Blind Instinct
( Jessica Coran - 7 )
Robert W. Walker
Robert W. Walker
Blind Instinct
PROLOGUE
All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil to crazy Ahab were visibly personified and made practically assailable…
— Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Below London, England, in an underground catacomb September 4, 2000-Approaching true millennium
She could not remember her own name, not even when the man who'd brought her to this excruciating moment-to die here-chanted her name in her bleeding ears. Neither could she recall her very sex, age, race, or religion, for the burning, searing pain washed so completely over her mind and blotted out all clarity of thought. Clarity ran before this blinding pain, banished from the realm of consciousness, sending the angels of specificity and nouns and adjectives spiraling away from this place. Now on the brink of death, she felt utter disappointment, having all her life believed that when she looked into the eye of death, that she'd find some answers to life's grandest questions: Who am I? What am I? Where am I? Where have I been, and where do I go?
If there were answers, they remained blurred, dulled, and finally lost to the pain of this death-the pain of a crucifixion death… Not even St. Michael and all his legion can help me now, she realized. Or had he said that in her ear? Bile and spit and gall. 1 must prepare myself to sleep, prepare to sleep forever. Answers and resolutions all blurred.
Crucifixion does that to you, to me, she told herself, here in this cold, dank coffin of “consecrated ground,” as he'd called this place. Now, she realized this was no dream, no nightmare she might claw herself out of. In that realization her mind cleared for one crystal moment to tell her. Yes… yes, you are actually dangling on a cross about to greet your Maker.
She had been tied and staked to a cross, and she would soon die Katherine O'Donahue, at fifty years and some odd months-either a saint or a wretched fool, she knew not anymore. Part of her cared not; part of her simply wanted the pain to go away, to sleep eternal.
She'd reached a plateau in the agony; she no longer felt the pain at the bloodied feet-feet held together first by coarse hemp and next a large stake hammered through them and into the splintering massive cross. Nor did she any longer feel the stinging pain at the core of each palm where bone and flesh had made peace with each great stake sent through each hand where they'd been held against the crossbar. No, the pain in her hands and feet had mercifully ceased, but that suffering now stood replaced by a worse pain, the pain of a slow suffocation she hadn't expected.
The drug given her hadn't been potent enough to send her into merciful peace, and so she'd felt the three stakes as each had been driven through the flesh, cartilage, and bone.
She'd yelped at the flinty, striking blows caused by hammerhead against stake and its resultant rending of flesh. The man with the hammer had been startled. She feared making any further outcries would only bring on more pain and loss of breath and consciousness, only to hasten her crossing over… Yet she wanted to cross over, didn't she? Crossing over, her schoolteacher's mind mused. How lovely the euphemism, and how apropos to her unbelievable situation: her life ending in such a manner.
She wanted a last look at his face before she died; she wanted to implant it on her memory. Take it into the next life-take it to her God.
Her arms, flung out on each side of her, remained immovable, save for the incremental, steady pull of gravity that brought her chest caving in on itself. Trying to breathe had become a laborious effort. Her own weight snatched her breath from her like a ravenous animal, devouring it before she could have even a slight taste. The oxygen deprivation caused dizziness and a ringing in her ears.
Still, little snatches of inhaled air also fought like clawing animals to get through to her lungs.
No, she no longer felt any pain in her hands, bleed as they might into the ancient wood, wood that he said, “Has the advantage of having been blessed by the Holy Roman Church.” Her mind screamed Evil liar! But there came no breath of air, which would be necessary to mold and fashion a word, much less a serviceable curse. She'd spent a lifetime fashioning words in diaries and in private poetry, but now her words, like a ship on a windless sea, had no life force to propel her stranded thought.
Her body gasped again and again for her life's breath, while her mind insisted, “Give it up.” At once she wondered at the depth of her faith, matched as it was by her killer's own. At the same time, she remained unsure of the soundness or brokenness, fragmented-ness, frag-men-ta-tion-which was it? — of her own mind, or even if her mind remained hers anymore, if it had not somehow already transmutated into the pure soul? She mused about the evil man's faith-whether it was perhaps the most beautiful or the most twisted faith she'd ever encountered, or whether the very sincerity with which he now practiced it made the fact of it undeniable.
She felt certain of one fact alone: His faith and not her own had everything to do with why she was being literally crucified by him. She wondered if his commitment meant anything to God, who allowed so much suffering in the world. But even these, her private, final thoughts, she could not be sure of. She could not be sure they were cogent-were they driven by hallucination or the torturous agony or the numbness now in her soul? How could she even trust her own mind with her body involved in a concerted attempt to destroy what remained of her… her?
What is my name? she mentally asked again, having no breath left to form the question aloud.
However, at the moment, the war continued to rage, the war for life coming down to a slow and painful fight for breath due to the gravitational pull. Gravity kills, she thought. My own weight is pushing the life from me. That's intense, overpowering, excruciating, literally heartrending, and mind numbing. But the numbing is good, she told herself-a blessing in horrid disguise. It must soon be over. Through such pain and such a death, perhaps I shall find final peace, even redemption. He had said so even as the stakes were driven in. Redemption in a place alongside my Maker, an end to all suffering in this life.
And for the moment, this hope sustained her soul, representing, as it did, her only reprieve.
She clutched at it.
Tearfully she decided, despite all pretense, that she had little or nothing to show for all the years she'd put in. Nothing beyond a pension amounting to so little she couldn't make her monthly rent. No children of her own; no family. Even at fifty, she had never been with a man, had never known any real, true desire or passion. Until now. Now she passionately wanted to either live or mercifully die. Against the advice of her doctor, against the wishes of a neighbor in St. Edmunds, she'd uprooted and gone fishing in search of something-anything-to give her life new meaning. She'd thought to find it in London. So, she'd moved to London, from the cottage community of Bury St. Edmunds. Taking a flat, her schoolteacher retirement pounds helped out along with her life's savings, but only so far. She had a few stocks and bonds, and while only the rare commoner held ownership to land in England, she had managed to make some money on real-estate exchanges over the years-all quite modest.
All having led to what? To this. Meant to be, perhaps. Fated, perhaps. Her only and just karma?
Had she remained in Bury St. Edmunds, she surely would have lived out her years to be buried there. Everything would have ended differently-unless he had come there for her, and that she could not say would not have happened. The man she'd put her fleeting hopes into, after all claimed he'd seen her death on the cross in a vision, and had since been driven to find her and execute this death. So perhaps he
would have sought her out in St. Edmunds had she remained there. She only knew he was a driven, determined being, no matter where he may be lurking.
She wished for a quick end to her life spent in the service of others. Her thoughts spiraled, revolved, circled, and came round and round on themselves, coiling snakelike, repeating themselves until she knew not how many times she'd had the same thought or memory or hope or tear.
Gasp… no breath… gaps in time… gasps in time. Gasp… no breath.
Mentally, she still lived her life. Regardless of her inability to recall her name or the fact that she was hanging like an insect pinned to a wall, she relived every detail of her life. It must mean something. She told herself that a life lived must mean something. Even he had to respect that. Then she wondered if she was making any sense at all. And if she couldn't make sense, would God Himself understand her? Would He make sense of her senselessness, of her death? Did her death make sense?
Inhaling without result, unable to exhale whatsoever, yet feeling the need to do so, Katherine O'Donahue smiled, recalling having signed over all her holdings to Mother Church. This much pleased her.
The fact that she was being crucified, the fact of its being witnessed by a man who whispered promises of a better life in the hereafter, none of it any longer got past the unfeeling, uncaring, unhealing, and inert body that now could not sustain itself. None of it, not even her own death, held any more meaning for… Again she'd lost all trace of her name. Perhaps that was part of death, to let go of such earthly ties as names, language, home, religion, beads, wishes, bread, needs, wine, flesh, bone, appearances, and such. Who am I? The suffering stopped. TTiis life and this world held no more meaning or allure. Slowly, as with her breath, all thought drifted off like smoke over the railing of a cruise ship, until her last breath caught and died with her.
ONE
— For the detectives, the most appalling visions have always demanded the greatest detachment.
— David Simon, Homicide
Charing Cross Pier, River Thames, London September 5, 2000
“Elderly woman, I warrant fifty if she's a day,” said Inspector Sharpe to his partner Copperwaite. “Looks like someone's mum. Looks local.”
“Then you don't make her out a whore, Sharpe? Killed possibly because she'd gotten too old to draw in enough shillings?”
“I shouldn't assume her a whore, Coppers.”
“Looks like someone's mum actually,” Copperwaite agreed. “Still doesn't rule her out as an old whore. Lots of mums are whores, you know.”
The dead woman's body had no identifying marks, no clothing and so no ID. “Nothing whatever to inform us of a bloody thing,” muttered Sharpe. “And I resent your summing her up as a whore, Stuart.”
Lieutenant Inspector Stuart Copperwaite, working his way up to full inspector status, felt compelled to agree with his superior. “You're right, of course. Sharpie. Just Another-nother.”
Sharpe thought of the sad term law enforcement in the United States used: Jane Doe, and its British equivalent A.N. Other. Murdered, but murdered in an unmistakably brutal and bizarre fashion. “Something altogether unique about this nobody,” said the Scotland Yard inspector. “This poor, wretched woman has died the most horrid death, staked to a tree, Stuart.”
Sharpe stepped away from the body and walked in little circles, ever-widening the breech between himself and the other authorities on hand. “Each time I look on such unconscionable, and despicable acts as this, I begin to believe that no new evil can ever rival what I must deal with before me. Yet… yet some fiend always finds a new twist, a new evil beyond anything you or I might ever have imagined possible, and this certainly proves the case here. Something evil this way comes…”
Sharpe's feet, hands, and lungs ached from the thought of how this elderly woman had died literally crucified. He imagined the hours it had taken for her to suffer this tormenting death. The same agony faced by Christ.
“I've interviewed the bridgeman. He's of no use,” Copperwaite said in Sharpe's ear. “The man called us about the body after sobering up. Discovered it physically 'in his way' as it were. In fact, he… ahh had ran over the body with the Volkswagen Jetta now parked below the bridge. 'An accident,' he called it, believing he had killed the woman. At the same time, an early morning American tourist, using a zoom lens, also spied the bridgeman with the body and reported a murder in progress.”
Oddly, the body lay close but not quite in the River Thames. It appeared to glisten as if washed, yet leaves, grass, and dirt adhered to it due to some sticky substance that it- she-had been bathed in. “Smells awful, doesn't she?” commented Sharpe's younger partner. “Like a salad that's set too long.” He covered his nose with a handkerchief.
As if unsure which element to choose, water or land, the killer had dumped her below the bridge. On a day when the wind proved right, a passerby might be treated to the sound of Bow Bells-the bells of Bow Church on Bow Street in the city of London. Since the location of the body itself proved of interest-so near the tourist circuit, within walking distance of Westminster-no doubt, the press would play it up; but the place also represented Sharpe's home. He'd been born within the sound of Bow Bells himself, and as the locals in London said of anyone actually bom within this geographical area, “You're then born true Cockney.”
Sharpe had worked hard, however, to lose his Cockney accent. He had aspired to a more military and even genteel-sounding professional voice, although he called upon his former speech pattern when occasion warranted.
Now full circle, Inspector Richard Sharpe, Criminal Investigation Division (CID) of the New Scotland Yard, looked over the result of a most horrid crime. He returned from his walkabout to again crouch over the pained face of the dead, squatting and wondering if the victim had also been a true Cockney.
“You think she's from here about?” asked Stuart.
For Sharpe the geography mattered for two reasons. One, he felt a sense of kinship with anyone born in the district. Two, and perhaps more important, it mattered in that if she were local, she'd be easy to identify down the road, perhaps at the first bar or restaurant he came to. However, if she were not from the Bow Bells district, she could prove difficult to name, and the investigation might drag on until he retired and after, perhaps falling into the category of a cold file, a case that relentlessly went on, unsolved forever. And the number of such cases already staggered the imagination.
Sharpe again lifted from his haunches to his full height, rivaling a signpost that warned of no swimming in the Thames. Methodically he stepped away from the body and peered out across the dirty river, taking in what he could amid the fog of Charring Cross Pier where one of the many water buses plied its trade back and forth across the wide, winding way. In the water boat's infrequent wail he heard the victim's voice crying for vengeance and retribution.
Through the fog, Sharpe could make out Westminster Bridge. To his left he could easily find Waterloo Bridge. He was surrounded by beauty on all sides, near Somerset House and King's College on the Victoria Gardens Embankment and the newly erected replica of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre loomed nearby. It seemed an ill-fit, dumping the tortured, murdered victim's remains here amid the flower gardens, which blanketed the Thames on either side. Sharpe wondered if this said something about the killer, about his relationship to his victim, about his last thoughts for her, or if the bastard simply wanted to be splashy.
The killer must know the businesspeople and the early morning tourists would be going by on the river ferries, and that someone would spot the body lying so near the water's edge. Yes, the body appeared to have been purposefully placed here with loving attention and concern. Always a twist in such strange cases, Sharpe thought, that so brutal a killer could be so gentle with the body afterward-after she could feel no pain. “Bastard,” he muttered aloud to the soft fog overhead. “Perhaps he meant to place her in the river but his plans were spoiled by our drunken bridgeman.”
“You think so, Sharpie?
” asked his young partner, but Sharpe ignored the silly question.
When officials had first arrived on scene, everyone expected the usual floater-some poor slob victim of a domestic dispute gone bad, or a whore whose badly beaten body had been thrown into the river and had washed to the embankment. No one could for a moment have suspected the woman to be the victim of crucifixion, least of all Sharpe.
Young Inspector Stuart Copperwaite, Sharpe's assistant, now ruminated over the hideous and grisly wounds they'd found, pleading for some meaning to surface, asking his superior to help him make sense of it all. Copperwaite's pained questions floated out over the nearby river: “Why? Why kill someone in so gruesome and complicated a fashion? Why bloody crucify her?”
Sharpe, his stem gaze having returned to the body, matter-of-factly replied, “Cruelty's really little different than any other vice, Stuart.”
“Say that again, sir?”
“Cruelty requires no motive outside itself. It merely requires opportunity.”
“My God but that's profound. Better put that up over my desk,” Copperwaite said, trying to make light of the heavy moment.
When Sharpe and Copperwaite had first arrived, the London constables stood horrified around the body. Each in turn gaping over the ugly crucifix scars and the wound to the side, like that of a knife or spear. The wounds to hands and feet could only have been caused by three grim and hefty spikes- one to each palm and a third to the crossed feet. The local authorities had eagerly stepped aside for the men of the Criminal Investigation Division. No one truly wanted this case. Sharpe thought it unlikely that there would be any special claims of jurisdictional boundaries or a dispute of any sort over where the deceased's body had fallen, as had been the case in the politically charged murder of a parliamentarian a few weeks before. No such concerns for what appeared to be a woman of simple means.
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