detectors. She pushes it into the middle ear and then through the temporal bone to the brain via the internal auditory nerve canal.” Holliday squatted down for a better look. “Apparently it takes a great deal of skill.”
“She?” Sister Meg said.
“Her name is Daniella Kay, the Canadian spouse of a Czech assassin-for-hire named Antonin Pesek. They’re a husband-and-wife team.”
“The boy was murdered?”
Holliday pushed his hand into the open neck of the young man’s shirt and pressed his palm against the bare skin over his heart. It was still warm to the touch. He withdrew his hand, forcing himself not to reach up and close the kid’s staring, still bright eyes. The dulling and shrinking of the eyeballs hadn’t even begun yet.
“Murdered, and not too long ago. Ten minutes, maybe fifteen.”
Sister Meg stood there, stunned, staring at the kneeling corpse.
“Why would anyone want to kill an archive clerk?”
Holliday leaned forward and looked at the ledger on the floor. Blood had pooled into a sticky mass in the center of the page, staining the spidery handwriting on the facsimile, but it was still easy enough to see the ragged tear running down the spine.
“Someone’s torn out a page,” said Holliday. He pushed himself up.
“They killed him for a ledger entry?”
“It’s about the third or fourth page in the next Zeno ledger,” said Holliday. “It’s almost certainly the entry for the return of the Santa Maria Maggiore to Venice.”
“Someone knows what we’re researching?”
“Not someone. The Peseks. They got the kid because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but someone hired them to kill us . We’re the target.”
“We have to tell the police.”
“Not on your life, Sister. We’d be in the glue for days, maybe weeks if we call the cops. They generally follow the line of least resistance in an investigation, which means us. We’ve got to go back to the workstation, wipe it down for prints, then find a back way out of here and a taxi to the airport. When they find this kid it’s going to hit the fan with a bang. I want us on a plane to London before nightfall.”
12
They barely got out of the building undetected, let alone to the airport. Eventually Holliday and the nun found what must have been one of the original winding narrow stairways in a distant corner of the big rambling convent cloister. The dust on the worn stone steps had been recently disturbed. A woman wearing low- heeled shoes; Holliday could see the outline of the square heel and the pointed oval of the sole clearly in the dust. The shoe prints were coming and going. She’d left the way she’d come in.
Holliday could visualize it easily enough: a young man sees a good-looking woman where she really shouldn’t be, but he doesn’t get angry because her smile is so friendly. It wouldn’t have taken her much to get close enough. They would have talked for a moment, standing over the ledger he’d pulled from the shelf.
Daniella Kay would have flirted with him mercilessly. She’d be good at that, hypnotic as a snake. The young man would have barely noticed her slipping the deadly plastic stickpin from her hair, and by then it would have been too late. He’d have died almost instantly, the stickpin skewering into his brain, his head full of the glorious fantasies of older women that only young men believe in.
Holliday and the nun reached the bottom of the narrow spiral staircase. It ended in a tiny dusty alcove and a door that had obviously been recently jimmied, the old wood around the latch splintered and white. Pushing out through the doorway, they found themselves in a small overgrown patch of garden between the wall of the cloister and the building next door.
“Which way?” Sister Meg asked.
To the left, through the trees, Holliday could see the end of one of the canal branches, or ramo . To the right a pathway led out to the plaza around the Church of San Rocco. Either way was
“She?” Sister Meg said.
“Her name is Daniella Kay, the Canadian spouse of a Czech assassin-for-hire named Antonin Pesek. They’re a husband-and-wife team.”
“The boy was murdered?”
Holliday pushed his hand into the open neck of the young man’s shirt and pressed his palm against the bare skin over his heart. It was still warm to the touch. He withdrew his hand, forcing himself not to reach up and close the kid’s staring, still bright eyes. The dulling and shrinking of the eyeballs hadn’t even begun yet.
“Murdered, and not too long ago. Ten minutes, maybe fifteen.”
Sister Meg stood there, stunned, staring at the kneeling corpse.
“Why would anyone want to kill an archive clerk?”
Holliday leaned forward and looked at the ledger on the floor. Blood had pooled into a sticky mass in the center of the page, staining the spidery handwriting on the facsimile, but it was still easy enough to see the ragged tear running down the spine.
“Someone’s torn out a page,” said Holliday. He pushed himself up.
“They killed him for a ledger entry?”
“It’s about the third or fourth page in the next Zeno ledger,” said Holliday. “It’s almost certainly the entry for the return of the Santa Maria Maggiore to Venice.”
“Someone knows what we’re researching?”
“Not someone. The Peseks. They got the kid because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but someone hired them to kill us . We’re the target.”
“We have to tell the police.”
“Not on your life, Sister. We’d be in the glue for days, maybe weeks if we call the cops. They generally follow the line of least resistance in an investigation, which means us. We’ve got to go back to the workstation, wipe it down for prints, then find a back way out of here and a taxi to the airport. When they find this kid it’s going to hit the fan with a bang. I want us on a plane to London before nightfall.”
12
They barely got out of the building undetected, let alone to the airport. Eventually Holliday and the nun found what must have been one of the original winding narrow stairways in a distant corner of the big rambling convent cloister. The dust on the worn stone steps had been recently disturbed. A woman wearing low- heeled shoes; Holliday could see the outline of the square heel and the pointed oval of the sole clearly in the dust. The shoe prints were coming and going. She’d left the way she’d come in.
Holliday could visualize it easily enough: a young man sees a good-looking woman where she really shouldn’t be, but he doesn’t get angry because her smile is so friendly. It wouldn’t have taken her much to get close enough. They would have talked for a moment, standing over the ledger he’d pulled from the shelf.
Daniella Kay would have flirted with him mercilessly. She’d be good at that, hypnotic as a snake. The young man would have barely noticed her slipping the deadly plastic stickpin from her hair, and by then it would have been too late. He’d have died almost instantly, the stickpin skewering into his brain, his head full of the glorious fantasies of older women that only young men believe in.
Holliday and the nun reached the bottom of the narrow spiral staircase. It ended in a tiny dusty alcove and a door that had obviously been recently jimmied, the old wood around the latch splintered and white. Pushing out through the doorway, they found themselves in a small overgrown patch of garden between the wall of the cloister and the building next door.
“Which way?” Sister Meg asked.
To the left, through the trees, Holliday could see the end of one of the canal branches, or ramo . To the right a pathway led out to the plaza around the Church of San Rocco. Either way was
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