Blind Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  “Quite,” agreed Boulte.

  “That single detail in error is large enough to tell anyone those two were lying, that they were not in the proximity of the corpse, the boat, or anything to do with the killing since they quote 'watched from the ferry as it left the dock to see how the detectives treated the body.' “

  On hearing the lie during his interrogation of the confessing pair, Richard Sharpe had quickly asked, “Oh, you must, of course, mean the return ferry, just coming in, since we held up the outgoing ferry.”

  “Yes, yes, that's the one,” volunteered the confessor.

  There had been no incoming ferries from across the Thames that time of morning. Even the ferry that Sharpe had heard that gloomy, fog-laden morning was the ferry crossing downriver at another bridge.

  When this was pointed out to the confessing couple, both pleaded to be executed together. They wanted the Crown to kill them. That had been their intent all along.

  Now this second murder duo of males, Periwinkle and Hawkins, a pair of seedy losers, had become altogether mad, angry, and frustrated in their sad little lives. Jessica, listening in on the interview from behind the one-way, realized im­mediately that the press, while useful if constructively in­volved in and committed to the ending of a serial killer's career, failed often to serve a case for a number of reasons, not the least being that a little bit of information in the wrong hands or head, could lead too many people down the primrose lane. Offering a reward often resulted in the same end. Except in this case the reward meant national attention, great noto­riety as when People magazine editors chose to splash can­nibal Jeffrey Dahmer's face across a cover. “I'm going in there. I have a few questions for these two,” Jessica told Boulte. He did not question her motive, even though she'd just told him that interrogating these men rep­resented a gross waste of time and a wrong direction for the investigation to take. Just as she left the observation room, the thin, dark-haired public prosecutor entered via another door, and Boulte's entire attention went to her. “Ellen!” he falsely beamed.

  Once inside the interrogation room, Jessica saw Sharpe's eyes, at first disappointed, as if throwing up a barrier to tell her This is no place for you; it's not safe or right for you to be here. This he quickly replaced with a quick nod, a half-smile, and an urging for her to come in. The moment she entered the interrogation room, she felt the palpable evil here, perhaps the reason that Richard wanted at first to stop her at the door. Evil in all its most excruciatingly toady ugliness resided in one comer in the pockmarked face of Periwinkle, who leaned over to whisper in the cauliflower ear of Hawkins. It were as if they shifted the evil back and forth between them, as if it were a salacious animal or insect. The sensation of it as a palpable, breathing entity here riveted first her sense of smell. Evil cast a noxious odor. It permeated her mouth where it tasted foul, and then found its way through the canals of her ears. Rude and disquieting words were coming from each of the desperate men. Each asked crude questions regarding Jessica's body and presence: “Why is the bitch here? Who is this whore kidding? We know what she wants, four wangs in the room. Wants us all to do her here and now while some other wang the other side of that mirror watches. Don't-cha, whore, bitch, cunt? Answer me, you fucking sweet-and-sour whore bitch.”

  Sharpe lashed out at Periwinkle, threatening bodily harm if he didn't “Shut up!” Then he warned Hawkins, followed by a chair he threw across the room.

  Jessica now felt the present evil crawl along the epidermal layer of her skin. It crept everywhere about her body at once. It made her feel like the victim in some sickening horror show, and the sight of the two men claiming to be the Crucifiers disgusted her, brought up in her a twisting, coiling hatred. Hissing hatred. Hatred wanting to unleash its venom on them.

  Jessica wondered at the sheer depth of her own rage: un­reasonably wild, natural, blind, primal, pure, dark, and fatal in the end. Such hatred existed as a natural survival signal for Jessica and other law-enforcement people, but it formed a reason for living for such monsters as Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, and countless others, including the Crucifier.

  She wondered how many good and faithful so-called Chris­tians felt this sort of viperlike hatred toward those who did not practice their belief. Wondered if the real Crucifier had this in mind, to bring the nonbeliever into believing, to teach by demonstration and by example, the example being the cru­cified remains of those who mocked his religion, whatever vision of that religion existed in the killers' heads.

  In any event, she felt the cold, hungry, animal hatred pacing Interrogation Room A. It permeated the room. Perhaps part of it belonged to Richard, part of it to Copperwaite—as well as being part of the two men they interrogated. Perhaps hatred fed off all of them, one and the same cowardly jackal, grow­ing in strength as one man's hatred matched the other's, until the jackal became a two-headed, winged beast with homs and hooves and talons. “We become the thing we hate, if we chase it long enough.” How often Asa Holcraft had warned her, and recently Luc Sante had said the same thing to her. Nothing new in the old belief, dating far before the character of Van Helsing in Bram Stoker's Dracula, going back to biblical story and the beginning of time: Pursue evil long enough with enough determination, and you become it, and doesn't it be­come you? she darkly jested somewhere deep within the regions of her multilayered soul. For part of the evil crouching in the comer resembled Jessica herself.

  “I like driving in the nails,” said Sheldon Hawkins, drool­ing over the image as he spoke the words. “Ja-see, that's my job. Jake here, he bleedin' prays over 'em, after we do 'em. Curly bastard, that's what Jake here is.”

  “Prayer wounds all heels!” joked Jacob Periwinkle, a small, obnoxious weasel whose body odor, something akin to hair and hide of the rat, preceded him. Hawkins's most prominent feature filled his face—an enormous beak nose, falconlike in size and appearance. Jessica thought them stark caricatures of the sort that Jim Henson's company portrayed in the Muppetland Band. Both men needed bathing, scrubbing, and grooming. They were like a pair of stray dogs who'd learned to live with their own lice.

  “What is the purpose behind your crucifying people?” she asked them. “Why kill people in so brutal a manner? If, in fact, you two committed these horrible acts.”

  “Acts? Acts is it, all right, look it up in the Acts of the Apostles six something. Says it all right there,” replied Perwinkle.

  “Bloody curly it is, too,” replied Hawkins.

  Jessica put it to Perwinkle. “Why don't you educate us, Mr. Perwinkle? Elucidate.”

  “All right, I will. Says there in Acts, why's it so hard for you to believe that your God can raise the dead? We wanted to see if God could.. . raise the dead.” He barked out his laughter. “Come to find out, The Old Fellow wasn't innerrested, I bloody guess.” He laughed more.

  “Keep a civil tongue, you animal!” shouted Copperwaite.

  “In the name of Christ,” said Periwinkle with a facetious tone as his hand did a flourish and his head gave a slight bow. “That's why we done what we done, right, Hawkins?”

  “Codswallop and bullshit, Jake, bullshit. Tell them the real reason,” shouted his partner.

  “We don't reveal secrets God 'imself has provided.”

  “God speaks to you, then?” asked Jessica.

  “Not exactly God,” corrected Hawkins.

  “Who then?”

  “It's 'im, the bloody one on the cross, it is,” shouted Per­iwinkle.

  Hawkins shouted, “Christ, it's from Christ, you damned fool cuntie! Like to see you all done up on the cross, dearie!”

  “Shut that flapper of yours, Hawkins! One more foul word, and I swear I'll strike you dumb,” shouted Sharpe, approach­ing menacingly with fists clenched and the veins popping out of his neck like taut rope.

  Hawkins ignored Sharpe's gallant attempt to spare Jessica foul words. He let out his own shout. “He's coming back! He's come back. He's here, among us now! And this world ain't seen no havoc like what He�
��the Son of God—will bring down round us all, that's what.” He'd so lost his breath that his last words came out as mere tire-screech utterances.

  Rat-boy had begun screaming over Beak-nose, chorusing the words, “Shut up! Shut up, Hawkins! Shut your hole!”

  “Christ told us to do it. Christ wants revenge on the Jews for what they did to 'im. That's why we did Burtie Burton. That's it, pure and simple, and He's come to show us what goddamn revenge is really, really like in the first order, I tell you, the revenge of God! The revenge of the Son of God is coming down on all of us, so you'd better stand on His side, whore and whore no more.” He ended with his eyes ablaze and burning into Jessica's eyes, Jessica matching his stare with her own intensity.

  'Ten Commandments take on a whole new meaning for you now, don't they, slut?”

  Sharpe, acting before Copperwaite could, struck like a snake. He had reached across the table where Periwinkle sat and nearly dragged him across it, shouting, “Shut up your ugly remarks to Dr. Coran! You want to see what revenge looks like up close, you bloody little pipsqueak!”

  Copperwaite and Jessica pulled and pried Richard and Per­iwinkle apart while Sheldon Hawkins laughed maniacally at the scene. Jessica saw now the hatred had firmly rooted itself in Richard's eyes. He let go of Periwinkle and turned from her gaze.

  Boulte, tiring of the verbal jousting and circles and anxious to get on the six o'clock news with results, stormed into the room now with the armed guards. He told the guards to take the prisoners back to the holding cells. “It's time we closed this down, Richard. Stuart.” Boulte paced the room now, and even with the two confessors gone, the anger and hatred per­meating the interrogation walls, breathing in and out of the very pores of the concrete, had remained behind with the stale and rank odors that had wafted in the wake of the two con­fessors.

  Boulte said outright, “I, for one, heard enough to put those two psychotics away for life.”

  Richard stood in his face. “You're drawing at straws, Chief Inspector.”

  “Fairly sturdy straws at that. Look, Richard, seems to me we have two viable suspects here, certainly worth pursuing.” Boulte turned to Copperwaite, now leaning against the wall, and Boulte's finger, like a thick-shafted arrow, now pressed into Copperwaite's chest as the chief added, “Get a warrant for the flat, the car they drive, all of it, Stuart.”

  'These two are not the killers,” Sharpe firmly said, again inches from Boulte's face. “They're a pair of sorry liars who couldn't tie their shoes if asked to. You turn them over to the cameras, make 'heroes' of them and yourself, sir, and 1 guar­antee that you'll be making an enormous mistake.”

  “I'll take the heat in the event we're wrong about them. Get the warrant, make the search.”

  Jessica, Stuart, and Richard all knew Boulte needed some­one to publicly “hang,” no matter the truth of guilt or inno­cence. The two men not only filled the bill, they fit the costumes: They walked and talked the parts given them by the press. Obviously, Boulte had chosen to overlook the ready clues in their so-called confession that made their tale as far­fetched as the “ferry boat” detail in the other confessors' tale. The biblical detail, however, may have proved just the right touch so far as Chief Boulte cared. Never mind the nonsense clues Richard had spent hours digging for, the clues that told them all that the entire confession could be characterized as bogus.

  “They tell a compelling story,” Boulte said to the others. “They know all the names of the victims, their histories, their backgrounds, their religious leanings, and where each body was dumped and found. And that remark against the Jews and Burtie BurtonIt all fits.”

  Sharpe argued, “They could've gotten all that from the press, and so could my six-year-old daughter from turning on the telly.”

  “We'll give them both lie-detector tests, if you are still uncertain,” Boulte determinedly replied.

  “While it's obvious that these two people are disturbed, it's not so obvious they committed these crimes,” Jessica put in. “Speaking to them, interviewing them, Luc Sante would say we have just interviewed the Devil at play, but—”

  “Luc Sante, Luc Sante,” Chief Inspector Boulte lamented. “I knew you should not have involved him on this case, Rich­ard.” Jessica read into his words, And you shouldn't have involved this lady doctor from America, either. “Luc Sante's managed to so brainwash you two with his little sermons on evil that you don't recognize it when you see it before you!”

  Jessica tried to reason with Boulte who stubbornly and te­naciously held to his tunnel vision. Finally, Richard said, “These two buffoons are convinced that they are the killers whom all of Scotland Yard, the press, the public, and the prime minister have sought now for weeks and weeks. Such a conviction lifts their mundane lives and low opinion of one another and self to a higher plane.”

  “Now you're a psychotherapist, too, Richard?”

  “Of course, they can lay claim to this enormous ripple ef­fect they've caused in society's pond,” agreed Jessica, im­mediately coming to Richard's defense, understanding his point. “It's alluring to them, and it is quite real. Real enough in here”—she pounded her heart—”that no lie detector test designed can help out here. They are themselves convinced that they are the killers. They are convinced of their own guilt, the guilt of murdering the innocent. Yet they've provided no key evidence here, and their eyes bugged out when we asked about their victims' tongues. TTiey first said they cut them out, and later they chose burning the tongues. They know nothing of this!”

  Richard again added to the argument, “You see, Boulte, they are convinced beyond all reason and rationale that they are indeed the Crucifiers whom the world seeks. It makes their miserable lives worth a few pounds to think it so.”

  Jessica laughed a hollow laugh. “In becoming the Crucifier with a capital C, they take shape, form, and they become something larger than themselves, something the press has made larger than life, as it so often and thoughtlessly does in America with such madmen as Cunanan, Manson, Bundy, Gacey, Speck, Oswald, Sirhan. As your historians have done with Jack-the-Ripper. Rather than turn the cameras away from these desperate and dangerous sociopaths, the press has given them a stature in death or in incarceration that they never possessed in their miserable little lives. They have elevated them to the status of godlike monsters, capable of great feats of daring and genius, when in fact they are pathetic remnants of passing evil.”

  “Now you really are beginning to sound like Luc Sante,” complained Boulte. The Chief stared several times at the two-way mirror, telling Jessica that the public prosecutor had been listening in on them all. “You've been talking too long to that old shrink. Look, we have the finest lie-detector men in the world here.”

  “And they will tell you the same as I have. Despite even hypnotism, the subject, if thoroughly convinced on this con­scious plane of existence, he remains so on the subconscious level of existence as well. Lie detectors detect subtle nuances in honesty and truth, just as a hot blade bums the dry tongue of the village liar when the witch doctor lays the knife on. If the truth is subverted or overtaken by a rock-solid, all encom­passing, life-altering delusion, if you are dealing with an ab­normality that is the normality of existence for this person, an aberration that is cause for celebration in this individual, no truth other than the delusional truth will be forthcoming in such a test.”

  Boulte squinted, half-smiled, and asked Jessica point-blank, “Are you deliberately trying to confuse me?”

  Jessica erupted with laughter. It careened off the walls, out the door, and down the long corridors leading to Boulte's office.

  Sharpe grabbed her by the arm, taking her aside, saying, “Dr. Coran has been working extremely hard. She hasn't eaten today, either,” he excused her behavior. To her, he added, “Why don't we have a bite to eat? I know a pleasant place just around the comer, a pub where we can have a pint and a sandwich, since I'm off duty. What do you say?”

  “I'm famished and I'm buying, but we h
aven't finished here. We must convince your chief of—”

  “His mind is set, was set before he spoke to us, and he'll remain immovable. We're both wasting our time and energy on the man. Walk away from it, now.”

  And so they did, together, leaving poor Copperwaite to deal with Boulte.

  -FOURTEEN -

  Among . . . crippled legions—the mass of suffer­ing humanity—the evil reside, perhaps the most pitiable of all.

  —M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie

  “Old army saying, Doctor,” Sharpe said in her ear, taking her arm and gaining access to the other side of the busy, down­town intersection. “If it moves, salute it. If it doesn't move, clean it.”

  “Is that where you feel the investigation is? A standstill? Or are you saying that you've washed your hands of it?”

  “I don't know a blind thing about it.... The man on the street in bloody Bloomsbury knows more about the case than I do. Says so in the London Times. Damn all.”

  “Isn't that Erin Culbertson's newspaper?”

  “She's not to blame.”

  “I've met her, you know.”

  “Really?”

  'Twice now.”

  “She's bright.”

  “Agreed, and pretty.”

  “From Bloomsbury,” he finished.

  “Bloomsbury?”

  “West Central London. I should hang it all, go to the BM, perhaps.”

  “The BM? As in bowel movement?”

  He laughed. “British Museum. I should step out of it and leave it to the whole boiling lot of them, and place myself in a fucking museum is what.”

  “What's happened?”

  “They're after me, pure and simple.”

  “The press you mean?”

  “No, the department, the Yard. Boulte in particular. I'm certain of it now.”

  She joked. “I hadn't noticed any animosity there.”