Present
The island of Naxos, Greece
The Aegean sun rose warm and soft, painting the white hilltop houses in a ribbon of peachy light. Below in the cool shade, the little port town was already busy at work. The smells of coffee and cooking oil mingled with exhaust from mini trucks and scooters zipping up and down the waterfront. Along the quay, old men in coarse woolen sweaters fretted over torn nets, while their sons unloaded glistening cargoes of sardine and squid.
The sounds and smells drifted along an ancient causeway to a tiny island in the harbor. There, under the ancient posts and lintel of an unfinished temple to Apollo, stood a man. He was lithe and limber, but wrinkles had begun to crowd his honey-colored eyes. His olive skin was smooth, his straight jet hair pulled into a sleek ponytail. He wore black shoes, black jeans, and a black T-shirt. A black military-style rucksack lay at his feet. To the people of Naxos, he was just another nameless face, another Instagram tourist on his way to the more popular destinations of Mykonos and Santorini. Yet he was no tourist. He was a killer. And he had a name. To law enforcement agencies around the world, he was known simply as Gryphus.
Now, he shouldered his rucksack and strode along the causeway back into town. Through cobblestone streets, shady and narrow, he worked his way up to the hilltop neighborhood known as the Kastro. Crossing the courtyard of the island's only Catholic church, he came to the pensioner's flat where the old Jew lived. Gryphus had paid him a visit in the night, and now he was returning to finish the job.
Mounting the tile steps, he opened the door and slipped inside. The air was stale, sour with cheap wine. A bare light bulb hung from the kitchen ceiling. Gryphus crept down the hallway and studied the sliver of yellow light beneath the bathroom door. Then he turned the handle and pushed the door inward several centimeters until it struck something hard and dense just on the other side. He leaned into the door, forcing whatever it was to grate across the bathroom tiles.
The old Jew had been dead a while. He sat on the toilet, slumped against the pedestal sink, eyes half-closed to glassy slits, head held strangely erectânot by rigor mortis, but by the lariat of green plastic oxygen tubing around his neck, tethered to the heavy oxygen cannister behind the door. Clutched in the Jew's fist was the ipratropium bromide asthma inhaler Gryphus had left for him the day before. Bloody secretions smeared its mouthpiece. Prying loose the inhaler, Gryphus replaced it with a tiny metal trinket and crimped the dead man's stiffened fingers around it. Then he unloaded his rucksack and got to work.
***
Peter raced through the night, his mind blazing with the news. A police patrol had been dispatched to his father's house in Seattle, only to find it engulfed in flames. Fire crews had been quick to the scene, but it was doubtful that anyone inside the house had survived.
In his heart, Peter knew that his father was dead. Seh-mee-nah see-nah-pees. Whatever those bizarre words meant, the man had spent his dying breath on them.
Peter rounded the final bend of Interstate-90 and shot across the lightless void of Lake Washington, plunging through the city's halogen glow.
He found himself waiting at a familiar traffic light, his heart pounding in synch with the car's turn signal. Veering left, then left again, he came to a stop in the middle of the street.
The cul-de-sac was a circus. Blue and red and white lights flashed everywhere. Fire trucks and police cars idled at haphazard angles. Limp fire hoses crisscrossed the glistening pavement. Here and there, weary firefighters slouched against the fire trucks, talking quietly, their work done. If any of the neighbors had come out to watch, they had long since gone inside.
Peter eased his rental car to the curb, shut off the engine and got out. The acrid stench of fire burned his throat. Radios squawked in the dark. Somewhere a generator hummed. All around the cul-de-sac, people had their lights on. Except for one house, one darkened lot, like a knocked-out tooth.
Nearby, someone had parked a beige truck stenciled on its side with the words, King County Medical Examiner. When Peter moved toward it, two women stepped out of the shadows to cut him off. One was a police officer. She was short and muscular, her dark face soft with concern. The other wore street clothes. She was older, tall and gangly, her pale face drawn out beneath a head of closely-cropped gray hair. She introduced herself as Dr. Cornelia Hoffman, Medical Examiner.
As soon as Peter identified himself, Dr. Hoffman informed him that firefighters had penetrated the charred ruins of the house and located what appeared to be the remains of just one person.
"It's my dad."
She nodded solemnly. "We'll need to confirm it."
"What do I have to do?"
"Get some rest," said the police officer. "We'll post a patrol here."
"A patrol? Why?"
Dr. Hoffman raised her hand. She had long, arachnid fingers. "It's routine with high-intensity fires like this."
"High intensity? What do you mean?"
"We'll know more tomorrow." She handed Peter her business card. "In the afternoon, I need you to come to my office at King County Hospital. I'll be able to tell you more then."
Peter stayed until the last fire truck had rolled away. Under the watch of the remaining police patrol, he approached the line of yellow caution tape draped over the boxwood hedge he had trimmed a million times in his youth. In the darkness beyond, almost nothing remained, just a partial wall jutting out from a jumble of soggy timbers. For a moment, Peter thought he was at the wrong address, that it was all just a terrible mistake.
Then he noticed the silver pickup truck parked under a street lamp to his left. Peter still remembered his mother's fury the night his father bought the truck on a whim. But even without the memory, he would have recognized its bumper stickerâTeuton Pickupâa play on words only a professor of Germanics could appreciate.
Peter approached the truck, glancing over his shoulder as he tried the driver's side door. Finding it unlocked, he slipped inside and sat behind the wheel. Cold lamplight feathered through the rear window, illuminating a scrap of paper tucked between the windshield and dashboard. It was a list of sorts, handwritten, not in English letters of course, but in Viking runes.
Peter had learned the ancient Viking alphabet, the futhark, almost before his ABCs. It was a special language between father and son, a code for sharing secrets, crude jokes, or maybe just gift ideas for Mom's birthday. And whenever Peter's mother would intercept one of these runic transmissions, she would pass it on with a smile, reminding Peter that he owed his very existence to Viking runes. It was the study of runes, after all, that brought a young Daniel Barshman to Norway, where he met his future wife. Peter had even learned a poem about the subject of his father's doctoral dissertation, Olav Tryggvason, the first Christian king of Norway.
Now, holding the scrap of paper up to the lamplight, Peter wondered if it might be another one of his father's secret messages, an explanation for those bizarre words perhaps, seh-mee-nah see-nah-pees. But as he translated the runes in his mind, a dull ache of remorse climbed from the roots of his heart and lodged at the back of his throat. The secret message was nothing more than a grocery listâeggs, butter, bread, cigsâthe litany of a man living alone, a widower.
Peter opened the ashtray to dispose of the scrap when he noticed something lying there on the bed of ashes. It was a small metal trinket maybe a half an inch long. Fishing it out, he placed it in his palm and blew away the ash. It was a charm of sorts, fashioned from semi-lustrous gray metal into the form a mythical creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. A wire hook attached to the creature's spine marked it as a pendant earringâa woman's earring. Suddenly, the lump of remorse at the back of his throat had vanished.
Stuffing the earring into his pants pocket, Peter opened the glove compartment to find a half-empty pack of Chestershire Lights, the only brand the man ever smoked. Bringing the pack to his nose, he inhaled the rich umber scent, recalling a happier time, those autumn days at the zoo, Mom laughing, Dad puffing smoke like a dragon.
A knock on the window startled him. It was the officer from the patrol car, her voice muffled through the glass. "You're not supposed to be in there."
Peter opened the door. "There wasn't any yellow tape, so I thought it was OK. It's my dad's truck."
"Did you touch anything?"
Peter held up the pack of cigarettes and shut the glove compartment.
The officer sighed, glanced over both shoulders, then ushered Peter out of the truck. "Don't worry about it. We'll keep an eye on things tonight."
By the time Peter returned to his apartment, he felt ill, feverish and achy to the bone. His lungs were on fire. He could hardly catch his breath. Something was wrong. Stumbling inside, he emptied his pockets into the candy bowl on the kitchen table: keys, wallet, the pack of Chestershire Lights, and the heavy clank of that woman's earring. Then he went straight to bed.
He awoke drenched in sweat, the weird orange light of dawn seeping through the curtains. Outside his window, the fat gray squirrel was molesting the bird feeder in a vain attempt to get at the last remaining seeds. Too exhausted to care, Peter let himself fall back into a shallow sleep tormented by visions of fire, ash and bone.
He awoke again in the afternoon, this time to a splitting headache and a nasty cough. Sitting on the edge of his bed, he hacked up a glob of rust-colored phlegm. Then he checked his phone. No new calls or messages, just the ones he had missed the day before.
Stumbling into the bathroom, he downed a handful of ibuprofen and stepped into the shower. Whatever illness had struck him, it seemed to be passing quickly, and by the time he had dressed for his appointment with the medical examiner, he felt almost well. It was strange, unlike anything he had ever experienced.
Over coffee and dry toast, Peter reviewed the three missed calls and voice mail from the day before. In the chaos, he had completely forgotten about them. All had come in while he drove through Oregon, his phone set to vibrate. The first two calls were from the same unknown Seattle-area number, but whoever it was, they had chosen not to leave a message. The third call was from his father. It had come in five minutes before that final call, the one Peter answered. There was a message.
Peter tapped the screen and held the phone to his ear, expecting to hear his father's smoky baritone, perhaps those bizarre words again. Seh-mee-nah see-nah-pees. But there was only music, classical music, a familiar orchestral piece in a minor key, the violins and cellos crystal clear. It was familiar, because Peter had been listening to the same orchestral music as he drove his mother's car through the Oregon desert. It was her favorite piece from Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite, "Solveig's Song." He listened again. And again. Then he got up to go.
The King County Medical Examiner's office was at the south end of the hospital, near the loading docks and dumpsters where Peter never had cause to go. Dr. Cornelia Hoffman greeted him in the lobby and led him down a long hallway to a private room. The brown shag carpet and drab furniture gave off a strange, nervous odor, like sweat. Colored Kleenex sprouted from dispensers planted around the room.
They sat on opposite sofas, a low wooden table between them. Dr. Hoffman wore a crisp white lab coat with her name embroidered in red cursive letters over the breast pocket. She sat with her knees together, spidery hands folded in her lap. "I'm sorry to have to ask you here like this."
"I know what I have to do," said Peter, recalling the last time he saw his father, lying there as they donated blood together, a peaceful expression on his face. What did he look like now?
Dr. Hoffman took in a sharp breath. "I'm afraid it may not be what you think." She reached into her coat pocket and produced two clear plastic bags labeled with stickers. Their contents clunked softly as she laid the bags on the table. "These items were found in close proximity to the decedent's remains. Do you recognize either of them?"
Peter held up the first bag. It contained a lump of twisted bluish metal about two inches long. Part of it was flat and blackened, a disc with pale Roman numerals barely visible around the perimeterâa ghostly photo negative of the watch his father had been wearing the day they donated blood together. The watch Peter had bought one Father's Day eons ago.
"It's his."
She nodded for Peter to take the second bag, which held his father's wedding band. He had been wearing it when they donated blood. But except for a little soot here and there, the ring was unscathed. He held the bag close and noticed something he could not have noticed before. The ring's inner surface was inscribed with letters, not English letters, not even Viking runes. They were Hebrew letters, six in all, evenly spaced:
××¢×ש××
"Do you recognize the ring?"
"It's my Dad's"
"May I ask about the inscription?"
"You can ask, but I don't read Hebrew. And as far as I know, neither did my dad."
"But you're sure the ring belongs to him."
"Yeah. It's his wedding ring. Can I keep it?"
"No, unfortunately. Not while the investigation is open."
Peter copied the Hebrew letters as best he could onto a piece of paper.
She laid her hands on her knees. "Now, I need to ask if you know where your father received his dental care."
"You need dental records? What about DNA? I can give you my blood sample. Isn't that how you do it these days?"
"I'm afraid the condition of the remains precludes DNA testing." She let out her breath. "This won't be easy to hear."
"Tell me."
"We were unable to recover very much at all, just ashes really, and a few teeth and long bone fragments."
"Jesus. What happened? That sounds like a cremation oven."
"In fact, the temperature in the immediate vicinity of the remains was considerably hotter than a cremation furnace, somewhere between twenty-seven hundred and sixty-one hundred degrees Fahrenheit."
"How do you know that?"
She pointed to the watch and then to the ring. "Because one melted and the other did not. That watch was made of steel, but the ring is made of heat-resistant tungsten."
"Wait. Are you saying this was arson?"
She nodded. "The investigation team suspects someone used a military-grade incendiary device."
"What? Why would anyone do that?"
She turned her palms toward the ceiling. "I've never seen anything like it."
_________________
Author's note:
Thank you for reading Chapter 5!
Why would anyone set Professor Barshman's house on fire? Why use military grade incendiary devices?
All comments and questions welcome!
-Frode
Photo: Naxos at sunrise
Photo credit: Crash Williams' Blog
https://crashwilliams.wordpress.com