by Steven James
My fingers tensed, and as I set down the photos I realized that, despite how much I value human life, I was glad Sebastian Taylor was dead.
According to the case files, the tire impressions that had been found two weeks ago beside one of the mailboxes Shade had used matched the tread patterns on Taylor’s SUV. I asked Kurt, “Both of Taylor’s guns are at the lab?”
“Yes.”
“And neither had been discharged? Neither was loaded?”
“That’s right.”
The door to the house opened, and Cheyenne joined us again.
“I think our guy emptied the guns while Taylor showered,” I said. “It was all one elaborate, twisted game.”
Cheyenne looked a little confused. “Talk me through that.”
“Taylor was well-trained. He never would have carried a gun without a chambered cartridge, and he would have almost certainly gotten a shot off at the intruder if either of his guns were loaded. I’m thinking the killer must have gotten into Taylor’s house, found the guns, and emptied them prior to the time Taylor entered the garage. The perfect time to empty the guns would have been while Taylor showered.”
One of the CSU members stopped dusting for prints on the doorknob and stepped our way. Brown hair. Early thirties. Inquisitive face. I recognized him as one of the men who’d been waiting outside the mine when we investigated Heather’s body on Thursday. We hadn’t met yet, so I guessed he was new to the unit. I extended my hand. “Special Agent Bowers.”
“Reggie Greer.”
We shook hands, then I knelt beside the driver’s door and he squatted beside me. “See the blood here, under the car? Taylor must have approached the vehicle and was opening the door when the killer, who was hidden beneath the car, struck.”
I gestured with my hand, imitating the slicing motion of the killer’s blade. “One, two. First the right leg. See the cast-off splatter over there?” Kurt and Cheyenne nodded. Reggie scrutinized the bloodstains.
With my finger, I traced the outline of the blood spatter. “Taylor was already on his way to the ground when the killer sliced his left Achilles tendon. You can see how the blood spatter from the right leg begins perpendicular to the vehicle and ends parallel to it, so Taylor twisted counterclockwise on his way to the ground. Probably landed on his back. I can’t be certain about that, though. Bloodstain analysis isn’t my specialty.”
I stood and looked around.
Reggie was staring at me. “Blood spatter’s not your specialty?”
“That’s right.” I was studying the sight lines out the window to Brigitte’s car. If the lights had been off inside the garage, her headlights would have partially illuminated the room.
Reggie must have been listening in on my conversation with Kurt a few moments earlier, because he said, “But if the killer snuck into the house and unloaded the guns, why didn’t he just kill Taylor while he was defenseless in the shower? Why wait?”
“Maybe this wasn’t just about killing him. I don’t think he wanted it to be over quickly: trap him in the garage, disable him, but leave him the guns to make him think he’d be able to get away. Like a cat toying with a mouse.”
“Death isn’t enough,” Cheyenne said softly. “He wants to see them squirm first.”
I heard a cell ring, and both Kurt and I reached for our pockets. When I pulled out my phone, I noticed I’d forgotten to turn it on for the day. Kurt tapped at his screen. “I gotta take this.”
He stepped away. I turned on my cell, and Reggie resumed dusting for prints on the doorknob. Cheyenne stood beside me quietly for a moment, then said, “Did you get to the evidence list page in the case files?”
I put my phone away. “No.”
She pointed to a receipt on the far end of the workbench. “It’s for Chinese takeout. CSU found three empty cartons of food.”
“You’re kidding me.” I checked the time on the receipt. The cashier had rung it up at 8:18 p.m.
“No. Brigitte picked up the food on the way here, but none of it was in her stomach.” Then she added grimly, no doubt referring to Brigitte’s dismemberment, “We didn’t need an autopsy to figure that one out.”
But Taylor had showered, changed, and was about to get into his car when he was attacked . . . He wasn’t expecting takeout, he was expecting to leave . . .
We could check the incoming calls and text messages on Brigitte’s phone, but for now it looked to me like the killer had somehow contacted her and convinced her to bring over the food.
And the food cartons had been empty when CSU found them.
Which meant that he ate the Chinese food while he killed and dismembered those two people.
This guy was the real deal. As cold and disturbing as they get.
“Has Dr. Bender completed the autopsy on Taylor yet?” I asked Cheyenne.
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
I speed-dialed his number, and when Eric picked up I apologized for calling him so early, then asked how the sleepover had gone. “Good,” he said. “The girls are in Dora’s room right now on the computer.”
It surprised me that Tessa was already awake, but I stuck to the case. “Eric, when is Sebastian Taylor’s autopsy scheduled?”
“I’m leaving for the hospital in about half an hour.” Then he added soberly, “It’s been a busy week. I’ve barely been able to keep up. I plan to get started about ten.”
I’m not a fan of watching autopsies. I looked at my watch: 9:09.
It struck me that in less than forty-eight hours I would be back on the stand in Chicago. I decided not to think about that. “Is it all right if I swing by and have a look at the body before you get started?”
“Sure. I’ll have Lance Rietlin meet you. He’s my resident this year. He’ll get you whatever you need. Something specific you’re looking for?”
“I have a few questions about the wounds, the way he was attacked. I’ll see you there.”
“OK. See you soon.”
Pocketing the phone, I turned to Cheyenne. “We can let CSU finish up here. If we leave now, I think we’ll have just enough time to inspect the corpse before Dr. Bender gets started.”
She pulled out her keys. “Let me take one more look around. I’ll meet you at the car.”
22
Tessa and Dora had taken some time away from the videos to shower, dress, and eat a breakfast of cold pizza before returning to the computer to check their Facebook pages.
After ten minutes, Dora slapped the desk.
“I just remembered this other video I wanted to show you.”
Every one of her words sounded slightly squished because of the strawberry bubble gum she’d popped into her mouth a few minutes earlier. “Have you seen the ones of those kids doing the Rubik’s Cube blindfolded?”
“Uh-uh.” Tessa had heard about the Rubik’s Cube videos and knew they’d been around for a while but hadn’t really been that interested in them. But now it sounded like it might make Dora happy, might keep her from thinking about the reason she hadn’t been able to sleep so well, so she acted like she was into the idea. “Sure, yeah, let’s check ’em out.”
“It’s pretty insane.” Dora was tapping at the keyboard. “You ever try to figure one out?”
“Nope.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, why?”
Dora shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just, you’re so into puzzles and stuff.” She scrolled to a frozen video image of a Chinese girl about their age holding a Rubik’s Cube. “Here’s the best one. She does it in less than a minute.”
She pressed “play,” and Tessa watched as the girl in the video studied the mixed-up cube, waited while someone else blindfolded her, and then twisted the sides until, only fifty-seven seconds later, the entire cube was solved. Then she set it down, removed the blindfold, and smiled.
“Amazing, huh?” Dora pulled her own Rubik’s Cube off her bookshelf and handed it to Tessa. All the sides were mixed up. “At first I thought maybe she me
morized the moves, but I don’t know, she must have twisted it like forty or fifty times.”
“Let’s watch it again.”
They did.
“Seventy-two,” Tessa said.
“Seventy-two what?”
“She twisted it seventy-two times.”
Reaching across the keyboard, Tessa slid the cursor to the “play” icon and tapped the mouse button. Dora took the opportunity to look in the mirror and pick at her hair.
When the video was done, Tessa began to study the cube Dora had handed her.
“It’s wild, huh?” Dora said. “I can’t do it. There are like a billion different combinations.”
Tessa considered that . . . six sides . . . nine squares on each side . . . “Probably more than that,” she mumbled.
“So, see?” Dora said. “That’s what makes it so amazing that those kids can solve it blindfolded.”
“I think I can do it.”
“Do what? Solve it?”
“Yeah,” Tessa said. She was already practicing twisting the sides, getting a feel for the way the cube worked, the way one turn would affect the color combinations on the other sides.
“Well, yeah, if you practice for like—”
Dora’s dad called to her from the other room, and she tapped a finger against the air. “Hold that thought.”
While her friend slipped away, Tessa examined the cube. There were at least three ways to go about solving it. First, cheat. Look up the solution online. Maybe watch an instructional video.
Not exactly her thing.
Second, work the cube until you instinctively knew the patterns, sort of like typing or learning a musical instrument. But that would take days, weeks. Maybe longer.
No, to solve it quickly, you’d need a different approach.
So, math. By assigning a different number to each of the fifty-four squares, solving the cube became nothing more than a slightly—OK, a little more than slightly—complex three-dimensional algebraic equation. And since the middle pieces didn’t move, and each of the other squares was fixed in relationship to the neighboring square on the adjacent side of the cube, the number of turns needed to solve it shrank exponentially.
She figured that, however mixed up the sides were, the cube could always be solved in fewer than forty turns.
Probably less than thirty.
The girl in the video hadn’t been efficient enough in her solution.
Dora returned and plopped beside Tessa on the bed. “My dad is so totally lost this week without my mom around.”
“Where is she again?”
“Some real estate convention thing in Seattle. Comes back on Wednesday. Anyway, he has to go to the hospital to do an autopsy and he needs me to run some errands. So I’ll have to drop you off at your house by ten.”
That gave them half an hour.
“No prob.” Tessa mentally assigned numbers to each of the fifty-four tiles on the cube. “I’m ready.”
“If you say so.” Dora held out her hand. “Let me mix it up.”
“It’s already mixed up.”
“I’ll mix it up more.”
Tessa managed not to roll her eyes. “Whatever.” She gave Dora the cube.
Dora turned her back, and Tessa could hear the sides clicking, turning.
In truth, mixing up the cube would be just like shuffling a deck of cards in which three times through was no different than twenty times—the degree of randomness introduced into the order of the cards was statistically identical; you could twist and mix it for five minutes, five hours, or five days and it wouldn’t really alter the number of turns required to solve it.
After about thirty seconds or so, Dora turned and handed Tessa the cube.
She studied it. Rotated it 360 degrees. Memorized the color combinations.
“Time me.” Then she closed her eyes.
“You can’t be serious.”
Tessa opened her eyes. “What?”
“With your eyes closed?”
“The Chinese girl did.”
“She probably practiced forever.”
“Maybe she didn’t practice at all. Who knows? I can do it.”
“No way.”
“OK, how about we put a latte on the line. If I can solve it, you buy me one on the way home.”
Dora shrugged. Chomped her gum. “OK. And vice versa. Do I need to get you a blindfold or can I trust you?”
Tessa closed her eyes again. “You can trust me.”
“All right, girl.” Then a pause. Tessa assumed that Dora was checking her watch. “Ready . . . set . . . go.”
She took a moment to mentally review the relationship of the fifty-four numbers.
“I started the time,” Dora said.
“Shh.” Tessa began turning the sides of the cube, reorienting the numbers in her head with each turn, visualizing them twist and flip around each other as if the cube were transparent and all the squares had the numbers stenciled on them. Calculating, recalculating their position, their movement, their patterns. It wasn’t as difficult as she’d thought it’d be.
“That’s thirty seconds.”
“Quiet.”
In her mind’s eye, she saw the sides forming, the red side complete, the white side missing only one side piece. She paused. Thought. Twisted.
There. Two sides.
Close.
She worked at the cube methodically. Systematically.
“Fifty seconds.”
“Dora, shh!”
Turn, turn.
Turn.
Yes. All the numbers aligned.
There. She punched the cube onto the bed and opened her eyes. “Time.”
“A minute four seconds,” Dora said. They were both staring at the cube, which was at least as mixed up as before. “Wow.” Dora used a friendly kind of sarcasm. “Impressive. I think I’ll get a grande.”
“Dang,” Tessa muttered. “That should have worked.”
“Here.” Dora stuck the cube into the satchel that Tessa used as a purse. “Take it. It’s yours.”
“No, that’s crazy.”
“Seriously. That thing is just way too hard for me.” She waited for Tessa to take it. “Go on. It’s cool.”
Finally, Tessa accepted it. “Sweet. Thanks.”
“Oh!” Dora said. “You are not gonna believe this. We’re getting a dog!”
Dora was the queen of randomness.
“A dog?” Tessa didn’t even try to hide her disdain.
“Yeah. Dad says he thinks it’ll help. Things have been hard, you know, ever since—”
“Yeah, I get it.”
“I know it seems kind of weird to get a dog when—”
“No-no-no-no.” Tessa squeezed all the no’s together into one word. She knew that coping with grief and guilt wasn’t easy, even if something wasn’t your fault. Lately she’d turned to journaling and writing poetry to sort through her feelings, but right after her mom died, she’d been into cutting, self-inflicting on her arm, to deal with the pain and loneliness. Getting a pet was a lot better way to cope than that.
“You don’t have to explain. But it’s just, a dog? C’mon, get a cat instead.”
Dora looked somewhat deflated. “What’s wrong with a dog? Dogs are man’s best friend.”
“Well, I have a policy: whenever my best friend starts sniffing my butt and eating his own vomit, it’s time to find a new best friend.”
“Oh,” Dora said. “Wow. Thanks for that image.”
“No prob.”
“Maybe we oughtta get a cat.”
“Good choice.”
And then Dora launched into an explanation of how her cousin had gotten a cat when she was visiting her last summer in Orlando and how she’d introduced her to this really hot guy who worked at Disney World—and then Dora sighed and started talking about how much she’d miss Tessa while she was in DC this summer and how she was hoping to get a job at Elitch Gardens after they were done with finals, which she was totally not ready f
or . . .
But Tessa’s attention had drifted back to Dora’s screen saver.
She carefully averted her eyes and pretended to listen to her friend.
I was outside Taylor’s house waiting for Cheyenne when Kurt approached me. He didn’t look happy. “That call I got a few minutes ago,” he said. “It was the captain. There’s something I need to tell you.”
By Kurt’s tone of voice I was pretty sure the captain hadn’t invited us to join him for a beer after work. “What is it?”
“You know how he’s not exactly dialed into your techniques . . .”
Here we go. “Yes?”
“Well, last night he talked with your supervisor at the Bureau—Assistant Director Wellington.”
Great.
Ever since I’d testified in an internal affairs review a few years ago that had temporarily set back her career plans, Margaret Wellington had been gunning for me with both barrels. I braced myself for bad news.
“She told Captain Terrell that with Basque’s trial and the shooting yesterday, she’s afraid you might be distracted, not at the top of your game.”
I could feel my temperature rising. “The top of my game.”
“Her words, not mine. She’s sending someone else to work the case with us. Captain Terrell already signed off on it. He’s a big fan of those profiling TV shows, so he—”
“She’s sending a profiler?” If Margaret was sending Lien-hua, things were going to get very awkward very fast.
“Yeah.”
“Did he say who? Was it Special Agent Jiang? Lien-hua Jiang?”
“No. Some guy named Vanderveld. Didn’t mention a first name.”
Oh, that was even worse. “Jake Vanderveld.”
“So you know him.”
“Oh yeah. We’re acquainted.”
Kurt stared at me for a moment, no doubt trying to decipher what lay beneath my words. “Anything I should know?”
Margaret knew how I felt about Jake. That’s probably why she’d assigned him to the case.
“Have you noticed how I’m not exactly the biggest fan of profilers?”
“I may have picked up on that.”
“Well, he’s the reason why.” I saw Cheyenne climbing into the driver’s seat. “I’ll run it down for you later. When does he get here?”