Chris Mooney - The Soul Collectors

'Professor Ross, this is Darby McCormick. We spoke earlier.'

'Yes, yes, of course. The Latin phrase.' The man sounded as though he was fighting a cold. 'I've made some notes for you.'

'I was told it's a reference to someone who once enjoyed the pleasures of life and has now been transformed in death.'

'That would be a correct interpretation, as some believe the phrase was spoken by Death, a reminder for one to enjoy the pleasures of earth. Other scholars believe Et in Arcadia ego is an anagram for another Latin phrase that means "Begone, I keep God's Secrets." I don't know how much information you need. I don't want to bury you in it.'

'I want to send you a symbol I found, see if it ties into this phrase in any way. Would you be willing to take a look?'

'Of course,' he said, sounding positively delighted.

'Do you have a fax machine?'

He gave her the number. She wrote it down on a piece of paper and took it with her down the hall to Ellis's office. Inside, she removed a sheet of paper from his printer tray, drew the symbol and faxed it to the Harvard professor with a note saying to call her immediately if he knew anything.

Stepping back inside the autopsy suite, she saw that ID had arrived. She didn't recognize the faces of the two men behind the face shields. Coop showed them the tattoo and then left the table to give them room to work.

Darby followed him to the corner. Her eyes felt dry and gritty, like sandpaper, and her head had begun to feel thick and sluggish from lack of sleep. She thought of the photographs of Sarah Casey, of the young girl's severed finger, and that helped to keep the haze at bay.

'Where's Casey?' she asked.

'He left with the fingerprint card.'

'Where?'

'To Ellis's office, I think.'

'I was just there. I didn't see him.'

'That guy that was standing outside, the one with the suitcase? He has a fingerprint transmitter. And he's a courier. That bee you found? I saw Casey hand it off to him.'

'That was, what, two hours ago?'

'That finger belongs to Casey's daughter, doesn't it?'

'I think so,' she said.

'I saw the wound. Up close. Judging from the marks, I'd say it was snipped off with something like a bolt cutter.'

Jesus. 'What about the USB drive?'

'He took that too.'

'Before it was fingerprinted?'

'Casey said that other guy was going to take care of that.' He held up an apologetic hand. 'Hey, don't give me that look. His show, his rules — remember?'

She did. She did remember, and she was going to have to have a discussion with Sergey about the former profiler. Jack Casey was a force of nature, a genuine cult of personality; she had the enormous reverence with which Sergey and the others treated the man — maybe out of simple respect, maybe because of his background as a profiler and his service to the Bureau. But he had an emotional stake in this case now, and he needed to be removed — not from the case but from calling the shots.

And there was something else at work, something that she couldn't quite identify. Something that reminded her of rotting floorboards found in a derelict house. Something unsafe. And the others had sensed it too. She had noticed how none of them stood too close to him.

ID had finished with the pictures. They agreed to go back to the lab and print out copies. Darby asked them for duplicates. After they left, she used a desk phone to call Sergey. She told him about the tattooed symbol and explained why she had called in ID to take the pictures. She didn't have to tell him what she had found inside the victim's throat; Casey had already called him. He said he'd meet them at the lab shortly and then abruptly hung up.

Coop helped her turn over the body. They kept at it, fighting through their exhaustion, talking to each other so they didn't miss anything. Checked over each other's work and, wanting a fresh set of eyes, asked Ellis to look over everything.

Darby checked the clock as she stripped off her gloves. Twenty to eight.

She grabbed her kit, about to leave to allow Ellis to begin the autopsy, when Perkins insisted on doing a thorough inspection of her clothing. Spiders, especially some of the smaller ones, he said, could find all sorts of places to hide. She stood holding her arms out by her sides while Perkins checked every fold and crevice and corner. When he finished, he turned to Coop.

Darby went across the hall to strip out of her gear and found Keats still posted beside the door. She unbuckled her face shield.

'Where's Casey?'

'He left,' Keats said.

'Where?'

'Don't worry, he's safe.' Keats nodded towards the locker-room door. 'You should go on and get dressed. We'll take you and Mr Cooper to your hotel. You look like you could use a shower.'

Coop came into the locker room a moment later. She had dressed first, told him she'd wait for him in the hall, and when she opened the door she saw Sergey heading her way, his phone pressed against an ear and heels smacking against the polished floor.

Sergey's hair had been blown silly by the wind and his face had a thin veil of oily perspiration that made his olive skin look both pale and damp underneath the light. Darby saw fresh coffee stains dotting his white shirt and pinkish tie, probably from trying to guzzle a cup during the bumpy car ride here.

'Prints came back,' he said just as he reached her. 'Vic is Mark Rizzo. Boston PD had logged his prints into the system, along with those of his wife and the twin girls.'

'Standard procedure when a child disappears or is abducted,' Darby said, aware of the weary sadness seeping through her. It was now official. Mark Rizzo was dead. 'We have them on-hand for comparison purposes when we examine evidence. What about the finger? Is it…'

'Yeah. It's Sarah Casey's.'

Darby nodded, as if confirming it herself. She had suspected this, of course, when she'd seen the chipped red fingernail polish. Now it was confirmed. The severed finger that had been stuffed down the vic's throat — Mark Rizzo's throat — belonged to Jack Casey's daughter.

She recalled a part of her first conversation with Casey, back inside the Nahant PD: They won't kill me. Not yet, he had said. They're going to send me a message first. She thought, His daughter's severed finger.

Sergey spoke slowly: 'Jack had his daughter printed as part of one of those child-safety programmes they do in the schools. This was a few years ago. After what happened to my son, I convinced him to load her prints and DNA into our system in the event these people ever targeted her.'

'Did ID call you about the pictures?'

He nodded. 'I just sent someone over there to collect them.'

'I need to speak to Casey.'

'He's on the plane.'

'Where's he going?'

'Nowhere.' Sergey answered the question before she could ask it. 'It's our plane, the one we sent to Florida. It touched back down at Logan.'

'You brought your forensic people back?'

'Not all of them. I left a few at the safe house.' Sergey moved the hair out of his eyes. 'We had eight agents down there — four inside the house, the other four doing a perimeter watch, okay? The ones outside, we think were taken out from a distance. Silenced weapons, nobody heard a thing. The four we had inside the house, all headshots, and not one of them had pulled his weapon. I watched the video feed on the way over here. Way the bodies were found? It was like they had fallen asleep and then someone came up and shot them.'

'Nerve agent?'

'Don't know anything yet. If they used it, I don't know how they managed to get it inside the house. Maybe the outside A/C units. Put the gas in there.'

Coop came out of the door, shrugging into his suit jacket.

Darby said, 'I was told Casey took the USB drive?'