The Pegassian Order

3. The Map

Chapter Three

‘Elliot Mara?' A gruff voice demanded. For a moment, Elliot remained completely still. It was only when the silhouette took a step closer to the wardrobe doors, that Elliot realised he knew she was hiding. Elliot squinted through the horizontal gaps lining the wooden doors, in hopes of trying to catch a glimpse of the man’s face, but he was holding the gun directly in front of him, obscuring her view. Rafi gave her a warning look as she reached out and turned the door handle.

‘I'm not here to harm you.' The voice came again, calmer now. As though the turning of the door handle had soothed his nerves. She pushed the door open and came face to face with a man a few years older than her. He had shortly trimmed blond hair and pale blue eyes, the kind of shimmering but weathered blue reflected in swimming pools and shallow tropical waters.

‘Detective Nick 'Duke' Doukas.' The man introduced himself as he extended a hand toward Elliot.

'I work homicide cases. I'm investigating your sister's disappearance.’

‘So are we.' Rafi's voice boomed from over her shoulder, reminding her he was still there. The detective took a step back and eyed Rafi suspiciously, as Elliot and Rafi stepped out from the small space.

‘I followed you from the airport.’ Nick admitted. Elliot could see from Rafi's face that he didn't trust the detective. 'I was actually meaning to get in touch, to ask a few questions.’

‘With all due respect, Detective, you work homicide. This isn’t a homicide. It’s a missing person's case.’ Elliot said. Her eyes moved over the detective to rule out whether he could be carrying weapons other than the standard police pistol. She noted the slight protrusion above his left ankle. A smaller pistol, perhaps.

‘Please, my friends call me Duke.’ He said, softly. He extended a hand again, only Elliot pretended not to notice.

‘We're not friends.’ Elliot remarked side stepping the detective and continuing her search for clues. The detective looked to Rafi for help but Rafi responded with a one-sided shrug. He had never been a fan of the authorities.

As Elliot turned her attention to the apartment, she overheard Rafi asking to see the detective’s credentials. The detective obliged without any objection, putting Elliot at more ease. It was standard procedure for officers to be armed with a pistol but it was the second, smaller gun that gave her cause for concern. She snuck a sideways glance at the detective as she moved through the open plan apartment. Why had he followed them from the airport? Did he suspect them of having something to do with whatever happened to Chloe?

Elliot noticed jewelry on the ground by the dressing table, she scooped it up and placed it back onto the wooden dresser. Glancing around the apartment, she determined nothing was out of the ordinary, minus the overturned furniture.

There was no blood, no more signs of violence, just a heavy-handed attempt at finding something. Paintings of heroes from the Greek mythos were strewn across the ground, shoved off the walls in hopes of the intruders finding whatever they were after. Did Chloe have an artifact of theirs? Is that what this was all about? She found something and that didn't belong to her?

Elliot walked over to an open wall safe. The painting on the ground below the safe, and the empty bookshelf which sat just inches beneath the safe told Elliot the painting was a cover, a half-hearted attempt to conceal the secret storage space. Elliot peered into the small space, running her fingers over the jagged bullet holes drilled into the metal lock. She determined the intruder or intruders had a semi-automatic machine gun.

‘You won't find anything useful in here.’ The detective's voice interrupted her train of thought. Rafi, who was now leaning out of the broken window and looking around at the street, ducked back into the room and looked at Elliot with the slightest shake of his head. He didn't find anything. Her hope felt like it had been put into a jar and a lid had been placed over it, muffling it.

‘I'd rather check. In case you missed anything the first time.’ Elliot said, shortly. It was her sister after all. And Elliot herself had sufficient experience with the police to know to always cross-check things. Crouching, she scanned the spines of the fallen books, stopping at the only one that stood out.

It can't be.

Elliot thought as she picked up the old, worn copy of Iram of the Pillars. It was the same one her mother brandished on the bookshelf in the study. What was it doing here, among the endless texts on Greek mythology and Ancient Greek history? It was out of place here, especially because Chloe rarely, if ever, set foot in their family manor after their mother's death.

Elliot had visited now and then. It felt like she was visiting a museum dedicated to what once was and who they once were. It gave her chills. Every time she set foot in the old house surrounded by greenery, her breath would catch in her throat and her heart would plummet slowly. It would only hit rock bottom when she would reach her the shut door of her mother's study.

Rafi and the detective seemed to be exchanging terse words at the far end of the apartment. Elliot picked up the book with care. Their mother would hide precious findings in hollowed textbooks, and based on the weight of the book, Elliot knew it had pages missing. She ran her fingers along the stems of the pages until she found the middle of the book.

She flipped the book open and found herself facing a rectangular carving, it was neater than the ones she would hastily make. It had been carved with the right tools and not the old dagger Elliot tended to use. The words on the page stopped abruptly, as if they had run off the edges where the carving had been made. When she was small, she used to think it was so heartless, to rip out the core of a book, of an entire world, so you could bury your secrets within it, but as she grew older, she found it to be a handy ploy and in many ways, it felt more accurate.

Everybody had secrets, and if they didn't, they had somebody else's. The world was steeped in secrets and unspoken sentiments, cloaked in the invisibility but Elliot could always feel their presence. In the rectangular space left by the core of the book being removed, was a folded piece of paper. Elliot opened it, and narrowed her eyes at what she saw.

It was a series of dots, large dots and small ones, beside each dot was a date. A pattern of some kind? A map maybe? A few lines had been drawn, connecting a dot here and there.

What is this Chloe?

Upon hearing footsteps approach, Elliot quickly folded the paper and slipped it into her trouser pocket. She turned to find Rafi, who had sought her out. His brown eyes gleamed in the shadowy apartment, reflecting the light from a nearby fallen lamp, giving his earthy eyes flecks of auburn as he looked at her with a nervous expression.

‘What is it?’ She asked.

‘I don't trust him.’ Rafi said. Elliot nodded, acknowledging his concern. Rafi always had a problem with authority—or at least with human authority. He was the first to believe theories of some supernatural power destroying a civilisation, but when it came to human power structures, he had zero faith in people and the power structures they concocted.

‘I'm not sure yet.’ Elliot responded, sharing her own opinion about the detective. On one hand, she didn't know anything about him, and knew it would be naïve to work with him, but on the other hand, he could prove useful in her search for her sister. Before Elliot could elaborate, Nick entered the room.

‘How did you learn about Chloe's disappearance?’ The detective asked as he joined the pair.

‘She left me a message.’ Elliot answered.

‘Oh.’ The detective replied. ‘What did the message say?’ He asked, watching Elliot's every move like a hawk.

‘My phone was off. She couldn't reach me.’ Elliot explained. The familiar and queasy sensation of guilt snaked through her veins as she thought about how desperate Chloe sounded on the phone. She wished she had answered, she wished she hadn't turned her phone off at all.

‘She said they knew, that she needed help.’Elliot revealed, her voice shook as tears threatened to form in her eyes. She felt Rafi give her bicep a gentle squeeze and step forward, so he stood between Elliot and Nick.

‘We should ask you the same question.’ Rafi said, his lips barely moved as he spoke. Rafi was always quick to try to protect the people around him. Elliot had seen him protect strangers from unjust beatings and children from thugs. When he initially tried to protect her, she had accused him of being backward and with misguided notions of chivalry, but the more she had gotten to know him, the more she learnt he was simply a caring man, which she thought to be his greatest weakness. He watched the detective intently.

‘How did you learn about her disappearance?’

The detective flashed a forced smile at Rafi, not appreciating having his own question turned back onto him.

‘It's wiser if I show you something before answering that.’ He replied. Elliot and Rafi exchanged a look, then Rafi nodded.

‘Go ahead.’ Elliot said.

‘Not here.’ Nick said, eyeing the apartment around them. ‘You'll need to follow me. It's about five minutes from here.’

‘Lead the way.’ Elliot said. Rafi hung back as Elliot followed the detective out of the apartment and back toward the street. Now and then, the detective would cast a curious look over his shoulder as if he was making sure they were still following him. There was something Rafi disliked about the blond haired, blue eyed homicide detective, he just couldn't place his finger on what.

The detective led them to a library a few streets from Chloe's apartment. Much to Rafi's surprise, though it was after hours, the detective had access. The large building was lit up, its walls caked with books and journals. It had red floors a polished dark wood along the walls giving off an air of royalty. Long matching wooden tables ran along the middle of the library from one end to the other, with small spaces allowing people to cross from one batch of aisles to the others.

At the far end of the empty library, seated at a table layered in various papers and books was an old man in a brown suit. He wore thick black glasses and had scruffy grey hair and a small goatee. His blue shirt was crumpled and his brown eyes were tired. He circled something on a piece of paper then placed it carefully on a pile opposite him.

As the trio approached the table, the old man looked up and gave them a hopeful smile.

‘Duke, you did it! You found her.’ He smiled at Elliot, who returned the smile as the old man shook her hand. He sat back down, giving Rafi a nod.

‘This is Professor Felipe Galen, him and I have been investigating these disappearances.’

Elliot's head shot up.

‘Plural?' She asked. More than one woman had been abducted. Nick nodded then glanced at Galen, indicating he could take it from here.

‘Right well, we are quite lucky they took your sister.’ Elliot stared at the old man. His smile morphed into an apologetic expression, and he spoke quickly, both aware of his error and embarrassed by it. ‘Sorry, I didn't mean lucky that she was taken, but lucky that you are here to help find before… ‘The man trailed off then as if he had regained his train of thought, continued. ‘I'm a big fan of your mother's work. Great shame... what happened, I mean…’

‘Before what?’ Elliot asked, ignoring his acknowledgement of her mother. She had grown numb to the sadness people would watch her with when she would attend an event in honour of her late mother. Her eyes flicked from Galen to Nick's.

Nick looked to Galen then back to Elliot, not wanting to say what he was about to.

‘Before she is killed like the others.’ He elaborated.

The words landed like blows against Elliot's demeanour. She pulled out a chair for herself and sat in it, eyeing the papers laid out on the table. Nick pointed at various photographs of dead women. What would have been a rich range of skin colours between them, were in death a similar pale shade. Their chests had been marked by a single stab wound which had long vertical line and two short diagonal ones to its upper right side, forming a jagged ‘p’ on their collar bones.

‘Who did this?’ She asked, stirred with grief as her brain began to imagine Chloe in this state.

‘We don't know yet.’ Nick answered.

‘Every murder is identical. An abduction of an academic then her body resurfacing a few days later at some hilltop in Athens.’ Galen explained.

‘You mean…’ Rafi interrupted, ‘we could be running out of time.’

Galen and Nick exchanged a look then both nodded at Rafi. Elliot scanned the documents.

‘What leads do you have?’ Rafi enquired.

‘Not many. We've mapped the deaths to date, it seems to be cyclic with something similar having happened once every decade or so. But nobody connected the dots before, not until Galen,’ Nick shared.

Elliot listened intently as Detective Nick Duke explained the striking similarities shared by the victims. Chloe's disappearance happened a month after the last series of murders, meaning something changed for the killer.

She figured something out.

The realisation came to Elliot like a punch to the gut, with it, it brought a darker theory to light. If Chloe had figured something out, they would plan to kill her sooner than later. It was as though Duke read her mind when he reassured her the ritual took a minimum of three days, whatever the ritual was.

‘What ritual? And how do you know for a fact?’ Elliot demanded. She wasn't one to cling to notions and beliefs. She needed something hard, something she could work with. Galen noticed the worry on Elliot's face.

‘Since my daughter's murder, we have been working day and night to figure out what is going on. To identify the ‘who', ‘what’, and ‘why’… all we have so far, is a ‘where'.’ Galen said sadly. ‘Well, almost.’

Galen stood and unfolded a large map of Athens and spread it across the table. Rafi ran a hand over the map, helping to smooth the dents and creases in the paper. The map was divided up by tourism hotspots, key points in the city and popular structures, and that's when Elliot noticed the faint track marks running along the map indicating a river. She ran her fingers along the map. There wasn't a river running along these coordinates.

‘Eridanos.’ Rafi spoke softly. ‘It used to flow through Ancient Greece. Now it flows mostly underground. The riverbed itself is visible from Kerameikos.’ Rafi elaborated, gently taking Elliot's outstretched hand and moving it along the map, pointing out each location. Elliot had seen the pattern it created somewhere before.

‘Can I have a moment alone?’ The words fell from her lips like small droplets of water, making the faintest dent in the silence. Galen and Nick swapped looks then walked away, giving her some privacy. Rafi remained, arms folded. Elliot gave him a look, silently pleading with him. He rolled his eyes and shook his head as he walked away from the table. Elliot reached into her pocket and pulled out the piece of paper she found in Chloe's apartment.

She pressed her palm against the sheet and flattened it out, then carefully placed it over the river. The dots lined up with key points and bends along the river. It was a map.

Picking up a pen, she circled the dot which was dated by the same day Chloe left Elliot a message. She compared the other dates to the case files, and matched them up to dates and locations of the other bodies.

I'm coming for you. Elliot promised.