Blind Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  She could live without Jim, she rationalized now, and then she cried more deeply, not believing a word of it.

  And now here she lay in a London suite paid for by Scot­land Yard. Gulping back her grief at the loss of her lover, Jessica quietly fell asleep thinking of a line from a familiar song, one that had become a way of life for her: Alone again, naturally.

  At 2 a.m. Jessica gave up any hope of sleep. Insomnia, that old devil, stalked her anew. With the full discomfort of in­ability to find restful sleep, Jessica turned to Father Jerrard Luc Sante for help, hefting his self-published book Twisted Faiths onto her lap where she sat up in bed.

  She read halfway through the opus and determined that while Dr. Luc Sante's conclusions lived an inspired life unto themselves, and while he went way out on the cutting edge of a psychotherapy few people dared discuss much less ex­amine at so close a range, his style and choice of words were too often uninspired.

  Still, the conclusions seemed inspired by some supra-human voice seemingly not of this Earth. Actually, the book's many conclusions surpassed anything she had ever read in psychotherapy journals or volumes.

  At the same time, she clearly understood why Luc Sante could not find a publisher for his work. No one would pay money to read the convoluted thinking of what some might assume to be a mad priest gone on verbal rampage against the evil among us. Throughout her reading, she was forced to stop and reread for clarity, and, frankly, she found Luc Sante's crippled prose generally wooden and lacking in luster.

  While she was no editor or grammarian, she judged his sentences as awkwardly constructed, his phraseology too of­ten linear and syllogistic, while his annoying terminology-laden, for-psychotherapist-only approach stuttered every step of the way over the rhetoric of his own field: religion. Still, his “truths” were fascinating: Satan lives in the human breath and organs. Evil flourishes in the disease vials we call our bodies. Evil flourishes in our weak and hopelessly ruled brains, and yet we have children whom we teach and inspire. How many of us inspire hatred, racial prejudice, ignorance, poverty, and murder? We are Satan. Satan is us. And from generation to generation, we propagate evil through our chil­dren, and will continue to do so until the cycle of Satanism is broken and until psychotherapists join with religious leaders to both recognize and combat evil in its purest form—man­kind. The same mankind that crucified Christ.

  All the same, only occasionally on paper did Luc Sante's magnificent speaking voice come through. Consequently, the pace of the book became as turgid as a pollution-choked in­dustrial canal. Still, the book filled Jessica with dread shivers. It held much rare information doled out like so many golden nuggets, she thought, all on a subject seldom to never touched on. Luc Sante's running thesis said: True evil as it is created in society among people, as it is given life and breath in this world, is altogether so mundane and day-to-day as to be all but invisible to us, and in being so invisible, it gained in strength and cunning thanks to our blatant ignorance of it.

  She believed what Luc Sante said to be clearly correct in a sense, fitting into of her own experiences with twisted minds. Jessica began to believe that perhaps evil did indeed infest and infiltrate and find succor in the most mundane of human hearts and minds through the genetic makeup. That much of the pitiable state of the human condition, and the ferocity of the creature called man, was predetermined through a fate as biochemically fundamental as the DNA of apes, despite the outward veneer of civility, progress, and technological marvels.

  Certainly mankind remained, throughout the ages and pres­ent day, an incubator for evil experiments as well as all man­ner of disease and disability. She imagined a world in which the worst of mankind, the most evil among us, were subjects of a cloning experiment, that had, in the later part of the twentieth century, blindly and unwittingly cloned its own dark side, so that the modem-day serial killer could indeed be ex­plained. She imagined that nature had done the cloning for us with the hand of Satan in the mix. She pulled back, short of putting full stock into the reli­gious man's words. “We've had the messages in the bubblegum wrapper de­fense, we've had the Devil-made-me-do-it defense, the talking dog from Son of Sam, and now we're to have the DNA-made-me-do-it defense?” she asked the room. Still Luc Sante's book had one fine result: It had put her under.She had fallen asleep at last, with his compilation of dark and sinister thoughts on her lap, and she dreamed of the many guises of evil he'd so elegantly described in his comprehen­sive work on the nature of evil and the duty of every psy­chotherapist to engage the diabolical, all malfeasance and malignancy wherever he or she found it, and to struggle in real-time combat with it at every turn.

  “We fight the same enemy.” Luc Sante's voice wafted over her dreams....Lawrence Coibby, used car salesman, loner, without a friend in the world, having never actually been buried, had spent the last few weeks in storage in a stranger's freezer in a garage in Kensington. Jessica was told this with such calm that she marveled anew at the ability of the British to understate any situation. Consequently, there having been no actual burial, due in part to the absence of burial sites, there was no true exhumation of the body. However, over the last twenty-four hours, the “hunt” for Coibby's body had continued, and once properly identified and located, the cadaver had been taken to a nearby hospital, St. Stephen's Parish Hospital, where Dr. Coran oversaw the evidence gathering—specifically the evi­dence gathered from under Lawrence Coibby's tongue.

  Staring through the high-powered magnifying glass brought in for the job, Jessica found the tongue in remarkably good shape due more to the deep freezing of the body than to the embalming.

  “There it stands, gentlemen,” she told Sharpe and the oth­ers, Copperwaite, Chief Inspector Boulte alongside Dr. Schul­ler. “Have a look, Richard. It's the same message, letter for letter, word for word.”

  Sharpe eagerly took her place at the magnifying glass, find­ing just the right focus for himself. “As if the killer has a brand, and he keeps using it over and over.”

  'Two out of three, technically,” agreed Copperwaite.

  “It's clear enough.”

  Jessica took a last look at the message, inscribed in the flesh, burnt into the flesh by a micro-brand. “I confess, I've never seen the like of it before,” she told the men.

  “It's clearly the work of a serial killer now, one wishing to taunt police with a hideous method of torturous death for his victims,” suggested Chief Inspector Boulte. “We'll keep this out of the communique you wish to forward the media, Rich­ard.”

  “We'd like a good deal more said about the killings, Chief Inspector.”

  “I've reviewed your suggestions and those of our American colleague, Richard. I'm sorry, but it all seems a bit premature at this time to alarm the public with this information about...about the tongues being seared on top of all this other nastiness, you see?”

  Jessica took several deep breaths of air, allowing her dis­appointment clear vent. Sharpe bit his lip and nodded to his superior, saying, “Whatever you judge best, Chief Inspector. It is, after all, your show.”

  Sharpe abruptly turned from his superior and rained com­pliments on Jessica. “You've done a fine job for us. Dr. Coran, in the startlingly brief time you've been on the case.”

  Copperwaite eagerly added, “Yes, she's already proven her worth to the case quite dramatically, I'd say.”*

  Copperwaite's compliment hardly left his lips when Sharpe laughed aloud. Whether Copperwaite knew it or not, he'd hit upon the true reason why Chief Inspector Boulte did not wish to go public with this information. It had come not from the Yard's efforts or findings, but from the American, the colo­nist, Jessica Coran. Boulte only showed a politically correct smile and agreed with his men, saying, “Yes, Dr. Coran, your contribution to the case, thus far, has been most impressive. Keep up the good work.” Dr. Karl Schuller, however, remained displeased, his dour expression as frozen as the dead Coibby's, and he left without a word to anyone. Boulte followed after him.“Where do w
e go from here?” she asked Sharpe.

  “How about lunch?” he replied.

  “Bonzo,” agreed Copperwaite. “I'm starved.”

  “There's a little pub not far from here, called Groton's, if it's not full. Old favorite,” said Sharpe. “Let's have a go at it, shall we?”

  “We shall,” Jessica agreed.

  “Over lunch, we can talk about our next move. If we have one.”

  “What do you mean by that?” she asked. “ 7/ we have one?”

  “Chief Inspector Boulte's pushing for a new investigative team to come on.”

  “What? What kind of thinking is that?”

  “Administrative.”

  “Is that how New Scotland Yard works? If so, it smells like yesterday's fish.”

  “Boulte used a fishy metaphor as well,” replied Sharpe, a bit amused at her anger. “Says we're rowing a leaking boat.”

  “He's always saying crap of that sort. 'Gain on swings, lose on roundabouts,' he says ten times a day,” reported Cop­perwaite as they continued to the bar. “Gawd 'elp us. The man doesn't know the geography of his own house.”

  Sharpe laughed uproariously at this, leaving Jessica to won­der what she'd missed. He quickly explained, “It means he can't find the john in his own home.”

  She joined in their laughter. “I've a Geordie friend from Tynsdale knows more than that man,” said Copperwaite.

  “Boulte doesn't rise to the level of a Geordie, a George perhaps.. ..” Sharpe's summation brought on more laughter. Copperwaite explained for Jessica that a George in Britain meant the automatic-pilot mechanism on an airplane or the cruise mechanism on a car. “Let the hamster onto the wheel,” added Sharpe, chewing now on an unlit pipe.

  “Still, isn't it rather a bit premature to call in a new inves­tigative team at this point?” she asked.

  Sharpe shrugged. “Oh, I don't know. He has to have some­one to play the goat. Short of having someone in the green­house—ahh, the lock-up—he has to point a finger in some direction. To be fair, he has a hell of a political Rube Gold­berg balanced on his shoulder right now, and—”

  “Ahh, you're daft, Sharpie. You make too many excuses for the man.”

  Sharpe ignored Copperwaite as they continued along a tree-lined street, children playing in nearby yards. “Boulte's right about one thing. We haven't amassed a thing on the killer, and now we may simply have to wait for the killer to strike again before we can learn any more about him or them. This is a sorry state of affairs, but it happens to be the circum­stances we're now faced with, as you know.”

  “We're just to sit about like bumps to wait for a . .. another killing?” asked Copperwaite.

  Jessica complained as well. “That's a bit like the tail wag­ging the dog, don't you think?”

  “What steps then would you have us take?”

  “Use the Times and the BBC. Get word out on this killer. Tell the public what you've found, what to look for.”

  “That might flush him out,” agreed Copperwaite.

  “Or send him packing,” suggested Sharpe.

  Jessica looked into his eyes. “Either way, don't you think people should be forewarned? If there's anyone out there who knows anything about this branding for instance, it could lead to a break in the case. As it is, you have no suspects and no direction. Sometimes you need to manufacture a direction.”

  -NINE -

  The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But swoln with wind and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly and foul contagion spread. . .

  —John Milton, Lycidas

  While at Groton's Pub, Sharpe's beeper hailed him, and after making a phone call, he returned to the table with a grim look in his eye. “Afraid Stuart, Jessica,... before anything regard­ing the crucifixion deaths and the fact the victims had all been branded can be released to the press, another body, in the same condition, awaits us at the Serpentine.”

  “The Serpentine?” asked Jessica.

  “A large lake, rather serpentine in form, if one uses imag­ination, bordering Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens,” re­plied Copperwaite, placing a polite hand over his gaping, yawning mouth. “Rather a distance from the other bodies, wouldn't you say, Richard?”

  But Sharpe's mind was elsewhere. He hardly heard a word.

  “Ahh, of course,” Copperwaite's light came on. “Not bloody far from where your ex and your children live, is it, Richard?” asked Copperwaite, knowing the answer.

  “Let's get over there.”

  The ride to Hyde Park felt like a funeral procession marked by extraordinary solemnity. Sharpe brooded, looking like one of the ancient gargoyles atop so many London cathedrals. Obviously, the Crucifier had struck too close to home for Sharpe's comfort. Jessica followed Stuart Copperwaite's lead, Copperwaite appearing to respect his elder partner's need for silence.

  “Body's been snatched from the water. No telling how much evidence has gone lost before we were notified,” Sharpe finally said, breaking the quiet. “First thing you'll want to examine, Doctor, are the wounds to the extremities and the tongue, of course.”

  “I'll have a look, of course,” she replied.

  “And if it's the same, we'll know that much.”

  “And if it's not?” asked Copperwaite.

  “Then we'll have a bloody copycat killer to add to the mix, now won't we?” Sharpe's response came terse and angry.

  Silence once again ruled the rest of the trip.

  On aniving at Hyde Park, they turned off Baywater Road and cruised through Westbourne Gate onto West Carriage Drive which led them to water's edge at the Serpentine Bridge. Again, the body had been discovered washed up be­low a large bridge over a sizable body of water. A psychic could make hay with this repeated scenario, Jessica thought, as psychics invariably told authorities to “look for the body to be located near a large body of water, possibly near a bridge.”

  It so often became true because it was true to begin with; many a killer wished to wash his hands of the deed, and what better way than in a lake, at a river's edge or some other body of water.

  When they came on the body, they found some ten or more men standing about in various poses ranging from awkward­ness to confusion. Two of the men, hair and clothing drenched from having dragged the body out of the Serpentine, looked up at them as they approached, Jessica with her black valise in hand. She'd dragged it all about London in what Sharpe called his boot, the trunk of his car, and now she must utilize its contents.

  “Stand back, all you chaps,” Richard directed the others. “Dr. Coran here is a forensics expert. She'll have a look at the victim now. Stand aside, please.” Jessica appreciated his choreographing of the moment, tak­ing charge as Otto Boutine, her FBI mentor, would have done were he alive and standing alongside her.

  Jessica immediately saw that the nude victim was female. “Another A.N. Other,” she heard someone say. Like the other victims, this one was up in years, perhaps forty-five, perhaps more. Impossible to be absolute at this point, but Jessica saw the specificity of the wounds to feet and hands, the work of large spikes.

  Copperwaite, swallowing a gasp, exclaimed, “It's another one crucified, all right. Look at the wounds to the hands and feet.”

  Jessica and Sharpe had already seen and deduced the evi­dence of crucifixion. Like Sharpe, she suspected a copycat, this murder having come so soon on the heels of Burton's death. The only way to be certain lay beneath the victim's tongue.

  She located a pair of tweezers from her black valise as a cricket clamored aboard the body and found its way across the woman's dead eyes, which stared blankly out at Jessica. She'd seen that same serenity about the features in both Coibby and Burton's faces. It was as if these deaths meant to defy her, as if their spirit remnants shunned her with a wry grin.

  Jessica shooed off the cricket even as she pushed her dis­concerting thoughts away, concentrating on struggling into her Latex gloves. Next she began fishing for the dead woman's tongue using the sort of prong-ended tweezers su
r­geons preferred. She yanked and pulled at the dead tongue, and brought it as far out as it would come, which in death was two to three times further than in life.

  All about her, men looked on, all but two wondering what in God's name her interest in the dead woman's tongue could possibly be, except the eccentric fetish of yet another eccen­tric M.E.? Jessica felt their combined stares as a mix of both the curious and disgusted all at once.

  “Give me a little light over here, will you?” she asked her Scotland Yard colleagues.

  Copperwaite grabbed for his penlight and shone the beam down over Jessica's shoulder and onto the tongue held by the tweezers.

  “Has she got it?” asked Copperwaite.

  “Shhh!” cautioned Sharpe. “You'll tip off the lads.” He indicated the others, but it was too late. One asked, “Got it? Has she some sort of disease we should be knowing about, Inspector?”

  “No, no!” assured Sharpe. “Nothing of that nature, I can assure you.”

  “What then's with the tongue?”

  “Dr. Coran examines every inch of the body,” he half-lied, leaving out the rest.

  Sharpe leaned in now, and saw what Jessica and Copper­waite stared at. A branded tongue with the exact same words, Mihi beata mater, staring back at them.

  “Poor woman,” moaned Jessica. “Such an awful way to die.”

  “Amazes me how these fiends think of such grotesque methods of torture and debauchery,” Copperwaite bemoaned.

  Sharpe asked the men standing about, “How was she found?”

  “Facedown in the water, floating like a log.”

  “She bloody looks at peace,” commented Copperwaite.

  Jessica silently agreed with Stuart's assessment. The woman appeared restful, peaceful beside the lovely Lake Ser­pentine, and Sharpe appeared the agitated one. He began pac­ing in catlike circles before venturing off, down an incline toward the water and out of earshot.