“Don't play games with me, Miss Culbertson. Richard's told me all about you,” she lied.
Erin Culbertson held back sudden tears and found it difficult to meet Jessica's gaze. She fell into the chair she'd occupied earlier. “I'd hoped it wasn't over, not completely, between Richard and me… Have for some months now, but when I learned… When he told me about his attraction for you, I knew that it was.”
“So you went to his superior, getting him into trouble with Boulte out of some female need for vengeance? That really sucks, lady.”
“What? No… I would never hurt Richard.”
“Well, you did. Boulte has changed toward Richard. He seems to know about Richard and me.”
“Not from me, he doesn't! Perhaps you and Richard ought be more discreet. Dr. Coran. Given the circumstances, the fact you are involved cannot be healthy for the case, now can it?”
“That's not your call.”
“But it is Boulte's.”
“It might be, but Boulte isn't being direct with Richard or me. No, he's biding his time like some spider spinning a web. He doesn't want to cripple Richard. He wants to crush him, wants to figure a way to press him into early retirement. I thought you with your press badge might be Boulte's trump card.”
“I swear to you, I've said not one word against Richard or you to anyone, Doctor. Now, I am leaving. You can be assured that I love Richard, and I would do nothing whatever to harm him in any fashion. In fact, I would do all within my power to protect him, if I could. Good day to you, Doctor.”
Culbertson stood tall and straight and proud as she quickly stepped away, leaving Jessica to wonder if Culbertson wasn 't feeding Boulte salacious gossip, then who?
Twenty-four hours later
“We did it. Him and me is what did it,” said Jacob Periwinkle, pointing again to his roommate and so-called partner in murder, Sheldon Hawkins. Periwinkle and Hawkins had said the magic words that might catapult them into the dark and infamous fame of the pantheon of antiheroes and Antichrists who, over a half century now had dominated world news- the serial killers. They meant to join the ranks by claiming to be “team” Crucifier.
Sharpe conducted the interrogation of the self-confessed duo, while Jessica stood behind the one-way mirror alongside Chief Inspector Boulte. While at ease for the moment, Sharpe had been extremely agitated by Periwinkle and Hawkins. Nearby, rocking on the back of a chair that tap-tapped the brick wall, Stuart Copperwaite looked sternly on, not asking any questions, content to allow Sharpe on his feet and pacing, to speak. Only occasionally did Copperwaite break silence to hammer a quesdon home to one or the other of the suspects.
The information imparted at the news conference had spread forth like a fiery cancer, the result a shocking string of confessors claiming their place in history as the crucifixion killers. Most completely mad, but one pair claiming to be “The Crucifier Crew” or 'Team Crucifier” must now be seriously examined, as they voluntarily came in, in tandem, both alleging to be the crucifixion killer “team” as touted by the press.
“They were on their periods, the women, weren't they?” Jacob Periwinkle told them as he asked the question. And it had been true according to one news account. Jessica had volunteered to search all the news stories to understand fully what a confessor might pick up in the media to use to convince authorities of their claims. Facts, details of the crime scene, exacting times, all went into a believable, bankable lie. Between Periwinkle and Hawkins, they had already managed to repeat, verbatim, all they'd seen on TV and read in the newspaper. Bad news and a salacious appetite for it by news-people in radio, TV, and print happened so frequently nowadays that people, jaded to the horror of murder, accepted it as a commonplace, and here in Interrogation Room A-the sweatbox Sharpe called it-the informer who used too many details, told too many exacting stories about how he did what he supposedly did, invariably lied. The truth-tellers, as Sharpe called them, had only one thing in common with pathological liars, and that was the simple matter of “Where do I go from here? Are you taking me to jail or not?” There the similarities died. The false-claims people told an interrogator more than what he asked for. As sure as “dabs”-fingerprints according to Sharpe-body language sent its own message to an experienced interrogator who could read each type, liar and truth-teller. All that is necessary is we show the confessor the dabs and tell him the prints came from the bloody crime scene, and he'll give it up one way or the other, usually. It hadn't been so with the two confessors today, who claimed they used surgical gloves throughout their tormenting and disposing of the bodies.
Sharpe stepped out of the interrogation room for a time, needing fresh air and a moment to collect himself. Seeing Jessica, he said, “I can tell from the change in expression which way an innocent man and a guilty man will react- whether the crime is his or not. These two are bogus, ingenuine article… despite their revelations, none of which my little six-year-old could not have plucked from the tabloids and the legitimate press.”
Knowing most certainly now that Sharpe disbelieved this “tag team” crucifying couple, Periwinkle created a show, clamoring to his feet and making an attempt to grab Copper-waite, who'd remained inside. Sharpe took the opportunity to rush back inside to lash out at the foolhardy man, while warning off the tattered-looking Sheldon Hawkins. Sharpe almost broke Periwinkle's arm, releasing the man only at Copperwaite's intervention.
In the same instant, Chief Inspector Boulte muttered, “There's Sharpe for you. The real man. Take a clear look. He pops off like this more often than not. Not surprised his wife left him.”
Jessica didn't need to hear this coming from Boulte. She wanted to run away from the man. She thought him as dull as a bolt, that Copperwaite had properly surmised all that there was of the chief and his talent.
“It's unfortunate that Richard's time is taken up by these false claimants to the Crucifier's throne.”
“You think so, do you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“For your information, Doctor, several promising leads have already opened up as a result of our cooperation with the press.”
“Really? And I thought it just the opposite, that we're wasting our time interviewing subjects for the latest Ripley's museum or book of the odd and delusional.”
“Still, you must admit that these two birds, that they are… That is, they make a strangely frightening couple, wouldn't you say?”
“What's strangely frightening, sir, and I mean this with all due respect, is how much time we're willing to waste on the usual suspects when this case is not about the usual in any sense of the word. These two men were mental cases before the Crucifixion murders. The press stories actually feed their delusional tendency, legitimizing them, so to speak. Now we are validating them by giving them our time and attention, and then the press will give them the attention of stars, celebrities.”
“All well and good, Doctor, but you work out of a laboratory. The rest of us don't have the luxury to work in a vacuum, as much as we'd like to pretend otherwise. We are held accountable for progress or lack of progress on solving murder cases, and often the cases are, like this one, extremely high profile. We can't duck the press on such sensationalism. It's their bread and butter, and if we fail to cooperate, they crucify us. Ironic, but true.”
“No, the real irony here, sir, is how we've tied our own investigative teams' hands to their backs, as if conditions aren't bad enough to begin with. It's a catch-22 in which the soldier, scraping his knee on landing after jumping from the airplane, whines, moans, and complains about the scraped knee while ignoring the fact his entrails are lying on the ground next to him.”
“What are you implying?”
“Implying? I'm not implying anything. I'm saying outright that we're wasting valuable time on nonsense that will only prove itself nonsense. It's like the proverbial camel-a horse created by committee. The results are not what you want, so much as what you get in the end.”
“Are you making a joke?”
The man's thick-headedness drove Jessica insane inside, and she had no place to put the rage. She tried once more. 'Take the last couple claiming to be the one and only Crucifiers. A man and woman team in a common- law marriage, who explained in vivid detail why they crucified their first victim, how they got a charge out of it, and seeing the hubbub around the discovered body, they claimed to have blended in with the tourists to take the ferry at the bridge.”
“They sounded so convincing at first,” Boulte muttered.
“Yeah, until they got on the ferry. Said they watched from the ferry out on the water while the Yard men were still looking over the body. That has to be a lie.”
“How so?”
