Wounds (29 page)

“Not with a body like this”—Ellis pointed at the photo of the trussed-up corpse—“nearby.”

“Wait.” Heywood's eyes widened. “You're not suggesting . . .” He slapped his forehead. “I should have seen this. It seems so obvious now.”

“What's
obvious?” Carmen snapped the words.

“I'm with her,” Captain Simmons said.

Ellis returned to the front of the time line and tapped the image of Lindsey's dead body. “Garden setting. Drops of blood.” He paused. “Gethsemane, where Jesus sweat great drops of blood.” A step to the side. “Rabbi's home. Jesus was pummeled by Temple guards at the High Priest's house.” He moved down the line again. “Military barracks. Pilate had Jesus beaten by soldiers. It included beating him with reeds. Don't think soft, pliable reeds along a riverbank. Think wood sticks.”

“And the latest victim?” Carmen said.

“Contempt. The Roman soldiers dressed Jesus in purple and mocked him by saying, ‘Hail to the King of the Jews.' The only reason the Romans were involved was because Jesus' accusers said Jesus claimed to be a king. That was punishable by death in Roman-controlled Jerusalem. The soldiers and temple guards entertained themselves by beating and mocking Jesus. Purple was a sign of wealth and royalty. The mockery took place in or around King Herod's palace.”

“That's where your question about the Jewish home came from?” Carmen pushed back in her seat, like she needed the additional support from the back of the chair.

“Yes.”

Carmen rubbed her face. No one spoke. It took a full minute before she broke the silence. “So you're telling us that all this lines up perfectly with what the Bible says about Jesus.”

“Well, no, not perfectly. I don't know enough criminal psychology to pretend to understand what's going on in the killer's brain, but he's definitely following a biblical pattern . . .” A slap of realization hit Ellis. “Doug Lindsey. He died on a Thursday. Maundy Thursday. That's the day Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper, then went to the garden of Gethsemane where He prayed with such fervor he sweat blood.”

Simmons shook his head. “How can a man sweat blood?”

Ellis had heard the question countless times. “Hematidrosis. It's a rare condition. Blood mixes with sweat. It happens when a person is under tremendous, life-threatening stress. From there, Jesus would be captured and tortured. It looks like the killer picked that day to start his killing spree. Of course, he's not torturing and killing one man, so he needs more time. That seems to make sense.”

“So he's working his way through the events of Jesus' suffering,” Heywood's comment was more statement than question.

“It seems so.” Ellis wondered if he should feel proud about his discovery. He didn't. He felt ill.

“Why?” Carmen asked.

Ellis shook his head. “I don't know.”

“Let me ask this,” Simmons said. “Is there a time line here? I mean, is he working on a schedule?”

“A schedule. I don't know.” Ellis turned back to the wall of information. “He's not replicating all that Jesus went through. He seems to be pulling notable events and staging his murders based on them. So, I can't say I see a schedule . . . unless . . .” He closed his eyes trying to tempt the thought to the forefront of his mind. “Easter.”

“Easter has passed,” Bud said.

“
One
Easter has passed,” Ellis countered.

Bud frowned. “Well, just how many Easters are there? I'm not a church expert, but I'm pretty sure there's only one Easter a year.”

“I'm sorry, Detective, but you're wrong. There are two. Let me explain. Most Christians celebrate the Western Easter. The Eastern Church celebrates later. Theirs is based on the Julian calendar, not the Gregorian—the calendar we use today. Easter floats. This year it was on March 31, and the Eastern Easter will be celebrated May 5. Next year they will coincide. I wonder . . . could the killer be working between the Easters?”

Carmen narrowed her eyes. “So he's working toward a goal?”

“That would be my guess.” Ellis studied the board again, searching for anything he might have missed. He turned back to the group when Carmen spoke.

“Just how many other events are there in the . . . what do we call this?”

“Passion Week is a good term.” The things he had avoided thinking crashed like a storm-driven wave. He put his hands through his hair. He felt his knees shake. “Oh my.” He moved from the wall, pulled a chair from the conference table, and plopped in it.

“Are you all right?” Simmons asked.

“I'm . . . I'm . . .”

Carmen inched closer to the table. “Do you need to go to the women's restroom again?” A moment passed then he heard her say, “I'll explain later.”

“No, I'll be fine. I just need . . . the next murder. It will be horrible. I know what's missing.” He closed his eyes against the images that knowledge sent through his mind. “The crown of thorns and the flogging.”

“Flogging, like Rolf Brady—the guy beaten with the wood dowels?”

“No. Worse.” Ellis raised his head. “Flogging was done with a Roman flagellum, sometimes called a cat-o-nine tails. It's a whip with several strands attached to a wood handle. The strands were weighted on the ends with small, lead weights and bits of metal and glass. It was designed to remove the skin from a man's back. There are historical accounts of the victim being beaten so badly that bits of bone could be seen. Many prisoners died from the beating.” He leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling. If only he could slip back to his tiny boat and never leave. “And that's not the worst.”

“What could be worse than that?” Carmen's voice was hushed.

“Your man is planning to crucify someone. I can't even describe how horrible that will be. It's beyond imagination.” Ellis jerked to his feet and swayed. He looked at Carmen. “The
correct
door is just a little farther along the hall?”

“Yes. Heywood can go with you—”

Ellis raised a hand and belched. “No, I prefer to do this alone . . .”

He ran from the room.

31

T
he problem with having voices in your head is the inability to be alone, to have a thought, an urge, a home, a dream that isn't known to the invaders. Sometimes they complimented him, but more often they mocked him, discouraged him, even threatened him, twisting his emotions, analyzing every thought.

Then there were the images: grotesque figures. One was the shape of a beautiful woman in a flowing, white wedding dress, moving as if floating an inch above the ground, closer, closer, nearer still until he could gaze beyond the veil at her faceless features.

Others were dark, insectlike. At times he would wake in the night and see them scampering on the ceiling like cockroaches, falling on the bed next to him—falling on him, scrambling, clambering, scrabbling over his petrified body.

Still others hovered just outside his peripheral vision. He would detect the motion of something black-red approaching, but it never arrived.

The sensations bothered him most. The caress of an invisible finger on his ear, its skin like sandpaper; the feeling of hot breath on his neck, and when he would turn he'd find nothing but empty space.

Space. It was one thing the voices did for him. They knew he had a breaking point. He was never afraid. He was incapable of it. Nor could he feel regret. Physically, he was better than any man he had ever met—powerful, agile, dense, tall, broad, with the build of the largest heavyweight boxers—but he had been short-changed in the emotion department. He had never known love. His parents didn't use the word and didn't express kindness. Certainly not when they would lock him in the bathroom for a week at a time. No food, only water from the sink to drink, only the tile floor or bathtub for a bed.

He was small then. When his father abandoned them and his mother died of a drug overdose a week later, he was handed off to a string of foster homes. Two were abusive, one kind, the last three didn't care what he did as long as they received their money from the state.

Pain, he knew. He had felt it; he had delivered it. There was joy in both. He remembered his first school fight. A kid two years older, a sixth grader, and his pals had snatched him after school. They called him names. They stripped him naked, then laughed. Then the large boy punched him in the stomach. He expected excruciating pain. Instead, he felt—joy. Another punch confirmed it. This was new. As a younger child, the beatings his father delivered hurt and left marks. Now . . . it was different.

Then he found an even greater joy.

He clenched his fist and let it fly, catching the other boy on the side of his head. The kid went down, his head bouncing off the pavement in the alley where they had dragged him. He turned to the kids. They fled.

Calmly he dressed himself, smoothed his clothing, gathered his school books, then stepped to the unconscious twelve-year-old. He raised a foot and brought it down on the boy's abdomen. Even unconscious, the boy moaned.

That felt pretty good, too.

This led to his first stint in a reform school.

Work. Work. Work.

There was no sense in arguing with the voices. They had been with him continually for the last year and he had come to know their habits. They would repeat the word until he complied, or make it so he couldn't eat or drink.

“I'm going. I'm going.”

The small office of the abandoned warehouse had become his home. His place of work was the empty expanse of the storage area. He walked through the space, his boots echoing off the concrete floor and hard walls. Today's task was easy:

Mount the large Douglas-fir crossbeam to the upright member of the twelve-foot-high cross in the making.

Ellis Poe didn't know whether to feel good or bad. He had gone to the police station to confess what he knew about Shelly's murder, to admit that he was a coward, to apologize, and then take whatever came next, even if that meant arrest. It had taken him all night and most of the day to conjure up the courage to make the trip and to ask to speak to Carmen.

He didn't know if he could do it again.

He steered his car north toward his Escondido home. Traffic was coagulating along the Interstates, something he expected. It didn't matter. His class for tomorrow was ready, requiring only a little review. He'd pick up fast food, go home, eat, read, and hopefully sleep.

He did have one odd sensation. Earlier, while on his boat, he had tried to pray, but God seemed so distant. He thought he'd feel the same way after failing in his confessional mission. Instead, there was a warmth in him. He could imagine Jesus sitting in the passenger's seat. Maybe he had done some good today. That would be nice. He desperately needed to feel that he had done something useful.

Just once in his life he would like to feel valuable instead of cowardly.

The slow traffic gave him time to think. Normally a good thing, but his mind kept running to the sickening wall of murder Carmen had erected. He was certain of his interpretation.

Interpretation.

That was his skill, his superpower. To understand the teaching of the Bible, the reader had to understand the context. When was it written? By whom? Under what circumstance? To whom was the author writing? What did the writer want to achieve? Hermeneutics was not the same as criminal investigation, but there were points of commonality. All events happen in context.

What was the killer's context?

As usual, Ellis steered into the far right lane to take his time. Let the other drivers race home. He had nothing to race to. Once settled into the flow of traffic, he returned to his thinking.

Context. Why kill people to replicate the passion of Christ? And to do it so brutally? Was it a hatred for Christians? Did the killer have an axe to grind with God? Maybe he was trying to hurt God by killing Christians and Jews.

No, that couldn't be it. Carmen had revealed more of the details. Only two were Christians, and one—Wilton—didn't fit the killer's pattern at all. Only one victim, as far as the police knew, was Jewish, although two of the crimes were somehow tied to a Jewish home. Sometimes scholars worked on instinct, and his instinct was telling him he had gone off-course. If every victim had been an active Christian, then the supposition might make sense. The same was true if each victim were Jewish. Neither was the case.

Clearly, the killer had some biblical understanding. At the very least he knew a little about the physical abuse Jesus suffered at the hands of his accusers and the Romans. Maybe he knew more than Ellis supposed. Maybe Ellis hadn't looked deep enough. For example, the man tied to the tree with the purple fabric. Was the killer thinking of Paul's letter to the Galatians? He paraphrased the verse aloud: “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.”

Maybe. He couldn't be sure. Who could guess what a crazy man was thinking? The best thing to do was to let it go. Let the police handle everything. It was their job. They had been trained for such work. Just forget it.