There was one other item in the first envelope. Jessica reached in, slid it out. And they had their answer.
Inside was a small booklet, about the size and shape of a Playbill. It bore a date from 1990. Jessica looked at the cover.
CHRISTA-MARIE SCHVNBURG, CELLO
AN EVENING WITH SAINT-SAENS AND VIVALDI
SELECTIONS FROM THE FOUR SEASONS,
CARNIVAL OF THE ANIMALS AND DANSE MACABRE ARRANGED FOR THE CELLO
BY SIR OLIVER MALCOLM
Jessica opened the booklet. The program began with brief selections from each part of The Four Seasons. After that were selections from Carnival of the Animals.
Et marche royale du Lion was the lion. Poules et Coqs was the rooster. Tortues was the tortoise. L'Elephant was the elephant. Kangourous was the kangaroo. Le Cygne was the swan. Aquarium was the fish. Voliиre was the bird.
There were eight selections in all.
'Someone is recreating her last performance,' Jessica said.
Bontrager pointed to the last part of the night's program. 'Danse Macabre?' he asked. 'What do you know about it?'
'Nothing,' Jessica said.
Bontrager sat down at the computer, launched a web browser. In seconds he had a hit.
The wild entry gave them the basics. Danse Macabre was written by Camille Saint-Saens originally as an art song for voice and piano. What had Duchesne said?
'A lot of times material has been written as an adjunct to the music — a poetic epigraph, if you will:
'See if there's a narrative that goes with this,' Jessica said.
Bontrager did a search. He soon got hits. 'Yeah,' he said. 'There is. It was originally a poem by a guy named Henri Cazalis.' Bontrager hit a few more keys. In a moment the poem appeared on the screen.
The poem began:
Zig, zig, zig, Death in cadence,
Striking a tomb with his heel,
Death at midnight plays a dance-tune,
Zig, zig, zag, on his violin.
It all began to make sense. Striking a tomb with his heel explained the bodies found in the cemeteries, their legs broken. Zig, zig, zig was on Joseph Novak's computer. Jessica's gaze continued down the page, a symmetry forming.
Zig zig, zig, Death continues
The unending scraping on his instrument.
A veil has fallen! The dancer is naked.
Jessica thought: The dancer is naked. The shaved bodies.
'Is there an explanation for this?' Jessica asked. 'Some sort of source material?'
Bontrager scrolled down. 'It says the poem was based on an old French superstition. Hang on.' He did another search. He soon had the synopsis of the original superstition.
'According to the superstition, Death appears at midnight every year on Halloween, and has the power to call forth the dead from their graves to dance for him while he plays his fiddle. His skeletons dance for him until the first break of dawn, when they must return to their graves until the next year.'
The two detectives looked at each other, at their watches. It was 9:50.
According to what they were reading, there were two hours and ten minutes left. And they had no idea where or whom the killer was going to strike.
Jessica opened the second envelope. Inside were six transparencies. The clear plastic sheets were 8Ѕ by 11 inches. At first it was not clear what was printed on them. Jessica looked at the lower right-hand corner of one. There she saw a number she recognized as the homicide case file number. She soon realized that it was a transparency of the forensic photograph of the wounds to Kenneth Beckman's forehead, a photograph of the white paper band that encircled the victim's head.
Jessica took the transparency, held it up to the white wall. There was the Rorschach blot of blood on the left, which had come from the mutilated ear, a shape she had originally thought of as a rough figure eight. There was the straight line across the top, as well as the oval of blood underneath. In this format, a photographic transparency, the blood looked black.
Why had Byrne made these into transparencies?
She held up the next sample. The second transparency was from Preston Braswell's head. It was identical. She looked at the third sheet, this time the evidence photograph of Eduardo Robles. Identical. There was no doubt in her mind, or in the mind of anyone else investigating these homicides, that the signature for each of these murders was identical, and all but confirmed a single killer.
Except that they were not identical.
'Josh, bring that lamp closer.'
Bontrager got up and pulled the table lamp across the desk. Jessica sorted through the transparencies, her heart beating faster. She put them all in the order that made the most sense at that moment.
'Turn off the overhead light.'
Bontrager crossed the room, shut off the fluorescents. When he returned, Jessica held the stack of transparencies up to the bright lampshade.
And then they saw it.
There were five lines, but they were in slightly different places, one above the other. The puncture wounds were in different places, too. On the left side, the bloodstains left by the killer's mutilation of the victims' ears formed a stylized clef.
'My God,' Jessica said. The clarity was almost painful. 'It's a musical staff. He's writing music on the dead bodies, one note at a time.'
Bontrager sat back down. He entered the search phrase: 'Danse Macabre sheet music.'
In seconds they had a visual representation of the sheet music. The two detectives compared the samples with the transparencies. They were identical. The killer was carving the final measure of Danse Macabre on his victims.
He was done with The Four Seasons. He wasn't quite done with Carnival of the Animals. There were two notes yet to write in the measure.
Jessica glanced back at the poem. The answer was in there. She read it all again.
Her stare fell on a phrase in the middle.
A lustful couple sits on the moss
So as to taste long-lost delights.
Is the lustful couple Christa-Marie Schцnburg and Kevin Byrne? Is their killer taking them back to the night they met?
Jessica looked at her watch. It was 10:00. They had less than two hours to figure it all out.
And Kevin Byrne was nowhere to be found.
Chapter 77
Lucy hid in a small room off the ladies' locker room in the basement, near the rear of the hotel. There were two other women in the room. They spoke animatedly in Spanish. Lucy did not understand the words, but she didn't have to. There was something going on in the hotel, and Lucy had to figure that they had seen the blood in the hallway.
Meet me here on Sunday night at 9:30. Love, Lucy.
