A section of raffia cord, with a burned end.
In Sweetwater’s apartment in Venice.
“Knots? What do you mean?”
“Knots. Every few inches, a little knot had been tied in the string. Then it had been set on fire and dropped into the basket, along with some broken pottery. Like a flowerpot, sort of. We have it all here, if you want it.”
He was looking through the closed wooden door but his mind was back in Cortona, in Naumann’s rented room at the Strega hostel, and Brancati’s description of what his men had found there.
“Mr. Naumann bought a bottle of Chianti and some cigarillos. He smoked the cigarillos and drank the Chianti and slept on top of the bed. At one point he smashed an old pot filled with morning glories, and then he made a small fire in the wastepaper basket—”
“He started a fire?”
“Yes. It set off the smoke alarm. The clerk went up. Mr. Naumann did not open the door. He said it was only a cigarette. He was very apologetic. The clerk went away.”
“He broke a flowerpot?”
“Yes. It was full of morning glories. Moonflowers. They were in one of those tall round things, like you would put white wine bottles into. To keep them cool.”
“Did any of you touch the pottery?”
“Touch it?”
“Make skin contact with it. Breathe it. Any kind of close contact?”
“No. Our people always use masks. That’s standard.”
“Were there any flowers in the pot?”
“Flowers?”
“Yes. Flowers?”
“Yes. I think so. White ones. Large.”
“Morning glories?”
“I suppose so, Micah. I don’t do shrubbery.”
“Where are they now?”
“The flowers?”
“Yes, Mandy,” he said, sighing a bit. “The flowers.”
“It’s all in a sealed box by the door. Everything. Stallworth told Forensics to leave it all for you. They didn’t like it much, but Stallworth made it clear to everyone that you were lead on this one. I had to sign off for it, but it’s all there. The security tapes, digital shots of everything. The alarm company log. Photos of… of them.”
“In my briefcase. The tan one by the hallway chair. I have a paper sack sealed inside an evidence bag. Inside the sack there are some pieces of broken pottery, a pack of Toscanos cigarillos, and a little leather bag with some kind of powder. Take everything you found here, and crate it up with the rest. Including the morning glories. All of it has to go to Stallworth at Langley in a diplomatic pouch. Mark the shipment with a Hazmat tag and send it triple-sealed in a vacuum canister.”
“Why the flowers, Micah?”
“If you get a knock on the door and you see it’s a man delivering flowers, do you open the door?”
“Depends on the flowers. Or the man. But probably yes.”
“And if the flowers are morning glories?”
“I’m not following.”
“Morning glories, at least the kind called moonflowers, are nocturnal. They only open their petals at night. In the daytime, the flowers are curled up tight. But at night, they open.”
“And?”
“What if you put some sort of fine powder into the petals and let them close naturally. When they opened, in the middle of the night, the powder would be released into the air. If the house is air-conditioned, the currents would carry the powder everywhere. You follow?”
“God. Is that what happened here?”
“I think it’s… possible.”
“God. What was the drug? Pixie dust?”
“More like angel dust. Make sure nobody has any unprotected physical contact with it. Tell Stallworth it’s all got to go straight to our Hazmat labs. If he asks, tell him I think it’s what killed Porter.”
“Was Porter killed? Stallworth says it was a heart attack.”
“Maybe it was. But I want to know what caused the heart attack.”
“Micah, do you think Porter might have committed suicide?”
He took a while to answer. Her eyes never left his face.
“No,” he said, finally. “No. I don’t.”
“If it wasn’t suicide, what was it? An accident?”
“No. It was no accident.”
“Then it was murder? Do you have a target?”
Dalton didn’t want to open up the issue of Mr. Sweetwater with Mandy — or with anyone else at London Station. And Stallworth had made it brutally plain: whatever he got, it all went straight to Jack, and no written reports. Verbal only, face to face in Langley.
“Maybe.”
“But you’re not going to tell me who it is?”
“No. I’m not.”
“That’s okay. I can live with… I can accept it. I’m just…”
Mandy’s face showed relief and pain in equal parts. She had carried a torch (Dalton had always assumed an unrequited torch) for Naumann for years. Naumann’s marriage had not been a happy one in its later years, and the girls had poisoned whatever peripheral joys might have been possible. Although Naumann had never admitted it, he held Joanne responsible for what the girls had become. Mandy had been afraid that Naumann had simply run wildly off the rails: perhaps he had killed his family in the middle of some kind of annihilating domestic rage, and then gone to Venice to commit suicide.
And it was true that Naumann had been completely off the grid for days. That was why Dalton had been sent out to find him.
But if he’d been murdered, then everything changed.
Murder, though terrible, absolved him.
“Okay,” said Mandy, coming back. “The evidence bag overnight to Langley. Anything else?”
“Did they fix the time of death?”
“Tentatively. Stallworth wanted the bodies left in place for you to see, so Forensic couldn’t do anything with stomach contents. But the degree of decomposition, lividity, internal temperature. They placed it on or about three or four days ago. Which fits with the time marker for the camera failure.”
“Jesus. Four days. Are they still in one piece?”
“Yes. Feel how cold the house is? The air-conditioning has been left on Full for days. The master bedroom has condensation on the inside of the windows. The bathroom feels like a meat lock — like an icebox.”
“So it was done on purpose? To preserve the bodies?”
“One would assume. It’s summer. The scent of corruption would have gotten out pretty fast. This way, discovery is delayed.”
“Any sign of forced entry?”
“No. The front door was dead-bolted from the inside. And we saw Joanne go to the door to open it. That’s the last image. But the whole place had been wiped clean. Along with the door latch. There were no prints at all. Kitchen. Bathroom. Bedside tables. Nothing. Not even Joanne’s. As I said, whoever wiped the place down was a professional. Flowers. You said she would have opened the door to accept flowers. Once the flowers were in the house, and the drug in the air, then the man could have come back later and gotten in, knowing that the people inside were… Would they be unconscious?”
“Possibly. All right. Good work. Thank you, Mandy.”
“You’re welcome.” She sighed, turned to the door, her back stiffening and her face growing even more pale. “Okay, then. We might as well go in.”
“You don’t have to come.”
“I owe it to her. Besides, I’m the one who found them.”
“Please, Mandy. Stay here.”
She wavered, her porcelain skin growing paler. She had a fan of delicate wrinkles at the outer edges of each eye, and her upper lip was incised with vertical creases that deepened as she tightened her mouth.