“When the Hubble project was launched wasn’t there a lot of noise and protests from various religious groups?”
“Yes,” Pierce answered. He stepped forward out of the shadows and into the light. “I’d just started working here, had to run through protest lines to get to work sometimes: people waving doom and judgment placards in your face, calling it all a heresy, daring to gaze so far into heaven.” He stared hard at the message on the screen, his mind ticking behind his eyes. “I didn’t really connect all that with this until just now, but—”
He snapped to attention. “Come with me, gentlemen, there’s something I need to show you.”
12
Cold neon tubes tinked into life in the visitors’ center as Pierce held the door and Franklin and Shepherd hustled in out of the weather. It was a big, rectangular space large enough to accommodate the busloads of schoolkids who came here every day to look at the old rockets and dream of riding them to the moon. Shepherd had been one of them once.
“In here, gentlemen,” Pierce said, shrugging out of his rain slicker and punching a code into a door next to the ticket desk.
His office had none of the romance of the public areas. There were no pictures on the walls of man’s extraordinary exploration in here, no forming galaxies or wonders of creation, just a framed photograph of Pierce in his state trooper days wearing a dress uniform and looking a little more lean and a lot more mean than he did now. A coffeepot sat in the corner. The heating plate was turned off but the smell of burned coffee still filled the room with a smoky aroma that twisted Shepherd’s gut. He hadn’t had time to eat before leaving Quantico and they hadn’t stopped anywhere on the way. Franklin didn’t seem to need food.
Pierce fitted a small key into a large filing cabinet and heaved open the bottom drawer. “We get crank mail here all the time, mostly reports of UFO sightings and/or conspiracy theorists and moon-landing deniers who think Hubble is NASA’s latest hoax and all the images are done in Photoshop. Most of it comes in as e-mail but we still get some the old-fashioned way.” He lifted a well-stuffed hanging divider out of the drawer and started sorting through it. “This past year it’s gone nuts. I don’t know if it’s all this weird weather we’re having, or the business in Rome that knocked the Church on its ass or what it is but something sure got the doom and damnation crowd all worked up. ’Bout eight months ago we started getting these.” He took a clear plastic wallet out of the divider and handed it to Franklin. It was full of postcards, all variations on the same theme — old-master-style paintings showing a monumental tower under construction. “They’re all pictures of the Tower of Babel. We got the first one in May, then a new one on the first day of every month since. We date-stamp everything when it comes in, so you can see in what order they arrived.”
Franklin snapped his nitrile gloves back on and carefully tipped the cards out onto the desktop. He picked one up, stared at the strange painting for a second, one stone coil inside another corkscrewing up into the clouds, then flipped it over to read the handwritten message on the back:
And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children had builded.
The words transported Shepherd straight back to the oak-paneled horror of his school where his Latin teacher had started each term by reading the same passage from a well-thumbed leather Bible. “The quote is from Genesis,” he said, “the Tower of Babel story.”
“Yep, and they were all sent directly to Dr. Kinderman,” Pierce added. “The postmarks are from all over but the writing looks to me like it’s the same person. I didn’t know what to make of them when they first started coming in, but we keep everything on file, just in case. Each month there was a different quote, always from Genesis and always referring to the Tower of Babel. Then last month we got this.” He pulled a single brown envelope from the file and handed it to Franklin. It too was addressed to Dr. Kinderman only this time with a printed label. Franklin shook out a single sheet of folded paper and opened it to reveal a typed note:
Build not a tower into heaven for the glory of man.
Nor seek to gaze upon the face of God
For His judgment shall be upon you,
Thou Sodomite and member of the occult tribe,
And that right soon.
The servants of the Lord are watching.
You must destroy your tower
And avert your gaze from heaven
Lest your blasphemy bring destruction upon you
And upon all of the earth.
Sacrifice the tower or the faithful servants of the Lord
Shalt sacrifice you
And your blood shalt stand payment for your sins.
Novus Sancti
Franklin looked up at Pierce. “You report this to state PD?”
He nodded. “Fancy language aside it’s still a serious threat. There’s a crime reference number in the file.”
“Novus Sancti,” Franklin muttered. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“It’s Latin,” Shepherd said. “It means ‘new holy’ but by the context I would say it’s being used here as a name.”
Franklin turned back to Pierce. “Did the state-ies follow this up at all?”
“They registered the complaint, told Dr. Kinderman to be extra vigilant, asked me to keep them updated on any new developments.”
“That’ll be a no then.”
Pierce bristled. “There were over four hundred murders in this state last year; they’ve barely got the manpower to investigate those, let alone divert resources to every crazy with an axe to grind.”
Franklin pointed to the fourth line. “What does that mean—Sodomite and member of the occult tribe—are they saying he’s a devil worshipper?”
“Not necessarily,” Shepherd replied. “ ‘Occult’ actually just means ‘hidden’ or ‘secret.’ It could just as easily mean he’s a Freemason.”
“What about ‘Sodomite’?”
Pierce cleared his throat. “Well, that’s a reference to… Dr. Kinderman was — I mean I don’t think he is now, but in the past he had—”
“Dr. Kinderman is gay,” Shepherd cut in to put Pierce out of his misery. “It’s no big secret, it’s mentioned in his Wikipedia entry. When he was a student he apparently had a brief fling with some guy who outed him when his star began to rise. There was a mild bit of tabloid interest at the time but it didn’t fly very far. Dr. Kinderman just made a statement confirming it and saying something like we all do foolish things when young. He also stated that for the past twenty years his only committed relationship has been with his work.”
“That true, do you think?” Franklin addressed the question to Pierce.
“Who can say? What Dr. Kinderman did in his own time is nothing to do with me. He certainly spent a whole lot of time here. He was always around — he practically lived here.”
“Did he seem particularly concerned or surprised when this letter arrived?”
“Like Merriweather said, Dr. Kinderman wasn’t what you would call the conventional type. He didn’t seem scared or anything like that. He listened to what the state trooper had to say about being careful then got straight back to work.”
“What about religion — is Kinderman a man of faith?”