The Vesuvius Isotope (The Katrina Stone Novels) by Kristen Elise Ph.D.

Take my advice. Stop looking.”
     

    The train continued its steady chug, and I stared out the window at the passing Campania countryside.
    Rossi killed him.
    I looked up at Dante once again. His eyes were concerned.
    “I can help with the Italian if you want to buy a plane ticket to return home to the United States,” he said. “And I’m begging you to do that.”
    What he said barely registered.
    “Dante,” I said thoughtfully, “let me ask you something. You mentioned camorra , the Naples Mafia. They are drug runners, right?”
    “Eh, of course. Drugs, and other things.”
    “Is it possible that Rossi is one of them? Could a Naples police officer be mixed up in that kind of thing?”
    “It is possible that a Naples police officer can be mixed up in camorra . Yes. It is also possible that a camorra boss could impersonate a police officer. Our law enforcement—what would an American say?—sucks.”
    “So if I go to the police to report Rossi—”
    “Don’t. Just don’t. Katrina, go home.”
    “I can’t go home.” Tears sprang to my eyes, and I blinked them back. “Can’t you see that I can’t just go home? Rossi took something from me. Something dear to me that I will never get back. I need answers. I need justice. Or I might as well have let him shoot me back there.”
    Dante looked pensive for a moment, and I thought I saw a tear in his eye as well. He looked down at the floor of the train. “He killed your husband.” It was not a question.
    I nodded miserably, my eyes fixed upon my lap.
    “If you keep looking, he will kill you, too.”
    “If I don’t,” I replied, “then I’m already dead.”
     

    The train shuddered to a halt, and I glanced out the window. “Are we in Naples?” I asked.
    Dante’s eyes widened. Then he grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet. “Come on!” he said and led me off the train.
    I looked around. “This isn’t Naples…” I began, and a moment of panic took me as I wondered why he had led me off the train at the wrong stop.
    “I know,” Dante explained. “We jumped onto the train so quickly that we took the wrong one. We took the one coming from Naples, through Herculaneum, through Pompeii. It goes the wrong way.”
    As he said it, I realized he was right. We had boarded the train at the same platform where we had arrived from Naples.
    “We are now in Pompeii,” Dante said.
    “Aw, fuck.” I began looking around for the platform for the return train.
    “No, no… this could be good,” he said.
    “What do you mean?”
    Dante looked up at the sky and then at his wristwatch. Then he turned and looked into my eyes. “Are you sure you want to keep looking? Are you completely sure?”
    I gave him a dirty look.
    “That’s what I thought. Then this is where you should be. Pompeii is bigger than Herculaneum. It is more popular. There is more to see. There are more guides. More of the information is written in English. You can learn whatever you need to learn about the Villa dei Papiri, the history, the plant. Maybe you can figure out what Rossi is after. And maybe I can help.”
    “How so?”
    “I know a lot about the ancient Romans.”
    “You do?”
    “Yes. I study their religion. I’m a pagan theologist.”
    I glanced at his youthful, heavily tattooed flesh and backward baseball cap, now slightly askew from our dash through the ruins of Herculaneum. “No, you’re not,” I scoffed.
    “Oh no?” His eyes were suddenly challenging. “Look again.”
    I did, and I could not believe my eyes. “Incredible,” I said. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice before.”
     

    Many years ago, I took a backpacking trip through Eastern Europe with a girlfriend. In the Bucovina region of Romania is a series of monasteries. Each monastery is completely covered, exterior and interior, top to bottom, in intricate frescoes depicting Biblical scenes. Each wall tells a story in the universal language of pictures.
    Standing at the entrance to the ruins of