16

The medical examiner’s office was on University Avenue. When Jessica and Byrne returned to the Roundhouse they had a message from Dr. Tom Weyrich. It was marked Urgent.

They met in the main autopsy theater. It was Josh Bontrager’s first time. His face was the color of cigar ash.

TOM WEYRICH WAS on the phone when Jessica, Byrne, and Bontrager arrived. He handed Jessica a folder, held up a finger. The folder contained the preliminary autopsy findings. Jessica scanned the report:

The body is that of a normally developed white female measuring sixty-six inches and weighing 112 pounds. Her general appearance is consistent with the recorded age of twenty-four years. Livor mortis is present. Eyes are open.

The irises are blue and corneas are cloudy. Petechial hemorrhaging is present in the conjuctiva bilaterally. There is a ligature mark on the neck below the mandible.

Weyrich hung up the phone. Jessica handed him back the report. “So she was strangled,” she said.

“Yes.”

“And that was the cause of death?”

“Yes,” Weyrich said. “But she was not strangled with the nylon belt found around her neck.”

“So what was it?”

“She was strangled by a much narrower ligature. A polypropylene rope. Definitely from behind.” Weyrich pointed to a photograph of the V-shaped ligature mark made at the back of the victim’s neck. “This is not high enough to indicate hanging. I believe it was done manually. The killer stood behind her as she sat, wrapped the ligature once around, and pulled up.”

“What about the rope itself?”

“At first I thought it was a standard three-strand polypropylene. But the lab has pulled a pair of fibers. One blue, one white. Presumptively it was of a type that has been treated to resist chemicals, probably floatable. There’s a good chance it is a swim-lane-type rope.”

Jessica had never heard the term. “You mean the kind of rope they use in pools to separate the lanes?” she asked.

“Yes,” Weyrich said. “It’s strong, made of a low-stretch fiber.”

“So why was there another belt tied around her neck?” Jessica asked.

“Can’t help you there. Perhaps to conceal the ligature mark for aesthetic reasons. Perhaps it means something. The lab has the belt now.”

“Any word on it?”

“It’s old.”

“How old?”

“Maybe forty or fifty years or so. The composition of the fibers has begun to break down due to use and age and weather. They are getting a lot of different substances from the fiber.”

“Like what?

“Sweat, blood, sugar, salt.”

Byrne flicked a glance at Jessica.

“Her nails are in pretty good shape,” Weyrich continued. “We’ve swabbed them anyway. No scratches or bruises.”

“What about her feet?” Byrne asked. As of that morning, the missing body parts had not been recovered. The marine unit would be diving in the river near the crime scene later that day, but even with their sophisticated gear, it would be slow going. The water in the Schuylkill was frigid.

“Her feet were amputated postmortem with a sharp serrated instrument. There is some shattering of the bone, so I don’t believe it was a surgical saw.” He pointed to an extreme close-up of the cut. “It’s more likely to have been a carpenter’s saw. We pulled some trace from the area. Lab believes it was wood fragments. Mahogany perhaps.”

“So you’re saying that the saw was used in some sort of woodworking project before it was used on the victim?”

“All preliminary, but that sounds about right.”

“And none of this was done at the scene?”

“Presumptively, no,” Weyrich said. “But she was definitely dead when it happened. Thank God.”

Jessica made her notes, a little taken aback. A carpenter’s saw.

“There’s more,” Weyrich said.

There’s always more, Jessica thought. Whenever you step into the world of a psychopath, there is always more.

Tom Weyrich pulled down the sheet. Kristina Jakos’s body was colorless. Her musculature was already breaking down. Jessica remembered how graceful and strong she had looked on the videotape at the church. How alive.

“Look at this.” Weyrich indicated a spot on the victim’s abdomen, a glossy whitish area about the size of a fifty-cent piece.

He flipped off the bright overhead light, picked up a handheld UV lamp, and switched it on. Jessica and Byrne immediately saw what he was talking about. There was a circle on the victim’s lower stomach, measuring about two inches in diameter. From her vantage point of a few feet away, it looked to Jessica to be an almost perfect disk.

“What’s this?” Jessica asked.

“It’s a mixture of semen and blood.”

This changed everything. Byrne looked at Jessica; Jessica at Josh Bontrager. Bontrager’s face remained a bloodless gray.

“She was sexually assaulted?” Jessica asked.

“No,” Weyrich said. “There was no recent vaginal or anal penetration.”

“You ran a rape kit?”

Weyrich nodded. “It was negative.”

“The killer ejaculated onto her?”

“No again.” He picked up a lighted magnifying glass, handed it to Jessica. She leaned in, looked at the circle. And felt her stomach drop.

“Oh Jesus.”

While the image was an almost perfect circle, it was much more than that. So much more. The image was a highly detailed drawing of the moon.

“This is a drawing?” Jessica asked.

“Yes.”

“Painted with semen and blood?”

“Yes,” Weyrich said. “And the blood doesn’t belong to the victim.”

“Oh this is just getting better and better,” Byrne said.

“From the detail, it looks like it probably took hours to do,” Weyrich said. “We have a DNA report coming. It’s on the fast track. Find the guy, and we’ll match him to this and nail it shut.”

“So this was painted painted? Like with a brush?” Jessica asked.

“Yes. We lifted a few fibers from the area. The doer used an expensive sable brush. Our boy is an accomplished artist.”

“A woodworking, swimming, psychopathic, masturbating artist,” Byrne offered, more or less to himself.

“Lab has the fibers?”

“Yes.”

This was good. They would get the report on the brush hairs and perhaps trace the brush used.

“Do we know if this ‘painting’ was done pre- or post?” Jessica asked.

“I would say post,” Weyrich said, “but there’s no way to know for sure. That it’s so detailed, that there were no barbiturates in the victim’s system, leads me to believe it was done postmortem. She wasn’t drugged. No one can or would sit that still if they were conscious.”

Jessica looked more closely at the drawing. It was a classic rendering of the man in the moon, similar to an old woodcut of a benevolent face staring down at the earth. She considered the process of painting this on a corpse. The painter posed his victim, more or less, in plain sight. He was bold. And clearly insane.

JESSICA AND BYRNE sat in the parking lot, more than a little stunned.

“Please tell me this is a first for you,” Jessica said.

“It’s a first.”

“We’re looking for a guy who takes a woman off the street, strangles her, cuts off her feet, then takes hours to draw the moon on her stomach.”

“Yep.”

“In his own semen and blood.”

“We don’t know for sure whose blood and semen it is yet,” Byrne said.

“Thanks,” Jessica said. “I was just starting to think I had a handle on it. I was kind of hoping he jacked off, cut his own wrists, and eventually bled out.”

“No such luck.”

As they pulled out onto the street, four words ran through Jessica’s mind:

Sweat, blood, sugar, salt.

BACK AT THE Roundhouse, Jessica called SEPTA. After running a series of bureaucratic gauntlets, she finally spoke to the man who drove the night route that passed in front of the All-City Launderette. He confirmed that he had driven his route the night Kristina Jakos did her laundry, the last night anyone to whom they had spoken recalled seeing her alive. The driver specifically remembered not picking anyone up at that stop all week.

Kristina Jakos had never made it onto the bus that night.

While Byrne put together a list of thrift shops and secondhand clothing stores, Jessica scanned the preliminary lab reports. There were no fingerprints on Kristina Jakos’s neck. There was no blood on the scene other than the trace evidence found on the riverbank and on her clothing.

Blood evidence, Jessica thought. Her mind went back to the moon “painting” on Kristina’s stomach. It gave her an idea. It was a long shot, but it was better than no shot. She picked up the phone and called the rectory at St. Seraphim. In short order she had Father Greg on the line.

“How can I help you, Detective?” he asked.

“I have a quick question,” she said. “Do you have a moment?”

“Of course.”

“I’m afraid it might sound a little strange.”

“I am an inner-city priest,” Father Greg said. “Strange is pretty much my business.”

“I have a question about the moon.”

Silence. Jessica expected as much. Then: “The moon?”

“Yes. When we spoke, you mentioned the Julian calendar,” Jessica said. “I was wondering if the Julian calendar addressed any issues relating to the moon, the lunar cycle, anything like that.”

“I see,” Father Greg said. “Like I said, I’m not particularly scholarly on these matters, but I can tell you that, like the Gregorian calendar, which is also divided into months of irregular lengths, the Julian calendar is no longer synchronized to the phases of the moon. In fact, the Julian calendar is a purely solar calendar.”

“So there is no particular significance given to the moon in Russian Orthodoxy or by the Russian people?”

“I didn’t say that. There are many Russian folk tales and much Russian lore that address both the sun and the moon, but nothing I can think of regarding the phases of the moon.”

“What sorts of folk tales?”

“Well, one story in particular, one that is widely known, is the story called ‘The Sun Maiden and the Crescent Moon.’ ”

“What is that?”

“It is a Siberian folk tale, I believe. Maybe a Ket fable. Rather grotesque according to some.”

“I’m an inner-city cop, Father. Grotesque is pretty much my business.”

Father Greg laughed. “Well, ‘The Sun Maiden and the Crescent Moon’ is the story of a man who becomes the crescent moon, beloved of the Sun Maiden. Unfortunately—and this is the grotesque part—he is torn in half by the Sun Maiden and an evil sorceress as they fight over him.”

“He’s torn in half?”

“Yes,” Father Greg said. “And, as it turns out, the Sun Maiden got the half without the hero’s heart, and can only revive him for a week at a time.”

“Sounds cheerful,” Jessica said. “This is a children’s story?”

“Not all folk tales are for children,” the priest said. “I am sure there are other stories. I would be happy to ask around. We have many elderly parishioners. They will undoubtedly know much more than I do about these matters.”

“I would really appreciate it,” Jessica said, mostly out of courtesy. She couldn’t imagine how any of this could be relevant.

They said their good-byes. Jessica hung up the phone. She made a note to visit the Free Library and look up the story, as well as try to find a book of woodcuts or books dedicated to renderings of the moon.

Her desk was covered with the photographs she had printed out from her digital camera, photographs taken at the Manayunk crime scene. Three dozen medium and close-up shots—the ligature, the crime scene itself, the building, the river, the victim.

Jessica grabbed the pictures and stuffed them into her shoulder bag. She would look at them later. She had seen enough for today. She needed a drink. Or six.

She glanced out the window. It was getting dark already. Jessica wondered if there would be a crescent moon this night.