“When I hear of crimes such as these,” Father Corrio continued, “I have to wonder just how civilized a place we live in. We like to think that we have become enlightened through the centuries. But this? It’s barbaric.”

“I try not to think of it that way,” Jessica said. “If I think about the horrors of it all, there’s no way I can do my job.” It sounded easy when she said it. It wasn’t.

“Have you ever heard of the Rosarium Virginis Mariae?”

“I think so,” Jessica said. It sounded like something she had run across in her research at the library, but like most of the information it was lost in a bottomless chasm of data. “What about it?”

Father Corrio smiled. “Don’t worry. There won’t be a pop quiz.” He reached into his briefcase and produced an envelope. “I think you should read this.” He handed her the envelope.

“What is this?”

“The Rosarium Virginis Mariae is an apostolic letter regarding the rosary of the Virgin Mary.”

“Does it have something to do with these murders?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

Jessica glanced at the folded papers inside. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll read it tonight.”

Father Corrio drained his cup, looked at his watch.

“Would you like some more coffee?” Jessica asked.

“No thanks,” Father Corrio said. “I really should get back.” Before he could rise, the phone rang. “Excuse me,” she said. Jessica answered. It was Eric Chavez.

As she listened, she looked at her reflection in the night-black window. The night threatened to open up and swallow her whole.

They had found another girl.

38

TUESDAY, 10:20 PM

The Rodin Museum was a small museum dedicated to the French sculptor at Twenty-second Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. When Jessica arrived, there were already a number of patrol cars on the scene. Two lanes of the parkway were blocked. A crowd was gathering.

Kevin Byrne huddled with John Shepherd.

The girl sat on the ground, her back against the bronze gates leading into the museum courtyard. She looked about sixteen. Her hands were bolted together, just like the others. She was heavyset, red-haired, pretty. She wore a Regina uniform.

In her hands was a black rosary, with three decades of beads missing.

On her head was a crown of thorns, fashioned out of concertina wire.

Blood trickled down her face in a delicate crimson web.

“Goddamn it,” Byrne yelled, slamming his fist into the hood of the car.

“I put out an all-points on Parkhurst,” Buchanan said. “There’s a BOLO on the van.”

Jessica had heard it go out on her way into the city, her third trip of the day.

“A crown?” Byrne asked. “A fucking crown?”

“Gets better,” John Shepherd said.

“What do you mean?”

“You see the gates?” Shepherd pointed his flashlight toward the inner gates, the gates leading to the museum itself.

“What about them?” Byrne asked.

“Those gates are called The Gates of Hell,” he said. “This fucker is a real piece of work.”

“The picture,” Byrne said. “The Blake painting.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s telling us where the next victim is going to be found.”

For a homicide detective, the only thing worse than having no leads was being played with. The collective rage at this crime scene was palpable.

“The girl’s name is Bethany Price,” Tony Park said, consulting his notes. “Her mother reported her missing this afternoon. She was at the Sixth District station when the call came in. That’s her over there.”

He pointed to a woman in her late thirties, dressed in a tan raincoat. She reminded Jessica of those shell-shocked people you see on foreign news footage, just after a car bomb has gone off. Lost, numb, hollowed out.

“How long had she been missing?” Jessica asked.

“She didn’t make it home from school today. Everybody with a daughter in high school and junior high is pretty jumpy.”

“Thanks to the media,” Shepherd said.

Byrne began to pace.

“What about the guy who called in the nine-one-one?” Shepherd asked.

Park pointed to a man standing behind one of the patrol cars. He was about forty, well dressed in a three-button navy suit, club tie.

“His name is Jeremy Darnton,” Park said. “He said he was driving about forty miles an hour when he went by. All he saw was the victim being carried on a man’s shoulder. By the time he could pull over and double back, the man was gone.”

“No description of the man?” Jessica asked.

Park shook his head. “White shirt or jacket. Dark pants.” “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“That’s every waiter in Philly,” Byrne said. He went back to his pacing. “I want this guy. I want to put this fucker down.”

“We all do, Kevin,” Shepherd said. “We’ll get him.”

“Parkhurst played me.” Jessica said. “He knew I wouldn’t come alone. He knew I’d bring the cavalry. He tried to draw us off.”

“And he did,” Shepherd said.

A few minutes later, they all approached the victim as Tom Weyrich stepped in to do his preliminary exam.

Weyrich searched for a pulse, pronounced her dead. He then looked at her wrists. On each wrist was a long-healed scar, a snaky gray ridge, crudely cut, laterally, about an inch below the heel of her palm.

At some point in the last few years, Bethany Price had attempted suicide.

As the lights from the half dozen patrol cars strobed against the statue of The Thinker, as the crowd continued to gather, as the rain picked up in intensity, washing away precious knowledge, one man in the crowd looked on, a man who carried a deep and secret knowledge of the horrors that were befalling the daughters of Philadelphia.

TUESDAY, 10:25 PM

The lights on the face of the statue are beautiful.

But not as beautiful as Bethany. Her delicate white features give her the

appearance of a sad angel, as radiant as the winter moon.