Blind Instinct

SIX

They were each and all clothed in robes, their faces shrouded in the manner of supplicating monks. They'd gathered to hear their leader and to determine their next move toward bringing on Christ's new Kingdom on Earth.

The walls were as dark and dingy as their robes; they might have blended into their surroundings had they not been animate. Nearby, the sound of trickling water beat a rhythm, and torches only created glowing circles of light that reached but did not penetrate the blackness of the tunnels all round them.

Like the approach of the year 2001 itself-so terribly long in coming-they shambled nearer, ever nearer with each passing day, hour, ticktock. They feared they'd begun this quest far too late, that there simply would not be time enough to complete the task and bask in the afterglow of accomplishment.

Still they held out hope-faith really-hopeful faith instilled on a daily basis through prayer and their leadership. For hope was ever extended to them, and all of mankind, by God the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.

Their leader also in deep cowl, now gripped the enormous pulpit which stood in the foreground of an ancient wooden cross standing upright, fixed and waiting, a cross empty and waiting for a new Chosen One to take the place of Christ. Some twenty-six followers paid rapt attention to the man at the pulpit, hoping his words would console and lift them up.

He cleared his throat and the sound of it echoed off the weeping walls here. Then he said, “The number four, my children, think of it. Four. That is the number-four. Four represents accomplishment, finality, wholeness. That is the belief of the cabalists and alchemists-religions lost in time, before Christ himself. Yet it holds true, in Christian teaching, that this number is a highly charged, holy number and has been since time's beginning. It represents the four elements, the four stages of life: infancy, youth, midlife, and old age. And so we believe-and so we all believe as one mind-that our fourth crucifixion will provide the answers sought by all: all the answers ever asked by all mankind. The mysteries of the universe revealed to those who believe, and they alone. For it came to pass that they alone sought true and utter purity and rapture. That all others were made blind and dumb to the sound of His voice.”

But dissension, inevitable among even Jesus' followers, invaded the temple. One of their number pointed out, “But we have chosen badly and wrongly.”

A second angry voice cried out, “None of those targeted to die on the cross have been a right and righteous choice.”

“Wrong,” their leader insisted.

“How so, wrong?” pressed a follower, another doubting voice.

He clearly, calmly, evenly pointed out, “In order to find and make the right choice, wrong choices are a necessary part of the process of getting from here to there. God is testing us one and all, my friends. Only through adversity does the spirit enter this world. So only through mistakes and pain and suffering can Christ come to us at this the time of the actual millennium. We were all made fools by thinking it was 2000, but as we now know 2001 is our true millennium.” Another of their number pointed out, “If the integer four means accomplishment, then the integer eight would mean accomplishment twofold, would it not?”

“If it is God's will that we crucify eight whom we choose to go before us, then so be it,” their leader replied sharply. If it take a hundred, then so be it.” The battlelike discussion inside and out of the mosque of mind and the synagogue of soul within their leader had raged now for days.

In the meantime, they'd crucified no one. “We must stop getting in the way,” he told them in simple terms, “in our own way, slowing progress toward any completion. Now, I tell you that the number four is, after all, special, any way we may look at it.”

“So, we look for number four…”

“Number four…”

“Number four,” they took up the chant.

Their leader breathed a bit easier, seeing that his persuasive hold on them and his struggle to maintain control had, for the time being, won out.

“Number four!” he shouted to the earthen ceiling of this place, his enormous voice seeming to shake the huge cross behind him.

Scotland Yard Crime Lab and Postmortem Room

Theodore Burton's body, still as glass, a fishy underbelly-white hue overall, lavender with touches of purple-where bruises had formed-spoke nothing to Jessica. It lay before Jessica hard as linoleum from its time in the cooler, shriveled, and now the sheetlike skin with multiple folds looked back at her as if to say, Go ahead, I challenge you to read anything from this body.

Certainly the body stood in stark contrast to Tattoo Man back in the States. Not a mark on Burton save those obvious and horrid wounds to hands and feet that spoke volumes about exactly how Theodore Burton-the Mole-met his end: stark death via crucifixion.

Standing about the postmortem room, ostensibly to watch over Jessica's shoulder, Boulte and Sharpe showed signs of restlessness. More so Boulte than Sharpe, but Jessica had long stopped paying heed to either man. She did a mental Houdini, making them vanish from both the room and her focus.

Burton had once been heavy, but the thin frame looked as if he'd suffered some debilitating disease late in life, causing both body and face to wither. The punishment to the features seemed obvious to Jessica, and this also contributed to his ferretlike features. One certainty: He'd been completely out of shape, that much the body assured her. Certainly, he was in no shape to withstand the rigors of a crucifixion of many hours. He likely succumbed early to the torturous stress placed on his muscles and lungs.

Jessica found herself staring across the body at a dark-skinned doctor whose height challenged Jessica not to look down on him. His small head and beaky nose gave him the appearance of a rodent, yet his smile appeared genuine. He tried to put her at ease with his name by pronouncing it slowly and carefully as, “A1… just call me Al. It's easier than Al-Zay-don Ray-hill.”

“And I'm Jessica,” she replied, reading his nameplate: dr. al-zadan raehael.

They shook hands and Jessica asked, “Did you check for any signs of cancer, Dr. Raehael?”

“I am assistant M.E. for Dr. Karl Schuller, the attending autopsiest here at Scotland Yard crime lab. Such an order must come from him, unless I have the body. That is, unless it comes to my attention first. Rules, but to answer your question, I rather doubt it.”

“So, no general interest in disease prior to death?”

“Ahhh, no, we did not search for that. I did not, not specifically, no. Dr. Schuller saw no need for that. Mr. Burton died of asphyxiation from hanging for hours on a cross, Doctor.” The last came out in a derisive tone that the genteel Egyptian accent could not mask.

“Hours,” she chorused. “Exactly how many hours did Dr. Schuller surmise?”

“What difference?”

“I merely wondered if he'd been suffering from any malady before his death. If so, perhaps Mr. Burton thwarted the killer.”

“How is it do you mean?”

“Any abnormality may have contributed to a curtailing of the Crucifier's fun and games, as well as to a lessening of the victim's suffering.” On the defensive now, Dr. Schuller's assistant replied, “What good does that information do in circumstances of this nature?”

Jessica examined the assistant more carefully. He was a black-eyed, black-haired little man. Somewhat round, his skin was pockmarked and rough, his attitude both subservient and challenging all at once. The small man's eyes bore into her, watching her every move, suspicious perhaps, and from his tone of voice, obviously unimpressed with her.

Sharpe wanted to hear more on this matter. “We brought Dr. Coran from America because of her reputation, Dr. Raehael.”

“Yes, we have all heard at Scotland Yard how attention to detail is your trademark, Dr. Coran. However, the man's illnesses or lack of illnesses-had we done tests to ascertain either-hardly contributed to his slow, heinous, and torturous death. Does your FBI still rank the degree of torture to the victim as the most important fact in prosecuting offenders?”

Evasive fellow, Jessica thought even as she replied. “We still have a torture chart with levels to plot out the extent of torture endured by a victim, yes. This would-given the amount of time the victim suffered-be calculated in the upper levels, something of a tort nine, perhaps even a ten.”

Sharpe directed the conversation back on course, telling Raehael, “Dr. Coran didn't say that Burton's condition and health before his crucifixion would have contributed to his death, quite the contrary,” corrected Sharpe. “What Dr. Coran is suggesting, if I'm hearing her correctly, is that Burton may have died a less torturous death-at least in terms of time in suffering-if he were in a weakened condition to begin with.”

“That about sums it up,” Jessica agreed.

Sharpe continued for Raehael's sake while the small, dark man nodded appreciatively and in silence. “The healthier our victim, in this case, the more time on the cross. Is that not what you're saying, Dr. Coran?”

“Precisely.” Jessica bit back her anger at the complacency of the assistant M.E. and turned her attention back to the deceased, wondering why the dead man spoke to her-even in his serene and solemn silence-more intelligently than the living man standing across from her. Still, the body, like a ship with a hardened outer shell now, defied the scalpel- defied her as well-to unlock its secrets. Secrets locked away in a dark chamber called death. Nothing new in and of itself, but something more seemed at play here. Something grimly pleasant about the dead man's expression also defied logic; he appeared at absolute peace.

As if reading her thoughts, Sharpe broke in with, “Odd, that expression on his face, wouldn't you say, Doctor?”

“Death wears any number of masks,” she replied, reminding herself of a favored Holcraft quote: “Even bodies with the rictus smile-that ugly, snakelike crease-had nothing whatever to do with the victim's frame of mind, as it was a natural alignment of the muscles of the jaw that occurred in not all but many cases of death. “So why should a pleasant smile be questioned any more than a horrid smile?

She almost heard the long-silenced voice of her old teacher and mentor, Dr. Asa Holcraft, mimicking her thoughts as if standing alongside her. Now she knew she needed to get more sleep.

Still, like a persistent hologram, Holcraft's apparition stood nodding his pleasure at her concern. He agreed with her, up to a point, but then he had also always staunchly maintained, “A strong spiritual element, a filamentlike thread of spirit, remains even in the decaying corpse. “

Asa had always believed that spirit resided not only in the living but also in the dead. He had felt that at least some semblance of the spirit remained, and this spirit remnant could be found, perhaps understood, if only the doctor gave enough of himself or herself over to the task. Holcraft had even believed that it was the job of the M.E. to hold firm and seek out all spiritual connection between medical examiner and corpse, even in severe cases of fire, bombings, and explosive airplane crashes.

“So what of the crucified?” she muttered aloud.

“What?” asked Sharpe.

“Oh, nothing.” Jessica also believed that some spirit element hovered about the body, doing all it could to communicate with the pathologist. She believed it the key element in so many of her instinctual leaps of faith in discerning the true nature of a crime. She owed a great deal to Asa for that.

She recalled just how good Holcraft had been as a teacher and as a medical examiner. He had had her looking for spirits in every cadaver she handled. “Some of the spirits you'll find not to your liking, others tender,” he had once confided with a Kriss Kringle twinkle in his eyes, his white beard bobbing up and down.

She focused in again on the body itself, seeing the familiar, large, Y-shaped scar from each shoulder to the groin area, the universal Y-cut, understood by every mortician and pathologist and medical examiner. Dr. Schuller's work greeted Jessica every step of the way; the autopsiest had already taken samples and weights of all the major organs during the initial autopsy, but the toxicological and medical tests that Schuller ran had been, by Dr. Schuller's own admission, limited to a few serum and toxicology reports. No one had run a full workup on the cadaver. Such tests ran up bills… and Burton was no member of the Royal elite. No going the extra mile for Burtie.

Dr. Karl Schuller, while not present, made his presence felt throughout this crime lab like a well hung, saturated blanket. The paperwork on Burton felt rushed. She wondered if he had any prejudice against Burton, if it at all entered into the man's work over the body of Theodore Burton, who had been bom Emil Burlinstein. She feared that Dr. Karl Schuller hadn't been as thorough as he might have been in such a capital murder case. Still, Jessica doubted that raising such questions could be of any possible use at this late date. It might be best at this point to leave it alone. If she did pursue the issue of shoddy work in the Scotland Yard crime lab, she would do so vigorously, as Holcraft whispered in her ear; “Order a full toxicological and tissue mapping of the cadaver to determine the condition of the man's body, health, and well-being. Frequently, what is central to the cause of death, existed before death. Often, such total, complete, and expensive measures added some nuggets of information otherwise lost to an investigation, and just as often the effort netted nothing. “Something troubling you, Doctor?” asked Sharpe near her ear. “Yes, something is nagging at me about the sudden loss of weight signaled by the folds of loose skin.”

“I see.”

“A forensic profiler often begins with the physical as well as the mental health of the victim.”

“So, you surmise that perhaps Burton's state of mind had something to do with the way in which he met his end?”

“And if his body had been in a shutdown mode, then perhaps this led him to some extreme measures in search of a cure. Perhaps in search of miracles and miracle drugs, the man reached out in desperation.”

“Which led him down a particularly nasty lane.”

“As perhaps it did in the cases of Lawrence Coibby and the Crucifier's first victim, the woman.”

“O'Donahue.”

“Maybe all three, for instance, sought out medical help at the same clinic or pharmacy. If each had been lured into some sort of web, partially of the victim's own spinning due to ill health or depression, then perhaps somewhere along the complex of each life-web, they crossed paths, and if I-or we, rather-can find some interconnecting thread…”

Schuller, the man who'd prepared all the slides and gathered all the minutia on Theodore Burton's body, had been notified of Dr. Coran's interest. He now came belatedly through the door from his Kensington address to confer with the famous American medical examiner.

Dr. Karl Schuller, nodding familiarly to Dr. Raehael, Chief Inspector Boulte, and Inspector Sharpe, now introduced himself to Jessica. His eyes were unblinking as he buoyantly proclaimed, “Welcome to the lab of the Nazi death-master.” He added, “That's what they call me upstairs. Behind my back, of course, right Inspector Sharpe? Chief Boulte, right?” He waited for no answer from either Sharpe or Boulte who fumbled with words to reply. Schuller continued on instead with, “Yes, I am the official 'death-master' here, you will find. All responsibility for this lab falls on my shoulders.” He smiled cordially at Jessica, and with a slight bow and a slight edge to his German accent-an accent he'd worked hard to master-he said for her benefit, “If there is anything at all I can do for you to make your investigation simpler, please do not hesitate to ask.”

“Thank you, Dr. Schuller. I'll certainly avail myself of your hospitality.” Jessica summed him up as he spoke: stiff, uncompromising, proud, angry at her having been called in on his case to lend him assistance and not at all wishing to be in the least help to her, his mildly German accent masked by his British tongue.

The cadaver had been washed clean, the wounds hardly as ghastly as those seen in the crime-scene photos, now that the crucifixion holes had had time to sink in on themselves. The holes in the hands and feet, however, were large enough and gruesome and strange enough to warrant Jessica's undivided attention. She snatched a large magnifying glass on a swivel arm and placed it between her eyes and the crucifixion wound to the right hand.

Soon her silence, her intense scrutiny, made Schuller and Boulte particularly uneasy. She felt Schuller stiffen even more, and she felt Boulte's body language behind her where he rocked nervously from his heels to the balls of his feet and back again, clearing his throat, and finally excusing himself, telling Richard Sharpe in a tone loud enough for all, “I have bushels of ancient paperwork awaiting upstairs.”

Jessica guessed that Boulte must be thinking better of ever having asked her out, and that there would likely be no second attempt. For this she felt grateful.

Boulte promptly said, “I'll leave you four to it then, Richard, Doctors. Oh, and Richard, do keep me informed, please.”Jessica quickly, efficiently moved on with her investigation, reading notes into a small tape recorder she'd used on many such errands. “Noting the otherwise unhealthy appearance of the deceased, and having read Dr. Schuller's detailed autopsy report on the victim, Theodore Burton, it appears the victim died of asphyxia due to crucifixion torture. Holes in hands and feet measuring three-fourths to an inch in diameter were fitted with stakes recovered from railroad yard rail ties. My own findings are consistent with Dr. Schuller's findings.” She knew that her final remarks put Schuller somewhat at ease. Even Sharpe seemed to relax his stiff posture. Her words were designed for that effect.

“Are you quite satisfied, then?” asked Schuller. “Of my diagnosis?”

Jessica continued to probe the body with the movable magnifying glass, the arm outstretched like the leg of a robotic praying mantis. She searched for the telltale signs of puncture marks mentioned in the reports. She found them in both thighs, the abdomen, and the rump.

“He appears to have been shooting up pretty regularly. Diabetic, you think?”

“No, he wasn't shooting insulin. He was shooting up drugs-a wide variety from the look of his blood scan.”

“So he was an addict?”

“Exactly.”

“Did anyone check for diabetes?”

“There was no need after the drug findings and the gaping wounds to the hands and feet,” countered Schuller, his guard up again like a shield.

Jessica dropped the subject of the obvious oversight. “What about the other two victims? Any evidence of drugs other than Brevital used in subduing them?”

“Matter-of-fact, yes. It's the one common denominator found in all three cases, but then, given the pervasive presence of drugs in London society nowadays… Well, there you have it. No great shock. Rather think it should come as no surprise to an experienced forensics person like yourself,” Schuller said, his tone turned slighdy condescending.

“You think a lifestyle of habitual drug use had anything to do with their becoming victims?” On either side of the Atlantic the thinking was the same-most victims of violent death lived lives that courted such disasters. For the most part she couldn't deny that it held true, but the argument also lost in the end like blaming the rape on the raped woman. No one deserved murder or to be scammed out of their life's savings because they acted out of a desperation brought on by illness or old age. Still no one, coroners, pathologists, and medical examiners included, was without his or her prejudices. It sounded to Jessica, if she accurately read between the lines, that Schuller had an aversion to druggies.

Despite the choice of lifestyle, she maintained silently in her head that the victim did not nail himself to a cross. He did not kill himself. The victims were killed by someone of superior strength and cunning, possibly someone taking full advantage of the victims' weakest of weaknesses.

“Those who live by the needle, you know,” Schuller added, confirming Jessica's assessment of the good doctor. “Inspector Sharpe can attest to it. We've all seen it. An addict necessarily must associate with the dregs of society, those even lower on the food chain than the addict… The slightest something goes wrong and it's execution time.”

“I can't see a drug dealer crucifying addicts for nonpayment of debt, sorry,” Jessica replied, unable to listen to Schuller's nonsense any longer without comment. “Did you examine the female victim for signs of diabetes or other life-threatening diseases?”

“I urged you to do exactly that,” Sharpe said to Schuller.

Schuller shook his head. “All of them died not of disease but of evil mishandling. Someone cut off their oxygen supply to watch them die slowly and torturously. End of forensic story.”

“Did you check the woman for signs of sexual battery?” asked Jessica.

“Yes, and there were none.”

“Small favors,” she muttered, her hands now lifting Burton's punctured left foot closer to the magnifying glass. “What about souvenirs? Did the killer or killers take anything from the woman's body? Anything cut off and gone missing from any of the three bodies?”

“Nothing of the sort,” replied Schuller.

“I see, and the men, both intact.”

“Nothing stolen, save the breath of life.”

“So unusual,” she murmured thoughtfully.

“What's that?” asked Sharpe.

“That the killer should not retain something of his conquests, something of a souvenir. A token to memorialize the moment, a keepsake, say like some of the hair, a hand, a sex organ, an internal organ, the heart, something to mark the occasion, to lift from his box of memorabilia to relive the moment at some later date.”

Schuller lifted his chin high and said, “I assure you that Burton and the others were totally and wholly intact, not so much as a hair disturbed, other than the brutality done them as you see before you, Dr. Coran.”

She nodded and addressed Sharpe. “Could be part of the killer's fantasy, to send them over whole and intact… as pure as he can make them, perhaps. Still, the killer may've made videotapes to commemorate their-”

“Videotapes?” Raehael was aghast.

“A perfectly awful thought,” said Sharpe. “You do think like a killer, don't you. Dr. Coran?”

'Tapes of their deaths,” she repeated. “Remember, Christ hung on the cross for what, minimum three hours before he expired? Lot of time for photographs and videotape. Many serial killers collect pictures of the event.”

“If we imagine it all had to do with some sort of religious fantasy, involving the crucifixion-the blood, oil, and the water, all having rejuvenative powers, according to biblical symbolism-then any mutilation of the body, such as taking of a body part, might well interfere with the reanimation, the resurrection as it were. Do you suppose the killer or killers think they have the power to resurrect the dead?”

“It's a possibility, yes. Nothing's too fantastic for the fevered, psychotic mind.”

Richard nodded. “All sounds logical in a twisted way, of course.”

“If that is the case, it must've hurt the killer's sense of order and cleanliness to see the O'Donahue woman's body ran over,” she commented.

“I'm sure,” agreed Sharpe. “However, I do hope we can hurt the bastard in more places than his sensibilities.”

“I suppose it does sound foolish to speak of a killer's sense of order. But a killer like this one who premeditates, prescribes, stalks, plans out his kill. Inspector, is certainly concerned with a sense of orderliness and conduct in what he does.” She momentarily wondered whether or not J. T. back at home was having any luck with Tattoo Man's case. Now there was a case involving a deadly planning out of every detail. She wondered what, if anything, the two disparate cases might have in common.

Sharpe near-whispered, “Do you think we can catch this madman anytime soon?”

“In time. All in due time, Inspector.” He set his jaw and nodded. “Are we finished here? She considered the pros and cons of asking that Burton's body be tested for disease of every sort. What might it net, what problems would it cause between the British doctors and herself? She finally said, “Yes, all done. These gentlemen have done a thorough job of it.”

But the spirit in the corpse didn't think so, for slowly, almost imperceptibly, the swollen dead tongue, bloated to near bursting, parted the smiling lips and peeked out like a cautious gray gecko. The tongue kept moving now that it had parted the lips, moving as if independent of the body, as if it remained somehow alive. Forward it came, of its own accord, to lie over the lower lip where it stopped.

“What in God's name?” whispered Sharpe.

“Never seen anything like it,” added young Dr. Raehael.

“Not unusual in my experience,” Jessica said, albeit unnerved. Such artificial life movements in the dead always caused a ripple of fear in anyone looking on. The tongue made Burton's already distorted features an impious gargoyle's snicker. The overall effect made Burton a macabre clown poking fun to both startle and taunt all in the room.

Schuller, although curious, kept a straight face, while Jessica grabbed for the large magnifying glass on its swivel arm and focused it on the tongue, asking, “Had you seen this swelling before?” She wondered if it were not indicative of some exotic disease.

“Yes, it was mentioned as an addendum to my report,” countered Schuller.

Jessica, not knowing why, found a pair of large forceps and pulled the tongue as far as the corpse would allow her, staring at the decaying, bloated thing for some time before she lifted it to stare at the underside, and there she found something that made them all gasp-some sort of brand.

“Son-of-a Bristol whore,” said Sharpe. “Oh, pardon, Dr. Coran, but what the deuce is it?”

Schuller couldn't hide his confusion, nor the shakiness where he stood on the balls of his feet across from Jessica, staring at the blackened flesh. He finally asked, “Is it some sort of emblem?”

“Lettering…”

“What's that?”

“It appears to be lettering of some sort, but I can't make it out. Was there anything of the sort on the other two bodies?”

“No, some swelling of the tongue, but no… no branded letters on the underside of the tongues, no,” replied Schuller. “But then…”

“But,” Jessica finished for him, “there'd been no reason to look below the tongue, right?”

“Exactly, and what with the understaffing here and the overworked help…”

Sharpe, more interested in the message than the verbal jousting between doctors, firmly asked, “Can you make out what it says?”

“Small lettering. Guy had to use jeweler's tools or tattoo parlor tools or a hot brand to make this happen,” Jessica replied, again thinking there may well be some connections unforeseen between Tattoo Man and the crucified dead here in London.

Sharpe, craning to see, demanded, “You can read it with the glass, can't you, Dr. Coran?”

“It's partially obliterated from where the integrity of the skin has collapsed in on itself, but the first letter appears to be M.”

“Anything else?”

“M-i-h-i,” she slowly read, each letter qualified by her tentative tone, like someone reading a chart in an optometrist's office. “I think, but don't hold me to it. And the message goes on.”

“Saying what?” Sharpe bent over her shoulder now, trying desperately to have a look, pushing against her, close enough that she could smell his cologne. “Can't say without closer examination.”

“What will that require?”

“What I really must do is cut out the tongue, strip the skin, and place it beneath electron microscope magnifica-”

“Ironic… Cut out his tongue? The man made a living with that tongue,” said Dr. Schuller, sounding disturbed.

“There's more to the message, Doctor,” she countered.

“I realize that, but suppose it's a mere affectation, say as you suggest, like a tattoo or tongue piercing, and all your time in cutting and searching for linguistic evidence is ail a blind corridor?”

“Sharpe, it's your investigation,” she said. 'Tell us what you want.”

“You're certain there's more to the message?”

“Absolutely, but the only way to get at it is to remove the tongue, spray it with a fixative and fillet it flat, and skin the portion with the message. It's the only way we can tell the age of the brand and whether or not it came about when he was still alive or after death.”

“What the bloody hell does Mihi mean?” Sharpe wondered aloud.

No one in the room knew the answer.

“Sounds kinda Hawaiian to me,” Jessica said. “Have you a linguistics expert on call?”

“We do. Father Luc Sante. He's a Catholic priest as well.”

“Get him in here, then. I think Mr. Burton has made one thing clear. He wants to tell us something after all, and here I'd judged him wrong, thinking him stonily silent.”

“I caution you not to rush headlong into this decision, Richard,” Schuller said, putting a hand on Sharpe's shoulder and stepping him aside to huddle and whisper like boys playing football.

Schuller's assistant-the marble black eyes appearing a bit droopy and unfocused from a definite lack of sleep or no lack of drugs-nervously swallowed and tried to find anywhere to look but into Jessica's eyes. His demeanor said, “Yes, we royally screwed up here,” but he kept the words to himself. Sharpe suddenly walked away from Schuller, his teeth set, his jaw squared. Then he announced in clear defiance of Schuller, “Fillet the damned tongue.”

This made the other men laugh nervously. Jessica snatched out her scalpel case. Using the stainless-steel scalpel her father had given her when she graduated from medical school, she tugged at the tongue with forceps in one hand and worked to slice it off with the other. As usual, removing a tongue proved no easy task, as the last fibrous threads stubbornly held on. Finally, with two quick flicks of her wrist, Burton's tongue lay in her hand like a baby trout.

“Short of peeling the skin, I'll try filleting the tongue and sectioning it as thinly as possible to fit below the eyepiece of the largest microscope you have, Dr. Schuller. I don't think we'll need to bombard it with electrons, so we won't need the electron microscope. That would only destroy the physical evidence anyway.”

“Evidence of what?” Schuller remained skeptical.

Jessica went about the business of sectioning. She examined the other words of the small, cryptic message below the lens of a huge microscope that Schuller's assistant had pointed out to her. She read aloud what she saw before her. “P-no, it's a b-followed by e-a-t something mater.” She then read aloud the entire message, “Mihi be eat a mater.”

“Sounds like Greek,” said the Egyptian assistant.

“More likely Latin,” replied Sharpe. “Something about beautiful or blessed mother, mater being mother, and if you put the b and the eat and an a together, it's beata, beautiful or quite possibly blessed. Blessed mother, which pertains, of course, to Mary, Mother of Christ,” explained Sharpe, qualifying with, “But don't quote me. Father Luc Sante… he would know, most certainly. We've used him in cases before, often cases involving psychotics. He's a psychotherapist as well.”

Stuart Copperwaite appeared from nowhere at Jessica's shoulder, asking, “What's this?”

Jessica was startled into dropping the portion of slippery tongue she'd balanced beneath the microscope lens, only to further obliterate the message. “Sonofabitch,” she muttered under her breath. “Damnit,” she more clearly cursed and stared at Stuart Copperwaite whose shoulders lifted like those of a puppet on a string.

“I am sorry,” he pleaded, trying to help her lift the slippery fish from the floor, but managing only to cause more havoc.

“Will you just back off?” she shouted.

Copperwaite gasped and backed away as she had asked.

The message had been ripped and torn and parts of it were down the drain on the floor where it had splattered.

“We may have to exhume the other bodies to have a clearer look at this,” she pointedly said to Sharpe. Then Jessica turned to Dr. Raehael and said, 'Take a few photos of what remains of the wording, Doctor.”

The little Egyptian nodded, his mouth agape, displaying good teeth.

“O'Donahue's tongue can't be intact after all this time. Maybe Coibby, but I doubt it,” Schuller thought openly and loudly. “Soft tissue decay.”

“Coibby then!” Jessica firmly replied. “We've got to know what we're chasing after in the dark, and this, gentlemen, is the first bit of light we've had. It may prove a false light, but for now, it behooves us to treat it as a divine light, a gift.”

“Right you are, Doctor,” agreed Sharpe. “If the others have this same mark on their tongues, then it originated, most likely, with the killer. I shall see to the exhumation order personally.”

Shouldn 't have released the damned bodies to begin with, Jessica thought. The thought colored her features, but she withstood the desire to throw it into Schuller's now less than smug face. “As for me, I'd like to find that hotel room you promised, Inspector Sharpe. Get some rest, maybe a bite.”

“Absolutely. I'll see a car is waiting for you. Doctor.”

With that, Jessica tore from the postmortem room, ripping her surgical mask and gown away, tossing them into a large, green hamper. Her mind played over the possible single clue left them by the killer. The words Mihi beata mater reverberated in a chant, a tight, enticing, rhythmic chant.