Copperwaite and the others watched as Sharpe found a matchbox and finally lit his pipe tobacco.
“Can we assume that, Colonel Sharpe?” asked Copperwaite, using Sharpe's military salutation for the men all round to hear.
“Will you stop calling me 'Colonel.' Makes me out to be an old fart in front of the chaps.”
“Sure, Sharpie, sorry.”
“Not so sorry as that bridgeman when I get my hooks into him.” Sharpe stormed off to climb the spiraling ladder that would take him to the only so-called eyewitness left to deal with. He snatched his now-lit pipe from his mouth and shouted from the third rung of the ladder, “Stuart, see what you can do to locate that bloody American tourist. We must question him.” He silently cursed the bobbie beside Stuart for having allowed the tourist to continue on his merry way. Then he concentrated on what remained of the ladder, grateful that he had worked out at the gym the day before.
FBI Headquarters, Quantico, Virginia Two days later
Dr. Jessica Coran, FBI forensic pathologist for the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico, Virginia, paced her office, staring at the crime-scene photos of a particularly gruesome murder in which a man had been literally torn to death by rabid dogs. Police in New Jersey believed that the man was a murder victim, that the dogs had been the weapon. She and her team awaited shipment of the body, a man with full-body tattoos but not a trace of identification, having been stripped of wallet and clothing after the attack. The victim had no pockets, as the street cops would say.
Jessica, her hazel eyes dancing with the soft office light, had loosened her auburn hair to let it flow. She now studied the photos of the dead man, holding them up to the light when her phone beeped. Her secretary's voice followed. “Dr. Coran, I have a call that you really must—”
“I left word I wasn't to be disturbed, Gloria!” Jessica firmly replied. “I need a couple of hours.”
“But... but this is a call from New Scotland Yard, an Inspector Sharpe, something to do with a ... a crucifixion murder over there?”
“A crucifixion murder?” Jessica flashed on a newspaper account of a body discovered in some park in England, a woman whose body had shown the unmistakable signs of having been literally crucified. She realized the call must have something to do with that. “All right, put it through,” she relented.
Inspector Richard Sharpe introduced himself, asking if she might inform him what she knew of murder by crucifixion. “We're still waiting on a final autopsy protocol on the murder, and as yet the victim has not been identified, you see.”
Jessica loved the accented words, and his voice. “I see, and how might... What do you wish from me?”
“I am seeking your expertise and any information you can share on death by crucifixion.”
“Ahhh, I see, now it's come to this, Dial-an-Autopsy.”
“I've read that you are an extraordinary medical examiner. I'm fishing, as you Yanks would say. At this point all we know is that the woman died of her wounds, sustained from what appears a ritualistic killing.”
“Then you are already wrong.”
“Pardon? But that much is obvious,” railed Sharpe. Jessica Coran countered, saying, “If she hung from a cross for any length of time, and from the sound of her wounds— I've heard talk over the Internet about the case and the gaps where gravity did its work around the spikes—then I must assume she died of asphyxiation, not her crucifixion wounds.”
Sharpe, taken so much aback that he now fumbled for words, finally replied, “Asphyxia? How do you bloody get that from her wounds?”
“Any postmortem man worth his salt will tell you that crucifixion means great stress placed on the breathing apparatus.”
“Breathing apparatus?”
Jessica allowed a short, annoyed breath to escape into the receiver. “It has to do with the weight placed against the lungs until the victim can no longer support the effort it takes to breathe.”
“Is that so? I never knew it.”
“It has to do with the arms having been extended over the head for so long a period, and gravity's downward pull on the body, until the chest literally crushes in on its own vital organs.”
“My God, then it's worse still than we've believed.”
“You know how the infamous Elephant Man died when they found him in bed, unable any longer to support the weight of his own enormous head? He could not lift the weight from his chest as he slept, so he died of asphyxiation.”
“Yes, of course every schoolchild in London knows the story.”
“Then imagine crucifixion as infinitely worse and infinitely slower in killing the victim.”
“And the killer ... Whoever did this to her? You suppose he knows precisely ... how she ... that is, what killed her ... How much distress she must have experienced?”
“I should think he knows all there is to know about crucifixion. Why else choose such an unusual and torturous method of disposing of your Jane Doe?”
“Out of some sense of outrage, perhaps? Perhaps she cheated on him with ... a priest?”
“Yes, well there is that possibility. There are all manner of possibilities.”
“Would you, Dr. Coran, be interested in consulting on the case?”
“Absolutely. Anything I can do, don't hesitate. I'll give you my E-mail address. Obviously you have my phone number.”
“That would be superb, and look for me to contact you again soon. Thank you, Dr. Coran, for the information. I've already gleaned more from you than our own death investigator here.”
“Karl Schuller,” she said.
“You know Dr. Schuller?”
“Only by reputation.”
“Aye, he has that.”
Jessica sensed a touch of sarcasm in the inspector's final remarks. She hung up, giving thought to New Scotland Yard's strange case of the crucified woman. However, she had a lab full of problems and issues this side of the Atlantic to deal with, and she promptly returned to them.
London underground Same day
Through the crucifixion and the resurrection, he and the collective would come to find Christ on His return in the year 2001 during the true millennium, which hovered over all of life, time, and space now. Poised now, the coming end of life on Earth as mankind had come to know it, accept it, and to generally assume it.
The crucifixion lived vividly in their collective mind. They were all of one mind now and forever. This pleased the mind they shared, and it pleased him, their leader.
They found—and rightly so—that even with failed resurrections, after each new crucifixion, they had grown in strength, resolve, and a sense of power and well-being, and so the collective marched onward as if to war in the battle as Christ's good and stalwart soldiers, shoulder to shoulder, hand to hand, will to will.
“In the name of the Father,” they chanted their mantra, “and in the name of the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”
They longed to complete what they'd begun, realizing that all must step cautiously; but when the time came, all would be revealed to everyone, indeed to the world.
After all, the true millennium cometh... The year 2001 loomed before all of mankind, and with it the Second Coming as prophesied by the Bible itself and by God Himself. Soon they would be among Them—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. For He and His Son would return to smite the insidious evil of the species.
The collective meant to be part of the glorious Second Coming. They had been told—a whisper from God and His legion of saints—to do His bidding. They need only to find the Chosen One, see to His crucifixion, and watch for the dead to rise. Again the Kingdom of Heaven would be proved to be the mightiest of all powers in the universe, and thus the blood of the world would fuse into a single, great ocean from which new life would come—reborn, rejuvenated, revitalized, all sin at ground zero. It meant the Rapture and the end of the world as mankind knew it. But first they must find Him, the Son of God, in whatever guise He chose. Of one thing the collective mind was certain, that however
He came—whether it be in the form of a woman, a man, or a child—He would make Himself known to the Chosen few who worshipped Him as none other on Earth had ever worshipped Him before. He would show Himself by once again ascending the cross and rising again in a glorious new resurrection.
God had told their leader so, and their leader exuded purity, piety, honesty, accuracy, correctness, and absolute power— so much so that he could not be questioned in his motives. Nor could he ever be denied, nor ever be accused of wrongdoing or unjust or unholy thoughts.
His thoughts, channeled as they were from God the Father, could not be denied. His thoughts were pure, his motive was to combat evil as he found it, where he found it.
This life stood for something. This man lived the exemplary life of pure goodness.
The fact that the first choice for crucifixion hadn't resulted in resurrection did not deter either him or his followers. They together stood in the shadow of God, and God made it clear that, while they could not fully comprehend or fathom His plan, a plan for Katherine O'Donahue and a plan for them all did indeed exist. He promised that Katherine's sacrifice must lead to more such sacrifices until the purest of heart stepped forward to accept the cross as reward and redemption for all mankind.
Their leader reminded them that what they'd done to Katherine O'Donahue was preordained, that despite the fact that her resurrection hadn't come about, they had succeeded in following the wishes and whispers of the Supreme Being. Katherine remained part of a larger plan. They were told they mustn't for a moment think that they worked for God out of primordial fear but rather from a timeless, ageless, and untainted faith.
-TWO -
Cave ab homine unius libri—Beware the man of one book.
—Isaac D'Israeli, Curiosities of Litera ture
FBI Crime Lab, Quantico, Virginia September 21, 2000
When Dr. Jessica Coran first heard of the body in the Chesterfield, New Jersey, junkyard she'd had no idea that it would hold so much fascination for her and her team. Nor did she anticipate the red tape and confusion in shipping the body that would delay its arrival for ten days. But here it lay now on her cutting slab, the most intriguing and colorful body she had ever cut into. Even after the rents and tears, even in death, and even after freezing—the body had been shipped in a refrigerated truck along with an array of needed supplies and chemicals—even after all this, she found the complete, head-to-toe tattoo artwork covering the murder victim mesmerizing.
Indeed, this utter fascination with the intricate detail and artistic lines depicting a myriad of symbols, animals, plants, and teeming insect life, as well as bizarre, alien life-forms, all went toward Jessica's dilemma. She hated destroying the artwork that was this “body electric” any further than it had already been obliterated by some hundred-plus gaping wounds, dog bites. The vicious dogs, long since destroyed by local New Jersey police, had torn away whole patches of the masterwork. One of the man's arms had been completely chewed off, the limb having been packed in the ice-coffin that John Doe traveled in.
Initially the dice-up work had been fast and easy because the body remained bricklike, and a frozen cadaver made for easier sectioning for microscopic analysis, be it the brain or any other major organ.
Jessica and John Thorpe—J. T. to his friends—both found it difficult to hold back, to allow their two young assistants, Kenneth Holbrook and Yon Chen to do the precision work with the new laser technology that allowed for efficient sections to be cut from the major organs. Both Holbrook and Chen eagerly passed the laser—connected to the latest computer-imaging software available—between them. Each assistant took separate organ cuts with mouths agape, both learning as the laser dissected John Doe's internal organs.
They soon finished the laser work, and J. T. instantly quizzed the neophytes, asking, “All right, now that you have sections of every major organ, Holbrook, Chen, what's next?” J. T. held the laser in his hand now, gently returning the wand back to its cradle attachment on the computer monitor.
Almost in tandem, like cartoon characters, Holbrook stammered an “I think ... I think ...” while Chen immediately said, “Blood and seminal fluid workup, I think.”
“Excellent, but none of that I think stuff. Every time anyone says those two words, it means they don't really know what they think. It's both a qualifying of your answer and a stalling tactic. It also makes you sound stupid. 'I think,' 'in my opinion,' 'it is my feeling.' Forget it. Simply state your facts without all the introductory stammering. Right, Holbrook?” replied J. T.
“I think so.”
“Damnit,” muttered J. T. as Jessica helplessly laughed behind her mask.
J. T. frowned, recalling how he'd earlier had the same discussion with Jessica because he'd seen and heard the president of the United States sounding silly by prefacing every damned remark at a news conference on NATO with I think. Jessica, for the benefit of the tape recording, loudly ordered a complete fluid workup, from semen to sweat, along with blood toxicology, all dissection and section work on the rack of organs called the viscera having been completed. Holbrook had logged in weight and appearance of each viscus as it had been surgically removed. Now with every laser cut, each slice coming off like a thin, large portion of salami, Chen bagged and labeled John Doe's specimens, using the number given her by the computer: case # 348-119-2000.
As they worked and time ticked by, day turning to night, Jessica and J. T. discussed the recent frozen body of a prison inmate who had wanted to give something back to society, and so he had left his body to science—to the science of forensic medicine in particular. Out of this had come phenomenal new computer software, already proving invaluable to physicians everywhere.
The young interns had also heard the news, but they had no idea that the computer-imaging software they'd just used was the result of that unselfish act on the part of one lone prison inmate, a man named Albert Lawrence Kurlandinsky. Kurlandinsky had made headlines initially by one day walking calmly into his place of work—a JCPenney distribution warehouse—with a high-powered rifle. He opened fire on fellow employees and bosses, a spree murderer with sixteen maimed and seven deaths on his head.
“The software was created when Kurlandinsky's body experienced postmortem freezing in a cryogenics chamber. Frozen rock-hard solid in order that every inch of his body— from crown to toe—could be cut into cross sections,” explained Jessica. “Then each section was scanned into the computer.”
“The entire body?” young, petite Chen chirped, birdlike.
“Like a stack of large, oddly shaped poker chips,” supplied J. T.
Flashing on their ill-fated trip to Las Vegas a few years back, Jessica thought it just like J. T. to use a gambling metaphor. She continued saying, “Now that each section of an entire human body is filmed and on computer, scientists and autopsiests, such as we, benefit by seeing, for the first time in history, the human organs in three-dimensional form from top to bottom in successive sections.”
“All in 'living' color,” J. T. happily added, “so now you can call up any organ, and the computer will give you a full three-dimensional look at it.”
Today's John Doe autopsy benefited from the inmate's generosity, and certainly Jessica did, as the new imaging software saved hours in the lab. A simple, straightforward autopsy could be completed in an hour, but one faced untold complications whenever opening a cadaver and rummaging about in the cranium and below the breastplate. With the new technology, she didn't have to cut so many sections; she could use the templates created by the software to see if the victim's organs proved oversized, overweight, distended, ballooned up, too small, shriveled or lacking in proper color, texture, diseased or healthy. If an organ checked out against the software, then there was no need to cut any sections, because the computer wand had just told the computer brain that the measurements figured accurately. But whenever an organ didn't fit the profile as determined by the computer, a cute little Daffy Duck
who-who laugh sounded an alarm. The alarm notified the people doing the autopsy that sections of a given organ absolutely had to be taken.
In John Doe's case, the Daffy Duck alarm had gone off repeatedly, signaling a hard life, despite his relatively young age.
Jessica had fought long and hard to finally persuade Quantico that the new technology must be had for their labs and teaching theaters here in Virginia, if the FBI wished to stay current with new advances in medical procedures. And she'd been absolutely right. Today alone, six hours of guesswork and searching about the body, rooting around in the “rack”— as the professionals called the organs below the rib cage— had been saved due to the new imaging wonder. And now she tried to imagine how they had ever gotten by without it.
But now a new mystery presented itself—today's cadaver. The strange case of Mr. John Doe—Horace, J. T. had taken to calling him because he “looked like a Horace”—whose body had gone unclaimed, whose identity remained a mystery, and whose unruly hair, from ponytail to thickly bearded chin, kept falling out and clogging the drain below the slab. The man's wild hair, black with streaks of gray throughout, gave him the appearance of a modern-day mountain man; his clothing marked him as both a biker and a gang member. But the gang jacket emblem, The Flesheaters, didn't exist according to the FBI's extensive records on outlaw biker gangs. They surmised that Horace had begun his own new club, and perhaps some rival had killed him for his trouble. It was all rank speculation.
All the same, someone with extreme patience had set this Tattoo Man up for murder. Someone with access to a rabid animal and time enough to infect five other canines and thus had introduced that unfortunate to six mad dogs. Someone had set those killing dogs in motion. The evidence pointed to a strong hand or two working the strings.
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