Boulte seethed, his gaze piercing hers, for she said it in such a way as to make it sound like Boulte's order. Then in the sea of faces before them, Jessica saw the reporter who'd questioned her at the York. She glared at Erin Culbertson, wishing to stake the reporter to a cross even as the other woman asked Jessica a pointed question. “Are you and Richard Sharpe”… hesitation, pause… “Are you in agreement on the question of whether the Crucifier is one killer or two?”
“We suspect there are at least two men doing the killing, yes.”
“Have you any idea why they crucify their victims?”
“We fear it is a religious fixation, a zealotry, possibly an attempt to reawaken in the general public an awareness of Christ, the cross, God's word, all that, but we are only speculating. It's difficult enough to climb into the head of one killer, much less two at once. But, yes, there does seem to be a pair-mentality at work, and some of the physical requirements of actually spiking someone to a cross might well require at least four strong hands.”
“Thank you all for coming,” said Boulte, bringing the press conference to a close. Jessica stepped behind a curtain, out of sight of the cameras and reporters, but she watched from her vantage point to see what, if any, contact Culbertson made with Boulte. To her surprise, there appeared none whatever.
Jessica felt good about having kept the exact wording of the killer's message and the coal dust and beetle long shot to herself. No one but she and Dr. Raehael knew of its possible significance. She secretly seethed now, knowing that the information on the tongue branding, and most likely the precise wording, would soon become newsprint fodder, plastered across every television in the city. Like America, the press in England, inadvertently or otherwise, made antiheroes of serial killers. The Crucifiers would make great copy for many days, possibly many months, to come. Even if caught, their story would continue through pre-and post-trial footage, and these psychos would be held up as “criminal geniuses” for young people to “worship” when in fact they were anything but.
Jessica saw that the Culbertson woman had remained behind, fixing her makeup, combing out her hair, preparing it seemed for the next interview, the next story. On a dare to herself, Jessica stepped from behind the curtain to confront the woman. Moments before Erin Culbertson was about to step away, Jessica intercepted her and asked, “Can I have a private moment with you. Miss Culbertson?”
“Absolutely, Dr. Coran. You're the hottest topic in London today. What can I do for you?”
“You can tell me what's transpired between you and Chief Boulte.”
“Whatever are you talking about?”
“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.”