immediate interference with the normal rotation of the head and body as a unit, well maybe---I say just maybe--- you could get this result.'
'Could another human being have done it?'
'Yes, but he'd have to be an exceptionally powerful man.'
Kinderman had checked Karl Engstrom's story regarding his whereabouts at the time of Denning's death. The show times matched, as did the schedule that night of a D. C. Transit bus. Moreover, the driver of the bus that Karl had claimed he had boarded by the theater went off duty at Wisconsin and M, where Karl had stated he alighted at approximately twenty minutes after nine. A change of drivers had taken place, and the off-duty driver had logged the time of his arrival at the transfer point: precisely nine-eighteen.
Yet on Kinderman's desk was a record of a felony charge against Engstrom on August 27, 1963, alleging he had stolen a quantity of narcotics over a period of months from the home of a doctor in Beverly Hills where he and Willie were then employed.
... born April 20, 1921, in Zurich, Switzerland. Married to Willie nee Braun September 7, 1941. Daughter, Elvira, born New York City, January 11, 1943, current address unknown. Defendant...
The remainder the detective found baffling: The doctor, whose testimony was sine qua non for successful prosecution, abruptly---and without any explanation---dropped the charges.
Why would he done so?
The Engstrom were hired by Chris MacNeil only two months later, which meant that the doctor had given them a favorable reference.
Why would he do so?
Engstrom had certainly pilfered the drugs, and yet a medical examination at the time of the charge had failed to yield the slightest sign that the man was an addict, or even a user.
Why not?
With his eyes still closed, the detective softly recited Lewis Carroll's 'Jabberwocky': ' 'Twas brillig and the slithy tones...' Another of his mind-clearing tricks.
When he'd finished reciting, he opened his eyes and fixed his gaze on the Capitol rotunda, trying to keep his mind a blank. But as usual, he found the task impossible. Sighing, he glanced at the police psychologist's report on the recent desecrations at Holy Trinity: '... statue... phallus... human excrement... Damien Karras,' he had underscored in red. He breathed in the silence and then reached for a scholarly work on witchcraft, turning to a page he had marked with a paper clip: Black Mass... a form of devil worship, the ritual, in the main, consisting of (1) exhortation (the 'sermon') to performance of evil among the community, (2) coition with the demon (reputedly painful, the demon's penis invariably described as 'icy cold'), and (3) a variety of desecrations that were largely sexual in nature. For example, communion Hosts of unusual size were prepared (compounded of flour, feces, menstrual blood and pus), which then were slit and used as artificial vaginas with which the priests would ferociously copulate while raving that they were ravishing the Virgin Mother of God or that they were sodomizing Christ. In another instance of such practice, a statue of Christ was inserted deep in a girl's vagina while into her anus was inserted the Host, which the priest then crushed as he shouted blasphemies and sodomized the girl. Life- sized images of Christ and the Virgin Mary also played a frequent role in the ritual. The image of the Virgin, for example---usually painted to give her a dissolute, sluttish appearance---was equipped with breasts which cultists sucked, and also a vagina into which the penis might be inserted. The statues of Christ were equipped with a phallus for fellatio by both the men and the women, and also for insertion into the vagina of the women and the anus of the men. Occasionally, rather than an image, a human figure was bound to a cross and made to function in place of the statue, and upon the discharge of his semen it was collected in a blasphemously consecrated chalice and used in the making of the communion host, which was destined to be consecrated on an altar coveted with excrement. This--- Kinderman flipped the pages to an underlined paragraph dealing with ritualistic murder. He read it slowly, nibbling at the pad of an index finger, and when he had finished he frowned at the page and shook his head. He lifted a brooding glance to the -lamp. He flicked it out. He left his office and drove to the morgue.
The young attendant at the desk wan munching at a ham and cheese sandwich on rye, and brushed the crumbs from a crossword puzzle as Kinderman approached him.
'Dennings,' the detective whispered hoarsely.
The attendant nodded, filling in a five-letter horizontal, then rose with his sandwich and moved down the hall.
Kinderman followed him, hat in hand, followed faint scent of caraway seed and mustard to rows of refrigerated lockers, to the dreamless cabinet used for the filing of sightless eyes.
They halted at locker 32, The expressionless attendant slid it out. He bit at his sandwich, and a fragment of mayonnaise-speckled crust fell lightly to the shroud.
For a moment Kinderman stared down; then, slowly and gently, he pulled back the sheet to expose what he'd seen and yet could not accept.
Burke Dennings' head was turned completely around, facing backward.
CHAPTER FIVE
Cupped in the warm, green hollow of the campus, Damien Karras, jogged alone around an oval, loamy track in khaki shorts and a cotton T-shit drenched with the cling of healing sweat. Up ahead, on a hillock, the lime-white dome of the astronomical observatory pulsed with the beat of his stride; behind him, the medical school fell away with churned-up shards of earth and care.
Since release from his duties, he came here daily, lapping the miles and chasing sleep. He had almost caught it; almost eased the clutch of grief that gripped at his heart like a deep tattoo. It held him gentler now.
Twenty laps...
Much gentler.
More! Two more!
Much gentler...
Powerful leg muscles blooded and stinging, rippling with a long and leonine grace, Karras thumped around
