Both Campos and Lauria looked at Byrne. “Gotta ask, Kevin,” Campos said.

“I know,” Byrne said. They wanted his whereabouts for the past twenty-four. Neither of them suspected him of a thing, but they had to get it out of the way. Byrne, of course, knew the drill. “I’ll lay it out in a statement back at the house.”

“No problem,” Lauria said.

“Got a cause yet?” Byrne asked, happy to change the subject.

Campos stood up, walked behind the victim. There was a small hole at the base of Simon Close’s neck. It was probably caused by a drill bit.

As the CSU officers did their thing, it was clear that whoever had sewn Close’s eyes shut—and there was little doubt as to who that was— had not gone for quality of workmanship. The thick black thread alternated from piercing the soft skin of the eyelid to an inch or so down the cheek. Thin rivulets of blood had trickled down the face, giving him a Christ-like visage.

Both skin and flesh were pulled tight, in an upward direction, dragging up the soft tissue around Close’s mouth, exposing his incisors.

Close’s upper lip was pulled up, but his teeth were together. From a few feet away, Byrne noticed that there was something black and shiny just behind the man’s front teeth.

Byrne took out a pencil, gestured to Campos.

“Help yourself,” Campos said.

Byrne took the pencil and gently leveraged Simon Close’s teeth slightly apart. For a moment, his mouth appeared empty, as if what Byrne thought he saw was a reflection in the man’s bubbled saliva.

Then a solitary item fell out, rolling down Close’s chest, over his lap, and onto the floor.

The sound it made was slight, a thin plastic click on the hardwood.

Jessica and Byrne watched it roll to a stop.

They looked at each other, the significance of what they were seeing registering at the same moment. A second later, the rest of the missing rosary beads tumbled out of the dead man’s mouth like a slot machine paying off.

Ten minutes later, they had counted the rosary beads, carefully avoiding contact with the surfaces, lest they disturb what might be a usable shred of forensic evidence, although the probability of the Rosary Killer tripping himself up at this point was low.

They counted twice, just to be sure. The significance of the number of beads that had been stuffed into Simon Close’s mouth was not lost on anyone in the room.

There were fifty beads. All five decades.

And that meant that the rosary for the last girl in this madman’s passion play had already been prepared.

At noon, Brian Parkhurst’s Ford Windstar was found parked at an indoor garage a few blocks from the building in which he was found hanged. The Crime Scene Unit had spent the early afternoon combing it for trace evidence. There was no blood evidence, nor any indication that any of the murder victims had been transported in the vehicle. The carpeting was a bronze in color and did not match the carpet fibers found on the first four victims.

The glove compartment held the expected—registration, owner’s manual, a pair of maps.

It was the letter they found in the visor that was most interesting, a letter containing the typewritten names of ten girls. Four of the names were already familiar to police. Tessa Wells, Nicole Taylor, Bethany Price, and Kristi Hamilton.

The envelope was addressed to Detective Jessica Balzano.

There was little debate about whether the killer’s next victim would come from the ranks of the remaining six names.

There was much room for debate about why these names were in the late Dr. Parkhurst’s possession, and what it all meant.

The white board was divided into five columns. At the top of each was a Sorrowful Mystery. agony, scourge, crown, carry, crucifixion. Beneath each heading, except for the last, was a photograph of the respective victim.

Jessica briefed the team on what she had learned from her research, from Eddie Kasalonis as well as what Father Corrio had told her and Byrne.

“The Sorrowful Mysteries are the last week in Christ’s life,” Jessica said. “And, although the victims were discovered out of order, our doer seems to be following the strict order of the mysteries.

“As I’m sure you all know, today is Good Friday, the day Christ was crucified. There is only one mystery left. The crucifixion.”

A sector car had been assigned to every Catholic church in the city. By three twenty-five, incident reports had come in from all corners. The three o’clock hour—noon to three were the hours it is believed that Christ hung upon the cross—had passed at all Catholic churches without episode.

By four o’clock they had gotten in contact with all the families of the girls on the list found in Brian Parkhurst’s car. All the remaining girls were accounted for and, without causing undue panic, the families were told to be on guard. A car was dispatched to each of the girls’ houses for protection detail.

Why these girls were on the list, and what they had in common to get on the list was still unknown. The task force had tried to cross-reference the girls based on the clubs they belonged to, the churches they attended, eye and hair color, ethnicity; nothing leapt off the page.

Each of the six detectives on the task force would visit one of the six girls left on the list. The answer to the riddle of these horrors, they were certain, would be found with them.

FRIDAY, 4:15 PM

The Semanski house sat between two vacant lots on a dying street in North Philly.

Jessica spoke briefly to the two officers parked out front, then walked up the sagging steps. The inside door was open, the screen door unlatched. Jessica knocked. After a few seconds, a woman approached. She was in her early sixties. She wore a pilled blue cardigan and wellworn black cotton slacks.

“Mrs. Semanski? I’m Detective Balzano. We spoke on the phone.”

“Oh yes,” the woman said. “I’m Bonnie. Please come in.” Bonnie Semanski opened the screen door and let her in. The interior of the Semanski house seemed cast from another era.

There were probably a few valuable antiques in here, Jessica thought, but to the Semanski family they were most likely seen as functioning articles of furniture that were still good, so why throw them away?

To the right was a small living room with a worn sisal rug in the center and a grouping of old waterfall furniture. Sitting in a recliner was a gaunt man in his sixties. On a folding metal TV tray table next to him were a variety of amber pill bottles and a pitcher of iced tea. He was watching a hockey game, but it appeared as if he was looking near the television, not at it. He glanced over at Jessica. Jessica smiled, and the man lifted a slight arm to wave.