucking map, man.”

“
Perhaps more than you know. How dramatic will it be to do a live feed from a jet plane to the networks? And can you do it? Do you have the equipment for it?”

“
Are you kidding? We've got state-of-the-art, same as reporters had during the Iraqi war. Sure...”

“
Terrific, but there's to be no information going out about our destination.”