Through the looking glass and into the abyss angels must spy.
On a hunch, Jessica Coran made a long-distance call to now Chief Constable Ja Okinleye of the Official Police of the Cayman Islands. Ja had become a good friend since the time some years ago when Jessica had assisted him on a murder case on his island of Grand Cayman. At the time he was a lieutenant in the Investigatory Division there. The case had involved a wealthy and highly regarded man who had been involved in the import business and was the owner of the largest clothing and jewelry store on the islands. Ja thought the man had gotten involved with some sort of smuggling operation, a common practice at all levels of society there. The man’s throat had been slashed and there were repeated stab wounds to the body. Ja wondered if it were not the work of an angry co-conspirator in the smuggling operation or the botched work of a burglar, but Jessica merely had to look at the body to tell him otherwise. It was neither business nor mistake that had dispatched the elderly gentleman. She explained that the wound to the throat, while similar to a Colombian necktie-a throat slit from ear to ear-would have been enough to kill the man and that the other repeated stab wounds had been unnecessary save for one need-rage and vengeance of a sort. “So,” she had surmised, “it is the work of some person who knew the deceased well enough to hate him.”
On further investigation at what passed for a crime lab on Grand Cayman, Jessica revealed other, even more startling facts: that the body had been moved from another location and posed; that the stab wounds had come first; that the wound to the throat had been a last-minute addition to the staging of the event; and that in fact the man had died of a broken neck. Someone had simply snapped his neck in a quick, brutal and efficient manner, someone both strong and possibly well-trained in the martial arts.
“ Then, in a fit of rage, he or she did the butchering, quite possibly after spending several hours with the body hatching out what to do with it.”
Ja knew instantly whom he must interrogate further, and it quickly came to light that the man’s nephew was in extreme debt to island loan sharks, that he’d pleaded with his uncle for money and that the old man had stood adamant against lending him another cent. The younger man, it was soon revealed, had lost control and attacked his uncle; in the scuffle, he’d made short work of his uncle’s vertebrae and neck bone. Death had come about as a result of the trauma suffered when the nervous system was severed.
Ja Okinleye had done most of the work that cornered the nephew, but he had been aided immeasurably by Jessica’s display of scientific knowledge, beginning with the fact of lividity, indicating that the man’s body had lain on its side for at least three hours after death before it was lifted up a flight of stairs and thrown across his bed, where the butchering ensued. The body had been left facedown where the throat was cut. The amount of blood soaking into the bedcover, or rather the lack of it, was Jessica’s first indication that things were not as they seemed on the surface; the absence of blood from such an enormous gash had clearly indicated that the old man was dead long before his throat was slashed, another relatively easy surmise.
These facts, thrown in the face of the suspect in Ja’s interrogation room, had brought him to confession and the entire case took a mere three days to solve-all while Jessica was on vacation on the islands. How Ja learned of her and of the fact that she was on his island, she never knew. At any rate, Ja Okinleye estimated Jessica Coran a wizard and a magician and was able to close the baffling case with head-spinning speed. He remained to this day, as he put it, “a great believer and friend.” And if ever she needed a favor…
Ja had since moved up the ranks on Grand Cayman. He had used his new authority to send some of his officers to the United States for training at the FBI Academy, and had been pleased with the results.
Jessica recognized his voice immediately when she was finally put through to Ja.
“ Okinleye here!” Ja was always loud and clear, having had a British education and a military upbringing. He was stiff and formal even at a party, but his formality had become so much a part of his personality, it seemed pleasantly integrated, charming even. “Ja, it’s me, Jessica Coran. I’m calling on a matter of some urgency.”
“ Aha! To congratulate me, no doubt.” She laughed into the phone. “Yes, that of course, but I sent a card when I learned of your promotion. Just the same, congratulations.”
“ And your card and well-wishing is much appreciated. Dr. Coran, it is always a pleasure to hear from you! Where are you calling from? Are you on the island?” He sounded surprised.
“ I’m in Florida-Naples, Florida, to be exact. I’m working a case here; one you may’ve heard about?”
“ Hoooo, yes, an evil business that one in Florida I hear of.”
“ That’s my case.”
“ I have word of your string of children, all dead at the hand of this fiend they are calling the Night Crawler, but I didn’t know you were handling the case. If there is anything-anything whatever-I can do, please never hesitate one moment to ask, my dear Doctor.”
She pictured Okinleye’s Sidney Poitier appearance, his wide forehead and piercing, nearly black eyes as she replied, “Ja, have you had any like Missing Persons cases- disappearances-turn into murder victims? These would be young women, American or British, my basic appearance-height, weight, color of hair.”
“ Teens, tourists?”
“ Or early twenties, yes.”
“ In point of fact… yes, but are you suggesting a connection?”
“ I’m not sure…”
“ I will have my best man scour our records for… for how long past?”
“ A year… no, two years ago?”
“ That far back may take some time. I of course recall several instances of bodies washing ashore, all clustering about a year ago, yes.”
“ Were they bound, gagged?”
“ No, nothing like that.”
“ Nude?”
“ Yes.”
“ Cause of death?”
“ First it was suggested as drowning, but one of our men who is academy-trained by your fine FBI realized it was strangulation.”
“ And the killer was never apprehended, I take it.”
“ No, never… to our shame.”
“ We may be trailing the same man here. Can you send all you have on the protocols there?”
“ Absolutely, as soon as it is amassed.”
She gave him the NPD’s address in Naples. “Make sure it’s marked for me personally.”
“ It will be done. I wish you all good luck there, Dr. Coran.”
“ Thank you, Chief Okinleye. It does appear that we’ll need all the luck we can find.”
“ I apologize for my surprise when you first called,” he said.
She unnecessarily shrugged. “What for?”
“ I mean, I thought you were in Hawaii, that you had relocated and had married some fellow there?”
“ Well… not quite…”
“ Not quite? Or not quite yet?”
“ I’m not quite sure yet. Does that answer your question?”
“ I am sorry to pry; your happiness is all that I wish.”
She smiled at this genuine, simple desire, so sincerely stated. “Thank you, Ja, and I’ll look forward to hearing from you.”
“ When will you come to dive The Wall in Cayman again? When will you come to see us? You will not believe how big my children have become. They were busting the house, so in keeping with my new duties, we have purchased a suitable abode far above the city, overlooking the city and the harbor.”
“ It sounds lovely, and I’ll visit as soon as I can, promise.”
“ Remember to take time to play; that life is not made for work alone, that work alone is not life.”
“ Thank you, Ja. I’ll remember that island wisdom.” Ja hung up and she played over his final words inside her head and heart. She knew he was right, that once again she’d become so entangled in her work that it had become her life. For that kind of advice from her shrink, she paid through the nose; getting it through Ja’s simple wisdom was cheaper, but no less painful.
Quincey and Samernow knew the so-called best barbecue place in Naples, so the foursome wound up at Brace’s for drinks and dinner. They tried to talk about anything and everything besides their great disappointment in not having had the chance to pounce on the Night Crawler this day. They talked of sports and weather and the Eddie Perlman trial, which had started in earnest in Seattle. Perlman was accused of the brutal murder of his six children, his wife and his mother-in-law. The case had been in the headlines for almost a year now as prosecution and defense jockeyed for position. It was a classic example of a defenseless defense resorting to blowing smoke, burning unrelated incense in the courtroom, fanning the flame of confusion and creating doubt where no doubt existed by playing one mirror off another, all in a superfluous effort to deflect and ultimately derail the truth while boring the jury to death.
“ When we do finally catch this bastard Allain, or whoever the hell he is, the damned legal system will drag it out, ass-over-backwards, for ten years,” complained Quincey, “and it’ll take some prison-cell justice to see the SOB gets what he deserves.” Jessica and the others drank to the sad truth.
Jessica reminded them how, after capture, Mad Matthew Matisak had been placed in a federal prison for the criminally insane, and how he had played the system for years, and how the moment his doctor’s defenses went down, he’d struck like a waiting cobra. He’d escaped, wreaked havoc and murder from Philadelphia to Louisiana, where he began stalking her, until finally she had cornered and killed him in a New Orleans warehouse. Final justice three long years after he was found guilty of the slow-torture deaths of the countless victims he had drained blood from to feed an insatiable appetite for the red fluid.
And so the conversation worked its way back around to what was eating away at them all tonight, the whereabouts of the Night Crawler.
“ Where the hell can he be?”
“ He’s like a damned crayfish, hiding in the mud out there-invisible but there.”
“ How’d he know we’d staked out Buck’s Trophy Shop?”
“ Was he maybe using Buck to decoy us away?”
“ What do you mean?”
“ Keep us here, while he goes north to Tampa?”
“ Is he just playing more cat-and-mouse games with us?”
The questions spiraled and threaded through their conversation, and Jessica sadly and resignedly began to believe that they were no closer to apprehending the monster than when they’d begun their effort so long ago in Islamorada Key. She voiced this feeling and the others stopped their drinking and eating to stare.
“ How can you say that, Jess?” asked Eriq. “We know a lot more about this creep now than when we began.”
“ But that’s not enough. Knowing about him hasn’t stopped him.”
“ Fact is, he gets off on letting us know bits and pieces, seems to me,” said Quincey. “Isn’t that why he cut loose three bodies in one day and left the nylon rope behind?”
Samernow agreed. “Isn’t that why he keeps writing the damned papers with his damnable poetry?”
“ Yeah, he feeds us… we feed him,” grumbled Santiva, who’d had more to drink than the others and was now completely despondent.
“ Anybody here by the name of Coran or Santiva?” shouted the bartender, waving a phone in one hand, hefting a stein of beer in the other.
“ Yeah, over here,” replied Jessica, going for the phone.
Quincey asked, “Who knows we’re here?”
“ Ford,” explained Santiva. “Told him to keep us informed of anything from his side.”
Jessica held firmly to the phone, as if its hard density might keep her from reeling; she felt a little light-headed, and too much beer, not enough pretzels and the news she was receiving wasn’t helping any. She gritted her teeth and stared back at the men she’d just left at the table. She met Santiva’s eyes, and he proved sober enough to read her body language. He could tell the call was serious, so he got up and joined her, asking, “What is it?”
“ Tampa Tribune got a love note from the Crawler. Looks like he’s in the Bay Area all right. Postmark is St. Petersburg.”
“ Damn, the bastard’s got us hopping to his tune.”
“ All part of his game. Only good news is that there haven’t been any other bodies to wash ashore from the Gulf.”
“ As yet, you mean
“ Let’s get up the coast. Think you can get us a helicopter?”
“ We’ll get some local help on that score. Be ready to leave”-he looked at his watch-”at midnight. What about a facsimile of the letter? Has Ford received one?”
“ He has.”Tell him to send a copy to my hotel room, and tell him we’re on our way to Tampa-St. Pete.”
Jessica did as instructed, thanking Ford for his cooperation and the help of his men, asking him to be on the lookout for a package arriving there for her postmarked the Cayman Islands and instructing him to forward it to FBI Headquarters in Tampa. She again thanked Ford before hanging up, then rushed out of the restaurant with Eriq, who’d left instructions with Samernow and Quincey. The two detectives would follow them by way of car or boat- depending on Anderson’s mood-the following day.
“ Tampa, Jess,” Eriq said to her in firm conviction.
“ What about Tampa?”
“ That’s where we’re going to corner this bastard.”
“ Yeah, well, for a time we thought the same of Naples, but it didn’t happen.”
“ The noose is tightening. We just have to pull on the rope.”
She realized he was just doing a bit of cheerleading, attempting to bolster her sagging spirits. It was Eriq’s way of trying to comfort her and bring her along emotionally.
“ I hope you’re right, Eriq,” she relented somewhat as they got into the car that would take them to the airport, where a chopper was holding for them.
“ I am right. I have to be right,” he assured her.
“ He’s led us on one hell of a chase.”
“ It comes to an end in Tampa.”
“ Promise?”
“ Promise.”