ยท "Great," Jane said as Elizabeth and Katherine gathered in her office for a brief situation briefing. Elizabeth and Jane each had a paper cup of black coffee from the rumbling, brownish smoke emitting coffee maker from the third-floor coffee kitchen in front of them, Katherine a cup of Earl Grey from her office. She couldn't for the life of her get the coffee down from the coffee maker, as she constantly affirmed.

"Let's go back to the rose by those feet," Jane said, sitting behind her file-laden desk. She looked at Katherine for a long moment. "You're saying it has symbolic meaning?" They hadn't talked about the rose at all before. But the rose had been by the feet. And according to that, it was better to deal with the rose.

Katherine nodded slowly. "The rose is the symbol of love and purity. And it is associated with the Virgin Mary. Hence the name rosary, a prayer in which one looks at Christ through the eyes of Mary."

"My God, do you think we have another religious nut like that Legion guy back in the day?" Jane sat up straight in her desk chair.

Elizabeth took a deep breath and raised her eyebrows. "Well, there are a few more ritual murderers like that than Legion, I'm afraid." She glanced at her sister. "What was that total failure you told me about not long ago?"

"Albert Fish," the psychiatrist said without thinking twice.

"Also, a serial killer, right?" the detective asked.

Katherine licked her lips and frowned a little. "Also, a serial killer is good," the younger woman replied. "More like one of the serial killers. Even though it's been a few years. Albert Hamilton Fish. He believed he was the Savior himself. He'd often run out into the street shouting, 'Blessed is he who grabs little children to bash their skulls in with rocks.'"

"Then there are some here in Boston who are blessed," Jane replied with furrowed brows, aware of child abuse statistics. "But here, they're teenagers, not children."

Katherine nodded slowly. "That may play a role but may also be irrelevant."

Jane closed her eyes briefly and took a deep breath. "So, what else did this Fish guy do?"

"Everything," the doctor said curtly.

Jane waited a few seconds. "Everything?"

Katherine nodded again, only this time in a tortured way. "Flagellation, pederasty, exhibitionism, torture, necrophilia, cannibalism, rape, and murder."

Jane puffed out her cheeks. "I guess he wanted to know."

Katherine took a sip from her cup. "Not only that. He also used violence against himself, believing this mortification would bring him closer to Jesus Christ. Or, preferably, made him identical to Christ."

"And how?"

"He put needles in his testicles and anus."

Elizabeth listened tensely. He put needles in his testicles and anus. Her sister said it like she was letting her know: He worked out on the cross-trainer for thirty minutes every morning.

Jane made a face and took a deep breath. "Ouch. Did they get those out? The needles, I mean."

"Just no. He kept them, um, inside him until he died. And ... they delayed his death."

Jane licked her lips and moved forward a little in her chair now. "Excuse me?"

Katherine cleared her throat and set her cup down on the desk. "When he was finally caught, the sentence was execution in the electric chair. And because of the needles, there was a short circuit on the first try." She paused to let what she had said sink in with the audience. "They had to boot up the system again because of the needles. Then on the second try, it worked. Despite the needles."

"I guess that was before the energy transition." Jane cleared her throat. "What the needles in the ass can be good for. Did we hear anything else from the two drivers? The truck driver and the one with the Audi?"

Elizabeth took a deep breath and shook her head. "No. Just that they saw the junkie, so did we." She turned to Katherine. "Now to Mary again," she said. "Why do you think the rose necessarily means Mary? Fish was religious; that's what he said. But just the rose lying by the feet is hardly a sufficient indication that our murderer is also a ritual killer. Why Mary?"

Katherine looked at her sister long and hard. "Mary is not only the successor of Eve. Eve was the mother of all the living. Mary, through the birth of Christ, the Savior of all the living. For she brought the Savior who frees men from original sin into the world."

"Our murderer has not freed them from original sin," Elizabeth said. "Is this murderer religious at all?"

Katherine paused for a moment and raised her shoulders. "Maybe not directly, but in an archetypal way, he is."

"In an archetypal way?"

"Many ritual killers have a religious component."

"And deal with Mary?"

"Yes. Mary takes away sins. And she's also a follower of Sarah."

"You mean the one of Abraham?"

"That's the one. Sarah was Abraham's wife, and she had a child, although she was much too old for that. Then with Mary, God went one step further. She had a child even though she was still a virgin."

"So Mary is a repeat of Eve and Sarah?" Elizabeth remembered the communion lessons a priest had given even though it seemed like a lifetime ago.

Katherine nodded another time. "Especially of Eve. Adam was tested by the serpent of temptation alone in the Garden. Eve was there. Jesus was alone in the Garden of Gethsemane. Mary was not there." She looked up as if some inspiration was waiting for her on the woodchip ceiling. When it didn't come, she kept talking. "Where sin is, there is Eve. But where sin is conquered, there is Mary. Mary is the only person who is free from sin."

"Katherine," Jane said, deliberately using her daughter's full name, "with all due respect to your inexhaustible knowledge and this introduction to the ... uh ... Doctrine of Redemption, but does the killer really want to hold a theological seminar with and? Or maybe he just wants to slaughter women because he gets off on it?"

Elizabeth pressed her lips together and looked down at her folded hands to disguise a grin.

Katherine took a deep breath and furrowed her brows. "Right. Most killers are much more simplistic than thriller writers would have you believe. They want the three E's."

Elizabeth's eyebrows drew together. She hadn't heard that one either. "The three E's?"

"Ejaculate, Execute, Escape." The doctor pursed her lips. "Escape they must in any case so that they can continue." Elizabeth rolled her eyes again. Katherine continued to speak. "But the rose has such a strong, symbolic meaning that its placement there can't be a coincidence. As I said, he may not be convincingly religious, but maybe people around him were his parents, and he's unconsciously applying that religious symbolism." She paused for a moment. "I like to quote G. K Chesterton on that: sometimes something is too close to see."

"Sometimes it's too far away, too," Jane growled. "The end of the day, for example."

Elizabeth ignored her mother. Today was not her day. "Does the killer fascinate Mary?"

Katherine wiggled her head. "It's possible."

"Are you sure?"

The doctor nodded. "Well, Eve is considered the temptation of man, after all, while Mary is the chaste woman who is the only human being without sin."

Elizabeth tried to figure out if there could be any truth to Katherine's reasoning. "Except with Fish, there was a religious reference when he yelled down the street that he was the savior. Our killer cut off a girl's feet. But that doesn't make him a religiously motivated killer. And does the rose have to refer to Mary? Maybe it was some undoing, too?"

Undoing occurred when a killer attempted to undo his deed, which, after all, was decidedly tricky in the case of murder. Therefore, such killers placed flowers and other gifts with the dead as amends.

It could have been like that, Elizabeth thought, even here. "It could be, but to judge whether it was undoing, we'd have to see the body. So far, we have the feet. The rose is the symbol of innocent love. The young girl is also still innocent and thus on the verge of becoming Eve from Mary. It becomes from the innocent being to the sinful being. Perhaps the killer wants to prevent this from becoming guilty by killing the girl first?"

Jane snorted in exertion. "Sounds pretty far-fetched. Is there any proof there?"

"Proof no," Katherine replied, "But there is an anagram you can make out of the name Eva."

"From Eva?" Jane looked at her daughter in wonder. "Well, that's only three letters? I can't make the word Mary out of that."

"You can't. But there is the Hail Mary. And the Hail spelled backward makes Eva. Or Eva makes Ave."

"Okay," Elizabeth sighed and set about getting up from her chair. "Well, we'd better get back to work."

Katherine nodded in agreement, stood up, and approached the closed office door.

"Not you, Elizabeth," Jane said, raising her hand as the detective half rose. "I need to talk to you about something important."

Elizabeth looked at her sister wide-eyed and slumped back in her chair. "Okay," she said slowly.

Katherine looked long and hard at the detective and then at her mother with wide eyes, pressed her lips together, and opened the office door with her head hanging.