Knowing most certainly now that Sharpe disbelieved this “tag team” crucifying couple, Periwinkle created a show, clamoring to his feet and making an attempt to grab Copper-waite, who'd remained inside. Sharpe took the opportunity to rush back inside to lash out at the foolhardy man, while warning off the tattered-looking Sheldon Hawkins. Sharpe almost broke Periwinkle's arm, releasing the man only at Copperwaite's intervention.
In the same instant, Chief Inspector Boulte muttered, “There's Sharpe for you. The real man. Take a clear look. He pops off like this more often than not. Not surprised his wife left him.”
Jessica didn't need to hear this coming from Boulte. She wanted to run away from the man. She thought him as dull as a bolt, that Copperwaite had properly surmised all that there was of the chief and his talent.
“It's unfortunate that Richard's time is taken up by these false claimants to the Crucifier's throne.”
“You think so, do you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“For your information, Doctor, several promising leads have already opened up as a result of our cooperation with the press.”
“Really? And I thought it just the opposite, that we're wasting our time interviewing subjects for the latest Ripley's museum or book of the odd and delusional.”
“Still, you must admit that these two birds, that they are… That is, they make a strangely frightening couple, wouldn't you say?”
“What's strangely frightening, sir, and I mean this with all due respect, is how much time we're willing to waste on the usual suspects when this case is not about the usual in any sense of the word. These two men were mental cases before the Crucifixion murders. The press stories actually feed their delusional tendency, legitimizing them, so to speak. Now we are validating them by giving them our time and attention, and then the press will give them the attention of stars, celebrities.”
“All well and good, Doctor, but you work out of a laboratory. The rest of us don't have the luxury to work in a vacuum, as much as we'd like to pretend otherwise. We are held accountable for progress or lack of progress on solving murder cases, and often the cases are, like this one, extremely high profile. We can't duck the press on such sensationalism. It's their bread and butter, and if we fail to cooperate, they crucify us. Ironic, but true.”
“No, the real irony here, sir, is how we've tied our own investigative teams' hands to their backs, as if conditions aren't bad enough to begin with. It's a catch-22 in which the soldier, scraping his knee on landing after jumping from the airplane, whines, moans, and complains about the scraped knee while ignoring the fact his entrails are lying on the ground next to him.”
“What are you implying?”
“Implying? I'm not implying anything. I'm saying outright that we're wasting valuable time on nonsense that will only prove itself nonsense. It's like the proverbial camel-a horse created by committee. The results are not what you want, so much as what you get in the end.”
“Are you making a joke?”
The man's thick-headedness drove Jessica insane inside, and she had no place to put the rage. She tried once more. 'Take the last couple claiming to be the one and only Crucifiers. A man and woman team in a common-law marriage, who explained in vivid detail why they crucified their first victim, how they got a charge out of it, and seeing the hubbub around the discovered body, they claimed to have blended in with the tourists to take the ferry at the bridge.”
“They sounded so convincing at first,” Boulte muttered.
“Yeah, until they got on the ferry. Said they watched from the ferry out on the water while the Yard men were still looking over the body. That has to be a lie.”
“How so?”
“Sharpe and Copperwaite had the ferry traffic held up for over an hour when they arrived, and a thick fog covered them. Finally, neither Sharpe nor Copperwaite or any police remained behind once the body was carted off, so how did the so-called killers see them from the ferTy as it pulled from the dock? I'll tell you how: through gross imaginings.”
“Quite,” agreed Boulte.
“That single detail in error is large enough to tell anyone those two were lying, that they were not in the proximity of the corpse, the boat, or anything to do with the killing since they quote 'watched from the ferry as it left the dock to see how the detectives treated the body.' “
On hearing the lie during his interrogation of the confessing pair, Richard Sharpe had quickly asked, “Oh, you must, of course, mean the return ferry, just coming in, since we held up the outgoing ferry.”
“Yes, yes, that's the one,” volunteered the confessor.
There had been no incoming ferries from across the Thames that time of morning. Even the ferry that Sharpe had heard that gloomy, fog-laden morning was the ferry crossing downriver at another bridge.
When this was pointed out to the confessing couple, both pleaded to be executed together. They wanted the Crown to kill them. That had been their intent all along.
Now this second murder duo of males, Periwinkle and Hawkins, a pair of seedy losers, had become altogether mad, angry, and frustrated in their sad little lives. Jessica, listening in on the interview from behind the one-way, realized immediately that the press, while useful if constructively involved in and committed to the ending of a serial killer's career, failed often to serve a case for a number of reasons, not the least being that a little bit of information in the wrong hands or head, could lead too many people down the primrose lane. Offering a reward often resulted in the same end. Except in this case the reward meant national attention, great notoriety as when People magazine editors chose to splash cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer's face across a cover. “I'm going in there. I have a few questions for these two,” Jessica told Boulte. He did not question her motive, even though she'd just told him that interrogating these men represented a gross waste of time and a wrong direction for the investigation to take. Just as she left the observation room, the thin, dark-haired public prosecutor entered via another door, and Boulte's entire attention went to her. “Ellen!” he falsely beamed.
Once inside the interrogation room, Jessica saw Sharpe's eyes, at first disappointed, as if throwing up a barrier to tell her This is no place for you; it's not safe or right for you to be here. This he quickly replaced with a quick nod, a half-smile, and an urging for her to come in. The moment she entered the interrogation room, she felt the palpable evil here, perhaps the reason that Richard wanted at first to stop her at the door. Evil in all its most excruciatingly toady ugliness resided in one comer in the pockmarked face of Periwinkle, who leaned over to whisper in the cauliflower ear of Hawkins. It were as if they shifted the evil back and forth between them, as if it were a salacious animal or insect. The sensation of it as a palpable, breathing entity here riveted first her sense of smell. Evil cast a noxious odor. It permeated her mouth where it tasted foul, and then found its way through the canals of her ears. Rude and disquieting words were coming from each of the desperate men. Each asked crude questions regarding Jessica's body and presence: “Why is the bitch here? Who is this whore kidding? We know what she wants, four wangs in the room. Wants us all to do her here and now while some other wang the other side of that mirror watches. Don't-cha, whore, bitch, cunt? Answer me, you fucking sweet-and-sour whore bitch.”
Sharpe lashed out at Periwinkle, threatening bodily harm if he didn't “Shut up!” Then he warned Hawkins, followed by a chair he threw across the room.
Jessica now felt the present evil crawl along the epidermal layer of her skin. It crept everywhere about her body at once. It made her feel like the victim in some sickening horror show, and the sight of the two men claiming to be the Crucifiers disgusted her, brought up in her a twisting, coiling hatred. Hissing hatred. Hatred wanting to unleash its venom on them.