“Can't get a flight out for hours, and even then, it takes me to San Francisco for a connecting flight to Portland. It's all that's flying.”
“Let's hope the Tigers can help you out then. I have so missed you, Richard. I'll be at the airport to greet you.”
“I'll call you from wherever I am. Let you know. How has Portland treated you so far?”
“I think if Christ came to Portland under present circumstances, they'd inject him with a death cocktail, too.”
“That bad?”
“That bad. Public sentiment against Towne has been whipped up to a frenzy here.”
“Watch yourself then. Take all precautions.”
“Not to worry.”
“G'night then, dear. I love you.”
“After this is over, we're going to reassess our lives, you and me, Richard. I'm considering alternatives.”
“That offer I made you? Or are you talking about the offer from D.C., to return to the M.E.'s office there, or the Virginia state lab?”
“Carte blanche I'm told. I would have total, complete control at Virginia. Don't think I could go back to D.C., not comfortably, and certainly not with what Virginia's offering.”
“Certainly, you of all people, have earned retirement from the FBI, but what about my proposal?”
“I survived the FBI for over a decade, survived the horrors and what it's done to me, what it's made of me. As for marriage, darling Richard, I–I'm just not sure we're either of us ready just yet. You still have issues with your former wife, and you've got your children to think of, and I… I still have this fear we will break what we have if we change anything.”
“You are an intelligent, articulate, giving, beautiful soul, Jessica Coran, but in this you are wrong.”
“I'm also a chicken, a fearful chicken.”
“I know of no one braver.”
“Not when it comes to relationships and getting my heart broken.”
“Sounds like perhaps you are the one with the issues.”
“Emotional baggage, it's called, and it's why I can't marry you, Richard, at least not now, not until I deal with it all. It'd only drag you down into my emotional-”
“We can work through any problems together. I can be your support, Jess.”
“Sweet… you are so sweet, Richard. I am so lucky to have you. Please be patient with me.”
“My name before I changed it was Patience,” he joked. “And you really are lucky to have me, you know.”
“Ohhh, I do know that.”
“And that you are blinded by your devotion to me? Did you know that?”
“I confess it! I confess it all!” She then closed her eyes and blew him a kiss through the miracle of the cam phone. He sent it back to her.
She thoughtfully said, “Back into private sector. No more of this screwy FBI crap for me. Sounds like peace and paradise.”
“Whatever you decide, you know I will support you, Jess.”
FOURTEEN
Curious about evil since they had never known evil, the gods produced evil by interacting with mankind, usually a woman who was soon impregnated with a misfit child.
The following day in Portland
Jessica was awakened by a pounding on her door, but it turned out to be the adjoining room's door-Darwin, shouting something unintelligible on the other side. While she threw on her terry-cloth robe, she worked out in her head what she was hearing. Darwin continued shouting, “We've gotten a terrific break in our case, Jess. On the tube, now!”
She tore open the door and he barged past her, searching for her remote. Finding it, he snapped on the television set.
“What is it?” she asked, following him into her room. “Darwin?”
“Watch! CNN, MSNBC, Fox, they all have the breaking story, and it's going to blow that fucking smug Governor Hughes outta his pants. They gotta give Robert a reprieve now. They won't have a choice.”
Jessica sat on the very edge of her bed facing the TV screen as it filled with images of a police raid, a box crate the size of a small pool table confiscated, shots of a man in handcuffs, his long hair and clothing looking like that of a rock star. Jessica tried to put it all together, wondering what it had to do with their case.
“It's Chicago, and the guy they're snatching around and forcing into the squad car, that's Orion, Keith Orion. Seems an old girlfriend's corpse turned up.”
“You mean Orion pulled an Ira Einhorn?”
“Yeah, and in similar fashion. Crated up a murder victim-someone my team in Milwaukee believes we've heard about before.”
“My God, who?”
“Lucinda Wellingham.”
“The art gallery girl, the one who backed Orion's exhibit in Milwaukee? This could be our trump card to get your brother off death row.”
“Yeah, but it gets even better. Listen.” Darwin pointed to the tube, and her gaze followed.
CNN newswoman Paula Zahn was reporting.
“I thought Zahn went to night-time television,” Jessica said.
“She's back to daytime. Will you just listen?”
With a look of frightened consternation creasing her forehead, Paula Zahn read the TelePrompTer. “… following a breaking story out of Chicago… just in… just gruesome… something out of an Evan Kingsbury novel.” Zahn took a moment to compose and gather her assaulted sensibilities, obviously shaken. “In a bizarre and gruesome find, Chicago UPS workers, sorting mail at their Grace-Ravenswood-Lakeview facility, discovered a large, leaking container. With terror alerts still at orange, UPS management immediately notified officials, and the leaking container remained a mystery for the better part of the day as seven hundred eighty employees were evacuated and Chicago biohazard team and the EPA went in.” Coanchor Bill Zimmer cut in with, “After initial tests, chemists on hand at the UPS facility discovered the fluid staining the container and floor to be the result of human decomposition-fluids from a decaying body.”
“How could she be decaying so quickly,” asked Jessica, “if no one even knew she'd disappeared until now? Unless…”
“Yeah,” said Darwin, “unless. Keep listening, Jess.”
Paula Zahn, through gnashed teeth and frown, continued. “The crate was ordered opened, and within was found a nude young woman in mid-twenties who's back had been so completely splayed open that her killer had actually… Oh, dear God…”
Zimmer had to pick up the story from here. “The killer had actually removed the victim's entire backbone, which remains missing! Paula.”
Paula looked as if she wanted to storm off. Again Zimmer took up the slack. “Investigators suspect there might be a connection between this and three previous murders in three other states involving the taking of spinal columns- for what grisly purpose no one yet knows.”
Zahn finally recovered and turned to her coanchor and mock-gagged, repeating, “'Backbones'? A killer interested in backbones? Uggghhh… whatever for?”
“Well, Paula,” replied Zimmer, “police aren't saying for certain that they have the murderer in custody, but they do have what CNN sources are calling a person of interest in custody.”
Paula shook off any thoughts of hyperventilating and interjected, “And given UPS's penchant for a lot of paperwork, they strongly suspect the man to whom the box was being shipped, as Keith Orion is believed to have sent the crate to Chicago from Milwaukee-where he was having a showing of his artwork.”
Zimmer picked up the story there. “We're not likely to hear anything definite on the identity of the lady in the crate anytime soon from authorities, but there is rampant speculation at this hour as to her identity. Some saying that it is this woman.”
They flashed a photo of Lucinda Wellingham, smiling, bright, cheerful, eyes alive with excited enthusiasm. “We are told,” began Paula, “at this time that while police won't speculate on the identity of the victim, CNN has obtained a second photo for comparison.”
They flashed the second photo, this one a morgue mug shot of the victim. “Geez,” complained Jessica, “how do these parasites do it? How do they get photos from an M.E.'s office?”