The Devil Will Come by Glenn Cooper

of a predator. She took a deep breath and pressed on.
    Human tails ranged from short nubbins to longer snake-like appendages. They possessed all the structures of mammalian tails with extra bones – up to half a dozen coccygeal vertebrae – covered by sinew and muscle and pink skin. They could move with the full voluntary control of striated muscle.
    Most parents opted for surgical removal lest the child grow up stigmatized and for that reason tails in adults were even more unusual.
    Elisabetta’s eyelids grew heavy. She’d gotten through all the English-language papers and she was finding them repetitive. A German paper was at the top of the pile. It was from the Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift , a short piece from 2007. Her knowledge of German wasn’t good but she thought the title referred to a case study of an adult human tail. The text was dense and impenetrable.
    She’d tackle it in the morning, she decided.
    It was time to clear her head and restore her balance with a short period of prayer before sleep overtook her.
    As she rose from her chair Elisabetta had a sudden impulse to turn one more page. She tried to fight it but her hand moved too fast.
    At the sight of the photo, she lost control of her legs and fell back onto the seat hard enough to make her gasp in pain.
    Dear God .
    A naked old corpse lay prone on an autopsy table, photographed from waist to knees.
    Arising above wrinkled male buttocks was a tail, twenty centimeters from its base to its tip by the measuring rule laid beside it. It was thick at its base, its whole length cylindrical and untapered with an abruptly stubby tip like the cut edge of a sausage.
    But there was more.
    Elisabetta tried to swallow but her mouth was too dry . She squinted hard at the photo and adjusted her reading light but it wasn’t enough.
    Breathing hard, she ran from her room, grabbing at her dressing gown and donning it as she flew down the hall. Sister Silvia, a dear lady with a weak bladder on her way to the lavatory, was speechless as Elisabetta rushed past and careened down the stairs to the classrooms.
    She switched on the lights and found what she needed in the science room. Then she ran back up the stairs, clutching a magnifying glass.
    She sat back down at her desk. The base of the dead man’s spine – that was what had seized her attention like a hard slap to the face.
    There they were, visible under the magnifying glass, ringing the tail in concentric semicircles: a flock of small black tattoos. Elisabetta was seized with a paralyzing fear, as if this naked old corpse might rise from the page and strike at her with a knife aimed for her heart.

SEVEN
    THE INSTITUTE OF Pathology at the University Hospital of Ulm in southern Germany was set in woodlands at the outskirts of the expansive campus. A journey by air with a car and driver from Munich airport had been arranged at the insistence of Professor De Stefano over Elisabetta’s protestations that the train would do fine.
    ‘Look,’ he’d said. ‘I’m sticking my neck out by letting you bring your sister into this so indulge me. I want to make sure you’re there and back the same day. Speed …’
    To his non-amusement Elisabetta completed his mantra, ‘… is essential.’
    She and Micaela had sat beside each other on the flight from Rome talking in hushed voices about tails and tattoos, star signs and ancient Roman burial practices.
    Micaela chomped through her bag of mixed nuts and took Elisabetta’s when they were offered, thoroughly enjoying her role as an insider. But Elisabetta, already nervous about including her family in this business, began to worry about her sister’s commitment to secrecy when she said, ‘We should get Papa involved. He’s a genius.’
    ‘Yes, I know he’s as clever as they come and I guess his analytical powers would be very useful,’ Elisabetta replied, ‘but we simply cannot tell him. We can’t speak of this to anyone else! It was difficult enough to get