In reality this blanket of deadly white had killed over a hundred people along its zigzag path across the U.S., its subzero and snow-related deaths racking up sizable numbers from Wichita, Kansas, to Pittsburgh. The unkind storm had crept across from northern Canada, through the Great Plains, up again toward the Midwest, scourging Chicago and Buffalo, causing catastrophic problems for some, death for others, across Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and now working on a downward spiral in its mad rush toward the Atlantic. The ride over this storm front was indeed calamitous, riotous and heart-pumping.
Still, it was good to feel that long-silent heart in her chest pounding again; Jessica was only sorry that it was at the expense of so many other passengers. She’d gone numb on December 2, 1995, the day she had left James Parry and Hawaii for a second time. They had made such a perfect pair, and his showing her the return of the glorious, spawning humpback whales in Maui’s steamy, warm-water bays was an unforgettable experience which she would cherish forever, just as she cherished her moments alone with Jim. But they had both felt the rest of the world crushing in by November’s end; they were both committed to their work, their careers once more conspiring against all happiness.
Still, on returning to the mainland, she’d put in for a transfer to the islands, telling headquarters that she wanted to make the move a permanent one. But D.C. wasn’t in any mood to play Cupid for Jim and her, and there had appeared no real solution to the dilemma. Then things had changed quickly and drastically.
Jessica found herself in that daydreaming-again-about- Jim territory of her mind here now on American flight 312 when she was shaken from her reverie by the first of Eriq Santiva’s deafening groans. She stared at him on her left, watching him turn to Jell-O with sound effects. His reeling head and dizziness, along with his stomach pains, were as real as his fear of flying, and those double-decker flapjacks he’d had just before takeoff had come to life, jumping up and over again.
Eriq Santiva wanted her here, on this special case which didn’t involve Hawaii. In fact, it appeared it might lead in an entirely different direction, that of London, by way of Miami, and the Keys, perhaps.
A string of brutal murders along the Intracoastal Waterway between Key West and Miami had left local authorities guessing and ghost-chasing. The phantom killer seemed to come and go on the tropical wind, seemed capable of complete deception and near invisibility. And he had quite a knack for making his victims vanish as well. It was as if these young women were abducted by some sort of spectral visitor from another planet who floated in, dazzled them with pixie dust and then poof! — all gone but the remains, which washed ashore out of an uncaring ocean some twenty to thirty days later.
What the killer did with the bodies in the interim was anyone’s guess, and at the moment, Jessica wasn’t sure she wanted to look under that rock. That kind of peek into the pit would come soon enough, she knew.
The killer left no trail, no clues, no sign of himself, no killing ground, and his victims averaged one a month-a far greater number than those of the heart-taking killer of New Orleans-all eventually washing up on lonely, deserted Florida beaches, and on occasion, at one of the classier private beaches of a prestigious hotel, where guests would wade in the water with the floater until someone recognized it for what it was, usually by the gruesome gashes taken out of the body by passing sharks.
One victim had washed up outside a plate-glass window at a seaside restaurant where patrons were dining on native grouper and other delicacies of the sea. The most recent floater washed up just behind a house in South Miami Beach. The outline of the story read like a dark, perverse, reverse fairy tale without a happy ending: That bright morning the wife drew the curtains and stared out on her stretch of beach to see a glorious sunrise and what she believed to be the remains of the largest jellyfish she’d ever seen. It proved to be the fish-eaten, flesh-gone-slick torso of a missing seventeen-year-old named Allison Norris…
Forensics estimated her time in the water at about the same number of days as she’d gone missing, which was just over a month. What remained was hardly human, save the superstructure of bone below the clinging gelatin.
No one in the medical or police profession knew how a floater-a body in the water-could take thirty days to wash ashore. The body had to have been anchored in some manner below the water, since it was determined by the local M.E. to have expired between twenty-five and thirty days before-a difficult call with any floater. So the thinking was that the body had been moored somehow below the surface, but had somehow worked loose. Yet there were no chains or ropes attached, although there was evidence to indicate that the girl’s wrists had been burned and bruised by ropes or handcuffs or a combination thereof. Her throat also showed severe signs of rope burn, as well as manual strangulation, as if she’d been hung by her neck, or so said the M.E.’s protocol.
Cause of death was listed as strangulation-drowning, as if the two had curiously occurred simultaneously.
Eriq Santiva, sitting the entire flight in the aisle seat beside Jessica, was still struggling with his half-digested breakfast. Beside Eric in the aisle, and on the floor on her rump, sat a tall, leggy stewardess who’d been flirting with the dark-eyed Eriq, whose natural good looks made him a kind of Latin George Clooney.
The stewardess had simply plopped, unable to in any way gracefully return to her seat to buckle in, when turbulence had struck a third time, this time with a vengeance, and as if on cue with Jessica’s rising dislike of the other woman. The stewardesses had only just finished serving what American Airlines referred to as a “Continental Breakfast” and was about to clean away trays and cups when the seat belt light dinged on for the third time, at which time the curvaceous woman had simply given up trying to maneuver on the wild ride.
“ You okay, Chief?” Jessica felt compelled by common courtesy to ask after her boss’s discomfort.
Santiva swiped at his face again with the damp towel he’d specifically asked the stewardess for. She had obliged and had been cooing over the “poor man” ever since. At least he had been wise enough to decline any coffee or Danish, and for good reason. He’d had enough trouble just watching Jessica scarfs down her own.
Breathing heavily, he said, “Never was a comfortable flyer, but I’ve never gotten into anything quite like this before.”
She patted his hand and with a smile said, “No need to apologize, Chief.”
“ This goddamn seat feels like it’s on a gyrating compass.”
“ Who knows,” she replied, fighting back a gasp with the updrafts. “Might make you”-she grasped hard onto the sides of her seat when the plane was yanked to one side by unseen but powerful forces outside the aircraft-”a more comfortable… flyer in the end.”
“ Just wish the turbulence would end.”
“ Ultimately, it will.”
“ That doesn’t sound exactly reassuring. Dr. Coran.”
“ Perhaps if we went over some of the particulars of the case, it might take your mind off of it?”
Santiva was a bronze-skinned man with dark, piercing eyes and a rakish grin when he wasn’t reeling from nausea. He’d made a number of changes back at Quantico, one being to replace Paul Zanek with his own, more trusted man, and he made it clear that on the more important cases where profiling techniques and handwriting analysis were being used, he might well be along for the ride. He had built a reputation on solving cases through the use of handwriting analysis.
Santiva had also instated the use of psychic detection within the Behavioral Science Division, wisely giving full credit for its introduction into formal FBI channels to the departing Paul Zanek, who had been made bureau chief in Puerto Rico, having finally gotten that island paradise job he’d always fantasized about. This innovation had not come without controversy, and at great personal and professional costs to Santiva’s own safety and well-being, primarily in the loss of points with the big guys overhead, who were all extremely conservative and old-fashioned-the Hooverites, they were called in the ranks. But no one could argue with the results in New Orleans the year before, when Dr. Kim Faith Desinor proved the extreme value of psychic detection in a major-profile case, the baffling, bizarre instance of the infamous Queen of Hearts Killer, a dreaded monster who literally preyed on the still-beating hearts of young transvestites in the French Quarter district of New Orleans. But Dr. Desinor had a history with Miami-Dade which was not conducive to good relations, so she was not to be directly involved in this case, although she might be contacted at any time with material evidence and asked to run her sensitive hands over it to see what might surface.