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
