by Casey Mayes
“Have a good time, and send her my love.”
“I will. Zach, I meant what I said. Be careful.”
“Always,” he replied as he headed for the door.
I just wished that were true.
I SPENT AN HOUR AT SHERRY’S BUT IT WAS CLEAR TO BOTH of us that I was worried about my husband, and we broke it off early, with the promise that we’d get together after all of this was over.
As I drove back to the hotel, I knew that Zach was closing in on the killer, but I believed in my heart that Grady had to have slipped up making that puzzle for us to decipher. If I could find a signature clue there, it would make my husband’s case that much stronger.
I might not be able to help in most ways, but I could at least do that.
When I got back to our suite at the hotel, I tried to look at the clues we’d been given with fresh eyes. No matter how much I tried, though, I kept coming back to the last note’s odd appearance. It was so different from the others that I couldn’t get my mind off it. Had I missed something there before? It was so strange.
And then I realized what was so troubling to me about it.
There wasn’t a single letter or number on it.
Or was there?
Chapter 20
I STARTED LOOKING CLOSER AT THE OBLONG CIRCLES AGAIN, and then I suddenly realized that there might have been a clue there all along, but we’d all just missed it.
When the sheet was examined closely, it was clear that the lines were broken in many places. At first, I’d just assumed that it was from the way it was copied, but as I stared harder at it, I began to see that there was more than just a series of oblong circles.
Zach had a magnifying glass on his key chain, and I prayed that he’d left it behind, since he wasn’t driving our car. For my husband’s fortieth birthday, I’d gotten him a magnifying glass, though miniaturized, like Sherlock Holmes might have used. It hung from his key chain, and even sported its own little case.
Thankfully, it was still on the dresser. I took the shade off one of the lamps and held the copy up to the bulb. Without the magnifying glass, I could really see the breaks with my naked eye, but when I saw it under magnification, my heart started pounding.
Those weren’t just lines.
They were a series of numbers, all in the same sequence of number-letter combinations that we’d been getting from the start. In a way, it was exactly like my nightmare.
I had a key to the puzzle now.
It was time to get to work.
AFTER I FINISHED RECORDING THE NUMBERS AND LETters, I stared at the list on my pad. I was happy to see that the sequences we’d already received were included in this list, telling me that my hunch was on the money. I quickly filled in the grid with the new additions, but there were spaces still left open, and several sequences that didn’t seem to fit into the grid.
Along with a series of numbers, there was something that appeared to be a set of other numbers that didn’t fit: C13, B12, D11.
But what did they mean? If they were a part of my grid, they wouldn’t match the vowel axis I’d penciled in.
They had to mean something, though.
I started to pick up the phone, and then I remembered the radio in my pocket.
“Hello?” I asked tentatively as I pushed the button. “Is anyone there?”
“Hello, Savannah. How may I be of service to you?”
I still couldn’t get over the fact that I had the hotel’s manager at my beck and call.
“Could you send someone up here with an almanac, a road atlas for the area, and a fact booklet on the city of Charlotte?”
“Of course.”
He signed off, and I wondered how long I would have to wait.
Four minutes later, there was a knock at my door.
“Yes?”
Garrett said, “I have the information you requested.”
As I opened the door, I said, “Wow, that was fast.”
“I was about to apologize for the delay. I had to retrieve a new copy of Charlotte’s Got A Lot.”
He handed me the stack of requested items. “Will there be anything else?”
“No, not that I can think of.”
“If you require anything, don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Thanks, Garrett.”
After he was gone, I started leafing through the reference materials, trying to come up with some explanation for the different set of numbers I’d found. The almanac had a great deal of information, but there wasn’t anything that struck a chord with me. I browsed through the map, but again, no bells. I got excited at first, but when D11 turned out to be Raleigh, I knew I was on the wrong track. These crimes were limited to the Charlotte area.
Then I picked up the Charlotte guide. As I leafed through it, searching for any number/letter combinations that might make sense, I kept drawing a blank. The magazine had a lot of useful information, but there was nothing that matched the new sequences.
I tossed the magazine aside, and it landed on the open road atlas. I picked it up again, and saw that the coordinates still didn’t match anything else.
And then I flipped the page.
On the next section, there was a grouping of smaller maps of several North Carolina cities, including Charlotte.
D11 had part of Sharon Road within its boundaries, the scene of one of the homicides.
My hands were shaking as I circled the other two locations.
One was the other crime scene.
I wasn’t sure what the significance of the last sequence was, but I had something to work with now.
I took out my puzzle grid. For the moment, I forgot about my vowel lines, and wrote the start of the alphabet below them, A, B, C, D, and E.
But I didn’t immediately go up the vertical axis. I started fiddling with the puzzle, and discovered that if I used the first digit for the vertical axis, I could use the second to fill in the number for that open block.
It worked like a charm, but I had one number left, one that didn’t match anything else.
19 squared.
I kept staring at it, wondering how it could fit into the puzzle to make things perfect.
And then I started counting, and realized that 19 squared could also be written as S X S.
Savannah Stone.
Was this a warning directed straight at me?
As I stared at it, I realized something else.
There was another player in this who shared my double S initials.
It might not be telling me the next victim at all.
The killer could have been signing his work, thinking that he was too clever for anyone ever to figure out what he’d been up to.
Steve Sanders.
I was reaching for the phone to call Zach when I glanced at the map again.
In a flash of insight, I realized the significance of the last set I hadn’t been able to place before. I stared at the map, and then I realized the importance of that sequence.
The last letter-number combination represented the grid that my hotel was in.
As I dialed my husband’s number, there was a knock at the door.
“Who is it?” I asked as I waited for my husband to answer.
“Housekeeping,” a muffled voice said from the other side of the door.
Without even thinking to check twice, I opened the door as my husband’s phone went to voice mail.
Steve Sanders was standing there instead of a maid, and he had a wicked-looking knife in his hand.
I’d been right figuring out the killer’s identity, but it wasn’t going to do me the least bit of good.
AS HE FORCED HIS WAY IN, STEVE REACHED OUT A HAND for my cell phone. “I’ll take that, if you don’t mind.”
He grabbed my phone out of my hands, threw it to the floor, and then smashed it with his heel. “We don’t want to be interrupted, now do we?”
“You were a little too cute with that last clue. I knew it was you.”
He looked surprised. “Come
on, you’re not that clever, Savannah.”
“S squared, naming the victim and the killer, and the last coordinates from the map are of the hotel.”
Steve nodded. “Bravo. I didn’t give you enough credit, I can see that now. Not that it’s going to do you any good.”
“You honestly don’t think you’re going to get away with this, do you? My husband will never rest until he brings you down.”
Steve laughed. “That’s where you’re wrong. Zach is going after Grady, so I had to strike while I could, before the mayor was in custody, or something worse happened to him.”
“Why me, though? I thought we were friends.”
He looked sincerely regretful. “You’re collateral damage, Savannah. I have to blind your husband with rage, and killing you will do just the trick. I’m hoping he kills Grady for me.”
“Your plan was to bring the mayor down? Why?”
“He endorsed Davis, not me.” Steve’s voice was growing agitated, and that was a good thing. I had to distract him somehow until help arrived. The only problem was, how would anyone know that I was in trouble, until it was too late? My cell phone was in a thousand pieces, and the house phone was too far away.
But I still had a radio.
If I could get Steve to brag about his brilliance, I might be able to summon help on it.
“It was clever casting suspicion on Grady, I’ll give you that. But what reason would he have to want me dead?”
“You were about to expose him,” Steve said. “In the scenario I’ll suggest as motive, it will appear that you held on to some evidence you found at his house the day you and your husband were there.” Steve reached into his pocket, and for just a second, he took his eyes off me.
I casually put my hand in my pocket, hoping he wouldn’t notice.
He must have seen something in my eyes, because Steve lashed out and struck me with his clenched fist, exhibiting a swiftness that startled me, driving the air out of my lungs. As I fell to the carpet, I struggled to catch my breath and signal Garrett.
At least he hadn’t used the blade in his other hand.
Not yet, anyway.
I didn’t know if I made it or not. Steve reached into my pocket and pulled out the radio before I could try again.
He was angry, until he looked at it a little closer. “I don’t know what you thought you were doing, but you turned it off. Thanks for saving me the trouble.”
He smashed it as well, taking glee seeing it strike the wall and shatter.
“No one’s going to save you,” he said as he stood over me.
The knife shifted in his hand, and I realized I was about to die. I had to do something to stall him. My breath was starting to come back, but when I spoke, my voice was still muffled. “How are you going to frame Grady? You might as well tell me. No one else is ever going to know.”
It was clear that Steve felt he had all of the power, and he seemed to draw strength from it. “I was about to show you, so I don’t see what it could hurt now. It’s not like you’re going to be able to tell anyone.”
He pulled something out of his pocket, and I knew what it was in an instant. It was Cindy Glass’s cow necklace, the one Barton had been so desperate to find.
“That won’t do any good.”
“It’s just one more piece of the puzzle, Savannah. I’ve got other little trinkets, and Grady’s watch is one of them.”
Grady had mentioned that it was missing when all of this started, but none of us had suspected at the time that it was going to be used to frame him for murder.
“That’s pretty clever,” I said. “You killed Cindy to put suspicion on Grady, and then after the public fight between Grady and Hank, you had a perfect opening. But I don’t understand something.”
The knife hesitated, and I started breathing again.
“What’s that? Quit stalling. You’re not making this any easier on yourself.”
“Why not get rid of Davis, so you can take his job?”
“My job, you mean,” he said viciously, and the knife shot out and caught my shoulder. It wasn’t a deep cut, but it still crippled me. I felt a searing stab of pain, what I was afraid was going to be the first of many.
“Your job,” I corrected, holding my free hand to the wound. I had never experienced that level of pain before.
“It wasn’t Davis’s fault. He’s a good cop, but he shouldn’t be chief. I never blamed him for going after the job. Grady is the one who ruined it for me, so he’s going to pay.”
“Were you the one who followed me to Hickory?” I asked, stalling for time.
“You caught that? I’ve got to say, I underestimated you, Savannah. Following you was rash of me, but you got my curiosity going. I nearly ran you off the road when I had the chance, but it didn’t match my puzzle.”
“That’s the last question, isn’t it? Why did you choose a puzzle to taunt the police with?”
Steve laughed. “I knew Davis would be in over his head, and that they’d bring your husband in. Zach has to pay for recommending Davis and not me. If neither of them could figure out what I’d done, they both could be discredited, and I might be chief after all. Wouldn’t that be something?”
“But you thought you were too smart for me.” I had a desperate idea, but there wasn’t any choice. If I did nothing, I knew that I was about to die.
I took a deep breath, and then said, “There’s a flaw in your puzzle; you know that, don’t you?”
“What are you talking about? The S squared? It works out, if you’re clever enough to see it. 19 times 19 equals 361. 3 plus 6 plus 1 equals 10, and 1 plus 0 equals 1. The last block is filled in with a one.”
“The math doesn’t work out,” I said. It wasn’t true; I could see the answer clearly in my mind, and I realized that while Steve was a killer, he wasn’t stupid.
“You’re wrong,” he said.
“Check it. My notepad is over there.”
I pointed to the window, and he moved toward it, forgetting all about me for the moment.
It was the chance I needed.
I drove myself upward, ignoring the screaming pain in my shoulder. I never thought for a split second to try to disarm him. He was a cop, trained in self-defense, and besides that, he had a knife.
Fight or flight quickly came down to flight.
I hit the door running, threw it open, and ran as fast as I could. Behind me, I could hear him scream in some kind of demented anger, and I knew that if he caught me, the cat-and-mouse game he’d been playing with me was going to be over.
The elevator was out of the question, so I raced for the stairway. If I tried to go downstairs, he’d have the advantage, being able to jump on me from above.
There was nowhere to go but up.
I raced up the stairs, and as I cleared the next landing, I felt something knick the back of my jeans. He’d taken a chance and lunged out at me, and only the luck of timing had saved me from having my calf split wide open.
I lost a good pair of jeans, but I could cope with that if I lived though this.
The next floor was Barton’s, but I knew his door would be locked. That left the roof. He’d shown me his garden up there, and I prayed the door was unlocked, as he’d promised it would be.
If it was dead-bolted, I was a goner.
It swung open, but I knew I wasn’t in the clear yet. I made it out onto the roof, and I put my weight against the door to keep Steve from following me. I thought I had him for a second, but the door locked with a key on both sides, and I wasn’t strong enough to hold it, especially with my weakened shoulder. Blood had run down my arm in my efforts to escape, and when it hit my hand, it made everything I touched too slippery to grasp well.
I looked around at Barton’s sparse garden, searching for some way to defend myself.
The only thing I could find was a handheld garden weeder with three tines protruding from it. It was metal, and it was sharp, but it was also less than nine inches long. If I was going to use it,
I was going to have to get within a foot of a serial killer.
As weapons went, it wasn’t much, but it was all I had.
Steve came through the door like a prowling cat, the knife held out as if it were seeking my heart.
“You’re going to pay for that,” he snarled. When he saw the meager weapon in my hand, Steve actually laughed. “Do you think that’s going to do you any good?”
“I might not kill you, but if I can mark you with this, Zach will know you had something to do with my murder.”
“It still won’t save you,” he said.
“No, but you won’t get away, either. If I’m going to die, I’m going down fighting.”
He paused for a second, and then shrugged. “I’ll take my chances.”
I prepared myself for his attack when I saw the door open behind him.
I’d been hoping for Zach, or even Garrett.
It was my uncle Barton instead.
“Go back,” I shouted.
It was enough to make Steve pause.
“I won’t,” Barton said. “I can’t.”
Steve pivoted around. “Get over here, or she dies.”
“If you come, he’ll just kill us both.” I hoped I was getting through to him, but my heart sank as my uncle walked toward us.
He was two steps away when someone came out of the door behind him, holding a gun on Steve. “Drop it or die.”
I saw Steve look at the gun, and then judge the distance to the edge of the roof. It was clear he had no interest in paying for his crimes.
He started for the edge, but before he could get there, I drove the weeder into his thigh as he raced past me. We both screamed in pain, him for his leg, me for my shoulder, and we collapsed on the rooftop together.
Barton rushed to me, and before Steve could recover, my uncle pulled me to safety away from the killer, and the edge of the roof.
Chapter 21
“THANK GOD YOU’RE OKAY,” MY HUSBAND SAID AS HE rushed toward me. I was sitting in an examining room in the ER, having just gotten eight stitches for my shoulder wound. Barton hovered just out of sight. He had stayed with me the entire time, even riding in the ambulance with me.