Chase Baker and the Da Vinci Divinity (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book 6) by Vincent Zandri Page A

An area no longer
than my thumb nail and no thicker than a matchstick. Reaching into my pocket, I
retrieve my switchblade, trigger it open. Sticking the soft area with the blade,
it punctures the mural, making a small rectangular incision in Christ’s hand.
    “You’re crucifying him,” Andrea
says.
    “It’s what I must do in the name of
saving humanity. Something tells me he won’t mind.”
    “So what is it? A keyhole?”
    I play with the blade inside the
opening for a bit.
    “It’s definitely some sort of
opener. But, I’m not feeling any tumblers like I would on a lockset.”
    “You want me to try and pick it?”
    “By all means.”
    She approaches me, her pick already
in hand. Handing me the Maglite, I now assume the job of shining the light on
the tiny wall slit. Andrea pokes and prods the opening, but nothing seems to be
happening. She pulls the pick out.
    “You’re right,” she says. “No
tumblers. The lock, if it is even a lock in the traditional sense of the word,
requires a special key. I suppose we should check out Dr. Belli’s office.”
    “Hang on a minute,” I say, digging
in my pocket for the note.
    Retrieving it, I shine the light
down on the ornate handwriting and read it aloud once again, more for my own
benefit than Andrea’s.
    “The open door will reveal the
divinity. Vitruvian Man holds the key.” Pausing for a minute to mull it over
inside my brain, I then shoot a look at Andrea. “Why bring up Vitruvian Man?
How could da Vinci’s artistic rendering of one particular man hold the key to
the door?”
    “You’re right,” she says. “Doesn’t
make sense.”
    I fold the note, shove it back in
my pocket, and finger the change inside it. That’s when the realization comes
to me like a divine bolt of electricity. I pull out a coin. A one euro coin.
Holding it between my forefinger and thumb, I shine the Maglite on the front.
The light bounces off it like a mirror.
    “What are you doing?” she asks.
    “What do you see here?”
    “I see a common coin. One euro. So
what?”
    “But what do you see now,
girlfriend?”
    Flipping the coin around, shining
the light on the human image stamped on it. Andrea’s face lights up brighter
than the Maglite.
    “Vitruvian Man,” she says. “Da
Vinci’s Vitruvian Man occupies the entire backside of the coin.”
    “Let’s try it,” I say, placing the
coin in the slot as if it were a slot machine in a gaming parlor. Pushing the
coin in with my thumb, it disappears. At first, nothing happens, until the
floor beneath us begins to vibrate and the sounds of heavy concrete separating
from heavy concrete fills the empty museum. The stone door covered in the image
of da Vinci’s Jesus opens up onto another room.
    A room that may very well hold The Book
of Truths .

 
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    A bright, overhead light automatically flashes on inside the
long, narrow room, as the door opens up. The room contains floor-to-ceiling
shelves on both sides. The shelves support skulls that have browned over the
years, as well as antique crosses inlaid with gold and precious jewels. There’s
a glass ossuary that contains an entire hand, the skin shriveled around the
bone, the black fingernails overgrown by inches. A metal plate attached to the
wood base of the ossuary is embossed with the words, “Mano destra di
Michelangelo” or “Right hand of Michelangelo.”
    There are dozens, if not hundreds,
of old leather-bound volumes that must be worth a fortune to collectors. The
floor space contains mounts for suits of armor, small arms of the Renaissance
and Medieval periods, plus daggers, knives, and crossbows.
    “How do we know what to look for?”
Andrea says.
    “The sketchbook will be small,” I reply.
    “Like, how small, Chase?”
    “It’ll be smaller than those
volumes,” I say, my eyes scanning the far end of the shelves on my right-hand
side. “About the size of the diary you kept as a teenage