'Good Lord,' Congreve said, raising the heavy flashlight with a trembling hand and flinging it at the wild dog. He missed by mere inches, yet the dog didn't even flinch. He snarled viciously and suddenly leaped forward. Alex Hawke shot him in midair, a quick round to the head. The dog dropped to the ground without a sound, quite dead, barely inside the church door.
'Back to work,' Hawke said, holstering his weapon.
'Good Lord,' Congreve said again, staring at the dead animal as he bent to retrieve his flashlight. A dog built like this monster could rip a man to shreds in a matter of seconds. The rough seas he'd crossed were beginning to have a certain charm.
TEN MINUTES LATER, USING TWO small hand spades, they had cleared away all the soil. A wooden door, old, but hardly ancient, had been buried beneath the altar and hidden beneath a few inches of carefully tamped-down black earth. Hawke grasped the iron ring and pulled.
The door squealed loudly on its rusted iron hinges but swung open with surprising ease after all these years of disuse. The poisonous air that instantly wafted out of that centuries-old hole in the ground made both men choke and gag.
Congreve staggered back, eyes watering, kicking dirt and pebbles into the yawning black opening. Hawke leaned forward and played his light about the space below.
'What's down there?' Congreve croaked.
'No idea. But whatever it is, it's what we came here to find.'
Hawke leaned deeper into the hole with his light. The only object of note was an ancient stone staircase descending darkly into God only knows what fresh hell lay below.
'I'm going down there,' he said to Ambrose. 'Care to join me?'
Congreve pulled a white linen handkerchief from somewhere inside his mac and clamped it over his nose and mouth. Seemingly unable to speak, he nodded his head in the affirmative. He crouched by the foul-smelling hole in the earth as Hawke descended; his nose was running and his eyes were tearing so badly he could barely see.
'You'd better come down and see this, Constable,' Hawke's voice called seconds later.
Congreve, despite all his wanton misgivings, went down the worn stone staircase only to find that Hawke had not moved a foot away from the steps.
'Look at that,' he said.
Congreve, who'd been busily watching his feet descend the treacherous staircase, raised his eyes and followed the beam of Hawke's light.
'Ah,' he said.
The room was one large square, with an opening at the far side. It looked to be a tunnel leading off into more darkness.
'Ah, what?' Hawke said.
'A crypt.' Ambrose played his light over the four walls, each completely decorated from floor to ceiling with yellowed human skulls jammed together to form a nightmare decor.
'I know it's a crypt, Ambrose. What I'm talking about is that tunnel leading off to God knows where.'
'Tunnels intrigue me,' Congreve said. 'Always have.'
'And me as well.'
'This room is either Pagan or Early Christian, I'm not sure. We may find out at the end of that tunnel.'
'Then let's proceed with all due haste,' Hawke said, leading the way.
The tunnel was fairly wide but less than five feet in height, so both men had to stoop to pass through it.
Hawke figured they'd traveled about a hundred feet when they came into the next room.
It was round, with a domed ceiling, the entire space decorated like the first, with human skulls crammed together, floor to ceiling. In the very center of the room, directly beneath the dome, was a large circular structure.
'And what might that be?' Hawke asked, shining his light on the thing. It was a circle of stone, perhaps eight feet in diameter, and it rose about four feet from the earthen floor, which was covered with the small white pebbles. From Ambrose's vantage point, the structure looked to be empty.
'Well, it's definitely not a child's wading pool,' Congreve said, advancing slowly toward the thing. It was very, very old stone, and the exterior was decorated with carvings and hieroglyphs similar to those on the obelisk in the graveyard above. Ambrose dropped to one knee and began examining the symbols carefully with his omnipresent magnifying glass.
'Have you been inside the catacombs beneath Rome?' he asked Hawke.
'No.'
'You'll find similar structures there. This is a fountain, oddly enough. At one point, the room surrounding this fountain was filled with hundreds, perhaps thousands of human bones.'
'That fountain is where the smell is coming from.'
'I noticed that,' Congreve said. 'Look inside, please.'
Hawke held his breath, put one hand on the rim, and looked into the fountain or whatever it was. The stink was coming from the stuff at the bottom, a foul grey sludge that stank to high heaven. Clearly the source of the foul underground air.
'Disgusting,' Hawke said. 'Have a peek.'
Congreve rose and peered inside.
'Yes, just as I thought.'
Saying nothing more, he again donned his latex gloves. Then he leaned over the edge and dipped his right index finger into the pungent muck. Quickly withdrawing it, he held it for the briefest moment under his nose.
'Hmm.'
'I hate it when you say that. What the hell is that god-awful stuff?'
'Sulfuric acid. At one point this fountain was filled to the brim with it.'
'But who-?'
'Our mysterious Mr. Smith. This is where he disposed of his victims. He rid himself of the bodies in this Pagan fountain. Submerged his victims in acid, hopefully postmortem. Completely destroyed the physical evidence. Bad luck.'
'No remains at all?'
'No. I'm afraid we've come all this way for nothing, Alex. Every trace of those poor women's bodies is gone. I know of cases where someone is tried in the absence of any trace of a body. But they are extremely rare. Only a tiny fraction of them ever come to trial.'
'Let's get out of here, then, Ambrose. The stench is unbearable.'
'I agree. I think we might-Ouch! Damn it!'
Congreve stood up, rubbing his right knee.
'What happened?' Hawke said.
'One of those damned pebbles. Dug right into my knee.'
He bent to brush it from his trouser leg, hesitated, then plucked it off his flannel trousers and held it to the light.
'We may be in luck after all,' he said, flicking open his small gold magnifying glass and holding the thing up to his eye for closer inspection.
'Because of that damn pebble?'
'It's not a pebble, Alex; it's a gallstone. Not animal, either. A human gallstone, in fact.'
'Is that proof of anything?'
'Indeed it is. Under a molecular microscope, we might determine the presence of something called Helicobacter.'
'And what might that be?'
'DNA. Human DNA.'
He withdrew a small Ziploc baggie from his rain gear and dropped the precious nugget of evidence inside. Hawke was already halfway through the tunnel, and Congreve quickly followed in his wake.
Considering the horrific stench underground, he was surprised to find Alex Hawke waiting patiently for him at the bottom of the stone staircase.
'What is it, Alex?' he said, joining him.
