Blind Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  “What you said about the millennium is perhaps more true than you know. Historically speaking, any major event brings on a certain return to fundamental fears in mankind. Any turn­ing of a century brings out his fears and frailties. He falls back on the primal urges, the primitive brain mechanisms that aren't so different than those of lizards, alligators, and other carnivores—those flee or fight mechanisms. And if that's true of the usual, run-of-the-mill turn of the century, then it's likely to be exacerbated by something as momentous as the new millennium. It's even exacerbated by the fact that nothing momentous occurred New Year's Eve 2000. So now the prophesies and millennial fears logically flip-flop to the year 2001, which experts tell us is in fact the actual turn of the thousand years.”

  “You realize there's a great deal of meat on that mutton. We must pick at it a good deal more to get to the bone,” he agreed. “Historically speaking, the turn of any century sees an intensified unrest with panics, revolutions, and wars.”

  “You think the Crucifier is acting out of some reaction to the new age, the year 2001, then?”

  He nodded several times, his jaw set, eyes stem and pen­etrating. “1 think it quite possible, yes. I've read some history, and I've spoken with Luc Sante about the possibility. As it happens, since at least the 1490s, the century ending has nor­mally meant speeded-up events, history and consciousness in the Western world.”

  “And the added religious and cultural dimension of this being the millennium to Christianity ...” she mused.

  He picked up her thread of thought and added, “Should triple if not quadruple the impact of the year 2001. Just as for so many cults and cult leaders, the year 2000 itself fueled fantastic beliefs and practices. We had quite a show of them in London, as reported by the tabloids.”

  “Predictable enough. Anyone could claim psychic powers who has studied the history of mankind and its mistakes. Those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. We in America, too, were innundated with millennial madness both approaching and at the turn of the year 2000. Consid­ering history—and the compression of this period in time, 2000 to 2001 ... Well, we're certain to see an intensifying of the end-of-world, apocalypse-now, end-of-century pandemo­nium multiplied.”

  “As I said, it's been true of past '90s, from 1490 to 1890. There's ample evidence in the history books that turn-of-the-century fears have brought on revolutions and wars, or have accelerated wars, as in both the 1690s and 1790s. The French Revolution began in 1789, and by the 1800s had turned into the Napoleonic wars. Early twentieth century wars from St. Petersburg and Constantinople to Vienna and Berlin began in the tumult and terrorism of the 1890s.”

  “Luc Sante told you all this?”

  “No, he simply got me thinking, and I rummaged about my memory of what I've read. History's something of a fasci­nation for me. It's so littered with stress—anxiety in general but characterized mostly as panic before the turn of the cen­tury.”

  “We've already seen plenty of tumult and terrorism in our own wounded, hurting decade,” she readily agreed. “The 1980s to the 1990s have been filled with horrors of all sorts.” Jessica looked deeply into Richard's sea-green eyes, losing herself there for a moment. She thought how he proved as sharp as his name. In the light of day, even where they were in the morgue below the crime lab, Jessica felt her fleeting suspicions and doubts surrounding Richard were so foolish that she wished to die at having ever entertained them even for the flashing moment. She wondered if there could ever come a time in their relationship when she could jokingly tell him about her paranoia. She rather doubted it. She also won­dered what it said about her. How had she become such a suspicious shrew?

  “I shall hope to see you at end of day, then. It appears you have your hands rather full here,” he said, looking on as she had lifted the viscera from the rib cage.

  She half smiled and said, “I'll look for you after I've closed.”

  “And I shall look forward to it.” And he was gone.

  James Parry could take himself and his newfound love and go to hell, she thought. At the same instant, she chastised herself for the uncharacteristic thought. Once again she thought of lines from Shakespeare's Mid-Summer Night's Dream and how rankled and insane love had made her. Still she did not wish Richard Sharpe to be “revenge” for Parry spuming her. She wasn't about to play that part. In fact, her mind actively fought the notion. She simply wanted to appre­ciate Sharpe's company. Richard Sharpe, a former colonel and a Scotland Yard inspector, courting her. Now that was some­thing to write home to her therapist about. A smile serenely danced across her lips, for the thought made her momentarily dreamy-eyed: just long enough for Schuller's man, Raehael, to quizzically wonder what had gotten into Dr. Jessica Coran.

  Jessica determined that her affinity for the Scotland Yard inspector to be completely genuine, and not some facile rem­nant of anger toward Parry. In fact, she felt nothing glib, cursory, trite, superficial, or insincere with regard to Sharpe; nothing elementary, apparent, simple, or obvious. Instead, a plethora of complex and confusing feelings proved to cul­minate in a pleasant acceptance of her admiration of Sharpe. She quieted her thoughts of Richard, returning attention once more to the fourth victim of the Crucifier's cross.

  As she did so, Jessica wondered if new DNA testing with laser light to detect trace elements of DNA left on the victim's body from someone in close contact might be of help here. It had recently been shown that humans indeed secreted far more DNA through touch alone than believed, leaving trace elements of DNA on telephones, pens, desktops, anything they touched. She asked Dr. Al-Zadan Raehael if he had the capability at the Yard to run such a test, supposing they could locate and lift the killer's DNA off the dead woman's hands or feet, where the killer had held them down to stake them, or on her lips, for example, where the killer, using the micro brand on her tongue, would have left DNA traces, had the killer failed to use surgical gloves. The killer knew about Brevital and he used precision. Might he be a doctor himself?

  “We have the laser equipment and the DNA testing equip­ment, yes. DNA testing began in Leicestershire County, not far from here, Doctor. Where that fiend killed all those little girls in Narborough, Littiethorpe, and Enderbury.”

  She recalled the famous case. Author Joseph Wambaugh chronicled it in his book The Blooding, which not only re­counted both the discovery of genetic fingerprint testing through DNA analysis in Dr. Alec Jeffreys's laboratory in 1986, but the first official use of genetic fingerprinting to re­solve a murder investigation and put a killer away for life.

  “In that case, let's test her hands, feet, and lips for any traces of DNA not hers.”

  “At the point of each wound, that's clear enough,” replied Dr. Raehael.

  “How soon can the tests be run and results had?”

  “We'll put it on first burner. Several days is the best we can do, but even then, without a matching—”

  “Oh, I realize that. But if and when we determine who the Crucifier is, we'll have it on record to nail him—no pun in­tended.”

  “If,” Raehael cautioned Jessica. “Big if, like you Ameri­cans say.... If he's left any DNA on her.”

  -TEN -

  If evil were easily recognized, identified and managed, there would be no need of forensic medicine.

  -from the casebooks of jessica coran

  After dinner at the Savoy, Richard, with tickets in hand, an­nounced that they were going to take in King Lear at the Globe Theatre.

  They drove to the theater, located at a wide bend on the River Thames on the opposite shore to that of St. Paul's Ca­thedral between the Southwark Bridge and Blackfriar's Bridge.

  The air felt thick with an electric intensity as the crowd grew and took on a rambling, monstrous life of its own. The madding crowd, Jessica thought. The public anticipation of the performance in the open-air, outdoor, Tudor theater had created an intensity in the impatient audience. Jessica took in the replica of the Globe Theatre, a painstakingly reco
nstructed edifice down to the oaken steps leading onto and off stage. Even the bard himself would recognize the theater as his home. The place did, in fact, represent an exact likeness of the theater in which Shakespeare's plays had been performed in his day. The only change Shakespeare would feel was that of time, for almost four hundred years had gone by.

  “It's been a boondoggle, some say, reconstructing the great Globe,” Richard informed her. “Not everyone is happy with her.”

  “Give me one reason why,” Jessica protested, staring at the beautiful stage, its circular shape and the two-story, surround­ing building.

  “It opened in 1997 at a cost of forty-six million of your American dollars. Having remained closed since 1613, purist and taxpayer alike didn't relish paying for it.”

  “Then it came into being through government funding?”

  “Matching funds for a wood and thatch construction on the south bank of the Thames, some two hundred yards from the site of the original? Imagine the fire insurance alone.”

  Jessica's eye wandered to the concession stand where plas­tic pullover raincoats could be had for two pounds, about three dollars American.

  “The original wooden O, as many call it, as Shakespeare himself called it in Henry V, was built in 1598 or '99 by a pair of well-to-do brothers, Cuthbert and Richard Burbage, using timbers from a failed theater in nearby Shoreditch. They wanted to place the O centrally, you see. Later, Shakespeare himself became a shareholder.”

  “I suppose the original, being made of thatch and timber, rotted of old age?” she asked.

  “Fate has never been too kind to the Globe, no. In 1613, the thatch was put alight by two cannons fired during a per­formance of Henry VIII. King Henry's ghost's revenge on Shakespeare for depicting him as he did, some say.”

  Together they laughed at the jest.

  Since there was no assigned seating at the Globe, further simulating Shakespeare's day, they made their way toward the stage, to locate seats as close to the action as possible. Richard now added, “History books say no one was hurt in the fire, except for one poor chap who, and I quote, 'Found his breeches afire so that it would have broiled him if he had not, with benefit of a provident wit, helped himself to some bottled ale to quench the flames.' “

  Jessica laughed even harder at this image.

  “The theater was rebuilt sometime after the fire, but again it came under destruction when in 1642 the Puritans, finding it offensive, demolished her as the breeding ground of the Devil that she is, you see.” Guiding her to her seat, he added, “If you look closely, the reconstruction is not entirely com­plete. There's still scaffolding at the rear and some finishing touches are being applied. Only last year did the plywood stage get replaced with the oaken one we now have. Still, even unfinished, the theater has enticed some 150,000 visitors annually, a figure that is expected to triple by the year 2001.”

  In a balcony built overlooking the stage, an actor began hurling insults at the audience, his own patrons. “Ya've paid full fair to sit on a wooden bench to hear buffoons wail out their sorrowful lives here? Are ya' daft, ya' citizens of Lon­don? 'Aven't ya' a telly for that, the telly and soap operas? Are ya' daft?” he venomously shouted and tossed confetti at the front rows.

  A female, acting as his wife, came out on the balcony to scold him, telling him to leave the paying customers alone and to come away with her, to help her prepare for the show.

  “Ya're all daft!” he called back. “Ya' could be sittin' at the Coat of Arms down the street having a pint!”

  “Shut that big hole of yours!” replied the wife.

  “I'll not be aggrieved by ya', woman, not in public and not in private!”

  And off they went, arguing, only to be replaced by an aged man with a white, flowing beard who talked to himself about the alignment of the stars, the heavens, and the meaning of life there on the balcony.

  “It's a tradition with the Globe, the stage balcony rows,” explained Richard. “Keeps the audience entertained and in a good mood before curtain rise.”

  “How many people does the theater seat?” asked Jessica, curious.

  'To cover the cost of an opening, ticket sellers have to fill the seats, some 1,394. Five pounds buys the rights to be a groundling.”

  “A groundling?”

  “See those people up front, all on their feet in the pit ahead of us?”

  She nodded.

  “Groundlings. They have a right to space on the floor, standing or sitting. We, by comparison, have tickets for a seat in the terraces, a bit more costly at sixteen pounds, but well worth it for these seats.”

  They had found their seats and settled in. Richard said in her ear, “The season began in May with the Globe ensemble of actors performing four plays in repertory. Performances run till late September. Playwrights other than Shakespeare are performed here from time to time as well.”

  “Such a splendid idea ... to revive the Globe.”

  “We Britons can't take all the credit in reviving the Globe,” Richard confessed. “One of your American actors, Sam Wanamaker, established a trust to raise funds for the project. Con­struction began in 1993, the year Wanamaker died at age seventy-four in fact.”

  “I've seen Wanamaker on the screen and on TV.” Jessica pictured the ruddy-faced, tall Wanamaker.

  “The project is still several million dollars short, and was ten million short when the Globe opened in '93.”

  As if hearing Sharpe, and as if on cue, a new character atop the theater at the balcony yelled down to the patrons to open their pocketbooks. “You critics among you who said the the­ater would never survive! You dig the deepest and pay treble for those seats you now have! Come along, out with it! There are jars and wretched fellows milling about who will take your donations!”

  “We're still paying for her, but she is grand, isn't she?” asked Richard. “Right down to her Norfolk reed roof, the oak beams, the hand-turned balustrades.”

  “Yes, it's a fantastic recreation,” Jessica agreed when sud­denly thunder roared all around them, yet the source could be traced to crude sounds being created behind the stage.

  “Even the sound effects are authentic to their time,” he explained. “That's heavy metal shot, cannonballs, rolled about in a metal washtub to simulate the sound of an approaching storm.”

  “So there's actually no sound equipment?”

  “None but what human hands and minds can create. There's no electricity, no lights, actually. Look around you.”

  “So that's why we're here so early.”

  “The performance ends with nightfall, just as in Shake­speare's day.”

  “It's a totally 'rough' experience.”

  “Exactly. The only thing not authentic is that we, the au­dience, aren't allowed to bring in overripe fruit and vegetables to throw at the actors.”

  Jessica's behind already felt sore on the hard wood “ter­race” seats. Taking her mind off the lack of creature comforts, Jessica noticed other buildings standing about, also with Tu­dor construction and thatch roofs. “What goes on there?” she asked, pointing.

  “Just opened the final phase of the project, two museums, or rather one an educational center, and a three-hundred-seat small theater designed from blueprints left by Elizabethan ar­chitect Inigo Jones. Plan is to have them all operational by 2001 and have a gala millennium party alongside the 401st performance on the Globe stage at the same time.”

  “What an undertaking! It's magnificent,” she conceded.

  “The theater itself is fully operational now, and will support the cost of its operation. I firmly believe that, as a member of the board of trustees.”

  “Ahhh, no wonder you know so much about it.”

  “It's become a passion, something to give myself over to so that I am not wholly swallowed up by my job, as in the past.”

  She thought momentarily of how her own work had swal­lowed up relationships, such as her and Jim Parry's irrecon­cilable problems, which prompted her t
o say, “Something all of us in law enforcement must.. . guard against.”

  “Something indeed ... When I allowed my job to consume me, well... for my troubles my wife gave me my walking papers.”

  “Divorce. I'm sorry.”

  “You see, too much time devoted to my work, not enough to the ones I love.”

  “I'm so sorry for any pain you've been put through, Rich­ard.”

  “Pain, depression, you can say the whole gamut came down around me. Had to take some time off, get back my focus, regroup. The Globe project, when it came along, well, it worked as a lifesaver for me.”

  Jessica settled in comfortably, excited at the same time. Then the curtains, faithful to history, were hand-pulled back to reveal the opening scene in Lear. She soon learned that Richard hadn't exaggerated in the least about the method of “special effects” here. Sounds and sights were indeed faith­fully reproduced, even the firing off of a cannon like the one that burned down the original Globe.

  King Lear had always held a great fascination for Jessica. Especially interesting to her was the tragic tyrant who, when he had eyes, could not see, and when blind, could see. The play, she believed, actually represented a metaphor for all mankind, the blind lives we all lead.

  At the close of evening, walking from the theater, Sharpe asked if she'd like to see the Thames from Blackfriar's Bridge. She accepted, and they made the short stroll to the center of the bridge overlooking the river and nearby massive St. Paul's Cathedral by moonlight.

  While there he reached out, took her hand in his, telling her, “You are an extraordinary woman, Jessica Coran. I've not met anyone like you before.”

  “Funny,” she replied, squeezing the hand that he'd placed in hers. “I've been thinking the same thought about you, Rich­ard Sharpe.”

  “Perhaps we should do something about our feelings?” It came out as a question. He added a warm smile.

  She dropped her gaze from his. “Perhaps. If you feel it won't jeopardize our working relationship.”

  “We won't allow it to.”