Rosary girls

5 5

Jessica and Sophie sat at the table, pigging out on all the goodies they had brought home from her father's house-panettone, fogliatelle, tiramisu. It wasn't exactly a balanced meal, but she had blown off the grocery store and there was nothing in the fridge.

Jessica knew it wasn't a good idea to let Sophie eat so much sugar at this late hour, but Sophie had a sweet tooth the size of Pittsburgh, just like her mother, and, well, it was so hard to say no. Jessica concluded long ago that she had better start saving for the dental bills.

Besides, after seeing Vincent mooning with Britney or Courtney or Ashley, or whatever the hell her name was, tiramisu was just about the right medicine. She tried to exile the image of her husband and the blond teenager from her mind.

Unfortunately, it was immediately replaced by the picture of Brian Parkhurst's body, hanging in that hot room, the rank smell of death.

The more she thought about it, the more she doubted Parkhurst's guilt. Had he been seeing Tessa Wells? Perhaps. Was he responsible for the murders of three young women? She didn't think so. It was nearly impossible to commit a single abduction and homicide without leaving behind trace evidence.

Three of them?

It just didn't seem feasible.

But what about the PARon Nicole Taylor's hand?

For a fleeting moment, Jessica realized that she had signed on for a lot more than she felt she could handle with this job.

She cleaned the table, plopped Sophie down in front of the TV, popped in the Finding Nemo DVD.

She poured herself a glass of Chianti, cleared the dining room table, then spread out all her notes on the case. She walked her mind over the time line of events. There was a connection among these girls, something other than the fact that they attended Catholic schools.

Nicole Taylor, abducted off the street, dumped in a field of flowers.

Tessa Wells, abducted off the street, dumped in an abandoned row house.

Bethany Price, abducted off the street, dumped at the Rodin Museum.

The selection of dump sites seemed in turn random and precise, elaborately staged and mindlessly arbitrary.

No, Jessica thought. Dr. Summers was right. Their doer was anything but illogical. The placement of these victims was every bit as significant as the method of their murder.

She looked at the crime scene photographs of the girls and tried to imagine their final moments of freedom, tried to drag those unfolding moments from the dominion of black and white to the saturated color of nightmare.

Jessica picked up Tessa Wells's school photograph. It was Tessa Wells who troubled her most deeply; perhaps because Tessa had been the first victim she had seen. Or maybe because she knew that Tessa was the outwardly shy young girl that Jessica had once been, the chrysalis ever yearning to become the imago.

She walked into the living room, planted a kiss on Sophie's shiny, strawberry-scented hair. Sophie giggled. Jessica watched a few minutes of the movie, the colorful adventures of Dory and Marlin and Gill.

Then her eyes found the envelope on the end table. She had forgotten all about it.

The Rosarium Virginis Mariae.

Jessica sat down at the dining room table and skimmed the lengthy letter, which seemed to be a missive from Pope John Paul II, affirming the relevance of the holy rosary. She glossed over the headings, but her attention was drawn to one section, a segment titled "Mysteries of Christ, Mysteries of His Mother."

As she read, she felt a small flame of understanding ignite within her, the realization that she had crossed a barrier that, until this second, had been unknown to her, a barricade that could never be breached again.

She read that there are five "Sorrowful Mysteries" of the rosary. She had, of course, known this from her Catholic school upbringing, but hadn't thought of it in years.

The agony in the garden.

The scourge at the pillar.

The crown of thorns.

The carrying of the cross.

The crucifixion.

The revelation was a crystalline bullet to the center of her brain. Nicole Taylor was found in a garden. Tessa Wells was bound to a pillar. Bethany Price wore a crown of thorns.

This was the killer's master plan.

He is going to killfive girls.

For a few anxious moments she didn't seem to be able to move. She took a few deep breaths, calmed herself. She knew that, if she was right about this, the information would change the investigation completely, but she didn't want to present the theory to the task force until she was sure.

It was one thing to know the plan, but it was equally important to understand why. Understanding why would go a long way toward knowing where their doer would strike next. She took out a legal pad and made a grid.

The section of sheep bone found on Nicole Taylor was intended to lead investigators to the Tessa Wells crime scene.

But how?

She thumbed through the indices of some of the books she had taken from the Free Library. She found a section on Roman customs, and learned that scourging practices in the time of Christ included a short whip called a flagrum, to which they often attached leather thongs of variable lengths. Knots were tied in the ends of each thong, and sharp sheep bones were inserted into the knots at the ends.

The sheep bone meant there would be a scourge at the pillar.

Jessica wrote notes as fast as she could.

The reproduction of Blake's painting Dante and Virgil at the Gates of Hell that was found inside Tessa Wells's hands was obvious. Bethany Price was found at the gates leading into the Rodin Museum.

An examination of Bethany Price had found that she had two numbers written on the insides of her hands. On her left hand was the number 7. On her right hand, the number 16. Both numbers were written in black magic marker. Address? License plate? Partial zip code?

So far, no one on the task force had had any idea what the numbers meant. Jessica knew that, if she could divine this secret, there was a chance they could anticipate where the murderer's next victim would be placed. And they could be waiting for him.

She stared at the huge pile of books on the dining room table. She was certain the answer was somewhere in one of them.

She walked into the kitchen, dumped the glass of red wine, put on a pot of coffee.

It was going to be a long night.