Page 22 of Go Home (Kate Valentine #1)

Around Christ’s plate, there were two pieces of bread, instead of four.

The roles of Judas Iscariot and Peter were reversed: Peter was clutching the purse, while Judas brandished the knife.

Meanwhile, instead of pointing with a skeptical index finger, “Doubting” Thomas held up two digits – index and middle – as if he was making a blessing.

And under the right-hand side of the table, there were more sandaled feet than there were Apostles…

The email had been sent to Kate’s FBI address at five-oh-four a.m. That disturbed Kate more than anything else.

It was the precise time she woke up every morning, the exact time she’d been waking up, groggy and under-rested, ever since a date was first set for Denton’s execution.

She’d never told anyone about this, never written it in a letter or an email or a text message.

But someone knew this detail. Someone knew it, and they wanted her to know that they knew it.

Unless it was just chance. Purely random that the email had gone out at a time that happened to mean something to her. But the longer this case ran on, the less Kate believed in words like random and chance.

The email appeared to be from A.D. Winters, and the title was Urgent Updates.

As it opened, a hi-res image appeared on the screen.

It was da Vinci’s famous “Last Supper,” or rather, a cleverly adapted version of that fifteenth century mural.

Underneath it, three blank boxes. Their meaning and purpose weren’t immediately clear; it was Marcus who’d first spotted the extra feet underneath the table.

Further analysis of the image revealed a number of subtle variations from the original.

“What if it’s a Spot the Difference?” Marcus had said. “You put the number of differences in the boxes and that…”

“What?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It reveals a message?”

“So we’ve potentially got to spot anywhere between a hundred and nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine differences between the original and this doctored copy?”

“Nobody said it was easy. Anyway, there’s got to be some kinda cheat software we can use.”

The IT team were working on that. In the meantime, Kate and Marcus were back to spadework.

Digging for connections between the locations, the witnesses, individual bits of evidence.

Spadework, along with cellphone mast triangulation, actually solved ninety percent of their cases nowadays – though that never featured in the TV shows and the movies.

The audience would find it boring. They liked to think of the Bureau as a crack unit of geniuses, swimming, swinging, and leaping their way to justice, while solving conundrums in their heads. If only…

Kate was having trouble concentrating. She sensed a shift in the case, and not a good one.

Previously, the killer’s enigmatic puzzles had been placed at the crime scene.

But the da Vinci picture had been emailed directly to her.

So, did that mean that there was a killing that they didn’t yet know about?

Would there be one, or worse still, was the killer implying that they could even prevent it by solving the puzzle quickly enough?

Could they be looking at a copycat? That seemed unlikely, as they’d released only the most rudimentary of details to the media so far.

It only served to remind her, though, that Winters intended to brief the press this evening.

“You come across the name Gregory Mercer?” Marcus asked suddenly. Kate almost jumped, so lost as she was in her own spiraling doubts and concerns. She glanced over at his screen. A wild-eyed arrest shot of a pale and gaunt young man with an unruly shock of bright red hair.

“Religious blogger,” Marcus explained. “We’re all doomed, that sort of thing. Seems to believe there’s a coming Apocalypse and only a handful of the righteous will survive. That’s his arrest photo from Stelling County PD.”

“What did he do?”

“Dangerous driving,” Marcus explained. “Earlier this year. When asked why he was doing ninety miles an hour on a residential street near an elementary school, he said it was a test of faith.”

“What did he get?”

“Ninety days county jail. Banned for two years. He believes it was all foretold in the Book of Hosea.”

“Of course it was,” Kate said. “Why’s he pinged?”

“He won a scholarship to Brantley College. Studied under Whitman. Dropped out after a year.”

“Reason?”

“Doesn’t say. Meanwhile, growing up in New Manchester, Pennsylvania, guess who teaches his Confirmation Class.”

“Father Tom? So, he’s linked to both victims.”

“Not just linked. Take a look at his blog.”

Mercer’s blog was entitled “The Pulpit of Fire.” His most recent post bore yesterday’s date, and it referenced his connection to both of the dead men. Kate read aloud.

“The prophets spoke of God acting through history, of His Will being expressed in the rise and fall of Near Eastern kingdoms. Only a fool would think this phenomenon belongs only to Biblical times. The deaths of Professor Alan Whitman and Father Thomas Grayson are evidence of the Divine Will in action. Both were blasphemers, despoilers of the True Faith, who considered themselves above His Law. As a teenager, I witnessed Father Thomas making a mockery of the vows of the priesthood. As a scholarship student, I witnessed Professor Whitman, time after time, declaring human reason superior to faith, dismissing God’s Revelation as illusion, wish-fulfillment, tricks of the light and patterns in the clouds.

Should we be surprised that God sent purifying fire to the doors of these arrogant, pride-bloated servants of Baal?

” Kate rubbed her eyes. “There’s more, but you get the picture. ”

“I think we should talk to Mr. Mercer.”

“We should -”

Kate’s phone rang. It was the IT team. She had a brief conversation.

“They’ve rigged up a way of comparing the doctored painting with the original. It scans each pair of pixels in turn.”

“So it’s gonna be ready by Christmas.”

“No, it’s going to be done in a few minutes.”

Marcus shrugged. “No problem. I’ll fetch ol’ Fiery Pulpit myself.”

“Shouldn’t you take backup?”

“C’mon, the guy looks like he’d blow over in a breeze.”

By the time she’d made it back to her own desk, the email had arrived.

There were one-hundred-and-fourteen differences between the original painting of The Last Supper and the version she’d been sent.

Someone clearly had a lot of time on their hands.

A lot of time, a lot of skill and intelligence, and they seemed to be devoting all these faculties to the business of frightening her.

And why her? Whatever turns this case took, whatever secrets she uncovered, Kate still floundered when it came to this single, simple question. She didn’t know what the killer wanted from her. And for some reason, perhaps because it remained unknown, out of her grasp, that terrified her.

She’d thought already that the number might be 114. But being right gave her no satisfaction. It merely deepened her sense of dread as she typed the numbers into the blank boxes on the email.

The screen went black.

Then. Nothing. It stayed black.

Was that it? All that effort, and the end result was just…

nothing? Behind the blackness, was it wiping her hard drive, downloading all her files, spreading some kind of malware through the FBI’s entire network?

It seemed a little… every-day for this killer.

Like something an ordinary mischief-maker might go in for.

Then the blackness started to roll away, like a window blind being lifted. An image appeared, fuzzy at first, then growing sharper and clearer, as if someone was adjusting the focus.

It was a plastic lunch tray – the sort of institutional-looking thing you’d get at school, or in a hospital. Upon it was a cheeseburger, with some skinny-looking French fries, a gray-colored omelet, and two strawberry yogurts.

Kate knew exactly what it was. It was Denton’s final meal.

She knew it was Denton’s final meal because the governor at the William C.

Weidt Correctional Facility in Pennsylvania had told her.

The details of most murderers’ final meals were shared widely on news channels, social media feeds, and in the newspapers, a macabre source of fascination, it seemed, for a large section of the great American public.

But Denton, trying to stage-manage everything until his last gasp, had refused to have the Last Rites and refused to choose a final meal.

With one hour and twenty-one minutes to go, he’d suddenly backed down on one of these, declaring himself ravenously hungry and, after consulting with prison medical staff, the governor had sent in a tray with whatever happened to be floating around the chow hall after lunch that day.

So the Governor knew. And the prison doctor – the man bizarrely given the job of deciding whether Denton was healthy enough to die – he knew. A handful of people knew. But there were no reporters present. And the world at large did not know about Denton’s Last Supper.

It felt to Kate as if a hand was reaching out from behind that screen and gently squeezing her brain. Saying, without words, I am inside your mind .

I know what you know.

The one-hundred-and-fourteen differences were part of that same exercise in control.

November 4, 2015, was a date burned deep into Kate’s soul.

Like today, it was a Friday. The day Denton attacked and almost killed her.

Kate had lived a life of three parts. There was everything before that day.

There was everything after that day. And there was everything that happened on that day.

Three parts. She knew what it truly meant to be in pieces.

She sat at her desk in a kind of half-trance, staring at the screen, but not really looking at it.

She was surprised to realize that the image had changed.

In place of Denton’s lunch was an illustration from an old book, nineteenth century, she thought, judging by the style and the typeface used in the caption.

It depicted a king – a man wearing a crown, at any rate, brandishing a sword. One of his sandaled feet was on the neck of an enormous felled beast, some mythical concoction of anaconda, dragon, and gargoyle. The caption simply said “The King of Tarshish.”

She looked it up. Nobody could agree where Tarshish was.

It was a country mentioned in the Old Testament twenty-five times.

It had a fleet of ships, and its precious metals were said to be the source of King Solomon’s wealth.

The prophet Isaiah described it as an island.

The Book of Kings said it was a source of apes and peacocks.

Modern scholars thought it might be Sardinia, or Carthage, or Mersin, a city in southeastern Turkey.

Others said it was nowhere, just a term for a far-off place, a Biblical Oz.

Why had she received this picture?

She didn’t know. But she knew someone who would.