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    My door led to a small alcove with steps to the left ascending to the sacristy, a closet for the storage of religious artifacts. I doubted anything remained but out of curiosity, a necessary element of my occupation , I opened the door and peered inside. I found nothing but a thick layer of dust and a crushed beer can . A rustle startled me until I spotted a large rat staring at me from a shelf above my head . It seemed he was curious as well. He sniffed once and slowly crawled away as if he owned the small closet and I was an unwelcome guest. I admired his insouciance with visitors. The c orridor continued straight back to the original part of the monastery . The wooden floor bore a thin veneer of fine dust liming old footprints, themselves dust covered. No one had disturbed this dust in long years. Small rooms branched off the corridor, all empty except for their share of accumulated trash and dust. Cobwebs woven by generations of busy spiders draped the windows and the dark corners of the rooms. R elatively clean rectangular areas on the wall outlined former positions of missing pictures and crucifixes. As we walked, I felt a low rumble in my chest as the floor and walls began to vibrate . Dust and paint chips plummeted from the ceiling , joining similar piles on the floor .
    “Subway,” Lew whispered in answer to my confused look . He jerked his head back toward the door he had investigated. “Nothing there.”
    I no d ded as I wondered if the subway was one of the reasons for the church's abandonment. It s effect on the building would certainly interfere with a religious ceremony and was probably the cause of the many cracks in the c eiling and wall plaster . Some first-time worshipers might attribute the shaking and rumble to the End of Days. The corridor ended at a wall much older than the church. The builders had simply abutted the newer walls of the church to the outside walls of the monastery’s main building . They had left a weathered wooden exterior door in place . I tried the handle. The door was unlocked but I had to lean my shoulder into it to force it open. M oldy plaster broke away from the doorframe and crashed to the floor . So much for stealth , I thought. I managed to force open the door just wide enough to squeeze through into a large room in very bad disrepair , the original nave of the monastery chapel . The nave was extraordinarily large for a Jesuit monastery , nearly as large as that of the adjoining church . I had mistaken its vaulted ceiling for the building’s second story from outside. I wondered at the need for such a large place of worship. From its size , the monastery looked as if it had housed no more than fifty monks. Perhaps the commanding size and attention to detail had been an act of devotion, making it a tribute to God rather than simply a place of worship.
    Sunlight dappled the broken-tiled floor through large holes in the roof. Birds roosted within the carved stone leaves of heavily scrolled capitals atop twin rows of fluted columns . Faded wall murals bore macabre scenes depicting the grisly deaths of martyred saints . The odor of ammonia was much stronger here than in the rest of the building . Equal to and unmasked by the ammonia was a second odor, one with which I was all too familiar in to my line of work – t he cloying stench of death.
    I followed the odor to the apse beyond a stone altar. Barely v isible through the gloom and shadows was a pale , blood-splattered leg. I pressed my handkerchief to my nose and moved closer. The sound of my steps frightened a pair of rats that had been busy munching on the foot attached to the leg. Two toes had already disappeared, tidbits for a rat feast . I moved closer and saw the lower edge of a nude body, a female, probably one of our missing girls. It was not a pleasant sight. A slight sound caught my attention. Thinking it might be Lew, I turned to look. N obody was there, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow