Jessica wondered at the sheer depth of her own rage: unreasonably wild, natural, blind, primal, pure, dark, and fatal in the end. Such hatred existed as a natural survival signal for Jessica and other law-enforcement people, but it formed a reason for living for such monsters as Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, and countless others, including the Crucifier.
She wondered how many good and faithful so-called Christians felt this sort of viperlike hatred toward those who did not practice their belief. Wondered if the real Crucifier had this in mind, to bring the nonbeliever into believing, to teach by demonstration and by example, the example being the crucified remains of those who mocked his religion, whatever vision of that religion existed in the killers' heads.
In any event, she felt the cold, hungry, animal hatred pacing Interrogation Room A. It permeated the room. Perhaps part of it belonged to Richard, part of it to Copperwaite-as well as being part of the two men they interrogated. Perhaps hatred fed off all of them, one and the same cowardly jackal, growing in strength as one man's hatred matched the other's, until the jackal became a two-headed, winged beast with homs and hooves and talons. “We become the thing we hate, if we chase it long enough.” How often Asa Holcraft had warned her, and recently Luc Sante had said the same thing to her. Nothing new in the old belief, dating far before the character of Van Helsing in Bram Stoker's Dracula, going back to biblical story and the beginning of time: Pursue evil long enough with enough determination, and you become it, and doesn't it become you? she darkly jested somewhere deep within the regions of her multilayered soul. For part of the evil crouching in the comer resembled Jessica herself.
“I like driving in the nails,” said Sheldon Hawkins, drooling over the image as he spoke the words. “Ja-see, that's my job. Jake here, he bleedin' prays over 'em, after we do 'em. Curly bastard, that's what Jake here is.”
“Prayer wounds all heels!” joked Jacob Periwinkle, a small, obnoxious weasel whose body odor, something akin to hair and hide of the rat, preceded him. Hawkins's most prominent feature filled his face-an enormous beak nose, falconlike in size and appearance. Jessica thought them stark caricatures of the sort that Jim Henson's company portrayed in the Muppetland Band. Both men needed bathing, scrubbing, and grooming. They were like a pair of stray dogs who'd learned to live with their own lice.
“What is the purpose behind your crucifying people?” she asked them. “Why kill people in so brutal a manner? If, in fact, you two committed these horrible acts.”
“Acts? Acts is it, all right, look it up in the Acts of the Apostles six something. Says it all right there,” replied Perwinkle.
“Bloody curly it is, too,” replied Hawkins.
Jessica put it to Perwinkle. “Why don't you educate us, Mr. Perwinkle? Elucidate.”
“All right, I will. Says there in Acts, why's it so hard for you to believe that your God can raise the dead? We wanted to see if God could… raise the dead.” He barked out his laughter. “Come to find out, The Old Fellow wasn't innerrested, I bloody guess.” He laughed more.
“Keep a civil tongue, you animal!” shouted Copperwaite.
“In the name of Christ,” said Periwinkle with a facetious tone as his hand did a flourish and his head gave a slight bow. “That's why we done what we done, right, Hawkins?”
“Codswallop and bullshit, Jake, bullshit. Tell them the real reason,” shouted his partner.
“We don't reveal secrets God 'imself has provided.”
“God speaks to you, then?” asked Jessica.
“Not exactly God,” corrected Hawkins.
“Who then?”
“It's 'im, the bloody one on the cross, it is,” shouted Periwinkle.
Hawkins shouted, “Christ, it's from Christ, you damned fool cuntie! Like to see you all done up on the cross, dearie!”
“Shut that flapper of yours, Hawkins! One more foul word, and I swear I'll strike you dumb,” shouted Sharpe, approaching menacingly with fists clenched and the veins popping out of his neck like taut rope.
Hawkins ignored Sharpe's gallant attempt to spare Jessica foul words. He let out his own shout. “He's coming back! He's come back. He's here, among us now! And this world ain't seen no havoc like what He-the Son of God-will bring down round us all, that's what.” He'd so lost his breath that his last words came out as mere tire-screech utterances.
Rat-boy had begun screaming over Beak-nose, chorusing the words, “Shut up! Shut up, Hawkins! Shut your hole!”
“Christ told us to do it. Christ wants revenge on the Jews for what they did to 'im. That's why we did Burtie Burton. That's it, pure and simple, and He's come to show us what goddamn revenge is really, really like in the first order, I tell you, the revenge of God! The revenge of the Son of God is coming down on all of us, so you'd better stand on His side, whore and whore no more.” He ended with his eyes ablaze and burning into Jessica's eyes, Jessica matching his stare with her own intensity.
'Ten Commandments take on a whole new meaning for you now, don't they, slut?”
Sharpe, acting before Copperwaite could, struck like a snake. He had reached across the table where Periwinkle sat and nearly dragged him across it, shouting, “Shut up your ugly remarks to Dr. Coran! You want to see what revenge looks like up close, you bloody little pipsqueak!”
Copperwaite and Jessica pulled and pried Richard and Periwinkle apart while Sheldon Hawkins laughed maniacally at the scene. Jessica saw now the hatred had firmly rooted itself in Richard's eyes. He let go of Periwinkle and turned from her gaze.
Boulte, tiring of the verbal jousting and circles and anxious to get on the six o'clock news with results, stormed into the room now with the armed guards. He told the guards to take the prisoners back to the holding cells. “It's time we closed this down, Richard. Stuart.” Boulte paced the room now, and even with the two confessors gone, the anger and hatred permeating the interrogation walls, breathing in and out of the very pores of the concrete, had remained behind with the stale and rank odors that had wafted in the wake of the two confessors.
Boulte said outright, “I, for one, heard enough to put those two psychotics away for life.”
Richard stood in his face. “You're drawing at straws, Chief Inspector.”
“Fairly sturdy straws at that. Look, Richard, seems to me we have two viable suspects here, certainly worth pursuing.” Boulte turned to Copperwaite, now leaning against the wall, and Boulte's finger, like a thick-shafted arrow, now pressed into Copperwaite's chest as the chief added, “Get a warrant for the flat, the car they drive, all of it, Stuart.”
'These two are not the killers,” Sharpe firmly said, again inches from Boulte's face. “They're a pair of sorry liars who couldn't tie their shoes if asked to. You turn them over to the cameras, make 'heroes' of them and yourself, sir, and 1 guarantee that you'll be making an enormous mistake.”
“I'll take the heat in the event we're wrong about them. Get the warrant, make the search.”
Jessica, Stuart, and Richard all knew Boulte needed someone to publicly “hang,” no matter the truth of guilt or innocence. The two men not only filled the bill, they fit the costumes: They walked and talked the parts given them by the press. Obviously, Boulte had chosen to overlook the ready clues in their so-called confession that made their tale as farfetched as the “ferry boat” detail in the other confessors' tale. The biblical detail, however, may have proved just the right touch so far as Chief Boulte cared. Never mind the nonsense clues Richard had spent hours digging for, the clues that told them all that the entire confession could be characterized as bogus.
“They tell a compelling story,” Boulte said to the others. “They know all the names of the victims, their histories, their backgrounds, their religious leanings, and where each body was dumped and found. And that remark against the Jews and Burtie BurtonIt all fits.”