by Steven James
But she needed just a little more information to do it.
One news commentator had mentioned that there had been two anonymous phone calls reporting the location of the bodies.
Amy Lynn knew that sometimes audio files of 911 calls get posted online, so she took a few minutes to search for them but came up empty. Which meant, if she were going to find out what those tapes said, she would need to call her source at the police department.
Not her husband. No. She couldn’t use him. The man she was thinking of worked in the EMS dispatch office.
It was a friendship she’d never taken the time to mention to her husband. It wasn’t anything serious, they’d shared drinks a few times, met for coffee, nothing compromising, but it had paid off for her in three previous stories.
With office buzz in the EMS department, who knows what he might have heard.
She closed the door to the safe house’s bedroom to make sure the federal agent watching TV with her son in the living room wouldn’t overhear her conversation. Then she pulled out a notepad and called her contact’s cell number.
He answered after one ring. “Ari.”
“Ari. It’s Amy Lynn.”
A slight pause. “Amy Lynn.”
Dr. Bryant, her journalism professor, had taught her to always start by relating as a person, before ever relating as a reporter. “Otherwise your source might think you’re more interested in the story than in him,” he’d told the class, then he’d paused and grinned. She still remembered that. “Of course, you are more interested in the story, but knowing how to get the information you want without letting people realize you’re using them is the difference between good journalists and great ones.”
“You doing OK, Ari?” she asked warmly. Considering his timorous personality, she’d always found it ironic that in Hebrew his name meant “Lion.”
“I’m good.” He paused. “How are you and Jayson?”
She noted that he hadn’t asked about her husband, just her son, but she decided not to remind him that she was a married woman.
“Just turned three. He’s talking now. He’s a real mama’s boy. Yeah, we’re good.”
“That’s great.”
“Yeah.”
“So, how do you do it? Working, mothering, everything?” It was a subtle compliment bordering on flirtation, and she noticed.
“Lots of day care.” Get to the case. Ask him about the tips. “Hey, I heard about these calls the last couple days. The homicides. That someone tipped off the police.”
Silence.
“Off the record, I was wondering-”
“Amy Lynn, I’m not supposed to-”
“I know, I know. But I won’t use your name. I’ll just say, ‘an anonymous source,’ just like we did last time.”
“Yeah, but last time they almost found out.” He’d lowered his voice. “I could lose my job. They’re really worried about leaks with this one, he’s been killing two people every day-” He cut himself short.
“Two people a day?” She jotted the words “Mounting Death Toll Shocks City” on her notepad. “So they think he’ll kill again before tomorrow?” She spoke without thinking, slipping into reporter mode.
“I didn’t say that.” Slightly defensive. Not good.
“Of course not. No, you didn’t say anything.”
“Maybe I should go.”
Quick.
“You’re right, Ari. Really, look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called. The last thing I’d ever want to do is get you in trouble.”
Wait. Wait.
“Don’t worry about the story. Really. I can… It’s not that big of a deal.”
Wait.
More, a little more.
“It’s really good to say hi, though. Good to hear your voice. I should probably go.”
Wait.
“Good-bye, Ari-”
“Hang on.”
Oh yes.
“One thing.” He spoke even softer than before. “But I didn’t tell you, though. You have to promise.”
This was good. Very good. “No, of course not. You didn’t say a word.”
“I didn’t take either of the tips the guy called in, but I heard people talking.”
She waited, pen poised on her notebook.
“He said dusk was coming, that Day Four would be over soon, that he wouldn’t stop until he was done with the story. I don’t know what it means. No one does. That’s it. But don’t print it, OK? Just say something like ‘the police are investigating the calls.’”
“I promise, I won’t print it.” It was a promise she wasn’t sure she could keep, but it was the right thing to say at the moment. “I wouldn’t want to do anything to hurt our friendship. You know that.”
“Yeah, thanks… um. Hey, I’ve been wanting to give you a call. It’s been awhile since… Maybe we could meet for dinner?”
“Yeah, yeah. That’d be great.” She needed to end this. She glanced at the closed door to the room she was in. “Wait, here comes my editor. I need to go. OK? I’ll call you.”
“OK-”
She hurriedly said good-bye, ended the call, and looked down at her notes: dusk… day four… he’s telling a story… two victims each day.
Maybe the note John left in the pot of basil has something to do with the story the killer is telling.
Slowly she wrote out the words to the note, thinking carefully about each one: “Must needs we tell of others’ tears? Please, Mrs. Greer, have a heart.-”
Wait.
She’d missed a word before. A crucial word-we.
“We tell of others’ tears.”
Her heartbeat quickened.
Maybe John was in the media as well.
He’s one of us.
She pulled up the Denver News’ staff roster on her computer and began to search for anyone who might have recently written a story about dusk, or the fourth day of something, or someone who’d been off duty at the times of the murders.
She would start there. Then move on to other media outlets until she found the man who’d sent her the flowers.
I was deeply troubled by the two stories I read in The Decam-eron.
If our killer really was reenacting the stories told on day four, when he came to the ninth tale he would commit one of the most shocking crimes I’d ever heard of.
The tenth tale was less gruesome, but it left the door open for even more crimes.
My time was slipping away.
I checked out the copy of the 1947 translation of The Decameron and hurried back to police headquarters.
Even though I was anxious to share what I’d uncovered about story number nine, I knew that in order to understand the broader context of The Decameron connection, we needed to start with the first story told on day four.
That was Jake’s story and he was already waiting in the conference room when I stepped inside.
Kurt and Cheyenne arrived less than a minute later, and the meeting began.
39
3:34 p.m.
Kurt got things under way. “This guy has been escalating, and we have a lot to cover. Let’s be thorough, but let’s be concise.” He nodded to Jake. “Talk to us.”
Jake glanced at his notes. “In the introduction to the first story, the storyteller Fiammetta says ‘needs must we tell of others’ tears,’ in reference to the goal they have of telling tragic stories on this day. John simply inverted the first two words to make it into a question directed at Amy Lynn.”
“Since the words weren’t in order, an online search engine wouldn’t have found the phrase,” Cheyenne said. “Clever.”
If there’d been any doubt at all, that reference locked in the connection between the killings and The Decameron.
I caught myself tapping my finger against the table. Stopped.
Jake went on, “This first story is about a father who has some men strangle his daughter’s lover. He sends her the dead man’s heart in a golden bowl, she pours poison over it, drinks it, and dies.�
��
“And I’ll bet she’s found holding his heart against her own,” I said.
Jake didn’t have to glance at his notes. “Yes.”
I had a horrifying thought, but one I couldn’t shake: John made Heather drink a bowl of poison that contained her boyfriend’s heart.
“Wait,” Cheyenne said. “The anonymous caller said that Day Four would end on Wednesday-that’s ten days after Heather and Chris disappeared. And there are ten stories told about others’ tears. So that means-”
“He’s reenacting all ten stories,” Kurt said.
Stillness climbed through the room.
“Well,” Jake said at last. “I’m not sure how he’ll reenact the second story: it’s about a priest who pretends to be the angel Gabriel in order to have sex with a woman who’s beautiful but not all that bright.”
“What happens to the priest?” Kurt asked.
“He’s caught, humiliated, sent to prison.”
“He’s not killed?” I said.
Jake shook his head. “But he is left for a while in the forest, chained to a tree with a mask fastened over his face so he couldn’t call for help.”
“The woman?” asked Cheyenne.
“She survives too.”
Kurt stared thoughtfully at the wall for a moment and then said, “I don’t know of any priests from the area who’ve been caught recently in sex scandals, but I’ll check with Lieutenant Kaison in Sex Crimes, and I’ll give Missing Persons a call.” He scribbled some notes on his pad.
“All right,” Jake continued. “Third story: this one reads like a medieval soap opera. It covers a three-way love triangle gone bad. Really convoluted. In the end, though, one man is poisoned and a woman is killed with a sword.”
“So that must be Ahmed Mohammed Shokr’s poisoning and the stabbing death of Tatum Maroukas on Wednesday,” Cheyenne said.
“Those are my three stories,” Jake concluded.
Cheyenne’s turn. She stood.
“The fourth story obviously relates to Sebastian Taylor and Bri-gitte Marcello: a woman is dismembered before her lover’s eyes, then dropped into the sea, or in this case, Cherry Creek Reservoir. In the end, her lover gets beheaded.”
“So,” Jake said reflectively, “the UNSUB dumps bodies where they can be found quickly, calls in tips, leaves notes.” He paused, looked around the room. “He’s a storyteller. He wants an audience; needs to tell someone of others’ tears.”
“That fits,” Cheyenne said. “Story five is about the pot of basil.”
Something didn’t click. The timing of the crimes was off. “Hang on,” I said. “Heather and Chris disappeared on Monday, but they were found on Thursday. If the killer is reenacting the crimes in order, they should have been found first… Wait…”
“What is it?” Jake asked.
“Remember the temperature in the mine? Forensics measured it at 42 degrees Fahrenheit when they tested the candles. The cooler temperature preserved the body and the heart.”
“So they might have been killed on Monday,” Cheyenne said.
“Yes. For now, let’s call the killer John. If he really is retelling the stories in order and if the priest isn’t supposed to die in the second story-”
“He might still be alive.” Kurt finished my thought.
“Right.”
I felt a small thrill.
Kurt stood. “I’ll put this into play right now; see if we have anything unusual-anything at all-involving priests this week.” He left the room.
“Hang on, Pat.” It was Jake. “The first anonymous tip came in on Thursday; if John killed Heather and Chris on Monday, why wait three days before calling our attention to the crime?”
“Who knows,” I said. “Maybe he waited to give himself a head start. Let’s not worry about reading his mind, let’s just focus on catching him. The first crime occurred on Monday; today is Saturday. That means he’s going to be reenacting story number six today.”
Jake and I shifted our attention back to Cheyenne.
She began to circle the table. “That one’s about a man named Gabriotto who dies of what Boccaccio calls a ‘pus-filled abscess’ bursting near his heart. But remember, this was in the 1300s, so I’m guessing maybe a heart attack; it’s hard to know what Boccaccio might have been referring to.”
“A heart attack?” I shook my head. “Not good.”
“Why’s that?” she asked.
“Given the number of heart attack victims in the Denver metro-plex, it’ll be almost impossible to track. It’s too vague.”
I thought for a moment. “This killer, he’s into spectacle, right? What did you say, Jake?-that he’s a storyteller, that he wants an audience?”
He nodded.
“Then he’d do something more dramatic than just let a man die of a heart attack. Cheyenne, is there anything else in the story he might use? Anything more unusual? More shocking?”
She’d stopped walking and now I noticed her face turning pale. “Before the man dies, he has a dream that a black greyhound attacks him and eats out his heart while it’s still beating in his chest.”
40
A chill.
All three of us were quiet.
For a moment we let the impact of her words settle in, and finally, I asked Cheyenne, “What about the man’s lover?”
She consulted her notes. “She survives. After laying his body on a silk sheet covered with rose petals, she joins a convent. So, I’m not sure that helps us as much. The greyhound connection, though, I think that’s solid.”
I nodded. “So do I. Before we go any further, we need to get some officers on this-greyhound owners, vets, kennels, tracks. Let’s see if anyone’s missing a dog, or if there have been any recent dog attacks. If we’re right, John is going to commit this crime today…” Then I paused. I didn’t want to add the next four words, but I felt like I needed to. “Maybe he already has.”
“All right,” Cheyenne said. “I’ll talk with Kurt and Captain Terrell.” She headed for the door.
I offered to join her, but she called over her shoulder, “I’ll be right back. Give me five minutes.”
After Cheyenne left the room, Jake headed for the snack machines at the end of the hall. I took a moment to jot down the names of the victims and the story details from the crimes we knew about so far, then I tugged out my phone, checked my voicemails, found none, but then remembered I’d promised to call Calvin today.
I tried his number.
No answer. I left a message for him to return my call.
The facts of the case kept tumbling through my mind: the dismemberments, the poisonings, the beheadings, the progression of stories one through five, the pot of basil. The timing and progression I still hadn’t spoken with Tessa since she’d left with Dora. I speed-dialed her.
“Yeah?” she said.
“It’s me. How are-”
“So, was it in there?”
“What do you mean?”
“The pot. Was it in the pot?”
“You said you didn’t want me to tell you.”
“I know, but I’m just wondering, like, was it or-wait. Don’t tell me, OK?”
“OK,” I said.
“But it was there, though, right? The head?”
“We’re not talking about that.”
“Yeah, no, I know. But-”
“Tessa, enough. Is Dora still there?”
“We’re reading through my mom’s shoe box stuff. It’s pretty cool.” A pause, and then, “It’d be better if I had the diary.”
“We’ll discuss that later. How long is Dora staying?”
“She’s gotta leave in an hour or so, but I think we’re gonna hang out later tonight, I guess. Grab supper. See a movie, something like that.”
“Well, if I don’t see you this afternoon, have fun. And I want you back by midnight.”
Another pause. “Yeah.”
“OK, talk to you soon.”
“So are you gonna give me the diary?”
“Not if you keep asking me about it.”
“That’s not even fair. How am I supposed to make my case if I can’t ever talk about it?”
“Good-bye, Raven.”
Silence.
“I said, ‘good-bye,’” I repeated.
No answer. I waited, and finally I realized she’d hung up.
Great.
I was pocketing my cell when Kurt appeared at the door.
41
His face was drawn tight and traced with a weary sadness. “You OK?” I asked.
He nodded and told me that he was fine, and that he had officers following up on all the leads, but I could tell there was something else weighing on his mind.
“It’s not just the case, is it?” I said.
After an awkward pause he said, “It’s Cheryl… but it’s gonna work out. Things are just, you know, a little tense right now.”
Watching his marriage disintegrate had been one of the most painful things for me over the last five months. “Maybe you should take a little time off, work things through,” I said.
He shook off the suggestion. “It’ll be all right.”
“If there’s anything I can do-” But then Cheyenne and Jake stepped into the room, and I thought it best not to elaborate any further.
“Thanks,” Kurt said. “I appreciate it.”
As everyone took their seats, I said, “Before we go on, let’s take a minute to look at what we have so far. Summarize the progression of the crimes.”
I borrowed Jake’s computer, which was still hooked up to the wall monitor, and typed,
Victims:
Monday-Heather Fain and Chris Arlington (found on Thursday)
Tuesday-Unknown. A priest? Still alive?
Wednesday-Tatum Maroukas and Ahmed Mohammed Shokr
Thursday-Sebastian Taylor and Brigitte Marcello Friday- Kelsey Nash (survived) and Travis Nash Saturday-?
We all stared at the list.
“It’s a little overwhelming when you lay it all out like that,” Cheyenne said, mirroring my thoughts.
No one said anything, and I sensed a focused urgency descend on the room.
After taking a few minutes to review the means of death outlined in each of Boccaccio’s stories so far, our eyes fell on Kurt. “Well,” he said, “let me give you the nutshell version: in story seven, two lovers die from rubbing poison-from poisonous toads-against their gums, and in the eighth story two ex-lovers die of grief. The man dies when he realizes the woman he loves is happily married to someone else; the woman, when she attends his funeral.”