Hi, Knot Newbie. Send me your JPEG and I’ll see what I can do.

Within ten minutes, Tony was looking at a second message from his new correspondent.

Easy peasy, Newbie. It’s not a common knot, but it’s not really outré. This is a Buntline Hitch. It was traditionally used by sailors to tie a line to the bottom of a square sail. It’s basically a clove hitch tied around itself. It’s more secure than the more common two half hitches, but it has a tendency to jam under pressure. You wanted to know what sort of person would use it, right? Well, like I said, it’s a sailor’s knot. So I guess they’re the most likely people to use one …

Tie one on for me.

Monkey’s Fist.

Tony sat back and stared at the screen, his eyebrows lowered in concentration. After a few minutes, he got to his feet and scanned the bookshelves that lined one wall of Petra’s study. He found what he was looking for on the bottom shelf, along with other oversized volumes. Tony opened the atlas and thumbed through the pages. But there wasn’t enough detail for what he wanted.

Impatient, he turned back to the computer and the search engine. First, he looked at city plans of all the murder sites. Then he studied various physical maps of the countries where the murders had taken place. Finally, he disconnected from the internet and returned to his profile.