Jessica nodded, taking the podium, and after saying good afternoon to some sixty or so assembled inspectors, she listed the likely characteristics of the killer again, adding, “We, first of all, we believe to be a they—at least two men. They have a religious fixation, an obsession with the crucifixion, likely find replicas and paintings of it everywhere they spend time. They will likely lead exemplary lives, purporting to be model citizens, even religious experts or leaders among their acquaintances. They will likely be in their mid-twenties to upper-thirties, and are most likely white men. They will be married, working steady jobs, likely lower-income, blue-collar, raising families and/or caring for aged parents, all the duties of sons, fatherhood, and husbands part of their facade, and part of the pressure they live under. We've also developed some threads of connection among the victims. The victims are middle-class for the most part, white—one reason we suspect the killers to be white. Each victim led a life generally uneventful, devoted to an effort at finding peace and comfort in organized religion and within themselves. They had little else in common save religious devotion. This doesn't tell us much, but it does suggest that they may have met their attackers in their quest for religious answers.”
A characteristically wry Falstaff-looking British detective interjected, “Not exactly lookin' for love in all the wrong places. But perhaps looking for God in all the wrong places? Heh, Doctor?”
“You could put it that way, yes.” Her smile relaxed.
“So, we seek out any and all bizarre-o cults in London? That's a gargantuan task in itself,” said one inspector.
“Take us till bloody doomsday,” added another. Jessica went on the defensive, her tone firm, saying, “Actually, sometimes, if a law-enforcement official shows up at the doorstep of a guilty person, he automatically confesses and asks, 'Why'd it take you so long? I've been waiting for you.' “ After the meeting, Boulte said to Jessica, “A news conference is set to go. I'd like you to be beside me when I inform the press of our most recent findings.”
Near her wit's end, Jessica exploded, “My God, Chief! Another meeting?”
“Meet the press time, Doctor,” came his simple response.
“You don't intend to give them the details surrounding the tongue brandings, do you?”
“That bit of news may shake someone from apathy, may open someone's mind to the possibility of a neighbor's strange habits and lifestyle.”
“It could also jeopardize a conviction, if and when the killer's apprehended. We need to keep some information in-house.”
“We owe it to the public to be open and honest with them at this point, and ... well...”
“And that's the image you wish to portray, but that information isn't news! It must be withheld. It could prove invaluable as a tool in interrogating viable suspects later, and it can certainly rule a suspect out quickly, if skillfully used to—”
“We need to tell the press something now, today, and it has to be something new, Dr. Coran, and it has to be concrete evidence.”
“I see. Then no amount of persuasion on my part will change the course you've chosen.”
“No, it will not.”
Jessica followed alongside Boulte, Sharpe, and Copperwaite to the news conference. Surprisingly, Stuart Copperwaite appeared animated over the prospect of cameras and microphones pushed into his face. She chalked his enthusiasm up to his youth, his inexperience with the press. He'd soon enough learn the pitfalls of dealing with the “free press.” Sharpe, by comparison, appeared sullen, perhaps angry. She wondered if he and Boulte had already had it out over this matter. The two men, obviously, were not speaking to one another at the moment.
Suddenly Richard said to Boulte, “This is shoddy police work, sir, and I choose not to participate in your little circus.” Sharpe stormed off to Boulte's, “You come back here, Inspector, right this moment, or I will be forced to take sanctions against you for insubordination. You force me to remove you from the case and it will be on your head, Richard! Richard!”
“Do that!” Sharpe shouted over his shoulder.
“Damn that fellow,” bellowed Boulte at Copperwaite. “You'll have to buck up, Stuart. You are, for the moment, the lead investigator on the case of the century.”
Copperwaite blanched and didn't smile, but he almost saluted and he might have clicked his heels, Jessica thought. “I shall do my level best, sir.”
A far cry from his back-stabbing comments of only a few days ago, Jessica thought. Now Copperwaite's lapping at Paul Boulte's boots. She momentarily wondered if Sharpe had been given Copperwaite to mold and fashion for some insidious purpose such as his keeping a close eye on Sharpe's activities. It fleeted past like a shy shadow, but the intuitive feeling certainly sat squarely before Jessica now that Boulte nodded appreciatively at his junior inspector and said, “I knew I could count on you, Coppers.”
Copperwaite's lips pursed in an unassuming smile, while his eyes sought out Jessica, sending a silent and unspoken message that clearly read: What else am I to do? Storm off like a child, like Richard? What will that accomplish?
Copperwaite read nothing in Jessica's return gaze. She allowed nothing to be transmitted. Still, the coldness of her gaze, the neutrality of it, brought about a painted smile that flit birdlike across Stuart's countenance, gone almost as suddenly as it had come. As the press conference began, a pencil-thin, sharp-edged woman calling herself the new public prosecutor promised the usual political improbables. But Boulte worked the center ring with Copperwaite to one side of him, Jessica to the other. Since her way to London had been paid for by Boulte's department, she felt she must do as the man requested of her. But she volunteered nothing. Reporters had to pry the new forensic evidence from her with one leading question after another. Jessica finally and reluctantly told the press about the branding of the tongues, only at Boulte's insistence. However, the exact wording was withheld and would be kept internal so that investigators could know when a suspect is viable or simply a crackpot wishing to confess to the crime.
Boulte seethed, his gaze piercing hers, for she said it in such a way as to make it sound like Boulte's order. Then in the sea of faces before them, Jessica saw the reporter who'd questioned her at the York. She glared at Erin Culbertson, wishing to stake the reporter to a cross even as the other woman asked Jessica a pointed question. “Are you and Richard Sharpe” ... hesitation, pause ... “Are you in agreement on the question of whether the Crucifier is one killer or two?”
“We suspect there are at least two men doing the killing, yes.”
“Have you any idea why they crucify their victims?”
“We fear it is a religious fixation, a zealotry, possibly an attempt to reawaken in the general public an awareness of Christ, the cross, God's word, all that, but we are only speculating. It's difficult enough to climb into the head of one killer, much less two at once. But, yes, there does seem to be a pair-mentality at work, and some of the physical requirements of actually spiking someone to a cross might well require at least four strong hands.”
“Thank you all for coming,” said Boulte, bringing the press conference to a close. Jessica stepped behind a curtain, out of sight of the cameras and reporters, but she watched from her vantage point to see what, if any, contact Culbertson made with Boulte. To her surprise, there appeared none whatever.
Jessica felt good about having kept the exact wording of the killer's message and the coal dust and beetle long shot to herself. No one but she and Dr. Raehael knew of its possible significance. She secretly seethed now, knowing that the information on the tongue branding, and most likely the precise wording, would soon become newsprint fodder, plastered across every television in the city. Like America, the press in England, inadvertently or otherwise, made antiheroes of serial killers. The Crucifiers would make great copy for many days, possibly many months, to come. Even if caught, their story would continue through pre-and post-trial footage, and these psychos would be held up as
“criminal geniuses” for young people to “worship” when in fact they were anything but.
Jessica saw that the Culbertson woman had remained behind, fixing her makeup, combing out her hair, preparing it seemed for the next interview, the next story. On a dare to herself, Jessica stepped from behind the curtain to confront the woman. Moments before Erin Culbertson was about to step away, Jessica intercepted her and asked, “Can I have a private moment with you. Miss Culbertson?”
“Absolutely, Dr. Coran. You're the hottest topic in London today. What can I do for you?”
“You can tell me what's transpired between you and Chief Boulte.”
“Whatever are you talking about?”
“Don't play games with me, Miss Culbertson. Richard's told me all about you,” she lied.
Erin Culbertson held back sudden tears and found it difficult to meet Jessica's gaze. She fell into the chair she'd occupied earlier. “I'd hoped it wasn't over, not completely, between Richard and me. ... Have for some months now, but when I learned .. . When he told me about his attraction for you, I knew that it was.”
“So you went to his superior, getting him into trouble with Boulte out of some female need for vengeance? That really sucks, lady.”
“What? No ... I would never hurt Richard.”
“Well, you did. Boulte has changed toward Richard. He seems to know about Richard and me.”
“Not from me, he doesn't! Perhaps you and Richard ought be more discreet. Dr. Coran. Given the circumstances, the fact you are involved cannot be healthy for the case, now can it?”
“That's not your call.”
“But it is Boulte's.”
“It might be, but Boulte isn't being direct with Richard or me. No, he's biding his time like some spider spinning a web. He doesn't want to cripple Richard. He wants to crush him, wants to figure a way to press him into early retirement. I thought you with your press badge might be Boulte's trump card.”
“I swear to you, I've said not one word against Richard or you to anyone, Doctor. Now, I am leaving. You can be assured that I love Richard, and I would do nothing whatever to harm him in any fashion. In fact, I would do all within my power to protect him, if I could. Good day to you, Doctor.”
Culbertson stood tall and straight and proud as she quickly stepped away, leaving Jessica to wonder if Culbertson wasn 't feeding Boulte salacious gossip, then who?
Twenty-four hours later
“We did it. Him and me is what did it,” said Jacob Periwinkle, pointing again to his roommate and so-called partner in murder, Sheldon Hawkins. Periwinkle and Hawkins had said the magic words that might catapult them into the dark and infamous fame of the pantheon of antiheroes and Antichrists who, over a half century now had dominated world news— the serial killers. They meant to join the ranks by claiming to be “team” Crucifier.
Sharpe conducted the interrogation of the self-confessed duo, while Jessica stood behind the one-way mirror alongside Chief Inspector Boulte. While at ease for the moment, Sharpe had been extremely agitated by Periwinkle and Hawkins. Nearby, rocking on the back of a chair that tap-tapped the brick wall, Stuart Copperwaite looked sternly on, not asking any questions, content to allow Sharpe on his feet and pacing, to speak. Only occasionally did Copperwaite break silence to hammer a quesdon home to one or the other of the suspects.
The information imparted at the news conference had spread forth like a fiery cancer, the result a shocking string of confessors claiming their place in history as the crucifixion killers. Most completely mad, but one pair claiming to be “The Crucifier Crew” or 'Team Crucifier” must now be seriously examined, as they voluntarily came in, in tandem, both alleging to be the crucifixion killer “team” as touted by the press.
“They were on their periods, the women, weren't they?” Jacob Periwinkle told them as he asked the question. And it had been true according to one news account. Jessica had volunteered to search all the news stories to understand fully what a confessor might pick up in the media to use to convince authorities of their claims. Facts, details of the crime scene, exacting times, all went into a believable, bankable lie. Between Periwinkle and Hawkins, they had already managed to repeat, verbatim, all they'd seen on TV and read in the newspaper. Bad news and a salacious appetite for it by news-people in radio, TV, and print happened so frequently nowadays that people, jaded to the horror of murder, accepted it as a commonplace, and here in Interrogation Room A—the sweatbox Sharpe called it—the informer who used too many details, told too many exacting stories about how he did what he supposedly did, invariably lied. The truth-tellers, as Sharpe called them, had only one thing in common with pathological liars, and that was the simple matter of “Where do I go from here? Are you taking me to jail or not?” There the similarities died. The false-claims people told an interrogator more than what he asked for. As sure as “dabs”—fingerprints according to Sharpe—body language sent its own message to an experienced interrogator who could read each type, liar and truth-teller. All that is necessary is we show the confessor the dabs and tell him the prints came from the bloody crime scene, and he'll give it up one way or the other, usually. It hadn't been so with the two confessors today, who claimed they used surgical gloves throughout their tormenting and disposing of the bodies.
Sharpe stepped out of the interrogation room for a time, needing fresh air and a moment to collect himself. Seeing Jessica, he said, “I can tell from the change in expression which way an innocent man and a guilty man will react— whether the crime is his or not. These two are bogus, ingenuine article ... despite their revelations, none of which my little six-year-old could not have plucked from the tabloids and the legitimate press.”
Knowing most certainly now that Sharpe disbelieved this “tag team” crucifying couple, Periwinkle created a show, clamoring to his feet and making an attempt to grab Copper-waite, who'd remained inside. Sharpe took the opportunity to rush back inside to lash out at the foolhardy man, while warning off the tattered-looking Sheldon Hawkins. Sharpe almost broke Periwinkle's arm, releasing the man only at Copperwaite's intervention.
In the same instant, Chief Inspector Boulte muttered, “There's Sharpe for you. The real man. Take a clear look. He pops off like this more often than not. Not surprised his wife left him.”
Jessica didn't need to hear this coming from Boulte. She wanted to run away from the man. She thought him as dull as a bolt, that Copperwaite had properly surmised all that there was of the chief and his talent.
“It's unfortunate that Richard's time is taken up by these false claimants to the Crucifier's throne.”
“You think so, do you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“For your information, Doctor, several promising leads have already opened up as a result of our cooperation with the press.”
“Really? And I thought it just the opposite, that we're wasting our time interviewing subjects for the latest Ripley's museum or book of the odd and delusional.”
“Still, you must admit that these two birds, that they are ... That is, they make a strangely frightening couple, wouldn't you say?”
“What's strangely frightening, sir, and I mean this with all due respect, is how much time we're willing to waste on the usual suspects when this case is not about the usual in any sense of the word. These two men were mental cases before the Crucifixion murders. The press stories actually feed their delusional tendency, legitimizing them, so to speak. Now we are validating them by giving them our time and attention, and then the press will give them the attention of stars, celebrities.”
“All well and good, Doctor, but you work out of a laboratory. The rest of us don't have the luxury to work in a vacuum, as much as we'd like to pretend otherwise. We are held accountable for progress or lack of progress on solving murder cases, and often the cases are, like this one, extremely high profile. We can't duck the press on such sensationalism. It's their bread and butter, and if we fail to cooperate, they crucify us. Iro
nic, but true.”
“No, the real irony here, sir, is how we've tied our own investigative teams' hands to their backs, as if conditions aren't bad enough to begin with. It's a catch-22 in which the soldier, scraping his knee on landing after jumping from the airplane, whines, moans, and complains about the scraped knee while ignoring the fact his entrails are lying on the ground next to him.”
“What are you implying?”
“Implying? I'm not implying anything. I'm saying outright that we're wasting valuable time on nonsense that will only prove itself nonsense. It's like the proverbial camel—a horse created by committee. The results are not what you want, so much as what you get in the end.”
“Are you making a joke?”
The man's thick-headedness drove Jessica insane inside, and she had no place to put the rage. She tried once more. 'Take the last couple claiming to be the one and only Crucifiers. A man and woman team in a common-law marriage, who explained in vivid detail why they crucified their first victim, how they got a charge out of it, and seeing the hubbub around the discovered body, they claimed to have blended in with the tourists to take the ferry at the bridge.”
“They sounded so convincing at first,” Boulte muttered.
“Yeah, until they got on the ferry. Said they watched from the ferry out on the water while the Yard men were still looking over the body. That has to be a lie.”
“How so?”
“Sharpe and Copperwaite had the ferry traffic held up for over an hour when they arrived, and a thick fog covered them. Finally, neither Sharpe nor Copperwaite or any police remained behind once the body was carted off, so how did the so-called killers see them from the ferTy as it pulled from the dock? I'll tell you how: through gross imaginings.”
Blind Instinct Page 23
