“Are you all right?” Sansone asked her.

Jane said, “This really isn’t a good time for a visit, Mr. Sansone. Would you mind stepping outside?”

He ignored Jane; his gaze stayed on Maura. He was not dressed in black today, but in shades of gray. A tweed jacket, an ash-colored shirt. So different from Daniel, she thought; this man I cannot read, and he makes me uncomfortable.

“I just saw the markings on your door,” he said. “When did that happen?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Sometime last night.”

“I should have driven you home myself.”

Jane cut in. “I really think you should leave now.”

“Wait,” said Frost. “You need to hear what he says, about what’s on the door. What it might mean.”

“I have sinned? I think the meaning is pretty obvious.”

“Not the words,” said Sansone. “The symbols beneath them.”

“We’ve already heard about the all-seeing eye. Your friend Oliver Stark explained it.”

“He may have been mistaken.”

“You don’t agree that it’s the eye of Horus?”

“I think it may represent something else entirely.” He looked at Maura. “Come outside and I’ll explain it to you.”

Maura had no wish to once again confront those accusing words on her door, but his sense of urgency forced her to follow him. Stepping outside onto the porch, she paused, blinking against the sun’s glare. It was such a beautiful Sunday morning, a morning to linger over coffee and the newspaper. Instead she was afraid to sit in her own house, afraid to look at her own front door.

She took a breath and turned to confront what had been drawn in ocher that was the color of dried blood. The words I have sinned screamed at her, an accusation that made her want to shrink, to hide her guilty face.

But it was not the words that Sansone focused on. He pointed to the two symbols drawn below them. The larger one they had seen before, on his garden door.

“That looks exactly like the all-seeing eye to me,” said Jane.

“But look at this other symbol,” said Sansone, pointing to a figure near the bottom of the door. It was so small, it almost seemed like an afterthought. “Drawn in ocher, as at the other crime scenes.”

Jane said, “How did you know about the ocher?”

“My colleagues need to see this. To confirm what I think it represents.” He took out his cell phone.

“Wait,” said Jane. “This isn’t some public showing.”

“Do you know how to interpret this, Detective? Do you have any idea where to start? If you want to find this killer, you’d better understand his thinking. His symbols.” He began to dial. Jane did not stop him.

Maura dropped to a crouch so that she could study the bottom sketch. She stared at arching horns, a triangular head, and slitted eyes. “It looks like a goat,” she said. “But what does it mean?” She gazed up at Sansone. Backlit by the morning glare, he was a towering figure, black and faceless.

“It represents Azazel,” he said. “It’s a symbol of the Watchers.”

“Azazel was the chief of the Se’irim,” said Oliver Stark. “They were goat demons who haunted the ancient deserts before Moses, before the pharaohs. All the way back in the age of Lilith.”

“Who’s Lilith?” asked Frost.

Edwina Felway looked at Frost in surprise. “You don’t know about her?”

Frost gave an embarrassed shrug. “I have to admit, I’m not all that well-versed in the Bible.”

“Oh, you won’t find Lilith in the Bible,” said Edwina. “She’s long been banished from accepted Christian doctrine, although she does have a place in Hebrew legend. She was Adam’s first wife.”

“Adam had another wife?”

“Yes, before Eve.” Edwina smiled at his startled face. “What, you think the Bible tells the whole story?”

They were sitting in Maura’s living room, gathered around the coffee table, where Oliver’s sketchpad lay among the empty cups and saucers. Within half an hour of Sansone’s call, both Edwina and Oliver had arrived to examine the symbols on the door. They’d conferred on the porch for only a few minutes before the cold drove them all into the house for hot coffee and theories. Theories that now struck Maura as cold-bloodedly intellectual. Her home had been marked by a killer, and these people calmly sat in her living room, discussing their bizarre theology. She glanced at Jane, who wore an undisguised expression of these people are kooks. But Frost was clearly fascinated.

“I never heard that Adam had a first wife,” he said.

“There’s a whole history that never appears in the Bible, Detective,” said Edwina, “a secret history you can only find in Canaanite or Hebrew legends. They talk about the marriage between Adam and a free-spirited woman, a cunning temptress who refused to obey her husband, or to lie beneath him as a docile wife should. Instead she demanded wild sex in every position and taunted him when he couldn’t satisfy her. She was the world’s first truly liberated female, and she wasn’t afraid to seek the pleasures of the flesh.”

“She sounds like a lot more fun than Eve,” said Frost.

“But in the eyes of the church, Lilith was an abomination, a woman who was beyond the control of men, a creature so sexually insatiable that she finally abandoned her boring old husband, Adam, and ran off to have orgies with demons.” Edwina paused. “And as a result, she gave birth to the most powerful demon of all, the one who’s plagued mankind ever since.”

“You don’t mean the Devil?”

Sansone said, “It’s a belief that was commonly held in the Middle Ages: Lilith was the mother of Lucifer.”

Edwina gave a snort. “So you see how history treats an assertive woman? If you refuse to be subservient, if you enjoy sex a little too much, then the church turns you into a monster. You’re known as the Devil’s mother.”

“Or you disappear from history entirely,” said Frost. “Because this is the first I’ve ever heard of Lilith. Or that goat person.”

“Azazel,” said Oliver. He tore off his latest sketch and placed it on the coffee table so that everyone could see it. It was a more detailed version of the face that had been drawn on Maura’s door: a horned goat with slitted eyes and a single flame burning atop its head. “The goat demons are mentioned in Leviticus and Isaiah. They were hairy creatures who cavorted with wild beings like Lilith. The name Azazel goes back to the Canaanites, probably a derivation of one of their ancient gods’ names.”

“And that’s who the symbol on the door refers to?” asked Frost.

“That would be my guess.”

Jane laughed, unable to contain her skepticism. “A guess? Oh, we’re really nailing down the facts here, aren’t we?”

Edwina said, “You think this discussion is a waste of time?”

“I think a symbol is whatever you want to make of it. You people think it’s a goat demon. But to the weirdo who drew it, it may mean something entirely different. Remember all that stuff you and Oliver spouted about the eye of Horus? The fractions, the quarter moon? So all of that is suddenly a bunch of hooey?”

“I did explain to you that the eye can represent a number of different things,” said Oliver. “The Egyptian god. The all-seeing eye of Lucifer. Or the Masonic symbol for illumination, for wisdom.”

“Those are pretty opposite meanings,” said Frost. “The Devil versus wisdom?”

“They’re not opposite at all. You have to remember what the word Lucifer means. Translated, the name is ‘Bringer of Light.’”

“That doesn’t sound so evil.”

“Some would claim that Lucifer isn’t evil,” said Edwina, “that he represents the questioning mind, the independent thinker, the very things that once threatened the church.”

Jane snorted. “So now Lucifer isn’t such a bad guy? He just asked too many questions?”

“Who you call the Devil depends on your perspective,” said Edwina. “My late husband was an anthropologist. I’ve lived all over the world, collected images of demons that look like jackals or cats or snakes. Or beautiful women. Every culture has its own idea of what the Devil looks like. There’s only one thing that almost all cultures, dating back to the most primitive tribes, agree on: the Devil actually exists.”