Robert Walker - Blind Instinct

As the car made its way to Dulles International Airport, Jessica wondered what specifically about Richard Sharpe there was to compare to Otto, and quickly decided it must merely be the man's physical appearance.

Copperwaite, while younger, had slicked down hair and carried a hefty, stocky man's girth and barrel chest, thick hands and fingers, his eyes like melons with the seeds clear and alert, while Sharpe appeared his opposite, a man of height, who wore his hair in a shaggy but comfortable mess, his hands and fingers gracefully long, making her wonder if he didn't play a musical instmment. His eyes held a deep sadness, that of the wounded. There was certainly some misery and mystery there, but he rarely met her eye to be so examined.

Her gaze challenged Sharpe's to meet her own. He did not. In fact, the man's broad shoulders and stone-sculptured physique notwithstanding, his eyes seemed hardly able to hold her look, perhaps out of some almost boyish shyness that might have been cute in another context.

“So as it sums up, we know precious little about crucifixion deaths,” commented Sharpe, “but there must be some literature, even if ancient, somewhere on the subject.”

“No one I know has had any experience with it ever, at all,” she replied, “not my father, or my old teacher, Asa Holcraft, no one.”

“That's just it. No one, obviously, either side of the Atlantic.”

“Well, I do know that Jesus died of dehydration and asphyxiation brought on by the weight of his body collapsing in on his windpipe and lungs during the most well-known of all crucifixions,” Jessica stated, trying to make right her earlier, lame response. “I know a bit about crucifixion motifs in art, Raphael and all that. Took Art Appreciation 101 in college, you see, and well, even Picasso's little known, dark work… Well, I guess that's of little consequence here. You didn't happen to find a tau cross or depictions of angels, the sun, or the moon anywhere near the body, did you? There was that gash at the ribs on his left side.”

Sharpe's naturally narrow eyes widened. “In point of fact, yes. Each body had been bled like Christ with something the coroner suspects to be a spearhead. Just as in the Bible.”

“You needn't think me psychic. I caught a glimpse of the wounds in the photos.” Frowning, Jessica pushed on. “The question becomes: Why crucify the victim when drowning or simple strangulation would accomplish the task more efficiently and certainly more easily? Unless …”

“Yes?” Sharpe eagerly encouraged.

“Unless the bastard wants to enjoy a prolonged kill, or the ritual of the crucifixion itself. It might take hours, even days before a person would expire, depending on the stamina and perhaps the weight of the individual as the most important variables here. Age, of course, is a major factor.”

“We've had three victims, all nailed to makeshift crosses, or a single cross, somewhere hidden. One cannot say with any degree of certainty which it might be, of course,” said Sharpe in a tone so level, he might have been referring to tea and crumpets. Jessica at once admired his detachment, the man's bearing and professional sureness, his professional sense. At the same time, she understood the veneer of jaded cynicism and cold aloofness essential to maintaining one's own safety net in such matters, one's own wall of defense. Most people found her own professional air a “bitch act”- both officious and off-putting-when in fact, she required the necessarily stout and impenetrable wall of detachment to go about the business of death investigations every day. If she were to get by with the same dignity and bravado of her male counterparts, she knew detachment to be the only cure-all.

“So, I take it we do not have the crosses to work with, only the dumped bodies,” Jessica said as the car entered the airport grounds. “At this point in my career, having seen so much human suffering and brutality, little remains to truly shock me. However, these crucifixion deaths do, even from this distance.”

Sharpe shook his head. “We're scouring for the cross, but frankly, we don't know where to look.”

“And the nails or spikes used?”

“No, the bodies are dumped with the spikes removed, but we've sized up the weapon, that is the spikes, through calculations made against the wounds.”

“Nails driven through the palms and into the crossbar, here,” added Copperwaite, indicating exactly where on his own left hand, pointing and saying, “precisely in the center of each palm. At each wrist and the ankles, rope bums occur where the victims were anchored before the spikes were driven.”

“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.”