To him the book of Night was open 'd wide, And voices from the deep abyss reveal 'd A marvel and a secret.
A call from headquarters sent them next to the home of Lucian Burke Locke. The poet had telephoned in when he learned that he was being sought for questioning in the case of the Poet Killer. On their previous visit to his home, Parry had left his calling card. FBI dispatch informed Parry that Dr. Locke wished to cooperate in any way possible, and he'd left word that he would be home for the rest of the evening.
They drove back out to Locke's home, a pleasant, rambling two-story Victorian in need of some serious repairs to the exterior walls and the porch, but otherwise in good shape, well landscaped and the lawn well lit by light that spilled out of the huge, open windows. The place felt cozy and large at the same time, and the atmosphere felt welcoming. Lucian Locke met them at the door, urging them inside, into a spacious living room decorated in subdued grays and beiges, with blond Scandinavian furniture that starkly contrasted with oaken beams in the ceiling, and yet somehow it all worked.
To Jessica, the man appeared a strange mix. While his hands and feet were oversized, his body was dwarflike, reminding Jessica of Peter Flavius Vladoc, only Locke was shorter still, and a decade younger. In an otherwise handsome face, one eye fixed on the person he spoke to, while the other eye wandered, as if staring off into another realm. Jessica stared back curiously, then suddenly realized that what she was looking at was a glass eye.
Locke noticed her noticing and immediately said, “Had it put out by a mangy lover when I was only seventeen; wore a black patch to impress the ladies thereafter, until the piratical look grew tiresome. That's when I had the glass eye put in.”
“Sorry, I didn't mean to stare.”
“But of course you did. Aren't we all fascinated with the maimed, the damaged, and the twisted, if not consciously then subconsciously? It's not a character flaw, but a part of our common human nature to find the freakish of great fascination. Hence the geek shows, and their legacy, TV and film.”
Jessica attempted another apology, but he shrugged it off with a wave of the hand and asked them, “May I offer you tea, coffee? Anything to drink?”
Jessica replied, “Coffee sounds good,” while Parry declined.
“You live here alone?” she asked when he returned to the living room with two cups of coffee and a small pot.
“No, no! I have Evelyn, my angel of a wife, and my children, Beverly and Robert, six and seven respectively. They're off on a trip up to the country to see Evey's parents. Back soon, I expect.”
Jessica now saw the photos of wife and children atop the piano. She'd hardly had time to study them in detail when Locke asked if she played.
“No, not a note, but I love to listen. Do you play?”
“That's Evey's gift, not mine. She learned as a child, growing up in her homeland.”
“Oh, and where was that?”
“Austria.” After the initial shock of discovering Locke to be a short gnarled man with a glass eye, Jessica found herself fascinated by him. There was something extraordinary about the man. She wondered if he was not one of those people who, from birth, have to strive extremely hard to overcome what nature has done to them.
During the time she laid out the photos of the victims, and while Parry asked him the same questions they had asked of Dr. Leare, Jessica caught herself staring at the queer little gnome of a man. His face in the light revealed pockmarks, and he looked as if he'd had his features reshaped by a plastic surgeon after an automobile accident or a fire. His nose appeared to be the size of an onion. The look of a deformed cherub, she thought, her eyes going over the stubby, swollen hands, and yet at first sight he did not appear quite so grotesque. How could that be?
Locke caught her eye with his one good one, smiling. He knew she could not help staring at his physical shortcomings.
Embarrassed, she pulled her eyes away.
“I am somewhat familiar with these two, but the others, no. None of the others I've seen in my classes. They all have a similar emaciated look, though, don't they. Micellina Petryna, now she was a lovely, lovely young woman with a boundless spirit, although subdued. Caterina Mercedes quite the same, really. Loved poetry, everything to do with it, particularly the English Romantics.”
“And were they enamored of your work, sir?” asked Jessica.
“Not so's it would go to my head, no, but they were fans. Either that or both were smart in another way. Both flattered me by coming to my recent book signing at that strange little shop on Second Street-Darkest Instinct or something.”
“Expectations,” said Parry. “Darkest Expectations.”
“Yes, well, they came fawning for my autograph, ostensibly, but it would be more accurate to say they came hoping to improve their grade, I'm quite sure.”
“Did it work?” asked Jessica.
“Flattery to a gnome like me always works, but it's never believed, my dear.”
Jessica could not for the life of her fix the man's age, but his speech and manner and formality suggested he was Donatella Leare's senior by at least a decade. He led them to a screened-in pool that looked out over a lake. It was a beautiful setting. “My little slice of heaven on earth,” he said, shrugging. They each found seats. Locke's backyard lights lit up an array of plants and a flower garden as well as a children's toy land. A lantern-styled fixture hung on the dock, revealing a small boat.
“Is there anything you can tell us, anything at all, that might shed some light on who might have, so to speak, 'written' these people into early graves?”
“I wish I could help you, but no. Not a thing useful comes to mind. Such a waste, I know-first these children's lives, and now you're coming all the way out here to talk to me-just as much a waste. I do wish I could be of more help.”
Jessica once again collected the photographs. She and Parry stood to leave.
“You've got to do whatever you can to stop this monster, Dr. Coran, Chief Parry. It's horrible, and I can only imagine the enormity of the pain inflicted on the families of these children. I mean, if such a death came to one of my children… well, I would simply go mad.”
Jessica's eyes fell on a photo of Locke with his two children on his lap. Neither child looked like their father, and one was clearly Oriental. Jessica guessed that Locke and his wife had adopted the children. She wanted to ask, but she felt it too prying a question, and it had nothing to do with the investigation.
On the ride back to the hotel, Parry told her, “I can't imagine such a strange little man as Locke capable of convincing a tortoise to move, much less convincing young men and women to lay down and die.” He then told her that Sturtevante's people had been all over everything they had gathered from each victim, and his own time spent on Maurice Deneau's diary had “netted nothing specific; certainly no rendezvous dates with any mysterious poets.”
“Are we continuing to watch the pubs and coffeehouses along Second Street?”
“They arrested a number of perverts and mashers in and around Second Street, and we've had half a dozen so-called confessions to the murders-none of which can be given credence-so no one has been held for long.”
Jessica said good night to Parry and retired to her room. She imagined that Kim had probably wondered where she had gone off to, but it was far too late to knock at the other woman's door. She went directly into her room, stripped and showered, allowing the hot spray to relax her and free her mind of all but this moment's experience. Her shrink had always said, “Live the moment.” Easier said than done, she now mentally chided herself.
After showering, she wrapped herself in one of the thick terrycloth hotel robes, curled up in bed, and began reading Lucian Burke Locke's volume of poetry. She skimmed most of the selections, just getting a feel for the voice and style. Then she settled on one or two poems, slowly reading them through after being enticed by their titles. Locke's work was grim and passionate in the depth of its dark and brooding imagery, she felt. She mentally compared his work with the killer's. There was an odd sort of fit, but she refused to consider Locke a suspect just yet. She next lifted Donatella Leare's volume. She skimmed it as she'd done Locke's, and becoming intrigued by certain titles, she read a few in their entirety, but soon her eyes could no longer focus, and her mind ceased to process the language. She didn't know when she fell asleep.
Now her experience of the moment became a dream-and a dream to run screaming from. She found herself, figuratively speaking, in bed with both Locke and Leare, finding both poets equally disturbing in appearance and actions. Each reached out at her, tearing at her with clawed hands in vulture fashion. Each poet, dwarf and lesbian, spouted words as meaningless and confused as any jabberwocky she had ever heard until the words crystallized into somber, grim, dreary, and scary. Although it was Locke who had won the more prestigious awards, Leare's haunting look and work proved to be the darker and more sensual of the two poets.
Marc Tamburino, the store-clerk-turned-owner, a fan of both “artists,” as he'd called them, now stepped into Jessica's dream to say, “I find that Leare is, in the end, the stronger of the two poets. Leare's images… they don't go away.” Jessica felt a disturbance at her core, and images of a dark, empty world filled her mind, but the images both poets had created were not of another world-they expressed the awfulness of this world-in the past, present, and future. While horror writers and poets of horror generally depicted the supernatural as frightening, these two depicted the real world that way. The surreal horror of reality, or, as Geoffrey Caine described his work, “reality-based horror.”
A small voice, rational and firm, deep within her kept denying that either of these poets could be the killer she and the task force sought. Whereas the work of both tore at the reader with a raging anger, the words of the Killer Poet joined a gentleness to the dark themes. That's what the poisoning poet had left as an indelible signature to his crimes, a most gentle touch, that lethal gentleness of hand and word, a quiet horror played out on the backs of the victims.
She awoke with a start of recognition at this notion, accepting it as a gift of the unconscious, and asked herself what specifically had so bothered her about Leare and Locke? Was it that these two and many another dark poet since Poe had caught the fevered imagination of whole generations of children and young people? Or was it the nature of the cult that followed their work? Was the killer a part of this cult, and did he choose his victims from its ranks? Or was he himself one of the lionized poets, or another poet of similar stature, who decided to exploit the adoration of his or her fans? What young, impressionable kid could say no to an accomplished, well-respected poet like Leare, or for that matter Locke?
With these thoughts swirling about her brain, Jessica again sought sleep.
The following day
With the core members of the task force assembled, Jessica discussed her suspicions that all the victims read Locke, Leare, and other poets of this strange dark school, and while Kim and Parry considered the idea important, Sturtevante was quite vocal in her opinion of the opposite.
During her reading of Leare's volume, a few poems had struck Jessica as especially relevant to the case. “ 'Archetypes of Desire and Hatred: A Verse Dialogue at the End of the Millennium,' “ she read aloud, and paused, adding, “and that's just the title. Listen to this one entitled 'The End of Thought.' “
You 're the evil that flogs my welted back and I'm the one who must overcome.
So nature made her judgment on our vows- when you touch my hand, all I feel is your blood running down my fingers, dripping onto the ruined street where we were wed.
“Let's kill each other.
Here's my knife; please,
I want to feel you twist inside me. And as for you-
I'll break your neck; quick-kiss your swollen lips.
You wont feel death,
I promise.”
Amniotic decadence twists their faces; an anguish life of rage crawls from the womb.
A final sweet embrace, surrendering to temptation to die in the guarded of rusty buildings.
This is the final excretion, and you can see it coming to the surface, a caduceus canker, the scepter of maleness- suspended in the alchemy of the prima materia.
This is the beginning of Time.
They never left, and neither did we.
There is only one person here.”
“Okay, so what the hell does it mean?” asked Parry, garnering a laugh from Jessica.
“The poem is equating making love with death,” Kim replied. “At least, that's what I'm hearing.”
“So it's not about someone murdering the sex partner?” asked Sturtevante, her eyes wide at Kim's words.
“Not exactly,” Kim answered.
“It's still damned grim,” said Parry, plopping into a chair.
“It may be just this kind of so-called art that is motivating the Killer Poet to murder,” Jessica suggested.
“What are you saying?” asked Sturtevante, standing and pacing. “That the killer is motivated by these poets at the university? Or… or that he reads into their poems a motive for killing?”
Jessica calmly answered, “Either theory is a possibility.”
“So take my pick?” Sturtevante shouted, losing her temper now. “What a defense for the accused. 'I read a book of poems, Your Honor, and it sent me over the edge,'“ the detective mocked, her voice rising shrilly, “and if you believe that fairy tale…”
“Fiction, novels, short stories, and movies have been known to influence people,” Jessica countered. “Whether we want to face it or not, an open society such as ours breeds killers and insanity, and often our literature and other cultural artifacts reflect this truth, and then the person raised on violence begins to act with violence.”
“Criminals who decide to mimic what they see or read about,” said Kim, her steepled fingers twitching at her chin. “Over the years, we've seen many instances of young people doing just that. ”Jessica added, “We've all seen such cases in the news, after the fact, when it's too late. I'm merely suggesting-”
“Suggestions, more suggestions and guesswork,” muttered Sturtevante, pacing now like a nervous cat. “Well, frankly, Dr. Coran, we in the PPD expected FBI involvement to bring great and swift results. Not a lot of speculation, and thus far all I've heard is bullshit spec-”
“Leanne's just a little on edge today,” Parry began to apologize when Sturtevante glared at him and suddenly the doors burst open and in came Chief Aaron Roth with two men wearing three-piece, expensive-looking suits. It became immediately apparent to Jessica and the others why Sturtevante was on edge, as Parry had put it. Her superiors were on edge.
No one in the complex chain of command, from detective room to governor's mansion, was happy with the slow progress of the Poet Killer case.
“Deputy Mayor Alsop,” Chief Roth began, introducing the man on his left. “And this is Senator Patrick Harmon, father of the late Anton Pierre.”
Immediately upon being introduced, Senator Harmon placed a hand against Chief Roth's chest and said, “I'll take it from here, Aaron.” The tall, imposing senator, his gray-to-white hair long and striking, making him look like a nineteenth-century patriarch, almost shouted, “I want some fucking answers, and I want some fucking results. You people have been sitting on your asses longer than Snuffy Smith has been sitting in his rocker. Now, what in God's name do you have for me on the death-murder- of my child?”
Beneath his bluster, Harmon was like any other father caught up in so horrific a circumstance. He had had to bury his own child; the natural order of his universe had been shaken to the core. He felt a rage and had nowhere to express it. I demand to know what's being done!”
Parry immediately took charge, standing, offering his hand and introducing first himself and the task-force leadership. Finishing with Kim, he added, “We've even put a psychic on the case. It's only a matter of time before we nail this bastard, sir. If you'd like to come with me, I can show you the mounting evidence we are assembling. Trust me, no one's resting on their rears or leaning on any walls here.”
The senator looked around the room, gritted his teeth, and finally nodded. “Yes, I expect you are doing all you can.”
“All that is humanly possible,” added Parry.
The senator's entire body told them that he had relented. “Doing all that is humanly possible, yes, and I will take you up on your invitation-Agent Parry, is it?”
Parry's strong suit, Jessica recalled, had always been dealing with the bereaved family members, never an easy task. Now, much to everyone's comfort, the FBI agent led the distraught father away. Parry, who had handled both situation and man with great sensitivity and care, had earned back some points with Jessica.
When they were gone, Chief Roth stood aside, rather agitatedly, to hear a brief “pep talk” from the deputy mayor, whose final clich6-”I hope you all good hunting”-fell flat.
Then Chief Roth, his bulldog face turning stony, said, “Senator Harmon is not the only one ready to throw you people to the dogs. I had another father in my office late yesterday. It was Maurice Deneau's father, a local alderman and minister, who collapsed under the strain right there in my office. Paramedics rushed him to St. Stephen's; he's expected to recover, but the man's a basket case; so depressed that he's under a suicide watch. His family's going through a double hell now.” We're getting closer every hour, every day.” Kim told them what they wanted to hear. “I am seeing more details; each vision I have of the killer brings me more words and symbols to puzzle out and piece together.”
Jessica helped Kim calm Chief Roth and Deputy Mayor Alsop, both fathers themselves, with assurances that the agents themselves did not wholly believe.
A telephone call came an hour later; another body had surfaced, discovered this time in the first stages of decomposition. Over the weekend both Leare and Locke had been in Houston, there had been a murder after all, but the body had gone undetected. Jessica steeled herself as she walked into the now familiar “cozy” death scene, a set of props and surroundings created between lovers, between victim and killer, or so it seemed, down to the leftover Pinot Noir, the candles, and soft music.
Time had taken its toll on the crime scene. Candles had burned out, spilling wax like small pools of lava over surfaces. This young woman's body had been discovered by her mother, who, after numerous attempts to reach her daughter by phone, had driven to her apartment and quietly let herself in; the hysterical woman now sat sobbing in a neighbor's apartment down the hall, a cluster of building residents standing about her in a protective circle.
It proved to be a carbon-copy murder scene, and it took little time to determine that the MO was that of the Poet Killer. Victim facedown on living-room floor, this time a pillow under her head, a soft down comforter pulled to her waist, a blatant message left by her killer, penned once again in angry red-to-ocher-burnished ink that made the words appear to be written in dried blood.
The only difference with this victim was the more advanced stage of decomposition; decay had caused some of the killer's penned words to sink inward, as it were, creating puckering slash like wounds in the skin. This time, the victim's skin had to be pulled tight on either side, held by forceps, in order for the poetic lines to be completely made out. Rigor mortis had set in days before and had long since released its grip on the corpse.
“Same MO, same setup,” muttered Parry, just to hear himself speak.
“It's definitely the work of the Poet,” Sturtevante agreed.
“The body gently posed for all eternity, and the victim is familiar as well. She is all the others, all the others are her,” added Kim Desinor.
After a cursory examination of the body, Jessica stepped aside for Kim to “read” it, but Kim's examination fell short. “Getting nothing; emptiness, save for those words again: rampage… quark, preflight, and outing… At least I… I think it's outing.”
Jessica then began collecting the minutiae of evidence left by the killer, searching in particular for the tearstained evidence. Under her magnifying glass, she found it. Using an adhesive, she collected the sample and placed it in a vial, labeling it and carefully putting it away.
Parry and Sturtevante had been searching about the room, Parry again going for the books. He held up a copy of Locke's poems. “It was on her shelf,” he said, opening the volume to a marker. “She appears to have been reading a poem entitled 'The Stage Is Set.' “ He began to read:
The Enochian world is made of gritty tectonics of mind, pressed against the choking smokestack of our lonely city, a place of diastrophic shifts thought masquerading as landmasses that grind into one another.
There, at the hazy altar of ruined pavement, vested in soot, the twin lovers to be wed; purity and iniquity.
They stand in pools of nervous devils, clutching one another with vows of betrothal, caught in the tactile rush of Thorazine bedlam.
They are the lost children elected to host the supraliminal.
On the marker, Jessica read the name and address of the bookstore where the victim had purchased this autographed copy of the book-Darkest Expectations. Also on the marker was a scribbled note, which the victim had apparently written as a reminder to herself. Purchase Leare's work next, it read.
From the look of the apartment, Jessica imagined that the victim could ill afford to purchase both books at the same time, but then Kim entered from the bathroom, carrying a copy of Leare's book.
“It all keeps going back to Locke and Leare and that bookstore,” said Jessica. “Somehow I believe their work is connected to the killings.”
“What are you saying?” asked Sturtevante. “You have no proof of that. None whatever.”
I believe that somehow Locke, Leare, or both are connected to the killings, or at the very least, their poetry is somehow inextricably mixed with the reasoning behind the killing spree.”
Kim supported Jessica. “Such phrases as Enochian world in Locke's poem-that refers to occultism and ancient rites and conversations with God or his agents, angels?”
“Vladoc spoke of it,” said Sturtevante. “But Leare was out of the city all weekend, and Locke with her. Neither of them could possibly have had anything to do with this.”
Jessica felt a sense of relief coming from Sturtevante. Had she begun to suspect her friend Donatella Leare?
“Yes, so they say,” Jessica commented.
“They were both out of the city all weekend, and according to your own findings, the victim died Saturday night,” countered Sturtevante. “And as for Locke's reference to Enoch, Donatella tells me that many poets are familiar with ancient religions and magical practices. Hell, that Dr. Burrwith guy, his poetry alludes to the Four Quarters all the time. Vladoc told me that that's part of the Enochian belief system, too. It's more widespread among artists and writers than you would imagine.”
“Vladoc did make some brief mention of strange belief systems,” said Kim. “I think I remember that.”
“They both left the city on a flight for Houston, or so we are told,” Jessica said, thinking aloud. “But suppose one or the other faked the flight out of here, not getting on that plane, asking the other to cover for him or her?”
Jessica stepped out and down the hallway to talk to the mother. Sturtevante followed. The woman said she was Rowena Metzger, wife of Phillip K. Metzger. Sturtevante knew what this meant, so she explained for Jessica's sake. “Only the most powerful business leader in the city.”
“Cinthia, our daughter, absolutely rejected her father's and my lifestyle and all that we offered her. This began after she started at the university.”
“University of Philadelphia?” asked Jessica.
The mother nodded, still sobbing. Finally, she added, “She wanted so to become an artist and poet. Now… my God… nooooo!” The wailing moan ripped at Jessica's heart.
'Take her to St. Behan's Hospital,” Sturtevante told a nearby medic as she helped Mrs. Metzger to her feet. “She will need something to calm her down until her husband can be located.”
When the sobbing woman was led away, Sturtevante said to Jessica, “The Metzgers, Phillip and Rowena there, regularly appear on the society pages.”
“And now they're front-page news.”
Jessica and Sturtevante returned to the death room to find Kim Desinor attempting a second reading of the body. “It's teasing, something being held out of reach,” Kim muttered, when suddenly Phillip Metzger, a tall, barrel-chested, white-haired man, charged in bull-like. He had become another of the walking wounded-another victim.
“Get away from her! Get away!” he cried out at them as if they were all ghouls, and as if he somehow believed the girl might be saved by his touch. He fell to his knees over his daughter, grabbed her up in his arms, and rocked and sobbed as uncontrollably as a hurt child.
Sturtevante looked shaken, Jessica thought as the PPD detective moved her toward the door. “Can we talk privately?” the detective asked. “I need to talk to you alone… now.”
Jessica did not argue; Sturtevante's voice had become at once tremulous and conspiratorial.