The world is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be.
Jessica had had such dreams since earliest childhood, and a stint with Dr. Donna Lemonte had helped her to deal with the dreaded feelings of entrapment, near escape, and failure represented in the dreams. While the setting changed from dream to dream, the goal and the outcome always remained the same: escape attempt fails. Once the maze proved to be a concentration camp; another time it was a children's camp by a lake; another it was an opulent mansion yet a prison nonetheless, in which a trapped little boy/girl ran in circles, attempting to escape. Jessica would then appear from out of nowhere, like a guardian angel, assuring the little one that s/he had nothing to fear, that there was a way out, and that the adult knew how to find it. All the child needed was to take her hand and follow her lead; the entire time Jessica told the child repeatedly that she knew the way, that she had just come back that way, and that it was within their combined grasp, just around the next confusing turn.
Yet it always eluded the child and Jessica, leaving her with an overwhelming sense of futility, not fear, just a quicksand of hopelessness.
The dream, always lavish with color and extravagant with emotion, filled Jessica with both a sense of awe and a sharing of the child's enormous belief in the uselessness of their attempt to find freedom and happiness.
The worst part of the dream was the elaborate nature of the construct in which the boy/girl always found him/herself a prisoner, and the notion that the adult could unlock its secrets. Even as she promised her charge escape, the escape routes she knew so well always changed from moment to moment, inevitably leading back into the prison. Mazes within living mazes, undulating like the living poems on the backs of the victims in Philadelphia. The mazes came to life, reconstructing themselves like snakes in a pit, even as she led the freedom-starved child toward an exit.
The little boy/girl always grew impatient and horribly afraid that the maze master would find out about the escape attempt, and worse, that s/he had been betrayed by Jessica, that s/he could not trust her after all. The dream followed this cycle, turning back on itself, tripling in intensity, never reaching resolution.
Jessica had thought the dreams at an end; Dr. Lemonte had skillfully led her to realize that the fearful child in the dreams was none other than her own inner child, her inner self and soul. Donna-shrink to the FBI women, the shrink others had encouraged her to see-had explained, “In our dreams we often change sexes, especially when dealing with small children. You are, in effect, in the dream, subconsciously attempting to free yourself, and you are failing to do so. You are no hero to your inner child if you can't free him/her from what you've become.”
Jessica's only chance at healing, according to the psychologist, was to deal with her inner child, talk to her true self, nurture a healthy and trusting relationship between Dr. Jessica Coran and the child she had buried within her so many years before, at a mazelike military base, be it in the Philippine islands, in Germany, or in Washington, D.C. Giving time to be the child she had imprisoned in stone within herself must take precedence in her life now, she had been told.
All the various prisons came to represent that dark little place called a military base, the squares and rectangles of an artificial village, all neatly set off, each with its own four-by-four garden, all the blurred places where she, as a military brat, had grown up. And it all made sense, and all the child faces she saw, all pleading with her for escape, all came to represent her. It had all made perfect sense, like the pieces of a puzzle finally located and fitted together.
So why had the dream returned here and now, after so long? And why had it thrust upon her a sense of desolation, fear even, that she had in all this time accomplished nothing for her inner child and the relationship between her adult self and her child? Was it the same dream or a new one? Did it represent something real or imagined? Had it to do with the Philadelphia case, the one she had so cavalierly tossed aside? What of the dead or the soon-to-be dead-the next victim engulfed by the enticing words of the Poet Killer? Why did she feel so absolutely, emotionally cold?
She snatched at invisible covers and gave in to the fears of the child residing deep within. She allowed his/her fears full vent, as she had on so many other occasions, having promised her former child self that she would never desert it again. Giving herself over to her child, experiencing the childhood dread, was supposed to work. But she felt powerless against the overpowering sense of dread and futility. How could she help the child she was supposed to have been, the one she had hidden from the world, if she could not free herself from fear today, in the here and now?
The fear proved too great. Nothing Dr. Lemonte had told her was working. An FBI forensic specialist in need of a shrink. Even Jessica found it laughable. What would others think of it?
Suddenly the phone came alive with its purring noise. She lifted the receiver, wondering if Richard had somehow read her thoughts from an ocean away.
“Jessica?” came the female voice at the other end. “It's me, Kim.”
Kim Faith Desinor was the FBI's psychic specialist and a psychiatrist with the Behavioral Science Unit, the same unit Jessica worked for. A scientist of the paranormal, Kim was usually used by the Bureau as a last resort in a high-profile case. Kim had most recently helped local police on a case that involved child torture and murder. Using her psychic detection ability, Kim Desinor solved the Child Snatcher case in Houston, working with the infamous Texas Cherokee Detective Lucas Stonecoat and a police psychiatrist named Meredyth Sanger. Kim had confided to Jessica that working with Stonecoat had been like riding with John Wayne or Clint Eastwood in a nitroglycerin-carrying covered wagon with bad shocks.
Jessica had worked with Kim to solve the case of the Heartthrob Killer in New Orleans four years before.
“Kim, how're you doing?”
“More to the point, how're you doing, kiddo?”
“So you've heard?”
“Regardless of the popular image, the FBI is actually a fairly close-knit community, sweetheart. Some of us care about your welfare.”
“So, everybody now knows about Jim and me possibly working a case together again?”
“Including Jim, yes.”
“Like old times, and I'm the last to know…”
“Not quite like old times. There is the matter of your new love, Richard Sharpe.”
“You think I shouldn't do it?” Jessica sipped at her wine between words.
'Talk to Donna Lemonte.”
Lemonte had gone from being Jessica's shrink to one of her most trusted friends. “God, lately that's everybody's answer to everything I say.”
“Why not see what Donna has to say about it?” pressed Kim.
“I want your opinion. Woman to woman, friend to friend.”
“Okay, do it.”
No hesitation in this woman. “Why? Why should I take on this kind of… crap?”
“Closure, that's why.”
“Closure?”
“Every relationship that ends really ought to have closure, especially one that ends badly, say, like… over the phone!” Kim's last words hit home.
“Exactly what I would say to a friend in my situation. Still… shit, I don't need this, Kim.”
“I know you better than that,” Kim persisted. “A relationship without closure is as lousy as… as a mystery novel missing the last page. Nothing gets settled, emotions are in turmoil, and it lingers on endlessly without your knowing the final why.”
As usual her friend made sense. Still Jessica said nothing, thinking of the dream she'd been yanked from.
“Go with me to Philadelphia, Jess. I'll help you any way I can.”
Jessica knew Kim meant that she would help her with any personal turmoil involving Parry as well as the case. “Thanks,” she muttered.
“Meantime, we have a unique case in Quaker City.”
Jessica felt a bit foolish. She hadn't given the case half the thought she'd given to James Parry. No doubt psychiatrist Donna Lemonte would have made great gobs of critical gravy over her failure to scrutinize the case with her usual fervor, all due to James Parry. Jessica hadn't been seeing Donna professionally for years. Although she was now more of a friend than a doctor, perhaps a talk with Donna was in order.
Kim asked, “Do you know that the killer in Philadelphia is leaving poems at each crime scene? Etched into the victims' backs?”
“I know. Do you recall the Night Crawler in Miami?”
“Sure… who forgets the creepiest of the creeps?”
“He did the same-left poetic lines like crumbs wherever he went. His poems were filled with venomous hatred toward women. It's not unusual. We learned a great deal about the bastard from his handwriting.”
“Miami was a bitch. Sure, I saw the clues left by the killer there. He used lines from that poet who never capitalized, the British counterpart of e.e. cummings.”
“Yeah, e.j. hellering's poems. Killer used them to get his point across, but hellering's stuff wasn't what I'd call memorable by any stretch.”
“This guy's poetry is not maniacal, and it's not filled with anger or hatred, Jess. The crime scenes are bloodless, pristine in fact, and it's all in terrible contradiction to the idea of a rampage, yet the word keeps insinuating itself on me. Strange. As to the poetry I've seen thus far, it's… it is rather mesmerizing, haunting on some strange level I can't quite comprehend.”
“Really? It's that good?”
'To my mind it recalls some of the English-lit classes I endured in college, but the subject matter is modem.”
“Coleridge, Keats, Wadsworth?”
“Don't you mean Wordsworth, dear?”
“English literature was never my best subject,” Jessica replied, “and I found a lot of the old poetry to be a wad of it, so I'll stick with Wfofsworth.” Kim laughed.
Jessica now asked, “So if not Wordsworth, then who? Shelley, Keats?”
'Try Gerard Manley Hopkins, or better yet Lord Byron. Again not in style or even form, but something melancholy and haunting about the quality of the mind behind it. Brooding… like Byron.”
Jessica paused before saying, “Really? Byron. Haven't thought of Byron since I was in college.”
“I don't mean to say that the poetry is equal to Byron's, or even that it's similar. And as I said, it's certainly not written in the same style. But something about it reminds me of Byron.”
“Such as?”
“The Byronic hero-man against the herd, man against establishment-but in this case life itself, being born into this existence is the fiend, the reviled establishment, if you will. And I think, or rather feel, that the Poet Killer is himself or herself a flawed character in the scene the killer is creating, perhaps wantonly so.”
“Somewhat melodramatic, isn't it?”
“Scatch the surface of Byron and what're you left with but melodrama? I'm telling you this poisoner thinks of himself as the lone man standing against the machine of society, the establishment, the human condition, you name it.”
“That is remarkable. You've gotten all that from the victim photos?”
“Copies actually, but yes. Eriq faxed 'em to me. But I really need to see the originals, lay my hands on the real deal. Parry's told me that can be arranged.”
Over the phone line, Jessica heard Kim's hands thumbing through papers. “Let me read you what we have so far from the killer. It's known that this fellow left behind flowers and wine along with the poems. Some task-force members think these may be offerings, keepsakes for the deceased to take to the other side with them.”
Jessica took a moment to listen intently to the poetic lines, nodding as she did so. When Kim had finished, she said, “You may be onto something here, Kim.”
“Aside from the classic feel of the poems, the killer's… I don't know… writing to the gods, the fates, the angels, as well as to the victims he dispatches, but he's not directing a word to anyone in authority, anyone, say, like you or me…
Jessica asked, “What're you saying?”
“He's not at all interested in us. His poems are an homage to the victims, what you'd call…”
“Eulogies?”
“Exactly.”
“That is a new wrinkle. A guy kills you and then writes your eulogy.”
“Loves to write your epitaph on your corpus delecti,” Kim quipped. “Really would like to get my hands on the originals.”
Jessica knew what she meant. Kim was a psychometrist: she “read” information from the objects a victim or a killer handled. She had received vivid images both in the New Orleans case and in the Houston case merely by handling objects belonging to the victims.
“Want to feel the originals, don't you? But that means laying your hands on the bodies in Philadelphia.”
“Hands-on, right. One reason I need to go there. I want you to hear another of the poems. Listen to this one, Jess.”
Kim read the lines the killer had penned, the lines that had killed one of his victims:
Chance… whose desire is to have a meeting with stunned innocence.. and to tell it again; luminescent green is the color of the script, and ice-blue hues embrace the images.
They make skin crawl with miniature electric devotions, huddled and yearning, hushed whispers waiting on the shadow of a flickering light.
“Whew… pretty heavy shit,” Jessica remarked, unsure what to say. “The Philly detectives think the killer is working out of some sense of pity for his victims. Maybe he sees his murders as an act of mercy.”
“Yeah, I got that much from Eriq. But this sounds like a type of mercy killer we haven't seen before.”
“Mercy killer, maybe… that is, we only know that Philly PD has characterized him as such. Seems the fellow kills his victims after sharing wine, cheese, and a laying-on of a deadly pen.”
“Wine and cheese I get, but what kind of pen is he using?”
“Something around the turn of the century or a couple, few years before. Definitely dips the thing, as he's left drops of poisonous ink stains on bedclothes and floor. From the depth of the cuts, it's been surmised that the delivery system is sharp.”
“ 'Cutting edge' long before high tech adopted the word?” suggested Jessica, wincing. “Sounds painful.”
“Not if you're knocked out on booze. Bread and wine. wine and cheese, sometimes pizza; point is, they spend a long and pleasant evening together, killer and victim, ending with a bit of poison-a poison, by the way, that continues to defy analysis. No one seems to be able to agree on its properties or give it a name. And as a final touch, his victims appear to sit for the poetic writing, er… killing, willingly.”
“Persuasive guy, this Shakespeare. What kind of profile do they have on him?”
“Mixed bag. Not even sure he's a he; could just as well be a female killer, given the choice of weapons. As to the victims, two women, one man, all young, all into New Age thinking and beliefs, all living in an area that's gone ape-shit for this new craze of 'living poetry,' and curiously enough no other tattoos or nose rings or tongue piercings found on the vies.”
“Conservative about how they used their bodies, but all talked into doing the body-writing thing,” Jessica mused.
“Save for that, their ages, the fact that they appear to have been easily beguiled, and their close geographical proximity to one another and to the clubs, they have little in common.”
“Sounds like an unusual victim type.”
“Well, this guy in Philly-or woman-his or her poetics are different.”
“Do you get a sense that maybe it's a woman, Kim? And what exactly do you mean by different, huh? How so?”
“I don't know for sure, but one thing's certain: it's a gentle person, feminine, I suspect, in many ways. At the same time I'm getting this singularly masculine word insinuating itself on any reading I do.”
“What word is that?”
“It's paradoxical, just the opposite of femininity.”
“What's the word, Kim?”
“Rampage.”
“Rampage? As in kill spree rampage?”
“All I know is the word keeps coming through loud and clear.”
“Hardly a gentle, feminine word.”
“Precisely… so… how am I to be sure of the gender of the poet?”
“Maybe it's coming through from somewhere else? The victims, maybe?”
“I don't know… yet. But rampage keeps forcing itself into my readings.”
“Maybe it has some symbolic meaning, then?”
“Maybe it's a quiet rampage, like a personal quest.”
“Rampage… quest…” Jessica muttered. “You think?”
“The word quirk or quark is also coming through, along with a number.”
“What number?”
“Nineteen… means nothing in and of itself, but I get it strong and clear.” Jessica bit her lip. “Let's hope that's not a preset number of victims he's planning to sacrifice.“I can't say one way or the other, not really.”
“What do you think of the poetry itself?” asked Jessica.
“I believe the poetry is original. Nothing else like it in my experience, and the killer is definitely sending a message of some sort.”
Jessica thought of her parting words with Eriq Santiva earlier. He had left the ball in her court, saying she must decide by eleven p.m. and that hour had come and gone. Now Kim sat perched on the phone with her, doing all she could to persuade her to take on the case. Had Santiva sicked Kim onto her? Kim's words even sounded like Santiva's, as she ended with, “So, Jess, are you in or out? Do you want to have a look into this or not? I leave the decision up to you.”
Yes, Kim sounded as if she were reading lines from Santiva's script. “Eriq put you up to this phone call, didn't he?” Jessica wanted her to admit it. If she did, then perhaps there was no cause for alarm; if she denied it, then there must surely be.
“What, I can't call a dear friend and beg her help?”
Both women knew that if Jessica took on the case, it would be for two reasons: her unquenchable curiosity as a forensic scientist, and the need for closure on a long-term relationship.
“Well, all right, Jess. Eriq and I discussed it from top to bottom, and we both feel that you're the best person for the task, and frankly, I'm not sure I'm going without you.”
“I'll see you at the airstrip at six a.m. tomorrow, Kim.”
“Good… good. Would you like me to inform Eriq?”
“That's your call.”
“My call?”
“Thanks, yes.” Decision made, Jessica hung up, still wondering when and how she would tell Richard of her new case and its connection with James Parry.
The Poet Lord liked the apartment dimly lit, and so the thickly embroidered, burgundy-and-gray tapestry that covered the larger windows pleased his eye on waking. Music of another period poured from the CD set on continual play. The poet had slept to the music of an Italian opera. Incense filled the room with a delicate sandalwood scent, and the tapered candles had burned down to stubs, creating tentacled stalagmites of the cooling wax over the arms of the candelabra at his bedside.
The poet clawed toward wakefulness, somehow touching foot to floor and staggering through the apartment, clicking on the coffeepot and showering for the day.
The apartment walls stared back at the poet. All the eyes watched from all the paintings, prints he'd gathered as cheaply as possible, framed and placed at increasingly smaller intervals around the rooms. In fact, the wall could hardly be made out for the prints. Max field Parrish, Edward Burne-Jones, Waterhouse and his disciples, Hieronymus Bosch's visions of heaven, an assortment of enchanted visions of paradise, some depicting it as another realm entirely, others depicting it-or its closest approximation-as a place here on earth. All the poet's paintings spoke of lost times and lost souls. Each of his victims had seen this shrine, and all had shared his taste in art, music, and literature. None of them had the least interest in Beanie Babies, makeup kits, inflation, or current events. None had watched a TV sitcom in years, and none of the one's he'd helped to pass over even knew firsthand what a skin blemish was. Prerequisite to having the poet sponsor someone as a living poem.
With coffee in hand, The Lord Poet Messenger of Misspent Time did what every Philadelphian did on a Monday morning: he struggled to consciousness. He staggered about his small castle like place with its black-sky ceiling overhead, its earth tones all around, and its stone-tiled floor selected specifically for its old-world appearance.
The staggering was a dance performed each morning, but it was particularly acute after pulling an all-nighter with someone special, someone not of this world, someone chosen to be sent over.
After a pot of coffee and a roll, he located the remote and scanned the news channels for any mention of the body's having been discovered. Nothing, nada, zip, not a word. He imagined that the body would be found before long. The poet would keep an eye out and an ear open. While it mattered little to him what authorities thought of his work, he wished to stay informed and to remain above suspicion so that he might carry on with the necessary labor. After all, he had a universe to save. A crusade had been taken up, and this crusade to stomp out ignorance, eradicate fear, and end the poverty of impoverished souls-this had become the true calling of the poet.
But for now, it was off to work, a taxing, energy-draining job, the nine-to-whenever grind.
Still, the poet paused to think of each of his lovers, the ones he had chosen for the ultimate journey. He pictured his first victim, Micellina Petryna. She had been so beautiful in her purity and naivet6. There was an angelic quality even in her self-deprecation. The most worthy never know their worth, he thought now. She had attracted the poet the moment she stepped into view, and when she received the first love sonnet the poet had written to her, she had not been frightened off, but rather touched.
They met for coffee on several occasions, talking mostly-of poetry and literature, the classics and the modern classics. Each flattered the other on their choices of the best lines ever penned by man-or womankind. She was hungry for the attention he lavished on her, and easily led as a result, and the very qualities that made her angelic also made her vulnerable to the lies, lies necessary to carry out the mission.
He recalled how, on that last night they'd spent together, he'd told her how much he both admired her and helplessly loved her in that special spiritual way reserved only for the most intimate of souls, those souls who miraculously did what most could not. “And what is that?” she'd asked, staring into the poet's flaming eyes.
'To both locate and then hold on to the gift of a soul mate.”
They had closed down the little coffeehouse where they'd met. She'd so opened up, revealing every detail of herself and the horrors of her everyday existence. She'd been molested as a child by a stepmother, and she had sought therapy for the emotional scars. Now she promised,
“I'm working on relating to other women more and more, but I gotta tell you, it's not easy. You… you're so understanding, so gentle and caring. I've never met anyone quite like you. There's a fire in your eyes when you're listening to me talk, and that's so cool, so attractive.”
She was right about the poet; he was the most gentle being she would ever encounter in this world. His eyes blazed with the light of attentiveness whenever someone bared his or her soul, as Micellina, Caterina, and Anton had all done before leaving this world.
True enough, a fire burned behind the poet's eyes, the fire of a crusader, a person on a quest for the holiest of spirits on this plane. The Holy Grail was not a thing, not a chalice, not an object, but a soul, a rare soul indeed. It mattered not a whit that some sordid and polluted moment existed in their pasts on this plane, or even if they were presently sleeping with someone, for they remained innocent of their own true natures, innocent of the power they wielded, the power of their souls when taken by the angels. And while none of the chosen had been old enough to have committed any great sins against God or man-none had been cheats, liars, whores, none had practiced prostitution or promiscuity of either the worldly kind or the ethereal kind that characterized so many so-called experts on art and creativity. Certainly, no one in this life remained pure. People didn't long endure on this plane without smut attracting to them. Only the children of the angels, chosen by the poet to go over, remained pure of heart and being.
This had certainly been the case with Caterina Mercedes, the poet thought, groggily getting up and searching for something to wear to work this morning. While Micellina had been easy to lead, Caterina had been a holdout. It had taken a great deal more persuasion to convince her that it was in her best interest to have a private moment with the poet. When she finally acquiesced, it proved almost as hard to get her to meet with him a second time. She had serious reservations about seeing him privately, and she had serious doubts as to his intentions, almost up to the end. But the poet's dexterity with words, both spoken and written, finally won her over. In the end, Caterina, like Micellina, felt a joyous and heartfelt obligation to carry out the poet's plan-to write her into eternity. They had both, in the end, willingly gone over, first believing they would achieve a kind of immortality among their peers for displaying the poems on their backs, but in the end knowing that he had a greater immortality in store for them.
Then came Anton Pierre, a beautiful young man, not unlike the two women who had preceded him in physical beauty and mental purity.
The poet stepped from the modest apartment, located the elevator, and with his valise in hand soon stood on the avenue fronting his building. A penniless man with a squirt bottle in hand asked if he could hail a cab for the poet. He nodded, indicating that yes, he would like the beggar to help him, but to remain at a safe distance. As he waited for the cab, he felt a wave of revulsion wash over him at the sight of the derelict. When a cab pulled over, he threw a five-dollar bill at the homeless man and rushed to enter the cab, glad to be speeding off.
It wasn't every day he took a cab to work, but it looked like rain again, and he'd left his umbrella in the stand, the one with the Victorian hounds that stared out at the poet, hounds whose eyes burned with a fire to match the poet's own.