38
The four of us downloaded the text to The Decameron from the Internet, then Jake offered to investigate the first three stories that were told on the fourth day, Cheyenne took stories four through six, Kurt, seven and eight, and I agreed to study the last two.
Kurt suggested we reconvene in an hour, at 3:30. I figured that the Denver Public Library, which was only a couple of blocks away, would likely have commentaries that might include additional details and background on the stories we were studying, so as the four of us dispersed to do our research, I grabbed my laptop and hit the sidewalk.
Ever since Tessa and Dora had arrived at the house, they’d been lounging on Tessa’s bed, going through the items in her mom’s memory box, and Tessa had been telling her friend stories about the objects she remembered.
The girls were about to start reading the letters when Dora announced that she’d missed lunch and was starving and had to eat something or she was probably going to keel over and die.
Whatever.
But Tessa realized she was pretty hungry too.
So, to the kitchen.
Dora opened the fridge, grabbed a Sprite for herself and a root beer for Tessa. “So he won’t even let you see the diary?”
“Not yet, no.” Tessa dumped some tortilla chips into a giant bowl. Set it on the counter next to a smaller bowl of salsa. “I need to find a way to convince him to give it to me.”
Dora closed the fridge. “How are you gonna do that?”
Tessa shrugged and picked up the bowl of tortilla chips to head back to the bedroom. “I don’t know.” Then she noticed that the bowl was almost as big as the pot of basil had been.
A shiver.
She set it back down.
OK. Think about something else.
She went for two cereal bowls instead, transferred the chips into them, and then stuck the big bowl back in the cupboard. She hadn’t told Dora about the flowerpot and what was probably-almost certainly-inside it. She didn’t even want to think about that. “C’mon,” she said. “Let’s go read those letters.”
They grabbed their snacks and returned to the bedroom. But Tessa noticed she wasn’t nearly as hungry as she’d been a few minutes earlier.
I found the collections of Boccaccio’s writings in the 853s on the third floor of the Denver Public Library, sandwiched between the other volumes of Italian prose.
Of the sixteen books about Boccaccio or The Decameron, twelve were translations, two were comparative literature studies of Boc-caccio’s writings and Chaucer’s, and two focused on Boccaccio’s other works.
None of the library’s five commentaries about The Decameron were on the shelf.
I checked the computerized card catalog and found that all five were checked out, but when I asked the library’s director which patron had them, she told me she couldn’t release that information.
“Yes, you can.” I showed her my FBI badge. “And I’ll need a list of everyone who’s checked them out over the last twelve months.”
She shook her head.
“This is a federal investigation.”
“And this is a public library.” The woman folded her arms. She had a haircut only a librarian could love. “There are laws to protect people’s right to privacy, you know.”
Technically, she was correct, but the right to privacy isn’t a constitutional right, just an imputed right, and can therefore be overridden for things such as terrorist attacks, national security, or imminent threat. “People’s lives are in danger,” I told her.
“So are people’s rights,” she replied stiffly. “Come back with a warrant and we’ll be glad to help you.”
My jaw tightened. Over the years I’ve requested more than my share of search warrants and I knew we didn’t have enough information yet to get one for the library records. Besides, it would take an hour just to fill out the paperwork.
Forget it. You can always follow up on that later. Just get to the stories.
I went back to the 853s and chose the translation with the most footnotes-John Payne’s 1947 translation from Italian into English, rather than the 1942 translation we’d downloaded off the Internet.
Then, I began to read the ninth and tenth stories of the condemned book that had, by all appearances, inspired a man to kill at least seven people so far this week.
Giovanni sat at his desk and thought about the next six hours, thought about the man he was going to abduct and the rather unsettling way he was going to die in story number six: the tale of the greyhound and the convent and the silk sheet that would be covered with soft, graceful rose petals the color of bloody sunlight.
And so.
Giovanni had the straight razor and hypodermic needles with him.
He checked the time: 2:53 p.m.
Thomas Bennett would get off work in less than two hours.
And he would be dead in less than twelve.
It was perfect.
When the authorities had offered Amy Lynn Greer the chance to be sequestered in a safe house for the rest of the day away from the prying eyes of Benjamin Rhodes, it was an offer too good to pass up.
She had her son along, sure, but that wasn’t such a big deal. The safe house was stocked with plenty of children’s videos and toys.
And she had her computer with her.
That was all she needed.
Earlier in Rhodes’s office, the girl whom Agent Bowers had identified as his stepdaughter had become upset when she connected the pot of basil with the name John, and right after that the authorities had hustled the pot away, so Amy Lynn had spent the last hour researching connections between the name “John” and the spice “basil” while her son played with Legos and watched TV in the adjoining room.
And when she found a poem by Keats about a head that was hidden in a pot of basil, she decided it had to be related to the fact that Governor Taylor had been beheaded on Thursday night.
She could hardly believe how big this story was. Even though Sebastian Taylor’s death was receiving nonstop media coverage, as far as she could tell, no one else had made the connection to the pot of basil.
The pot had been sent to her.
The killer had contacted her.
Had chosen her.
She could write the story no one else could ever write.
But she needed just a little more information to do it.
One news commentator had mentioned that there had been two anonymous phone calls reporting the location of the bodies.
Amy Lynn knew that sometimes audio files of 911 calls get posted online, so she took a few minutes to search for them but came up empty. Which meant, if she were going to find out what those tapes said, she would need to call her source at the police department.
Not her husband. No. She couldn’t use him. The man she was thinking of worked in the EMS dispatch office.
It was a friendship she’d never taken the time to mention to her husband. It wasn’t anything serious, they’d shared drinks a few times, met for coffee, nothing compromising, but it had paid off for her in three previous stories.
With office buzz in the EMS department, who knows what he might have heard.
She closed the door to the safe house’s bedroom to make sure the federal agent watching TV with her son in the living room wouldn’t overhear her conversation. Then she pulled out a notepad and called her contact’s cell number.
He answered after one ring. “Ari.”
“Ari. It’s Amy Lynn.”
A slight pause. “Amy Lynn.”
Dr. Bryant, her journalism professor, had taught her to always start by relating as a person, before ever relating as a reporter. “Otherwise your source might think you’re more interested in the story than in him,” he’d told the class, then he’d paused and grinned. She still remembered that. “Of course, you are more interested in the story, but knowing how to get the information you want without letting people realize you’re using them is the difference between good journalists and great ones.”