Everett didn’t answer. His eyes crisscrossed the various shelves until he spied a black bound book.

“Ah, here we go.”

He held up a thick tome. A King James Bible.

Grant’s eyes widened. “Isn’t that the one that Dad gave each of us?”

“I’m surprised you even recognize it,” said Everett with a smile. “I figure yours must be gathering dust somewhere, you good-for-nothing heathen.”

“You’re going to start quoting scripture? This is what my life has come to?”

Everett was silent while flipping pages. “Ah, here we go. Exodus, chapter twenty, verse one. I quote: ‘And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.’”

Everett looked up. “As opposed to Lionel Frey, who devoted his life to other gods—the Greek variety, not Jehovah or whatever the Good Book says he should be doing . . .”

“Everett . . .”

His brother quieted Grant with a look and continued. “Number two. ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above. . . .’ Like your sculptor of archangels.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Deadly.” Everett tapped the Bible passage. “Number three. ‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.’ Sound familiar?”

He lowered the book and stared at Grant, whose mouth had dropped open.

“Good God. The Blasphemers?” said the stunned commander.

“I think we might have stumbled onto your connection, dear brother.”

Grant shook his head in disbelief. “The Ten Commandments?”

“He’s even numbering them for you. Right on their foreheads.”

Grant shook his head in disbelief as he uttered the words. “Someone’s killing people according to the Ten Commandments.”

“Do you have another link in mind?” asked Everett.

Grant wished he did.

The thought running through his head was much, much worse.

Three down. Seven to go.

VII

Grant kicked himself for not putting it together on his own. The killings wrapped up in some sort of misguided religious fervor made perfect sense. Someone was traipsing around London doling out their own form of judgment on people they deemed to have committed punishable sins, even if they were far-fetched and not actual transgressions. Clearly, the killer was bent, so his choices needn’t make sense to a normal person, only to the delusional one who had declared himself judge, jury, and executioner.

Leave it to his brother, “the educated one” as their father used to say, to figure it out. If his Ten Commandment theory held, he knew Everett would lord it over him forever, even if Grant caught the killer and put him away.

“Seeing as how I’m not up to speed with the Good Book, remind me what the Fourth Commandment is.”