CHAPTER TEN
Kate studied the decoded cipher with a slight frown.
The cipher found at Dr. Hammond’s office was much shorter than the one found at the Carlton’s home and appeared to be a condensed version of the second code.
The same code used for one fourth of the Carlton cipher.
The same hand etched it too, an emotional, shaky hand that wasn’t particularly strong but appeared to use all the force it could manage when it left the message.
Kate had decoded that cipher the evening before, but Marcus’s bomb about taking a step back from their not-quite relationship had driven the thought from her mind. It wouldn’t have made a difference to Dr. Hammond, but it bothered her that she could be so easily distracted from her case.
Just like you are now.
She read the decoded cipher and forced herself to focus on that and nothing else.
The code here was a slightly more complicated substitution where the characters were replaced by their opposites then replaced again by swapping evens with the opposite evens and odds with the opposite odds.
So, character one was swapped with character twenty-two, and then the new one was swapped with the new twenty-one, the new two with the new twenty-two, the new three with the new nineteen, and so on.
A fun little trick, but the words it revealed weren’t so fun. Besides the Proverbs 9 passage, only one other Bible verse was quoted: Proverbs 28: 10. “Whoever leads the upright along an evil path will fall into their own trap.”
Kate wasn’t surprised to find that the second half of that verse, “but the blameless shall inherit good” wasn’t mentioned. Cox and his disciples weren’t concerned with God’s blessings, only His wrath.
The rest of the cipher was a rant about how people who encourage other people to commit adultery were worse than adulterers.
They were the messengers of Satan and deserved to be cast into Hell.
The Carltons apparently liked playing games with people where they put married individuals into the arms of others.
What had Dr. Hammond done to earn this killer’s wrath?
And why cutting off the genitals? Kate still didn’t understand why that was the punishment. It didn’t quite fit with the habit Cox and his disciples had of matching their victims’ executions to the commandments they violated. It came close, but not quite on target.
Still, this code so far was the strongest evidence that this was indeed one of Cox's disciples. Apparently, he could still reach the world, even from prison.
How? How could he be locked in a room away from the light of day but still command one of his disciples to kill in his name?
How many more would there be before it finally ended?
Would it end as long as Cox was alive, or did the FBI have to push for an expedited death penalty before they woke up from this nightmare?
Her phone buzzed. Miami Police Department. She answered and recognized the voice of the officer who had sat with Jenna Fritz the night before.
“Just talked to Miss Fritz. She’s ready to talk to you.”
“Perfect,” Kate said. “I’m on my way.”
She hung up and stood, moving gently for the door so as not to wake Marcus, who was still asleep.
She had her hand on the door handle when she heard the bed creak as Marcus rolled out of it.
She debated trying to rush out, but she wouldn’t make it in time, and if he caught her, he’d be hurt, and that would only make things worse between them.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
She turned to him. He looked awful. His eyes were bloodshot and his short hair somehow managed to be a messy mop. His t-shirt was matted with sweat, and his sweatpants hung too low on his hips. He looked hungover.
Boy, Cheryl really did a number on you, huh?
She scolded herself for the unkind thought and said, “I’m going to talk to Jenna Fritz.”
Marcus nodded. “Give me ten minutes. I’ll freshen up and come with you.”
Kate took a deep breath and said, “Um, I don’t think you should. She looked really nervous, and your kind of intimidating this morning.”
To her surprise, Marcus didn’t argue. He just nodded again and said, “Fair enough. I’ll follow up on the business card.”
She frowned. “What business card?”
“The one I found on Dr. Hammond’s desk.”
Kate blinked. “You didn’t tell me about a business card.”
“I didn’t?”
“No.”
He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Shit. I’m sorry. Yeah, a guy named Maxwell. It was the only business card on her desk, so I thought that it might be something. I thought I told you.”
“Well, you didn’t.”
Kate’s voice was curt, but she didn’t feel guilty about that.
Damn it, this is exactly what she was afraid of.
The two of them would act on their feelings for each other, and it would interfere with their ability to work together.
This, more than anything else, would be a death knell to their chances of a future with each other.
They didn’t have time for a long talk about it now, though. She took a deep breath and said, “I’ll text you when I’m done. You do the same, okay?”
“Yeah, for sure.”
She left the hotel, frowning at the already bright-already warm Miami sun. Time seemed to move faster here. Or was it that she was moving slower? Either way, she felt like she was dragging herself through molasses while their killer was skipping gaily toward their next victim.
***
Jenna met Kate at a café a mile south of the medical center. She faced Biscayne Bay and doggedly refused to turn around lest she catch a glimpse of the building she worked at up until finding her boss so horribly murdered.
Kate ordered them coffee and made small talk until the brews arrived.
She learned that Jenna had gone home late last night with a sedative to help her sleep.
She’d taken the sedative and woken up feeling present enough to talk.
She’d called the officer who had forgotten to give her Kate’s card but left his own.
He’d called Kate, and now here they were.
The coffees arrived, and Kate got to the meat and potatoes. “Can you tell me about last night? Go at your own pace but try to be as detailed as possible.”
Jenna began to shake, but she sipped her coffee and took a deep breath, and the shakes eased a little. She took another deep breath, then said, “I was in the storage closet after I finished organizing files and confirming Dr. Hammond’s schedule for the following day. Dr. Hammond was in her office.”
Kate made a note to follow up on the fact that Jenna was in the storage closet, but she wanted to let the woman finish first.
“I finally got the courage to go tell her I was quitting after about twenty minutes. That was an hour after closing, so it was around six o’clock.”
Right when I arrived at the Miami Field Office to meet with Marcus, Kate thought.
“I knocked on the door, and she didn’t answer.
I thought that she might have gone home, and I just didn’t hear her leave, but when I checked, I saw the alarm hadn’t been set and the door hadn’t been locked.
I figured she probably didn’t answer because she had her earphones in.
She listens to the recordings of her sessions at the end of the day when she goes over her notes. Not all of them, just excerpts.
“Anyway, I told her I was coming in and opened the door. I walked inside, and she was there. Most of her.”
She began to shake again and sipped more of the coffee. Kate decided now was time to follow up a little. “Why were you in the storage closet?”
Jenna took another sip of coffee and braced herself. Was she bracing to lie or to tell the truth? “I was quitting.”
“I see. May I ask why?”
“I… I didn’t agree with what Dr. Hammond was saying to patients.”
“What was she saying?”
“She was… Well, it differed from patient to patient. And I never really knew exactly what she was saying. I didn’t eavesdrop, and she didn’t betray doctor-patient confidentiality.
She just believed certain things, and I know she was telling people to do those things because she wrote books about it and articles.
She was interviewed last month by a psychology journal over it. ”
Kate gave Jenna a gently stern look. “I understand this is difficult for you, but if we’re going to find the person responsible for Dr. Hammond’s death, I need to know that you’re telling me everything you know.”
Jenna inhaled sharply and looked out across the water. Kate looked that way and saw a tour boat passing. It was an open-air barge designed to look like a miniature riverboat, complete with two steel-frame non-functional paddle wheels on either side.
“It’s just that she was a really good boss. Like, really good.”
Kate turned back to Jenna. Her lower lip was trembling, but the tremors in the rest of her body had eased. Tears welled in her eyes. “She was always nice to me. She would talk to me like she was actually interested. She bought me Chappell Roan tickets for my birthday.”
Kate didn’t know who Chappell Roan was, but Jenna’s grief appeared genuine, and a boss who bought her employee concert tickets was definitely high up on the ranking of cool bosses.
Kate thought her own boss was a badass, but if Victoria Winters ever bought her concert tickets, Kate would fear for her sanity.
“It’s hard because…” Jenna wiped tears from her eyes. “I liked her. That’s why I worked for her for so long. I didn’t want her to think I didn’t like her, but… I just couldn’t get over the difference in our values.”
It was clear that Jenna was going to have a hard time spilling the beans herself. Kate would have to coax her. “Did this have something to do with Dr. Hammond’s views on adultery?”
“Yes. Well, sort of. She didn’t advocate… Well, she didn’t call it cheating.”
Kate sipped her own coffee to keep from snapping at the hurting girl to just say it already. She was never the most patient person to begin with, and Jenna was challenging the limited patience she had. “What exactly did she advocate?”
“Open relationships. Polyamory and things like that.”
Kate took another sip of coffee. That fit with the killer’s MO. The killer held the marriage bed sacred, and it was pretty clear that Dr. Hammond didn’t.
“I just can’t get past it,” Jenna blurted.
“I mean, I get that people are sexual beings, and ancient humans were polygamous and whatever, but part of being in love with someone is belonging to them, you know?
Heart, soul, and body. She would tell her patients to explore sex with other people, and sometimes you could see in their eyes they didn't want it.
Sometimes one partner would get excited, and you could see the hurt in the other's eyes. "
She stopped and looked at Kate, wide-eyed. She’d just revealed that she was a little less respectful of doctor-patient confidentiality than she’d said before.
Kate wasn’t here to arrest Jenna for snooping, though. “Were any of those couples angry with Dr. Hammond?”
Jenna shook her head. “No, not that I saw. They just… didn’t work out.
A few did, maybe, but most of them ended up divorced soon after.
That’s the thing. Sex isn’t just sex. It’s part of how we express love.
If you say you love someone but you let someone else inside of you, it’s hard to prove that you really love someone. ”
She brought her coffee abruptly to her lips, maybe to stifle the stream of confession.
Kate resisted the urge to let her frustration show.
This interview was making for good gossip but nothing new for her case.
“Did Dr. Hammond seem distressed lately or worried? Did she mention anyone new in her life? Were there people who publicly condemned her or opposed her?”
Jenna caught Kate’s irritation and deflated. Her voice was thin and reedy when she replied, “No. I’m sorry. I was just in the storage closet practicing what I was going to say. I wasn’t even mad at her. I just felt bad working for someone advocating for polygamy.”
Kate sighed and got to her feet. “Thank you, Jenna. This helps a lot.”
She didn’t know if that was true or not, but she could hope that something would come of it. It gave her another potential list of suspects, at least.
Maybe Marcus would get lucky. Maybe this Maxwell guy would turn out to be the thread that unraveled the mystery.
As she left the café, however, she found it hard to focus on the case. Their killer murdered people because to them, marriage was sacrosanct, and the victims encouraged people to violate it.
Marcus’s marriage wasn’t sacrosanct. Not to her. She didn’t think of herself as the “other woman,” but that’s what she was, wasn’t she? And she didn’t have the advice of a therapist or adventurous swinger friends to blame. Her choices were her own.
As were the consequences, to herself and those she cared about.
That didn’t have anything to do with the case, and the fact that Kate couldn’t shake it off and focus on the job was bothersome. Would innocent people suffer consequences because of her spat with Marcus?
Maybe it was better if she and Marcus avoided a relationship. This was getting dangerously close to messy, and some of that mess could splatter on people who didn’t deserve it.
And allow a killer to continue their spree.