straight. Coal dust, blackened wood fibers, and beetle dung embedded in the nails of Marion Woodard.
Suddenly, the Scotland Yard Crime Laboratory that was filled with the noisy, bustling business of investigating fraud, accident, and murder, all vanished and silenced around her. The coal dust had come from Raehael's having pried particles from beneath victim number four's long nails. The particles were so long embedded there that they had not been washed away by the waters of the Serpentine. Coal dust made up a good portion of the particle evidence. Could this be a significant factor in the fourth victim's death? What of the others? She recalled nothing about coal dust, wood fibers, or beetle leavings in the other reports. Most likely, the finding meant little or nothing. Even in her excitement to further examine Raehael's findings, she found an unbidden, uninvited, unwelcomed thought of Richard Sharpe weaseling its way into her consciousness. The same Richard who had disappeared from the crime scene one night and made love to her the following evening.
“A phone call for Dr. Coran,” someone in the lab announced. Jessica took it in the office turned over to her.
It was Sharpe, asking, “May I come over for a visit, or perhaps you'd care to visit me?”
Jessica instantly knew visit meant something more, another British euphemism for sex, she imagined. “What's really on your mind, Richard?” She wanted to make him plead a little.
“Actually, I wish to apologize fully for my standoffish behavior of earlier.”
To apologize fully, she guessed, another euphemism for passion? “But you have nothing whatever to apologize for, Richard.” Play dumb, she told herself. “Besides, I've had an exhausting day of it here in the lab, and I have autopsy results to slave over tomorrow, so I don't think a visit or an apology a good idea, not tonight at least. Perhaps you can apologize another night?”
He caught her drift, saying, “You may wager on it.”
“Besides, I fear a certain green-eyed reporter may still be staking out the lobby of the York. It wouldn't do for the two of us to make your London tabloids, now would it?”
“I see. Erin Culbertson, you mean. Certainly. Well then, if your mind is set, I'll then see you at the Yard tomorrow. But if you later should change your mind, and you wish a visit, that is a get-together, to see one another, I'm quite sure I can find your room without anyone's taking notice.”
She smiled at his persistence and his persistent euphemisms for making love. The terms most people used for making love were usually crass, and even the formal fornication sounded crude to Jessica's ear, much more pleasant to hear visit, get-together, and apology instead of the usual harsh terms that had become commonplace in America. Jessica found the British needed euphemisms to keep the world bright and cheery. Perhaps all mankind did, but die British were most adept at it. The British speaker substituted kinder, gentler words for the ugly, cruel, crude thousands that abounded in the language-words they considered irreligious or sacrilegious; words to stave off bad manners, ill-feelings, and anything smacking of sex, or to do with death, murder, or God's name taken in vain or in curse. Anything to flesh out a good Christian curse would do so long as one spared God's name being made a part of it. To her delight, Richard proved no exception to this truth.
She suspected that Richard and Erin Culbertson had, at one time, been lovers. How long ago she did not know, and mentally shrugging, she wondered if it mattered to her, and the more she thought about it, the more it did.
She begged off, thinking the nosy reporter might well cause irreparable damage to Richard's standing here, and possibly to the investigation, or to both. She imagined the spumed woman lying in wait for Richard to visit Jessica's bed. oddly enough and in direct conflict with the British staid exterior, euphemisms not withstanding, an old-fashioned, juicy scandal drew no quarter and no soft substitution of terms. The typical Londoner's use of euphemisms and his or her desire to remain aloof did not extend to a rollicking good scandal, and Brit society delighted in the downfall of the great and powerful, the famous and influential. This passion rivaled anything Jessica knew in America. She wondered if it were human nature to want to see leaders and authority figures disgraced. Either way, she had thought it prudent not to see Richard tonight, so she claimed-and rightly so-fatigue, exhaustion, and headache while gently letting him down with her own set of euphemisms.
After hanging up, she felt good about protecting his standing and reputation, knowing the newshounds would have a field day with the fact of their lovemaking in the midst of the investigation into the horrid crucifixion murders. Still, she knew that her shrink friend Donna LeMonte would only laugh at her feminine “gallantry” and call it a lie. Jessica felt hurt by Richard, who might have warned her about the reporter-stalker Culbertson. But she didn't want to go there, part of her fearful of the hot coals she'd started across with Richard Sharpe. They had come a long way in a short period of time. How had this man come to mean so much to her so suddenly? So much so that she stood here jealous of his earlier relationship with Erin Culbertson.
Jessica stepped away from the phone and out of the office, and back into the lab. There she mentally shook herself, vigorously pushing away any thought of Richard and his former girlfriend, forcing herself to focus on the test results of the minute particle evidence before her. She read without enthusiasm, her sleepy eyes glazing over when the words coal dust amid hundreds of other words leapt out at her.
She saw again the report prepared by Dr. Raehael; the two words, coal dust, seemed to clamor for her attention. For a moment, she thought it a brain tease amid the fatigue, nothing important, but the words continued to stare back at her, insinuating themselves in her mind's eye like little live things under a microscope. She thought it a significant item that she hadn't seen on any of the other autopsy reports, or had she simply overlooked these findings earlier?
Jessica returned to the other reports, bringing them up on the computer screen, clicked on Edit and word searched for coal dust. A hit on O'Donahue, next the same with Coibby, and with Burton. How could she have missed the significance of it before? How had Schuller and Raehael been so blind? And how significant a find was this?
She ran a computer search for any mention of black wood fibers and the beetle droppings. In both cases, she made hits. All of the victims had all three of these connecting remnant details, and while the dots were tenuous, they were dots in the maze. In fact, Coibby's body had a dead beetle caught in his hair.
She cursed them all for fools, not forgetting herself. At the same time, she breathed in a deep sense of relief over the fact that they had something, even as minute as it was, to zero in on. That thought filled her with a small hope like a lighted candle. All the victims had had coal dust particles found on their bodies, either in the sticky residue of blood and oil or possibly scraped from their nails, she guessed. It had to be significant, along with the wood and beetles.
After allowing herself a moment of exhilaration over the new discovery, she earnestly wished to share it with Raehael and Schuller, both of whom were laboring over a series of tests in the Woodard case. In fact, Schuller had ordered a full report on Woodard's health condition before she died-precisely the point Jessica had made in the Burton autopsy. Schuller, a depressed man according to the rumor mill here, a man hurting in his personal life from what she'd been able to gather, took her comments as censure. He meant to prove himself not guilty of negligence or incompetent work in the Burton case.
Schuller appeared a fragile man this morning, she thought. She worried how he would take the coal dust issue, if it might not be the last straw for him. She struggled with how best to approach the other forensic doctor on this.
She stepped to within whispering distance of Dr. Schuller, asking, “Can we talk in private, Dr. Schuller?”
Raehael, beside them, overheard and looked up from his microscope. Schuller promptly replied, “Al-Zadan and I have worked together for three years. Whatever you have to say to me, you can say to us, Dr. Coran.”
She took a deep breath and said, “It's the report of coal dust findings on the Woodard woman.”
“What of it?”
“I did a check back through all the victims, and they all show trace elements of coal dust. I think it significant, sir.”
“Coal dust and beetles?” Schuller asked with an arched brow, and then he exchanged a long stare with Raehael before he said, “I give you my blessings. Pursue the beetle and the coal to whatever end you wish. It's in the reports, and if and when we can locate a killing ground, then perhaps we will have some explanation for this trace evidence. Use whatever you wish; our lab and our people are at your disposal.”
Schuller put it in perspective for her, saying loud enough for all to hear, “Coal heating remains one of the primary sources of fuel consumption here, despite every effort that's been made to end its use in the City. Nearly every flat in London has a coal bin below, and the City is liberally dusted with coal. Not to imply that all of us Londoners have coal dust under our nails. But you will be hard-pressed to pinpoint a killing ground in this city with
