CHAPTER TEN
The precinct felt like it had been cranked ten decibels past sane.
Phones going off in stuttering rounds, someone swearing at a jammed copier, the clatter of boots and metal chair legs and half-shouted conversations bouncing down every corridor.
An officer dropped a box of tacks; someone else told him where he could put it.
The air was sour with too-strong coffee and yesterday’s takeout.
Kate sat in the middle of this minor apocalypse at her borrowed desk, the three drawings arranged in a tight row before her, in their evidence bags, like suspects. She rubbed her temples. Heraldry specialist from Yale. Any minute now, she told herself for the fifth time.
She leaned closer to the knight illustration, tracing the illumination with her eyes.
Then she froze.
Bottom left corner. Barely visible unless you were looking for the grain of the paper texture.
A tiny black bird with black beak.
“…You’ve got to be kidding me.”
She snatched up the satirical feast drawing—the tipsy gentleman at the table, the older woman poised to strike. Bottom left, same spot: the bird again. Tiny, smug, unmistakable. A rook? A raven? A crow? And what was in its beak?
She grabbed the tablets piece. Bottom left— not there.
“How did I miss this?” Kate hissed under her breath. “ A signature, a mark, a calling card—and I just—”
Her irritation spiked hot behind her ribs. Calming herself, she took photos of each, and zoomed in. The surface of each bird was smooth, lacking the brushmarks of the main artworks. Printed on, maybe?
That could explain why there was no crow on the drawing, which was on sketch paper. Maybe it wouldn’t have been thick enough to withstand the printing process. Especially if, as she suspected, a laser printer had been used.
“But the stone tablets are also an introduction to the whole sequence,” she murmured to herself. “A reminder that it all starts with the 5th Commandment. The paintings lead on from the drawing… as the killings lead on from the Commandment?”
Across the room, completely oblivious, Marcus paced like a man trying to wear a groove into the precinct linoleum.
“I mean, think about it,” he said, gesturing with a half-eaten protein bar.
“If Garrett’s building doesn’t use the same maintenance contractor, then why the hell would he wear the same overalls?
He knows we’ve seen him in them. That’s basic counter-surveillance.
Is he taking a risk? Or is it symbolic? Maybe the color matters.
Except—hell—black and white footage. We don’t know if they are the same color.
Could be orange. Could be blue. Could be—”
“Marcus.”
He didn’t hear her.
“—and the fit is terrible,” he continued, pacing.
“Way too small. Why would he choose a pair that doesn’t fit?
A choice, or he just doesn’t give a shit?
They make him look bigger… it’s the old, tight t-shirt trick.
But he doesn’t want to be looked at, does he?
He’s not in a bar trying to hook up. So why—”
“Marcus!”
He stopped mid-stride.
Kate held up a hand, gripping the drawings with the other.
“You have to work that out for yourself,” she snapped—sharper than she’d intended, but she didn’t retract it.
“I am currently drowning in—” she waved the papers, “—tiny black birds and heraldic insanity, and my phone is refusing to ring, and I do not have the bandwidth for your existential jumpsuit crisis.”
Marcus blinked. “Right. Okay.”
Kate inhaled, exhaled, then tried again, a little softer.
"Aren't you due to speak to Garrett's business associate? His flight from Denver landed twenty minutes ago. Go meet him. He might give us something we can actually use."
Before Marcus could reply, Sullivan appeared behind him, leafing through a stack of notes.
Marcus and Sullivan exchanged a glance.
Just a glance of warning. Quick. Almost nothing.
Kate saw it all the same.
“What,” she said, voice dropping. “Was. That.”
Marcus held up both hands. “Nothing.”
“I know that look. It was the old— ” she deepened her voice an octave, in imitation of a dumb male voice. “‘Watch out for the little lady, she’s in a bad mood’ look.”
“Hey, no, Kate it was—”
Sullivan, no coward but not suicidal, took one immediate step backward. “I—uh—I’ve got uniforms waiting on the fourth floor. Evidence chain-of-custody thing.” He fled like a man who’d heard approaching artillery.
Marcus followed, equally fast, voice cracking into a retreating excuse.
Kate glared after them, furious heat climbing her neck. “Jerks,” she whispered.
Her phone rang.
At last.
She snatched it up so fast she nearly sent a coffee cup flying.
“Valentine.”
A soft, calm, academic voice replied, "Agent Valentine? This is Dr. Rowan Lasker from Yale—the heraldry inquiry. You sent me the image of the medieval knight?"
A woman, Kate thought. Thank God. She closed her eyes once, gathering her breath.
“Yes, Doctor. Thank you. I need your help with something very specific.”
She stared down at the paintings.
At the tiny black bird.
And felt the first threads of pattern tighten.
Kate pressed her phone tighter to her ear, blocking out as much of the precinct din as she could.
Someone dropped a binder. Someone else swore at a coffee machine.
But beneath it all, Dr. Rowan Lasker’s voice carried a steady, academic cadence—focused, unhurried, certain.
For a moment, Kate missed the academic world.
“Well, Agent Valentine,” she said, “I’ve identified your knight.”
Kate straightened. “Already? That’s impressive.”
“Well,” Lasker replied with a smile audible even over the phone, “he’s a memorable figure.
The heraldic elements are distinctive. The stag supine, the cormorants on the escutcheon—those are not common motifs.
Your painting depicts Sir Miles de Coverleagh, later Baron Sephton, a thirteenth-century knight who fought in the Sixth Crusade. ”
Kate scribbled the name on her notepad. “Coverleagh. Sephton. Crusades. Okay. And the cormorants—those are part of his coat of arms?”
“Yes. Awarded to him by King Henry III, actually. The cormorant is a symbol of exceptional bravery in battle. Not a standard charge—you’d only see it in cases of extreme royal favor. It was added to Coverleagh’s arms after he returned from the Holy Land.”
Kate frowned. “That sounds… heroic. I’m just curious as to why it would be accompanying a crime scene.”
“Well,” Lasker said gently, “maybe the rest of the story will help.”
Kate leaned back, letting the noise around her blur.
“When Sir Miles left for the crusades,” Lasker continued, “he left behind massive debts. Land holdings mortgaged to the hilt. Creditors circling. But he was confident in his prospects—military glory was lucrative. Except…” A pause.
“He was gone far longer than intended. Years. And while he was away, his beloved elderly mother was cast out of their home. She died in the care of a nunnery, penniless.”
Kate closed her eyes. There it is.
"When Coverleagh returned in triumph," Lasker said, "he found out what had happened.
Contemporary accounts suggest he was devastated.
Some chroniclers say he retreated to a particularly austere monastery out of remorse; others say he took poison in grief and shame.
His ultimate fate is debated, but the moral is consistent: he abandoned a parent and suffered the consequences. "
The image snapped into place like a puzzle piece sliding home.
“Parental abandonment,” Kate murmured. “Punished harshly. It fits. It fits exactly.”
“In which case,” Lasker said, “I’d say that whoever chose that image understood its implications intimately.”
Kate stared down at the knight’s serene face, the heavy-lidded calm.
A man blessed by a king.
Cursed by his own conscience.
She exhaled sharply. “Doctor, one more thing. Can you zoom in on the bottom left of the image? There’s a tiny black bird, holding something in its beak. It appears on both of the paintings we’ve found.”
“Let me pull it up… ah. Yes. I see it. Goodness. How could he paint something so small?”
“I don’t know. I’m thinking maybe he painted it full-size then somehow printed a minimized version onto the canvas. Does it say anything to you?”
“The plant in its beak—I’m afraid I can’t identify that with confidence. Could be stylized. Could be symbolic. But the bird itself?” Paper rustled. “That’s a crow.”
“Definitely a crow?” Kate probed. ‘Not a rook or a raven?”
“Rooks have shaggy chest-feathers, and ravens have a patch of grey skin at the top of their beaks. And I’d say our painter knew exactly what he wanted to paint because he’s given his crows a distinctive, wedge-shaped tail.”
“Are you a bird expert as well as a medieval historian?”
“I’m married to one,” Lasker replied with a chuckle.
“Anyway, the crow is an important heraldic symbol,” Lasker said.
“Crows often appear in crests or badges to mark a bereavement. A loss so significant that families wanted it recorded in their arms. A crow can indicate mourning, memorial, or the burden of a death.”
Kate’s pulse thumped once, hard.
“But there’s no heraldic significance to the twig or the plant in the beak?”
“Plants and flowers carry a range of meanings, but not, to my knowledge, attached to or associated with birds or animals. There’s the possibility, of course, that your artist is creating his own symbolic language, but you’d know more about that than I.
It would help if we could identify what’s in the bird’s beak, but it doesn’t seem to have been drawn with much detail. ”
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “You’ve been incredibly helpful.”
“My pleasure, Agent Valentine. I’ll see if any of my colleagues can shed any further light on the plants. But if there’s anything else, do get in touch.” There was a pause. “I hadn’t expected to be assisting the F.B.I. on an overcast Wednesday afternoon.”
Kate thanked her again and ended the call.
For a moment, the precinct noise seemed to pull back, as if the whole building were inhaling, leaving her in a bubble of thinning air. She stared at the crow, enlarged on her screen.
Its ink-black body.
The wedge-shaped tail.
The little plant clenched in its gray-black beak. It was, as Lasker said, not very detailed. The color somewhere between green and brown. The thing itself somewhere between a plant and a twig.
A memory marker.
A grief marker.
She traced the outline with her fingertip.
“You lost someone, didn’t you?” she whispered. “A parent? That’s got to be why it’s here. You put that where your signature should be, because it’s the part of you you can’t hide.”
Her voice softened to a breath.
“That loss… it’s at the heart of all of this, isn’t it?”