Chris Kuzneski - Sign of the Cross

Tamher smiled. ‘As you wish.’

‘Were the stains made with the victim’s blood? Or someone else’s?’

‘No, that’s his blood. He had a deep gash in his side, caused by the tip of a sword or a very thin spear. I could be wrong, but I think they used the wound as their paint source, dipping their brush inside his rib cage on more than one occasion.’

Dial didn’t blink. ‘Why do you think that?’

Tamher crouched, pointing at the dirt. ‘We found a thin trail of blood that started under the victim’s chest. The path fanned out in several different directions. I’m assuming they kept going back for more, dripping blood as they walked.’

Dial nodded, pleased with Tamher’s conclusion. ‘Time of death?’

‘Approximately five a.m., give or take thirty minutes.’

‘Really? That’s kind of ballsy, don’t you think? Leaving someone to die right before sunrise. Why take a chance like that? Why not slit his throat?’

‘I have no idea. Then again, I am not a killer.’

‘And why paint the monument? How tall is it, anyway? Fourteen, fifteen feet? That means the killer climbed on someone’s shoulders to finish the job. Either that, or this guy’s a giant.’

‘No ladder marks or signs of giants.’

‘What about handprints? Maybe the killer leaned against the arch for balance.’

‘No such luck. The monument was clean. The cross was clean. Everything came back clean.’

Dial nodded, expecting as much. The killers had been efficient in Denmark, too. ‘Where’s the cross now? I can’t help but notice that it’s missing.’

‘Very observant of you, Mr Dial. We wanted to protect it so we moved the entire cross, body and all, to the coroner’s office. Forensic specialists are examining it now.’

‘What about pictures? Please tell me you took pictures.’

He nodded. ‘We documented the entire scene. If you’d like, we can go to my office and look at them. They should be developed by now.’

‘In a minute,’ Dial said. ‘First tell me about the sign.’

Tamher smiled. ‘Are you certain you’re ready? I don’t want to confuse you.’

Dial laughed, glad to see the old guy had a personality. ‘I’ll try to keep up.’

‘It was written in red paint in very neat Arabic script. Four simple words. Very distinct. If you’d like, I’d be happy to translate it for you.’

Dial shook his head. ‘Let me take a wild guess. Did it say, AND OF THE SON?’

Tamher nodded, half impressed. ‘How did you know?’

‘Because I dealt with his father up in Denmark.’

‘His father?’

‘Never mind… So, what can you tell me about the victim? Do we have a name yet? I can run his prints through our database if you think it would help.’

‘No, that won’t be necessary. We’re all very aware of his identity.’

‘Good. That’ll save me some legwork.’

Tamher paused, trying to decide if Dial was joking. He quickly decided that he wasn’t. ‘You have no idea who he was, do you? I can’t believe no one told you. I just assumed that — ’

‘Assumed what? What are you talking about? No one told me anything about the victim.’

‘Not even your assistant?’

‘You mean Ahmad? He wanted to discuss the case on the drive in, but I wouldn’t let him. I like forming my own opinions based on what I see, not what someone else has seen.’

‘And the crowd? What about the crowd?’ He made a wide sweeping motion, indicating the thousands of people that surrounded them. ‘You have no idea why they’re here?’

Dial shrugged. ‘I just figured they were rubbernecking. Same with the media. I deal with crowds all the time. They aren’t always this large, but they’re crowds nonetheless.’

‘Rubbernecking? What is this rubbernecking?’

‘Sorry. It’s an American term. It means to stare at the scene of an accident.’

‘Interesting. We have a similar phenomenon in Libya. We call it khibbesh. ’

‘ Khibbesh? What in the world does that mean?’

‘Rubbernecking.’

Dial smiled. He rarely came across a foreign cop that shared his sense of humor. ‘So, tell me, what’s the deal? I’m dying to know why everyone’s here. I mean, if they aren’t khibbeshing. ’

‘Some people are, while others are paying their respects.’

‘Their respects? To who, the dead guy?’

Tamher nodded but remained silent.

‘Come on! Why would they pay their respects? Who the hell died? The king of England?’

He shook his head, suddenly serious. ‘Close. Raj Narayan was the prince of Nepal.’

23

Payne gazed over the edge of the 900-foot precipice, trying to find the site that Barnes had described. No helicopter, no truck, no physical evidence of any kind. Only the fertile farmland of the southern Orvieto valley. ‘Where’s the damage? There should be some serious damage down there. Scattered debris, scorched earth, loss of vegetation, the works.’

They spotted a path about one hundred feet to the left, which took them to the valley floor in a steep, zigzagging pattern. At the bottom they noticed several sets of tire tracks in the grass that were too shallow to be spotted from the high cliffs above.

Jones sank to his knees and studied the wheel prints, an art he’d learned in the military police. ‘I’d say there were three trucks heading east at a slow rate of speed, probably within the last twelve hours. Large, industrial trucks. Fully loaded. Possibly salvage equipment. Not your typical four by four pickup. The treads are too large.’

‘So we’re in the right area.’

Jones nodded. ‘It would seem so, yeah.’

They proceeded east, following the tracks like bloodhounds. They ran parallel to the plateau, bisecting the open space between the olive groves to the right and the rock face to the left and swerved for nothing. The trucks had plowed through a vegetable garden, a small wooden fence, and a patch of white oleander before stopping near a massive pile of rocks. Payne stared at them and realized the front edge of the stones surpassed knee level. There was no way a loaded truck could’ve cleared this obstacle without gutting its underbelly. There had to be a different solution, something they were overlooking. ‘Could these have been dump trucks?’

‘Maybe.’

‘What if these trucks arrived with stones? Couldn’t they have dumped their payload right here? That would account for the abrupt end to the trail. The rocks would’ve covered it up.’

Jones considered this as he walked several meters to the far side of the pile. ‘You might be right. There are dozens of tracks here, fanning out in a wide variety of angles. And unless I’m mistaken, the depth of the tread keeps changing. That means they lessened their weight significantly in a short period of time.’

‘So the trucks came speeding along in the middle of the night and dropped several tons of rocks right here in the middle of nowhere… Is that what we’re saying?’

Jones shook his head. ‘This was more than just dumping rocks. This was about picking up, too. Not only did someone beat us to the crash site, they decided to take it with them.’

Tourists were usually the only people to visit Il Pozzo di San Patrizio (aka Saint Patrick’s Well), the artesian well built in 1527. But due to a rumor that swept through Orvieto, locals were drawn to the beige brick building like freshmen to a keg party.

Payne and Jones spotted them on the other side of the Piazza Cahen, a large square in the center of town, and assumed it was the line to see the well. They passed the bus station and approached the back of the throng. Hundreds of people, young and old, clogged the courtyard ahead of them, surrounding the circular building with a silent intensity quite similar to the tone of the earlier funeral. For a better view, Jones climbed on a nearby wall and searched for Donald Barnes. He wanted to see his photos of the Orvieto crash site, hoping they would reveal something important, possibly the reason that the wreckage was hauled out by trucks in the dead of night. ‘I don’t think they’re even letting people inside the well. The door looks barricaded.’