Blind Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  “No messages on or around the body?”

  “Not a word, not a clue, nothing, no.”

  She nodded. “I see. Perhaps the killer believes his message is quite clear enough.”

  “Perhaps.”

  It hurt Jessica's hands to even think of a huge spike going through them, although she realized that the pain of the spike through hands and feet in a true crucifixion hardly began to tell the story of the excruciating manner of death brought on by this torturous end.

  “There'd be frequent pass outs, simulating death. With each blackout, the killer may well rejoice, might even ejaculate,” she informed the detectives. “Any semen or other foreign flu­ids found on the bodies?”

  “Matter of fact, olive oil.”

  “Olive oil?” she asked.

  “Smeared over the body with a mixture of wine and blood, yes. Kind of bathed in it, according to our lab people, up the anus, everywhere. Forensics also tells us that blood alcohol levels were high. And from stomach contents, it was deter­mined the victims had consumed a lot of wine just before each died.”

  “And that's it?” she asked.

  Copperwaite added, “That and the signs of crucifixion is all we've got.”

  Sharpe was quick to add, “Our experts tell us that olive oil is thought to have regenerative powers.”

  She sighed heavily and leaned back, trying to imagine the kind of madman behind such torturous killings. “Sounds rit­ualistic in nature. The blood is the wine, the wine is the blood, and olives have magical properties....”

  Copperwaite added some gruesome details, “Forensics has splinters pulled from wounds on palms and feet. Old, wooden cross, oak ... well-aged ... rarely found anymore.”

  “Bathed in blood, oil, and wine ...” said Jessica, thinking it over, made curious by the men from England. “Three vic­tims found in this similar state already.”

  “Perhaps you're right, Dr. Coran,” began Copperwaite. “Perhaps three will satisfy the fiend. Maybe three has some significant or symbolic meaning for him.” The others merely looked from one to the other, none of them believing Copperwaite's hopeful wish. Jessica broke the awkward silence with, “And you say two male victims, one female?”

  “Quite right,” Sharpe responded.

  “All of the same race ...”

  “All three have absolutely nothing in common,” replied Copperwaite, “save skin color, pale like all Londoners.”

  “One is of Irish extraction, the woman. She was bom in Cardiff but spent the better part of her life in Bury St. Ed­munds. She was a schoolteacher there,” began Sharpe. “We learned of her identity when her landlord in London sent word he recognized her from a sketch in the Times. She'd gone missing.”

  Copperwaite added, “Another is a white male butcher turned used automobile salesman.”

  “The third,” concluded Sharpe, “renounced his Jewish faith live on his radio talk show, for which the BBC took great exception—doing it as he chose. Bad form, all that. And af­terward, some years afterward, he converted to Catholicism. He lost all favor with his listeners, lost his radio show, every­thing—a prime candidate for suicide for a time, or so asso­ciates say.”

  “The victims were killed in that order?”

  “Yes. The woman first.”

  “I see.”

  As fascinating as Tattoo Man's cadaver had been for Jes­sica, she must admit that this madman in London, England, needed full attention. Besides, the prospect of traveling to London to catch a killer of such obvious theatrical panache could not be denied. The monster across the sea had already proved to be ghastly even from this safe distance.

  “The plane has been held for your boarding, Jessica, gen­tlemen,” Eriq Santiva announced when the car stopped before the delayed flight on the runway. “Keep me informed!”

  -

  FOUR -

  Juries want bleeding bullet holes, sucking chest wounds with steak knives or hot pokers still at­tached to the victim of violent crime. Anything less—such as scientific evidence—leaves room for a junior high school definition of reasonable doubt.. . .

  —Stephen Robertson, Decoy

  In the back of her mind all the way to Dulles International Airport in Fairfax, Virginia, Jessica had worried about J. T. and her having dropped Tattoo Man's case in his lap.

  Concern over Tattoo Man faded quickly, however, when she looked out on the runway at Dulles International to see the final preparations for takeoff of their nonstop to London.

  With Scotland Yard paying the freight this time, Eriq San­tiva displayed even greater pleasure at the combining of his FBI personnel with that of the famous Scotland Yard. The only downside: no ride on the Concorde. Perhaps on her re­turn, Sharpe had promised, but not today since the Concorde only flew into JFK, in New York, and they would be depart­ing from Fairfax.

  They'd been the last to board the plane, which had indeed been held up for Dr. Jessica Coran, by order of the FBI and Scotland Yard on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen. It was enough to make Jessica blush at their boarding when the stew­ardess had said, “Dr. Coran, I presume?”

  Once settled in their seats on the commercial flight, In­spector Sharpe wasted no time, asking her even before she had the opportunity to order a drink, “Shall I fill you in further on the three crime scenes that we have thus far?”

  She loved his mastery of language, the little touches that made his culture bubble forth with each word, not to mention his melodic voice and lovely accent.

  “Yes, I would like to see all that you have on each case, actually. Another look at the crime-scene photos and any fo­rensic reports coming out of each case.”

  “Good, then be my guest.” Sharpe snapped open his thin, black briefcase and produced several files. Each was marked with a victim's name scrawled in large, red marker across its label: O'Donahue, Katherine; Coibby, Lawrence; Burton, Theodore. No strange-sounding, exotic names with origins from faraway places, nothing to die for, she thought, simply homespun, middle-of-the-road, run-of-the-mill names that ap­peared as scattered as the victims themselves. Jessica read of a schoolteacher in retirement; a British used-car salesman with a mortgage, alimony, and child support to pay; and fi­nally a stockbroker turned radio personality who'd strayed from his Jewish roots to embrace Catholicism, all in that or­der.

  The victims appeared to share nothing in common save that they were all British subjects, the Irish schoolmarm having adopted Britain as her home in her youth, someplace called Bury St. Edmunds.

  One of the crime-scene photos in O'Donahue's file gave Jessica a start. She hadn't seen it before. She helplessly stared at the tire marks, which were quite visible, like large tattoos across her back and shoulders where the skin had absorbed the impact of the automobile going over her. The tread marks shimmered beneath the lights in a perfect pattern, reminding her of Tattoo Man back in her lab at Quantico. “Did the killer run her over before or after crucifying her?”

  “Neither.” Sharpe explained the sad origin of the tread marks.

  The plane sped down the runway, lifting like an ancient bird of prey, ponderous at first but suddenly light and airy, free of all restraint.

  Settling in, Jessica released her seat belt to relax more com­fortably, and said to Sharpe, 'Tell me more about how you found the first victim: when, where, and the condition of the body at the time.”

  “That'd be the schoolteacher, O'Donahue. In her early to mid-fifties. Not your typical serial-killer bait, I'd say.”

  “No, although it's not unheard of.”

  “Well, as I said, we found her run over by the fool that discovered the body, tire marks over her back. She'd been dumped facedown near the Thames on the Victoria Gardens Embankment, along a dirty stretch of levy along the parkway below a bridge.”

  Copperwaite, who'd begun to listen in earnest, added, “We can take you to the scene if you like.”

  “Yes, I would like to have a look ... give it the once-over.”

  “We suspect that body and
perpetrator were en route to the Thames,” suggested Sharpe. “That the killer fully intended to dump it into the river when he was frightened off.”

  “Points to the possibility it may've been his first-ever kill. Since he was so easily frightened off, you might look for a younger person,” she countered.

  “Good thought.” Sharpe sat back heavily in his chair to consider this.

  Copperwaite, from the other side of Sharpe, added as an afterthought, “We find a great deal floating in the Thames.”

  “Her hands and feet had been spiked with three-quarter-inch thick nails. Like bloody railway spikes, but not quite. Still, large enough to make you wince.” Sharpe's matter-of-fact tone did battle with the content of his words. He paused for her benefit, fearing she might become alarmed.

  “Go on,” she dictated.

  “We didn't know what to make of it at the time, of course, and only later were we made absolutely certain—”

  “Certain of what?” she impatiently prodded him.

  “—certain that the holes in hands and feet had been part of a crucifixion murder, you see. Accepting the fact at the time, I tell you, we wanted to deny it.”

  “I see, of course. Were the others similarly disposed of, the killer using water?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. Do you think there's significance in that? Because I do.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not. Tell me about the other discoveries.”

  “Very well, as you like ...” Sharpe launched into a typical police description of the scene, the body, the surrounding area—a small lake in a park frequented by families on a daily basis where children saw the body floating like a balloon toy in Coibby's case.

  Copperwaite interjected here and there, adding a bit of de­tail and color, the two detectives complimenting one another in rounding out the description of how Lawrence Coibby's body—victim number two—had been discovered.

  “Any defensive marks on hands, forearms? Any blood or tissue, not his own, found under his nails?”

  “Like the woman, no sign of any violence done to the body save the slight cut to the side, the spikes driven into palms and feet,” replied Sharpe. “No fight put up whatsoever.”

  Copperwaite added, “Nor the third victim. Perfectly un­touched save for the crucifixion marks. And don't forget the needle marks, Sharpie—Inspector Sharpe.”

  “Then there were drugs found in the system?” she pressed.

  'Trace elements of a barbiturate,” replied Sharpe. “M.E.'s report is...” He paused, shuffled papers about the file, and finally pointed to a line on the M.E.'s protocol sheet—a form that appeared up-to-date and quaint at the same time, Jessica thought. She read the logo: Coroner for the Crown.“ 'Brevital,' “ Jessica read aloud“That mean anything to you?” asked Sharpe, sensing her reaction to the word. She let out a breath of air and shrugged. “Methohexital, used in sedating patients ... barbiturate, short-acting.”

  “Short-acting?” asked Copperwaite, his youthful eyes alight with eager interest.

  “As opposed to long-acting. In other words, your victims, injected with Brevital, would have dozed just long enough for the killer—”

  “Or killers,” corrected Sharpe.

  “—to hoist the prone victims' bodies onto whatever make­shift cross he—or they—concocted for the sacrificial lambs.”

  “Just enough to put them under, then?”

  “Exactly. And each victim must've awakened when the killer drove home the stakes at the palms and feet, most likely having already been secured by some other means. Rope, hemp, rawhide perhaps? Yes, the body would need lashing to the cross in addition to the stakes.”

  Copperwaite ground his teeth at the image.

  Jessica added, “That would be my guesstimate, but don't quote me.” She paused, all of them allowing the image to sink in. “Rope bums at both wrists and about the feet, right? To take the weight,” pursued Jessica.

  “Precisely,” Sharpe said at once.

  “The body weight on the victims,” Jessica began. “Can you give me a ballpark figure?”

  “Ballpark figure?” asked Copperwaite, confused by her lan­guage.

  “She means an estimated guess, Stuart. How about a precise number, Doctor?”

  “That'll do.”

  “You see, I've had the same thoughts,” returned Sharpe. “The men each weighed over 190 stones, while the woman weighed 155 of your American pounds.”

  Jessica smiled at the use of the word “stones.”

  “So, the ropes were enough to hold the body in place, so the stakes could be driven in. Certainly sounds like the work of more than one man, possibly a deadly pair, given the deadweight of the drugged victims.”

  “Once again, our thought also,” replied Sharpe with a nar­rowed gaze. “Given how long we've had to study the cases, your deductions are positively . . . preternatural. Are you sure you're not a psychic to boot?”

  While Jessica answered with a thoughtful smile, Copper­waite added, “Unless this bugger is bigger than Arnold Schwarzenegger, he'd have to be two men.”

  Everyone sat back, allowing the gravity of this fact to sink in. It was hard to envision not one but two men, working in tandem, crucifying random, innocent people. The why of it hung in the air thick and choking.

  Jessica had brought along some light reading for the long plane trip, her volume of Medical and Legal Procedures Re­lated to Death written some years earlier by her now deceased mentor Dr. Asa Holcraft. She'd long been wanting to reread Dr. Holcraft's work to, in a sense, be in his presence once again. She needed his firm grounding, if for no other reason than the sheer monstrosity this crucifixion evil represented.

  Jessica had never known a finer scientific mind than that of Asa Holcraft. She now quickly scanned Holcraft's words for any information relative to crucifixion deaths—half know­ing she'd find nothing specific to crucifixion. Still, a quick glance at the enormous index was in order. This only con­firmed what she knew: His huge opus didn't touch on death by crucifixion. The topic simply didn't appear in any of the forensics books she owned—and she owned them all. Save for a paragraph here or there, Jessica had found no help in the literature of forensic medicine.

  She was working on here ...Even an electronic search of the World Wide Web had turned up more reams of religious-oriented material dealing with the death of Jesus Christ than anything else, and nothing substantive regarding the medical intricacies of dying in such a manner. Death of this manner being so extremely rare, no studies or treatises had ever been done on it.

  She shared this information, or lack thereof, with Sharpe and Copperwaite. Her news met a pair of glum frowns. Sharpe said, “Not surprising, really.”

  She halfheartedly searched Holcraft for his remarks on as­phyxia, as he remained the foremost authority on asphyxia deaths. She located the pages and placed a bookmark there.

  She looked up at Richard Sharpe and asked, “Why don't you describe the scene of the third discovery, the body which ostensibly sent you scurrying in earnest to the FBI for profil­ing assistance.”

  “That would be Burtie Burton, Theodore Burton. Rather well-known chap at one time—known for his views, for his late-night radio talk program a year or so back. A rare breed indeed, both a stockbroker and a rebel-rouser as some call— called him. Rather enjoyed his program myself. Man made a lot of sense as well as money. Tore into our Tories mostly, roughed them up a bit before he got into trouble with the BBC.”

  Jessica imagined someone saying in such mild tones how Howard Stem upset Middle America, and she momentarily wondered at the British in general—their history of social gentility and blood beneath the carpet. She likewise wondered aloud for the benefit of the men, “I wonder if the man's pro­fession, radio talk show host, had anything remotely to do with his dying so dreaded a death—after a used-car salesman and a teacher. What might that connection be? On the surface of it, perhaps the victims have nothing whatever in common. I'm sure you've dug for connections.”

 
“Pile on the agony,” muttered Sharpe.

  “What?” asked Jessica.

  Copperwaite translated, saying, “Old English for don't spare the gory details, Doctor.”

  “I mean ifjffff that's so, then we're really scrambled as you Americans say,” Sharpe announced. “With nothing tying the victims together.”

  “All I'm saying is that perhaps the selection of victims has been absolutely random. If the killer or killers 'saw the mark of Christ' on the foreheads of each of their victims, that might well be what the victims had in common—everything but nothing.”

  Sharpe fell silent. Copperwaite sensed his partner wanted silence for a time. Finally, Sharpe began telling Jessica more about victim number three: Theodore Burton.

  “It was a few days after number two—Coibby—that Burtie Burton's body came to our attention. He'd gone missing, but people who knew him said that he'd do that, you know, dis­appear for weeks at a time—”

  “Go on holiday without the slightest provocation or warn­ing to others. Queer fellow, really,” added Copperwaite. “And we knew the bloody moment we came on scene that it was him, but it was rather shocking to discover he was yet another victim of the Crucifier.”

  “The 'Crucifier'? Is that what you're calling the killer?”

  “Press picked it up somehow,” Sharpe apologetically re­plied.

  “All Burton's wounds were the same, then?” she asked.

  “Identical. Actually Stuart saw it immediately, before I wanted to believe it. We looked at the hands, and then to the feet of the naked body. Poor chap lay outstretched before us, and there once again—for the third time—we found the tell­tale marks of a murder by crucifixion.”

  As Sharpe continued to describe the murdered victim and the scene, Jessica allowed her imagination to flow, picturing the exact moment, trying to climb into Sharpe's world, to know the exact words and gestures exchanged between Cop­perwaite and the more experienced Richard Sharpe. In a wak­ing dream, she saw Sharpe at the murder scene and heard him there, but his voice was muffled. She somehow found herself in a cold, cavernous well, the clamminess and absolute still­ness like a coffin, when she realized that she lay inside the body of one of the crucifixion victims.