Page 92 of Forever Dark
The walk to the silo felt longer than it should have.Mud sucked at their boots.Selena was careful not to stand in existing boot prints, and she noticed the same custom boot marks from the other scenes.The morning had that raw early edge that made every sound travel.A crow called from somewhere unseen.Beyond the fields, a tractor coughed to life on distant land.
Inside, the air changed at once.
It smelled of old grain dust and blood.The early morning wind poked through unseen holes somewhere in the structure, whistling slightly.
The silo’s curved interior held the sound strangely.Every shift of a boot came back a half-second late.Light slipped in through seams in the metal and the open door, striping the walls in pale gray.
Matt Price, the forensic pathologist, stood near the far side with a camera hanging from his neck, flash rigged above it, moving with the patient care of a man who had already seen too much to rush.His forensic coveralls made him look almost anonymous until he turned and Selena saw recognition settle into his face.
“Morning,” Price said.
On the ground near the base of the curved wall sat Tara Brennan.
The pose was the same.Chair.Hands arranged.Head slightly bowed.The terrible deliberation of it.But this was not a church or a cemetery.This was not holy ground.Selena wondered what had changed.
Selena stopped a few feet short and took the scene in piece by piece because that was easier than taking it in whole.Hospital scrubs beneath the victim’s coat she’d never gotten to remove.Hair fallen over one shoulder.Blood at the throat and dried dark on the front of the fabric.Her shoes were muddy.One had nearly come off.The skin of one wrist was scraped raw as if she had fought hard against being dragged.
On the metal wall above and behind her, the message had been painted in thick strokes.
DEUS MERETRICES SEPELIT
“You know this one?”Connor asked.
“No,” Selena said.“I’ll send it to the linguist.”
She took out her phone, snapped a picture, then typed in the words to see what a Google translation would pop out.
Selena whispered a rough translation.“God buries harlots.”
Beneath the words, large and unmistakable, stood more Roman numerals:
IV
Connor looked around at the curved walls.“This place isn’t religious.”
Selena did not take her eyes off the body.“He’s changed up the setting.”
Price lowered his camera.“You mean he gave up on churches?”
“Not exactly.”Selena stepped sideways for a better angle on the writing.“He’s shifted from houses of worship to something else isolated.A place where he wouldn’t be disturbed.It’s possible he worried we’d be watching abandoned churches in the county.”
Connor glanced up at the metal ribs of the silo, then back at the words in blood.“For a killer who likes to make statements, this still has to be deliberate.He picked this place for a reason.”
“You’re right.”
Price frowned.“What are you seeing?”
Selena looked toward the open top where a thin circle of morning light showed high above.“Harvest.”
Price blinked.“What?”
“This isn’t about holy ground,” she said.“Or notonlythat.A grain silo.It’s a harvest.”Her eyes moved to the writing again.“In Christian imagery, souls are harvested by the Lord.”
Price let that settle.“So, the killer might believe he’s harvesting these soulsforGod?”
Connor’s mouth tightened.“It does all seem to revolve around something like that.”
Selena crouched slowly, careful of the floor around the chair.“Three women.Same staging.Same accusation of immorality.”She nodded once toward the numeral on the wall.“But there it is again.A number one larger than the victim count.Where is number one?”
