“ We need to get somebody over to Naples,” said Quincey, “but we also need to get somebody down south of here to Matecumbe Key to hear the testimony of the Monroe girl. We want… we’re asking you both to stay on long enough to talk to her and to look into the Naples connection a little more closely.”
“ Someone’s got to go to Key Largo,” said Courdriet, materializing from nowhere at the doorway.
“ Why’s that, Dr. Coudriet?” asked Jessica, wondering what the ME was getting at.
“ Friend of mine is a pathologist at the local hospital there. They have a body washed up on shore bearing all the marks of the Night Crawler’s handiwork and then some.’’’’
“ Show me on the map?” asked Santiva. They moved into the laboratory, where a map of south Florida and the Keys had been pinned on a bulletin board, each colored stickpin marking another of the Night Crawler’s victims. This southernmost tip of Florida resembled a slovenly J, the islands like ink spatters at the bottom. Coudriet did the dubious honors of tacking in this most recent kill.
“ What do you mean and then some?” asked Jessica.
“ Washed up between the Key Largo Hammocks State Botanical Site and the Carysfort Yacht Club, right here,”
Coudriet said as he jabbed the tack into the corkboard. “Came in on the Gulf Stream.”
“ Well damn, then that’s got to place our killer well south of Key Largo, as the stream would ripple the body in a northerly direction at that point,” said Quincey. “I know- I’ve fished those waters.”
“ And then some?” Jessica repeated, tugging at Coudriet’s billowy shirt. The man had dispensed with ties and jackets, it appeared. “What did you mean when you said ‘bearing all the normal marks of the killer and then someT “
He looked directly at Jessica when he replied, “Seems this time he embalmed the girl, and not just a piece of her… the entire body. You were right. Prophetic, in fact. Doctor.”
She didn’t enjoy being right like this, and such power of prophesy was more a curse than a wonder. “It’s him, Eriq. Now one of us has to go to Naples and the other to Key Largo,” said Jessica.
“ What’s this about, Jess? What haven’t you told me?”
“ I told you about the embalming agents found in some of the body parts. This just confirms it,” she said, sighing heavily. “The killer’s trying to preserve a victim. He’s been experimenting with embalming methods.”
“ Naples is straight across the state by way of Alligator Alley,” said Quincey. “Mark could drive you,” he told Eriq. “And me, I’ll take Dr. Coran to Key Largo. From there, we can go down to Matecumbe Key, interview the Monroe girl in person.”
“ Yeah,” agreed Samernow, “sure, I can take Agent Santiva to Naples.”
“ Not before I authenticate this letter,” Eriq said. “It could be a hoax.”
“ Who would put together such a hoax?” asked Coudriet, a bit facetiously.
“ I wouldn’t put it past that creepy bald guy Eddings at the Herald, for one,” replied Santiva.
Jessica’s eyebrows shot up. “Eddings? I rather doubt that, Eriq. I know he was a bit strange, but-”
‘ A bit strange?’ “ Eriq laughed. “Try X-Files weirdo supernerd paranoid fringe dittohead.”
“ I thought he was kinda cute and sweet,” she said with a laugh.
“ Just the same, I’m going nowhere until we authenticate the letter.”
She countered with her own challenge. “Well, I’m going to Key Largo. Detective Quincey, I just have to get my bag and a change of clothes. Can you pick me up at my hotel?”
Eriq only shook his head and found a chair to plop into, seemingly beaten.
“ I’ll swing by in, say, half an hour?” Quincey asked Jessica.
“ Agreed.”
“ Jess,” said Eriq, climbing again to his feet and now taking her away from the others. “I thought we agreed to discuss any major moves we take in relation to this case. Now you’re rushing off to the Keys, and you want me to race to Naples without our having had a chance to authenticate the letter or discuss it.”
“ I thought we just did authenticate and discuss.”
“ We did what?”
“ We discussed how Eddings would not’ve plotted such a hoax and the fact that there is a missing girl meeting the victim profile the other side of the state. We have to move on this, Eriq.” She briskly walked back to her temporary office, grabbed her black ME’s bag and rushed out with Quincey.
Eriq stared across at Mark Samernow. “All right, Detective, let’s go to Naples… Maybe pay a visit to your girl and your ex. I can make the comparison points on the letters along the way.”
“ I’ll get you there in two and a half hours without leaving the ground,” Samernow promised. “And thanks, Agent.”
THIRTEEN
Pursue like a shadow…
In the Gulf of Mexico, Somewhere off Naples, Florida
Warren Tauman hadn’t thrown everything overboard. He still had shanks of hair and fingernails he’d clipped from several of his victims, some jewelry and underclothes he had clung to-all of which he could bring to the nostrils, for these items opened up an entire vista of memories.
He recalled each of his victims in turn, and what he’d done to each one in his years-long attempt to reach out for the soul of his departed mother, to lure her back to him. He wanted to reincarnate her in the image of one of his victims, and once done, he wanted to make her suffer as all his victims had suffered. As he had suffered. Was that asking so much?
After all, his god Tauto had promised that there was a way. That he need merely to find his way. The poetry of e. j. hellering promised a way. Through sacrifice, a path would open.
Something in the warm Gulf air told Warren Tauman that he had been right to come here to Naples. Sanibel and Captiva Islands had been beautiful and filled with tourists, but they were small and insular, filled with a xenophobia, despite the tourists, and the loss of one of their own had sent ripples throughout the communities, ripples he cared not to feel.
The warm, balmy wind and the stolen items from his victims brought back moving, exciting images in his mind. He recalled the one called Tammy Sue. He had placed her in the water and, while she was still alive, had dragged her at great speed. She didn’t last long, and she’d not put up much of a fight from the beginning. Annoying and disappointing, really, because he knew that Mother would not seek to inhabit such a body, that she’d require a strong- willed fighter, like the one who’d gotten away so early in the game, the one who called herself Aeriel.
He recalled his excitement in having her scratch and tear, spit and kick out at him as he’d choked the life from her. Then how he had to do it again. He had not found any victim so motivated to live as Aeriel-certainly not the bitch strapped to the rear of the boat now whom he had wooed aboard at Sanibel Island.
Now he prayed that Naples would be kinder to him than Sanibel had been, or Miami or London or Grand Cayman Island, for that matter. When would he ever find the one acceptable “bride” for Mother?
His thoughts wandered back to those early attempts at reaching out to Mother through the filthy crones and tramps of London streets, derelicts one and all. Even then, he knew he must alter the way he did things. From the first, he instinctively knew this. Tauto had only reinforced what his own soul was trying to convey to him when he’d intentionally changed his ways, seeking out for the first time a younger body.
Her name had been Pauline Charlotte Warmellby, and what a fine, warm name it was, too, he’d told her before he had taken her life. He knew then, after killing her, that he must start over, and that this meant going elsewhere. The police, Scotland Yard, everyone in England was on the lookout for him by then, yet he was so far from attaining his final and prime objective. He knew he had to relocate, start over, and this time with younger women. Mother was vain and always had been vain; why should that change just because she was dead, an inhabitant of another world? She’d been vain till the bitter end, and she’d remain vain in the afterlife.