We are ne 'er like angels till our passions die.
Leaving George Gordonn to a fresh surveillance team,
Jessica, Sturtevante, Parry, and Kim regrouped at PPD headquarters. There Jessica called in Peter Vladoc to look at the latest findings and make an assessment of George Gordonn, openly and honestly.
“My dear, Lord Byron's given name was George Gordon. Gordonn's mother's maiden name was Byron. Byron marries Harold Gordonn and the two would-be artists romantically concoct a quick exit from this world. As a photographic artist, Gordonn senior would have known the properties of selenium. The killings are based on this incident, but the story had been told in and around Philadelphia for so long that everyone considers it just another urban legend. Only thing is, young Gordonn researched his parents' death, and he learned that they intended for him to go out with them.”
“And you didn't think it relevant to tell us about this?”
“He's never threatened anyone in my presence; he's never admitted to being the Poet Killer, and he comes off as extremely well grounded, mentally speaking, for someone who began life as he did. Harmless, searching… these are words to describe George. Patient-doctor privilege forbids me to discuss our sessions in any but the most general of terms.”
“Ironic,” said Sturtevante.
“More like Byronic,” Vladoc countered. “Someone too fine, too delicate, too good for this world, too heroic in the sense of having the most exquisite of human sensibilities, an angelic nature too sublime to withstand the slings and arrows of this existence. That's what your killer thinks of his victims. Gordonn, on the other hand, detests what his parents did to him, leaving him alone in the world, and he hates them for attempting to kill him as well. A Byronic personality would be the last thing he would emulate.”
“But one of the parents actually saved him,” Jessica said. “Exactly, and he is wrestling with his ambivalence, and has from the outset of our talks attempted to leam which one showed him more mercy. You see, he has a right to be angry with his parents for deserting him as they did, leaving him to grow up alone.”
“Was he given to foster care?” asked Kim.
“His foster parents have since passed on; natural causes.”
“You're speaking as if you are certain Gordonn is not our killer,” said Sturtevante.
Jessica added, “As if the killer is a heroic person by mere virtue of being… sensitive to the supposed needs of his victims, Dr. Vladoc, and you don't believe Gordonn sensitive enough to be this killer?”
“Your killer is a worshiper of the angelic,” Vladoc countered. He nodded, his eyes going from Parry to each of the women investigators. “He sees himself this way, and sees each of his victims the same way.” His pause allowed them time to digest this.
Sturtevante found a seat and fell into it. Clearing her throat, her eyes glassy, she said, “Maybe it's in their nature-the poets; the real ones, I mean-to feel only resentment for this world and all the sorrow it brings down around them.”
“The ideals of beauty and spiritual wholeness subjected to ugliness and fragmentation,” said Jessica, “are the same that are expressed in Leare's poetry.”
“As well as Locke's,” added Sturtevante. “And doubtless countless others'.”
“We still need to catch George Gordonn in the act or speaking about the act, Jess,” said Parry. “We need someone to get him to open up.”
Vladoc quickly agreed. “While you have some impressive patterns emerging here, the dots have yet to be connected, and I sincerely believe, from all my time spent with Gordonn, that he is incapable of such heinous acts.”
“Perhaps you can locate some of the dots,” suggested Jessica, an edge to her voice.
“In point of fact, I have one major dot for you. I know this George Gordonn and have known him as a patient for almost a year now.”
“You've treated him?” asked Sturtevante, this news being new to her.
“That's certainly a strange coincidence, Dr. Vladoc,” Parry observed dryly. He then asked, “Why didn't you tell us about him sooner?”
“I have never known him to be violent; it never occurred to me that he could be a killer. I am still having trouble grasping the idea. He just doesn't fit the profile, despite all the business with his ruined family life.”Parry nearly shouted, “You didn't think it relevant to tell us about the man whose parents started the urban legend that began this back-writing fad among the young?”
“I had and still have patient privilege to consider. But I tell you, Gordonn never gave me the least concern. I can't see him perpetrating the very act which took his parents' lives and nearly took his.”
“He doesn't appear to have enough money to pay the normal household bills, Dr. Vladoc,” said Jessica. “How does he afford your sessions?” He pays with cash, always. I've never seen him use a check or credit card. He always insists on cash.”
“Isn't that a bit strange?” asked Parry.
“What isn't strange about this entire business?” Sturtevante put in.
“Perhaps, since Dr. Desinor is also a psychiatrist,” began Jessica, a fist balled up and held against her teeth, “sharing information on Gordonn's case would only amount to consultation with a… a consultant, a colleague. That may not be a violation of the young man's civil rights or a breaking of your code of conduct.”
“Yes, perhaps with Dr. Desinor's help, I'm sure you two can and will help this case along,” agreed Parry.
“Then, after, we can do more research in the archives at the Inquirer.”
“I'll be glad to help you in any way possible, Dr. Vladoc,” said Kim, striking a match and lighting the elderly psychiatrist's pipe.
“And you have no idea where he's getting the money to pay your bills?” pressed Sturtevante.
Jessica stood, nodding. “All right, while Dr. Vladoc and Kim make their determinations, we will pursue a line of questioning with Dr. Throckmorton at the university.”
“It appears Gordonn took some classes in the photography department at the University of Philadelphia,” Sturtevante informed the others, and Vladoc knowingly nodded.
“We'll rendezvous back here at five p.m.,” said Jessica, “if everyone is in agreement.”
“Five it is,” said Vladoc. “We must get past this wrong direction you have all taken so that we can get back to the real madman, checkmate him before his next move.”
By now, Jessica had become a familiar face on campus, but Parry and Sturtevante drew a few stares from students passing them in the hallways. They had returned to the photography department, where they spoke with Leonard Throckmorton, who informed them that Gordonn had indeed taken classes in the department with Professor Zachary Goldfarb, and that he had begun but not finished an ambitious film project on the life of Lord Byron.
“What kind of film do you mean?”
“Why, a documentary about the poet's greatest accomplishments. Do you know that it is impossible to find a bust of Lord Byron anywhere? You can get Beethoven, Mozart, but try to find Shelley, Keats, Byron, or any of the major poets-except for Shakespeare, of course. Not a large enough market, I suppose. Meanwhile, you can't throw a stone without hitting the bust of a composer.”
“What can you tell us about Gordonn?”
“Very little, I'm afraid.”
“Start by telling us how much you knew of this Byron film he was intending to make.”
“He was nearly finished with the project when he suddenly disappeared, dropped out, and as far as I know, the project went with him. But then, Dr. Goldfarb can tell you more about that than I can.”
“Where is Goldfarb now?”
“Presumably in class.”
“We need to see him. When's class out?”
'Twenty minutes. If you care to wait, I'll have him sent for.”
“That would be helpful.”
“There's a lounge just down the hallway if you care to wait there.”
“No, I'm quite sure the twenty minutes will be filled up right here, Dr. Throckmorton, because I have more questions.” Jessica sat down in a chair opposite the man's desk. “Since you know little about George Gordonn, then perhaps you can tell us about another suspect. ”Another suspect?”
“The original George Gordon-Lord Byron.”
“What do you now wish to know about Byron?” he asked, confused. “And how is a dead poet-one dead for well over a hundred and fifty years, I believe, a suspect in a murder investigation today?”
“I was hoping you could tell us that.”
Parry plopped down in the plush leather chair beside Jessica. He explained the connection they'd made between the Byron volume found at one of the victim's homes, George Gordonn, and Gordonn's “twisted, deceased” parents. Finally, after explaining about the suicide-pact death that was meant to take little George out as well, Parry told the other man about the poem on the six-year-old's back.
“And now he's been making a film homage to Byron,” said Throckmorton. “I see why you are interested in Gordonn.” The department chairman then said, “Actually, Byron has become a kind of cult hero for many of America's youth, particularly those given over to the goth lifestyle, those black-trench-coated legions whose preoccupation with romanticism, heroism, and death have catapulted the Byron type and the Byronic hero into a kind of… well, I guess you'd call it godhead.”
“Byronic hero?” asked Sturtevante, who'd remained standing. “Now I need a cup of coffee.”
“Well, the Byronic hero… he occurs in many guises, taking on different characteristics in Byron's poetry, you know, the extremes of passion, the fervent and moody antihero, solitary, doomed, the one who stands outside or above ordinary criteria and jurisdictions or notions of right and wrong, good and evil.”
“Yeah, I know what Byronism is if I search my memory banks from college lit courses,” said Sturtevante, sounding more frustrated than skeptical. “I just didn't expect this.”
“Nor I,” the professor replied. “Are you detectives sure you weren't simply influenced by the volume of Byron's work you saw placed alongside the body?”
“The Byron book was found with pages marked and lying on the nightstand,” Parry returned. “We think it's a strong, unifying element in George's twisted logic.”
“What're you saying, Dr. Throckmorton?” put in Sturtevante. “That we have a killer with a Byron complex?” She turned to the others. “By the way, is there any such thing as a Byron complex?”
“Why, yes,” Throckmorton explained. “A person with a Byron complex sees himself as a doomed and tragic figure, a kind of Prometheus who is pecked to death not by an eagle but by the smug, indifferent, and uncomprehending world to which, like the Prometheus of myth, he has brought light. Perhaps you ought to talk to a shrink about this, not a photography professor,” he finished.
“We are, as we speak, getting support from that quarter,” Jessica informed him.
“How amazing. I had no idea that Lord Byron had any connection whatsoever to… to these deaths.”
The twenty-minute wait for Dr. Goldfarb was up, and so Dr. Throckmorton, fearing he'd miss Zach, as he called the other man, rushed out himself to fetch him.
“Not a very forthcoming fellow at first but once he gets to know you…” Jessica observed with a smile to lighten Parry's mood.
“Rather uptight, I agree.”
Leanne said nothing, pacing instead.
“Why don't you sit down somewhere, Detective?” asked Parry.
In a moment, Dr. Goldfarb stepped in, saying, “Dr. Throckmorton has informed me of your interest in a former student of mine, a George Gordonn, and his film project.” He held up a black record book, scanning it for Gordonn's grades. “He accumulated a series of D's and low C's before dropping out, withdrawing from the class. What more can I tell you?”
“Is there anything you can tell us about him of a more personal nature? What was he like?”
“I had no discipline problems with him; he displayed no odd behavior, if that's what you mean. Somewhat subdued, sullen as I recall, a bit withdrawn.”
“I see.”
'1 fear I can tell you very little, but I will be happy to assist in any way that I can. Outside of classwork, I know next to nothing about any of my students, and Gordonn wasn't an especially notable student, to be hank, save for his interest in Byron, his proposed project I remember being surprised that he selected the poet for his term project Most admirable. I usually get projects about the effects of concussions on NFL quarterbacks.”
“So George Gordonn challenged himself and that surprises you?”
“By term's end, I only knew him as a grade. Over a hundred students in my Literature in Film class, so sorry, but he really made little impact on me, and as for his film and aspirations to do definitive work on Byron, it was a joke. He couldn't do it. He simply hadn't the intellect for it; it's as simple as that. What little of the film I saw in its early stages was merely… pitiable.”
“But he works as a specialist, or has worked as a specialist with film development.”
“Workhorse stuff in this arena. He was no photographer, and certainly no writer/director.”
“So he failed to complete your course?”
“Dropped out, at my urging, you see. He and I both knew he was heading straight for an F. I do remember one strange thing he told me once, but I thought it a mere affectation, so I paid it little attention.”
“Until now?” asked Parry. “What strange thing did he tell you?” Said he had been the first young person ever to disrobe and show a poem emblazoned on his back as so many do now in the pubs on Second Street; said he started the trend in a South Street pub and coffeehouse called Charlie's or Charles's Manse or something of the sort.”
“That clinches it,” said Sturtevante. “He's got to be our man.”
Goldfarb looked stricken. “Do you actually think him capable of murdering people?”
“Did you believe him? About his starting this fad in the coffeehouses and pubs?” asked Jessica, startled at this news.
“I chalked it up to bravado, talk, you know.”
“And that's the last you saw of him?” asked Sturtevante, her eyes locked onto the professor.
“Well, yes, we had no further reason for contact.”
“Thanks for your help, Professor Goldfarb. I think we've got all we came for.”
“I'm sorry I could be of no more help,” finished the pompous little man before disappearing through the door.
“Little weasel,” said Sturtevante in his wake.
A quick check in the phone book showed no Charlie's or Charles's Manse, but there was a listing for Charlemagne's. The trio of detectives headed directly for the coffeehouse, the oldest in the area, according to its sign. Tucked away on a dead-end street off Second, it was out of the way of the normal flow past such places as Starbucks.
It had not been overlooked in the police sweep of the coffeehouses, but it had produced no leads, and so, like the others, it had ceased to be of interest, until now. When they got to the door, Sturtevante begged off, telling the others to work the place. 'Two detectives are unwanted company,” she said, “three's a police action.” But I was going to suggest a bite to eat, Leanne, at Sitale's,” Parry said.
“Not for me.”
Parry protested. “A late-afternoon lunch/dinner before rendezvousing with Desinor and Vladoc back at headquarters. Come on, you haven't eaten all day.”
She didn't go into any details but claimed she had an urgent private matter to deal with. “Something I must take care of.”
Jessica imagined it had something to do with her broken relationship with Donatella Leare.
At Charlemagne's they learned very little. No one working the day shift had any recollection of Gordonn, and when they flashed his photo, hastily taken by the detectives who'd been watching the man and forwarded to them, everyone in the establishment drew a blank. Either that or they were good actors. They weren't particularly interested in cooperating with authorities. This much was clear.
Jessica and Parry left feeling unhappy with the continued lack of results, cheering each other with the fact that Goldfarb could be called in to testify to what Gordonn had said to him about starting the back-poetry fad. “Another nail in his coffin,” Parry, using his favorite figure of speech, commented.
Parry located a small Italian restaurant in the heart of Philadelphia, a place that had become his favorite among the downtown eateries.
The restaurant turned out to be splendid, the dishes authentic old-world cuisine. Over wine and food, James Parry opened up to Jessica, telling her how he had lost his post in Hawaii, and how much it had devastated him. “It was all a lot of hogwash, but hogwash that had been accumulating since… well, before I met you.”
“Hogwash in the FBI has a way of accumulating to the point where you find yourself drowning in it,” she replied, commiserating with his situation. “If I had a dime for every time some BS-stuffed official in the ranks came into my lab and made demands, well… go on, Jim.”
“It was based on my not following proper procedure during just such a case as we have today.”
“Really?”
“A murder conviction on a mobster had been thrown out of court, and the resulting fallout rained down on me. It had been a case the Bureau had been building for years.”
“So they needed a scapegoat.”
“In the islands it's known as a sacrificial pig. You know how they like to roast pigs in Hawaii.”
“Funny, Jim, but I'm sorry for what happened to you.”
“I'll be a damned sight more careful in the future, and that's got to be the case with Gordonn.”
“Are you suggesting that we can only arrest him with the deadly pen in his hand?”
“Something like that, yes. If we want an airtight case against the freak.”
“God, I wish we'd had more time at his place to locate his stash of photos of the victims, assuming he had any- something beyond his collection of news clips of his parents' deaths.”
“Even if we'd found such evidence, if you'd walked out of there with them, they would have been inadmissible in a court of law. Besides, we couldn't disturb the place. Like I said before, if Gordonn caught on… I mean if he somehow figured out that we were in his pad, he'd know it's bugged. We've got to get him to incriminate himself in one fashion or another.”
“All right,” she said, relenting, “but I still wonder if we won't both regret the decisions we made back there at his place.”
“Are you referring to Sturtevante? Has she a hidden agenda?” Something like that. She's kinda closed off, or hadn't you noticed?”
“Holds her cards close to her chest, yeah,” he agreed.
“Do you trust her, Jim?”
“I do, and you can as well.”
“Fine… good to hear it.”
“Does that mean you trust me, too?”
“I trust that you're at my back.”
“Yeah… you can bank on that, Jess.”
“I haven't forgotten how you saved my life in the Cayman Islands,” she told him.
He stabbed at his fettuccini. “We'd best get out of here and to that meeting with Vladoc and Desinor. See if they've come up with anything useful on Gordonn.”
Sturtevante was late for the meeting. “Gordonn is on the prowl, heading down Second Street as we speak,” she told them as she entered the meeting room. “Surveillance is on him, but I think we ought to get out in the field.”
“I want to know what Dr. Vladoc and Dr. Desinor have to say first,” Parry told her.
Jessica remained silent. Vladoc, who had been speaking when Leanne arrived, picked up where he had left off.
“Further investigation into Gordonn's past and parents reveals much to us,” he declared, twirling his glasses as he spoke. “Dr. Desinor has unearthed all the local newspaper articles from the various papers, including those she found at the Philadelphia Inquirer's, microfiche library.”
“There's sufficient detail in the stories,” said Kim, “to link what happened to Gordonn as a child with what is going on today.”
Jessica stared at the array of articles Kim had collected, squinting in order to follow the fuzzy microfiche copies. In the days before computers, microfiche had seemed a miracle of an invention, but today it seemed about as advanced as chiseling on stone tablets. The images and words on the poor-quality copy she held in her hand were hard to see, but the headline was easy enough to read: family suicide pact ends life of poet lydia byron and artist husband harold gordonn-child survives.
The story summarized the macabre little family suicide pact that became as powerful an urban legend as any in Philadelphia artistic circles, in addition to being the great motivating force of George Gordonn's life, the origin of the living-poem fad and the reason he was on the prowl that very night.
The phone rang, breaking everyone's intense concentration. Jessica picked it up and heard Marc Tamburino's voice, sounding loud and shaken. “Dr. Coran, I have some information you might like to know about.”
“Pay for, you mean? You're suddenly getting very good at digging up stuff, Marc. I think we've discovered a hidden talent in-”
“I located information about how the Philadelphia fad of writing poetry into the skin began.”
“Is that right? Go ahead,” she told him, curious now.
“There've been several explanations over the years that have attached themselves to the fad, but one in particular I found in my research… well, it's weird enough for The X-Files, and I wanted to share it with you.”
She took share to mean sell.
“Does it have anything to do with a bizarre suicide pact in George Gordonn's past?”
Tamburino's silence clearly meant yes.
“Do you know this guy Gordonn?” she asked.
“Are you kidding? He's the leader of the Locke and Leare groupies. He never misses a signing, and he's taken a lot of pictures at them. Hey, just remember, without me, you'd be nowhere on this case. ”So why wasn't he on the list of names you gave me earlier.”
“It never occurred to me to list him. I thought you wanted pros! He's an amateur, a goofball, a weirdo, but not the kind you'd notice particularly, and certainly not the kind who you imagine could kill somebody.”
“Your information is a little late, Marc and frankly it sucks. No deals this time. In other words, thanks but no thanks.” She hung up on his protests. While plainly useless at this point, Tamburino's phone call at least added to their conviction that they were on the right path.
“We're wasting time here,” said Sturtevante.
“I want to see if Gordonn shows up on anyone else's class list, say like Garrison Burrwith's, Leare's, or Locke's,” Jessica protested. “It won't take long.”
“Grab the lists; bring them along,” Parry suggested.
“They're in lockup,” Jessica told him, “along with all the other evidence we have. It'll take a while to get my hands on them. Go ahead. I'll catch up.”
“Let's hit the streets, people,” said Parry. “Get on the track of this creep. Tonight I feel lucky.”
With that, everyone but Vladoc and Jessica hurried out of the office. When they were gone, Vladoc muttered, as if to himself, “I still can't believe it of George. He's so mild-mannered and pleasant.”
“So was Ted Bundy, Doctor.”
Jessica left the police psychiatrist and went to the evidence room, where she signed out the class lists they'd acquired from the university and quickly scanned for George Gordonn's name. It appeared three times. He'd taken poetry classes with Locke, Leare, and Burrwith.
She ran into Kim on her way toward a waiting car. “Thought I'd ride with you,” said her psychic friend. “What did the class lists reveal about George's career as a student?” He took classes with the whole triumvirate-Locke, Leare, and Burrwith.”
“Why didn't we see this before?”
“It's not unusual for the same students to be showing up in a series of lit courses, especially when one is a prerequisite for the other. A lot of the names on the lists were repeated.”
“Including those of the victims. George Gordonn knew the victims.”
“He took Burrwith first, a year ago, followed by Locke last summer, and then Leare most recently, fall term. After that he signed up for Goldfarb's film class. He's been busy.”
“It would seem so… researching the life of Byron perhaps?”
“It would seem so…”
As the car pulled out of the underground lot, Jessica at the wheel, Kim said what both of them were thinking. “It would appear that we are finally on the trail of the Poet Killer, Jess.”
George Linden Gordonn, it seemed, having somehow learned of the police's interest in him, most likely from noticing that he was being followed and watched, had fled. At first, this presented no problem to the surveillance team, as they had him in their sights, driving his sedan. It was only when he slipped out of sight, veering into an underground lot and speeding out at an exit around the block, that it became a problem. But when they went to round him up-they figured he'd shot himself in the head or something-they found an empty car.
“How the hell did he just vanish?” the police chief, Roth, asked, having joined them at the car with a warrant in hand to search the vehicle, “and exactly how did Gordonn know that we were onto him?” He'd been kept apprised of events by Sturtevante. Angry, he shouted, “The surveillance team was never compromised, and yet he knew he was being watched. How?”
“Perhaps he simply felt the police presence everywhere, picked it up in, I don't know, some supersensory way,” Jessica wondered aloud. “Perhaps that's how he's stayed a step ahead of us.”
“You saying he's psychic?” asked Kim.
“That or very 'blue-sensed.' “
Roth and the others knew she was referring to police jargon for a cop's instincts. Sturtevante offered another possibility. “Maybe someone's keeping him informed.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe someone close to the case is in some way close to him. I'd thought that was the case when… when I suspected Leare, that she was getting the information from me.
“Pillow talk?” asked Parry. “You think Gordonn is sleeping with someone close to the investigation? Who?”
“I don't know. Someone on the task force, maybe, someone in the ME's office. I'm just grasping at straws here, Jim.”
“Like everyone else,” Kim commented.
Jessica said, “If so, then he knew when we were on, when we were off.” She wondered if some more mundane answer was closer to the truth. “At any rate, it's as if the city has swallowed our boy up. He won't easily be located.”
While Jessica and Parry cruised in Parry's car, FBI dispatch alerted them to an urgent call from Dr. Coran's “snitch,” Marc Tamburino.
“I've got more than you bargained for this time, Dr. Coran.”
“No games, Marc. I've got no time for nonsense. What is it?” Gordonn is being helped out of the city by well-meaning friends, friends who have already had their asses in a sling thanks to the police, if you get my drift.”
“Are you telling me that Leare is protecting Gordonn? That she knows him well enough to help him escape?”
“All I know is what I hear, and what I hear is that the poets of this city are fed up with your gestapo tactics, and they've banded together to help Gordonn out. How do you think he so thoroughly disappeared while under surveillance?”
“Some poets did this? I've never known poets to be so militant, Marc. What exactly are you telling me? No riddles, okay? Tell me, how did Gordonn learn that he was under suspicion?”
“I haven't a clue, but I do know that what I've heard is accurate information. I'll expect a healthy check for this piece, love.”
“So, a group of right-thinking, well-meaning artists have banded together to protect Gordonn.”
“He's like a cult figure to some of them, like a symbol or something. The founder of the fad, don't you see? It's earned him a measure of respect.”
“And his poisoning people to death?”
“That, too, with some in this crowd, believe me.”
“All right. Marc. Thanks for the lead. You'll be hearing from us.”
Jessica conveyed Tamburino's information, and while Parry admitted to being skeptical, he could not argue with following up on it. “We go back to Leare, Locke, possibly Burrwith, Plummer, and the photography people.”
“Well-meaning friends who cannot conceive of his guilt in this bizarre business are hiding and abetting him?” Kim asked when she heard the news. She had a sudden flash of how they all looked from afar, a flock of buzzards standing around Gordonn's vehicle as it was searched from top to bottom before being towed to the police lot. Aaron Roth put an APB out for Gordonn, and he arranged to have all highway entrances from the city closed off and roadblocks put up. Photos of George Linden Gordonn were circulated. All this, and still George did not surface.
The search brought them back to Donatella Leare's home, the suspicion being that she had picked up loose bits of information about Gordonn from Sturtevante or notes Sturtevante may have left about. They found the place dark, but could just make out some music, soft and melodious, playing in one of the rear rooms. Jessica rang repeatedly, but there was no answer. Peeking through the curtained door, she saw the flickering light of candles, and she caught a whiff of incense.
“Could be lounging in a bath and can't hear the bell with that music turned up so loud,” Parry suggested.
Kim had joined Leanne in her cruiser, and they arrived behind Jessica and Parry. Leanne now rushed toward the house, a look of dread etched on her features. Jessica apprised them of the situation.
“God, she's taken that creep in, and he's killed her!” Leanne cried. “I just know it!”
“Break down the door,” Jessica told Parry.
“No,” said Sturtevante. “I still have a key. I'll go in.”
“She's likely in the shower, but you tell her if she's aiding and abetting Gordonn, she's in trouble,” said Parry. “Make it clear to her that she has to tell us where he is.”
The detective nodded. “Will do.” She then entered the premises, calling out to her former girlfriend, while the others waited outside. In the time it took for Leanne Sturtevante to walk from the front room to the master bedroom and bath, all they could hear was the soft music and an occasional shout of “Donatella! Donatella!” Then a sudden scream sent a horrid ice pick into Jessica's spine. Sturtevante shouted hysterically that her friend Leare was dead.
The others raced in to find Donatella Leare lying facedown on her bed, rather haphazardly so. On the poet's back were the now familiar blood-orange words of the Poet Killer, carved into her skin with the selenium-laced ink. The poem on Leare's back stared back at them like a laughing skull, Jessica thought.
She wondered now if Gordonn or Tamburino or both of them together were not having fun with them all, PPD and FBI alike.
“Bastard! Bastard's killed Dona!” wailed Sturtevante, distraught and on her knees, her gun beside her.
“Locke-Locke and Burrwith!” shouted Jessica. “We've got to get to Lucian Locke's place, and to Garrison Burrwith's, and now! If the Poet Killer has targeted Leare for death, then he'll try to kill his other instructors as well.”
“Come on, Jessica. We'll let Kim take care of Leanne, and the crime scene will take care of itself,” said Parry. “Let's go. We've got to get a radio car dispatched to both locations. Someone close at hand.”
“Someone close to the investigation,” she muttered. “Who… who close to the investigation has given up our every move to the killer?”
“Vladoc,” shouted Sturtevante.
“Vladoc? But why?”
“He drinks, he talks. Someone knows this, uses him. Gordonn is shrewd. Doubled back on us all and escaped, didn't he? And we thought him a pitiful slob who had a miserable beginning and would have a miserable end, and left it at that. Meantime, he's busy killing… killed Donatella.”
Parry's cell phone went off. He lifted it and barked, “What is it?”
“Dispatch, sir. Another urgent for Dr. Coran, sir. Patch him through, now!”
“It's for you,” he told Jessica, his eyes bulging. “Says it's Lucian Burke Locke.”
Strange coincidence, she thought, taking the phone in hand. She repeated the garbled words she heard coming through for the benefit of the others. “Says he knows where we can find George Linden Gordonn.”
The strange little man, Locke, said clearly into the phone, “I have information as to where George can be found, or rather where what remains of him can be found.”
Parry snapped the button to place the cell phone on speaker so that the others could hear the conversation. “What do you mean, the remains of him?”
“He's dead.”
“Dead?”
“Ready for burial, yes.”
“Can't you be a little more descriptive? How did he die? Where are you?”
“He's lying dead alongside another of his victims,” Locke shouted into the phone, making Parry jump back.
“Where are the bodies, Dr. Locke?”
“My house.”
“We'll be right over. Don't touch a thing, do you understand?”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
He hung up and said, “We should still send a cruiser to Burrwith's place, have them look in on him. Meantime, we'd best get over to Locke's.”
Kim had been holding Sturtevante's hand as the other woman continued to cry over the loss of her friend. “I'll stay here with Leanne. You two go.”
“Be certain to maintain the integrity of the scene,” Jessica told her. “Call for Shockley to get over here and walk the grid.” Willdo.”
With that. Parry and Jessica rushed to the home of Lucian Burke Locke in search of George Gordonn… or what remained of him.