She believed what Luc Sante said to be clearly correct in a sense, fitting into of her own experiences with twisted minds. Jessica began to believe that perhaps evil did indeed infest and infiltrate and find succor in the most mundane of human hearts and minds through the genetic makeup. That much of the pitiable state of the human condition, and the ferocity of the creature called man, was predetermined through a fate as biochemically fundamental as the DNA of apes, despite the outward veneer of civility, progress, and technological marvels.
Certainly mankind remained, throughout the ages and present day, an incubator for evil experiments as well as all manner of disease and disability. She imagined a world in which the worst of mankind, the most evil among us, were subjects of a cloning experiment, that had, in the later part of the twentieth century, blindly and unwittingly cloned its own dark side, so that the modem-day serial killer could indeed be explained. She imagined that nature had done the cloning for us with the hand of Satan in the mix. She pulled back, short of putting full stock into the religious man's words. “We've had the messages in the bubblegum wrapper defense, we've had the Devil-made-me-do-it defense, the talking dog from Son of Sam, and now we're to have the DNA-made-me-do-it defense?” she asked the room. Still Luc Sante's book had one fine result: It had put her under. She had fallen asleep at last, with his compilation of dark and sinister thoughts on her lap, and she dreamed of the many guises of evil he'd so elegantly described in his comprehensive work on the nature of evil and the duty of every psychotherapist to engage the diabolical, all malfeasance and malignancy wherever he or she found it, and to struggle in real-time combat with it at every turn.
“We fight the same enemy.” Luc Sante's voice wafted over her dreams…Lawrence Coibby, used car salesman, loner, without a friend in the world, having never actually been buried, had spent the last few weeks in storage in a stranger's freezer in a garage in Kensington. Jessica was told this with such calm that she marveled anew at the ability of the British to understate any situation. Consequently, there having been no actual burial, due in part to the absence of burial sites, there was no true exhumation of the body. However, over the last twenty-four hours, the “hunt” for Coibby's body had continued, and once properly identified and located, the cadaver had been taken to a nearby hospital, St. Stephen's Parish Hospital, where Dr. Coran oversaw the evidence gathering-specifically the evidence gathered from under Lawrence Coibby's tongue.
Staring through the high-powered magnifying glass brought in for the job, Jessica found the tongue in remarkably good shape due more to the deep freezing of the body than to the embalming.
“There it stands, gentlemen,” she told Sharpe and the others, Copperwaite, Chief Inspector Boulte alongside Dr. Schuller. “Have a look, Richard. It's the same message, letter for letter, word for word.”
Sharpe eagerly took her place at the magnifying glass, finding just the right focus for himself. “As if the killer has a brand, and he keeps using it over and over.”
'Two out of three, technically,” agreed Copperwaite.
“It's clear enough.”
Jessica took a last look at the message, inscribed in the flesh, burnt into the flesh by a micro-brand. “I confess, I've never seen the like of it before,” she told the men.
“It's clearly the work of a serial killer now, one wishing to taunt police with a hideous method of torturous death for his victims,” suggested Chief Inspector Boulte. “We'll keep this out of the communique you wish to forward the media, Richard.”
“We'd like a good deal more said about the killings, Chief Inspector.”
“I've reviewed your suggestions and those of our American colleague, Richard. I'm sorry, but it all seems a bit premature at this time to alarm the public with this information about…about the tongues being seared on top of all this other nastiness, you see?”
Jessica took several deep breaths of air, allowing her disappointment clear vent. Sharpe bit his lip and nodded to his superior, saying, “Whatever you judge best, Chief Inspector. It is, after all, your show.”
Sharpe abruptly turned from his superior and rained compliments on Jessica. “You've done a fine job for us. Dr. Coran, in the startlingly brief time you've been on the case.”
Copperwaite eagerly added, “Yes, she's already proven her worth to the case quite dramatically, I'd say.”*
Copperwaite's compliment hardly left his lips when Sharpe laughed aloud. Whether Copperwaite knew it or not, he'd hit upon the true reason why Chief Inspector Boulte did not wish to go public with this information. It had come not from the Yard's efforts or findings, but from the American, the colonist, Jessica Coran. Boulte only showed a politically correct smile and agreed with his men, saying, “Yes, Dr. Coran, your contribution to the case, thus far, has been most impressive. Keep up the good work.” Dr. Karl Schuller, however, remained displeased, his dour expression as frozen as the dead Coibby's, and he left without a word to anyone. Boulte followed after him.“Where do we go from here?” she asked Sharpe.
“How about lunch?” he replied.
“Bonzo,” agreed Copperwaite. “I'm starved.”
“There's a little pub not far from here, called Groton's, if it's not full. Old favorite,” said Sharpe. “Let's have a go at it, shall we?”
“We shall,” Jessica agreed.
“Over lunch, we can talk about our next move. If we have one.”
“What do you mean by that?” she asked. “ 7/ we have one?”
“Chief Inspector Boulte's pushing for a new investigative team to come on.”
“What? What kind of thinking is that?”
“Administrative.”
“Is that how New Scotland Yard works? If so, it smells like yesterday's fish.”
“Boulte used a fishy metaphor as well,” replied Sharpe, a bit amused at her anger. “Says we're rowing a leaking boat.”
“He's always saying crap of that sort. 'Gain on swings, lose on roundabouts,' he says ten times a day,” reported Copperwaite as they continued to the bar. “Gawd 'elp us. The man doesn't know the geography of his own house.”
Sharpe laughed uproariously at this, leaving Jessica to wonder what she'd missed. He quickly explained, “It means he can't find the john in his own home.”
She joined in their laughter. “I've a Geordie friend from Tynsdale knows more than that man,” said Copperwaite.
“Boulte doesn't rise to the level of a Geordie, a George perhaps…” Sharpe's summation brought on more laughter. Copperwaite explained for Jessica that a George in Britain meant the automatic-pilot mechanism on an airplane or the cruise mechanism on a car. “Let the hamster onto the wheel,” added Sharpe, chewing now on an unlit pipe.
“Still, isn't it rather a bit premature to call in a new investigative team at this point?” she asked.
Sharpe shrugged. “Oh, I don't know. He has to have someone to play the goat. Short of having someone in the greenhouse-ahh, the lock-up-he has to point a finger in some direction. To be fair, he has a hell of a political Rube Goldberg balanced on his shoulder right now, and-”
“Ahh, you're daft, Sharpie. You make too many excuses for the man.”
Sharpe ignored Copperwaite as they continued along a tree-lined street, children playing in nearby yards. “Boulte's right about one thing. We haven't amassed a thing on the killer, and now we may simply have to wait for the killer to strike again before we can learn any more about him or them. This is a sorry state of affairs, but it happens to be the circumstances we're now faced with, as you know.”
“We're just to sit about like bumps to wait for a… another killing?” asked Copperwaite.
Jessica complained as well. “That's a bit like the tail wagging the dog, don't you think?”
“What steps then would you have us take?”
“Use the Times and the BBC. Get word out on this killer. Tell the public what you've found, what to look for.”