The rising sun painted the white hilltop houses in a ribbon of peachy light. Below in the shade, the little port town was already busy at work, the aromas of cooking oil and coffee mingling with exhaust fumes from mini trucks and scooters zipping along the waterfront. Along the quay, old men in coarse woolen sweaters fretted over torn nets, while their sons unloaded glistening cargoes of sardine and squid.

The sounds and smells drifted along an ancient causeway to a little island of crushed marble in the harbor. There, under the ancient posts and lintel of an unfinished temple to Apollo, stood a man. He was lithe and limber, but wrinkles had begun to crowd his honey-colored eyes. His skin was smooth and olive, his long jet hair pulled into a sleek ponytail. He wore black boots, black jeans, and a black T-shirt. A black military-style rucksack lay at his feet. To the people of Naxos, he was just another nameless face, another Instagram tourist on his way to the more popular destinations of Mykonos and Santorini. Yet he was no tourist. He was a killer. And he had a name. To law enforcement agencies around the world, he was known simply as Gryphus.

Now he shouldered his rucksack and strode along the causeway back into town. Through cobblestone streets, shady and narrow, he worked his way up to the white hilltop neighborhood known as the Kastro. Crossing the courtyard of the island's only Catholic church, he came to the pensioner's flat where the old Jew lived. Gryphus had paid him a visit in the night, and now he was returning to finish the job.

Mounting the tile steps, he opened the door and stepped inside. The air was stale, sour with cheap wine. A stingy light bulb hung from the kitchen ceiling. Gryphus padded down the hallway and studied the sliver of yellow light beneath the bathroom door. Then he turned the handle and pushed the door inward several centimeters until it struck something solid and dense just on the other side. He pushed harder, forcing whatever it was to grate over the tiles.

The old Jew had been dead a while. He sat on the toilet slumped against the pedestal sink, eyes not quite closed, head held erect—not by rigor mortis, but by the loop of translucent green tubing wrapped around his head. It was tethered to the heavy oxygen canister lying on its side behind the door. The tubing's nasal cannulas had been yanked from Jew's nose around to his ear, where they now whispered a steady lullaby. Clutched in his fist was the ipratropium bromide asthma inhaler Gryphus had left for him that night, its mouthpiece smeared with bloody secretions. Prying it loose, Gryphus replaced it with a tiny metal trinket and crimped the Jew's stiffened fingers around it. Then he unloaded his rucksack and got to work.

***

Peter raced through the night, his mind blazing with the news. A police patrol had been dispatched to his father's house in Seattle, only to find it engulfed in flames. Fire crews had been quick to the scene, but it was doubtful that anyone inside had survived.

In his heart, Peter knew that his father was dead. Seh-mee-nah see-nah-pees. Whatever those words meant, the man had spent his last breath on them.

Peter rounded the final bend of interstate and shot across Lake Washington's lightless void, plunging through the city's halogen glow.

He found himself waiting at a familiar traffic light, his heart pounding in time with the car's turn signal. He turned left, then left again, and came to a stop in the middle of the street.

The cul-de-sac was a three-ring circus of flashing lights. Fire trucks and police cars sat at odd angles. Limp hoses crisscrossed the glistening pavement. Here and there, weary firefighters slouched against the engines, talking quietly, their work done. If any of the neighbors had come out to watch, they had long since gone inside.

Peter eased the car to the curb, shut off the engine, and got out. The air was damp, acrid with the stench of fire. Somewhere, a generator hummed. Radios squawked from the shadows. All around the cul-de-sac, people still had their lights on, except for one darkened lot at the back, like a knocked-out tooth.

At the opposite edge of the cul-de-sac, someone had parked a beige truck stenciled with the words King County Medical Examiner. When Peter moved toward it, two women stepped out of the shadows and cut him off. One was a police officer, Black, young, short, and heavy-set, her oval face soft with concern. The other was a middle-aged white woman in street clothes, tall and gangly, her gray hair cut short, narrow face expressionless. She introduced herself as Dr. Cornelia Hoffman, Medical Examiner.

As soon as Peter identified himself, she informed him that firefighters had penetrated the charred ruins of the house and located what appeared to be the remains of a single occupant.

"It's my dad."

Dr. Hoffman nodded solemnly. "We'll need to confirm it."

"What do I have to do?"

"Get some rest," said the police officer. "We'll post a patrol here."

"A patrol? Why?"

Dr. Hoffman raised her long, paddle-like hand. "It's routine with high-intensity fires like this."

"High intensity? What do you mean?"

"We'll know more tomorrow." She handed Peter her business card. "In the afternoon, I need you to come to my office at King County Hospital. I'll be able to tell you more then."

Peter stayed until the last fire truck had rolled away. Under the watch of the remaining police patrol, he approached the line of yellow caution tape draped over a boxwood hedge he had trimmed a million times in his youth. In the darkness beyond, almost nothing remained, just a partial wall jutting out from a jumble of soggy timbers. For a moment, Peter thought he was at the wrong address, that it was all a terrible mistake.

Then he noticed a silver pickup truck parked under a street lamp to his left. Peter still remembered his mother's fury the night his father brought it home. But even without the memory, he would have recognized the bumper sticker—Teuton Pickup—a play on words only a professor of Germanics could appreciate.

He approached the truck, glancing over his shoulder as he tried the driver's side door. Finding it unlocked, he slipped inside and sat behind the wheel. Cold lamplight feathered through the rear window, illuminating a scrap of paper tucked between the windshield and dashboard. It was a list of sorts, handwritten, not in English letters of course, but in Viking runes.

Peter had learned the ancient Viking alphabet, the futhark, almost before his ABCs. It was a special language between father and son, a code for the sharing of secrets, crude jokes, gift ideas for Mom's birthday. Whenever she intercepted one of these runic transmissions, she would pass it on with a smile, reminding Peter that he owed his very existence to runes. It was the study of Viking runes, after all, that brought a young Daniel Barshman to Norway, where he met his future wife. Peter had even learned a poem about the subject of his father's doctoral dissertation, Olav Tryggvason, the first Christian king of Norway.

Now, holding the scrap of paper up to the lamplight, he wondered if it might be another one of his father's secret messages, an explanation for those mysterious words, seh-mee-nah see-nah-pees. But as he translated the runes in his mind, a dull ache of remorse climbed from the roots of his heart, gathering at the back of his throat. The secret message was nothing but a grocery list—eggs, butter, bread, cigs—the litany of a man living alone and repentant, his face red with shame.

Peter opened the ashtray to dispose of the list but paused. There in the ashes lay a metal object no bigger than a plump raisin. He fished it out, dropped it into his palm, and blew away the ash. It was a charm of sorts, fashioned from dense gray metal into the form a mythical creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. A wire hook attached to the spine marked it as a pendant earring—a woman's earring. The lump of remorse was gone.

Stuffing the earring into his pants pocket, Peter opened the glove compartment, not at all surprised to find a half-empty pack of Chestershire Lights, the only brand the man ever smoked. Bringing the pack to his nose, he took a deep breath of the rich umber scent, imagining for just a moment a happier time, those autumn days at the zoo, Mom laughing, Dad puffing smoke like a dragon.

A knock on the window startled him. It was the officer from the patrol car, her voice muffled by the glass. "You're not supposed to be in there."

Peter opened the door. "There wasn't any yellow tape, so I thought it was OK."

"Did you touch anything?"

Peter held up the pack of cigarettes and shut the glove compartment.

The officer sighed, looked over both shoulders, then ushered Peter out of the truck. "Don't worry about it. We'll keep an eye on things tonight."

By the time Peter returned to his apartment, he felt ill, feverish, achy to the bone. His lungs were on fire. He could hardly catch his breath. Stumbling inside, he emptied his pockets into the candy bowl on the kitchen table: keys, wallet, the pack of Chestershire Lights, and the heavy clank of that woman's earring. Then he went straight to bed.

He awoke drenched in sweat, the weird orange light of dawn seeping through the curtains. Outside his window, the fat gray squirrel was molesting the bird feeder in a vain attempt to get at the last seeds. Too exhausted to care, Peter let himself fall back into a shallow sleep tormented by fire, ash, and bone.

It was afternoon before he woke again. He groped for his phone and sat on the edge of his bed, hacking up rust-streaked phlegm. There were no new messages. But there were three missed calls from the day before.

He got up and shuffled to the bathroom, wincing through a splitting headache. Downing a handful of ibuprofen and two glasses of water, he stepped into the shower.

By the time he dressed for his appointment with the medical examiner, he was feeling better. Whatever illness had struck him in the night was passing quickly. But what was it? Not a bacterial pneumonia. Or even the flu. It was unlike anything he had ever experienced.

Over coffee and dry toast, he reviewed the missed calls from the day before. All three had come as Peter drove through Oregon, his phone set to vibrate. The first two were from the same unidentified local number, but whoever it was had disconnected without leaving a message. But the third message was from his father. It was thirty-two seconds in length, and it been left just minutes before his final call, the one Peter had answered.

He held the phone to his ear, expecting that smoky baritone, perhaps those strange words again. But there was only music, classical music, a familiar orchestral piece in a minor key, the violins and cellos crystal clear. It was familiar, because Peter had been listening to it as he drove his mother's car through the Oregon desert. It was her favorite piece from Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite, "Solveig's Song."

The King County Medical Examiner's office was at the south end of the hospital, near the loading docks and dumpsters where Peter never had cause to go. Dr. Cornelia Hoffman greeted him in the lobby and led him down a long hallway to a private room. The brown shag carpet and drab furniture gave off a strange, nervous odor, like sweat. Colored Kleenex sprouted from dispensers planted around the room.

They sat on opposite sofas, a low wooden table between them. Dr. Hoffman wore a crisp white lab coat with her name embroidered in red cursive letters over the breast pocket. She sat with her knees together, big hands folded in her lap. "I'm sorry to have to ask you here like this."

"I know what I have to do," he said. His father's face had been red with shame the last time Peter saw it. What did it look like now?

"It may not be what you think," said Dr. Hoffman. She reached into her coat pocket and produced two clear plastic bags with printed labels. They clunked softly as she laid them on the table. "These items were found in close proximity to the remains. Do you recognize either of them?"

Peter held up the first bag. It contained a lump of twisted bluish metal about two inches long. Part of it was flat and blackened, a disc with pale Roman numerals barely visible around the perimeter—a ghostly photo negative of the watch his father had been wearing the day they donated blood together, the watch Peter had bought one Father's Day eons ago.

"It's his."

She nodded for Peter to take the second bag, his father's wedding band. Except for a little soot here and there, the metal was unscathed. He held the bag close and noticed what he could not have noticed before. The ring's inner surface was inscribed with letters, not English letters, not even Viking runes. They were Hebrew letters, six in all, evenly spaced:

העושיה

"Do you recognize the ring?" she said.

"It's my Dad's"

"May I ask about the inscription?"

"You can ask, but I don't read Hebrew. And as far as I know, neither did my dad."

"But you're sure the ring belongs to him."

"It's his wedding ring. Can I keep it?"

"No, unfortunately. Not while the investigation is open."

Peter copied the Hebrew letters as best he could onto a piece of paper.

She laid her hands on her knees. "Now, I need to ask if you know where your father received his dental care."

"You need dental records? What about DNA? Isn't that how you do it these days?"

"I'm afraid the condition of the remains precludes DNA testing." She sighed. "This won't be easy to hear."

"Tell me."

"We were unable to recover very much at all, just ashes really, and a few teeth and long bone fragments."

"Jesus. What happened? That sounds like a cremation oven."

"In fact, the temperature in the immediate vicinity of the remains was considerably hotter than a cremation furnace, somewhere between twenty-seven hundred and sixty-one hundred degrees Fahrenheit."

"How do you know that?"

She pointed to the watch and then to the ring. "Because one melted and the other did not. That watch was made of steel, but the ring is made of heat-resistant tungsten."

"Wait. Are you saying this was arson?"

She nodded. "The investigation team suspects someone used a military-grade incendiary device."

"What? Why would anyone do that?"

She turned her palms toward the ceiling. "I've never seen anything like it."

_________________

Photo: Naxos at sunrise

Photo credit: Crash Williams' Blog

https://crashwilliams.wordpress.com