“Unless we can get Luc Sante on tape, admitting to his new cult following, and the fact he's involved in these deaths,” suggested Copperwaite. “And just how do you propose doing that?”
“He seems to've been working overtime to convert Dr. Coran.”
“No, I won't endanger her, Stuart.”
“You're bloody in love with her, aren't you?”
“We share a great deal. Love, I don't know that I would go that far.” Sharpe's inner mind mulled the question over. It hadn't occurred to him to call it love. Certainly, Jessica had not ever used the word, and he had been careful not to, and it all seemed somewhat of a younger man's game, this thing called love. Still, he found himself thinking of her always, to distraction, he warned himself now.
“But it may be our only hope. Have Coran wear a wire, with us nearby. Suppose I'm right?”
“Right about Luc Sante's wishing to win her over to his new world order and religion. I can see that now. He's been building up to it all along, but I daresay she's given him no encouragement.”
“She encourages by her very being, by her engaging him, returning to him, don't you see?” Copperwaite next suggested they walk up a flight for the exercise and so that they didn't appear too damnably suspicious here. Sharpe agreed, and they trekked up a flight.
“By God, Coppers, you are going to make a fine full inspector, one day. That's rather an insightful point you've made, perhaps one I've been blinded to, being… Since I've become so fond of Jessica.”
“If you take it a step further, Richard, if what you suspect Luc Sante of, then it follows that he may well see Dr. Coran as… well, as a perfect candidate for crucifixion?”
“Thanks for that, Coppers. You've the target in the crosshairs indeed.”
“What will you tell Dr. Coran?”
“I'll tell her what she wants to hear, that we're going to move on Luc Sante, one blasted way or another.”
“Then you will propose her wearing a wire device?” asked Copperwaite, standing still now at the top stair.
“Yes, if it's the only way. Can you arrange for the device, the surveillance van, all of it?”
“Consider it done, Sharpie.”
“I must contact Jessica. See if she is willing to become the sacrificial lamb.”
“She's not likely to say no to you, Richard. She hasn't so far.”
“Curb your tongue, Coppers. She's every bit a lady.”
“Meaning no harm, Sharpe.”
“Good, keep it so, and get the surveillance team together, then.”
“Right-o.”
Copperwaite disappeared through the door to their right, while Sharpe took the stairs back down for another exit. He'd decided that Luc Sante had too many friends on the force, too many eyes and ears. He wanted the element of surprise to be on their side when and if he decided to arrest. “Arrest for what?” he asked himself now. “On suspicion of being the Crucifier? On the suspicion the man had wantonly killed five human beings? That he showed a depraved indifference to human life?” Precisely what could he make stick to a priest of Father Luc Sante's standing in the community?
Luc Sante looked up from his scribblings to confront the shadow that suddenly lengthened and scurried across his desk. He half expected to look up and into the eyes of Satan himself, for so many years his archrival and enemy, but instead he found a stem-looking, somber Dr. Jessica Coran firmly rooted before him. “Ahhh, Dr. Coran, amazing you should show up this way. I was just wondering how I might entice you back through request or invitation. I have so enjoyed our talks, and you're such a wonderful conversationalist.” Flattery, she thought, will get you everywhere you want to be, if the target of flattery is weak-minded, weak-kneed, feeble, or strung out on drugs. How many poor slobs had Father Luc Sante lured into his cult through the kind word? “I hardly call what I did conversing, Dr. Luc Sante.”
“And why would you not call our conversations conversation, my dear?”
“You delightedly talked, I delightedly listened.”
“Are you suggesting that it was tutelage? I the teacher, you the student to be filled like some empty container? I hardly think it so.”
'Tutelage perhaps? Perhaps persuasion?” she countered. “My arguments are admittedly persuasive, practiced, I confess.”
“Honeyed, sometimes wondrous,” she characterized his arguments.
He only laughed lightly and smiled. “I masterfully led you, like a talented dancer, through the intricacies of my thinking, but it hardly can be called propaganda or an attempt to change you or your thinking, my dear, at least not without your consent.”
“My consent?”
“Your absolute consent, for without consent, there is no truth in a gesture, be it making love or committing one's soul to the Almighty.”
Any time now, she thought to herself, any time now you can just spew forth your confession to me like the kids in Diamondback had done for J. T., but 1 guess I won't hold my breath on that score. Instead, she crazily, insanely wanted to totally give in to Luc Sante here, now. She wanted to allow his verbal symphony on the eternal truths and the eternal battle of good over evil to manipulate her, to use her, place her as another pawn on his cosmic chessboard.
She resisted, however, in the deepest part of herself, and in turn she began to manipulate him, telling him, “I've actually come about the case. I've a theory you must hear and verify for its veracity.”
“A theory of your making?”
“Yes.”
“Go on.”
“Perhaps the victims are not what they appear to be.”
“A victim is a victim, how else should a victim appear?” he replied in caustic staccato.
“If a victim is a perfect victim, as in a willing victim, has she not been persuaded that in becoming a victim, that she, in some small measure, helps in God's cosmic plan for the universe? You see, Dr. Luc Sante, where I'm going with this?”
He looked confusedly across at her where she now sat in the big leather chair opposite him. “A willing victim, a perfect victim to this foul villain who is leaving a trail of blood across London. You are speaking hypothetically, I pray?”
“Hypothetically, yes, but what do you think of the theory of the crime? That there are willing, perfect victims among us, and I suspect the Crucifier has found them in the sick, the feeble and infirm. My autopsy on Burton showed him to have colon cancer, and I suspect the other victims, too, were facing some sort of health crisis, and perhaps found leaving this world in the fashion they did easier than suicide. Suicide closes the gate on eternal life, but sacrifice, now that's another story altogether, now isn't it, Father?”
“Depends upon what it is your are sacrificing and to whom, I should think.”
“Imagine if all of the Crucifier's victims were willing participants in their own sacrifices. It might make sense of this bizarre case.”
“Yes, yes, of course, the literature of religion and cults is littered with examples of just that, yes. I suggested this early on in the case. Richard Sharpe knew of my fears along these lines. I suggested the victims could be participant members of a cult, or don't you recall?”
“Yes, well, the possibility's been staring us in the face for some time now, hasn't it?” She stared for a moment at the painting over his desk of the hamlet and small parish in the English countryside, a place of purity and innocence, the image of peace on earth, his former parish, he'd called it. Then she added, “Victims who voluntarily go to their deaths, imagine it. Imagine the impulse to be a major part of the Second Coming. Certainly, if convinced of this… Well, I can appreciate the longing, the need to be part of something greater, larger than oneself, can't you?”
“Yes, I can imagine it.”
She wondered what she might say to get him to admit to one incriminating word, to state that he had been working overtime in his attempt to mesh with his God, to mesh with Jesus Christ, and in so doing, bring about the Second Coming.