CHAPTER EIGHTEEN #2
She jumped when the elevator dinged, signifying its arrival at the basement floor.
She suppressed a flash of irritation. She really hoped it wasn't Captain Ahab.
Captain Ahab was the name she'd given one of the civilian staffers who worked in the building: a loud, short, thickly bearded IT guy who liked to tell long stories about his encounters with famous people.
There were rumors about Captain Ahab, or more accurately, there was certain advice passed from woman to woman, largely about not ending up alone with him, or not accepting his, ostensibly friendly invitations for an after-hours drink.
So Kate was relieved when the lift doors swooshed open and Chen hopped out.
‘I hate Sundays,’ Chen said. ‘They remind me of being at school.’
Kate filled her in on the progress she’d made so far. ‘We’ve got an account statement from the IRS, detailing the back taxes and assorted penalties, all paid off by Grandma Blackstone, as per her daughter’s testimony.’
‘How much?’
Kate showed her the figure.
‘Ouch!’
‘I asked the Blackstones if they’ve got any of Ray’s statues, so that forensics can do a comparison with those left at the crime scenes.
Due to the ongoing sell-off of their properties, they’re in storage, but they’re on the case.
They also pointed me towards the gallery where that one exhibition took place in 2017.
If any statues were sold, then we’ll be able to contact the buyer or buyers.
Meanwhile, the family’s supplied us with photographs of the prodigal son going back to his childhood.
That’ll help the software to create a decent image of what he looks like now. ’
She clicked on a photograph of Ray Blackstone, aged somewhere between one and two. He was in the bath, grinning unselfconsciously, a quiff of bubbles sitting high on his head.
‘Sad, isn’t it?’ Chen said.
‘Well, we don’t know if he’s dead.’
‘I know. But he’s obviously had a chaotic, unhappy life, hasn’t he? You look at that kid there, and you think… well, nobody deserves that.’
They clicked on a few more, in silence. Ray’s fifth birthday, superhero-themed. Ray receiving some sort of cup or trophy, almost the same size as himself.
‘I almost can’t look at these,’ Kate said. ‘Too sad.’
‘Me either.’
‘Marcus was going to talk to his contact in La Paz, so I guess our hands are tied on that for now.’
‘Still no news from him?’
‘No. I left him a message, but I don’t want to push it. I just wish I knew what happened. My mind always goes to the worst things.’
Her laptop signalled the arrival of a new message. She clicked on it, Chen looking on expectantly.
‘It’s not Marcus. It’s that guy you put me onto. Dr Ignaz. The soil specialist.’
She read his email, clicked on the attachment, read some more, rolled her eyes.
‘God give me strength.’
‘What’s up?’
Chen came over to look at Kate’s screen. It was full of graphs and symbols.
‘I asked him if he could pinpoint where the clay used in the statues came from,’ Kate said.
‘He narrowed it down to the south-east of the state, but he said there were some further tests he could do to get a more accurate result. I made sure he got a sample from the last sculpture as well. But he’s sent me this. I mean – what even is it?’
Chen scanned the page, clicked through the rest of the document.
‘I see what he’s done. He’s done a detailed breakdown of the composition, probably way more detail than you need, to be honest. But he hasn’t cross-referred it with the geography.’
Kate growled. ‘What’s the matter with the guy?’
Chen grinned. ‘Maybe he left it out for a reason.’
‘What reason?’
‘Maybe he wants you to call him back.’
‘But why? Oh!’ Realisation dawned, and it wasn’t welcome. ‘No. No way. That’s crazy. It can’t be that.’
‘Is he cute?’
‘No. I mean, I don’t know, but I don’t care!
He’s got this irritating, condescending voice, like…
like your least favourite teacher.’ She sighed.
‘Seriously, I do not believe his mind works like that. Dr Ignaz is only interested in rocks. Ugh! And now I’ve got to ring him back and beg him to complete the work he said he’d do. Jeez.’
‘Actually, you don’t.’
‘What do you mean? Why don’t I?’
‘Because I can do the work. I mean, I’m pretty sure I can. I told you, I majored in geology. Give me ‘til tomorrow morning. If I can’t do it, I’ll hand it back. In fact, better than that. If I can’t do it, I’ll call Dr Ignaz.’
‘You’re very kind.’
‘If I do call him, shall I give him your number?’
‘NO! Anyway, he’s already got my number. I’m forwarding you the stuff now.’
It was only when Kate clicked on the mail app that she realised two emails must have arrived within milliseconds of each other.
Underneath the report from Dr Ignaz was a reply from the Planning and Building Control Authority of Hoboken City.
Kate had emailed an enquiry to them only yesterday, so she was surprised to see a reply so swiftly.
It occurred to her to exercise some caution before opening it.
‘Any idea why Hoboken’s Building Control department would be working over the weekend?’
‘They’ve probably farmed the admin overseas. People don’t like it, but everybody likes 24/7 support.’
Reassured, Kate opened the email. It confirmed that, just last month, someone had requested access to the plans of several buildings in the street where David Sterling lived. There was no fee, but enquirers had to register on the department website, giving a name and address.
She looked up the address: 5105 Lanark Street, in Hoboken. It didn’t take her long to establish that there was no 5105 on Lanark Street. In addition to that, judging by the streetview images, Lanark Street was composed entirely of small industrial units and large warehouses.
‘Alvira Meg White,’ she said, reading aloud.
‘Who?’
‘Good question. That’s the name of the person who wanted to know the internal layout of David Sterling’s house.’
Accessing the Bureau’s own, multi-database search engine, she discovered nobody called Alvira Meg White. But there were two people going by the name of Alvira Megan White.
One was 83, living in a retirement facility called Cedar Grove, in the town of Brewster, Wisconsin.
The other one had married a British citizen called Avram White.
They lived together in Haifa, Israel, having emigrated there in 1998.
Alvira Megan White, née Berg, was a paediatric nurse, nearing retirement age.
It was hard to imagine either of those individuals wanting to know the layout of David Sterling’s house, much less plotting his brutal slaying.
‘Don’t forget, some Megs are Margarets,’ Chen pointed out.
‘And some Margarets are Pegs,’ Kate replied. ‘Go figure.’
A search for Alvira Margaret Whites yielded slightly more results, but every one of them, still, was a poor fit for the role of murderer.
One of them must have just started pre-school, another was on secondment to the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, and one more completing a short prison stretch for fraud.
‘Well, we know the address is made-up, right?’ Chen said. ‘So we have to assume the name is, too.’
‘In which case, the question is: why that name?’
‘Exactly.’
On a hunch, Kate wrote all fourteen letters of the name in a circle. It was an old cryptanalyst trick; it stopped you from seeing the words you recognised and made you concentrate on other factors, such as the frequency of letters, or of adjacent pairs. The tiniest thing could help to crack it.
And the tiniest thing did. She noticed that the last A of Alvira and the M of Meg were adjacent, forming the word ‘AM’.
It was relatively easy from there, and as often happened, she was so caught up in the joy of decrypting that she didn’t think about the implications of the slowly unfurling message.
I AM THE LAW-GIVER
Once it was there, she wished she could jumble all the letters up again, and not know about it. But there it was.
In the last case, Elijah Cox had left her cryptic messages, referring to himself as the Law-giver.
Of course, as soon as she’d realised the latest spate of murders involved the second commandment, she’d made the connection to Cox. And to the promise he’d uttered from prison. That there were disciples, many of them, and that the world, as he put it, would be washed in blood.
But as this investigation had progressed, she’d almost managed to convince herself it was a bluff.
Hot air, typical serial killer narcissism, trying to pretend that his ‘work’, if you could call it that, would carry on beyond his capture, beyond his death.
The absence of cryptic codes and ciphers at the crime scenes – a prominent feature of the last case – had helped to convince her that the murders of the artists were unrelated.
Now she realised how deeply misguided she’d been.
And whoever this ‘Law-giver’ was, once again, he was reaching out directly to her, to tell her just how futile her efforts thus far had been. Because she wasn’t facing a single killer. And even if she caught him, her job would not be over. Because there was a legion of them.
‘Are you okay? Did you crack it?’
Chen’s question startled her. Hastily, she closed up her writing pad.
‘I can’t make any sense of it,’ Kate said. ‘Do you want coffee?’