Copperwaite added, “Nor the third victim. Perfectly untouched save for the crucifixion marks. And don't forget the needle marks, Sharpie-Inspector Sharpe.”
“Then there were drugs found in the system?” she pressed.
'Trace elements of a barbiturate,” replied Sharpe. “M.E.'s report is…” He paused, shuffled papers about the file, and finally pointed to a line on the M.E.'s protocol sheet-a form that appeared up-to-date and quaint at the same time, Jessica thought. She read the logo: Coroner for the Crown.“ 'Brevital,' “ Jessica read aloud“ That mean anything to you?” asked Sharpe, sensing her reaction to the word. She let out a breath of air and shrugged. “Methohexital, used in sedating patients… barbiturate, short-acting.”
“Short-acting?” asked Copperwaite, his youthful eyes alight with eager interest.
“As opposed to long-acting. In other words, your victims, injected with Brevital, would have dozed just long enough for the killer-”
“Or killers,” corrected Sharpe.
“-to hoist the prone victims' bodies onto whatever makeshift cross he-or they-concocted for the sacrificial lambs.”
“Just enough to put them under, then?”
“Exactly. And each victim must've awakened when the killer drove home the stakes at the palms and feet, most likely having already been secured by some other means. Rope, hemp, rawhide perhaps? Yes, the body would need lashing to the cross in addition to the stakes.”
Copperwaite ground his teeth at the image.
Jessica added, “That would be my guesstimate, but don't quote me.” She paused, all of them allowing the image to sink in. “Rope bums at both wrists and about the feet, right? To take the weight,” pursued Jessica.
“Precisely,” Sharpe said at once.
“The body weight on the victims,” Jessica began. “Can you give me a ballpark figure?”
“Ballpark figure?” asked Copperwaite, confused by her language.
“She means an estimated guess, Stuart. How about a precise number, Doctor?”
“That'll do.”
“You see, I've had the same thoughts,” returned Sharpe. “The men each weighed over 190 stones, while the woman weighed 155 of your American pounds.”
Jessica smiled at the use of the word “stones.”
“So, the ropes were enough to hold the body in place, so the stakes could be driven in. Certainly sounds like the work of more than one man, possibly a deadly pair, given the deadweight of the drugged victims.”
“Once again, our thought also,” replied Sharpe with a narrowed gaze. “Given how long we've had to study the cases, your deductions are positively… preternatural. Are you sure you're not a psychic to boot?”
While Jessica answered with a thoughtful smile, Copperwaite added, “Unless this bugger is bigger than Arnold Schwarzenegger, he'd have to be two men.”
Everyone sat back, allowing the gravity of this fact to sink in. It was hard to envision not one but two men, working in tandem, crucifying random, innocent people. The why of it hung in the air thick and choking.
Jessica had brought along some light reading for the long plane trip, her volume of Medical and Legal Procedures Related to Death written some years earlier by her now deceased mentor Dr. Asa Holcraft. She'd long been wanting to reread Dr. Holcraft's work to, in a sense, be in his presence once again. She needed his firm grounding, if for no other reason than the sheer monstrosity this crucifixion evil represented.
Jessica had never known a finer scientific mind than that of Asa Holcraft. She now quickly scanned Holcraft's words for any information relative to crucifixion deaths-half knowing she'd find nothing specific to crucifixion. Still, a quick glance at the enormous index was in order. This only confirmed what she knew: His huge opus didn't touch on death by crucifixion. The topic simply didn't appear in any of the forensics books she owned-and she owned them all. Save for a paragraph here or there, Jessica had found no help in the literature of forensic medicine.
She was working on here…Even an electronic search of the World Wide Web had turned up more reams of religious-oriented material dealing with the death of Jesus Christ than anything else, and nothing substantive regarding the medical intricacies of dying in such a manner. Death of this manner being so extremely rare, no studies or treatises had ever been done on it.
She shared this information, or lack thereof, with Sharpe and Copperwaite. Her news met a pair of glum frowns. Sharpe said, “Not surprising, really.”
She halfheartedly searched Holcraft for his remarks on asphyxia, as he remained the foremost authority on asphyxia deaths. She located the pages and placed a bookmark there.
She looked up at Richard Sharpe and asked, “Why don't you describe the scene of the third discovery, the body which ostensibly sent you scurrying in earnest to the FBI for profiling assistance.”
“That would be Burtie Burton, Theodore Burton. Rather well-known chap at one time-known for his views, for his late-night radio talk program a year or so back. A rare breed indeed, both a stockbroker and a rebel-rouser as some call- called him. Rather enjoyed his program myself. Man made a lot of sense as well as money. Tore into our Tories mostly, roughed them up a bit
before he got into trouble with the BBC.”
Jessica imagined someone saying in such mild tones how Howard Stem upset Middle America, and she momentarily wondered at the British in general-their history of social gentility and blood beneath the carpet. She likewise wondered aloud for the benefit of the men, “I wonder if the man's profession, radio talk show host, had anything remotely to do with his dying so dreaded a death-after a used-car salesman and a teacher. What might that connection be? On the surface of it, perhaps the victims have nothing whatever in common. I'm sure you've dug for connections.”
“Pile on the agony,” muttered Sharpe.
“What?” asked Jessica.
Copperwaite translated, saying, “Old English for don't spare the gory details, Doctor.”
“I mean ifjffff that's so, then we're really scrambled as you Americans say,” Sharpe announced. “With nothing tying the victims together.”
“All I'm saying is that perhaps the selection of victims has been absolutely random. If the killer or killers 'saw the mark of Christ' on the foreheads of each of their victims, that might well be what the victims had in common- everything but nothing.”
Sharpe fell silent. Copperwaite sensed his partner wanted silence for a time. Finally, Sharpe began telling Jessica more about victim number three: Theodore Burton.
“It was a few days after number two-Coibby-that Burtie Burton's body came to our attention. He'd gone missing, but people who knew him said that he'd do that, you know, disappear for weeks at a time-”
“Go on holiday without the slightest provocation or warning to others. Queer fellow, really,” added Copperwaite. “And we knew the bloody moment we came on scene that it was him, but it was rather shocking to discover he was yet another victim of the Crucifier.”
“The 'Crucifier'? Is that what you're calling the killer?”
“Press picked it up somehow,” Sharpe apologetically replied.
“All Burton's wounds were the same, then?” she asked.
“Identical. Actually Stuart saw it immediately, before I wanted to believe it. We looked at the hands, and then to the feet of the naked body. Poor chap lay outstretched before us, and there once again-for the third time-we found the telltale marks of a murder by crucifixion.”
As Sharpe continued to describe the murdered victim and the scene, Jessica allowed her imagination to flow, picturing the exact moment, trying to climb into Sharpe's world, to know the exact words and gestures exchanged between Copperwaite and the more experienced Richard Sharpe. In a waking dream, she saw Sharpe at the murder scene and heard him there, but his voice was muffled. She somehow found herself in a cold, cavernous well, the clamminess and absolute stillness like a coffin, when she realized that she lay inside the body of one of the crucifixion victims.
She felt memories bombard her, memories of her own near execution so many years before at the hand of a maniac named Matisak. She saw dark, featureless faces looking on, watching in gleeful exhaltation as one man held her against a huge wooden cross and another began to drive nails into her palms, finishing with her feet. Suddenly they let go, and her weight became her worst enemy. Gaining breath became an impossible labor.
All things around her became a blur as she struggled like a pinned butterfly, the struggle useless. All around
