The question was directed at Jessica, but Byrne stepped forward. “It’s

still early,” Byrne said.

“I understand that there has been a task force formed?” Byrne knew that Pacek already knew the answer to this question. The

look on Byrne’s face told Jessica—and, perhaps, Pacek himself—that he didn’t appreciate it.

“Yes,” Byrne said. Flat, succinct, tepid.

“Sergeant Buchanan tells me that you have brought in Dr. Brian Parkhurst?”

Here we go, Jessica thought.

“Dr. Parkhurst volunteered to help us with the investigation. It turns out that he was acquainted with both victims.”

Terry Pacek nodded. “So Dr. Parkhurst is not a suspect?” “Absolutely not,” Byrne said. “He is here merely as a material witness.” For now, Jessica thought.

Jessica knew that Terry Pacek was walking a tightrope. On one hand, if someone was killing the Catholic schoolgirls of Philadelphia, he had an obligation to stay on top of the situation, making sure that the investigation was given a high priority.

On the other hand, he could not stand idly by and have archdiocese personnel brought in for questioning without counsel, or at least a show of support from the church.

“As spokesperson for the archdiocese, you can certainly understand my concern over these tragic events,” Pacek said. “The archbishop himself has communicated with me directly and authorized me to put all of the diocese’s resources at your disposal.”

“That’s very generous,” Byrne said.

Pacek handed Byrne a card. “If there is anything my office can do, please don’t hesitate to call us.”

“I sure will,” Byrne said. “Just out of curiosity, Monsignor, how did you know Dr. Parkhurst had come in?”

“He called my office after you called him.”

Byrne nodded. If Parkhurst gave the archdiocese a heads-up about a witness interview, it was pretty clear that he knew the conversation might turn into an interrogation.

Jessica glanced at Ike Buchanan. She saw him look over her shoulder and make a subtle move with his head, the sort of gesture you would make to tell someone that whatever they were looking for was in the room on the right.

Jessica followed Buchanan’s gaze into the common room, just outside Ike’s door, and found Nick Palladino and Eric Chavez there. They headed to Interview Room A, and Jessica knew what the nod meant.

Cut Brian Parkhurst loose.

TUESDAY, 3:20 PM

The main branch of the Free Library was the largest library in the city, located on Vine Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

Jessica sat in the fine arts section, poring over a huge collection of Christian art tomes, looking for something, anything, that resembled the tableaux they had uncovered at the two crime scenes, scenes to which they had no witnesses, no fingerprints, as well as two victims who, as far as they knew, were unrelated: Tessa Wells, sitting at the column in that filthy basement on North Eighth Street; Nicole Taylor reposing in the field of spring flowers.

With the assistance of one of the librarians, Jessica did a catalog search using various keywords. The results were overwhelming.

There were books on the iconography of the Virgin Mary, books on mysticism and the Catholic Church, books on relics, the Shroud of Turin, the Oxford Companion to Christian Art. There were countless guides to the Louvre, to the Uffizi, to the Tate. She skimmed books on the stigmata, on Roman history as it applied to crucifixion. There were pictorial Bibles, books on Franciscan, Jesuit, and Cistercian art, sacred heraldry, Byzantine icons. There were color plates of oil paintings, watercolors, acrylics, woodcuts, pen-and-ink drawings, murals, frescoes, sculptures in bronze, marble, wood, stone.

Where to begin?

When she found herself thumbing through a coffee table book on ecclesiastical embroidery, she knew she was getting a little off course. She tried keywords like prayer and rosary, and got hundreds of hits. She learned some basics, including that the rosary is Marian in nature, centered on the Virgin Mary, and is meant to be said while contemplating the face of Christ. She took as many notes as she could.

She checked out a few of the circulating books—many she had looked at were reference—and headed back to the Roundhouse, her mind reeling with religious imagery. Something in these books pointed to the inspiration for the madness of these crimes. She just had no idea how to ferret it out.

For the first time in her life she wished she had paid more attention in religion class.

TUESDAY, 3:30 PM

The blackness was complete, seamless, a perpetual night that ignored time. Beneath the darkness, very faint, was the sound of the world.

For Bethany Price, the veil of consciousness came and went like waves on the beach.

Cape May, she thought through the deep haze in her mind, the images fighting up from the depths of her memory. She hadn’t thought of Cape May in years. When she was small, her parents would take the family to Cape May, a few miles south of Atlantic City on the Jersey shore. She used to sit on the beach, her feet buried in the wet sand. Dad in his crazy Hawaiian trunks, Mom in her modest one-piece.

She remembered changing in the beach cabana, even then terribly self-conscious about her body, her weight. The thought made her touch herself. She was still fully clothed.

She knew she had ridden in a car for about fifteen minutes. It might have been longer. He had stuck her with a needle that had taken her to the grasp of sleep, but not quite into its arms. She had heard city sounds all around her. Buses, car horns, people walking and talking. She wanted to cry out to them, but she couldn’t.

It was quiet.

She was afraid.

The room was small, maybe five feet by three feet. Not a room at all, really. More like a closet. On the wall opposite the door she had felt a large crucifix. On the floor was a padded confessional kneeler. The carpeting on the floor was new; she smelled the petroleum scent of the new fiber. Beneath the door she could see a meager bar of yellow light. She was hungry and thirsty, but she dared not ask.

He wanted her to pray. He had stepped into the darkness and given her a rosary, and told her to begin with the Apostle’s Creed. He hadn’t touched her in a sexual way. Not that she knew of, anyway.

He had left for a while, but was now back. He was pacing outside the closet, upset about something it seemed.

“I can’t hear you,” he said from the other side of the door. “What did Pope Pius the Sixth say about this?”

“I...I don’t know,” Bethany said.

“He said that, without contemplation, the rosary is a body without a soul, and its recitation runs the risk of becoming a mechanical repetition of formulas, in violation of the admonition of Christ.”