The Fifth Gospel(32)

            Peter dashes away from me to give Simon the handmade card. There are four stick figures holding hands: Mona, me, Peter, and Simon. On closer inspection, however, Mona is wearing a habit. My heart sinks. It’s Sister Helena.

            Simon lifts Peter onto his lap and squeezes him. After admiring the card, he presses his lips into the thicket of wild hair. “I love you,” I hear him whisper. “Babbo and I won’t let anything happen to you.”

            The sink is empty. Dishes washed and cleaned. The sponge looks as if it’s been wrung dry with an industrial winch. I’m surprised Simon was able to stop himself from cleaning the whole apartment.

            “What time does Sister Helena come with the laundry?” he asks.

            I’m too distracted to answer. Now that the mess in the kitchen is gone, what remains is more obvious.

            “Earth to Alex,” Simon says.

            “Peter,” I say, “before we get breakfast, could you go wash your hands?”

            Nervously he traipses down the hall.

            “What’s wrong?” Simon asks.

            Surely he has noticed it, too. I point to the areas where the damage is concentrated. The credenza by the door; the bookshelves; the side table where the phone is kept.

            Simon shrugs.

            “He was looking for something,” I say. “He opened everything with doors. Except that.”

            Eastern Christians keep a special corner in their homes where icons are arranged around a book of the gospels. In our apartment the icon corner is modest—just a dressed-up curio cabinet where Peter and I pray. But in the attack it wasn’t touched.

            “He must’ve known what that was,” I say.

            Nothing but sacred objects are kept in an icon corner. The intruder knew there was no need to look there for whatever he wanted. Almost no Italian layman would’ve known so much about our rituals. Last night’s ideas about a deranged intruder inspired by religious madness already seem impossible.

            Before Peter finishes in the bathroom, I quickly follow in the man’s footsteps. Sister Helena heard him calling for Simon from the hall outside Peter’s room. The hall leads to the bathroom and, across the way, to my bedroom. The bathroom is untouched; so was Peter’s bedroom. I feel an electric tingle down my neck. It looks as if the intruder went straight to the master bedroom.

            My bed is undisturbed. If the dresser drawers were rifled, then Simon erased all sign of it when he dressed after showering last night. But when I look more carefully, I see one shelf was touched: the one where I keep my travel books on the countries where Simon is posted. The volume on Turkey lies on the floor. Below it, an odd gap has appeared on the bottom shelf. Something’s missing.

            “Alli,” I hear Simon call from the foyer. “Come here a sec.”

            My books on the Shroud. They’re gone, along with my handwritten research for Ugo.

            My heart knocks against my ribs. My very first instinct was right. The break-in and Ugo’s murder must be connected. This surely has to do with Ugo’s exhibit.

            “Alex!” Simon repeats, louder now.

            When I walk numbly back to the foyer, he’s pointing at something on the floor. In his eyes is a new wariness. “I’ve been staring at it all morning,” he says quietly. “But it just clicked.”

            “Simon,” I murmur, “whoever did this must’ve known we helped Ugo on his exhibit.”

            But Simon is too distracted to process it. “Notice anything missing?” he says through his teeth.