until seeing Jessica, who waved them over.
Jessica didn't see or hear again from Inspector Richard Sharpe until the following morning while at autopsy over the latest Jane Doe. “Still no word on her identity,” he whispered in Jessica's ear. Most people whispered around dead people, as if speaking quietly were a requirement, some sort of Miss Manners rule number seventy- nine that stated, “Thou shalt be tranquil and silent in the face of death.” Perhaps they thought that to go into rancor at it would only upset the demons. But Sharpe's serenity seemed greater than the usual silence about the morgue and crime lab. He appeared genuinely refreshed, as if anxious to attack the problem of the Crucifier as never before.
“How are your girls?” she asked.
“Gonzo, actually. Lovely creatures, the both of them.” Sharpe had a disposable cup filled with black coffee in his hand, the steam caressing his cheek. “Does you well to see them, I can tell. You look refreshed.” She wondered if he'd gone to bed with his ex-wife and had gotten himself into a totally relaxed state this morning. It did seem so, she silendy mused.
“Absolutely, yes. Seeing the children, well it's like taking a drink from that fountain of youth everyone throughout the ages has searched for.”
“Perhaps there is where it lies, in our children.”
“Have you any? Children, I mean?”
“ 'Fraid not.”
“Pity. But then, you're young and have time.” He sipped at his coffee.
She smiled, thought of Jim Parry and his wish for children and wondered if men felt as much a need to have children as did women. In the sense that they wished to carry on their DNA, to make little clones of themselves, perfectly suited to the male ego.
Jessica returned her attention to the dead woman on the slab before her. Schuller's young assistant, Dr. Al- Zadan Raehael, remained all the help she had. He seemed capable and a good deal more at ease knowing that Dr. Karl Schuller would not be barreling through the door at any moment. Called back from his day off, he appeared sullen. “I've found nothing to distinguish her,” Jessica informed Sharpe, her eyebrows raised in mock supplication. “No birthmarks, no earlier fractures or sutures. Very little dental work has been done. It will be hard to ID the woman.”
“I've spoken with Paul Boulte. Fortunately, he never knew of my stepping off the task last evening. Copperwaite covered my bases, as you Americans are fond of saying.”
“Not all of us are fond of baseball metaphors, Richard.”
“I do wish to apologize for my behavior of-”
“Not at all.”
“-leaving you and Stuart in the lurch.”
“We managed just fine, as you can see.”
“Well, do accept my sincerest thank-you.”
“Accepted.”
“And should you care to see more of London, I do happen to be free this evening, say for dinner?”
“There's a great deal of the city I'd still like to see, and you have been so generous with your free time. Well, I'm both pleased and overwhelmed. You make a terrific guide.” Their eyes met and held for a moment, as they had the first time they met one another, back in Quantico, Virginia.
He smiled wide, his eyes flaring silver sparks from the deep green irises. “I'll take that as a yes, then.”
“Yes.”
“Another scare for Londoners,” Sharpe said, indicating the body before them.
“I saw the news photos. They must have paid the ambulance drivers. I never saw any press at the scene, nor at the crime lab when we got here.”
“Imagine the usual Geordie out there, opens his morning paper to find her dead eyes looking back up at him from his Gazette or Times,” ruminated Sharpe. 'To find a photo of the victim in death on the front page. Turns out that Stuart put the other victims' photos out there, and he likely did this one as well, to shake the tree, so to speak. It's a general call that's gone around, for anyone recognizing the woman to step forward, you see.”
“And you agree with the tactic?”
“Not altogether, no. Stuart and I had words about it.”
She nodded, biting her lip, wondering what “had words” in Great Britain meant. She certainly knew its American cousin. She finally said, “We're apt to utilize the press often in such cases in the States, but it's usually a step not taken lightly, much argument of the pros and cons with each case. You have to weigh everything in the balance, and often you weigh up all wrong anyway.”
“Press pressure,” he confided.
“Ahhh, yes, we've certainly got that in the States, too. It's a so-called legitimate duress.”
“Serial killers here are rare, so the press is all over it. Actually, it's becoming all too common, as if… as if… Well, I'm not a bloody philosopher, but as I said, the closer we get to 2001, as was the case with the year 2000 as well, the more madness and deviltry we find ourselves embroiled in and surrounded by. Course, you know more about that than I.”
The millennium? The madness? Or being surrounded and embroiled in deviltry?” she asked.
“Quite possibly all three. Oh, we have our share of terrorists, what with the IRA and Hamas and other organizations swom to destroy us. That's madness enough, but this sort of thing, someone killing a string of people out of some blind rage or cult blindness… No, I've not come across the like of this crucifying thing before.” He tossed his empty cup into a trash container. “Nor has anyone, I assure you. But you've faced monsters, human monsters, before, and that's what we're dealing with here. Not a man with a misguided political cause, but a man with a fantastic plan that boggles the mind and dares you to decipher the meaning.”
“Yes, in that regard, I guess I have had some experience. And perhaps you're right to work a theory connected with what the popular press is calling the turn of 'true millennium.' I know we Americans are overanxious about it. The teen suicide rate more than doubled at the turn of 2000. I shudder to think it will triple with the turn of 2001. Teens are routinely carrying guns and other weapons to schools, many out of paranoia. Unfortunately, we often downplay the force of change-especially technological change-and the anxiety it breeds. But also this fear of a major shift in time.”
“People are struggling, searching to make sense of a fundamentally unsteady world, a changing, evolving world,” Richard agreed.
“What you said about the millennium is perhaps more true than you know. Historically speaking, any major event brings on a certain return to fundamental fears in mankind. Any turning of a century brings out his fears and frailties. He falls back on the primal urges, the primitive brain mechanisms that aren't so different than those of lizards, alligators, and other carnivores-those flee or fight mechanisms. And if that's true of the usual, run-of-the- mill turn of the century, then it's likely to be exacerbated by something as momentous as the new millennium. It's even exacerbated by the fact that nothing momentous occurred New Year's Eve 2000. So now the prophesies and millennial fears logically flip-flop to the year 2001, which experts tell us is in fact the actual turn of the thousand years.”
“You realize there's a great deal of meat on that mutton. We must pick at it a good deal more to get to the bone,” he agreed. “Historically speaking, the turn of any century sees an intensified unrest with panics, revolutions, and wars.”
“You think the Crucifier is acting out of some reaction to the new age, the year 2001, then?”
He nodded several times, his jaw set, eyes stem and penetrating. “1 think it quite possible, yes. I've read some history, and I've spoken with Luc Sante about the possibility. As it happens, since at least the 1490s, the century ending has normally meant speeded-up events, history and consciousness in the Western world.”
“And the added religious and cultural dimension of this being the millennium to Christianity…” she mused.
He picked up her thread of thought and added, “Should triple if not quadruple the impact of the year 2001. Just as for so many cults and cult leaders, the year 2000 itself fueled fantastic beliefs and practices. We had quite a show of them in London, as reported by the tabloids.”
“Predictable enough. Anyone could claim psychic powers who has studied the history of mankind and its mistakes. Those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. We in America, too, were innundated with
