Sure, science and technology outstripped human evolution, human growth potential, the brain, socialization, education, racism, prejudice, leaving cavemen with cave-dwelling beliefs and notions while allowing them easy access to automatic weapons, drugs and poisons, the information to make a bomb from items below his kitchen cabinet; but hey, so long as there remained guilt and remorse, what did it matter? Perhaps the theologians did know more about the heart and the soul of mankind than science could ever know. Without feelings of sin and remorse and guilt, we'd all be killers, she thought. And maybe if some of the serial killers she'd trapped and put away and destroyed over the years had harbored any sense of guilt whatsoever, they'd have controlled their psychotic fantasies and ended their mind-made killings before acting on such murderous desires.
Perhaps if such sociopaths could be injected with a hormone called guilt, they couldn't play the psychological games they played with authorities to please their bloodthirsty demons and gods. The worst kind of killer, a sociopath, lived without remorse and without guilt or guile or empathy or conscience. What manner of being was this to be created in God's image? Would science come to the answer somewhere along the DNA double helix before theology found an answer? Would there come a day when science could be tapped into to supply the guiltless with a dose of guilt, remorse, grief, caring, love?
Here in the bumpy cab-which the driver dared call a Vegas limo service-Jessica wondered about the old phrase, "Religion is the opiate of the people." But certainly not all people; some appeared to require a more potent opiate. Men like Tauman, the Night Crawler of Florida. Men who relished torturing their victims required serious behavior modification if they were ever to feel the pain of their victims. Religion hardly amounted to a conscience… In fact, some of the thrill-seeking, feel-something-anything murderers she had known claimed to have killed in the name of religion, usually a religion with a following of one. And, of course, Jesus Christ remained the number one cause of death among the dying who'd left this world "in the name of Christianity…"
Jessica was brought back to her present discomfort by a news report over the limo's scratchy radio, something about the recessing U.S. Senate. No surprise, she thought.
The Senate was always out to lunch or recess. It took great reserves of talented men and women to catch elusive serial killers, to bring such monsters into the light of justice; but try to tell that to a Senate investigation committee looking into slashing the FBI's budget.
When their airport curbside limo came to a stop at the light, J. T. pointed out the famous Luxor Hotel and extravaganza. The lingering Nevada sun sent shards of light against its black glass surface, only to create an impenetrable image. Fascinating, more so than any of the steel and glass temples erected to the sky and the almighty dollar, its unusual size and pyramidal shape made it a marvel of human accomplishment and construction. It was the pyramid at Giza replanted here in the American desert. It was a stunning modern-day answer to the Egyptian pyramids, this answer to any of Hollywood's infamous, big-screen Babylons.
Like Vegas itself, it made for a stifling whore, this symbol of how far wealth and power were willing to go for the sake of more wealth and power. Audacious, grand beyond scale, and as gaudy and garish as all of convention-central Las Vegas's megacasinos combined. Like all of Vegas, the Luxor combined gargantuan themes and dreams of "epic" proportion with a crude commercialism possible only in America, a place where one casino's take in nickels alone on any given day might feed some Third World countries for a year.
But all J. T. saw was the grandeur of this architectural marvel, and all he could say was, "See what I mean? The city's desperate for a new image as a family-friendly place."
She cynically nodded and replied, "Yeah… sure… And what kind of conference can we have, J. T., surrounded as we are on all sides by… by so much… temptation?"
"You, tempted?"
"No, not me… everyone else."
"Oh, I see… everyone else. You're worried about everyone else… everyone but you." He laughed and ran a hand through his thick mat of dark hair.
She frowned at his response. "What's so funny?"
"Jess, do you really think you're immune to gambling?"
"I do and I am…"
"So, you're just worried about everyone else in the forensic science community being able to abstain?"
"Think about it, John," she quickly replied. She only called him John when she felt annoyed. "Adewah, Repasi, MacEachern… Sloan, Slaughter, Oleander, for that matter…"
He pictured each of these infamous medical examiners in turn.
She continued, "They take out bets on which one will find the most unusual and unique stomach contents on a victim in six different categories, E-mailing each other weekly to compare findings, so just imagine them surrounded by slot machines."
Again J. T. laughed. "So, big deal. We do the same to ease tensions in the lab… which wound on a stabbing victim will be the first fatal blow, whether a time of death will or will not turn an acquittal into a guilty verdict. Whether a young attending female student will find me attractive or not…"
"Big wooooo!" Now she laughed in response. "Still, if everyone's at the gambling tables and the bandit boxes, how're the brightest minds in the forensic world ever to come to any consensus about our bylaws, current issues with regard to the witness box, the latest in DNA findings, serious matters of ethics, legislative issues, and-"
"That's your problem, Doctor." She halted, her eyebrows lifting like birds on the wing.
"What's my problem, Dr. Thorpe?"
"Too damned serious for your own damned good at times, Jessica Coran. Life's short. When do you intend to find time to enjoy yourself, your life?''
"Hey, I had a great time in Athens and Rome with Jim, and now I'm back. I have plenty of fun… plenty…"
"And if Parry hadn't flown down to the Caymans to find you with those two tickets in his fist?"
Her eyes widened. "I'll be damned. You put him up to it, didn't you?"
"No, no… no," he denied, his eyes darting, searching for someplace to light, a pair of confused birds let out of a cage. He wondered how he'd gotten himself into this cage.
"And here I thought it was all Jim's idea. Didn't I tell you not to go playing Cupid? You're not that cute… although since putting on a few, you do have a cherubic quality about you."
J. T., pleased he was only mildly scolded, instantly defended his weight, saying, "For a man my age, thirty-nine next month"-he lied about his age-"it's not so bad, or so I'm told by my trainer. Axel always says-"
"Axel?" She stifled a laugh.
"Yeah. Axel always says, 'It's good to have a little to burn…' "
"I'll just bet good ol' Axel says that. And just what burner are you working on?" she continued to tease.
He was glad that she had been pleased down in the Caymans when she had reached out and found Jim Parry appearing from nowhere while she, like some real-life Perilous Pauline, had hung suspended over a bevy of hungry, blood-sniffing sharks. Parry had literally saved her from death in the waters off Grand Cayman, a surprise that had been totally unexpected. Then he whisked her off to Athens, where they remained for a week, followed by a second week, in Rome. And for a time, J. T. believed Jessica Coran would never return to D.C., and sometimes he still wondered why she had.