A Dark Perfection

by James, Mark

  “One last thing,” Prevot said, “something you should be aware of. If the sixth mark is added, it necessarily changes the location for one or more of the original marks, as they were extrapolated by certain calculations and assumptions. Hold on for a moment, let me run the photos through the computer again. Yes, two of the marks have changed positions, albeit slightly. Henri, let me send you the figure to your phone.”

  Garneau thanked his friend and pulled up the new set of marks. He showed Lani the phone screen and she immediately moved over to the laptop and began typing in a command. She connected the dots into another pattern, a six-pointed shape with no lines within.

  She entered the shape into the database for comparison. It returned, none found.

  “Help me, Jack. Do you remember when we were at the cottage talking about the ambassador’s background? What did we say, on his religious affiliation?”

  “He was Jewish,” Garneau interjected, excitement in his voice.

  “That’s right,” Jack said, as they all leaned over the symbol.

  “It was never a pentagram,” she said.

  She enhanced the image:

  “It’s the Star of David. It was always the Star of David.”

  †

  “I have some good news for you,” Dr. Alberghetti said to Biaggi, who was juggling his newly issued picture-phone, trying to get the intercom function to link up as he drove to Siena on another investigation.

  “Yes, Madame Coroner, how are you today?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “What case are you talking about?”

  “The mysterious one. You know, the one that got away – Anderson, the American. You remember – it’s only been two days.”

  He liked a woman who, how should he put it, had spunk. To that end, he’d always dated his share of athletes – dancers, ice skaters, particularly dancers – and always appreciated their will to persevere, in arguments or in life. But he drew a line between that sensation and sarcasm. No wonder she was alone; a complete waste of a pretty woman.

  “Yes, doctor. Two days without your company, the mind reels.”

  It was so easy to get under his skin and she laughed to herself, wondering if she should do it again.

  She decided he was only worth once.

  “I said I would inspect the cranium under better conditions. Before they took the body to Rome, I did just that. I found something interesting.”

  “Proceed. You have my attention,” Biaggi said as he restrained himself from honking loudly at the rental car that changed lanes and nearly drove him off the highway. More female drivers on cell phones, eating french fries, doing makeup, texting, just what the world needed…

  “Yes, doctor, I can still hear you. You were saying, the underside of the skull, more marks…”

  “Not any marks – burn marks. Where the energy, whatever, passed through. Clearly, they weren’t randomly administered.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you have your phone handy, one of the newer ones with the automatic roll-out screens?”

  “Right here, yes.”

  “You should be able to see it. I sent it to your account, the attachment. The center mark – the mark that corresponds to the liquification event – coincides with the tag’s location in the skin above it. I still don’t know why these other marks exist in the pattern around it.”

  He continued to fumble with the phone, slick and much too small for his hands as he tried to access his work account. He swerved and nearly struck a passing car, waving at them in their rearview mirror that he was sorry as the female driver flipped him off.

  “Yes, I think I have it.”

  He looked down at the pattern:

  “The center one, the dark one, that was the killing blow,” she said.

  “Why a pattern?” he asked himself out loud.

  “Sorry, inspector, that exceeds my job description. Oh, I think you’re breaking up…”

  “But I can hear you fine,” he growled.

  “Ciao!”

  †

  “And what was the female’s name from Paris again?” Lani asked as Jack and Garneau stood over her shoulder. “Her last name, Eckenstein, that could be of Jewish descent, correct?”

  “Actually, I recall somewhere,” Garneau said, “that her funeral services were held at a synagogue, somewhere in the south of France, where her parents still live.”

  Lani looked down at the next set of marks, the ones that killed Major Grindel.

  She did a search for his obituary.

  William Joseph Grindel was a member of

  the U.S. Army for twenty-three years.

  Affectionately known to his friends and family

  as Billy Joe, he is survived by his wife, Jolene…

  Services will be held at the First Evangelical

  Church of Christ in Enid, Oklahoma, where he’d

  been a member for over ten years…

  “And Della’s…”

  Della Norine Pearletha Beaufort is survived

  by her mother. Services will be held this

  Wednesday at the First Evangelical Church of

  Christ in Enid, Oklahoma, where she’d been a

  member since childhood…

  “Both were Christians. Before today, nothing that we would’ve ever looked twice at.”

  She entered another command, which brought up a familiar image of Jesus on the Cross. She narrowed the search so that only the cross image appeared, which she moved until it lay over the kill marks.

  “They’re all iconic religious symbols,” Garneau whispered. “But what about the marks for Duff? His was a circle. Does a circle have any corresponding religious meaning? I’ve never heard of that.”

  “Neither have I,” Lani said, hitting the search key.

  For the Celts, the circle was often

  drawn as a protective boundary

  against the powers of evil and

  enemies….

  She hit another.

  In ancient China, the circle

  represented the heavens, with the

  square representing the Earth.

  In their art, a circle placed inside of

  a square signified the union of

  heaven and Earth…

  She hit another and a quote appeared:

  God is a circle whose center is

  everywhere, and whose

  circumference is nowhere

  – Hermes Trismegistus

  She tried again.

  No further results found.

  Jack stood, “We should keep in mind that it’s not the symbols themselves we’re looking for. These symbols are abstractions standing for something else – a given religion. And, as far as I’m aware, no established, modern-day religion uses the circle as its primary symbol. On the other hand…”

  “But, is it actually a circle?” Garneau asked.

  They looked at him.

  “Do you mind?” he said, motioning to the laptop.

  “Please,” Lani said.

  “Look at this closer,” Garneau continued. “We’ve been interpreting the kill marks for Mr. Huff as a circle, but if you look closer, this mark – the one that is farthest to the right, defining the right side of the circle – it is actually slightly out of that line, positioned slightly inwards. Our eyes try to make it into a circle, but it’s not. That may be significant.”

  Lani immediately grasped the meaning and pulled up the biography for Daniel Huff on the church website.

  …although he was raised as a Muslim due to

  his adoptive father’s conversion, Dan found

  the Lord at our church. He was baptized in…

  “And how does the saying go,” Jack said, “once a Muslim always a Muslim?”

  “Actually, that’s quite true,” Garneau said. “Islam believes that if you are born into Islam, or convert thereto, you can never become another faith, even if you try to. Underneath, you are always of Islam. Huff was adopted into a Muslim home and the killer ma
y have classified him as such.”

  Lani commanded the program to superimpose the crescent and star symbol over the marks for Dan Huff and then for the other victims and their symbols.

  “A serial killer who targets different religious denominations. But why?” she asked.

  Jack reflected back on one of Mac’s earlier emails, when they were at the Paris apartment and Mac had provided an update on Aisha and the investigation, and of the bus found in Minnesota, and of the terrorist found inside the grave, and of the crescent and star pendant found clutched in his hand.

  “You know, it doesn’t necessarily have to mean anything,” Garneau observed. “We know a serial killer’s motivations are many times of relevance only to themselves. And a twisted relevance, at that. If we never catch our killer, we may never know.”

  “That’s true,” Jack said, “but there’s something else that keeps telling me, not this time around. I don’t know why.”

  “To be honest,” Garneau smiled, “I feel the same. There’s something here, something within these symbols – perhaps in their progression, perhaps within their tied meanings.”

  Lani continued staring. “Maybe, their meanings aren’t as separate symbols. Perhaps, they have one meaning, all together – a combined meaning.”

  Garneau became encouraged, “Do you mean the progression aspect, that the killings – from Judaic to Christian to Islamic – possesses a meaning in and of itself?”

  “Yes, perhaps, but I was thinking more along the lines of the symbols standing for religion in general. If you combine them together, they stand for ‘religion’ in our world. And, if we follow that logic, then it’s possible that the kill marks on other victims, unknown victims, would similarly represent some other religion. If we find another victim, then we’ll know.”

  “And maybe it’s even simpler than that,” Jack noted, “Ask: what is a religion? It’s an abstract word that stands for a group of people, ones who agree to a certain set of beliefs. And what is the common belief amongst them all? They are each a group who believes in a God, or in some type of God.”

  “You mean,” Garneau said, “that the symbols stand for all the people who hold that belief? That the killer hates that belief, hates God, and wants to kill anyone who believes in him?”

  “Or, her,” Lani smiled.

  Garneau smiled back, “My apologies, Agent Kinkaid – and, of course, to my wife. No, what I meant is that a given serial killer’s hating of God, the same God that put him in this world, is hardly a novel motivation for psychopaths. I do like the line of thinking, though. It possesses a certain symmetry.”

  They all stood and stared at the symbols, trying to pull more from them. The minutes dragged on. Garneau finally said, “Well, I must be blocked. I stared at the ambassador’s marks for hours before anything came to me. May I make a suggestion? Let me take all of this back to my superior, Jacques-Louis Chastain, the Director-General of the NSN. He can get us some help from our Security Intelligence Service. Maybe the intelligence experts can tell us more. I would also like my academic contacts to take a closer look. We could meet back here later this afternoon.”

  Jack and Lani looked uncomfortably at each other. Further contact with French law enforcement was not in their plans and their thirty-six hour reprieve was falling away fast.

  Garneau gathered his coat and walked towards the door, turning to say something before Jack sternly interrupted, “I’m afraid that’s not going to work for us, inspector.”

  Jack stood, his sudden height making Garneau pause. Garneau’s intuition had sensed something earlier, momentarily ignored in his focus over the marks. Similarly, when he now looked closer at Agent Kinkaid he realized he’d initially been wrong, having been fooled by her upturned eyes. Her skin wasn’t Asian; it was more Polynesian, more golden. And Agent Eubanks, now that he was standing, he was taller than he’d originally calculated. It had started to come to him, this sense, about the time that Agent Kinkaid had made her reference to God – namely, that these two supposed agents weren’t who they said they were.

  Garneau reassessed what was standing in front of him: A tall American male traveling with a petite Polynesian female, overly concerned about the circumstances of this meeting and possessing a desire to overcontrol the situation, offering vague reasons for why they were in Paris and why they hadn’t contacted him before arriving. And then there was the letter – Did you see their eyes? Hardly normal protocol between the FBI and his department. Perhaps they didn’t realize that the Interpol photos were pasted all over Paris and that one didn’t easily forget a face such as hers.

  Garneau stared back at Jack, brought his hand to his face and slowly pointed to a place near his own eye, the same place where Jack’s unnatural line had formed. “I think your cheek is coming off, Agent Eubanks. Or, should I say, O’Neill?”

  Jack tensed, leaning slightly forwards. Garneau noted the change in stance and also Lani’s mirroring it directly to his right. “You know,” he said casually, trying to put them at ease, “I’d heard of the new skin applications. I assumed, however, that it was just another rumor. Intriguing.”

  Jack and Lani continued to stare intently.

  “There’s no need to worry,” Garneau continued, his voice calm and even, “I’m essentially untouchable in my department and could retire tomorrow. So, making my mark at your expense is of no interest to me. I was pulled off my case and, it appears, so were you, albeit more roughly. My interest is in solving these murders, nothing more. We remain allies in this…quest.”

  Garneau thought back on Prevot’s lab. “And I simply don’t believe the charges against you. They don’t make sense. None of this does.”

  Lani looked to Jack.

  “You can trust me, Ms. Keno – I’m a paragon of discretion. No one will know you are here.”

  The room became preternaturally quiet.

  Jack squinted, trying to think through their options, attempting to discern the telltale twitch at Garneau’s jaw that would tell him that the Frenchman was lying. He gauged that Garneau was approximately ten feet away and had analyzed Garneau’s probable reaction time, determining that he could be across the desk and subdue the older man before he was able to open the door further.

  What would they then do with Garneau, he had no idea.

  The pale blue light activated at the side of the laptop, indicating a message. It could only be from Mac. He looked up at Garneau and then back down. Slowly, he accessed the email account.

  URGENT: Net in Paris remains down,

  but the GMA is instituting a city-wide

  sweep, have twisted arms and brought

  in French intelligence and the city

  police. They know you are there,

  obtained the London orb data and

  figured it out. I have a place in

  Germany nearly set up – via Merkel,

  so it’s good. Time to get out of

  France. Will re-contact you in

  1 hr. Be safe, Mac.

  Jack looked over at Lani. Their options were closing in.

  He decided to take another chance. “Inspector, it’s not that simple.”

  Garneau looked towards the door, realizing he may have misjudged his vulnerability.

  Jack shifted his weight and offered a conspiratorial smile. “I’m afraid we’re going to need your help.”

  †

  Many people believe that what is ‘Satan’ has always been against what is ‘God.’ But that is not true. Satan was originally the closest to God, his highest angel. Satan became “evil” – or, that which is against God – when he became jealous of Jesus, when God chose Jesus as his son before his first angel, that he would choose a flawed human first. The first angel “fell” when he rejected Jesus, when he rebelled against God. His battle was with humans, trying to show God his mistake. His original sin was envy.

  31

  The street corners bounding the park were quiet, which he considered normal for a Saturday morning. T
he Spaniard pushed aside a paper bag, long ago discarded, from his firing position in the window of the empty hostel. This place, it was not what he would have normally chosen for his aerie, his killing perch, but it would have to do. Mostly, though, it was its emptiness that had attracted him; the ragged drape that he’d seen hanging from one of the windows as he’d walked the neighborhood, telling him that no one lived here, its ‘For Lease’ sign foretelling that he wouldn’t be disturbed.

  As was his practice, he arrived several hours early to prepare his position – to position the chair, erect the tripod and adjust its height, assemble the rifle and attach the scope, then adjust it together as if a singular machine. He looked up and saw the sun rising higher. He extrapolated where the rays would strike when he sighted the targets, whether it would cause any flash in the scope.

  He noted that the tracking device he’d placed on Garneau’s Citroen had begun to move, traveling north and ending four hundred feet away.

  His attention was drawn to a man in a trench coat and hat crossing the street and walking down the sidewalk that fronted the park. He looked farther down the street, from where the man had come, and noted Garneau’s distinctive Citroen parked beneath a tree approximately twenty cars down, hiding in a tree’s shadow.

  He watched as Garneau walked to the corner and stopped. As always, the Spaniard could feel the surreal progression of it all: from the initial client assignment to his surveillance of the kill zone, from the receipt of the compensation to the action itself, all like liquid mercury, each event flowing into the next.