millennial madness both approaching and at the turn of the year 2000. Considering history-and the compression of this period in time, 2000 to 2001… Well, we're certain to see an intensifying of the end-of-world, apocalypse-now, end-of-century pandemonium multiplied.”
“As I said, it's been true of past '90s, from 1490 to 1890. There's ample evidence in the history books that turn-of-the-century fears have brought on revolutions and wars, or have accelerated wars, as in both the 1690s and 1790s. The French Revolution began in 1789, and by the 1800s had turned into the Napoleonic wars. Early twentieth century wars from St. Petersburg and Constantinople to Vienna and Berlin began in the tumult and terrorism of the 1890s.”
“Luc Sante told you all this?”
“No, he simply got me thinking, and I rummaged about my memory of what I've read. History's something of a fascination for me. It's so littered with stress-anxiety in general but characterized mostly as panic before the turn of the century.”
“We've already seen plenty of tumult and terrorism in our own wounded, hurting decade,” she readily agreed. “The 1980s to the 1990s have been filled with horrors of all sorts.” Jessica looked deeply into Richard's sea-green eyes, losing herself there for a moment. She thought how he proved as sharp as his name. In the light of day, even where they were in the morgue below the crime lab, Jessica felt her fleeting suspicions and doubts surrounding Richard were so foolish that she wished to die at having ever entertained them even for the flashing moment. She wondered if there could ever come a time in their relationship when she could jokingly tell him about her paranoia. She rather doubted it. She also wondered what it said about her. How had she become such a suspicious shrew?
“I shall hope to see you at end of day, then. It appears you have your hands rather full here,” he said, looking on as she had lifted the viscera from the rib cage.
She half smiled and said, “I'll look for you after I've closed.”
“And I shall look forward to it.” And he was gone.
James Parry could take himself and his newfound love and go to hell, she thought. At the same instant, she chastised herself for the uncharacteristic thought. Once again she thought of lines from Shakespeare's Mid-Summer Night's Dream and how rankled and insane love had made her. Still she did not wish Richard Sharpe to be “revenge” for Parry spuming her. She wasn't about to play that part. In fact, her mind actively fought the notion. She simply wanted to appreciate Sharpe's company. Richard Sharpe, a former colonel and a Scotland Yard inspector, courting her. Now that was something to write home to her therapist about. A smile serenely danced across her lips, for the thought made her momentarily dreamy-eyed: just long enough for Schuller's man, Raehael, to quizzically wonder what had gotten into Dr. Jessica Coran.
Jessica determined that her affinity for the Scotland Yard inspector to be completely genuine, and not some facile remnant of anger toward Parry. In fact, she felt nothing glib, cursory, trite, superficial, or insincere with regard to Sharpe; nothing elementary, apparent, simple, or obvious. Instead, a plethora of complex and confusing feelings proved to culminate in a pleasant acceptance of her admiration of Sharpe. She quieted her thoughts of Richard, returning attention once more to the fourth victim of the Crucifier's cross.
As she did so, Jessica wondered if new DNA testing with laser light to detect trace elements of DNA left on the victim's body from someone in close contact might be of help here. It had recently been shown that humans indeed secreted far more DNA through touch alone than believed, leaving trace elements of DNA on telephones, pens, desktops, anything they touched. She asked Dr. Al-Zadan Raehael if he had the capability at the Yard to run such a test, supposing they could locate and lift the killer's DNA off the dead woman's hands or feet, where the killer had held them down to stake them, or on her lips, for example, where the killer, using the micro brand on her tongue, would have left DNA traces, had the killer failed to use surgical gloves. The killer knew about Brevital and he used precision. Might he be a doctor himself?
“We have the laser equipment and the DNA testing equipment, yes. DNA testing began in Leicestershire County, not far from here, Doctor. Where that fiend killed all those little girls in Narborough, Littiethorpe, and Enderbury.”
She recalled the famous case. Author Joseph Wambaugh chronicled it in his book The Blooding, which not only recounted both the discovery of genetic fingerprint testing through DNA analysis in Dr. Alec Jeffreys's laboratory in 1986, but the first official use of genetic fingerprinting to resolve a murder investigation and put a killer away for life.
“In that case, let's test her hands, feet, and lips for any traces of DNA not hers.”
“At the point of each wound, that's clear enough,” replied Dr. Raehael.
“How soon can the tests be run and results had?”
“We'll put it on first burner. Several days is the best we can do, but even then, without a matching-”
“Oh, I realize that. But if and when we determine who the Crucifier is, we'll have it on record to nail him-no pun intended.”
“If,” Raehael cautioned Jessica. “Big if, like you Americans say… If he's left any DNA on her.”
TEN
If evil were easily recognized, identified and managed, there would be no need of forensic medicine.
After dinner at the Savoy, Richard, with tickets in hand, announced that they were going to take in King Lear at the Globe Theatre.
They drove to the theater, located at a wide bend on the River Thames on the opposite shore to that of St. Paul's Cathedral between the Southwark Bridge and Blackfriar's Bridge.
The air felt thick with an electric intensity as the crowd grew and took on a rambling, monstrous life of its own. The madding crowd, Jessica thought. The public anticipation of the performance in the open-air, outdoor, Tudor theater had created an intensity in the impatient audience. Jessica took in the replica of the Globe Theatre, a painstakingly reconstructed edifice down to the oaken steps leading onto and off stage. Even the bard himself would recognize the theater as his home. The place did, in fact, represent an exact likeness of the theater in which Shakespeare's plays had been performed in his day. The only change Shakespeare would feel was that of time, for almost four hundred years had gone by.
“It's been a boondoggle, some say, reconstructing the great Globe,” Richard informed her. “Not everyone is happy with her.”
“Give me one reason why,” Jessica protested, staring at the beautiful stage, its circular shape and the two- story, surrounding building.
“It opened in 1997 at a cost of forty-six million of your American dollars. Having remained closed since 1613, purist and taxpayer alike didn't relish paying for it.”
“Then it came into being through government funding?”
“Matching funds for a wood and thatch construction on the south bank of the Thames, some two hundred yards from the site of the original? Imagine the fire insurance alone.”
Jessica's eye wandered to the concession stand where plastic pullover raincoats could be had for two pounds, about three dollars American.
“The original wooden O, as many call it, as Shakespeare himself called it in Henry V, was built in 1598 or '99 by a pair of well-to-do brothers, Cuthbert and Richard Burbage, using timbers from a failed theater in nearby Shoreditch. They wanted to place the O centrally, you see. Later, Shakespeare himself became a shareholder.”
“I suppose the original, being made of thatch and timber, rotted of old age?” she asked.
“Fate has never been too kind to the Globe, no. In 1613, the thatch was put alight by two cannons fired during a performance of Henry VIII. King Henry's ghost's revenge on Shakespeare for depicting him as he did, some say.”
Together they laughed at the jest.
Since there was no assigned seating at the Globe, further simulating Shakespeare's day, they made their way
