“That almost sounds like something a spy would say on a park bench.”
“If you’re taking leave,” Marcus said.“What’s to stop you taking it in New York?I know you’re not working that twelfth-century forgery thing.I checked.”
“Winters barred me from the murder case.”
“Yeh, but she’s away for ten days.”
Kate looked back at the journal on the floor.It wasn't going anywhere.Nothing was changed if she set it aside for a couple of days.A change of scene and task might actually bring her some clarity.
“I’ll look up flights.”
Marcus coughed."There's an oh-five-ten arriving in Newark, oh-six-forty."
“I’ll see if I can get a seat.”
He coughed again. “I er-well, I thought they might go fast, so I got you one.”
“Well, it’s nice to feel wanted.”
“It was Torres’s idea.”
“Oh.So not yours?”
“Hey, no, I mean I was totally in favor of it, Kate, I just.”
“Marcus.I’m busting your chops.See you in the morning.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Monday, February 24th
By eleven, the temporary office was a reflection of Kate’s impatience.A ring of paper coffee cups marched around the wastebasket; an empty tic-tac box sat on top of a full one, peppermint flavor.A stack of legal pads, each deserted after four lines, made a stepped pyramid on the conference table, while the Bureau phone lay face down as if sulking.Beyond the glass, the Fifteenth Precinct kept up its municipal hum: printers rasping, chairs scraping, a detective laughing too loudly at something that wasn’t funny.
Torres was at the OCME.Her last text:Autopsy on Kellermann about to start.Will ring.Marcus had been welded to a phone since nine, working through the list of people who kept Patricia Kellermann’s engine turning.When he finally knocked, he was still wearing the expression he got when he’d had to be polite for an hour straight.
He closed the door behind him with a gentle hip-bump, as if the glass might bruise."Field report," he said, dropping into the chair opposite."Kellermann ran her shop like a lunar colony.Airlock checks, oxygen audits, everyone tethered to mission control.On call twenty-four/seven, weekends, Thanksgiving, your sister's graduation, the rapture.But—" He lifted a finger."—nothing she didn't demand of herself.Her EA swears she slept four hours a night, treated work like a sacrament."
Kate scribbled without looking, a habit more about ritual than memory.“Resentment?”
"Negative," he said."It's almost weird.Stemberg & Luft people spoke of their guy like he was a tax code.Kellermann's people sound like… parishioners.She paid top-of-market.Made the juniors rotate on-call so no one did six weekends in a row.Enforced quarterly vacation.They're stunned, not relieved, except for the guy who found her.He's totally devastated.She was mentoring him through night school law.”
“Which complicates motive,” Kate said quietly.“If Cox’s sermon is about the sin of Sabbath-breaking, he doesn’t care what the congregation feels about the pastor.”
Marcus leaned forward, forearms on his knees.“Someone in accounting said the thing she couldn’t stand was mediocrity.The way she said it made me want her to be my boss.”
“Good for culture,” Kate murmured.“Bad for surviving a zealot with a script.”
“There’s no suggestion she was a crook,” Marcus said.“Unlike Brennan. No murky past.No insider dealings, share scams…”
“So that was a false flag,” Kate mused.“The only sin Cox cares about is breaking the Sabbath.This time round, anyway.”
“Looks that way.”
He watched her face, the way her attention snagged somewhere no one could see.“How are you doing with the inscriptions?”
Kate stared down at the printouts—high-resolution photos of Kellermann’s butcher-block countertop, three lines of angular marks cut with a hand that liked precision.“Not well,” she admitted.“I thought—for a minute—I thought Cox might have abandoned the playground.But this…” She tapped the page.“This is him being Cox: a crazed quizmaster who wants to grade my paper.It’s Ugaritic, Marcus.Canaanite script.The ancient neighbor Israel was warned about.He’s playing with enemy tongues.”
“You’re telling me those little pitchfork-symbols can be translated into plain English?”Marcus peered.
