“I could only locate Boulte. Sharpe and his partner were unavailable. Listen to me, young woman, you promised me you wouldn't trek down in there alone!” Luc Sante protested.
“No, I promised you I'd wait until you returned before I did anything else.” She whipped out her. 38 Smith amp; Wesson from her shoulder holster, and she felt the comfort of the more compact Browning automatic strapped to her ankle below her pants leg. The. 38 police special alone should be enough to assure Luc Sante of her safety. She said, “I'm not entirely alone!” as she hefted the. 38 between two fists for him to see. “I know what I'm doing. I'm a marksman.”
The gun made the old man start, as if he suddenly saw her in a new light. Perhaps he had never thought of her in relation to a weapon, despite the work she did.
“I'm going ahead with my investigation,” she declared. “Direct authorities when they arrive.” She could hear Luc Sante behind her, still cautioning her to wait, cursing her for being so stubborn and impertinent, a cute word to use under the circumstances, she thought and continued forward into the gaping darkness that rushed up to meet her.
The stairwell dropped incrementally below her feet as she went deeper into the recesses here, and then the stone floor began a sharper spiral, and the walls narrowed in and in, as if moving in on her, wanting to crush her. Soon-her flash signaling each new step-the walls began scratching at Jessica's shoulders like ghouls reaching from vaults to tear at her clothing.
She could no longer see Strand or what had in the blackness appeared to be Strand, but she continued to hear noises, peculiar, odd sounds: the swishing of a robe, the scratch of a heel, the hum of some sort of machine, perhaps the reverberating noise from aboveground traffic, traveling through the rock here. She heard the distinct sound of seeping water, and for the second time today, she saw walls that bled with moisture. Her clothing had long been stained with the mineral-rich water.
The odors assailing her nostrils were those of ancient crypts and dungeons, stagnant places where only things requiring no light grew and festered, died and decayed. Her thoughts continued worrying her with each new step. The noises coming from above and through the rock, like the pulse of electricity-like the blood fuel that drove all of London-calmed to silence now, but sounds rising from below her rose up like awakening gnomes. She imagined the walls coming to life; she imagined the stairwell turning to Jell-O, slick and thick and slimy. She imagined spiraling into an Alice in Wonderland world below her ankles or coming out on the moon and stars, finding herself inside a bell jar. But none of this happened. The walls and stairs held even as she slipped on the now slick surface.
If this is the way to crucifixion at the hands of the Crucifier, she mentally whispered to herself, then how did those older people make it along this passage? Were they carried, dragged along in their chugged state? She recalled no serious bruising that would indicate such a scenario, so then how… A moan, human and low and guttural and pained escaped from somewhere ahead, and at her feet the inclined stairs ended, leaving her on a bed of rock.
Jessica, hearing distinctly human noises-the sound of more than one man-wondered whom Strand had met in this awful place? What was the meaning of the low, animal-like but human wail? Was she at last in the lair of the monster, on the Crucifier's ground?
She hesitated taking another step, but in the near distance, she saw that the tunnel opened on light, flickering, flaming, dancing light. She feared investigating further on her own, but she felt drawn to see precisely what lay at the end of the tunnel.
She inched forward, praying that by now Sharpe, Copperwaite, and an army of police were this moment taking direction from Father Luc Sante as to her whereabouts.
She believed now that she had long since left the rim of this peculiar hell, and that she now stood in the belly of the beast. This horrid place called to mind the rungs of hell in Dante's Inferno, the rungs to which a killer the year before promised to send Jessica. It appeared Satan had had his way with her after all, she now mused, for the Devil had brought her here, full circle, in a sense. Was the same evil that stalked her a year before still at her heels now? she wondered.
TWENTY-ONE
Man's latent talent for group evil is so attuned, so polished and honed today, that we fear any microscopic study of this uniquely human quality.
Richard Sharpe had waited for Copperwaite just down from St. Albans, scanning for any acUvity in and around the church as he did so, but the place appeared at this late afternoon hour, silent, abandoned even. No one in or out.
With Stuart Copperwaite finally joining Sharpe, they together started for the huge stone stairs and the oaken doors. Richard, familiar with the church corridors, went directly for Luc Sante's office. Not even the secretary was present. He called out several Umes for Luc Sante by name, gaining no response.
He next tried Strand. After finding a speaker to the PA system that fed into the altar and main congregational room, he called again for Luc Sante and Strand. They waited to see if this had any effect, but no one responded. Nothing moved in the enormous church.
Richard wondered about Luc Sante's patients, but then it was late. He wondered about the Gloucester twins, and as he did so, he studied the paindng of the Gloucester parish, looking
closely at it for the first dme and seeing the artist's name. It read in spiking letters: M.S.
“Could it have been painted by Martin Strand?” he wondered aloud, pointing to the painting.
“Strand, the other minister?” asked Copperwaite. “It's just possible he wants more from Luc Sante than St. Albans.”
“Where to from here?”
“Get an army in here to search through the catacombs below. There may be something afoot here, and if so, it may be in the bowels of this place.”
“But have we the right to defile the-”
“We have cause to fear for lives here, Stuart. That's enough reason alone. We're acdng under suspicion someone may be in danger of life and limb. Now do it.”
Jessica inched forward and found a small room with a Roman arch, light filtering through from ahead of this room. She found a series of such small rooms, before she came upon a wide open vault from which the firelight originated. The source of the light, torches in the walls, not unlike unused ones she'd seen in St. Albans' corridors.
No longer did the walls close in; rather, they expanded, and here a stagnant pool of water, part of a canal, similar to the one she'd seen in the company of Sharpe and Tatham the day before, lay like a fat, green, sleeping boa constrictor. Here she stood, circling, taking it all in when her eyes fell on the altar no doubt purchased with St. Albans' funds by Martin Strand, just as Father Luc Sante had said. She stood back of and behind a huge oaken cross, its front facing out to the cavern beyond. Then her eyes went beyond the wide beams of the cross to the huge, thick oaken altar, until a dull moan brought her eyes straight up to the cross. She saw first the feet, and as she inched closer, the length of the dying man's legs.
She gasped, standing now before the ancient cross-finally found-the killing ground of the Crucifier. To her astonishment, she saw someone still living, and not Jesus' carved image, squirming on the cross. He was nude and dying of his wounds, blood trickling down.
From her vantage point, below and behind the huge cross, she saw a scaffolding in nearby shadow, a scaffolding used to take the victim up to the cross. Shadow played across the writhing figure on the cross, deep shadows thrown up by the fire burning in thirteen torches and one small fire at the altar where oil and incense burned; beside the incense fire lay the hardware for the branding of the tongue. Jessica moved toward this highly important piece of physical evidence when droplets of blood from the person on the cross stained her blue suit jacket purple. Realizing this, she looked up to see the nude man's form dangling there, chin on chest, struggling to breathe in the semidarkness.