“So Sharpe here tells me how eager you are to see the results of the Crucifier's maiming. Perhaps you will be my guest tonight for dinner? Allow me to show you the fairer side of our beautiful city, get your mind off this horrid business for a time, once you've finished up with Burton's body, of course.”
“Sorry, not tonight,” she said automatically. “I'm going to be quite busy tonight. I want to do my own examination of all three of the victims right away.”
“Burton, perhaps, but not the other victims, I'm afraid,” he replied. 'Two of them have been released. We don't like to hold on to them too long. Public opinion, PR, all that, you understand.”
“I thought they were pretty much without family.”
“Well, the first one, yes, but our freezer compartments are jammed this time of year, and she was getting fairly ... ripe, if you follow.” He brought a guttural laugh from his larynx to spill out over his lips, but he didn't, thank God, drag it out.
Almost in apology for his superior, Sharpe said, “We do have limited space, and Whitehall hasn't seen fit to improve the situation for the past several years now, not to mention the problem with burial plot space, and true to form, division tells us that if we fail to use what space we have left, we shall lose it. The commonwealth will seize it, as it were.”
“Where did the body go for burial?”
“She was buried in a potter's field, ancient place in Southhampton owned by the city of London,” began Sharpe, his apologetic tone getting much work this morning. “Not one of your more exotic London walking tour cemeteries, I assure you.”
“We've got them buried in potter's fields here in layers,” added Chief Inspector Boulte. “Some burial plots house as many as four and five residences, one atop the other.”
Sharpe, paying little heed to Boulte's attempted thunderbolt of information, continued, saying, “Most A.N. Others are cremated, to save on space in the cemetery.” She liked the way he pronounced cemetery as cemel-tree. “Still, as chief investigator, I did insist we at least keep O'Donahue's body intact for the time being in case we need to review anything later.”
“Probably a wise move, Inspector,” she told him, holding the railway stake up to the men. “I'd really like to see what kind of a hole this made in her flesh. But, of course, we'll need more than my curiosity to get an exhumation order. I'm sure your government bureaucracy is at least as prickly as ours in America.”
“I'm sure we've got you Yanks won on that tally,” Boulte replied.
“Second victim's family had a burial plot in Hempstead,” explained Sharpe. 'Took the body there.” She allowed her surprise to color her features. “Really? I thought the family was estranged from him.” Again, Sharpe clarified for her, saying, “Funny how a crisis of this magnitude can break down those artificial barriers people impose on one another. Besides, the tabloid press gets interested and all sorts of roaches crawl out of the woodwork. The Coibbys were no different than the usual run of the mill. Still, blood is thicker than water, they say. And for having not seen the man in so long, the members of the family I spoke with were extremely and understandably shaken at how he met his end, dying as he did, you see.”
“So, do you have victim number three for me to look at, or has someone carted him off, too?” she asked point-blank. “He's here,” assured Sharpe. Then he looked at Boulte for reassurance of the fact. “Right?”
“Yes, of course, as I said earlier to Dr. Coran,” Boulte replied to Jessica even though he answered Sharpe, his eyes lingering as his hand had earlier done. “Knowing that you were on your way, we held tight to Mr. Burton, 'The Mole.' “ Boulte laughed again, annoying her. Then he feebly explained, “That's what the lab guys are calling him, not me.”
“And why are they calling him a mole?”
“His features suggest something of a cross between a ferret, a blind mouse, and a mole.”
“I see, then he was, as they say, a plain man?”
“In every respect, yes ... Quite ordinary, really.”
'Take me to see your Mole Man, then, please.”
-SIX-
Evil sleeps and awakes at the tip of the human tongue, often benign, often not, but always present, in a place where deceit has found refuge over the centuries.
—Dr. Asa Holcraft, M.E.
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 w
ay 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 bobb
ing 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.”
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