Half-Past Dawn

CHAPTER 21

As Jack exited the subway tunnel onto the street, the bright sun temporarily blinding him, he became aware of something he hadn’t realized earlier. His senses had grown acute. His vision seemed more focused, colors more vibrant, he was cognizant of all of the sounds around him, not just the white noise of the city but also the subtle characteristics that made it city noise: car horns, a bus’s pneumatic hoses exhausting air as its doors opened, the chatter of pedestrians as they walked the street, hailed cabs, and sang off-key tunes with their iPod ear buds in. He could smell the Hudson just a few blocks away, the smell of exhaust, of street-cart souvlaki and warming pretzels. He could see the expressions in people’s faces, their happiness and pain, their lust and greed, as if their intentions were written on their skin. It was as if his body had just come out of a major tune-up that accentuated his very being.

Jack knew at once what was happening. While the accident had jarred his head, affecting his memory, these symptoms were unrelated to that. They were exactly what Dr. McCourt had said might occur and that when they did, he needed to get to the hospital right away.

But that was the last place he planned on going.

As they walked out through the subway tunnel, Frank demanded that Jack stay away from the Tombs to avoid risking anyone else seeing him. He took the north-side exit and headed off to grab the car, saying he would be back within ten minutes to pick him up.

On top of that, Frank had said it was time to get some real help. While it appeared that Mia’s kidnapping might be some inside job involving rogue members of the FBI, that didn’t mean that he and Frank didn’t have their own people they could trust. Jack wasn’t sure, though; beyond Frank and Joy, he trusted no one and wasn’t about to put Mia’s life in any further danger.

As Jack continued down the street, he flipped up his collar, tucked his head, stooped his shoulders forward, and disappeared inside the Friday crowd. He was glad he was in the city, where the true New Yorkers kept to themselves and paid little attention to their city brethren. Jack loved the urban jungle cliche. To an outsider, it was mysterious, alluring, and frightening, with unfamiliar creatures lying in wait to pounce on unsuspecting prey that strayed from the light. But to those familiar with its confines, it was wondrous and friendly, filled with magic and life.

Maintaining heightened caution, with his senses on overdrive, he soon realized that someone else was already watching him. Jack moved across the street, using the plate-glass windows of a Barnes amp; Noble to catch sight of the man’s reflection. He saw the large man fall into lockstep a block back.

Without a thought, Jack quickly ducked into a deli and took a seat in the back. There was no one there except two men behind the counter. He turned to watch the door. The wound in his shoulder suddenly felt as if it was on fire. The pain had been on and off throughout the morning but seemed to grow as the day went on.

“Hello, Jack.”

He was shocked to see the man who had been nearly a block behind him standing there; he was heavy-set, with a receding hairline. Jack didn’t know whether to run or strike, as he was trying to comprehend how the man was so quickly upon him.

“I’m not a threat, Jack. Please relax. I just need to talk to you.”

The man put his right hand up in supplication as he took a seat across from Jack.

“That wasn’t a smart thing, chasing that guy down.” The man’s voice was sympathetic as he admonished Jack like a longtime friend.

Jack continued to assess the man before him as friend or foe, thinking that either way, he might be able to help him move one step closer to Mia. “Who are you?”

“A friend of Mia’s.”

“Prove it.”

The man smiled. “Not an easy thing. I’m James Griffin, FBI forensics.”

“ID?”

Griffin shook his head. “Not on me.”

“Convenient.”

“Yeah, well, when I heard what happened, I rushed out to find you, spent the better part of the day looking. Been to your house, your office. I’ve been watching the Tombs for the last hour, figuring either you’d show up or the people who are after the case would make an appearance.”

Jack had heard of the man. Mia had spoken of Jimmy Griffin on occasion as one of those brilliant minds who should have been working in a think-tank or a pharmaceutical company, making ten times his FBI salary. She admired him for his passion and for not selling out like so many others.

“I know how scared she was of what was in that evidence case.” Griffin rubbed his left hand. “I know she said there was only one person she could trust with it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jack lied. He wasn’t about to confirm anything.

“I was with her on Tuesday.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Where was that?”

“Room 1408 at the Waldorf. A murder investigation.”

Jack remained silent.

“The contents of the evidence box, the things that Mia so desperately wanted hidden away, are the belongings of a Cotis priest.”

Jack’s heart nearly stopped. He looked around the deli, no one there except the two men behind the counter, who paid Jack no mind. He glanced at his left forearm, realizing that everything was even more connected than he had imagined.

“Do you know what’s in the box?”

Jimmy nodded. “You get that box, they won’t dare hurt Mia.”

“Who’s they?”

Jimmy shook his head. “Not sure of the players, but Mia and I knew there were some of our fellow FBI guys in the mix. Don’t really know who or how many. But I can tell you this, get that box, and they will, without question, trade it for her.”

“What’s in the case?”

“I don’t know everything, but there’s a ceremonial jewel-encrusted dagger, some prayer beads, two prayer books with some interesting notes etched in them, and some images.”

“What kind of images?”

Griffin paused, again rubbing his left hand. “The scary kind, the kind that makes your blood run cold and makes you wish you could forget ever seeing.”

Three days earlier, on Tuesday afternoon, Jimmy Griffin had opened the rear door of the hotel suite and quickly ushered Mia in, closing and locking the door behind them.

The executive suites at the Waldorf were decorated to resemble a home, designed to impart a warmth and comfort not associated with travel. The sofas were plush and deep, the leather wingback chairs comfortable enough to sleep in. The separate bedrooms were more like those in a ski lodge, with large four-poster beds, piled high with thick earth-tone pillows and comforters.

Mia had received the call a half-hour earlier and had rushed uptown, telling no one where she was going, adhering exactly to Jimmy’s instructions. His words in that deep, resonant voice were brief and exact. “Room 1408. Waldorf. I’ve got a murder. I need to see you now. Tell no one.”

Mia glanced toward the second bedroom. The curtains were drawn, the darkness covering all details.

Jimmy abruptly shut the door. “You’ve got to see this first.”

He led Mia into an elegant bathroom, white marble, a Jacuzzi and sit-down shower. But the grandeur was tainted, awash in gore. Once-white towels littered the floor, stained dark brown with dried blood. Haphazard hand-and fingerprints streaked the counters and shower walls. A pile of blood-soaked bandages lay on a soiled pair of pants and shirt in the corner.

A pocket knife and a single misshapen bullet were on the counter. Although it was deformed, an intricate pattern could still be discerned on the flattened, bloodstained casing.

Jimmy handed Mia a pair of rubber gloves. She picked up the bullet, rolling it around in the palm of her hand. The warped lettering was elaborate and detailed, not what one would expect to see on an instrument of death. The language was foreign, and even if she understood it, she doubted the twisted metal would reveal its true meaning. But as she continued to examine the bullet, what surprised her was not the etched verbiage or the fact that she was holding an object that had robbed a man of his life. It was a barely discernible pinhole in the tip and the minute black stain that ringed the tiny opening.

She looked up at Jimmy

“Yeah.” Jimmy nodded as he stepped from the bathroom. “Exactly what I thought.”

Mia put the bullet back on the counter and followed him out into the hallway.

“You know I’m not one for drama, Jimmy.”

“You have to bear with me on this.” Jimmy pursed his pale lips. There was an unnatural quiver to his voice, a stroke of nerves in the usually composed man. Mia had known Jimmy Griffin when he was still considered skinny; most people couldn’t believe the portly man could ever have passed for that classification. Over the last ten years, he was always her go-to guy when she ran into a wall. Jimmy had a knack for forensics and seeing the truth beneath the mystery. She had watched as the job literally aged him from a handsome, dark-haired man of twenty-eight to a balding, overweight, and prematurely gray man of thirty-seven. It was as if every crime solved and every arrest made took a year off his life, and she feared that what he was about to show her would shed at least a decade.

“Do we have an ID on the victim?”

Jimmy nodded.

“Wealthy?” Mia asked.

“No, he’s a diplomat.”

Mia’s concern grew.

“So you know, the windows are bulletproof, and he had no visitors.”

Jimmy opened the door and flicked the wall switch. As the light washed over the room, Mia saw a man of indiscernible age. He was laid on the four-poster bed in serene repose, his face relaxed and at peace. He wore white priestly robes that wrapped his body from shoulder to ankle, and while she was unsure, they seemed more Buddhist or Hindu than Christian. He lay atop the thick, downy covers, his hands folded on his belly, his feet bare.

As she circled the bed, she looked closely at his pristine skin, a hint of Asian descent in his cheekbones and eyes. His hair was closely cropped, its dark bristle yet to know the color gray. As she walked around, she looked at the soles of his feet, noting the thick calluses of someone who had frequently forgone shoes. Leaning in, she examined his fingers and recently groomed cuticles, which showed no hint of blood or grime. His entire body was almost antiseptically clean.

Mia had seen death on too many occasions to count; it always disturbed her, marring her mood not only for the moment but also for days to come. The victims were never people who had died naturally-they were always those whose last breath had been stolen away by another. But for some reason, this death was worse. She viewed the murder of a holy man as an affront to God. As evil and wicked as mankind could be, she thought there were some boundaries that should never be crossed.

“It was as if he prepared his own body for death, knowing it was inevitable,” Mia said softly as she continued to look at his body, at all sides of his head, his neck, his chest. “Where’s the fatal wound?”

Jimmy walked over and grasped the white gown in his gloved hands, slowly lifting it, parting its layers to discreetly reveal the man’s torso.

What Mia saw was not what she expected.

On the left side of his stomach was the torn flesh from where the bullet had been extracted.

“It’s his fingerprints on the knife and the bullet,” Jimmy said.

“He took it out himself?”

Mia examined the crosswise incision, where the skin had been peeled back by the victim. Mia imagined the pain was excruciating as he dug into his own stomach to pull out the bullet.

As much as the thought of operating on oneself distressed her, what she saw around the wound shocked her even more.

Circling the point of the wound, a black, threadlike ooze radiated outward beneath the skin as if it had invaded the veins, replacing blood with darkness. The inky tentacles reached out through the body, spreading death from the point where the dermis had been breached. It drifted upward over the stomach and the sternum, over the ribs and lungs, circling the region of the heart as if it was drawn there. The tone of the flesh had been obliterated by the black-stained webs that rendered the surrounding unblemished skin a pasty white.

“This man had no chance,” Jimmy said. “His self-operation was nothing but a vain attempt at survival. His fate was sealed the moment the bullet pierced his flesh. I believe it was a neurotoxin from an Asian sea snake used for its slow-acting, agonizing effect; the pain must have been excruciating.

“According to the front desk, he arrived at seven o’clock. He never called down for dinner, for anything.”

“What is a priest doing staying in a room like this?” Mia asked.

“No idea… yet.”

“OK, so this is on odd murder, I see that, but you still haven’t told me why you called me here,” Mia said.

“You need to take this case.”

“Why?”

Jimmy pointed to the long desk against the wall, the elegant dark wood covered with a host of personal effects.

Mia knew the how and the what as it concerned this man’s death, but it was the who and the why that drove her for the moment. She walked over to the desk, picked up and opened a dark red passport. The image was an exact match for the dead man in the bed, issued by the Cotis government. His occupation was listed as priest/diplomat. The pages were heavily stamped over the last month: Shanghai, Sydney, Tokyo, South Africa, Italy, India, London, and Sri Lanka.

She thumbed through the effects from his pockets, which Jimmy had laid on the desk blotter. Four hundred dollars in cash, two credit cards, a gold pocket watch, and the keycard for the room. There was an open-ended plane ticket to Mumbai, a taxi receipt, and a stick of gum. From his suit-jacket pocket, there was a small quill pen and two bottles of ink, one a deep brown, the other as black as the poison that ran through his body.

On a separate table, as if placed in reverence, was a set of wooden prayer beads on a simple necklace, organic, as if they had grown in nature themselves. Beside them was a gold jewel-encrusted dagger, looking more like a piece of artwork than something of deadly purpose. There were two identical red books, each the size of a paperback novel.

Mia picked up and examined one of them; the cover was red leather, weathered from years of use. Opening the pages, she found an unfamiliar language but noted its similarity to the etching on the bullet. Thumbing through the dog-eared pages, she imagined it to be a prayer book, the text laid out in a rhythmic cadence. Each and every page was water-stained as if the book had been dipped in the ocean. She suspected the book was of sentimental value to the owner, as it appeared worn and well used. She picked up the second and found it identical in every sense, including the water-stained pages.

She finally turned and looked at Jimmy. “This isn’t why I’m here,” she said, as if she could read his mind.

“No, it’s not,” Jimmy said, avoiding her unspoken question. “Anything you see in his personal effects that gives you pause?”

She reexamined the prayer books, picking each one up in turn, flipping through the pages, fanning them as if a secret might fly out. She finally nodded. “Two things.” She held up the second book, opening it to the back. “A page is torn out of the back. Judging by its condition”-she ran her finger along the frayed edge of what remained of the paper near the spine of the book-“it was recent.”

“And the second thing?”

“The pages are water-stained, yet the leather cover is not.”

Jimmy smiled as he nodded his head. He disappeared and returned with a wet washcloth. He took the book from her hand, laid it down, opened it to the middle, and rubbed the page. At once the foreign language of the prayer vanished, revealing a handwritten text beneath.

“I think it’s a diary,” Jimmy said softly.

“What’s it say?”

“I don’t know, but it’s a hell of a place to keep secrets.”

Jimmy picked up the quill from the table. He opened the black ink bottle, dipped the quill in, and wrote on a piece of paper. They both watched as the lettering dried and disappeared.

Mia took the cloth, and with a single wipe of the page, the word reappeared.

“It’s like a kid’s magic trick.”

“Yeah, we’ve gotten so complex with our encryptions and passwords that we’ve forgotten the best place to hide is usually in plain sight.”

“Makes you wonder what was on the torn-out page.”

They both paused a moment, digesting the room.

“There’s a whole team on their way,” Jimmy finally said. “I need you to take this stuff before they get here. Keep it to yourself. The things hidden on the pages of those two books, I believe, are far more explosive than anyone realizes. I’ve reached out for a translator. I’m flying him in, but he won’t be here until the weekend. I need you to hide this away till then. I’ll get this case classified.”

“You’re sounding paranoid,” Mia said.

“Have you ever known me to be paranoid?”

Mia shook her head; Jimmy was anything but. He was probably the most logical, methodical man she had ever worked with.

“I need to show you something,” Jimmy said.

He took the washcloth from her and picked up the second book. Turning to the last page, he quickly wiped it to reveal a list of names, written in English, all in sharp contrast to the surrounding foreign characters. The list was short, five names. Fear ran through Mia as she realized that she knew them.

“I want you to take all of this now.” Jimmy picked up a two-foot-by-ten-inch evidence case and swept all of the priest’s personal effects into it. “You hide it away, far from any FBI, until we can figure out what to do.”

Mia nodded in agreement. If she had her way, she’d bury the box for all eternity.

“How’s Jack doing?” Jimmy asked, the question seeming odd in the middle of a murder scene.

“He’s good, thanks.”

“When did you see him last?”

“What?” Mia asked, confusion filling her voice. “Late last night. He got home late. I left before he was even awake.”

“Did you talk to him today?”

“What’s going on, Jimmy? You’re scaring me.”

“Just answer me. When did you speak to him last?”

“Dammit, Jimmy. Ten minutes ago.”

“And he’s OK?”

Mia glared at him, pissed.

“Is he working any crazy cases lately?”

Mia glared at Jimmy.

“Listen, Mia, I found something. It’s real disturbing. And as much as I’d like to spare you the shock, you need to see it.”

“Drop the preface, and show me. I hate when people do that. Everyone has to build the drama.”

Jimmy pulled out two eight-by-eleven sheets of paper, each with an intricate, lifelike drawing on it, and handed them to her.

As shocked as Mia was by the body on the bed and the names in the book, these images shook her to her core, lifelike in every respect. Her knees nearly buckled as she realized who they were of and what they represented. Without a further glance, she stuffed them into the black metal case and slammed the lid closed.

A S J ACK SAT in the deli listening intently to Jimmy’s every word, he leaned forward. “What were the images of?”

“I can’t say,” Jimmy said.

“Why?”

“Because I promised your wife I would tell no one of their existence, especially you.”

“Bullshit!” Jack’s arm shot out and grabbed Jimmy by the shirt. “You tell me, and you tell me now, what were they of, and why did they scare her so much?”

“Jack, they are too difficult to explain. When you get the box, you will see them for yourself, and then you will understand why I can’t speak of them and why they frightened Mia.”

Jack glared at Jimmy, finally releasing him. He glanced over at the two men behind the counter and saw them staring back. “Tell me the names in the book.”

Jimmy shook his head. “I promised Mia for a reason. I know she is your wife, but whether you know the names will not affect your getting that metal case. Jack,” Jimmy said as he stood up, “you have to get the box. I know the Tombs is under lockdown, but the people who tried to kill you are going to try to get there first. I don’t know how many are coming, but if they get that case, Mia is dead.”

Jimmy turned to leave but suddenly turned back.

“One other thing,” he said. “The body of the priest… it was stolen from the morgue last night.”

As baffled as Jack was by Jimmy’s last comment, he brushed it off. He couldn’t imagine who would steal a body. Instead, his mind focused on Mia. He couldn’t fathom how he would get the case, how he would possibly penetrate the depths of the Tombs. And if he couldn’t…

Jack buried his head in his hands, drawing them down his face as if the action would somehow wash away his nightmare.

He finally looked up… Jimmy was gone.