Lost and Found in Prague

by Kelly Jones

Genres: Women's Fiction; International Crime & Mystery; Suspense

Synopsis

The author of The Woman Who Heard Color transports readers to a dreary Good Friday in Prague in an "intriguing thriller"* as the mysterious death of a nun sets off a tangled chain of events that inexorably draws three strangers together—and forever changes their lives…

Just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, aspiring journalist Dana Pierson joined the hordes of young people traveling to Eastern Europe to be a part of history. There, she and her best friend were swept up in the excitement of the Velvet Revolution. Twenty years later, Dana returns to the city of her youthful rebellion to reconnect with her old confidant, who never left the city. But the visit that was reserved for healing intimacies and giddy reminiscences is marred by a strange death in one of Prague’s most famous Catholic churches—and an even more peculiar mystery surrounding it…

In a city where the past is never far from the present, Dana must work with a conflicted Italian priest and a world-weary Czech investigator to unlock dark secrets hidden in Prague’s twisted streets. But the key to solving the puzzle may lie in memories of Dana’s long-ago visit, even as she is forced to face the reality of a more recent loss…

*Publisher Weekly

Release date: January 6, 2015

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 352

Sample

1

The quiet woke her as it did each morning when the dreams faded. Claire lay, taking in a deep breath, aware that she had been given another day, forcing herself to be grateful for this. She rose, her knees creaking as she grasped the edge of the bed and lowered herself to the hard, cold floor for her morning offering. “O my God, my sweet Infant Savior, I offer thee my prayers, works, and sufferings,” she began.

After a silent Amen, she crossed herself, slowly unfolded her aging joints as she stood, and stepped to the narrow closet. Laboriously she tugged the night garment over her head, slipped on the dark brown tunic, the panels of the scapular, followed by white wimple and black veil, a ritual she had performed each morning for the past seventy-six years. She smoothed the covers on her small bed and sat, rubbing her feet together to encourage the circulation. The Barefoot Order of the Carmelites, she mused, though sandals had always been part of her habit. Today she would need a good pair of stockings to protect her toes from the early-morning chill. She worked the warm wool over her feet, pulling the socks up around her plump calves, and then nudged the sandals from beneath her bed and slipped them on, bending to secure the straps, a simple task that had become more and more difficult. Before leaving her room, she wrapped a frayed knit shawl around her shoulders.

In the darkness, she shuffled down the hall, through the kitchen, past the pantry. After retrieving the keys from the box near the door, she dipped her fingers into the dove-shaped holy water font that hung on the wall, offering her day for a second time to the Infant Savior.

Silently, she crept down the stairs, counting each step with an aspiration—my God—step—and my all—step—my God—step—and my all.Sixteen total. Making her way along the hall, she disturbed no one. She unbolted the heavy wooden door, pulled it open slowly, crossed the small courtyard, unlatched the iron gate, and stepped out onto the square. April’s dampness hung in the air, intensified by the silence, the absence of others. Sister Claire wrapped the shawl tighter and reached for her rosary. She knew exactly how long it would take to walk the short distance to Our Lady Victorious. One rosary. Twenty-five aspirations. As she grasped the small crucifix fixed to the beads, touched it to her head and heart, left, then right, she realized she wasn’t sure what day it was. This happened often now, and her greatest concern this morning was her uncertainty over which mysteries to contemplate. She decided on the Joyful to combat the feelings that had invaded her for the past weeks and months. The Joyful Mysteries were designated for Mondays and Thursdays, and she thought it was Thursday.

She encountered no one as she walked. The first light of morning had yet to rise over the golden-tipped spires of Prague. The bakers, whose delicious scents would soon fill the pastry shops in the neighborhoods of the Malá Strana, had just begun to rub sleep from their eyes, and it would be hours before the vendors, whose wooden wagons bumped early each morning with an uneven rhythm over the cobblestones, would offer fresh fruits and vegetables from the stalls at the open market.

Claire felt an energy in her prayers as if with each step, each word, she was nudging a soul closer toward heaven. She finished her rosary and kissed the cool metal of the cross, her lips pressed against the ridge of the nail piercing Christ’s feet. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” she whispered.

She had no permission to walk alone from the convent to the Church of Our Lady Victorious, though she was sure the prioress knew she often rose and moved about in the darkness, unable to sleep more than a few hours each night.

Later, she would return to her cell as she did each morning, then emerge once more in timely fashion, joining the other nuns in the chapter room for their silent procession into the convent chapel.

She recited the twenty-five aspirations, counting them off on two and a half decades of rosary beads—four more years’ indulgences. At times she thought she could feel and see the souls being lifted heavenward, greeted by the Father. She chided herself for such pride, thinking that she, a humble servant, could be an instrument in delivering these waiting souls to their eternal reward.

With the last aspiration, she arrived at her destination and in the darkness her fingers searched for the lock on the door. She slid the key in and entered. Immediately she sensed a foreign presence had infused the interior of the church. A faint vibration pulsed along the floor, and the glass chandelier above quivered with the slightest tremor. Yet, such movements were not unusual in themselves. The church was over four hundred years old; often she sensed spirits from the past still lingered, lurking in the crypt below, hovering in the attic above.

Inhaling, she wondered if the scent that clung to the air, a smell she knew but could not name nor retrieve from the proper pocket of her mind, was the source of this uneasiness and confusion. Memories, like pennies stored in a pouch riddled with holes, slipped out so easily now. Despite her misgivings, she approached the main altar and bowed—no longer able to lower herself for a proper genuflection—then continued to the sacristy where the cleaning supplies were stored, determined to complete the task for which she had come. She checked the altar alarm and found it had been turned off. Had she done this the day before? Forgotten to reset it? She gathered the plastic pail, inserted the whisk broom and dustpan, gripped the shears, and stepped back into the church, realizing with a touch of relief that the perplexing, yet familiar, smell was that of incense. A remnant of the previous evening’s services, it perfumed the air, mingling with the aroma perpetually clinging to the marble altars and ancient stone. But this relief coupled with the recognition of a recurring uncertainty. What was happening to her mind that she could not remember from day to day what had come and gone the day before? Today wasn’t Thursday. Yesterday had been Thursday. Holy Thursday. Today was Good Friday. There were no flowers to refresh, no dried blossoms to pinch or stray vines to clip. The altars were bare. How had she made such a terrible mistake? Today she should have contemplated on the Sorrowful Mysteries, meditating on the Passion of Christ. Today was the day Christ died for the sins of all mankind.

Again she felt a presence. A voice. “Accomplished with ease.” Was this merely her mind playing with her once more?

Then another, far away, near the door, the words carried on the air of a familiar melody, a distinct timbre. “A well-played plan. My reasoning correct. He is with us, guiding the way, as surely this would not have been so accomplished without.”

Then words, unspoken, a familiar voice, spinning about her, yet only within. The melody, the verse she’d often heard and pondered:

Under the wing of peace we march in gentle revolution

to claim our cherished life and freedom

The salvation of the world

to be found in the human heart

She stood, hands trembling, tightening her grasp on the shears. Lingering in the shadow of the altar of Saints Joachim and Anne, she listened. A click of the door? Nothing now. The voices had stilled. The church was quiet. Claire heard only her own breathing.

Moments later, deciding that the voices—which, together with the thieves of memory, had become her personal cross—were only imagined, she made her way down the side aisle. Again, she stopped and listened. Nothing. She was alone in the church.

She proceeded on quiet feet to the altar of the Pražské Jezulátko.

At one time she had been allowed to dress the Infant, but this task has been handed over to the younger nuns, Sister Agnes, Sister Ludmila, and Sister Eurosia. Claire knew she could still do it without difficulty. Her mind and hands had memorized every curve of the precious little body. She knew how to enclose the small figure in the metal shell for protection. She was aware of the scent and texture of every garment, the history of each. Tomorrow the younger nuns would remove the Infant from his position high on the altar and prepare him for the glorious day, dressing the little King in the colors of the Resurrection.

She bowed before the Infant, suddenly aware of another scent, similar, though distinct from the spicy smell of incense. The voices could deceive her, but this smell, layered upon stone and incense, she easily identified as the residue of tobacco. No plumes curled in the air, nor invaded her nostrils, yet she knew someone had been here, and she knew the odor, a scent that would cling to a body, leaving a distinct trail long after the flame had been extinguished. She did not imagine this. Someone had been in the church.

Instinctively, she tilted her head up toward the altar. A knot tightened in her chest. For the briefest moment she felt something—a swish of warm air against her face. Then a sensation of empty air. A void. Something missing. Gone. The sharpness circling her heart increased, the weight of her body pulling her down as a deep sting cut into her cheek, warm and wet. The clatter of her plastic pail dropping to the floor, dustpan and whisk broom rattling out. Another voice gently calling. “It is time, my faithful servant.”

Claire’s own voice, humble, but strong, “Not yet, my Lord.”

2

Two weeks, two days before Easter

The streetlamp provided scant light; he used the flashlight beam as he traced along the outline of the form, bulky as a grizzly bear in winter. A bullet hole pierced the side of the head. Twisted beneath the tower of the old town hall at the Staromestské námesti, the man’s body lay as if placed on the bull’s-eye of a target, centered in a circle constructed of dark stones alternating with light stones, a sidewalk mosaic. The astronomical clock hovered above, marking time, tracking the movement of sun and moon. If it had been summer or fall, the tourists might be gathering now, though the chimes would not sound for another two hours. It was too early, too cold, too dark.

Chief Investigator Dal Damek of the Czech Republic Police Force and the Mestská policie Praha officer who’d made the call stood conversing in low whispers. The young officer, part of the city police force, had heard the shot rip through the quiet morning and claimed to have seen a quick flash from the roof of a building—he pointed across the square toward the Grand Hotel Praha.

A tilt of the head from Damek sent Detective Kristof Sokol and the team off toward the hotel, the eager young rookie leading the way.Charging, Damek thought, with the barely tested enthusiasm of a novice.

“There.” The Mestská policie Praha officer’s voice trembled, as did his still-extended arm, and Damek guessed he was new to the local force, an officer whose duties normally consisted of overseeing traffic and animal control, attending to the tourists. Damek himself was well seasoned, seven years now in homicide. Seven days as chief investigator.

A cool wind whipped through the square, tumbling a paper cup along the cobbles, catching against the wheel of the forensics van. Tiny sparkling flakes, dust motes, danced in the glow of the streetlight. Damek pulled a kerchief out of his pocket to catch a sneeze. Too early in the season for pollen, but something had invaded the morning air. Once more he surveyed the scene, then folded the square into his jacket and knelt down on the hard, cold stone.

The victim, a man with broad shoulders and thick legs, wore expensive, finely polished leather shoes, a heavy winter coat, soft black fur around the collar. Little more than a week into spring, mornings had yet to welcome the season. The last snowfall had come in early March.

“I didn’t touch anything,” the Mestská officer assured him. His voice quivered with nerves and Damek knew the man hadn’t approached the body. The location and appearance of the entry wound, the lack of blood, indicated it wouldn’t have mattered; death had come quickly. Once more the investigator scanned the square, his eyes settling on the hotel where faces pressed against the windows.

Branislov Cerný, “the old Commie,” as some of the younger officers called him, stooped to examine the metal door at the base of the clock tower. The photographer, other technicians, and officers scurried about, recording details, taking measurements. Damek could not see an exit wound, just the small hole in the dead man’s head. Gauging the distance to the hotel, the way the body had fallen, it was likely the fatal shot had originated from the roof, just as the young officer had said.

Cerný approached, his left leg slowing him down in the cold. Something perhaps overlooked during his last physical as he neared retirement. The senior detective stood beside the chief investigator, staring down. Damek knew the expression that had settled on the man’s craggy face even before he glanced back. An expression that some would call no expression at all. They said Detective Cerný had been doing this too long—he was a holdover, one of the few, from the old days. He operated mostly on gut instinct. Passed over too many times for promotion. Now just biding his time. Over the years, Damek had come to know the man well, and he knew exactly what the old detective was thinking—this was not the work of an amateur. One bullet to the head. This was an execution, a professional.

A small crowd gathered, standing at a distance, held back by the bright yellow crime scene tape. Curious, hushed voices. Others were cordoned off, being questioned now, anyone who might have seen or heard anything. Two of the officers were turning the body, face fully visible now, tongue protruding from a distorted mouth, a thin drool jelling on the gaping lower lip. A pair of pale blue eyes stared up at Damek, wide with astonishment. The man’s dark hair was peppered with silver.

A cell phone rang. The uniformed officer meticulously bagging the victim’s belongings glanced at Damek, who nodded. The officer handed him the dead man’s phone. Nothing to identify the caller on the screen—the number officially blocked. Damek hit answer.

A rough voice, quick and impatient. “I wish to continue our discussion. Ten. Same place.” Damek said nothing. He heard only the caller’s shallow breathing, then dead air.

The officer handed the man’s ID to Cerný, who in turn pressed it into Dal’s hand without a word. Damek glanced down at the official government-issued ID, then at the body, matching the victim’s face with the photo of a jowly middle-aged man, aware of how easily one could be stripped of power, control, and dignity. Again his eyes met Cerný’s, and once more he read the old detective’s thoughts.

Seven days in, and Damek had been handed his first high-profile case as chief of homicide. Once more, he scanned the square, then stared up at the clock, the signs of the zodiac on the face of the tower. He’d come here to the Staromestské námesti, the Old Town Square, often with Karla when they were young, after the revolution, then with Petr, particularly for the holidays. During the Christmas season and again for Easter, the square overflowed with vendors and festivities. Easter, just two weeks away. The traditional beginning of the tourist season.

The unseen apostles remained silent and still, high in the tower, enclosed within the intricacies of the ancient mechanical device, hidden behind the star-dappled doors, as if they were the gates to paradise. Damek knew how it would all begin. The knell to mark each hour. The sliding doors opening to reveal the turning figures, the apostles’ procession. Below this parade of saints, four figures of stone stood without motion, poised for what was to come. Vanity held a mirror. Greed grasped a bag of gold. Death stood to the right, along with Sloth, two more figures for symmetry. Death, a form devoid of flesh and heart. Mere bones. In the left hand he grasped a rope, prepared to pull; in the right hand, the hourglass ready to turn. The sand would slip slowly, each sifting grain a reminder of time running out.

In myths and legends, Death stalked at midnight. Damek looked to the east, spires of the city visible in the early pink glow of dawn. In Prague, Death danced with delight after daybreak, performing each hour for tourists and visitors gathered in the square. This morning the esteemed Senator Jaroslav Zajic had been invited to join the show.

3

Two days after Easter

She traveled alone. Unnoticed. A woman, neither young nor old. Neither beautiful nor plain. Perhaps a woman with a secret, something hidden. Yet, if one were to look deeply, sorrow, rather than secrets, might be revealed. A grief she wished to share with no one. And so, each year, she left, arranging her schedule around the Easter holiday, leaving behind laptop, cell phone, any thread of connection to home, choosing destinations where she was unlikely to encounter anyone she knew. Dana Pierson wished to be alone, to disappear into the crowds.

She gazed out the airplane window at a vast expanse, wishing for a moment she could become part of it, then stared down at the open novel on her lap, realizing she’d read a full page, unaware of a single word. It wasn’t the type of book she’d normally pick up at home—an improbable mystery requiring little thought, silly and complicated at the same time, a book she may or may not finish and would probably leave in the hotel room for the next guest.

She’d spent a week in Rome and was now flying to Prague where she planned to visit her cousin, an exception to the solitude of her spring escape, though by virtue of Caroline’s life choice the two women would have little time together. Dana heard her brother Ben admonishing her, “Better with those who love you. You must know we are here for you.”

Caroline hadn’t been there. She’d sent a letter. Filled with words, attempting comfort. Dana hadn’t seen her in years. At one time they were very close. Then something changed, and Caroline had made a momentous decision that Dana had never understood.

Her thoughts turned to a gloomy November almost twenty years earlier, a youthful journey, an introduction to Prague. Dark clouds cast a shadow over this unknown world, and Dana had wondered, as she looked out the train window, how she had conceived such a notion, why she hadn’t listened to Caroline’s protests about the dangers of entering a Communist country. Caroline, generally open to possibility, always game for a little adventure, perpetually seeing the good in everyone, was, in fact, afraid of godless Communists, and it had taken some cajoling on Dana’s part to convince her to agree to the excursion. The wall in Berlin had just fallen and figurative walls were crumbling all over Europe: The Iron Curtain had been rent. They had heard from others along the way about groups of young, hopeful students organizing in Prague and throughout Czechoslovakia to demonstrate for justice and freedom. As an aspiring journalist, Dana wanted to witness history. Caroline did not share her enthusiasm.

“We could see the Holy Infant of Prague,” Dana had offered, and this turned out to be the shining lure—the opportunity for Caroline, a young woman who believed in angels and saints and divine intervention, to see the small, revered sixteenth-century religious icon.

They were twenty-two at the time, just graduated from college. Both from Boston University, Dana in journalism, Caroline in art history. The trip was a gift from their parents, the great adventure before settling down to enter the real world of employment and grown-up responsibilities. Originally intended for a month-long adventure, a summer trip, it had now extended into the fall, and now as winter took hold.

Dana recalled clearly the noisy locomotive coming to an abrupt halt at the Austria-Czechoslovakia border, the mismatched pair of armed guards muscling their way onto the train, thumbing through passports, checking for visas, glancing up at every turn of the page. The younger officer, short and compact, eyed the Americans suspiciously. The larger and older, square-shouldered with thick dark brows and tight-set mouth, took his time examining papers as if viewing every foreigner as a potential threat. The girls exchanged guarded looks and Dana guessed that Caroline was praying they might be sent back to Austria, fearing that, if allowed to enter, they would be arrested immediately and thrown into a rat-infested prison, their parents not even aware of where they were.

Two hours later, the train huffed and snorted and continued on. When they finally arrived at the outskirts of Prague, they were greeted by a scene more dour than Dana had imagined. Slowing, they rolled past filthy building facades, tile roofs caked with soot, a winter sky clogged with black puffs billowing from dirty brick chimneys. The train jerked to a stop at an ancient-looking station.

A slap of frigid air greeted them as they filed out with other passengers. Lifting backpacks to shoulders, they started through the city, Caroline clutching her coat tighter and tighter around her throat, throwing her cousin one look of concern after another. Breathing air that was barely breathable and reeking with smoke, they walked past boxy Communist-constructed apartments, people bundled up in colorless clothes—few making eye contact—then more dark, filthy structures. With each step, Dana wondered if this had been a terrible mistake.

Eventually, they found a student hostel and, after they’d checked in and surrendered their passports, a plump matronly woman in a gray sacklike dress, clipboard in hand, led them silently down a narrow hall, past walls of peeling paint, over a speckled linoleum floor buckling beneath them. The girls’ dorm, lined with lumpy beds blanketed with itchy-looking wool, smelled of cold stone, overripe fruit, and wet socks and overflowed with the noisy chatter of young women. Mostly students, Dana guessed, all speaking in languages she did not understand. She glanced around, a few girls throwing furtive looks their way, no one offering a smile or welcome. Laundry—dingy underclothes—hung on makeshift clotheslines. Dana pressed her fingers along the side of her head, attempting to thwart the headache she felt coming, and then collapsed on her assigned bed.

Caroline threw her backpack on the adjacent bed, unzipped a pocket, and rummaged around, glancing at Dana with another one ofthose looks. Dana didn’t want to tell her cousin she was now having her own doubts.

Caroline took off down the hall to shower and wash her hair. A natural beauty, without conceit or arrogance, she had one vanity—her lovely, thick, long blond tresses. Dana, who often hopped out of bed and quickly ran a comb through her lank brown hair, frequently teased Caroline about her time-consuming ritual of washing, drying, combing, fluffing. Yet Dana could not deny that a girl with lovely, long blond hair, especially one as attractive as Caroline, caught the attention of the fellows. A definite plus when hanging out with her cousin. Boys sometimes told Dana she was cute, but Caroline far surpassed cute. She turned heads.

A thin girl, speaking in broken English, approached and attempted to bum a cigarette, which Dana didn’t have, and then invited her to join a march the following day to commemorate International Student Day.

Caroline returned to the room, shivering, her damp head still spotted with dabs of shampoo suds. Glaring at Dana, she shrieked, “The goddamned water just went off!”

Dana felt her lips splitting into a smile at the memory, particularly in light of what Caroline was now doing in Prague. No swearing. No hair problems. And then, like an unexpected hiccup, a quick high-pitched laugh escaped. She cleared her throat and glanced quickly at the man sitting next to her. He looked up from his newspaper with a faint smile of amusement.

“Good book?” he asked. He spoke in the deep, roughly textured voice of a smoker. Late sixties to early seventies, she guessed, with noticeable fatigue in his eyes, which were mapped with fine red threads. About her father’s age, if he were still alive. The man wore a dark suit with a nicely pressed white shirt, open collar, no tie. His black hair, little more than a neatly trimmed fringe set below a balding pate, was touched with a hint of gray. A large man, the bulk of his round body pressed against the armrest dividing their seats. Yet there was something rather refined about him—a man who had perhaps overindulged in the better things of life. He, too, appeared to be traveling alone.

Dana stared down at her book cover, feeling a blush of embarrassment over the shiny gold-embossed title, the woman in shapely silhouette holding a smoking gun. “Good book?” she replied. “Not really.” The man tilted his head as if waiting for her to explain the smile, as if she might owe him an explanation.

“I was thinking,” she said, “of an earlier visit to Prague.” As soon as she spoke, she wished she hadn’t. She could have nodded a yes and returned to her reading.

He folded his paper and stuffed it in the seat pocket, eager and ready to engage in conversation. She noticed his hands, carefully manicured, soft as if he’d never engaged in a day of hard, physical work.

“You are on holiday?” he asked with interest, and she nodded, realizing she’d randomly drawn the seat next to a talker. A person who actually enjoyed engaging with strangers. “You spent time in Rome?” He spoke with a slight accent. Italian, she guessed.

“Six days,” she answered.

“You enjoyed it?” Something in his voice told her Rome was home, that he was proud of his city. “A lovely place to enjoy the Easter holidays.”

“Yes, I did enjoy the city.” She’d done the regular tourist things: the Colosseum, the Vatican, St. Peter’s. But Easter Sunday, the five-year anniversary, as well as the day before Easter—the cruelty of a moveable holiday requiring she relive it twice every year—she’d done nothing but wander the streets, purposely placing herself in the busiest squares, the areas with the most pedestrian traffic, in order to be alone, and yet among others. To be unnoticed. To become a no one among so many.

“Rome is a beautiful city with much history. As is Prague.” His tone was friendly. “What brings you back to the Czech Republic?” he asked.

“I’m visiting a friend, my cousin, actually,” she said. He seemed a nice enough man, and the flight wasn’t long enough to get bogged down in a lengthy, unwelcome conversation.

“She lives in Prague?”

Dana nodded.

“It’s been some time since you’ve visited?” he asked.

“About twenty years.”

“On holiday then, too?”

“Well, yes, though . . .” She stopped. Why was she sharing this with a complete stranger?

He raised an inviting brow as if to say, Do tell me, I’m interested. “Prague twenty years ago?” he asked. “What brought you to the city back then?”

“A revolution,” she replied, wondering if this would shock him terribly.

“A revolution.” He repeated the words slowly. He was pensive, rather than surprised. “Sametová revoluce, a velvet revolution.” The word velvet rolled off his tongue devoid of any roughness, imbued with a softness the word itself deserved.

Dana nodded, acknowledging his familiarity with the history of Prague.

“Prague, they say, has become the new Paris,” he told her. “Much changed since the Communists.” He tilted his head as if offering this last statement as a subject of discussion.

“You’re also on holiday?” Dana asked, using the European word, which sounded more fun than vacation or break, like a true celebration.

“I’m not sure,” he said with a laugh that had a rough, raspy tone, as if it came from deep within, rattling up through his lungs. “I’m visiting a dear friend. Like you.” He held out his hands, palms up, then turned them back to himself, as if he and Dana shared something in common. “Though I have not been apprised of the details, I believe I’ve been called upon to exercise the skills I’ve developed in the course of my work, in positions I’ve held through the past several decades.” This was pronounced with a combination of pride, authority, and something that might have been described as a tease—a tease in the sense of My work is so important that I’m