by Casey Mayes
“You can get something else, if you want.”
“I know, but why would anyone want anything else?”
He shrugged. “Beats me. Do you mind, Steve?”
“No, I’m on it. Be back in a flash.”
After he was gone, as Zach unlocked the door, I asked, “Is it that bad?”
“What? Steve’s doing just fine.”
“I’m not talking about that, and you know it.” I looked around the room, and noticed that since I’d been there yesterday, a large whiteboard leaned against one wall. It was already filled with my husband’s notes, and I knew it was a way he liked to think out loud. “I meant the case.”
“It’s no surprise Davis called me in,” Zach said. “I just had a meeting with him, and it’s pretty clear that Grady’s breathing down his neck. He wants results, and I’m not sure how fast I can give them to him.”
“Why the sudden urgency? We just got here yesterday.”
“This is all new to us, but they’ve been dealing with it for eight days. I don’t blame them. I just wish I had something for them.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll solve this.”
“Savannah, I wish I had your faith in me,” he said.
“You always were your worst critic.” Zach looked glum, and I had to do something to snap him out of it if I could.
“It’s a beautiful day. Why don’t we go outside and wait for Steve? When he brings us our sandwiches, we’ll have a picnic across the street.”
“I don’t know,” he said as he looked around the room. “There’s a lot of work I still need to do.”
“You can’t do it if you’re focused on how much there is to accomplish. Trust me, you need a break.”
He shrugged. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to get out of here for a little while. Let’s go.”
As we left the room, he pulled out a key and locked the door. “What’s wrong, don’t you trust your officers?”
“That’s the problem, I know them too well. I don’t want anyone snooping around and walking through my evidence.”
Steve was startled to find us out in front of the station waiting on him. “What’s wrong? Did I take too long?”
“No, we decided to eat outside today.”
He shrugged, then he handed Zach our lunches. “I’ll wait upstairs. There’s more work I can do while you’re eating.”
“Why don’t you take off, and I’ll catch up with you later.”
“You got it, Chief,” he said.
Zach and I walked across the street and found a weathered old wooden bench. It wasn’t exactly a park, but there was grass and some trees around us, and it felt like we were getting away from it all.
Zach immediately dove into the bag and pulled out a sandwich. To his credit, he handed the first one to me before he retrieved the other one for himself. As we ate, we enjoyed the day and tried not to talk about murder. After we finished, Zach collected our trash, but he made no move to leave.
“This sunshine feels great, doesn’t it?”
“I bet it’s not as humid at home,” I said.
Zach laughed. “You don’t have to sell me on it, Savannah. I wouldn’t mind being back there myself right now.”
“I thought you were looking for a little excitement in your life.”
“I would at least like to have a chance to solve this,” he said. “The problem with investigating these murders is that I have to push some powerful people to get answers, and I still can’t be sure they’re telling me the truth. Hank and Cindy deserve better than that.”
It wasn’t odd to hear my husband talk about the victims as though he knew them personally. He’d been trained by a woman who was an expert in the criminal thought process, and she’d stressed the need for the detective to distance himself from the victims, but it went against Zach’s nature. By personalizing the victims, he worked that much harder to find their killers.
I just hoped he could do it before the murderer struck again.
Chapter 9
WHEN WE WALKED BACK INTO THE POLICE STATION, Davis was waiting for us by the front door.
“What’s going on, Chief?” my husband asked. “You’re not going to bust my chops about taking a lunch break with my wife, are you?”
Davis frowned. “Zach, while you were gone, we got another note from the killer.”
“It wasn’t about me, was it?” I asked, suddenly getting the insane impulse that I was the killer’s next victim, even though I had no real ties to the case. I didn’t know either victim, though we had a mutual friend in Grady. The photo the killer had sent of me in Grady’s truck had shaken me more than I’d realized.
Davis said, “Of course not. Why, did something happen today?”
“No, I had breakfast with Lorna Gaither, and then I created a puzzle and faxed it to my editor from the hotel. I haven’t even had time to get into trouble yet.”
“Let’s see the note,” Zach said.
“It’s in my office.”
We walked back to Davis’s office, where Zach had spent so much time over the years. It had been completely redecorated since his time there, and while my husband had enjoyed dark woodwork and muted colors, Davis had redone the place into a bright and airy space with modern furniture, something I never would have pegged him for liking. Though mostly neat, I saw an open newspaper on one corner of his desk. As I glanced at it, I saw that there was a puzzle open, though not one of my own. It was partially completed, and I had to smile when I realized that he’d been working in pen.
“What do you think?” Davis asked as he watched Zach’s expression as he took the changes in.
“It looks good,” Zach said. “It suits you.”
I looked at my husband to see if he was teasing, but his expression was serious.
“Thanks.” It was clear that Davis had been holding his breath a little, and he released it with my husband’s approval.
“Here’s a copy,” Davis said as he handed a sheet of paper to Zach.
“Could I see the original?” my husband asked. “I can’t get a solid feel for copies.”
I thought about the photocopied sheets upstairs, and wondered about that statement. Zach must have seen something on my face, though I could have sworn I’d hidden my puzzlement.
“I like copies for display so I can get a handle on how things fit into the puzzle, but when it comes to getting a feel for something, I have to hold it in my hand.”
“That makes sense to me,” Davis said as he handed a clear plastic envelope to my husband, who took it as if it were loaded with poison. “There’s something else you need to know before you read it.”
“What’s that?” Zach asked, clearly distracted by wondering about the contents of the letter.
“Usually they come here without any routing, but this time it was addressed directly to you.”
Zach frowned as he took the letter, but I felt a chill run through me. It was one thing having my husband investigate the murders from the safety of that room upstairs in police headquarters, but when I realized that the killer was aware of what Zach was doing, it made my heart freeze.
“This isn’t happening,” I said.
Zach read it, then handed it to me.
“Should I?”
“He mentions you, too,” my husband said.
I took the letter and read.
Finally, a worthy adversary. I thought it was going to take another execution before they were smart enough to call you. You and your wife make such a nice looking couple. It would be a shame to break up the set. But I’m getting ahead of myself. By all means, do your best to catch me. I will strike again, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me. I’m as safe as if I were in Parson’s Valley. That’s probably where you should have stayed, but I’m looking forward to seeing if you can puzzle out my next move before it’s too late.
“He’s clearly nuts,” Davis said. “Why would he taunt you? What does it possibly gain him?”
I turned the letter over and saw “4O
” written in delicate script on the back. “We’ve got another clue here,” I said.
Zach took it from me, studied it, and then said, “Evidently I’m not as smart as he thinks I am. I have no idea what it means. Does anyone else? Does forty mean anything to anyone?”
“It’s part of a puzzle,” I said without thinking.
“This isn’t one of your creations,” Zach said. “Real killers don’t send clues through the puzzle page.”
“I didn’t say it was,” I replied. “But it’s clear that this guy is intelligent.”
“Not from the way he committed the murders,” Davis said. “He stabbed both victims in their homes. That doesn’t exactly take a rocket scientist.”
“Did you find any clues at either of the murder scenes? Did anyone see the victims with the killer? Has he made one single mistake you can point to?”
“No,” Davis reluctantly admitted. “He’s been lucky so far.”
“That, or very good.”
Zach asked, “So, what’s your point?”
I wanted to see something before I pushed my theory any harder. “Let’s go upstairs, and I’ll tell you.”
Davis started to follow us, but he got a call on his phone. “I’ve got to take this.”
“We’ll see you up there,” Zach said.
“Don’t wait for me. This might take awhile.”
After we left his office, Zach said, “This better be good.”
“Trust me, okay?”
Steve was waiting outside the task force room, and I saw he was using his time to work one of my puzzles. He saw that I’d caught him. “Don’t you ever do any easy puzzles anymore? It might be nice to have a no-brainer once in a while.”
“As a matter of fact, I made a simple one this morning.”
“When’s it going to show up?”
“I’m guessing sometime next week.”
He looked puzzled. “You don’t know when your puzzles are going to run in the papers?”
“The exact date? No, not usually. If I do a themed puzzle summary, they’ll usually run it when I ask them to, but I have to have those in a month early.”
“If you two are finished discussing number puzzles, I’ve got work to do,” Zach said as he unlocked the door.
“You know, it would make it a lot simpler if you gave me a key, too,” Steve said as we all walked inside.
“Not even Davis has a key to this room,” Zach said. “As long as I’ve got evidence stored in here, I’m going to keep it that way. No offense, Steve.”
“None taken. I don’t mind hanging around waiting for you to get back.” He grinned and slapped his newspaper against his leg. “I’m on the clock either way, Chief.”
“Don’t you think it’s time you started calling me Zach? I haven’t been the chief for a while.”
“I’m not sure it’s a habit I can break,” Steve said with a smile. “Or even want to.”
“Do you have a problem with Davis?” Zach asked softly, and I knew Steve was treading on dangerous ground.
“No, sir. He’s my boss. I’m behind him a thousand percent. Grady made his choice and I can live with it.”
Zach was clearly tired of that particular conversation; I could see it in his eyes.
Zach took the original of the note we’d just gotten and stored it in a locked box where he kept all of the other letters the police had received from the killer. Once that was safely put away, he pinned the front copy on the foam board with the rest of the copied notes, and then placed the back copy on the other side of the room. I didn’t know why he’d separated them so entirely, and then suddenly, I realized he was giving me my own space to work out my theory.
“It seems that there has to be a code here somewhere, don’t you think?” I asked.
“What makes you say that?”
I smiled at him. “If I told you it was woman’s intuition, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“You’re right, I wouldn’t.”
I walked over to the back copies.
“If we only knew for certain what they meant,” I said as I studied them. I was sure the numbers on the backs of the photos and letters were related to some kind of puzzle, a format the killer was using to map out the murders in his mind. But beyond that, I had no idea how it all came together.
“What do you want me to do, Ch—, I mean, Zach?”
Zach smiled at Steve. “I know it’s going to be tough, but you can do it.” He pointed to a pile of boxes in one corner of the room. “Those are notes from the two crime scenes. I need you to make a list of everything they have in common for me.” As Steve moved toward the boxes, Zach added, “Don’t include just what you see. Try to dig a little deeper and tell me what’s not there.”
“It sounds like I’m looking for a white dog in a snow-storm,” Steve said.
“Something like that. Are you up to it?”
“You bet,” he said as he moved away from us.
“How about you?” Zach asked. “Do you mind spending some of your time here to work on that theory of yours?”
“You can have all I’ve got.”
Zach nodded, and then to my surprise, he kissed me briefly on the lips. It was about as public as he ever got with his displays of affection. “You’re my kind of gal, you know that, don’t you?”
“That’s handy, since you’re my kind of guy.”
He winked at me, and then Zach walked over to the locked box and opened it again. When he was examining direct physical evidence, it was like he was channeling someone else, he got so lost in his thoughts. I had no idea what was going through his mind, but I’d seen that look in his eyes enough to know that I could set off a firecracker under his nose and he wouldn’t even notice it.
I looked back at the board full of copied clues, and studied the mishmash of letters and numbers. I was about to ask Zach for their order of appearance when I thought to turn the copies over. As I’d hoped, these were two-sided copies, with the crime scenes depicted on one side and the letters the killer had written matched to their codes on the other. That still didn’t tell me what I wanted to know, though.
“What order did these come in?” I asked, forgetting for a second that Zach could be on the moon for all the chance I had to get an answer from him.
Steve looked around, and then he said, “If you’re talking to me, there’s a log over on that table.”
I walked over to the spot he’d pointed to, and after digging through some of the paperwork, I found a master list of the mailings. Taking it back with me, I glanced at the board and saw that my husband had pinned them up randomly. I arranged the four entries in the order they were received until I had a good idea of how the mailings should be organized. Taking out my cell phone, I snapped a quick picture so I’d have a reference to carry with me, and then I turned the codes over and snapped a photo of the fronts. The two crime scene images were disturbing, but if I was going to help with the case, I had to steel myself for what I might see. Once I had the front pages in my phone, I turned the copies back over, and started recording the number sequences on a notepad. There were four sequences so far, two matching crime scene photos and two notes, including the latest entry.
3A, 5A, 2E, 4A, 1E, 4O.
I stared at it for what felt like an hour, hoping for some kind of breakthrough.
Nothing. If the forty meant anything, I’d have to figure it out later. For now, I had to focus on just the letter-number combinations.
Did the repeating pattern mean anything? A A E A E. Did that mean the next letter would be an E? Would it match the pattern? Even if it did, I still didn’t know what that might mean.
Okay, forget about the letters. How about the numbers?
3, 5, 2, 4, 1.
3, 5, 2, 4, represented a pattern, especially if the next entry was a 3. It was something to consider, but I couldn’t do anything with it yet. They added up to 15, and when they were added together, it made 6. Again, so what? 3 times 5 divided by 2 multiplied by 4 divided by 1 totaled 3
0, which added up to 3. Even though it was true, what could it mean?
I didn’t see any significance to any of the sequences I’d come up with so far. What else could they represent? How about if I took the letters and numbers and charted them on an x-y axis? Would that yield me anything? I took out a pad of paper from my purse and drew a rough graph, with numbers going vertically and letters horizontally.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
There was a pattern there only if the next note was 6A or 6E. That would create a stair-step segment, but so what? So far, I had a 1E, 2E, 3A, 4A, and 5A. Why had 5E been skipped? Was there a missing note, one that the police misfiled or accidentally threw away before anyone realized the significance of it?
I had another thought, and redrew my grid, this time substituting numbers in the order of the notes received where the stars now stood.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
No, that didn’t make any sense, either. Had something been missed, perhaps a vital clue to the whole thing?
I finally gave up. If there was a pattern of any significance there, I couldn’t see it. Most likely I didn’t have enough information to solve the puzzle yet. Given time, and enough entries, I should have more of a chance to see what the killer was trying to tell us. Or was there any hidden message there at all? Was it a prank, a ruse to make the police work harder than they should on nothing more than a nonsensical set of letters and numbers that in reality meant nothing? No, I couldn’t believe that. Each entry had been painstakingly drawn, as if the murderer was proud of what the segments represented.
There was a message there.
I just hadn’t figured it out yet.
I looked up from my pad to find my husband staring at me, a broad smile on his face.
“What’s so funny?” Steve was far enough away and so focused on his work that he probably couldn’t hear us, but I kept my voice low just in case. I knew how it was to be interrupted in the middle of a thought, and I didn’t want to do anything to disturb the investigation.