Blind Instinct jc-7 Page 21

  Jessica had been waylaid by reporters before, especially reporters out to make a name for themselves by scoring on a big crime story. And in London, at the moment, the Crucifier was the biggest story going. Jessica replied with caution holding rein at the back of her mind. “And how do you know who I am?”

  “The flowers.”

  “The flowers?”

  “I use flowers often to get an interview.”

  “You bought the flowers as a way of telling who I was when I returned, and you've staked out the elevators since?”

  “Clever, wouldn't you say?” she asked. “Diabolically so.”

  “Will you have coffee with me? Answer a handful of burning questions about the case you're working on with the Yard? I learned of your coming on the case, made mention of it, but until now I haven't gotten your side of it, Doctor.”

  “Well, you have gone to a good deal of trouble. I can't divulge anything that is too sensitive, you realize.”

  “But you'll talk to me?”

  “After I put these,” she indicated the flowers, “in water. You have lovely taste.”

  The reporter laughed. “They weren't cheap, I can tell you that.”

  Later, in the dining room of the hotel, Jessica had a meal while Miss Culbertson drank a pot of black coffee and grilled her on the progress of the case.

  Jessica candidly told her that she hadn't had much to do with the first three killings, as the autopsies on these had been done by Dr. Karl Schuller.

  “Yes, I've gone the merry-go-round with that one, I have,” she replied, a light laugh following her words. “What an old codger.”

  Now Jessica laughed. It felt good talking to another woman, and getting her perspective on Schuller couldn't hurt.

  “What about the tongue brandings? I believe that was your discovery, wasn't it?”

  “Yes, but that information wasn't released to the press. How did you find out about it?”

  “I'm a reporter, a crime reporter. Facts like that do not remain boardroom or station house secrets for very long.”Jessica shook her head, knowing this to be true. She then told the reporter what she could of the autopsy on the latest Jane Doe.

  “The one found in the Serpentine?”

  “That's the one, yes.”

  “Number four. Oddly close to where Richard Sharpe once lived.”

  “Right.” Jessica didn't so much as blink, but she wondered how on Earth this woman had gotten that piece of information. A closer look revealed that Culbertson had a sort of elegant panache about her and that she was, in Jessica's estimation, a pretty brunette. Since Richard had said that they had been close friends at one time, intimating that they had slept together, Culbertson likely knew about where his ex-wife and children lived.

  “What do you think is the significance of the words found on the tongue?”

  “Some sort of cult ritual? Part of the process of crucifying the victim, sending them over to the other side… properly armed, symbolically speaking.”

  “Her name's been discovered, you know. She had a name.”

  “You know her name?”

  “I told you, I'm a reporter, and I'm damned good at it. “

  “Apparently.”

  “She was a thirty-nine-year-old, a Marion Woodard, looked a good deal older. Must have had a rough life of it. A paralegal secretary at Hass, Stodder, and Weiland, a law firm on Fleet Street.”

  Jessica silently mused and she said to Culbertson, “Victim's age is far younger than the previous three. What does that tell us?”

  “That your killer does not discriminate on the basis of age?”

  “Frankly, I prefer to not know their names and ages, the number of children they left behind, their favorite hobbies, interests, or restaurants until I'm done with the autopsy.”

  “Really? I should think the more information you have on a subject-”

  “Corpse, not subject. You reporters do interesting things with words. You hounded Lady Di until she was Lady Dead. Then the same people who lusted after this image you all created of a rebellious whore suddenly in death became Snow White. So she lived a lie created for her by the press and the public, and she died a lie created for her by the press and the public.”

  “I see. Well, you do have a low opinion of the press.”

  “Not everyone in the press, but yes, generally speaking, there are few people in the press who have my respect.”

  “So, you didn't answer my question. The information on the victim?”

  “Knowing too much, too soon, can make me less than effective in my work.”

  “Clinical objectivity, you mean?”

  “Precisely.”

  “But isn't that alone sort of working blind?”

  “I must remain objective in doing my job, which is to examine the body for signs of trauma. Later, some information about the dead person or his past may be relevant.” She thought of Tattoo Man back in the States. A corpse without any background, a good example of the need for information on the deceased's life. The reporter knew the answer to her question before she asked it. She wondered why Culbertson felt it necessary to beat about the bush. “What the forensic team does is to take a step-by-step approach, leaving nothing to chance,” Jessica finally said.

  “You do have a clinical air about you,” Culbertson sharply countered. “Sorry, didn't mean that the way it came out.”

  The hell you didn't, Jessica thought. She knew when she was being sized up, and when someone had a hidden agenda. She guessed that Culbertson's agenda must be at least as personal as it was professional. Had she come to cash in on Jessica's reputation? To get a story she could sell to the tabloids? Was she mining for dirt? Jessica thought of Richard, and how vulnerable he might be to such a predator as the one sitting across from her right now. “Look, it's been a long and fatiguing day. If you don't mind, and if you've got your questions answered-”

  “One more, and I'll be gone, I promise.”

  “All right.”

  “Has the old priest, Luc Sante, been of any help to the investigation? I've read where he has helped solve cases for the Yard in the past. I've been thinking of doing a straight profile on the man.”

  “That's a wonderful idea, and yes, he has provided invaluable insights into the thinking of the killer or killers through both his meetings with us and through his book.”

  “Killers? Do you think there are more than one?” It's fairly obvious that this is a likely scenario, yes.”

  “Do you mind if I report this?”

  “And if I said I did? Would it stop you?”

  “No.” She smiled when she said it.

  They parted with Jessica urging the reporter to do a piece on Luc Sante and his book. It would do wonders for the old man's ego, she thought, and it might divert the hungry young reporter away from herself, and so away from Richard.

  A momentary scenario of Richard in a British courtroom defending his right to visit his daughters burned across her mind like a match being struck. Jessica stared after the young reporter whose hips swayed like a ship at sea as she stepped through the revolving door exit in the lobby of the York.

  Dr. Raehael, his eyeglasses being used as a battering ram, held out the report he had made on Burton's corpse and said, “You were right, Dr. Coran.” He spoke loud enough for the entire room to hear, but primarily, she surmised, for Dr. Schuller's benefit.

  Jessica now stared in earnest at the results of the tests Dr. Raehael had rushed through on Burton's health prior to his death. In bold, Dr. Raehael wrote: Colon cancer had eaten away most of the man's intestines and stomach. If he hadn't died as he had, he would be dead within days.

  “How could his doctors not have known?”

  “He went to Switzerland for diagnosis, to keep it hush-hush.”

  “I see. And no one knew of his condition?”

  “No one, not even his shrink.”

  “His shrink?”

  “A Dr. Kahili, works not far from here. Police questioned him, but he
refused to divulge anything about Burton, invoked doctor-patient privilege.”

  “Kahili?”

  “Iranian.”

  “I wonder if Luc Sante would know of him.”

  “Possibly. You might ask.”

  “Thanks for the workup, Dr. Raehael.”

  “Here also are my findings on the Woodard woman. Par-tide and fiber evidence, but nothing strikes me as particularly useful, I'm afraid.”

  Raehael handed Jessica the lab work on Marion Woodard, and answered a call from Schuller who, apparently, had begun working his own angle on the case and isolating himself from Jessica. Schuller appeared none too pleased with his little Egyptian assistant, and the two men muttered some angry words between them before Raehael returned to his own corner of the busy lab where men and women in lab coats worked investigations other than the Crucifier case. In fact, the place appeared as busy, noisy, and buzzing as her Quantico, Virginia, lab back home.

  Jessica found an unoccupied seat next to a microscope. She sat and leisurely looked over Raehael's findings on Burton, imagining the pain the man must have been in, and how the pain of the crucifixion death might mask this death from within, just as the gross scars and obviousness of the crucifixion murder had masked Burton's condition on the autopsy slab from Drs. Schuller and Raehael.

  Jessica then began to look over the Woodard report Raehael had handed her. More of the same. No fingerprint evidence whatsoever. Brevital in the system. All particle and minutia from hair to carpet fibers creating a long list of useless information. But then she saw one unique item in postmortem number four, causing her to sit up 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.”