“Mr. Sansone discussed this with you?”
“He called last night, to tell me everything that happened after I left.”
“I’m sorry he did. It would have been better if you hadn’t talked to him about it.”
Edwina paused in the hallway. “Why? So we can approach this like blind men? If we want to be helpful to the police, we need to be sure of our facts.”
“I’d rather have independent statements from our witnesses.”
“Every member of our group is quite independent, believe me. We each maintain our own opinions. Anthony wouldn’t want it any other way. It’s why we work so well together.”
The scream of the teakettle abruptly cut off, and Edwina glanced toward the kitchen. “Oh, I guess he got it.”
He? Who else was in the house?
Edwina scurried into the kitchen and said, “Here, let me do it.”
“It’s fine, Winnie, I’ve already filled the pot. You wanted Irish breakfast tea, right?”
The man sat in a wheelchair, his back turned to the visitors. Here was the owner of the van in the driveway. He pivoted his chair around to greet them, and Jane saw a thatch of limp brown hair and eyeglasses with thick tortoiseshell frames. The gray eyes that met her gaze were focused and curious. He looked young enough to be Edwina’s son—no older than his mid-twenties. But he sounded American, and there was no family resemblance between the robustly healthy Edwina and this pale young man.
“Let me introduce you,” said Edwina. “This is Detective Frost and Detective Rizzoli. And this is Oliver Stark.”
Jane frowned at the young man. “You were one of the dinner guests last night. At Sansone’s house.”
“Yes.” Oliver paused, reading her face. “Is that a problem?”
“We had hoped to talk to you separately.”
“They’re not happy we’ve already discussed the case amongst ourselves,” Edwina told him.
“Didn’t I predict they’d say that, Winnie?”
“But it’s so much more efficient this way, nailing down the details together. It saves everyone time.” Edwina crossed to the kitchen table and gathered up a huge mountain of newspapers, everything from the Bangkok Post to The Irish Times. She moved them to a countertop, then pulled out two chairs. “Come, everyone, sit down. I’ll go up and get the file.”
“File?” asked Jane.
“Of course we’ve already started a file. Anthony thought you’d want copies.” She strode out of the kitchen and they heard her thump solidly up the stairs.
“Like a mighty redwood, isn’t she?” said Oliver. “I never knew they grew them that big in England.” He wheeled his chair to the kitchen table and waved at them to join him. “I know it goes against everything you police believe in. Independent questioning of witnesses and all that. But this really is more efficient. Plus, we had a conference call with Gottfried this morning, so you’re getting three witness statements at once.”
“That would be Gottfried Baum?” asked Jane. “The fourth dinner guest?”
“Yes. He had to catch a flight back to Brussels last night, which is why he and Edwina left dinner early. We called him a few hours ago to compare notes. All our memories are pretty much in agreement.” He gave Jane a wan smile. “It may be one of the only times in history that we’re all in agreement about something.”
Jane sighed. “You know, Mr. Stark—”
“No one calls me that. I’m Ollie.”
Jane sat down so that her gaze was level with his. He met her look with one of mild amusement, and it irritated her. It said: I’m smart and I know it. Certainly smarter than some policewoman. It also irritated her that he was probably right; he looked like the stereotypical boy genius that you always dreaded sitting next to in math class. The kid who handed in his algebra exam while everyone else was still struggling with problem number one.
“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 wit
h 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 chal
k 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?”