Sign Of The Cross (18 page)

Boyd nodded.

Silence filled the room for several seconds. The only thing heard was the rumble of the room’s air conditioner. Finally, Maria said, ‘I’m sorry,
professore,
I don’t think I can be a part of this anymore.’

Then, before he could say anything, Maria left the library and went on a long walk, oblivious to the fact that she would soon be making a key discovery during her journey through Milan.

Tourists marveled at the view from the roof of
Il Duomo
while Maria Pelati sat in the corner, motionless, like one of the 2,245 marble statues that decorated the cathedral. On a normal day, she would’ve mingled with the rest of the people, admiring the spires that soared above her or contemplating the 511 years it took to build. However, this wasn’t a typical afternoon.

After pondering the scroll for over an hour, she emerged from her trance and realized she was dripping with perspiration. In an attempt to cool off, she eased down the thirty-degree slope of the slate roof toward a portal in one of the spires, yet found neither the breeze nor shade she was hoping for.
The heck with this,
she thought.
I’m probably going to hell for finding the scroll so I might as well sit in some air conditioning while I still have the chance.

Maria passed an elaborate row of statues that depicted a medley of saints, knights, and sinners in a variety of poses. Despite their exquisite craftsmanship, none of them grabbed her attention until she approached the final one, a majestic man in a flowing toga. Strangely, there was something about his face that seemed familiar. The sweeping curve of his lips. The lighthearted twinkle in his eyes. The arrogant protrusion of his jaw. The cocky smile on…

‘Oh my God!’ she blurted. ‘The laughing man!’

Stunned by her discovery, Maria considered racing back to tell Dr Boyd but realized if she didn’t scour the church for information, he would insist on a return trip – a trip where he would lead the investigation. And that was something she wanted to avoid.

Thinking quickly, she decided the easiest way to get background material on the statue would be to have a conversation with one of the tour guides. There were several on the roof alone, so she infiltrated a group near the tallest spire and listened to the guide’s lecture. ‘The tower stands three hundred and sixty-seven feet above the plaza, an astonishing height when you consider the age of this remarkable building. To comprehend how high we are, let’s walk toward the edge of the roof…’

When the group trudged forward, Maria approached the tour guide, a man in his early thirties. ‘Excuse me,’ she said in Italian. ‘I was wondering if you could answer a question.’

One glance at her smoldering brown eyes was all it took. The rest of the group could fend for themselves. ‘Yeah, um, sure. Whatever you need,’ he replied.

‘Thanks.’ She placed her arm in his and pulled him away. ‘There’s a statue over here that looks so familiar. Do you think you could tell me about it?’

The tour guide grinned confidently. ‘I’d be happy to. I’ve been working here for nearly five years. I know everything about this place.’

‘Everything? That’s amazing. Because this place is so big.’

‘You’re telling me,’ he bragged. ‘It’s five hundred and twenty feet long and two hundred and eighty-four feet wide. That’s bigger than a soccer field. In fact, it’s the third-largest cathedral in the world.’

‘And yet you know so much about it. You must be
so
smart.’

He beamed. ‘Which statue did you want to know about? I’ve got stories about them all.’

Maria pointed to the laughing man. ‘What can you tell me about him?’

The guide’s cocksure smile quickly faded. ‘Not very much. That’s one of the few objects that’s shrouded in mystery. When I was first hired, I asked the curator of the local museum about it, and he claimed it was the oldest artifact in the church, predating the other statues on the edifice by hundreds of years. Plus it’s made from a different type of stone than the others. Most of
Il Duomo
is made of white Carrara marble, but not this guy. He was made from marble that’s foreign to Italian soil. The only place that it can be found is in a small village near Vienna.’

‘Austria? That seems kind of strange.’

He agreed. ‘Even stranger is this monument’s placement. Look at the other statues around us. Does he seem to belong with any of them? The others depict the struggle of the common man in their quest for God, but not him. He’s
anything
but a peasant. Yet someone in the Church decided to place him here at the end of the series. Why they did we’re not really sure.’

Maria closed her eyes and thought back to the Catacombs. There, just like here, the laughing man seemed completely out of place. First, in the middle of Christ’s crucifixion scene, grinning his evil grin. Next, on the hand-carved box that contained Tiberius’s scroll. And now, his unexplained appearance on
Il Duomo.

This guy had a habit of popping up where he didn’t fit. But why? Or better yet, who?

‘One more question before I let you go. Do you have any theories on who he might be?’

The guide shrugged. ‘The only clue that we’ve found is the letter on his ring.’

‘Letter? What letter?’

The tour guide pointed at the statue’s hand. ‘You can’t really see it from down here. The man who cleans the monuments noticed it last year. Still, we have no idea if the letter is the subject’s initial or the artist’s – or neither.’

‘What letter is it?’ she demanded. ‘
A
,
B
,
C
?’

‘The letter
P
, as in Paul.’

Or in Paccius,
she thought to herself. Excited by the possibility, she kissed the tour guide on both cheeks.

‘Thank you! Thank you so much! That’s the letter I was hoping you’d say.’

‘It was? Why’s that?’

But instead of answering, Maria ran off to tell Dr Boyd the good news, convinced she had discovered proof of the laughing man’s identity.

Nick Dial unzipped his portfolio and carefully removed its contents. Inside, he had the portable bulletin board that he’d filled with a series of pictures, notes, and maps.

After hanging it in the Libyan police station, he tried to figure out what he needed to add. Definitely some pictures of Narayan. Maybe some close-ups of the bloody arch. He also needed to start drawing connections to the Jansen case, pointing out similarities, no matter how ridiculous they might seem. He knew the preposterous often turned out to be the most profitable.

Glancing at Jansen’s side of the board, the first thing he noticed was his unblemished skin. Why savagely beat the second victim, tearing his back to shreds, but leave the first victim untouched? Did they run out of time with Jansen? Did something spook them? Or were they following the pattern that Dial had seen several times before: the more victims that someone kills, the more comfortable the killer becomes?

Or maybe, Dial thought, this had nothing to do with comfort. Maybe this had something to do with religion, something he was overlooking. Just to be safe, he decided to call Henri Toulon at Interpol headquarters to get additional background information on Christ’s death.

‘Henri,’ Dial said, ‘how are you feeling after your night of drinking?’

Toulon answered groggily, ‘How did you know I was drinking? Are you back in France?’

‘No, but you always have a night of drinking.’

‘
Oui,
this is true.’

‘Did you have a chance to research that Shakespeare stuff that we discussed?’

Toulon nodded, jiggling his ponytail like a tassel. ‘Yes I did, and I decided it was bullshit. Nothing more than a red herring to lure you away from the truth.’

‘I was hoping you were going to say that. My gut told me to follow the religious side of this case, so that’s what I’ve been doing. I would’ve been so screwed if
Hamlet
came into play.’

Toulon smiled as he placed an unlit cigarette between his lips. ‘Was there anything else?’

Dial stared at Narayan’s autopsy photos. ‘Just one more thing. The victim here is different than the one in Denmark. I thought you might have some theories on it.’

‘What kind of differences?’

With his finger Dial traced the marks on Narayan’s back. ‘This one was beaten with some sort of a whip. And I mean beaten badly. We found more blood than skin.’

‘The victim was scourged?’

‘Scourged? Is that what the Bible calls it?’

‘That’s what everyone calls it. It was so common back in the day that John didn’t even have to explain it in his Gospel. In John 19:1, he wrote, they “took Jesus and had him scourged.” No need to go into details. Everyone knew what it meant.’

‘Everyone but me,’ Dial muttered. ‘What did the weapon look like?’

‘They used a whip called a flagellum. In Latin it means “little scourge.”’

‘There was nothing little about Narayan’s injuries. It cut right through his muscle.’

Toulon nodded. ‘That was its intent. The flagellum is a leather whip with tiny balls on the end. They were made of bone or metal barbells, some had tiny claws like barbed fishing hooks. That way when soldiers withdrew their weapons they would rip out chunks of flesh.’

‘Pretty barbaric.’

‘Yet common. Ultimately, it was done to weaken the criminal so he’d die quicker on the cross. In a twisted way, they did it out of mercy.’

Dial shook his head at the logic. There was nothing merciful about these wounds. He could see Narayan’s rib cage through the slashes in his flesh. ‘How long would the scourging last?’

‘Roman law limited it to forty lashes. Most soldiers stopped at thirty-nine, one below the maximum.’

‘Another way to show their mercy?’

‘Exactly. After that the patibulum – the horizontal beam of the cross – was tied to the victim across both shoulders, right behind his neck.’

‘Like a squat bar?’

‘Yes, just like you use in the gym, only much heavier. Probably fifty-five kilos.’

Dial wrote
approximately 125 pounds
in his notebook. ‘Then what?’

‘He was forced to carry it to the
stipes crucis,
which was already planted in the ground.’

‘And what would that weigh?’

‘Twice as much as the patibulum.’

Dial noted the entire cross would’ve been too heavy for one man to carry. ‘Out of curiosity, why do artists show Christ carrying the whole cross instead of just a beam?’

‘Because it’s more dramatic that way. Even Mel Gibson used a whole cross for his film, though it would’ve been physically impossible for Christ to carry after his scourging. As it was, he fell three times on his way to Golgotha.’

‘That’s right! I forgot about that. And his hands were tied, right? So he wouldn’t have been able to break his fall. He would’ve gone face-first.’

‘Undoubtedly. In fact, many people use that fact to explain the facial disfigurement that appears on the Shroud of Turin. The image shows a clean break in the nose.’

Dial shook his head at the direction that his case was headed. Here he was in Libya, working on a twenty-first-century case, yet he was talking about the crucifixion, the Shroud of Turin, and Christ’s facial scars like they were relevant to his investigation. And the most amazing thing was that they were. Not only relevant but crucial. He’d finally found significance in Jansen’s broken nose. Maybe that wasn’t an accident. Maybe that was done to make him more like Christ.

‘Was there anything else, Nick? I’m in serious need of some nicotine.’

‘Just one last thing. What do you know about the history of crucifixions?’

Toulon licked the cigarette, trying to savor the taste. ‘Supposedly they were invented by the Persians, who passed them on to the Carthaginians, who passed them on to the Romans. Most people think they were invented by the Romans, but they’re simply the group who perfected it. They got so proficient at it that they used to bet on the exact time that someone would die, based on the weather, the victim’s age, and how much food he’d had. “Hang ’em high and stretch ’em wide,” they used to say. Then they’d put money on it.’

‘That seems so wrong.’

‘Maybe to you. But to them it was a necessary evil in an unfair world. The quickest and most effective way to solve their problems.’

Dial thought about Toulon’s comment, wondering if that’s what he was dealing with in his current case. And if so, what problems did these murders actually solve?

Later, Omar Tamher knocked on the door and peeked into the tiny room. He was expecting to see Nick Dial working at the desk, not pacing back and forth like a caged puma.

‘May I?’ Tamher asked, not wanting to interrupt. ‘I don’t mean to -‘

‘No problem. I think better when I’m moving. Something about blood flow to my head.’

He nodded in understanding. ‘I think better with no shoes… Airflow between my toes.’

Dial glanced downward and noticed Tamher’s bare feet. ‘Interesting.’

Tamher laughed as he walked over to Dial’s bulletin board. ‘Whatever works, you know? Take your vertical scrapbook, for example. I could never use that here. Too many prying eyes.’

‘Coworkers?’

He shook his head. ‘Military.’

Dial didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.

‘Will you be staying another day, Nick? If so, you’d be wise to take your materials to your hotel. There’s no telling what will be missing if you leave them overnight.’

Dial nodded, reading between the lines. His access was guaranteed by Interpol’s agreement with Libya, but that didn’t mean that he was welcome. ‘I appreciate the advice.’

This time it was Tamher who was silent.

‘Out of curiosity, if I were to leave tonight, would you be willing to keep me in the loop?’

He nodded. ‘As long as you’re willing to return the favor.’

‘You got it.’

Tamher wanted to tell him it wasn’t personal, that this was simply his way of protecting his new friend from the Libyan government. But Dial nodded his head in understanding. No explanation was needed. He was an American, and that made him the most loved/hated mammal in the world, depending on where he went and what day of the week it was.