Robert Walker - Blind Instinct

“And why would you not call our conversations conversation, my dear?”

“You delightedly talked, I delightedly listened.”

“Are you suggesting that it was tutelage? I the teacher, you the student to be filled like some empty container? I hardly think it so.”

'Tutelage perhaps? Perhaps persuasion?” she countered. “My arguments are admittedly persuasive, practiced, I confess.”

“Honeyed, sometimes wondrous,” she characterized his arguments.

He only laughed lightly and smiled. “I masterfully led you, like a talented dancer, through the intricacies of my thinking, but it hardly can be called propaganda or an attempt to change you or your thinking, my dear, at least not without your consent.”

“My consent?”

“Your absolute consent, for without consent, there is no truth in a gesture, be it making love or committing one's soul to the Almighty.”

Any time now, she thought to herself, any time now you can just spew forth your confession to me like the kids in Diamondback had done for J. T., but 1 guess I won't hold my breath on that score. Instead, she crazily, insanely wanted to totally give in to Luc Sante here, now. She wanted to allow his verbal symphony on the eternal truths and the eternal battle of good over evil to manipulate her, to use her, place her as another pawn on his cosmic chessboard.

She resisted, however, in the deepest part of herself, and in turn she began to manipulate him, telling him, “I've actually come about the case. I've a theory you must hear and verify for its veracity.”

“A theory of your making?”

“Yes.”

“Go on.”

“Perhaps the victims are not what they appear to be.”

“A victim is a victim, how else should a victim appear?” he replied in caustic staccato.

“If a victim is a perfect victim, as in a willing victim, has she not been persuaded that in becoming a victim, that she, in some small measure, helps in God's cosmic plan for the universe? You see, Dr. Luc Sante, where I'm going with this?”

He looked confusedly across at her where she now sat in the big leather chair opposite him. “A willing victim, a perfect victim to this foul villain who is leaving a trail of blood across London. You are speaking hypothetically, I pray?”

“Hypothetically, yes, but what do you think of the theory of the crime? That there are willing, perfect victims among us, and I suspect the Crucifier has found them in the sick, the feeble and infirm. My autopsy on Burton showed him to have colon cancer, and I suspect the other victims, too, were facing some sort of health crisis, and perhaps found leaving this world in the fashion they did easier than suicide. Suicide closes the gate on eternal life, but sacrifice, now that's another story altogether, now isn't it, Father?”

“Depends upon what it is your are sacrificing and to whom, I should think.”

“Imagine if all of the Crucifier's victims were willing participants in their own sacrifices. It might make sense of this bizarre case.”

“Yes, yes, of course, the literature of religion and cults is littered with examples of just that, yes. I suggested this early on in the case. Richard Sharpe knew of my fears along these lines. I suggested the victims could be participant members of a cult, or don't you recall?”

“Yes, well, the possibility's been staring us in the face for some time now, hasn't it?” She stared for a moment at the painting over his desk of the hamlet and small parish in the English countryside, a place of purity and innocence, the image of peace on earth, his former parish, he'd called it. Then she added, “Victims who voluntarily go to their deaths, imagine it. Imagine the impulse to be a major part of the Second Coming. Certainly, if convinced of this… Well, I can appreciate the longing, the need to be part of something greater, larger than oneself, can't you?”

“Yes, I can imagine it.”

She wondered what she might say to get him to admit to one incriminating word, to state that he had been working overtime in his attempt to mesh with his God, to mesh with Jesus Christ, and in so doing, bring about the Second Coming.

“Do you believe, Father Luc Sante, that a person can be bom into this world a victim, that his or her fate from the day of birth is stamped victim of murder?”

Luc Sante suddenly and forcefully disagreed, shouting “No!”, his fist coming down on his desk like a hammer. “A child is sent from God, and a child demands to be bom, and we are all placed here for a reason, not some reason we fabricate, but a reason He alone fashions. We have no say so in it, and we must listen to our inner voice. No one is created by God for the express purpose of being murdered.”

“What about created as a sacrificial lamb, then?”

He shook his head, considering this. “There is so much evil waiting here for the innocent. True enough, but innocence must face evil, do battle with it, struggle against it. Speaking of which, actually, I've recendy had my eye on Strand,” he said with a conspiratorial whisper, a finger raised to his lips as if telling her to keep it down. “Sometimes, I believe these old walls are filled with gossiping ghosts.”

“What is your concern about Father Strand?”

“Strange business going on hereabouts, that is between here and the street bazaar that I've only recently learned of. You know, I fear that Martin is no saint after all, but the very sort of being I've spent my entire life combating, the sort that disguises himself even in the robes of the church.”

She felt intrigued. 'Tell me more of your suspicions. Father.” She felt hopeful, that if Luc Sante could point her in another direction, it might prove him the innocent victim here, too.

“Well, I've my suspicions now that-God help us-that Strand could be involved in something sinister. Even that he could be this… this awful, godless Crucifier himself.”

This came as a revelation to Jessica and a welcomed one. “What makes you suspect him?”

“I learned of some questionable bills. That's how my suspicions were first fueled. These led to even more questionable donations, death gifts, actually. As it turns out, Coibby, O'Donahue, Burton, all of them have left funds with St. Albans through roundabout means, and it smacks as suspicious as bloody… as can be, you see.”

“How long have you known of this?”

“I only just uncovered the evidence. I was here writing a letter to Sharpe on the matter. Look, look for yourself.”

She crouched forward and turned the paper he had been writing on, and yes, in black and white, he had been asking Sharpe to look into his findings, to determine what connection Strand might have with the murders. “I tell you I am now frightened to be alone around the man. But I did not link the problem at first with murder, of course, undl I telephoned the bank. He's been forging my name to accommodate himself in whatever manner he sees fit. He made a major purchase from an antique store.”

“What sort of purchase?”

“An altar of some sort, an altar I have not seen.”

“Are you certain of this?”

“I inquired. The storeman I spoke to over the phone thought me mad. Said I had paid for it with my own personal check. Forged, you see.”

“His own personal altar?”

“I've not seen or located it. I have no idea where it stands. But this and my curiosity about what he does with his evenings… Well, I'd often wondered over that… and so last night I followed him down to the bazaar near old Crown's End pub on Oxford Street, and there I lost him. You know how crowded Oxford is always with tourists, all the quaint shops there. He disappeared into thin air before me, somehow into the bowels of the underworld there.”

“Underworld? What underworld?”