Sign of the Cross

Orvieto, not Milan.’

‘Orvieto?’ he said, feigning confusion. ‘Is that near here?’

‘Not at all. That’s why I’m guessing you’ve made a mistake.’

‘But I’m not. There’s no doubt in my mind I hit this truck. If you don’t believe me, I can put the hotel manager back on the phone. This truck is sitting twenty feet from us.’

The sound of clicking started up again. ‘Hold on, sir. I’ll double-check my records if you’d like. Can you give me that license plate again?’

Jones repeated the numbers, even though he started to doubt his plan. He figured, if she was reluctant to believe that the truck was even in Milan, then there was little chance that she’d answer any of his questions about Boyd.

‘Sir,’ she finally said, ‘while I was rerunning the license plate, something caught my eye. The customer you’re looking for is obviously in Milan, just like you suggested.’

‘Really? Why’s that?’

‘I noticed on my computer that she just rented a second vehicle.’

‘Excuse me?’ It took a few seconds for things to sink in. ‘Wait a second! Did you say she?’

‘Yes, sir. The driver of the truck just rented a Fiat from our Linate Airport office.’

Jones mouthed holy shit to Payne before he talked to Gia. ‘And how long ago was that?’

‘About a minute, sir. The order just came up on my screen.’

40

Fenway Park,

Boston, Massachusetts

Nick Dial had always wanted to see Fenway Park. There was something about the Green Monster, the thirty-seven-foot left-field wall, that captivated his imagination. His obsession started when he was a boy, during the summer he lived in New England. He and his father used to listen to games on the radio, then they’d go in their backyard and imitate their favorite Red Sox players.

Dial smiled as he thought about the ballpark on his flight to Boston. He imagined what the grass was going to smell like, the dirt was going to feel like, and the Monster was going to look like. He’d been waiting for this moment his entire life and couldn’t wait to get there.

All that changed, though, when he walked out of the tunnel and saw the crime scene spread before him. The playground of his dreams had been stained by the reality of his job.

Dial wasn’t there for a baseball game. He was there to catch a killer.

The cross had been planted on the pitcher’s mound with the victim facing home plate. His muscular arms stretched toward first and third, while his feet were angled toward the pitching rubber. A garbage bag had been slipped over the victim’s head to protect his identity from the news choppers that hovered over the field. Meanwhile, several officers searched around the cross for physical evidence.

Strangely, Dial saw a second team of cops standing in front of the Green Monster. He tried to figure out what they were doing, but the fence was over 300 feet away, and his already shitty vision was being obscured by the spotlights. Throw in the wattage of the stadium lights, and Dial felt like he was standing in the harsh glare of the afternoon sun, even though it was midnight in Boston.

‘Hey you,’ a cop yelled in an accent thicker than chowder. ‘Get outta here. This field is off-limits.’

Dial whipped out his credentials. ‘Where can I find the man in charge?’

‘Probably takin’ a leak in the dugout. Captain’s got a wicked large prostate. Can’t last ten minutes without hittin’ the crapper.’

Dial nodded, pulling out his notebook. ‘What can you tell me about the vic?’

‘He was an asshole. Wicked bat, wicked arm, but nothin’ more than a cock tease. Can you imagine him in our lineup? No way the Yanks beat us.’

‘Hold up. The vic was a ballplayer?’

The cop stared at Dial with a mixture of amusement and disgust. ‘That’s right, Frenchie. He was a ballplayer. You guys have baseball over there in Paris? Or are you too busy eatin’ cheese and watchin’ Jerry Lewis movies to play sports?’

Ouch! Dial wondered, Where did that come from?

The truth was, he’d been told very little about the case from Henri Toulon, only that a third victim had been found. Dial knew if he wanted to see the crime scene, he needed to take the quickest route to Boston, even if it meant not being fully briefed on the case.

Unfortunately, now he was paying for his haste.

At least until he decided to do something about it.

Dial took a step toward the cop. ‘First of all, you Beantown piece of shit, if you were half the cop that I am, you would’ve noticed that I can speak English better than you. So your theory that I’m French is as misplaced as my assumption that you’re drunk just because you’re a Boston cop. Secondly, I grew up in New England, so I know more about the Sox’s history than half the players on the team, which isn’t saying much, since most of them aren’t American. Finally, if you would’ve taken the time to read my badge, you would’ve noticed that I run the Homicide Division at Interpol, which means if someone dies on planet Earth, the odds are pretty good that I’m in charge. You got that? Now why don’t you run off like a good little batboy and tell your captain that his boss is here.’

The cop blinked a few times, then did what he was told. Five minutes later Captain Michael Cavanaugh was introducing himself with a firm handshake. ‘Sorry about our lack of hospitality. We’re spread a little thin right now. Hell, if we had known a bigwig was coming to town, I’m sure the mayor would’ve greeted you himself.’

‘I’m glad he didn’t. I’m here to find a killer, not get my ass kissed.’

Cavanaugh laughed and patted Dial on his shoulder. ‘Then you’ll fit right in with me. Just tell me what you want to know, and I’ll be happy to help.’

‘We can start with the vic’s name. I understand he’s an athlete.’

‘Yes, sir, a helluva athlete. Truth be told, we were kind of looking forward to booing the bum all weekend. I guess the good Lord decided to protect him from the abuse.’

This was protection? Holy shit! That meant the victim could only be one person. The most hated man in Boston: Orlando Pope. Stunned, Dial tried to figure out how a Yankee fit in with the others. First a priest, then a prince, now a Pope. Maybe the killers had something against the letter P? If so, the plumbers of the world should be very afraid. ‘Mind if I take a look?’

‘I don’t mind if he don’t mind.’

Dial nodded, his eyes searching for anything that seemed out of place. He dealt with copycat crimes on a regular basis, so his first order of business was figuring out if Pope was victim number three or just a copycat corpse, someone’s sick way of stealing the spotlight from the real killer.

Most investigators would’ve started with the body, but not Dial. He knew most copycats got the body right — at least until the forensic experts got involved with all their high-tech toys and found fifty things that didn’t belong. But the place they normally screwed up was in the minutiae, the small facts that were never released to the press, all the things that couldn’t be known by simply looking at a picture that had been published on the Internet.

In his world, the trivial was sometimes more important than the significant.

Dial started with the construction of the cross, making sure that the wood was similar in color and age to the African oak. Then he examined the three spikes, eyeing their length and making sure that the victim was positioned in the same way as the others.

When that checked out, he turned his attention to the body, first looking at the wounds on his back, the way his skin had been sliced open with repetitive blows of a metal-tipped whip during the scourging process, then examining his rib cage, probing his puncture wound with a gloved finger, hoping that the tip of the blade had fractured and remained imbedded in his chest.

‘Whatcha lookin’ for?’ Cavanaugh wondered. ‘The wound’s clean.’

‘Just doing my job. I tend to double-check everything.’