Blind Instinct

THIRTEEN

The following Monday, Jessica joined yet another general meeting called by Chief Inspector Boulte, this one limited to Scotland Yard detectives alone. Every single detective on the force had long before been put on alert regarding the case of the Crucifier, but now with the additional information concerning new findings in the autopsy reports brought about by Dr. Jessica Coran, findings which could not be ignored, Boulte wished for his entire team to be “well-versed and further enlightened by Dr. Jessica Coran herself.”

Why am I getting the idea Boulte hates my guts? she asked herself. At Sharpe's request, the man had contacted her superiors in D.C., who had in turn contacted Quantico, who had in turn contacted Eriq Santiva, who had contacted her. Obviously, Boulte saw her competence as a personal rebuff to him. In his zeal to demean her, he had pushed professional courtesy to its limits. Either that or worse. Perhaps he'd gotten wind of the budding personal relationship between her and Richard and he didn't like it. Worse still, he saw it as an opportunity to hurt Richard.

Still, Boulte remained in charge when he now asked Jessica, “Will you share further profile information, anything developed by you and Sharpe, for instance, with the rest of us.” His tone made clear that he knew the two of them had slept together, and somehow she'd become yet another prize in the continual battles of the two men. Just how Chief Inspector Boulte knew remained a mystery, but Jessica suspected Erin Culbertson. Damn her.

Jessica nodded, taking the podium, and after saying good afternoon to some sixty or so assembled inspectors, she listed the likely characteristics of the killer again, adding, “We, first of all, we believe to be a they-at least two men. They have a religious fixation, an obsession with the crucifixion, likely find replicas and paintings of it everywhere they spend time. They will likely lead exemplary lives, purporting to be model citizens, even religious experts or leaders among their acquaintances. They will likely be in their mid-twenties to upper-thirties, and are most likely white men. They will be married, working steady jobs, likely lower-income, blue-collar, raising families and/or caring for aged parents, all the duties of sons, fatherhood, and husbands part of their facade, and part of the pressure they live under. We've also developed some threads of connection among the victims. The victims are middle-class for the most part, white-one reason we suspect the killers to be white. Each victim led a life generally uneventful, devoted to an effort at finding peace and comfort in organized religion and within themselves. They had little else in common save religious devotion. This doesn't tell us much, but it does suggest that they may have met their attackers in their quest for religious answers.”

A characteristically wry Falstaff-looking British detective interjected, “Not exactly lookin' for love in all the wrong places. But perhaps looking for God in all the wrong places? Heh, Doctor?”

“You could put it that way, yes.” Her smile relaxed.

“So, we seek out any and all bizarre-o cults in London? That's a gargantuan task in itself,” said one inspector.

“Take us till bloody doomsday,” added another. Jessica went on the defensive, her tone firm, saying, “Actually, sometimes, if a law-enforcement official shows up at the doorstep of a guilty person, he automatically confesses and asks, 'Why'd it take you so long? I've been waiting for you.' “ After the meeting, Boulte said to Jessica, “A news conference is set to go. I'd like you to be beside me when I inform the press of our most recent findings.”

Near her wit's end, Jessica exploded, “My God, Chief! Another meeting?”

“Meet the press time, Doctor,” came his simple response.

“You don't intend to give them the details surrounding the tongue brandings, do you?”

“That bit of news may shake someone from apathy, may open someone's mind to the possibility of a neighbor's strange habits and lifestyle.”

“It could also jeopardize a conviction, if and when the killer's apprehended. We need to keep some information in-house.”

“We owe it to the public to be open and honest with them at this point, and… well…”

“And that's the image you wish to portray, but that information isn't news! It must be withheld. It could prove invaluable as a tool in interrogating viable suspects later, and it can certainly rule a suspect out quickly, if skillfully used to-”

“We need to tell the press something now, today, and it has to be something new, Dr. Coran, and it has to be concrete evidence.”

“I see. Then no amount of persuasion on my part will change the course you've chosen.”

“No, it will not.”

Jessica followed alongside Boulte, Sharpe, and Copperwaite to the news conference. Surprisingly, Stuart Copperwaite appeared animated over the prospect of cameras and microphones pushed into his face. She chalked his enthusiasm up to his youth, his inexperience with the press. He'd soon enough learn the pitfalls of dealing with the “free press.” Sharpe, by comparison, appeared sullen, perhaps angry. She wondered if he and Boulte had already had it out over this matter. The two men, obviously, were not speaking to one another at the moment.

Suddenly Richard said to Boulte, “This is shoddy police work, sir, and I choose not to participate in your little circus.” Sharpe stormed off to Boulte's, “You come back here, Inspector, right this moment, or I will be forced to take sanctions against you for insubordination. You force me to remove you from the case and it will be on your head, Richard! Richard!”

“Do that!” Sharpe shouted over his shoulder.

“Damn that fellow,” bellowed Boulte at Copperwaite. “You'll have to buck up, Stuart. You are, for the moment, the lead investigator on the case of the century.”

Copperwaite blanched and didn't smile, but he almost saluted and he might have clicked his heels, Jessica thought. “I shall do my level best, sir.”

A far cry from his back-stabbing comments of only a few days ago, Jessica thought. Now Copperwaite's lapping at Paul Boulte's boots. She momentarily wondered if Sharpe had been given Copperwaite to mold and fashion for some insidious purpose such as his keeping a close eye on Sharpe's activities. It fleeted past like a shy shadow, but the intuitive feeling certainly sat squarely before Jessica now that Boulte nodded appreciatively at his junior inspector and said, “I knew I could count on you, Coppers.”

Copperwaite's lips pursed in an unassuming smile, while his eyes sought out Jessica, sending a silent and unspoken message that clearly read: What else am I to do? Storm off like a child, like Richard? What will that accomplish?

Copperwaite read nothing in Jessica's return gaze. She allowed nothing to be transmitted. Still, the coldness of her gaze, the neutrality of it, brought about a painted smile that flit birdlike across Stuart's countenance, gone almost as suddenly as it had come. As the press conference began, a pencil-thin, sharp-edged woman calling herself the new public prosecutor promised the usual political improbables. But Boulte worked the center ring with Copperwaite to one side of him, Jessica to the other. Since her way to London had been paid for by Boulte's department, she felt she must do as the man requested of her. But she volunteered nothing. Reporters had to pry the new forensic evidence from her with one leading question after another. Jessica finally and reluctantly told the press about the branding of the tongues, only at Boulte's insistence. However, the exact wording was withheld and would be kept internal so that investigators could know when a suspect is viable or simply a crackpot wishing to confess to the crime.

Boulte seethed, his gaze piercing hers, for she said it in such a way as to make it sound like Boulte's order. Then in the sea of faces before them, Jessica saw the reporter who'd questioned her at the York. She glared at Erin Culbertson, wishing to stake the reporter to a cross even as the other woman asked Jessica a pointed question. “Are you and Richard Sharpe”… hesitation, pause… “Are you in agreement on the question of whether the Crucifier is one killer or two?”

“We suspect there are at least two men doing the killing, yes.”

“Have you any idea why they crucify their victims?”

“We fear it is a religious fixation, a zealotry, possibly an attempt to reawaken in the general public an awareness of Christ, the cross, God's word, all that, but we are only speculating. It's difficult enough to climb into the head of one killer, much less two at once. But, yes, there does seem to be a pair-mentality at work, and some of the physical requirements of actually spiking someone to a cross might well require at least four strong hands.”

“Thank you all for coming,” said Boulte, bringing the press conference to a close. Jessica stepped behind a curtain, out of sight of the cameras and reporters, but she watched from her vantage point to see what, if any, contact Culbertson made with Boulte. To her surprise, there appeared none whatever.

Jessica felt good about having kept the exact wording of the killer's message and the coal dust and beetle long shot to herself. No one but she and Dr. Raehael knew of its possible significance. She secretly seethed now, knowing that the information on the tongue branding, and most likely the precise wording, would soon become newsprint fodder, plastered across every television in the city. Like America, the press in England, inadvertently or otherwise, made antiheroes of serial killers. The Crucifiers would make great copy for many days, possibly many months, to come. Even if caught, their story would continue through pre-and post-trial footage, and these psychos would be held up as “criminal geniuses” for young people to “worship” when in fact they were anything but.

Jessica saw that the Culbertson woman had remained behind, fixing her makeup, combing out her hair, preparing it seemed for the next interview, the next story. On a dare to herself, Jessica stepped from behind the curtain to confront the woman. Moments before Erin Culbertson was about to step away, Jessica intercepted her and asked, “Can I have a private moment with you. Miss Culbertson?”

“Absolutely, Dr. Coran. You're the hottest topic in London today. What can I do for you?”

“You can tell me what's transpired between you and Chief Boulte.”

“Whatever are you talking about?”

“Don't play games with me, Miss Culbertson. Richard's told me all about you,” she lied.

Erin Culbertson held back sudden tears and found it difficult to meet Jessica's gaze. She fell into the chair she'd occupied earlier. “I'd hoped it wasn't over, not completely, between Richard and me… Have for some months now, but when I learned… When he told me about his attraction for you, I knew that it was.”

“So you went to his superior, getting him into trouble with Boulte out of some female need for vengeance? That really sucks, lady.”

“What? No… I would never hurt Richard.”

“Well, you did. Boulte has changed toward Richard. He seems to know about Richard and me.”

“Not from me, he doesn't! Perhaps you and Richard ought be more discreet. Dr. Coran. Given the circumstances, the fact you are involved cannot be healthy for the case, now can it?”

“That's not your call.”

“But it is Boulte's.”

“It might be, but Boulte isn't being direct with Richard or me. No, he's biding his time like some spider spinning a web. He doesn't want to cripple Richard. He wants to crush him, wants to figure a way to press him into early retirement. I thought you with your press badge might be Boulte's trump card.”

“I swear to you, I've said not one word against Richard or you to anyone, Doctor. Now, I am leaving. You can be assured that I love Richard, and I would do nothing whatever to harm him in any fashion. In fact, I would do all within my power to protect him, if I could. Good day to you, Doctor.”

Culbertson stood tall and straight and proud as she quickly stepped away, leaving Jessica to wonder if Culbertson wasn 't feeding Boulte salacious gossip, then who?

Twenty-four hours later

“We did it. Him and me is what did it,” said Jacob Periwinkle, pointing again to his roommate and so-called partner in murder, Sheldon Hawkins. Periwinkle and Hawkins had said the magic words that might catapult them into the dark and infamous fame of the pantheon of antiheroes and Antichrists who, over a half century now had dominated world news- the serial killers. They meant to join the ranks by claiming to be “team” Crucifier.

Sharpe conducted the interrogation of the self-confessed duo, while Jessica stood behind the one-way mirror alongside Chief Inspector Boulte. While at ease for the moment, Sharpe had been extremely agitated by Periwinkle and Hawkins. Nearby, rocking on the back of a chair that tap-tapped the brick wall, Stuart Copperwaite looked sternly on, not asking any questions, content to allow Sharpe on his feet and pacing, to speak. Only occasionally did Copperwaite break silence to hammer a quesdon home to one or the other of the suspects.

The information imparted at the news conference had spread forth like a fiery cancer, the result a shocking string of confessors claiming their place in history as the crucifixion killers. Most completely mad, but one pair claiming to be “The Crucifier Crew” or 'Team Crucifier” must now be seriously examined, as they voluntarily came in, in tandem, both alleging to be the crucifixion killer “team” as touted by the press.

“They were on their periods, the women, weren't they?” Jacob Periwinkle told them as he asked the question. And it had been true according to one news account. Jessica had volunteered to search all the news stories to understand fully what a confessor might pick up in the media to use to convince authorities of their claims. Facts, details of the crime scene, exacting times, all went into a believable, bankable lie. Between Periwinkle and Hawkins, they had already managed to repeat, verbatim, all they'd seen on TV and read in the newspaper. Bad news and a salacious appetite for it by news-people in radio, TV, and print happened so frequently nowadays that people, jaded to the horror of murder, accepted it as a commonplace, and here in Interrogation Room A-the sweatbox Sharpe called it-the informer who used too many details, told too many exacting stories about how he did what he supposedly did, invariably lied. The truth-tellers, as Sharpe called them, had only one thing in common with pathological liars, and that was the simple matter of “Where do I go from here? Are you taking me to jail or not?” There the similarities died. The false-claims people told an interrogator more than what he asked for. As sure as “dabs”-fingerprints according to Sharpe-body language sent its own message to an experienced interrogator who could read each type, liar and truth-teller. All that is necessary is we show the confessor the dabs and tell him the prints came from the bloody crime scene, and he'll give it up one way or the other, usually. It hadn't been so with the two confessors today, who claimed they used surgical gloves throughout their tormenting and disposing of the bodies.

Sharpe stepped out of the interrogation room for a time, needing fresh air and a moment to collect himself. Seeing Jessica, he said, “I can tell from the change in expression which way an innocent man and a guilty man will react- whether the crime is his or not. These two are bogus, ingenuine article… despite their revelations, none of which my little six-year-old could not have plucked from the tabloids and the legitimate press.”

Knowing most certainly now that Sharpe disbelieved this “tag team” crucifying couple, Periwinkle created a show, clamoring to his feet and making an attempt to grab Copper-waite, who'd remained inside. Sharpe took the opportunity to rush back inside to lash out at the foolhardy man, while warning off the tattered-looking Sheldon Hawkins. Sharpe almost broke Periwinkle's arm, releasing the man only at Copperwaite's intervention.

In the same instant, Chief Inspector Boulte muttered, “There's Sharpe for you. The real man. Take a clear look. He pops off like this more often than not. Not surprised his wife left him.”

Jessica didn't need to hear this coming from Boulte. She wanted to run away from the man. She thought him as dull as a bolt, that Copperwaite had properly surmised all that there was of the chief and his talent.

“It's unfortunate that Richard's time is taken up by these false claimants to the Crucifier's throne.”

“You think so, do you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“For your information, Doctor, several promising leads have already opened up as a result of our cooperation with the press.”

“Really? And I thought it just the opposite, that we're wasting our time interviewing subjects for the latest Ripley's museum or book of the odd and delusional.”

“Still, you must admit that these two birds, that they are… That is, they make a strangely frightening couple, wouldn't you say?”

“What's strangely frightening, sir, and I mean this with all due respect, is how much time we're willing to waste on the usual suspects when this case is not about the usual in any sense of the word. These two men were mental cases before the Crucifixion murders. The press stories actually feed their delusional tendency, legitimizing them, so to speak. Now we are validating them by giving them our time and attention, and then the press will give them the attention of stars, celebrities.”

“All well and good, Doctor, but you work out of a laboratory. The rest of us don't have the luxury to work in a vacuum, as much as we'd like to pretend otherwise. We are held accountable for progress or lack of progress on solving murder cases, and often the cases are, like this one, extremely high profile. We can't duck the press on such sensationalism. It's their bread and butter, and if we fail to cooperate, they crucify us. Ironic, but true.”

“No, the real irony here, sir, is how we've tied our own investigative teams' hands to their backs, as if conditions aren't bad enough to begin with. It's a catch-22 in which the soldier, scraping his knee on landing after jumping from the airplane, whines, moans, and complains about the scraped knee while ignoring the fact his entrails are lying on the ground next to him.”

“What are you implying?”

“Implying? I'm not implying anything. I'm saying outright that we're wasting valuable time on nonsense that will only prove itself nonsense. It's like the proverbial camel-a horse created by committee. The results are not what you want, so much as what you get in the end.”

“Are you making a joke?”

The man's thick-headedness drove Jessica insane inside, and she had no place to put the rage. She tried once more. 'Take the last couple claiming to be the one and only Crucifiers. A man and woman team in a common-law marriage, who explained in vivid detail why they crucified their first victim, how they got a charge out of it, and seeing the hubbub around the discovered body, they claimed to have blended in with the tourists to take the ferry at the bridge.”

“They sounded so convincing at first,” Boulte muttered.

“Yeah, until they got on the ferry. Said they watched from the ferry out on the water while the Yard men were still looking over the body. That has to be a lie.”

“How so?”

“Sharpe and Copperwaite had the ferry traffic held up for over an hour when they arrived, and a thick fog covered them. Finally, neither Sharpe nor Copperwaite or any police remained behind once the body was carted off, so how did the so-called killers see them from the ferTy as it pulled from the dock? I'll tell you how: through gross imaginings.”

“Quite,” agreed Boulte.

“That single detail in error is large enough to tell anyone those two were lying, that they were not in the proximity of the corpse, the boat, or anything to do with the killing since they quote 'watched from the ferry as it left the dock to see how the detectives treated the body.' “

On hearing the lie during his interrogation of the confessing pair, Richard Sharpe had quickly asked, “Oh, you must, of course, mean the return ferry, just coming in, since we held up the outgoing ferry.”

“Yes, yes, that's the one,” volunteered the confessor.

There had been no incoming ferries from across the Thames that time of morning. Even the ferry that Sharpe had heard that gloomy, fog-laden morning was the ferry crossing downriver at another bridge.

When this was pointed out to the confessing couple, both pleaded to be executed together. They wanted the Crown to kill them. That had been their intent all along.

Now this second murder duo of males, Periwinkle and Hawkins, a pair of seedy losers, had become altogether mad, angry, and frustrated in their sad little lives. Jessica, listening in on the interview from behind the one-way, realized immediately that the press, while useful if constructively involved in and committed to the ending of a serial killer's career, failed often to serve a case for a number of reasons, not the least being that a little bit of information in the wrong hands or head, could lead too many people down the primrose lane. Offering a reward often resulted in the same end. Except in this case the reward meant national attention, great notoriety as when People magazine editors chose to splash cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer's face across a cover. “I'm going in there. I have a few questions for these two,” Jessica told Boulte. He did not question her motive, even though she'd just told him that interrogating these men represented a gross waste of time and a wrong direction for the investigation to take. Just as she left the observation room, the thin, dark-haired public prosecutor entered via another door, and Boulte's entire attention went to her. “Ellen!” he falsely beamed.

Once inside the interrogation room, Jessica saw Sharpe's eyes, at first disappointed, as if throwing up a barrier to tell her This is no place for you; it's not safe or right for you to be here. This he quickly replaced with a quick nod, a half-smile, and an urging for her to come in. The moment she entered the interrogation room, she felt the palpable evil here, perhaps the reason that Richard wanted at first to stop her at the door. Evil in all its most excruciatingly toady ugliness resided in one comer in the pockmarked face of Periwinkle, who leaned over to whisper in the cauliflower ear of Hawkins. It were as if they shifted the evil back and forth between them, as if it were a salacious animal or insect. The sensation of it as a palpable, breathing entity here riveted first her sense of smell. Evil cast a noxious odor. It permeated her mouth where it tasted foul, and then found its way through the canals of her ears. Rude and disquieting words were coming from each of the desperate men. Each asked crude questions regarding Jessica's body and presence: “Why is the bitch here? Who is this whore kidding? We know what she wants, four wangs in the room. Wants us all to do her here and now while some other wang the other side of that mirror watches. Don't-cha, whore, bitch, cunt? Answer me, you fucking sweet-and-sour whore bitch.”

Sharpe lashed out at Periwinkle, threatening bodily harm if he didn't “Shut up!” Then he warned Hawkins, followed by a chair he threw across the room.

Jessica now felt the present evil crawl along the epidermal layer of her skin. It crept everywhere about her body at once. It made her feel like the victim in some sickening horror show, and the sight of the two men claiming to be the Crucifiers disgusted her, brought up in her a twisting, coiling hatred. Hissing hatred. Hatred wanting to unleash its venom on them.

Jessica wondered at the sheer depth of her own rage: unreasonably wild, natural, blind, primal, pure, dark, and fatal in the end. Such hatred existed as a natural survival signal for Jessica and other law-enforcement people, but it formed a reason for living for such monsters as Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, and countless others, including the Crucifier.

She wondered how many good and faithful so-called Christians felt this sort of viperlike hatred toward those who did not practice their belief. Wondered if the real Crucifier had this in mind, to bring the nonbeliever into believing, to teach by demonstration and by example, the example being the crucified remains of those who mocked his religion, whatever vision of that religion existed in the killers' heads.

In any event, she felt the cold, hungry, animal hatred pacing Interrogation Room A. It permeated the room. Perhaps part of it belonged to Richard, part of it to Copperwaite-as well as being part of the two men they interrogated. Perhaps hatred fed off all of them, one and the same cowardly jackal, growing in strength as one man's hatred matched the other's, until the jackal became a two-headed, winged beast with homs and hooves and talons. “We become the thing we hate, if we chase it long enough.” How often Asa Holcraft had warned her, and recently Luc Sante had said the same thing to her. Nothing new in the old belief, dating far before the character of Van Helsing in Bram Stoker's Dracula, going back to biblical story and the beginning of time: Pursue evil long enough with enough determination, and you become it, and doesn't it become you? she darkly jested somewhere deep within the regions of her multilayered soul. For part of the evil crouching in the comer resembled Jessica herself.

“I like driving in the nails,” said Sheldon Hawkins, drooling over the image as he spoke the words. “Ja-see, that's my job. Jake here, he bleedin' prays over 'em, after we do 'em. Curly bastard, that's what Jake here is.”

“Prayer wounds all heels!” joked Jacob Periwinkle, a small, obnoxious weasel whose body odor, something akin to hair and hide of the rat, preceded him. Hawkins's most prominent feature filled his face-an enormous beak nose, falconlike in size and appearance. Jessica thought them stark caricatures of the sort that Jim Henson's company portrayed in the Muppetland Band. Both men needed bathing, scrubbing, and grooming. They were like a pair of stray dogs who'd learned to live with their own lice.

“What is the purpose behind your crucifying people?” she asked them. “Why kill people in so brutal a manner? If, in fact, you two committed these horrible acts.”

“Acts? Acts is it, all right, look it up in the Acts of the Apostles six something. Says it all right there,” replied Perwinkle.

“Bloody curly it is, too,” replied Hawkins.

Jessica put it to Perwinkle. “Why don't you educate us, Mr. Perwinkle? Elucidate.”

“All right, I will. Says there in Acts, why's it so hard for you to believe that your God can raise the dead? We wanted to see if God could… raise the dead.” He barked out his laughter. “Come to find out, The Old Fellow wasn't innerrested, I bloody guess.” He laughed more.

“Keep a civil tongue, you animal!” shouted Copperwaite.

“In the name of Christ,” said Periwinkle with a facetious tone as his hand did a flourish and his head gave a slight bow. “That's why we done what we done, right, Hawkins?”

“Codswallop and bullshit, Jake, bullshit. Tell them the real reason,” shouted his partner.

“We don't reveal secrets God 'imself has provided.”

“God speaks to you, then?” asked Jessica.

“Not exactly God,” corrected Hawkins.

“Who then?”

“It's 'im, the bloody one on the cross, it is,” shouted Periwinkle.

Hawkins shouted, “Christ, it's from Christ, you damned fool cuntie! Like to see you all done up on the cross, dearie!”

“Shut that flapper of yours, Hawkins! One more foul word, and I swear I'll strike you dumb,” shouted Sharpe, approaching menacingly with fists clenched and the veins popping out of his neck like taut rope.

Hawkins ignored Sharpe's gallant attempt to spare Jessica foul words. He let out his own shout. “He's coming back! He's come back. He's here, among us now! And this world ain't seen no havoc like what He-the Son of God-will bring down round us all, that's what.” He'd so lost his breath that his last words came out as mere tire-screech utterances.

Rat-boy had begun screaming over Beak-nose, chorusing the words, “Shut up! Shut up, Hawkins! Shut your hole!”

“Christ told us to do it. Christ wants revenge on the Jews for what they did to 'im. That's why we did Burtie Burton. That's it, pure and simple, and He's come to show us what goddamn revenge is really, really like in the first order, I tell you, the revenge of God! The revenge of the Son of God is coming down on all of us, so you'd better stand on His side, whore and whore no more.” He ended with his eyes ablaze and burning into Jessica's eyes, Jessica matching his stare with her own intensity.

'Ten Commandments take on a whole new meaning for you now, don't they, slut?”

Sharpe, acting before Copperwaite could, struck like a snake. He had reached across the table where Periwinkle sat and nearly dragged him across it, shouting, “Shut up your ugly remarks to Dr. Coran! You want to see what revenge looks like up close, you bloody little pipsqueak!”

Copperwaite and Jessica pulled and pried Richard and Periwinkle apart while Sheldon Hawkins laughed maniacally at the scene. Jessica saw now the hatred had firmly rooted itself in Richard's eyes. He let go of Periwinkle and turned from her gaze.

Boulte, tiring of the verbal jousting and circles and anxious to get on the six o'clock news with results, stormed into the room now with the armed guards. He told the guards to take the prisoners back to the holding cells. “It's time we closed this down, Richard. Stuart.” Boulte paced the room now, and even with the two confessors gone, the anger and hatred permeating the interrogation walls, breathing in and out of the very pores of the concrete, had remained behind with the stale and rank odors that had wafted in the wake of the two confessors.

Boulte said outright, “I, for one, heard enough to put those two psychotics away for life.”

Richard stood in his face. “You're drawing at straws, Chief Inspector.”

“Fairly sturdy straws at that. Look, Richard, seems to me we have two viable suspects here, certainly worth pursuing.” Boulte turned to Copperwaite, now leaning against the wall, and Boulte's finger, like a thick-shafted arrow, now pressed into Copperwaite's chest as the chief added, “Get a warrant for the flat, the car they drive, all of it, Stuart.”

'These two are not the killers,” Sharpe firmly said, again inches from Boulte's face. “They're a pair of sorry liars who couldn't tie their shoes if asked to. You turn them over to the cameras, make 'heroes' of them and yourself, sir, and 1 guarantee that you'll be making an enormous mistake.”

“I'll take the heat in the event we're wrong about them. Get the warrant, make the search.”

Jessica, Stuart, and Richard all knew Boulte needed someone to publicly “hang,” no matter the truth of guilt or innocence. The two men not only filled the bill, they fit the costumes: They walked and talked the parts given them by the press. Obviously, Boulte had chosen to overlook the ready clues in their so-called confession that made their tale as farfetched as the “ferry boat” detail in the other confessors' tale. The biblical detail, however, may have proved just the right touch so far as Chief Boulte cared. Never mind the nonsense clues Richard had spent hours digging for, the clues that told them all that the entire confession could be characterized as bogus.

“They tell a compelling story,” Boulte said to the others. “They know all the names of the victims, their histories, their backgrounds, their religious leanings, and where each body was dumped and found. And that remark against the Jews and Burtie BurtonIt all fits.”

Sharpe argued, “They could've gotten all that from the press, and so could my six-year-old daughter from turning on the telly.”

“We'll give them both lie-detector tests, if you are still uncertain,” Boulte determinedly replied.

“While it's obvious that these two people are disturbed, it's not so obvious they committed these crimes,” Jessica put in. “Speaking to them, interviewing them, Luc Sante would say we have just interviewed the Devil at play, but-”

“Luc Sante, Luc Sante,” Chief Inspector Boulte lamented. “I knew you should not have involved him on this case, Richard.” Jessica read into his words, And you shouldn't have involved this lady doctor from America, either. “Luc Sante's managed to so brainwash you two with his little sermons on evil that you don't recognize it when you see it before you!”

Jessica tried to reason with Boulte who stubbornly and tenaciously held to his tunnel vision. Finally, Richard said, “These two buffoons are convinced that they are the killers whom all of Scotland Yard, the press, the public, and the prime minister have sought now for weeks and weeks. Such a conviction lifts their mundane lives and low opinion of one another and self to a higher plane.”

“Now you're a psychotherapist, too, Richard?”

“Of course, they can lay claim to this enormous ripple effect they've caused in society's pond,” agreed Jessica, immediately coming to Richard's defense, understanding his point. “It's alluring to them, and it is quite real. Real enough in here”-she pounded her heart-”that no lie detector test designed can help out here. They are themselves convinced that they are the killers. They are convinced of their own guilt, the guilt of murdering the innocent. Yet they've provided no key evidence here, and their eyes bugged out when we asked about their victims' tongues. TTiey first said they cut them out, and later they chose burning the tongues. They know nothing of this!”

Richard again added to the argument, “You see, Boulte, they are convinced beyond all reason and rationale that they are indeed the Crucifiers whom the world seeks. It makes their miserable lives worth a few pounds to think it so.”

Jessica laughed a hollow laugh. “In becoming the Crucifier with a capital C, they take shape, form, and they become something larger than themselves, something the press has made larger than life, as it so often and thoughtlessly does in America with such madmen as Cunanan, Manson, Bundy, Gacey, Speck, Oswald, Sirhan. As your historians have done with Jack-the-Ripper. Rather than turn the cameras away from these desperate and dangerous sociopaths, the press has given them a stature in death or in incarceration that they never possessed in their miserable little lives. They have elevated them to the status of godlike monsters, capable of great feats of daring and genius, when in fact they are pathetic remnants of passing evil.”

“Now you really are beginning to sound like Luc Sante,” complained Boulte. The Chief stared several times at the two-way mirror, telling Jessica that the public prosecutor had been listening in on them all. “You've been talking too long to that old shrink. Look, we have the finest lie-detector men in the world here.”

“And they will tell you the same as I have. Despite even hypnotism, the subject, if thoroughly convinced on this conscious plane of existence, he remains so on the subconscious level of existence as well. Lie detectors detect subtle nuances in honesty and truth, just as a hot blade bums the dry tongue of the village liar when the witch doctor lays the knife on. If the truth is subverted or overtaken by a rock-solid, all encompassing, life-altering delusion, if you are dealing with an abnormality that is the normality of existence for this person, an aberration that is cause for celebration in this individual, no truth other than the delusional truth will be forthcoming in such a test.”

Boulte squinted, half-smiled, and asked Jessica point-blank, “Are you deliberately trying to confuse me?”

Jessica erupted with laughter. It careened off the walls, out the door, and down the long corridors leading to Boulte's office.

Sharpe grabbed her by the arm, taking her aside, saying, “Dr. Coran has been working extremely hard. She hasn't eaten today, either,” he excused her behavior. To her, he added, “Why don't we have a bite to eat? I know a pleasant place just around the comer, a pub where we can have a pint and a sandwich, since I'm off duty. What do you say?”

“I'm famished and I'm buying, but we haven't finished here. We must convince your chief of-”

“His mind is set, was set before he spoke to us, and he'll remain immovable. We're both wasting our time and energy on the man. Walk away from it, now.”

And so they did, together, leaving poor Copperwaite to deal with Boulte.