“What reason led her to kill him?”
“She had a child by him. Incest. Then she tries to get out from it, tries to marry a boyfriend, but the old man won't hear of it. Says nobody but him is 'good enough' for his baby girl. Sick, I know.”
“Evil is what it is. A man deprives his own daughter of a natural life.”
“The boyfriend, whom she did marry only days after her father was killed, turns out to be an apprentice veterinarian. He saw to the rabies, but the dogs they used, the dogs actually belonged to the old man. Family says he treated his dogs better than he did his wife and children.”
I“ Sounds like one man who deserved what he got,” she muttered.
“More I learn about the case, more I'm thinking the same, and we're educated doctors, Jess.”
“So? We can hate with the best of 'em, J. T.”
“The old man was infuriated at his daughter for wanting a normal life. Blocked her every avenue. I think the court will have to take in the circumstances, show some mercy. Sure it was a vicious murder, but in a sense, the girl was driven to it.”
“And the accomplice?”
“Nice young man by all accounts, but premeditating with the rabies like that. It's not going to go down well. The rabies was his idea.”
“How do you know he's not covering for her, that it wasn't her idea all along?”
J. T. considered this. “You're right. Could well be.”
“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
“You may have something there, Jess.”
“Find out how long the boy and girl had been seeing one another. The shorter the time period, the more likely she hatched the whole show, putting him up to it.”
“They'd been seeing each other for less than a month when they started planning the details and planning their marriage. The boy meant to raise her child as his own, and they meant to have children between them as well, start a real family, she told her cousin.”
“Her cousin?”
“Her cousin's the authority in Diamondback, Louisiana.”
“I see.”
“Max Sanocre had only been missed by people in his biker gang, but word had been put out that he'd gone to Utah to allow both John Law and rival gang members to cool off, because he had-according to an elaborate story circulated by his children-somehow pissed both parties off, so that no one had the least suspicion that Cassie's father, Maxwell 'Abominable' Sanocre was even dead.”
“ 'Abominable'?”
“It's what he went by.”Sounds like you did one hell of job on this one, J. T.”
“Thanks. I am feeling pretty good about now. Chillin' in Naw'leens, right now.”
“Great, but tell me, J. T., how'd you get all these people to confess down there in Diamondhead?”
“Back. Diamondback. And 1 did it by just showing up.”
“Showing up what?”
“Just showed up on their doorstep. It seemed like the girl and the boy, they just expected me, and when they saw me standing there, they just gave it up.”
“Maybe that's what I need to do on this case.”
“What do you mean? You have a suspect, and you think if you just showed up on his doorstep that a guy like this serial killer Crucifier guy is going to just give it up? London's a far cry from Diamondback, and I suspect Londoners are a bit different than Diamondbackers, Jess, so I'd be a bit more cautious than-”
“Than you were? You could have just as easily disappeared in that remote area of Louisiana as not, J. T. But hey, don't worry about me. I'm not going to do anything foolish to endanger myself. Hell, look how long I've gone without any scars. I've got a record to maintain, and a pool to win back at Quantico,” she joked.
J. T. laughed, finding this amusing, adding, “Hey, who do you think started the pool?”
They parted with good-byes and well wishes, and Jessica started anew for Scotland Yard, but at the cab stand, rather than walk over to the Yard, she made a detour.
“I'll just show up on Luc Sante's doorstep,” she told herself. “See what gives if he knows that I know.” The doorman hailed the next available cab in line to come forward to pick Jessica up. When she climbed inside, she announced, “St. Albans, the Marylebone district, please.”
“Ahhh, St. Albans, a wonderful old lady, she is,” the cabby said of the church.
“Yes, beautiful really,” she agreed.
“Married me wife in that church, twenty-six years ago, God rest her soul.”
Jessica tried to formulate what she would say to Father LucSante, how to arrange the list of coincidences, the list of questions and suspicions so as to best checkmate the man. She feared she would botch it, but she realized now that the entire time they had spent together in the past, the old man meant to recruit her, to win her over and to make her his newest convert, that he indeed had some sort of strange power over her as he did over others, and that he ran some sort of cult following somewhere out of the light of the Catholic church, out of the light of all other judging bodies and out of sight of people he could not control. But what to say to this man, and how to say it… How to trap him in his own lair, using his own lures…
TWENTY
The lie has seven endings…
— Anonymous Swahili proverb
Slowly, Richard Sharpe had begun to win young Stuart Copperwaite over to the idea that somehow Luc Sante had been connected with the violent deaths of the crucifixion victims all along. Sharpe had spent the morning trying to convince Copperwaite of the weight of the evidence pointing to the old man and minister.
Together now, in a stairwell, Richard wanting no one else to overhear, he forced the issue onto Stuart who had raged at him for having disappeared.
Copperwaite could hardly believe his ears on hearing of the underground trek Richard and Jessica Coran had taken in the company of the RIBA man the day before. He could hardly believe that both Sharpe and Dr. Coran had, independently, arrived at the same conclusion, that somehow St. Albans and Luc Sante had become focal points in some sort of bizarre, twisted Second Coming-Millennium cult. He haltingly said, “I cannot begin to believe that the two of you, M.E. and inspector, as levelheaded as you are, have concocted this incredible theory-not from whole cloth but from cheesecloth, this 'fantabulous' idea,” as he put it.
However, Sharpe persisted, laying out the number of bizarre crossovers and connections and coincidences involving Luc Sante. Someone pushed through the stairwell door just below them, and Sharpe put a finger to his lips, not wishing for anyone to hear Copperwaite's pronouncements. When it became clear that they were alone again, Sharpe continued, saying, “He's bloody protected not only by his sterling reputation, but by the bloody church,” Sharpe barked in ending. “But I've spent hours piecing it together, and there is a major organization behind all the smaller organizations to which each victim has left his worldly goods. It's St. Albans itself. With the help of computer sleuth Gyles Harney, I just got that piece of the puzzle today.”
“That is remarkable,” Copperwaite agreed, astonished.
“The organization and care with which the donations from the victims were masked, that took some expertise in computers, but Gyles managed to unravel it for me. No one can unravel like Gyles.”
“And none can unwind so well as Gyles.”
Sharpe managed a smile, the first he'd shared with Copperwaite since the falling out. “Aye, Gyles likes his pint.”
Copperwaite bit back his confusion, gnarling on his lower lip. “And so, we're caught out. We can't bloody get a search warrant against St. Albans.”
“Nor is it likely we'll get one for Saint Luc's house or office-being attached to the church-either.”
“And in the meantime, what do we do? Wait until another victim shows up in another body of water somewhere around town?” asked Copperwaite, exasperated, pounding a closed fist into the wall.
“We take no bloody action until we can prove what we now merely think, Copperwaite,” warned Sharpe. “Our hands are tied
.”
“Unless we can get Luc Sante on tape, admitting to his new cult following, and the fact he's involved in these deaths,” suggested Copperwaite. “And just how do you propose doing that?”
“He seems to've been working overtime to convert Dr. Coran.”
“No, I won't endanger her, Stuart.”
“You're bloody in love with her, aren't you?”
“We share a great deal. Love, I don't know that I would go that far.” Sharpe's inner mind mulled the question over. It hadn't occurred to him to call it love. Certainly, Jessica had not ever used the word, and he had been careful not to, and it all seemed somewhat of a younger man's game, this thing called love. Still, he found himself thinking of her always, to distraction, he warned himself now.
“But it may be our only hope. Have Coran wear a wire, with us nearby. Suppose I'm right?”
“Right about Luc Sante's wishing to win her over to his new world order and religion. I can see that now. He's been building up to it all along, but I daresay she's given him no encouragement.”
“She encourages by her very being, by her engaging him, returning to him, don't you see?” Copperwaite next suggested they walk up a flight for the exercise and so that they didn't appear too damnably suspicious here. Sharpe agreed, and they trekked up a flight.
“By God, Coppers, you are going to make a fine full inspector, one day. That's rather an insightful point you've made, perhaps one I've been blinded to, being… Since I've become so fond of Jessica.”
“If you take it a step further, Richard, if what you suspect Luc Sante of, then it follows that he may well see Dr. Coran as… well, as a perfect candidate for crucifixion?”
“Thanks for that, Coppers. You've the target in the crosshairs indeed.”
“What will you tell Dr. Coran?”
“I'll tell her what she wants to hear, that we're going to move on Luc Sante, one blasted way or another.”
“Then you will propose her wearing a wire device?” asked Copperwaite, standing still now at the top stair.
“Yes, if it's the only way. Can you arrange for the device, the surveillance van, all of it?”
“Consider it done, Sharpie.”
“I must contact Jessica. See if she is willing to become the sacrificial lamb.”
“She's not likely to say no to you, Richard. She hasn't so far.”
“Curb your tongue, Coppers. She's every bit a lady.”
“Meaning no harm, Sharpe.”
“Good, keep it so, and get the surveillance team together, then.”
“Right-o.”
Copperwaite disappeared through the door to their right, while Sharpe took the stairs back down for another exit. He'd decided that Luc Sante had too many friends on the force, too many eyes and ears. He wanted the element of surprise to be on their side when and if he decided to arrest. “Arrest for what?” he asked himself now. “On suspicion of being the Crucifier? On the suspicion the man had wantonly killed five human beings? That he showed a depraved indifference to human life?” Precisely what could he make stick to a priest of Father Luc Sante's standing in the community?
Luc Sante looked up from his scribblings to confront the shadow that suddenly lengthened and scurried across his desk. He half expected to look up and into the eyes of Satan himself, for so many years his archrival and enemy, but instead he found a stem-looking, somber Dr. Jessica Coran firmly rooted before him. “Ahhh, Dr. Coran, amazing you should show up this way. I was just wondering how I might entice you back through request or invitation. I have so enjoyed our talks, and you're such a wonderful conversationalist.” Flattery, she thought, will get you everywhere you want to be, if the target of flattery is weak-minded, weak-kneed, feeble, or strung out on drugs. How many poor slobs had Father Luc Sante lured into his cult through the kind word? “I hardly call what I did conversing, Dr. Luc Sante.”
“And why would you not call our conversations conversation, my dear?”
“You delightedly talked, I delightedly listened.”
“Are you suggesting that it was tutelage? I the teacher, you the student to be filled like some empty container? I hardly think it so.”
'Tutelage perhaps? Perhaps persuasion?” she countered. “My arguments are admittedly persuasive, practiced, I confess.”
“Honeyed, sometimes wondrous,” she characterized his arguments.
He only laughed lightly and smiled. “I masterfully led you, like a talented dancer, through the intricacies of my thinking, but it hardly can be called propaganda or an attempt to change you or your thinking, my dear, at least not without your consent.”
“My consent?”
“Your absolute consent, for without consent, there is no truth in a gesture, be it making love or committing one's soul to the Almighty.”
Any time now, she thought to herself, any time now you can just spew forth your confession to me like the kids in Diamondback had done for J. T., but 1 guess I won't hold my breath on that score. Instead, she crazily, insanely wanted to totally give in to Luc Sante here, now. She wanted to allow his verbal symphony on the eternal truths and the eternal battle of good over evil to manipulate her, to use her, place her as another pawn on his cosmic chessboard.
She resisted, however, in the deepest part of herself, and in turn she began to manipulate him, telling him, “I've actually come about the case. I've a theory you must hear and verify for its veracity.”
“A theory of your making?”
“Yes.”
“Go on.”
“Perhaps the victims are not what they appear to be.”
“A victim is a victim, how else should a victim appear?” he replied in caustic staccato.
“If a victim is a perfect victim, as in a willing victim, has she not been persuaded that in becoming a victim, that she, in some small measure, helps in God's cosmic plan for the universe? You see, Dr. Luc Sante, where I'm going with this?”
He looked confusedly across at her where she now sat in the big leather chair opposite him. “A willing victim, a perfect victim to this foul villain who is leaving a trail of blood across London. You are speaking hypothetically, I pray?”
“Hypothetically, yes, but what do you think of the theory of the crime? That there are willing, perfect victims among us, and I suspect the Crucifier has found them in the sick, the feeble and infirm. My autopsy on Burton showed him to have colon cancer, and I suspect the other victims, too, were facing some sort of health crisis, and perhaps found leaving this world in the fashion they did easier than suicide. Suicide closes the gate on eternal life, but sacrifice, now that's another story altogether, now isn't it, Father?”
“Depends upon what it is your are sacrificing and to whom, I should think.”
“Imagine if all of the Crucifier's victims were willing participants in their own sacrifices. It might make sense of this bizarre case.”
“Yes, yes, of course, the literature of religion and cults is littered with examples of just that, yes. I suggested this early on in the case. Richard Sharpe knew of my fears along these lines. I suggested the victims could be participant members of a cult, or don't you recall?”
“Yes, well, the possibility's been staring us in the face for some time now, hasn't it?” She stared for a moment at the painting over his desk of the hamlet and small parish in the English countryside, a place of purity and innocence, the image of peace on earth, his former parish, he'd called it. Then she added, “Victims who voluntarily go to their deaths, imagine it. Imagine the impulse to be a major part of the Second Coming. Certainly, if convinced of this… Well, I can appreciate the longing, the need to be part of something greater, larger than oneself, can't you?”
“Yes, I can imagine it.”
She wondered what she might say to get him to admit to one incriminating word, to state that he had been working overtime in his attempt to mesh with his God, to mesh with Jesus Christ, and in so doing, bring about the Second Coming.
“Do you believe, Father Luc San
te, that a person can be bom into this world a victim, that his or her fate from the day of birth is stamped victim of murder?”
Luc Sante suddenly and forcefully disagreed, shouting “No!”, his fist coming down on his desk like a hammer. “A child is sent from God, and a child demands to be bom, and we are all placed here for a reason, not some reason we fabricate, but a reason He alone fashions. We have no say so in it, and we must listen to our inner voice. No one is created by God for the express purpose of being murdered.”
“What about created as a sacrificial lamb, then?”
He shook his head, considering this. “There is so much evil waiting here for the innocent. True enough, but innocence must face evil, do battle with it, struggle against it. Speaking of which, actually, I've recendy had my eye on Strand,” he said with a conspiratorial whisper, a finger raised to his lips as if telling her to keep it down. “Sometimes, I believe these old walls are filled with gossiping ghosts.”
“What is your concern about Father Strand?”
“Strange business going on hereabouts, that is between here and the street bazaar that I've only recently learned of. You know, I fear that Martin is no saint after all, but the very sort of being I've spent my entire life combating, the sort that disguises himself even in the robes of the church.”
She felt intrigued. 'Tell me more of your suspicions. Father.” She felt hopeful, that if Luc Sante could point her in another direction, it might prove him the innocent victim here, too.
“Well, I've my suspicions now that-God help us-that Strand could be involved in something sinister. Even that he could be this… this awful, godless Crucifier himself.”
This came as a revelation to Jessica and a welcomed one. “What makes you suspect him?”
“I learned of some questionable bills. That's how my suspicions were first fueled. These led to even more questionable donations, death gifts, actually. As it turns out, Coibby, O'Donahue, Burton, all of them have left funds with St. Albans through roundabout means, and it smacks as suspicious as bloody… as can be, you see.”
“How long have you known of this?”
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