If evil is an illness, then why fear approaching it as an object of scientific study, as with any mental illness?
After a long, disappointing day in the laboratory in which she found herself in a holding pattern-waiting for the results of tests from experts on matters such as the DNA findings- Jessica felt bored and anxious. She kept returning to Father Luc Sante's words both at the meeting earlier today and from his findings in his book, which she had as yet to finish reading. Richard and Shakespeare had taken up all of her time the night before. She gathered an inward, delighted smile at the memory of her enchanted evening with the dashing, handsome inspector and former colonel. He proved to be a caring, kind, gentle man. When she'd brought up his children he had gone into a kind of beatific reverie, speaking of their beautiful faces, moments of happiness snatched with them between job and visitations. He had nicknames for the two girls, Pixie-snow and Pixie-cream, he called them. “Enchanting creatures, both with diametrically opposed personalities. Neither of them are the least like me. Sweet, the two of them. Bloody treacherous we have to bring such innocence into this world.”
She hadn't pried into the causes of his breakup with his wife. She could imagine the underlying reasons, what had caused the underpinnings of the relationship to be removed. Most likely his story would prove similar to how she and James Parry had drifted apart. At first in subtle ways that go unnoticed, and then came the wrecking ball at the end of a chain, she thought.
Shaking herself from her reverie, Jessica scanned the victims' files once again. She looked up at the clock and found that time had become fleet-footed as usual. It was pushing four in the afternoon. She felt a twinge of pouting come over her, combined liberally with a dash of anger that Richard hadn't made contact. Her eye fell on Father Luc Sante's professional card which read beneath his name, Minister and Psychotherapist of the Jungian School.
Not all therapists declared themselves so openly and blatantly Jungian. This meant that Luc Sante believed in the power of the subconscious mind, that the voice of dream held potent sway over individual lives and decisions, and that-if dream therapy was right-dreams foretold, foreshadowed, and reexamined events of the waking world. Jessica knew from her own reading in the area that Carl Jung had believed dreams to be a kind of god-voice, the overseer of personal protection and good, not unlike votive god statues in primitive people's homes, not unlike praying to rosary beads or a statue of the Virgin Mary or to Christ on the cross. Jung believed the dream-god-voice to be the god of truth spoken of in the admonition “to thine own self be true.” This god was also known as intuition and instinct from within, the one voice that never lied to the individual. The voice spoke in highly charged, loaded symbols. Many of them were archetypal symbols from avatars to zoo animals, from fish, water, and womb to the death's head. Nonetheless, if the dream could be decoded as one that denied or confirmed, then the individual could safely interpret the dream one way or the other.
Jessica had never heard of a shrink who so openly displayed his basic approach to psychotherapy by exhibiting it on his business card, but then how many psychotherapists were also ministers? How many are as eccentric as Luc Sante? she asked herself. Below the name and title, the address loomed large as St. Albans Cathedral, Marylebone Street. On impulse, Jessica felt a need to really converse with Dr. Luc Sante, to delve more deeply into his feelings and hunches about the Crucifier. Perhaps his insights could kick-start the investigation back on track.
To this end, she telephoned Luc Sante, and after getting the nod from his proper, prim old secretary, Luc Sante came on the line, delighted that she had called. He had been thinking of her all day, as if picking up some psychic reading, he said and then laughed so loud it hurt her ear.
“I'd like to come over to talk about the case in more depth with you, Dr. Luc Sante.”
“Hurry over, then. I will have Janet prepare us afternoon tea. Have you had afternoon tea?”
“Well, no, not today.”
“And crumpets. I'll see we have something to nibble on as well. Delightful. Do come over. My calendar is always clear after three of the day.”
She took the cab to his cathedral under a sky that had become menacing with roiling clouds that changed in hue and expression with each passing moment. The weather had turned cooler, the light dimmer, the day more dreary, making Jessica recall a time, as a child, when she didn't understand the clock or the passage of time. She had been in kindergarten when a storm had blown over her school with the sky a charcoal black only to grow even more deeply dark. The storm had intensified with sleet and crackling hailstones; the view through the sleek, storm-blackened window had represented a hole she might tumble into, like Alice had fallen into from the story they had read that day. The sky had turned to a blackness as shiny and fascinating as the coat of a black stallion. The blackness had felt impenetrable and forever, and as a child without understanding of time, young Jessica had assumed it was the blackness of midnight. She could not understand why her father and mother had left her at school so late into the night. She feared they had left her there forever. It had mattered not a wit that all the other children and teachers were also there with her.
The cab ride over to St. Albans took her into areas of the city not meant for tourist consumption. She saw the degradation and desolation that was part of any urban community.
All of London this morning, like Jessica herself, had been seeking answers, not only to the current rash of killings. Londoners, and Jessica, wanted spiritual answers that might in some way help them to cope with the hideousness and horror that human beings perpetrated in this world. She also felt a need to find some personal and spiritual guide here in the City, where she felt somewhat disconnected as the newcomer. Perhaps Luc Sante might be that guide, like the old shaman she had met in Hawaii several years ago, the one to whom she had gifted her cane so as to begin to walk on her own two feet after having been maimed by a brutal serial killer. Now she hurried to see another shaman with a cane, seeking answers. It felt right, like a circle, like his French grandmother's saying, fin de siecle, full-circle.
Paying the cabby and standing in the threatening world that seemed to come in around her here, she again noticed the worn, gray stone gargoyles atop little St. Albans Cathedral, each blended in with its surroundings, camouflaged against the gray granite niches they inhabited. Their eyes stared cold and vacant. Their talons and teeth bared against evil, for as evil as they appeared, their ferocious demeanor portended a far worse evil, that which gargoyles historically did battle with-Satan himself. At least that was one theory set forth for the existence of the stone dogs atop cathedrals across the globe. Another said that each gargoyle represented some hideous aspect of human nature, and that this aspect had been overwhelmed and overcome by the church that struggled against the beast within mankind, finally displaying the beast in its true demeanor and ugly passions as an abject lesson to all who stare at its countenance.
She recalled Luc Sante's young, good-looking protdge, Father Martin Strand, and how he had referred to Luc Sante's psychiatric practice as the work of a “trick cyclist,” and this made her smile anew. The two of them, old shaman and new, each in the robes of the church, seemed to have a strong bond and a fine working relationship.
When entering, Luc Sante was bellowing out, “I see no damnable reason whatsoever that I should move my practice from St. Albans simply because I am retiring from the pulpit!”
Jessica could not see with whom he tiraded, but she heard the high-pitched voice of the secretary reply, “You do not, Sire Luc Sante, own St. Albans. It belongs to the church, and if the church wants you out, then you're out! Simple as that. Are you looking for an order of eviction or excommunication, Father?”
“Hmmmph!” he blew out air. “You sdll have fight left in you, you sweet old darlin', don't you? Write to the Pope, if necessary. My patients will need me whether I am ministering the gospel or not!”
Jessica tried to make herself apparent. Clearing her throat, she stepped through the open door, calling out, “Dr. Luc Sante. I've made it back to St. Albans.”
“Jessica, can you imagine it?” He waved a letter overhead, one which had been mangled. “Apparently, some fool somewhere has complained of my using church property to do my psychiatric practice! And now, with my retirement looming, they're ordering me entirely out! Like last week's garbage, like stale fish! Out! Out on the street! Do I look as if I can afford an office on Picadilly Lane or Fleet Street? Besides, all my long history of files are housed here. The work is also done here, under the same roof where I have for so many years administered the sacraments to this congregation. By God, it's my being a Jesuit priest, it is. Some discriminating old bast-”
“Careful of your tongue, Father!” warned old Miss Eeadna. Jessica noticed that the lovely painting of the parish in the wood had been taken down from behind Father Luc Sante's desk. It lay now against his desk at Jessica's knees, apparently removed by Miss Eeadna, who had also begun boxing up books, in a befuddled effort to help out. She held a few of his precious books in her hands now. Jessica noticed that the parish painting had a metal emblem inscribed “Gloucester Parish.”
Luc Sante settled somewhat at the sound of Miss Eeadna's shaky voice, but he continued pacing and speaking. “And apparently the church is somehow made embarrassed by me, by my good works… Getting bad PR flack, as you Americans say.”
“I'm sorry they're giving you grief over it, Dr. Luc Sante,” she put in sincerely.
“I bloody intend to battle.”
The old secretary gasped at his cursing, and crossed herself. “And here in St. Albans,” she muttered and quaked.
“I see no reason why the church can't allow me the luxury of low overhead. And besides,” he continued, “people come more readily to my psychiatric practice for their spiritual needs than their intellectual needs. Wouldn't you agree?” he asked Jessica. “And it's convenient to the area people. Most of my clients live in the shadow of St. Albans. Don't you see the logic of it, Dr. Coran?”
“Yes, in fact, I do.” She felt somewhat unnerved by him, as though he had seen the emotional turmoil she had had brewing within her for so many years, and as if he were speaking about this and not his usual clientele at all.
Still, she genuinely liked the old minister. Not knowing why, she felt he, and his insights into her, were strangely comforting. Similar again to the ancient seer she'd met once in Hawaii who had “foretold” her future so accurately. Luc Sante didn't slow his pacing or his verbosity. “People find comfort in the aroma and aura of an old cathedral like St. Albans. It is a place to heal, and how many places are there left in this world to heal?”
Finally, he calmed when his ancient secretary promised to type a letter addressed to the Cardinal. She said, “I won't bother the Pope with such trifling problems, but those Cardinals, they haven't a great deal to do anyway.”
“And the Bishop. Write my old friend the Bishop, but before you become involved in the letter,” countered Luc Sante, “please, Miss Eeadna, bring in that tea and crumpets for my guest and me, in my inner office, please.”
“Yes, sir, as you like, but I may not get that letter finished by quitting time.”
“That will do. Miss Eeadna… Janet.”
Over tea and crumpets, nestled in Luc Sante's luxurious old office, surrounded by lamps and leather and warm browns of every hue, Jessica felt encircled by books that had enlightened a life. Jessica finally found the opening to ask him directly, “Dr. Luc Sante, what is your personal take on the crucifixion killings?”
“My personal takel Ahh, you Americans and your American English. You mean, what is my personal viewpoint, my feelings and thoughts on the matter?”
“You must have formulated some personal feelings about the killings, the mimicry of Christ's death each victim is put through.”
He pursed his lips, tapped a toe, shuffled a bit in his seat, and finally said, “Engaging case, really. Impassioned killer, well acquainted with the nature of evil.”
“So close to it that he, or they, have become it, you mean?”
“Excellent, yes.”
'Tell me more, please. Go on, Doctor.”
Instead of replying to this, he asked her how her trip to England had been thus far. Intentionally, the old man held her at bay, as if testing just how sincerely she wanted information from so old a warrior on a battlefield that had decimated so many before him. Jessica held the image and wondered what kept him so firmly on that field, how he kept his armor in one piece, how he kept his footing amid the gore and gruel and horror of it all: all he saw as both minister and psychotherapist; all he had chronicled of depression, mania, madness, murder, and mayhem done in the name of Christ and God and church as it filtered through twisted minds. Still, like a gothic warrior with shield and sword in hand, stood the white-bearded, white-headed old soldier. How? She wondered if she could be so strong at his age.
He repeated his first question and added, “So, how do you find England? London in particular?”
She sensed she had to play his game. “Is the weather always so… dreary?”
Luc Sante laughed heartily. “No, not always, but when C. S. Lewis depicted hell, he described it as a gray British Midlands city.” He again laughed and added, “A terrible dreariness indeed.”
Jessica knew of the theory that weather patterns-especially weather that sits atop a region for long periods of time, as when the sun fails to show for three and four weeks at a time-caused depression, irritability, some forms of physical illness, and some forms of violence, generally domestic violence.
“Are you saying that whoever did these killings is perhaps bored with life as it is, bored with the prevailing winds?”
“Perhaps. More importantly, evil takes as many disguises as a Shakespearean villain, so…”
“So, I'm to draw my own conclusions…”
“Despite their pretense, the evil among us are the most insane of all. Evil is the ultimate disease. The stage upon which evil struts, my dear Dr. Coran, may be as brilliantly lit as, say, your Las Vegas with all its pretense and glitter and tasteless neon lights, all designed to hide C. S. Lewis's depiction-the very same terrible dreariness that is our lives.”
“I'm not sure I follow what this has to do with-”
He pushed on. “Imagine a hell in which people mindlessly and forever yank at your one-armed bandits forever and ever and ever and ever on, all below the colored spotlights of a Siegfried and Roy production, while their children, infants to teenagers, mill about the casinos at two and three in the morning, sleeping in the lobbies, waiting for Mommy's and Daddy's addictions to abate.”
“That would indeed be hell.”
Miss Eeadna entered with tea and crumpets laid out on a silver tray. She silently and expertly served them, accepting Jessica's thank-you with a curt nod and smile before leaving, a ghostlike figure, Jessica thought.
After sipping her tea, Jessica asked, “So, you've been to Vegas?”
“I had the questionable pleasure, yes.”
“I came away with sickening feelings myself.”
“As I said, evil comes to all lands, in all lives in one form or fashion or another. To deny evil is to deny breath, life, beauty, its opposites.”
“Are you saying that Satan is crucifying people here in London?”
“In the broadest possible interpretation… yes. And if not he, then Christ.”
“Christ? Really?”
“There is a war going on in cosmic spheres of which we have no control or understanding.”
“Ahhh, I see, and Satan oft masquerades as Christ, does he?”
“You've read my book closely. Was it not Satan disguised as Christ who prodded the Grand Inquisitor to create the infamous Inquisition? Was not Hitler a guise for Satan purporting to be the voice of God?”
“And, of course, he can take the form of a serial killer,” she added. “One who thinks himself doing the work of Christ?”
“Precisely.” He settled back in his chair with his tea and took several long sips, the steam rising to his eyes.
“Evil is grandiose,” she muttered, tasting of the pastry in her hand, watching helplessly as the sugar-dust sprayed her lap.
“It, evil that is, likes to think so; it likes to think big.”
Jessica had long believed that evil and Satanic behavior originated within mankind alongside superstition, fear, ignorance, cruelty, and the like, and not from some supernatural force. Father Luc Sante apparently believed in a living, breathing Satan that infused evil into humanity. Perhaps the two nouons were not mutually exclusive.
Father Luc Sante, his eyes going to one side, his body language telling of fatigue, added, “But most times, it fails, and it embodies or insinuates itself into quite ordinary people in quite ordinary circumstances as well. So ordinary, in fact, that it goes by unnodced and unheralded. Not all evildoers can be a Hitler, certainly no assassin has reached his level.”
“So evil comes on many planes?”
“Yes. You have read the book, haven't you?”
She smiled. “Approximately two-thirds through.”
“I'm impressed. Most people don't get that far! But getdng back to your question, you want to ask this: Are serial killers manifestations of him, of Satan? Are spree killers him? Are mass murderers, bombers like your McVeigh and your Unabomber, are they manifestations of the same it-the Evil One?”
“Yes, good question.”
“Aren't serial killers just that in the end, little men with little identities, whom no one thought to fear, whom no one recognized as pure and primal evil? Aren't they Satan gone undetected among us? And yet they display all the signs of the Evil Thing which so oft comes on little cat's feet, silent in the night, not so loud or grand a thing as a Ghengis Khan or Vlad the Impaler or Hitler.”
“I can't argue with you there,” replied Jessica, thinking how true Father Luc Sante's words were. Quoting from Luc Sante's book, she said, “ 'And what are we to do with evil when their masquerade of sanity is so damnably successful, their destructiveness so… so…”
“
“Bloody normal,” he finished for her.
“Exactly.”
“They take on the roles society provides-the evil elves of Satan become the fathers, the mothers, the providers, the loving caretakers for the world to be lulled into a sense of faith in them before they strike. Like the faith we all put in a uniformed security guard, and yet half a dozen killers in as many years have worked at one time or another as security guards.”
She thought of the helpful young security guard at Scotland Yard that morning. The thought he might be the Crucifier as well as anyone flitted through her mind. “So, relating this to the Crucifier…?” she asked.
He stopped to again sip at his tea, the tinkling of the chinaware a counterpoint to their conversation. “Whoever is doing these killings, he's grown up as a twisted soul, but also as a well-trusted soul. Mark my words…”
She gulped her tea, thinking deeply about what his words entailed. A twisted monster whom the community at large believed in, put their faith in, trusted wholly and completely. “What do we do then, Father?”
He sighed heavily, putting his tea and half finished crumpet aside, the noise he now made a staccato aberration of the earlier tinkling sounds. “First we must stop buying into the masquerade, allowing ourselves to be so easily deceived by the pretense. Question is, can we do that?”
She raised her shoulders. “Can we?”
“Will we ever learn to detect the pretense of the cunning and clever? Of the evil among us?”
“In your book, if I've interpreted correctly,” she began, “you're of the opinion that although evil is antilife, it is itself a form of life.”
“Precisely. A form of life that must itself be destroyed, but in the destroying of that life”-and here he held up an accusatory finger-”evil though it may be, we destroy something of ourselves in the destroying of it.”
She bit her lower lip and then replied, “I've heard that argument.”
“As someone who has taken life, don't you agree?”
“I don't kill for sport.”
“No, only as your means of livelihood?”
She grimaced.
“I don't mean to pick on you, Jessica, but don't we all temper our own evil with words of justification, even denial? Society does so when it executes one of its members. And for the brief moment the switch is thrown, and people feel safe, insanely so, in their homes at night. When in fact, in your country and this, a minuscule percentage of death-row inmates are actually put to death, and most men on death-row are far safer there than in the neighborhoods where they once lived.”
She had to nod in agreement to this fact. “And if we sane intellectuals can justify a killing… If we can justify a killing, it makes it all right in our soul of souls. Apparently, that is what the fellow this morning's newspapers are calling the Crude Crucifier has done.”
“Crude now is he?” Luc Sante smiled.
For Jessica, Luc Sante's words on the nature of evil brought back images of the fiery end of the madman she'd chased just the year before, a maniac who had had frequent conversations with Satan. Jessica told Luc Sante the story, finishing with, “Satan was his justification for murder,” she explained. “Satan spoke to him, told him to kill nine people, the ninth was supposed to be me.”
“Apparently he missed his mark.”
All of the conversation led to a supposition in Jessica's mind, one which she now shared with Luc Sante. “Okay, suppose our killer here in London is hearing voices, too, but not Satan's voice. No… Rather, he's hearing Christ's voice. What if he's following some prescription laid down by the voice in his head, and the voice is that of Christ so far as he is concerned?”
“Imagine the power of such a voice if one believed wholly in it,” replied Luc Sante when a knock preceded young Martin Strand's peeking through the door, asking if Father Luc Sante would excuse his rudeness. “I have those books you wanted, sir.” Strand stepped through and put four books on the old man's desk. “Is there anything else I can get you before I leave?”
“Why don't we ask Strand?” Luc Sante replied to Jessica. “Strand, sit a moment. Listen to this.”
Strand was then subjected to Father Luc Sante's wilting scrutiny. “Martin, my boy,” the older priest began, “do you suppose that this killer who is crucifying people in our city, do you suppose that he may be listening to some prescriptions from God or Christ? Or that he thinks himself Christ, and is in an effort to decipher how to reinvigorate himself in order to make a second appearance before us all, to create his own Second Coming?” Luc Sante laughed at his own irreligious remarks, while Strand rocked a bit nervously in his leather chair, feeling doubly awkward at the old minister's words.
“Strand is confused by the question,” attacked Luc Sante. “Still, he buckles to it, tackles it, grapples with it up here.” He pointed to his head. “As he might a question of theology. Quite serious young man. Right, Martin?”
Strand returned to his feet so as to tower over the old man. He rocked a bit on his feet, then began pacing and finally erupted with, “Well, if we attempt to understand the killing mind-”
“There you're already wrong, man.” Luc Sante verbally shook his protege. “We're all carrying about in our pea-brained heads the killing mind. It's not something apart from you, Strand. That you must attempt to understand from afar. Look in the bloody mirror. Part of our makeup, our nature. Strand…” He lost his concentration, showing further signs of the fatigue and pain in his joints, but he didn't want to give up the floor any more than the office, his ministering, or his psychiatric pracdce. Hence his cutting of poor Strand left and right and back again. “We must,” Luc Sante started anew, “we must ask after his motivations, his rationalizations. If they are religious in nature, then perhaps it is a religion of one and taken to extreme, as history has shown us: Evil can evolve from too zealous a nature, and as anyone knows a Christ complex is too zealous.”
“I think it's time for you to retire for today. Father,” Strand said to him, emphasizing the word “retire” ever so slightly, but enough to pinch the old man's ego. “Strand did not help me to write my book,” he countered. “Can you tell?” he asked Jessica. Then back to Strand, he directed a new barb. 'Too bad, Strand. Such a book attracts lovely young ladies here to my lair, someone as beautiful as Dr. Coran, here, at St. Albans. See what you miss?”
“Father, I truly feel you've overtaxed yourself, today,” Strand said. “Won't you rest before dinner?”
Luc Sante laughed a light laugh. It sounded like resolve escaping him. But he ignored Strand's request and the hand the younger man presented him. Instead the old man turned to Jessica again. “Well, to return to your earlier question, Dr. Coran-or was it my question? Ahh, either way, if we do-gooders kill evil people, do we not ourselves become evil in doing so? And so by definition killers ourselves?”
“Evil is in the eye of the beholder,” she countered. “When McVeigh was given the death sentence, some called it justice, others called it a gross evil.”
“And where did you stand on the issue?” Strand asked her.
“On the side of the children McVeigh wantonly murdered, on the side of justice served. I've seen too many serial killers and mass murderers on death row and in asylums where they are treated like celebrities to wish to see another situation like Richard Speck occur. Actually execution is too easy, too good for McVeigh's kind. He should be maimed and allowed to slowly die in agony, as did many of his victims in the rubble of the explosion he set off. A bombing like that, to me, is the most cowardly act of all.” Strand's voice rose in reaction to this. “But if our only way to deal with evil is to destroy it, then we end up destroying ourselves-spiritually if not physically. And isn't that where you are at this moment in time, Dr. Coran? Wondering what particle of soul you've been able to salvage over the years of your career?”
She bit back her lower lip, contemplating Strand's incisive words and the sharpness of his characterization of her. She also saw that Luc Sante's half smile said that he agreed with his junior partner. Did Luc Sante mean to hurt her as much as Strand's words did? she wondered.
She then spoke to the room, her whiskey voice filling it. “Sometimes, I fear that I've overstepped… That is stepped over the line… I mean that who we are becomes who we were, what we've said and done, where we've been and how we've gotten there, and how we've acted and reacted becomes us.”
“That the current self is an amalgam of our past selves, perhaps?” asked Luc Sante.
“To destroy evil necessitates a destruction of self, of ego,” added Strand. “That much I've learned in the ministry and from Father Luc Sante. No, I didn't help him to write his book, but I have read it more than once.”
“Yes,” she agreed with the two ministers, “destroying a man, even a maniac like Mad Matthew Matisak and some of the others I've killed, yes, it chips away at the block of one's humanity. That's without a doubt.” She thought about Jim Parry, the life she would never have with him, about children she would never have, about a home she would never know.
“Well, I have much to do tonight. Bingo night, you know, and the Houghton sisters are at it again. Must go play referee,” said Strand, smiling before he disappeared the way he'd come, hardly conscious of what his words had done to Jessica.
Luc Sante took Jessica's hand in his, squeezing warmly, and said, “You are essentially a good person, Dr. Coran.”
“Thank you.”
“I dole out no absolution to anyone. Despite what the church says, I don't believe in that sort of nonsense. But I am here, if ever you wish to talk, for to kill another human being does, as you say, chip away at all mankind's care and concern for the essential nobility and quality of existence. Still, certain evil out there cannot be ignored, either. Father Strand and others, myself included, we all sleep better at night thanks to the fearlessness of people like yourself. Fear is our first weapon against evil, courage our second, instinct our final defense. And you… you must trust to your instincts.”
“Even blindly so?”
“ is better than no instinct.”
“Well said, sir.”
“Still, in killing the evil that climbed from the primordial muck with us, we are likely to take down the innocent with the guilty.”
“So, you believe our killer or killers here in London are at war with Satan on this ground, here?” She pointed to her own head.
“Precisely. Doing battle, grappling with our most ancient enemy in an attempt to resurrect the Son, Satan's greatest nemesis. Your killer fixates on the victim, sees the mark not of Cain on the forehead but that of Christ in the eyes, or some such manner, and then proceeds from there in his attempt to resurrect the Chosen One to walk anew among us. But, of course, he keeps missing his mark, and the resurrection hasn't happened. Until it does, he will, I fear, go on killing.”
“In the name of God.”
“And the Son.”
“Theology student perhaps?”
“Who knows, but since the so-called true millennium is upon us, your killer likely believes this is the time of the Second Coming. He damned well wants to be a big part of it, hasten it along, just as others want to be a part of the biggest millennium party that will be thrown.”
“Some kind of twisted thinking. How did you arrive at it?”
“Confessionals.”
“Confessionals?”
“As I've said, I've had a great deal of experience in confessionals both in the booth and in my psychiatric practice, in this office.”
“But you said you didn't believe in granting absolution.”
“I don't. I merely hear confessions.”
“But if you listen to confessions, you must… must say something to your parishioners.”
“All right, I tell them I absolve them, but I don't believe it. I don't believe I have that power. I don't believe any man has, no matter the robes he wears. Absolution must come from within one's own heart, not from some formalized church ritual. I know, it's a wonder I haven't long ago been defrocked. I have had my disguises throughout my life as well, Jessica.”
“What about your psychiatric patients? They seek a sort of absolution, too, don't they?”
“It's called absolut-vodka-there.” He again laughed. “Seriously, though, one in every twenty or so patients I see, or confessions I hear, are nowadays about some grand-new beginning. Lately, concern and fear center around the doomsday prophets and soothsayers of the final end, Armageddon, all balled up with the new millennium. The fact that Armageddon or Apocalypse did not occur when the bell tolled on New Year, 2000, has only fueled the belief in the year 2001 as that of the final judgment, the final flood if you will.”
She easily agreed. “Fear… Fear of the end, not hope for the beginning is typical of human nature, unfortunately.”
“Not unlike every mental breakdown, every divorce situation, every loss of a loved one I've handled in my psychiatric practice, for instance.”
“And such fears fuel phobias and manic depression, insomnia, and psychosis, as well as psychotic behavior, especially religious psychosis, right?” she asked. “I think you've answered that one yourself.” Luc Sante took her chinaware from her and stacked it on the tray left by his secretary, called out through the door left ajar by Strand, but no answer returned. “Where the deuce is that woman?” he asked Jessica.
“It's well past five. I think she may have gone home for the day, Father.”
“What time is it?”
The bells of St. Albans answered the old man as if on cue, ringing six times. Luc Sante grumbled about his secretary and Strand, “Both long gone by this time, having had enough of the old man's stubbornness,” he spoke of himself in the third person.
Ignoring his obvious fatigue, Luc Sante now walked Jessica down the huge back corridors of St. Albans Cathedral. The ancient marble hallways clicked with the rhythm of Jessica's heels to counterpoint Luc Sante's more subtle step. To Jessica's right, the length of the otherwise dark corridor ran with beautiful stained-glass windows; but the images, relying as they did on sunlight, had grown dull, faded, hidden within the blotted colors as darkness had come to the world outside.
Luc Sante grumbled about the lost beauty of the panes, saying, “The new buildings all round us now blot out the sun more and earlier. I used to close up, make this walk, and fill my soul here in this corridor, replenished by the resplendent artwork you see there now in the darkness. All things bow to progress as they call it. Change, I suppose.”
Jessica felt a sudden sadness for the old, wise man's loss, and she felt a sudden amazement at how much time had flown by while in Luc Sante's presence. This fact decided for her that she genuinely liked and admired the old scholarly Jesuit shaman. His appearance and crustiness reminded her of a later-day George Bernard Shaw. With his knowing hand grasping mankind about the throat to check for a pulse, Father and Dr. Jerrard Luc Sante found just cause for cynicism, despair, and hope all in the same breath and heartbeat.
All these thoughts flooded her mind as they continued down the seemingly endless corridor. The thoughts continued at the great oak doors-the entrance to the cathedral. Like Shaw, she felt Luc Sante a voice in the wasteland-T. S. (Thomas Steams) Eliot's Waste Land, yes, but Eliot's wasteland had only become cluttered with more disaffection, more disenfranchisement of the human soul, more searing, jagged-edged alienation or other modem ailment since his poem had been written in 1922. And all of the ugliness of alienation of the soul had been eclipsed by an enormity of fear too great for the collective soul of man to bare up under.
Yes, an eclipsing fear in the late 1990s created a wasteland of the soul that mankind had never known before. Mankind collectively stood on the brink of the coming new millennium and teetered there, one foot in the abyss on a slippery slope that led to the end of a particularly black and empty hole, unless… Unless mankind and womankind turned the emptiness inside out, examined it, and came to terms with it. Unless people began to heed their own spiritual voices as had Luc Sante and others like him.
Jessica admired the old man's juggling his dual roles as priest and psychotherapist, his abilities in both fields, and his intellect and calculation that told all who came within his sphere that religion and science sipped from the same vast ocean-sized teacup of the unknown, and that both fields of human endeavor had much to offer the human psyche, and that both could and should cohabit down here on Earth together. The two, religion and science, did not negate one another; the two were necessary for understanding of the human spirit.
Luc Sante turned to Jessica, facing her now at the entranceway to the corridor, the streetlights filtering in through the windowed doors, bathing him in a green glow. Jessica stared into his warm, glowing, and rich blue eyes which spoke along with his voice. “In order to survive to the next level of evolution, mankind and womankind must not only stare deeply into the abyss that is ourselves, our human nature, our souls, my dear. But we also must fully accept and understand our most hideous aspect, our ugliest gargoyles, that we are indeed the beast we fear most, for we are the beast of our own nightmares and our own making. As unpleasant as it is. Well, you of all people understand the wisdom of it. But beware the beast, for it is busy, at this moment, calculating the most advantageous instant it can take hold of you and tear you from the slippery edge you stand on.”
“Then you concede that Satan is of our own making, and not a separate entity from man himself?” she asked.
“I concede nothing of the kind. I tell you it, he-whatever you wish to call evil and the maker of violence-is both within us and without us. No less than the love of Christ is within us and without us.”
Jessica felt a startled recognition at his words. She wondered if this shaman were a mind reader, or simply quite clever and cunning at picking up nonverbal cues. Still, she could not fathom it. How does he know that I have spent a good deal of my life on that brink, looking over the edge of a slippery slope, wondering these exact thoughts. It must be a lifetime of working with troubled people, she concluded.
Jessica momentarily thought of the few truly close friends she had in this life: Donna LeMonte, who had seen her through psychotherapy and had become one of her closest friends along with psychic FBI agent Kim Desinor. There remained her friend and boss Eriq Santiva, and her associate in the M.E.'s office, John Thorpe. She had few contacts outside her work, and whenever she did, the relationship seldom survived for long. That had been the case with James Parry, although she'd managed to hold on to James, and he to her, for six years. Some kind of record. She wanted to add Luc Sante to her list of intimate friends.
It was no coincidence that her best friends were in law enforcement. Even the men she chose to love were in law enforcement. She knew from experience that to ask anyone, who had not been there, to delve so deeply into the rings of hell with her, was asking too much.
After calling for a cab, Jessica shook Luc Sante's hand. Each of them knew that the other had indeed stared into the eyes of Satan and had come away from the experience scarred. Somewhere, somehow, someday she would get the story out of him.
She sensed, with the lingering handshake, that he again knew what thoughts ran fleetingly through her mind.
“Your help, Father, has been invaluable.”
“Bit premature to say so, Doctor.”
“It will prove invaluable then, I am certain.”
“Thank you for the compliment, and good night. I see the cab you called for is here. Go with God.” He waved her off, and then the huge oak doors closed. She felt like Dorothy being put out of Oz.
When she had taken a few steps from the cathedral she felt some innate voice tell her to stop, turn, and stare, as if someone were at the door, watching her. She looked for Luc Sante's fatherly eyes to be upon her, but he had vanished within. She felt a bit foolish, imagining what she looked like standing on the steps, retreating from the gothic old place like a “Pauline in Peril” character depicted on the cover of a raggedy little paperback book. She needed only to bite her knuckles to complete the image.
“Well, to hell with that,” she muttered and consciously felt for the bulge of her Smith amp; Wesson in her shoulder holster. She dismissed her moment of uneasiness. Just being foolish to feel a buzz of intuition telling her that a healthy fear of this place and time might just save her life. Just being foolish, yet the same buzz of fear had saved her life on more than one occasion, and she'd learned to listen to the gift of instinct over the years.
This time she tried to shrug it off, but with each step toward the cab, the insistent intuition that most women felt in moments of danger made her glance back again. Again, there was no one at the door windows. Still, she felt the stare like a hot poker. Her intuition insisting someone indeed must be there. Stillness. She looked overhead at the huge edifice and saw hundreds of gilded and steepled windows staring back like sinister eyes. Someone could be at one of them, staring down on her retreat. Far above these many eyes of the edifice, she saw the stares of twenty or more bug-eyed gargoyles, concrete eyes all glaring down on her.
Her intuition proven right, she now stared back at the creatures of the subconscious sitting atop the cathedral, ostensibly to protect mankind from the far worse creatures that dwelled in even darker shadows at even deeper levels of the human condition. Ironic to fight fear with the images of fear, yet it felt right here in London, and it felt right here at St. Albans, fitdng in with Dr. Luc Sante's message that the thing we should all fear most is ourselves.
In a glint of reflected moonlight and stars, one of the gargoyles winked directly at her.