order, I tell you, the revenge of God! The revenge of the Son of God is coming down on all of us, so you'd better stand on His side, whore and whore no more.” He ended with his eyes ablaze and burning into Jessica's eyes, Jessica matching his stare with her own intensity.
'Ten Commandments take on a whole new meaning for you now, don't they, slut?”
Sharpe, acting before Copperwaite could, struck like a snake. He had reached across the table where Periwinkle sat and nearly dragged him across it, shouting, “Shut up your ugly remarks to Dr. Coran! You want to see what revenge looks like up close, you bloody little pipsqueak!”
Copperwaite and Jessica pulled and pried Richard and Periwinkle apart while Sheldon Hawkins laughed maniacally at the scene. Jessica saw now the hatred had firmly rooted itself in Richard's eyes. He let go of Periwinkle and turned from her gaze.
Boulte, tiring of the verbal jousting and circles and anxious to get on the six o'clock news with results, stormed into the room now with the armed guards. He told the guards to take the prisoners back to the holding cells. “It's time we closed this down, Richard. Stuart.” Boulte paced the room now, and even with the two confessors gone, the anger and hatred permeating the interrogation walls, breathing in and out of the very pores of the concrete, had remained behind with the stale and rank odors that had wafted in the wake of the two confessors.
Boulte said outright, “I, for one, heard enough to put those two psychotics away for life.”
Richard stood in his face. “You're drawing at straws, Chief Inspector.”
“Fairly sturdy straws at that. Look, Richard, seems to me we have two viable suspects here, certainly worth pursuing.” Boulte turned to Copperwaite, now leaning against the wall, and Boulte's finger, like a thick-shafted arrow, now pressed into Copperwaite's chest as the chief added, “Get a warrant for the flat, the car they drive, all of it, Stuart.”
'These two are not the killers,” Sharpe firmly said, again inches from Boulte's face. “They're a pair of sorry liars who couldn't tie their shoes if asked to. You turn them over to the cameras, make 'heroes' of them and yourself, sir, and 1 guarantee that you'll be making an enormous mistake.”
“I'll take the heat in the event we're wrong about them. Get the warrant, make the search.”
Jessica, Stuart, and Richard all knew Boulte needed someone to publicly “hang,” no matter the truth of guilt or innocence. The two men not only filled the bill, they fit the costumes: They walked and talked the parts given them by the press. Obviously, Boulte had chosen to overlook the ready clues in their so-called confession that made their tale as farfetched as the “ferry boat” detail in the other confessors' tale. The biblical detail, however, may have proved just the right touch so far as Chief Boulte cared. Never mind the nonsense clues Richard had spent hours digging for, the clues that told them all that the entire confession could be characterized as bogus.
“They tell a compelling story,” Boulte said to the others. “They know all the names of the victims, their histories, their backgrounds, their religious leanings, and where each body was dumped and found. And that remark against the Jews and Burtie BurtonIt all fits.”
Sharpe argued, “They could've gotten all that from the press, and so could my six-year-old daughter from turning on the telly.”
“We'll give them both lie-detector tests, if you are still uncertain,” Boulte determinedly replied.
“While it's obvious that these two people are disturbed, it's not so obvious they committed these crimes,” Jessica put in. “Speaking to them, interviewing them, Luc Sante would say we have just interviewed the Devil at play, but-”
“Luc Sante, Luc Sante,” Chief Inspector Boulte lamented. “I knew you should not have involved him on this case, Richard.” Jessica read into his words, And you shouldn't have involved this lady doctor from America, either. “Luc Sante's managed to so brainwash you two with his little sermons on evil that you don't recognize it when you see it before you!”
Jessica tried to reason with Boulte who stubbornly and tenaciously held to his tunnel vision. Finally, Richard said, “These two buffoons are convinced that they are the killers whom all of Scotland Yard, the press, the public, and the prime minister have sought now for weeks and weeks. Such a conviction lifts their mundane lives and low opinion of one another and self to a higher plane.”
“Now you're a psychotherapist, too, Richard?”
“Of course, they can lay claim to this enormous ripple effect they've caused in society's pond,” agreed Jessica, immediately coming to Richard's defense, understanding his point. “It's alluring to them, and it is quite real. Real enough in here”-she pounded her heart-”that no lie detector test designed can help out here. They are themselves convinced that they are the killers. They are convinced of their own guilt, the guilt of murdering the innocent. Yet they've provided no key evidence here, and their eyes bugged out when we asked about their victims' tongues. TTiey first said they cut them out, and later they chose burning the tongues. They know nothing of this!”
Richard again added to the argument, “You see, Boulte, they are convinced beyond all reason and rationale that they are indeed the Crucifiers whom the world seeks. It makes their miserable lives worth a few pounds to think it so.”
Jessica laughed a hollow laugh. “In becoming the Crucifier with a capital C, they take shape, form, and they become something larger than themselves, something the press has made larger than life, as it so often and thoughtlessly does in America with such madmen as Cunanan, Manson, Bundy, Gacey, Speck, Oswald, Sirhan. As your historians have done with Jack-the-Ripper. Rather than turn the cameras away from these desperate and dangerous sociopaths, the press has given them a stature in death or in incarceration that they never possessed in their miserable little lives. They have elevated them to the status of godlike monsters, capable of great feats of daring and genius, when in fact they are pathetic remnants of passing evil.”
“Now you really are beginning to sound like Luc Sante,” complained Boulte. The Chief stared several times at the two-way mirror, telling Jessica that the public prosecutor had been listening in on them all. “You've been talking too long to that old shrink. Look, we have the finest lie-detector men in the world here.”
“And they will tell you the same as I have. Despite even hypnotism, the subject, if thoroughly convinced on this conscious plane of existence, he remains so on the subconscious level of existence as well. Lie detectors detect subtle nuances in honesty and truth, just as a hot blade bums the dry tongue of the village liar when the witch doctor lays the knife on. If the truth is subverted or overtaken by a rock-solid, all encompassing, life-altering delusion, if you are dealing with an abnormality that is the normality of existence for this person, an aberration that is cause for celebration in this individual, no truth other than the delusional truth will be forthcoming in such a test.”
Boulte squinted, half-smiled, and asked Jessica point-blank, “Are you deliberately trying to confuse me?”
Jessica erupted with laughter. It careened off the walls, out the door, and down the long corridors leading to Boulte's office.
Sharpe grabbed her by the arm, taking her aside, saying, “Dr. Coran has been working extremely hard. She hasn't eaten today, either,” he excused her behavior. To her, he added, “Why don't we have a bite to eat? I know a pleasant place just around the comer, a pub where we can have a pint and a sandwich, since I'm off duty. What do you say?”
“I'm famished and I'm buying, but we haven't finished here. We must convince your chief of-”
“His mind is set, was set before he spoke to us, and he'll remain immovable. We're both wasting our time and energy on the man. Walk away from it, now.”
And so they did, together, leaving poor Copperwaite to deal with Boulte.
FOURTEEN
Among… crippled legions-the mass of suffering humanity-the evil reside, perhaps the most pitiable of all.
