Free Absolute Instinct by Robert W. Walker

footsteps alone announced his return from outside. Everyone else had returned ahead of Abrams. Staring down at the scene, at Reynolds, Sands and Jessica all on knees perched about the body like so many ghoulish scavengers, Abrams erupted, “I don't fucking suppose you people in Washington have anything like this in your data banks! We gotta catch this moth-erfuckingfreak before he strikes again.”
    “ I couldn't agree with you more,” she replied.
    “ Not in my city... not here. I can't look at this kind of thing again, not ever, Dr. Coran.”
    “ Sir... I completely understand.”
    “ What about those international guys you guys check with all the time, Interpol? They ever get anything remotely like this overseas someplace? Say just off a military base? Maybe our guy is some sort of military butcher or even a military medic type.”
    Jessica stood and went to Chief Abrams. She walked with him away from the others. “Checked with Interpol and every law-enforcement agency that cooperates with the FBI worldwide, Chief. Sorry, no one anywhere has ever seen anything like this save Portland, Oregon, and—”
    “ I know, Millbrook, Minnesota.”
    “ But this is the first one to fall under the lens of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit. It's a... a uniquely sick MO... nothing like it in anyone's computers.”
    Reynolds had followed them, listening. He added, “Wyatt, it's got to be related to the Towne case in Portland, Oregon, over a year back. Ex-husband, a regular mountain man type, a black Jeremiah Johnson for the modern age, and he's on death row for the crime. He supposedly hated her enough to do something like this.” He pointed back to the mutilated corpse. “Can you really imagine that two men on the planet could conceive of and execute this exact atrocity?”
    “ Yeah, I can if they turn out to be bunk mates in a prison cell, or two nuts meeting on a train or at a window placing a bet, and your boy Towne in Oregon spent a lot of time in prison cells from what I gather.”
    “ He's locked up. Can't have done this here in Milwaukee, and there's no proof he had ever been in Minnesota, Chief.”
    Abrams spoke to Jessica. “Remember that case breaking on CNN?”
    She nodded.
    “ Reynolds thinks it's somehow relevant to this murder.”
    “ Didn't he say he killed the woman for her spine because she always called him spineless?” Agent Pete shouted from the kitchen where she was using Luminol spray and a blue light to scour for useful blood evidence. Obviously by now everyone in the apartment was involved in the speculation and debate.
    “ And in his confession,” added Sands, getting into the foray. “What was it he said at the trial? Let me see if this old brain still has it tucked away. Oh, yeah... yeah. He said, 'I guess in a way I did kinda get her hackles up. Got those spiney bones breaking skin on her backside once't or twice't... kinda made her what she was—all spine and blister.'“ All but Darwin Reynolds laughed at this.
    Abrams shouted, “The man had an insanity defense at trial, and at the time, the guy was a lunatic, but jail time sobered his ass up, and now he claims his entire confession was a bold-faced fabrication!”
    “ To end an eighteen-hour, marathon interrogation,” countered Darwin.
    “ Were there sketches at the Portland murder scene?” Jessica asked.
    “ Matter of fact, yes.”
    “ Charcoal drawings?”
    “ Yes.”
    “ And what did they depict?”
    “ The dead woman and her horses.”
    “ Horses?”
    “ She loved horses... a real horse lover.”
    Sands broke in. “Didn't the husband say she slept with her horses?”
    “ Actually, he said she'd rather have fucked a horse than ever get down with him again,” replied the resident expert on Towne, Darwin Reynolds, and this brought on laughing jags all around and a halt to the discussion, and everyone took a moment.
    Dr. Sands turned his attention back to the body and began probing the ugly wound, taking a few more