A Deadly Row (13 page)

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 30, 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.

Zach matched my soft tone. “You look so intense when you’re working. It’s just like you’re creating a puzzle.”

“I wish that’s what it was. There’s a logic to my puzzles, but this is all just a jumble.”

“Well, you gave it your best shot,” he said. “Thanks for trying.”

“Are you kidding? I’m not giving up that easily. I’ve got a couple of ideas, but I need more information.”

“We may not get it,” Zach said. “Do you have anything so far?”

I looked at my sheets, and kept coming back to 5E. “I think there’s a chance that the police missed a note.”

“What do you mean?” The smile was suddenly gone from my husband’s face.

I showed him what I’d done, and he caught the missing 5E faster than I had, but to my credit, I’d laid it out for him. “There should be a 5E, but how do we know that’s not what the next note will have on it?”

“If that’s true, we’ll just have to wait until another one arrives. But what would it hurt to go through the stack of letters no one’s had a chance to really dig into yet? Couldn’t there be something there that was missed the first time around?”

Zach frowned, and then he called Steve over to us. It took him two tries to get the man’s attention, and I smiled when I realized I’d been right about his sharp focus. “I need you to go down to records and search through everything we’ve gotten since the first murder. Then again, go back a week before that, in case there’s something there.”

“Absolutely. What exactly is it that I’m looking for?”

Zach pointed to the wall. “Hunt for anything that looks like it came from the killer. Study these for a few minutes before you go.”

“I don’t have to,” he said. “I’ve already stared at them for hours.”

After Steve was gone, I said, “It’s a long shot, and he’s probably not going to be able to come up with anything.”

“It doesn’t cost a thing to have him check,” Zach said. “That was a good spot, Savannah.”

“It could be nothing.”

“Or it could mean everything. I’d hate to tell you how much of my time I’ve burned over the years looking for clues that weren’t there. This is part of the procedure. You keep digging into things, no matter how unrelated or impossible they might seem at times, and every now and then you hit pay dirt.”

“I don’t know how you do it,” I said.

Zach laughed. “Do you think I could make a puzzle?”

“Don’t sell yourself short.”

“Only if you promise not to do the same thing yourself. There’s real skill in what you do. You’ve got a mind that works in ways mine never could.”

I stifled a yawn. “I’m beat.”

“It’s just past five,” Zach said.

“The level of my exhaustion has nothing to do with the hands of a clock. I made up a puzzle this morning, and I’ve been working on this all afternoon. My brain’s fried.”

“Why don’t you go back to the hotel? I’ll be along later.”

“You could always come with me,” I suggested.

“Sorry, but I quit early yesterday. If I do it again, Davis is going to think I’ve gone soft on him. Go ahead. Take a long shower, order up some room service, and I’ll call you a little later.”

“I know I should argue with you, but I’m too tired. Don’t forget to call.”

I grabbed my things, and I was just about to leave when the door burst open. Steve looked excited as he showed us an envelope in his hand.

It appeared that I’d been right about something, at least.

We suddenly had another clue.

ZACH CAREFULLY REMOVED THE NOTE FROM ITS ENVE
lope, slid it into a clear plastic sleeve, copied both sides, and then handed the duplicates to me.

The note simply said, “
The game’s afoot. Try to catch me. I dare you
.”

And that was all that was written on the front.

As I was turning to the copy of the back, Steve asked Zach, “How did you know it would be there?”

“Don’t give me any credit. It was all Savannah’s idea.”

Steve nodded. “That’s good police work.”

“It just made sense that something was missing,” I explained.

“Trust me, it’s a lot harder to see what’s not there than what is.”

I shrugged as I studied the copy in my hands.

There was no number or letter sequence there, and aside from a smudge or two, the paper was blank.

“It’s not from him.”

Zach looked surprised. “What are you talking about? It matches his handwriting perfectly.”

“But there’s no sequence on the back.”

Zach looked at my copy, and then retrieved the original. After a moment of silence, he said, “It’s there, but the copier missed it. The paper must have buckled.”

I took the offered plastic sleeve from him and flipped it over. I didn’t know if it was my imagination, but I could swear I felt an electric shock when I touched it. I had to look hard, but I finally found the missing entry, so softly written that it had been easy for the copier to miss.

I walked to the machine, set the darkness to its fullest setting, and then made another copy of the original.

Faint, but clearly there, I saw a letter and number sequence on the paper as if I’d willed it to be there.

5E.

It was our missing letter.

But I still didn’t know what it meant.

I’d gone back to my hotel, enjoyed a long and hot shower under those lustrous jets of water, and I was waiting on my room service order to arrive when my phone rang.

“Uncle Thomas, how are you?” My uncle, my mother’s little brother, was all the family I had left besides my husband and his clan. He lived in Hickory, about an hour and a half drive from Charlotte, and oddly enough, about the same distance from Parson’s Valley, the central point of two ends of a line.

“I’m better, now that I know you’re safe. Don’t you ever check the messages on that answering machine of yours?”

“We haven’t been home the past couple of days. What’s up?”

“I was wondering if you might be coming this way anytime soon. There’s something I need to discuss with you.”

I didn’t admit that we’d passed the Hickory exits off I-40 just the day before, and though I’d thought of him briefly as we’d driven past, there had been no time to stop.

“Is something wrong?”

“It’s nothing, really. It can wait until we see each other again.”

I knew my uncle wouldn’t have kept calling unless it was important. He avoided every bit of modern technology he could, and for him to call me on my cell phone number, I realized that it was likely more important than he was letting on. “Come on, don’t try to kid a kidder. What’s happening?”

“I went to the doctor the other day,” he said, and a wave of dread raced through me. I couldn’t bear losing my uncle. He was the last real tie I had to my family, at least as far as I knew. My mother’s only other brother, Jeffrey, had left North Carolina the day he’d turned eighteen, and no one had heard from him since. There had been rumors that he’d gotten rich, but just as many that he was in prison serving a life sentence. As far as I was concerned, Uncle Thomas was all I had left.