Salem's Cipher Page 6

  Her eyes lit up. “My personal favorite Michelangelo is The Prophet Zechariah, which, if you look closely, features an angel flipping off Pope Julius II.” She lifted her shoulders. “Art nerds love this stuff. It’s our social currency. But yeah, I’ve never heard a peep about anything hidden in a Gentileschi.”

  Salem was studying a hundred angles a second, trying to line up the painting’s dates with the founding of the First Church in Salem. “You said she painted Judith Slaying Holofernes from 1614 to 1618. I don’t suppose there’s any way she could have gone back to the painting to add something new, say a message, around 1629?”

  Sheila tapped her upper lip. “Gentileschi didn’t die until the 1650s, if memory serves, so timewise, it would certainly have been possible. But she wasn’t the only one who could have added something. That painting was incognito for a good chunk of time. People actually mislabeled it a Caravaggio for years, and then it turned up in Boston in the 1840s before finding its way back to the Uffizi.”

  “So it’d be possible for someone to have painted a secret message into it at any time?”

  “Sure,” Sheila said, “anytime until it was placed in a museum under lock and key.” Either her patience or grace had run their course. She leaned forward, lowering her voice. “Can you tell me what you found in it?”

  “Sorry,” Salem said. “I wish we could.”

  Bel nudged Salem, thanking Sheila for the information before leading Salem out and heading toward the main entrance. They wound through crowds to step outside into brisk air that smelled of rotting leaves. A bus full of costumed kids was unloading in the parking loop in front of the institute. They were heavy on the Batman, Disney princess, mermaid, and ninja getups. Normally, the sight would make Salem smile. The day had ground her down, though, her brain a war zone of spinning thoughts and bottomless worries.

  “We both know what this means, right?” Bel shoved her hands in her pockets against the cool fall air. They walked briskly toward the parking ramp.

  “That we need to … ?”

  When Salem didn’t finish, Bel filled in the words, her voice tender. “That we need to fly to Massachusetts to investigate.”

  Salem had feared what the Gentileschi message meant as soon as her phone had translated it, but there was something about Bel saying it out loud that drove it home as real as a nail to her forehead. She would need to leave Minneapolis and the routine that had kept her safe all these years. The thought froze Salem’s blood, turning it thick and sluggish, choking her veins, tracking toward her heart. She breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth, as her therapist had taught her.

  “Hey, it’s about time I left the state,” she said creakily.

  Bel stopped and placed her hands on Salem’s shoulders so she couldn’t look away. Her voice was firm. “I can go to the First Church alone. You can be my brain on the ground back here, researching for me.”

  Salem wiped at the corners of her eyes. “It’s about time I expand my horizons, right?” She infused her voice with her best imitation of bravado. “If you’ve got my back, what can’t I do?”

  Bel’s expression was sour with worry, but she matched Salem’s tone. “Turn invisible? Make a decent grilled cheese sandwich? Have any semblance of good taste in men?”

  Salem punched her arm. “That’s enough of that, missy.” She didn’t know if it was reconnecting with Bel or the trauma of the morning, but the words spilled past her lips before she could stop them. “Hey, you and your mom are close, right?”

  Bel looked taken aback. “Of course. We tell each other everything. Just like you and Vida. Thick as thieves, right?”

  Salem bobbed her head, hoping the motion would distract from the flush spreading up from her neck. “Right! So we have a plan. You drive, I’ll find us plane tickets. That’s what credit cards are for, right?”

  Dr. David Keller stood at the glass panels of Mia’s second-story walkway, phone to his ear, speaking urgently, his stare glued to Salem and Bel until they disappeared from view. His pupils were dilated despite the daylight, his body’s ancient fight-or-flight response meant to provide him with the best possible vision when his life was on the line.

  14

  Powderhorn Park, Minneapolis

  Clancy Johnson ended the phone call. He stood on Vida Wiley’s lawn. The brick agents had left, leaving him and Stone the heavy dry cleaning. They’d discovered nothing—not the woman and no signs of a struggle, just a normal, messy house. They’d been about to leave when he’d gotten the call, one he wasn’t willing to answer with Stone in earshot.

  He massaged his temples, hoping to delay the approaching migraine.

  He didn’t like the orders he’d just received.

  At the Minneapolis Institute of Art earlier in the morning, both women had struck him as scared. Fear is a hard emotion to fake, and why would you bother if you didn’t know you were being followed?

  He was positive they hadn’t made him. The tall drink of water was a cop, and a good one by her files. But she was young, and only a few hours earlier she’d laid eyes on a pool of blood that might be all they’d ever find of her mother. The poor kid was shell-shocked. He’d seen the same dazed expression and confidence-to-nowhere in his troops in Nam. If she didn’t watch herself, she’d convince the both of them to walk off a cliff and believe it was a good idea the whole time.

  The other one he hadn’t figured out yet. It was funny, because when he’d looked over both their files, Salem Wiley appeared easier to crack than an egg. Born to a professor mom and artist dad, at age twelve, hippie dad swallows a handful of pills and drowns himself right in front of her eyes. Fast forward a decade plus, and the girl predictably turns to the safety of computers and puzzles and leaves the world behind. Nearly a shut-in, from what he could tell.

  But now, she found herself in the same boat as her friend, with her mom a blood puddle and a memory for all she knows. Yet, of the two, it was Wiley who was less twitchy. The girl was either going to crash hard, too hard to recover, or she was going to discover she was a different person than she’d imagined all these years. In his thirty years in the FBI, he’d seen it happen both ways.

  And these girls didn’t know the half of what they were in for. According to the phone call, Vida Wiley and Grace Odegaard had been leading double lives, both in up to their necks before they’d disappeared.

  That’s what the man on the other end of the line had told him, and he’d yet to be wrong. Clancy never liked it when he took his orders from the H, as he called them, but such was the reality of government work. He’d do what the power asked him to do. He’d done it before, and he knew where to hide the bodies.

  He jogged back toward the Bucar, the nickname all bureau-­assigned cars received, and crawled in. He held up his phone and pointed at it. “Sorry. Urgent business.”

  His partner, Lucan Stone, glanced at him. At least, he turned his head in Clancy’s general direction. It was hard to tell where he was looking with those mirrored frames. “Asshole glasses” is what they’d called them in training. Clancy’s reflection was bouncing off of them, a tiny version of himself reflected back to him. He’d been told he resembled the actor Ed Harris enough times that he’d come to believe it.

  “Everything okay?” Stone’s voice was a deep rumble. The man always sounded like he was about to unleash something.

  Clancy nodded. “Just the wife. Wants to know when we’re gonna be back in DC.”

  Stone turned his attention to starting the car. “Don’t we all.”

  Clancy frowned. He didn’t know what actor Lucan Stone would be compared to. The movies didn’t much interest Clancy Johnson. He was more of a nonfiction guy. Stone did remind him a little of a sculpture he’d passed by when leaving the art institute, though: as black as pitch and carved out of steel.

  Stone had exploded through the FBI ranks but didn’t have that hotshot air most
wunderkinds did, and as a KMA—short for Kiss My Ass, referring to an agent still active but past the age of retirement and so who had nothing to lose—Clancy had worked with more than his share of young guns. Stone was quiet, and he did his job. Clancy Johnson liked him better than fine as a partner, but it was still a mystery whose side he was on.

  Given Clancy’s latest directive, he suspected he would find out soon.

  Definitively.

  “I’m flying to Massachusetts.” Clancy reached for his Styrofoam coffee cup and took a sip of the bitter, grounds-filled liquid. Like French kissing a goddamned potted plant. “Salem.”

  Stone didn’t respond, didn’t even turn his head. For a crazy second, Clancy Johnson wanted to flick the chisel of the man’s cheekbones. He bet it’d make a solid thunk. Hurt his fingers.

  “Makes the most sense, given that’s where the daughters are flying to, and they’re the only assets we’ve got right now,” Clancy continued, as if it was an afterthought. It wasn’t unusual for them to work a case from different angles. He’d intentionally been one step behind Stone during this whole one. Allowed him the freedom to complete his real assignment. “What say you get the task force on track here, and we meet up out East?”

  Stone seemed to be weighing all the alternatives. Hell, for all Clancy knew, he could be mentally alphabetizing his spice rack.

  Stone finally spoke. “I’ll meet you in Massachusetts before the end of the week. I have some calls to make.”

  Who do you answer to? The question nearly leaked out of Clancy before he could stop it, a top-secret burp. He almost couldn’t help it. How much easier would this job be if they found out they both had the same goals? But in the end, he dismissed the foolishness. He was too old for that rookie mistake. He didn’t know who yanked Stone’s strings, but he knew who pulled his.

  He shrugged reflexively, massaging the back of his neck.

  We all have a master in this life.

  15

  Uptown, Minneapolis

  Bel’s phone played a snippet of the Beastie Boys’ “Brass Monkey” in the lobby of Salem’s apartment building. “That’s work.” She stopped and yanked her phone out of her pocket. “Meet you up there.”

  Salem nodded and tugged open the fire door leading to the stairs. The next available flight to Boston’s Logan International left in seven hours, giving them time to shower and tie up loose ends before they hit the skies. She was hoping Skanky Dave was home so she could drop off Beans. Skanky Dave lived in the apartment across the hall. He’d given himself the nickname, as far as she could tell, and he sold pot, hurt no one, and liked cats. He and Salem had exchanged keys shortly after meeting at the lobby mailboxes. She watered his plants while he traveled, and he promised to sit Beans if she ever needed it.

  This would be the first time she’d asked.

  When she reached the second floor, she knocked on Skanky Dave’s door. No answer. She’d have to text him. She crossed the hall and unlocked her apartment, stepping in. It felt like it had been ten years rather than half a day since she’d been home. “Beans?”

  The window to her fire escape was open, and the curtains drifted in on a cold, donut-scented breeze. Dammit. She’d forgotten to close it. The apartment temperature couldn’t be above 50 degrees. She needed to shut and lock it quick, before Bel walked in and reamed her out.

  “Beans? Are you out with your girlfriend again?”

  Salem stopped halfway across the room and cocked her head. Something in her apartment seemed off. It wasn’t the open window. She remembered leaving it that way. Everything else was neat and stacked and exactly as she’d left it, including the Minneapolis Magazine on her coffee table next to her laptop. All her dishes were put away. No water was running.

  Still … was it a smell?

  “Beans!”

  No response. But now, the chill grip of terror was massaging her stomach, moving up toward her heart. Something was definitely wrong.

  She wanted to call for her cat again, but her mouth was too dry to make a sound.

  She yearned to step backward, to turn, to escape out of the apartment, but her feet were frozen in the ground.

  She tried to remember basic self-defense moves from the Krav Maga classes Bel had forced her to take, to call on the strength in her thick thighs and the sharp power of her fists, but her feet melted into the ground and her hands hung at her sides. They might as well have been tied to bricks.

  Bel! She screamed it, but only in her head. Help!

  Two cold hands closed around her eyes.

  Her bladder released. It was the only movement she could make.

  16

  Gopher Munitions Plant

  Rosemount, Minnesota

  “Hello?”

  Jason relaxed. Carl Barnaby’s voice had always been a balm, so blithe and confident. “I located the two managers in Minneapolis.”

  “Excellent! Did they give you any more referrals?”

  Jason’s fists clenched, but he smeared butter over his voice. “I’m so sorry. No. Not yet.”

  “What?” The word was tinged with shock, or anger.

  “I had to unexpectedly fire their neighbor. She showed up for a shift earlier than scheduled and brought her dog into work, of all things. I also had to let one of the two managers go.” Jason rubbed his thumb over the smooth metal of the locket. “I have the remaining manager with me. She has yet to supply the promised referrals.”

  There was a pause on the other end. A muffled exchange filtered down the line. Jason imagined he heard the closing of a heavy door, soft footsteps on lush carpeting, the echo of conversation off brocaded walls. Carl Barnaby returned to the line. “That might be all right. We have word that their daughters are on the way to Massachusetts to retrieve a document from the pulpit of one of the oldest churches in the United States.” He took a breath. “We have reason to believe it might be the master referral list.”

  Jason shook his head, chuckling. Hiding the names in the pulpit of an old church? He’d seen extreme measures in his fifteen years working for the Hermitage, but this came close to taking the cake. You hunt a group of women for a couple hundred years, though, and it made sense they’d find ingenious ways to communicate with one another.

  The Hermitage had always taken care of the obvious targets, like Benazir Bhutto, Indira Gandhi, and Anna Mae Aquash, but other than those very public Underground leaders, they’d had to rely on second-or third-hand information to discover who their enemies were. The five women he’d killed before coming to Minneapolis had most likely been high up in the Underground. Same of Grace Odegaard and Vida Wiley, though how high, he couldn’t know without the master docket.

  But it sounded like he was about to get his hands on the legendary document. Finally, after all these years of searching.

  Cut off the head, the snake dies.

  Hot goddamn.

  “You want me to obtain the referral list, dismiss the daughters, and continue on to the Crucible?”

  Jason wouldn’t utter her name. His phone was disposable, Carl Barnaby’s line secured, but still. Her name would be flagged if anyone was listening, and someone was always listening. They were too close to achieving their mission to risk it on a loose tongue.

  “Yes, and in that order.” Carl Barnaby’s voice relaxed into its signature jocularity. “I’ll send someone for your current interviewee. We’ll keep her in case a position opens up. You stay on task.”

  Jason nodded, even though Carl Barnaby couldn’t see it. He waited as he heard the familiar click of being transferred. When the man’s secretary came on, he exchanged directions to the abandoned Gopher Munitions Plant in Rosemount, 30 miles south of Minneapolis, for the address of the First Church in Salem, Massachusetts. He didn’t know if the woman would still be alive when the Hermitage Foundation’s clean-up crew arrived.

  He glanced at her. She was
tied to a chair, her hair hanging in her face. Crusted blood had turned her top a muddy brown. Her smell was strong, even from ten feet away, the uniquely sour, musky potpourri of pain, feces, and terror.

  It was happy luck he’d discovered both of his Minnesota targets inside Odegaard’s apartment. He would have loved to bring them back here for questioning, but because of the neighbor and her dog, he’d only had time to transport the one.

  He’d cornered them on the fire escape and grabbed the woman nearest him. Whipping her around to face her friend, he held his fillet knife steady on her throat. Its metal reflected the moon back onto his cheek. The soft, distant purrs of cars driving through the night was the only sound. If either woman had screamed, the police would have arrived in minutes. Most women, he found, did not scream.

  “Tell me who the rest of the Underground leaders are, or your friend dies.”

  The woman in his grasp closed her eyes, silent. The one he faced trembled but did not cry. “I’m the only one left,” she whispered.

  The soft ding of the elevator traveled through the foyer, across Grace Odegaard’s apartment, and out onto the fire escape. Jason had locked her apartment door, but that wouldn’t buy him much time. He studied the woman across from him, the chilly breeze ruffling her hair. The woman he held was murmuring, probably a prayer.

  He opened her throat in one swift and lethal slice.

  He stepped aside so the hot blood wouldn’t stain his pants.

  The woman who faced him, despite her earlier courage, melted as she watched her friend bleed out. She spoke from the cocoon of shock, her knuckles white where she gripped the cool metal railing. “You killed her. I told you what you asked.”