David Greco and Max Finger arrived at a Victorian-style house a block from Mater Miseracordia Private Hospital, founded by the Sisters of Mercy in 1852. Three stories tall, with an ornate columned façade and new steel door, the building was in obvious need of restoration, as were the trees and shrubs around it.
          Inspector Finger had called ahead—a police guard was posted outside—and they were received by an elderly woman introduced to David as the housekeeper to the seven nuns who had lived there, two of them now dead. The third had lived elsewhere.
         “The first murder occurred here in the chapel they keep,” said the Inspector. “The perpetrator came up from behind her, probably as she was kneelin’ in prayer, wrapped the rosary beads around her neck and, according to the coroner, she choked to death in less than a minute. The murderer apparently just came through the old front door, maybe unlatched. After that, we put security on and installed that new metal door.”
         The chapel had not been touched since the murder, and there was nothing to see to indicate one had taken place.
         “The killer leave anything behind?”
         “Only a couple of olive pits that came free from the rosary,” said Finger. “I didn’t quite get why they were made of olive pits.”
         “There were olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus was taken prisoner by the Jews,” said David. “When I was in high school they sold rosaries made out of olive pits they said came from there.”
         Finger shook his head and said, “And I thought Judaism had weird folklore. We tried to trace them to the religious articles stores in town but no luck with that. They seemed quite old. The killer must have had them a long time.”
         The two men left the mansion and drove to a parish-run school near St. Patrick’s Cathedral, where the second victim had been found.
         “She used to teach here,” said Finger as they entered the old red stone building on Donore Avenue. The classroom where the murder occurred was small, musty, with very old, scratched school desks and a scuffed blackboard, with police tape across the door, and on the floor, just behind the teacher’s desk, was a broad stain of dried blood.
         “Our guess is that the victim was workin’ late—there are test papers on her desk—and the killer came in, grabbed the wooden pointer and jammed it right through her chest. Came out the other side of her body, so it needed a lot of force behind it. It’s unlikely the killer would have been an elderly woman out for revenge. The pointer slammed into the blackboard—here—and snapped. The rest was withdrawn and tossed over in that corner. No fingerprints anywhere. No strands of hair we could find.”
         “And the nun fell backwards?”
         “Yeah, and apparently cracked her skull on the way down, but she was already dead from the pointer attack.”
         “No one heard anything?”
         "There was no one in else in the buildin’. The maintenance man had left around five o’clock, the murder occurred around seven, when it was dark.”
         The detectives’ last stop was at a two-story house in Warrenmount where the nun beaten to death had been living on the first floor, her one-room flat facing the rear of the building. A police officer stood outside.
         “This one had left the order after they closed the Laundries,” said Finger. “We spoke to her colleagues and they said she was one of those who felt great remorse for her actions—of course, this was when some of the heat was buildin’ up against the good Sisters. She tried to leave it all behind her, never was in contact with her former colleagues but, oddly enough, had never formally renounced her vows. She lived here alone and kept inside most of the time. Must’ve been livin’ off the dole.”
         “How old?”
         “In her seventies. She was said to be sufferin’ from epilepsy and would sometimes go to Coombes Women’s Hospital a few blocks away. In this instance the room was spattered with blood that had flown from the flaying of the nun’s face—on the walls, the furniture and the carpet, as if a bottle of blood had exploded. Finger said the nun had been handcuffed first, with her hands behind the chair."
         “The paper said she’d been hit again and again by someone wearing gloves coated with some rough material?” asked David.
         “Oh, that’s all over the place—watch where you step. The murderer had glued very rough sandpaper onto the palms of the glove and just shredded the woman’s face. It couldn’t have gone on for too long, because the coroner determined that the woman actually died from brain damage caused by bein’ so brutally beaten about the head.”
         “And again, the killer left no evidence behind?”
         “We’ve got some wool fibers but have no real clue as to where they came from.  Maybe the killer’s coat, maybe not.”
         “The doors weren’t locked?”
         “They seemed to have been, and it’s clear the killer came through the rear window, which was not locked.”
         “And nobody heard anything, with this woman being slapped around like that?”
         “She was muffled with a cloth and duct tape. The killer had her seated facin’ a mirror, so the nun had to watch her own flesh being torn off.  And after the first few blows, I doubt the nun was capable of utterin’ a sound.”
         It never occurred to Finger that David would be put off by what he’d seen that morning, so he said, “How about some lunch? A quick one, somewhere near.”
         Of course, David had seen worse crime scenes in his time, and it never occurred to him not to have lunch. They repaired to a local pub, ordered sandwiches, and Finger said, “If you want to have a pint, you’re not on duty.”
         “I’m good. So, what do you know about these women?”
         “Not much from the remainin’ Sisters, who say it’s just too horrible to talk about. I suspect they know the reasons in each case for the way their colleagues were murdered. They were highly predetermined to signal somethin’ to the rest.”
         “Well, I suppose the rosary beads make sense and even the pointer if that nun had been a teacher. As for the blows to the head, I’ve got to think it was pay-back for a teacher who’d inflicted a lot of pain, maybe for slapping the girls silly.”
         “Yeah, that all sounds reasonable,” said Finger, picking at his chips. “I’d like to have a lot more specifics, so we’re trackin’ down some of the women who had been in the Laundries while those particular nuns were there. I don’t think there’s more than one killer, but you never know. Two or more could have ganged together, which would explain a bit about the strength it took to kill those old ladies.”
         “Well, they were old ladies, so I doubt they put up much of a fight,” said David.
         “Probably not, but Adrenalin can be a powerful force when you’re bein’ attacked. At least in the case of the rosary murder.”
         “I know you said there were no fingerprints, but what about foot prints?”
         “In the first two cases the walkways to the premises were concrete. In the third, where the killer came in through the window, ‘twas the usual rainy night in Dublin, and there were some marks in the grass but the killer must have worn plastic bags over his or her shoes.”       
         “Could you tell anything about the size of the shoe?”
         “No, the killer was smart enough to deliberately slog over the grass to obscure everything.”
         Finger called for the check, and David thought it was a reasonable moment to ask about how a Jew got onto the Garda.
         “Well, for one thing, I’m only half Jewish. Me mum’s Irish.”
         “You were raised as a Catholic?”
         “I might’ve been, but she died when I was only four years old. My father had no interest in religion one way or the other, not a practicin’ Jew by any means, though we’d go through a token observance of the occasional holiday when it suited his purpose. I did go to a parish school, because that’s almost all they have in Ireland. The government pays for them, the Church operates them. Had to take a god-awful amount of religion in school but they never forced me to take the Catholic sacraments.
         “By the time I was ready to choose a career, the only thing that was really Jewish about me was my name, and I reminded the police that the Lord Mayor of Dublin at that time was Jewish, name of Robert Briscoe (right), who had enormous respect from the people and the government. His son Ben followed him in the job.”
         “So no problem with prejudice among the rank and file?”
         “T'was more a question of constant ribbin’, some of it pretty mean, but that’s part of being a cop. I kept my head down, as they say, rose through the ranks, was lucky enough to solve some important cases, and here I am.”
         “So you’re on this present case out of seniority?”
        Finger finished his diet soda, paid the check, put his coat on and said, “Yes and no. I’m not the most senior cop on the force, but my captain—name’s Hannigan—wants this case solved and solved fast. He knows it’s a sensitive subject, a big open sore, what with the background of the Sisters and the reluctance to act against them. He knows this is a dirty business and a lot of the other detectives might not do a thorough job because of their connection to the Church. Me, I’m not a Catholic, so that doesn’t sway me at all and Hannigan knows it. I’m kind of the logical choice. I’m not goin’ to go soft on the nuns when I question them.”