“We’re not trying to mess up your usual protocol,” said Oliver. “We just want to be helpful. And we can be, if we work together.”
Upstairs, the dogs were barking, claws tapping back and forth across the floor as Edwina shushed them, and a door thudded shut.
“You can help us by just answering our questions,” said Jane.
“I think you misunderstand.”
“What am I not getting?”
“How useful we can be to you. Our group.”
“Right. Mr. Sansone told me about your little crime-fighting club.”
“It’s a society, not a club.”
“What’s the difference?” asked Frost.
Oliver looked at him. “Gravity, Detective. We have members around the world. And we’re not amateurs.”
“Are you a law enforcement professional, Ollie?” asked Jane.
“Actually, I’m a mathematician. But my real interest is symbology.”
“Excuse me?”
“I interpret symbols. Their origins and their meanings, both apparent and hidden.”
“Uh-huh. And Mrs. Felway?”
“She’s an anthropologist. She just joined us. Came highly recommended from our London branch.”
“And Mr. Sansone? He’s certainly not law enforcement.”
“He might as well be.”
“He told us he’s a retired academic. A Boston College history professor. That doesn’t sound like a cop to me.”
Oliver laughed. “Anthony would underplay himself. That’s just like him.”
Edwina came back into the kitchen, carrying a file folder. “Just like whom, Ollie?”
“We’re talking about Anthony. The police think he’s just a retired college professor.”
“And that’s just the way he likes it.” Edwina sat down. “It doesn’t help to advertise.”
“What are we supposed to know about him, anyway?” asked Frost.
“Well, you know he’s quite wealthy,” said Edwina.
“That was pretty obvious.”
“I mean, seriously wealthy. That house on Beacon Hill, it’s nothing compared to his estate in Florence.”
“Or his house in London,” said Oliver.
“And we’re supposed to be impressed by that?” said Jane.
Edwina’s response was a cool stare. “Money alone seldom makes a man impressive. It’s what he does with it.” She placed the file folder on the table in front of Jane. “For you, Detective.”
Jane opened the folder to the first page. It was a neatly typed chronology of last night’s events, as recalled by three of the dinner guests, Edwina and Oliver and the mysterious Gottfried Baum.
(All times are approximate)
6:00: Edwina and Gottfried arrive
6:15: Oliver Stark arrives.
6:20: Joyce O’Donnell arrives.
6:40: First course served by Jeremy…
The entire menu was listed. Consommé followed by salmon aspic and a salad of baby lettuces. Beef tournedos with crisp potato cakes. A tasting of port to accompany slivers of Reblochon cheese. And finally, with coffee, a Sacher torte and thick cream.
At nine-thirty, Edwina and Gottfried departed together for Logan Airport, where Edwina dropped Gottfried off for his flight to Brussels.
At nine forty-five Oliver left Beacon Hill and drove straight home.
“And that’s what we remember of the timeline,” said Edwina. “We tried to be as accurate as possible.”
Right down to the consommé, thought Jane, scanning the chronology. There was nothing particularly helpful here; it repeated the same information that Sansone and his butler had already provided, but with the additional culinary details. The overall picture was the same: A winter’s night. Four guests arrive on Beacon Hill within twenty minutes of one another. They and their host share an elegant supper and sip wine while they discuss the crimes of the day, never realizing that, just outside, in the frigid garden behind their building, a woman was being murdered.
Some crime-fighting club. These amateurs are less than useless.
The next page in the folder was a sheet of stationery with only a single letter printed at the top: “M,” in a gothic font. And beneath it, the handwritten note: “Oliver, your analysis? A.S.” Anthony Sansone? Jane flipped to the next page and stared at a photograph that she immediately recognized: the symbols that had been drawn on Sansone’s garden door.
“This is from the crime scene last night,” said Jane. “How did you get this?”
“Anthony sent it over this morning. It’s one of the photos he took last night.”
“This isn’t meant for public distribution,” said Jane. “It’s evidence.”
“Very interesting evidence,” said Oliver. “You know the significance, don’t you? Of those symbols?”
“They’re satanic.”
“Oh, that’s the automatic answer. You see weird symbols at a crime scene and you just assume it’s the work of some nasty satanic cult. Everyone’s favorite villains.”
Frost said, “Do you think this is something else?”
“I’m not saying this couldn’t be a cult. Satanists do use the reverse cross as a symbol of the Antichrist. And that slaying on Christmas Eve, the one with the decapitation, there was that circle drawn on the floor around the victim’s head. And the burned candles. That certainly calls to mind a satanic ritual.”
“How do you know about all this?”
Oliver glanced at Edwina. “They really think we’re clueless, don’t they?”
“It doesn’t matter how we learned the details,” said Edwina. “The fact is, we do know about the case.”
“Then what do you think about this symbol?” asked Frost, pointing to the photograph. “The one that looks like an eye? Is that satanic as well?”
“It depends,” said Oliver. “First, let’s consider what you saw at the Christmas Eve death scene. There was a red chalk circle where he’d placed the victim’s severed head. And there were five candles burned at the perimeter.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, circles in and of themselves are quite primitive symbols, and they are universal. They can mean all sorts of things. The sun, the moon. Protection. Eternity. Rebirth, the cycle of life. And yes, it’s also used by satanic cults to represent the female sexual organ. We don’t really know what it meant to the person who drew it that night.”
“But it could have a satanic meaning,” said Frost.
“Of course. And the five candles may represent the five points of a pentagram. Now, let’s look at what was drawn last night, on Anthony’s garden door.” He pointed to the photograph. “What do you see?”
“An eye.”
“Tell me more about this eye.”
“It’s got, like, a teardrop. And an eyelash sticking out below it.”
Oliver took a pen from his shirt pocket and flipped the sheet of stationery to its blank side. “Let me draw it more clearly, so you’ll see exactly what the different elements are in this symbol.” On the sheet of paper, he reproduced the drawing:
“It still looks like an eye,” said Frost.
“Yes, but all these features—the eyelash, the teardrop—that makes it a very specific eye. This symbol is called Udjat. Experts on satanic cults will tell you this is a symbol for Lucifer’s all-seeing eye. The teardrop is because he mourns for those souls outside his influence. Some conspiracy theorists claim it’s the same eye printed on U.S. currency.”
“You mean on the top of the pyramid?”
“Right. Their so-called proof that the world’s finances are run by worshippers of Satan.”
“So we’re back to satanic symbols,” said Jane.
“That’s one interpretation.”
“What others are there?”
“This is also a symbol used by the ancient fraternity of Freemasons. In which case it has quite a benign meaning. For them, it symbolizes enlightenment, illumination.”
“The seeking of knowledge,” said Edwina. �
�It’s about learning the secrets of their craft.”
Jane said, “You’re saying this murder was done by a Freemason?”
“Good grief, no!” said Oliver. “That’s not at all what I’m saying. The poor Freemasons have been the target of so many malicious accusations, I’m not even going to repeat them. I’m just giving you a quick history lesson. This is my field, you know, the interpretation of symbols. I’m trying to explain that this symbol, Udjat, is quite an old one. It’s been used throughout history for various purposes. For some people, its meaning is sacred. For others, it’s terrifying, a symbol of evil. But its original meaning, in the time of ancient Egypt, was quite a bit less threatening. And rather practical.”
“What did it mean then?”
“It represented the eye of Horus, the sun god. Horus is usually depicted in paintings or sculptures as a falcon’s head on a man’s body. He was personified on earth by the Pharaoh.”
Jane sighed. “So it could be a satanic symbol, or a symbol for illumination. Or the eye of some Egyptian god with a bird’s head.”
“There’s yet another possibility.”
“I thought you’d say that.”
Oliver picked up the pen again and drew another variation of the eye. “This symbol,” he said, “came into use in Egypt around 1200 B.C. It’s found in hieratic script.”
“Is that still the eye of Horus?” asked Frost.
“Yes, but notice how the eye is now made up of separate sections. The iris is represented by this circle, between two halves of the sclera. Then there’s the teardrop and the curling lash, as you called it. It looks like just a stylized version of Udjat, but it actually had a very practical use, as a mathematical symbol. Each part of the eye represents a fraction.” He wrote numbers on the sketch now:
“These fractions arise by dividing subsequent numbers in half. The entire eye represents the whole number, one. The left half of the sclera represents the fraction one half. The eyelash is one thirty-second.
“Are we getting around to some kind of point here?” asked Jane.
“Of course.”
“And that would be?”
“That maybe there’s a specific message in this eye. In the first death scene, the severed head was enclosed by a circle. In the second scene, there’s a drawing of Udjat on the door. What if they’re connected, those two symbols? What if one symbol was supposed to be the key to interpreting the other?”
“A mathematical key, you mean?”
“Yes. And the circle, at the first killing, represented an element of Udjat.”
Jane frowned at Oliver’s sketches, at the numbers he had jotted in the various sections of the all-seeing eye. “You’re saying that the circle at the first killing is really supposed to be the iris.”
“Yes. And it has a value.”
“You mean it represents a number? A fraction.” She looked up at Oliver and saw that he was leaning toward her, a flush of excitement in his cheeks.
“Exactly,” he said. “And that fraction would be?”
“One fourth,” she said.
“Right.” He smiled. “Right.”
“One fourth of what?” asked Frost.
“Oh, that we don’t know yet. It could mean a quarter moon. Or one of the four seasons.”
“Or it could mean he’s completed only a quarter of his task,” said Edwina.
“Yes,” said Oliver. “Maybe he’s telling us there are more kills to come. That he’s planning a total of four.”
Jane looked at Frost. “There were four place settings at the dining table.”
In the pause that followed, the ringing of Jane’s cell phone sounded startlingly loud. She recognized the number for the crime-scene lab and answered it at once.
“Rizzoli.”
“Hi, Detective. It’s Erin in Trace Evidence. You know that red circle that was drawn on the kitchen floor?”
“Yeah. We’re talking about it right now.”
“I’ve compared that pigment with the symbols from the Beacon Hill crime scene. The drawings on the door. The pigments do match.”
“So our perp used the same red chalk at both scenes.”
“Well, that’s why I’m calling. It’s not red chalk.”
“What is it?”
“It’s something a lot more interesting.”
SIXTEEN
The crime lab was in the south wing of Boston PD’s Schroeder Plaza, right down the hallway from the homicide unit offices. The walk took Jane and Frost past windows that looked out over the tired and broken neighborhood of Roxbury. Today, under a cloak of snow, all was purified and white; even the sky had been cleansed, the air crystalline. But that sparkling view of skyline drew only a glance from Jane; her focus was on Room S269, the trace evidence lab.
Criminalist Erin Volchko was waiting for them. As soon as Jane and Frost walked into the room, she swiveled around from the microscope that she’d been hunched over and swept up a file that was sitting on the countertop. “You two owe me a stiff drink,” she said, “after all the work I put into this one.”
“You always say that,” said Frost.
“This time I mean it. Out of all the trace evidence that came in from that first scene, I thought this would be the one we’d have the least trouble with. Instead, I had to chase all over the place to find out what that circle was drawn with.”
“And it’s not plain old chalk,” said Jane.
“Nope.” Erin handed her the folder. “Take a look.”
Jane opened the file. On top was a photographic sheet with a series of images. Red blobs on a blurred background.
“I started with high-magnification light microscopy,” said Erin. “About 600X to 1000X. Those blobs you see there are pigment particles, collected from the red circle drawn on the kitchen floor.”
“So what does this mean?”
“A few things. You can see there are varying degrees of color. The particles aren’t uniform. The refractive index also varied, from 2.5 to 3.01, and many of those particles are birefringent.”
“Meaning?”
“Those are anhydrous iron oxide particles. A quite common substance found around the world. It’s what gives clay its distinctive hues. It’s used in artists’ pigments to produce the colors red, yellow, and brown.”
“That doesn’t sound like anything special.”
“That’s what I thought, until I dug deeper into the subject. I assumed it came from a piece of chalk or a pastel crayon, so I ran comparisons against samples we obtained from two local artists’ supply stores.”
“Any matches?”
“None. The difference was immediately apparent under the microscope. First, the red pigment granules in the pastel crayons showed far less variability in color and refractive index. That’s because most anhydrous iron oxide used in pigments today is synthetic—manufactured, not mined from the earth. They commonly use a compound called Mars Red, a mixture of iron and aluminum oxides.”
“So these pigment granules here, in this photo, aren’t synthetic?”
“No, this is naturally occurring anhydrous iron oxide. It’s also called hematite, derived from the Greek word for blood. Because it’s sometimes red.”
“Do they use the natural stuff in art supplies?”
“We did find a few specialty chalks and pastel crayons that use natural hematite as a pigment. But chalks contain calcium carbonate. And manufactured pastel crayons usually use a natural glue to bind the pigment. Some kind of starch, like methyl cellulose or gum tragacanth. It’s all mixed together into a paste, which is then extruded through a mold to make crayons. We found no traces of gum tragacanth or any binding starch in the crime-scene samples. Nor did we find enough calcium carbonate to indicate that this came from colored chalk.”
“Then we’re not dealing with something you’d find at an art supply store.”
“Not locally.”
“So where did this red stuff come from?”
“Well, let’s talk about this red stuff
first. What it is, exactly.”
“You called it hematite.”
“Right. Anhydrous iron oxide. But when it’s found in tinted clay, it has another name as well: ocher.”
Frost said, “Isn’t that, like, what American Indians used to paint their faces?”
“Ocher has been used by mankind for at least three hundred thousand years. It’s even been found in Neanderthal graves. Red ocher in particular seems to have been universally valued in death ceremonies, probably because of its similarity to blood. It’s found in Stone Age cave paintings and on walls in Pompeii. It was used by the ancients to color their bodies as decoration or war paint. And it was used in magical rituals.”
“Including satanic ceremonies?”
“It’s the color of blood. Whatever your religion, that color has symbolic power.” Erin paused. “This killer makes quite unusual choices.”
“I think we already know that,” said Jane.
“What I mean is, he’s in touch with history. He doesn’t use common chalk for his ritual drawings. Instead he uses the same primitive pigment that was used in the Paleolithic era. And he didn’t just dig it up in his own backyard.”
“But you said that red ocher is found in common clay,” said Frost. “So maybe he did dig it up.”
“Not if his backyard is anywhere around here.” Erin nodded at the file folder Jane was holding. “Check out the chemical analysis. What we found on gas chromatography and Raman spectroscopy.”
Jane flipped to the next page and saw a computer printout. A graph with multiple spikes. “You want to interpret this for us?”
“Sure. First, the Raman spectroscopy.”
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s an archaeologist’s technique for analysis of historic artifacts. It uses the light spectrum of a substance to determine its properties. The big advantage for archaeologists is that it doesn’t destroy the artifact itself. You can analyze the pigments on everything from mummy wrappings to the Shroud of Turin and not damage the article in any way. I asked Dr. Ian MacAvoy, from the Harvard archaeology department, to analyze the Raman spectra results, and he confirmed that the sample contains iron oxide plus clay plus silica.”
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