Sign of the Cross(4)

Boyd smiled at the confused look on his pupil’s face. Refusing to make it easy on her, he said, ‘Tell me, my dear, have you ever been to the Roman ruins in Bath?’

She growled in frustration. ‘No, sir. Why do you ask?’

‘Ah,’ he sighed, remembering the quaint town on the River Avon. ‘There you are in the middle of the English countryside, yet you’re surrounded by relics from ancient Rome. It seems so surreal. Do you know what the most amazing thing is? The baths still work. The warm springs still bubble up from the ground, and the architecture still stands proud. Ancient pillars rising to the heavens from the magical waters below. It is somewhat amazing, if you think about it.’

Confused by his tale, Pelati grimaced. ‘Not to be rude, but what are you implying?’

‘Think about it, my dear. The popes of the 1300s used the Catacombs for protection. However, that doesn’t mean that they built them. The ancient Romans were well ahead of their time. Correct? I figure if they were able to build bathhouses that still work two thousand years later, then they certainly could’ve built some tunnels that were still standing seven hundred years ago.’

‘Wait! So that’s why there were no records of their construction. They were already in place when the pope came to town?’

He nodded, pointing to the documents in her hand. ‘When I found the original scroll, I assumed it was a hoax. I mean, how could it possibly be real? Then I had it tested, and the results were conclusive. The scroll predated the Schism by more than a thousand years, proving once and for all that the Catacombs actually existed. Furthermore, they weren’t built for the popes of the Middle Ages. They were built by the ancient Romans.’

‘A date,’ she demanded. ‘Do you have an exact date for the scroll?’

‘As you know, carbon dating isn’t that specific. The best I could come up with was an era.’ Boyd took a sip of water, trying to prolong the suspense. ‘According to my tests, the Catacombs of Orvieto were built during the life of Christ.’





4


Nearly 300,000 tourists flock to Kronborg Castle every year, but none of them had ever seen this before. And those that saw it wished they hadn’t.

By the time Erik Jansen was discovered, his torso was grayish white, and his legs were light purple, caused by postmortem lividity. Birds dined on his flesh like a country buffet.

A group of students spotted Jansen across the courtyard and assumed that he was a historical exhibit. So they walked closer, marveling at all the wonderful little details that made him seem lifelike: the color of his flesh, the horror on his face, the texture of his sandy-brown hair as it blew in the wind.

They crowded around him, begging to have their picture taken with the display. That is until one of them felt a drop. A single drop. That was all it took. One drop of blood and chaos erupted. Kids were wailing. Parents were screaming. Teachers scurried for help.

The local police were called to the scene but were in over their heads. They were used to car accidents and petty crimes, not murders. Certainly nothing of this magnitude. Yet that was to be expected in a quiet place like Helsingør. It sat on the northwestern coast of Sjaelland Island across the øresund from Hälsingborg, Sweden, away from the city life of Copenhagen. The last time anyone was brutally killed here was back in 1944, and that had been done by the Nazis.

Still, they shouldn’t have made the mistakes that they made. Some of them were inexcusable.

The first squad arrived by boat, landing on the same shore as the killers. Since the castle’s beach was private, the cops should’ve cordoned off the area, protecting all the information that was scattered in front of them. Clues about the murder. The number of assailants. Their approximate sizes. Their time of departure. All of it was there in the sand, just waiting to be found. But not for very long, because the commanding officer failed to think ahead, opting to sprint across the beach like a soldier at Normandy, soon followed by the rest of his men.

In a flash, the evidence was buried.

Of course, their next error was far worse. The type of screwup that occurs when people are crying, sirens are blaring, and there’s no time to think. When the cops reached the body, they heard the story about the dripping blood and assumed that Jansen was still alive. His temperature should’ve told them otherwise. Same with the color of his skin. But as it was, they ripped the cross out of the ground, hoping to bring him back to life with CPR, yet all they managed to do was destroy evidence. Crucial evidence. The kind of evidence that could’ve stopped the killers before they could strike again.

Ironically, their effort to save a life guaranteed that others would be killed.