with the rictus smile-that ugly, snakelike crease-had nothing whatever to do with the victim's frame of mind, as it was a natural alignment of the muscles of the jaw that occurred in not all but many cases of death. “So why should a pleasant smile be questioned any more than a horrid smile?
She almost heard the long-silenced voice of her old teacher and mentor, Dr. Asa Holcraft, mimicking her thoughts as if standing alongside her. Now she knew she needed to get more sleep.
Still, like a persistent hologram, Holcraft's apparition stood nodding his pleasure at her concern. He agreed with her, up to a point, but then he had also always staunchly maintained, “A strong spiritual element, a filamentlike thread of spirit, remains even in the decaying corpse. “
Asa had always believed that spirit resided not only in the living but also in the dead. He had felt that at least some semblance of the spirit remained, and this spirit remnant could be found, perhaps understood, if only the doctor gave enough of himself or herself over to the task. Holcraft had even believed that it was the job of the M.E. to hold firm and seek out all spiritual connection between medical examiner and corpse, even in severe cases of fire, bombings, and explosive airplane crashes.
“So what of the crucified?” she muttered aloud.
“What?” asked Sharpe.
“Oh, nothing.” Jessica also believed that some spirit element hovered about the body, doing all it could to communicate with the pathologist. She believed it the key element in so many of her instinctual leaps of faith in discerning the true nature of a crime. She owed a great deal to Asa for that.
She recalled just how good Holcraft had been as a teacher and as a medical examiner. He had had her looking for spirits in every cadaver she handled. “Some of the spirits you'll find not to your liking, others tender,” he had once confided with a Kriss Kringle twinkle in his eyes, his white beard bobbing up and down.
She focused in again on the body itself, seeing the familiar, large, Y-shaped scar from each shoulder to the groin area, the universal Y-cut, understood by every mortician and pathologist and medical examiner. Dr. Schuller's work greeted Jessica every step of the way; the autopsiest had already taken samples and weights of all the major organs during the initial autopsy, but the toxicological and medical tests that Schuller ran had been, by Dr. Schuller's own admission, limited to a few serum and toxicology reports. No one had run a full workup on the cadaver. Such tests ran up bills… and Burton was no member of the Royal elite. No going the extra mile for Burtie.
Dr. Karl Schuller, while not present, made his presence felt throughout this crime lab like a well hung, saturated blanket. The paperwork on Burton felt rushed. She wondered if he had any prejudice against Burton, if it at all entered into the man's work over the body of Theodore Burton, who had been bom Emil Burlinstein. She feared that Dr. Karl Schuller hadn't been as thorough as he might have been in such a capital murder case. Still, Jessica doubted that raising such questions could be of any possible use at this late date. It might be best at this point to leave it alone. If she did pursue the issue of shoddy work in the Scotland Yard crime lab, she would do so vigorously, as Holcraft whispered in her ear; “Order a full toxicological and tissue mapping of the cadaver to determine the condition of the man's body, health, and well-being. Frequently, what is central to the cause of death, existed before death. Often, such total, complete, and expensive measures added some nuggets of information otherwise lost to an investigation, and just as often the effort netted nothing. “Something troubling you, Doctor?” asked Sharpe near her ear. “Yes, something is nagging at me about the sudden loss of weight signaled by the folds of loose skin.”
“I see.”
“A forensic profiler often begins with the physical as well as the mental health of the victim.”
“So, you surmise that perhaps Burton's state of mind had something to do with the way in which he met his end?”
“And if his body had been in a shutdown mode, then perhaps this led him to some extreme measures in search of a cure. Perhaps in search of miracles and miracle drugs, the man reached out in desperation.”
“Which led him down a particularly nasty lane.”
“As perhaps it did in the cases of Lawrence Coibby and the Crucifier's first victim, the woman.”
“O'Donahue.”
“Maybe all three, for instance, sought out medical help at the same clinic or pharmacy. If each had been lured into some sort of web, partially of the victim's own spinning due to ill health or depression, then perhaps somewhere along the complex of each life-web, they crossed paths, and if I-or we, rather-can find some interconnecting thread…”
Schuller, the man who'd prepared all the slides and gathered all the minutia on Theodore Burton's body, had been notified of Dr. Coran's interest. He now came belatedly through the door from his Kensington address to confer with the famous American medical examiner.
Dr. Karl Schuller, nodding familiarly to Dr. Raehael, Chief Inspector Boulte, and Inspector Sharpe, now introduced himself to Jessica. His eyes were unblinking as he buoyantly proclaimed, “Welcome to the lab of the Nazi death-master.” He added, “That's what they call me upstairs. Behind my back, of course, right Inspector Sharpe? Chief Boulte, right?” He waited for no answer from either Sharpe or Boulte who fumbled with words to reply. Schuller continued on instead with, “Yes, I am the official 'death-master' here, you will find. All responsibility for this lab falls on my shoulders.” He smiled cordially at Jessica, and with a slight bow and a slight edge to his German accent-an accent he'd worked hard to master-he said for her benefit, “If there is anything at all I can do for you to make your investigation simpler, please do not hesitate to ask.”
“Thank you, Dr. Schuller. I'll certainly avail myself of your hospitality.” Jessica summed him up as he spoke: stiff, uncompromising, proud, angry at her having been called in on his case to lend him assistance and not at all wishing to be in the least help to her, his mildly German accent masked by his British tongue.
The cadaver had been washed clean, the wounds hardly as ghastly as those seen in the crime-scene photos, now that the crucifixion holes had had time to sink in on themselves. The holes in the hands and feet, however, were large enough and gruesome and strange enough to warrant Jessica's undivided attention. She snatched a large magnifying glass on a swivel arm and placed it between her eyes and the crucifixion wound to the right hand.
Soon her silence, her intense scrutiny, made Schuller and Boulte particularly uneasy. She felt Schuller stiffen even more, and she felt Boulte's body language behind her where he rocked nervously from his heels to the balls of his feet and back again, clearing his throat, and finally excusing himself, telling Richard Sharpe in a tone loud enough for all, “I have bushels of ancient paperwork awaiting upstairs.”
Jessica guessed that Boulte must be thinking better of ever having asked her out, and that there would likely be no second attempt. For this she felt grateful.
Boulte promptly said, “I'll leave you four to it then, Richard, Doctors. Oh, and Richard, do keep me informed, please.”Jessica quickly, efficiently moved on with her investigation, reading notes into a small tape recorder she'd used on many such errands. “Noting the otherwise unhealthy appearance of the deceased, and having read Dr. Schuller's detailed autopsy report on the victim, Theodore Burton, it appears the victim died of asphyxia due to crucifixion torture. Holes in hands and feet measuring three-fourths to an inch in diameter were fitted with stakes recovered from railroad yard rail ties. My own findings are consistent with Dr. Schuller's findings.” She knew that her final remarks put Schuller somewhat at ease. Even Sharpe seemed to relax his stiff posture. Her words were designed for that effect.
“Are you quite satisfied, then?” asked Schuller. “Of my diagnosis?”
Jessica continued to probe the body with the movable magnifying glass, the arm outstretched like the leg of a robotic praying mantis. She searched for the telltale signs of puncture marks mentioned in the reports. She found them in both thighs, the abdomen, and the rump.
“He appears to have been shooting up pretty regularly. Diabetic, you think?”
“No, he wasn't shooting insulin. He was shooting up drugs-a wide variety from the look of his blood scan.”
“So he was an addict?”
“Exactly.”
“Did anyone check for diabetes?”
“There was no need after the drug findings and the gaping wounds to the hands and feet,” countered Schuller, his guard up again like a shield.
Jessica dropped the subject of the obvious oversight. “What about the other two victims? Any evidence of
