The Lost Throne(31)

“Is he an officer?”

“No, sir. He’s a pickpocket. But he has the potential to be so much more.”

Dial laughed as he followed Andropoulos down the steep hillside. They used the same path as the day before, though it didn’t seem nearly as treacherous to Dial. Perhaps he was getting used to the footing. Or maybe it had to do with the sunlight, which was a drastic improvement over a single flashlight. Whatever the reason, he was able to pay closer attention to the terrain than he had on the previous night.

The first thing Dial noticed was the cable-car system that ran across the gorge to Holy Trinity. He slowed his pace when he saw its thin wires bouncing up and down as if they were caught in a violent storm. Then he spotted the reason why. A single monk, wearing a black cassock and cap, was sitting in a rickety cart as it was being pulled toward the top, more than a thousand feet in the air. Dial stopped to stare at the spectacle, and when he did, he heard the distant squeaking of pulleys and wheels coming from somewhere inside the ancient monastery.

Dial said, “You’d have to pay me a lot of money to ride in that thing.”

Andropoulos nodded in agreement. “I once asked a monk when they replaced the cable. And he said, ‘When the old one breaks.’”

“Strangely, I had a friend in college who had the same policy about condoms.”

“Sir, that’s disgusting.”

Dial laughed at his juvenile joke as he continued down the hillside. He knew he couldn’t make comments like that inside the monastery—at least not within earshot of any monks—so he tried to get them out of his system now. It was more difficult than it sounded. Working in a profession that was filled with so much violence and death, Dial relied on humor to keep him sane. Sometimes it was a racy comment. Other times it was a practical joke. Most of the time, it wasn’t meant to be malicious—like teasing Andropoulos about his hair and clothes. He was just having some fun while trying to solve a case that would probably depress him. Otherwise, he figured, he’d have to drink himself to sleep like half the cops he’d met.

In his mind, humor was a pretty good alternative to alcoholism.

Fifteen minutes later, the two of them were inside Holy Trinity, reexamining the crime scene. To Dial, everything looked different during daylight hours. The color of the stone was lighter. The construction of the monastery looked older, somehow more fragile. And the distance to the valley below was much greater than he expected. He glanced over the wall and for the first time could actually see the ground. At least ten people were down there, searching for clues or cleaning the rocks or something. Dial couldn’t tell for sure. Not from this far away.

“Hey, Marcus, do me a favor. Get me the names and backgrounds of all the monks they’ve identified. I’d like to have that ASAP.”

“Yes, sir. Where will you be?”

“I’ll be speaking with Nicolas. I need to ask him a few questions.”

Dial strolled toward the bell tower, glancing down the stone corridors and peeking in windows, hoping to spot the old monk meditating or chanting or doing whatever it is that old monks do. Dial had enjoyed talking to him the night before and looked forward to chatting with him again. Perhaps he could shed some light on the different nationalities of the victims and how he knew about the dead abbot before the police did. That, in particular, still bothered him.

Halfway across the complex, Dial approached the door where he had met Nicolas the previous night. Only this time he was able to see the grain of the ancient wood in the bright sunlight. It had the same consistency as the front gate. Not nearly as tall, yet just as thick and strong. The type of door that would put up a good fight against a battering ram.

Dial was about to knock when he noticed a large stain between the handle and the antique keyhole. The smudge was six inches long and the color of rust. If he had been sightseeing or entering an office building, Dial wouldn’t have given it much thought. But in the context of a crime scene, he crouched down for a closer look.

Except in rare circumstances, Interpol never handled forensic evidence—that was the job of the local cops who would eventually prosecute the case—yet Dial had worked enough murders to recognize blood when he saw it. And this stain was blood. No doubt about it. From the look of it, someone had tried to open the door with bloody hands. Whether the person had been successful or not was a different matter altogether. But someone had definitely tried to get inside.

The question was, why?

It wasn’t the only thing that popped into Dial’s mind. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if the stain had been there the night before, when he talked to Nicolas. The only reason Dial had approached the door to begin with was because there was a bright light shining under it—not because he had spotted the blood. Without the light, he would have kept on walking.