frustration in Chooch's eyes as I fished the phone out of my pocket. He wanted my complete attention on this visit and unfortunately, he wasn't quite getting it. But a fresh homicide had hit our table at two-thirty this morning and I couldn't let the first twenty-four hours of Forrest's investigation go stagnant.
The other calls had been from the coroner's office and forensics. No additional material was found at the crime scene. The blood work showed nothing special. . a low alcohol count and no drugs. They were still trying to trace the contact lens.
I opened my cell phone as I left the living room, and went into the den. 'Scully,' I said.
It was a cryptologist who identified herself as Cindy Clark from Symbols and Hieroglyphics. We'd met once previously and I recognized her heavy Southern accent.
'I've translated the tattoo on the vic's eyelids,' she said.
'Great! Let's hear.'
'The figures are Cyrillic symbols from the old Russian alphabet. They date all the way back to Peter the Great.'
'Russian?'
'Yes, sir. It's a warning.'
'Go on.'
'Roughly translated, it means, 'Don't wake up.
I started writing that on a slip of paper. 'A warning or a statement of fact?'
'In the book where I found it, it just says that life is bad and it's better to sleep. But since this John Doe had it on his eyelids, maybe it just refers to him being asleep when his eyes are closed. I don't know.'
'Listen Cindy, I really appreciate this, but what I need most right now is to decode that figure eight inside the oval. The case is starting to fall in on me. Can you keep working on that? If you're at a dead end, maybe you could send it out to experts in other departments?'
'We already did that. Everything we got back so far doesn't help much. I have a few possibilities, but we've eliminated most of them because they aren't exact matches and they don't seem relevant. I think you know Mike Menninger, our head cryptologist. He's gone over everything. He thinks what we have so far is pretty low-yield stuff and might just produce confusion for y'all.'
'Let's hear, anyway.'
I heard paper rustling, then: 'One is a sailing club in Vancouver, Washington, called Pieces of Eight. Their flag is kind of like your symbol, but it's more just an eight in a circle with no crosshatching. So we don't think it's anything.'
I agreed, but wrote it down anyway. 'Go on.'
'There's a symbol from the ancient Greek that looks a little like it, only the eight is sideways, not perpendicular, and it's closed, not open at the top.'
'What's it mean?'
'It was an academic symbol for a college of philosophers in Athens.'
'Not very damn likely,' I agreed, but wrote that down, too.
'Then, just some logos of businesses. A bike shop in the Valley, Eight Mile Bikes, a chicken franchise called Eight Pieces, stuff like that. None of it is close enough to take seriously. Since the peril carved the exact same symbol each time, we think it's probably a close representation of what he wants. It may be lacking detail, but none of this stuff seems right to us.'
'Okay, Cindy, I agree. But turn up the heat, will you? I need a break.'
'Yes, sir.'
She hung up and I opened the murder book so I could stick the slip of paper inside to enter later. When I looked at the index page for John Doe Number Two, who I'd named 'Van' because we found him in the L. A. River at Van Alden Avenue, I saw at a glance that some pictures were missing and the material was not organized correctly. I felt a flash of anger at Zack. What had he been doing instead of taking care of this? I closed the binder and walked back into the living room.
'A good pre-law major is political science,' Pete Carroll was saying. 'We have academic advisors who help our players with their majors. They also help our athletes register for the right courses. We have mandatory study halls, and tutors on standby if you need help on a subject.'
Chooch was leaning forward. 'Coach, can we talk just a little more about the program, because I have some questions.'
'Sure,' the coach said. 'Fire away.'
'Is Coach Sarkisian gonna stay at USC?' Chooch was asking about SC's brilliant quarterback coach who had recently been promoted to assistant head coach.
'So far that's the plan, but one of my jobs, Chooch, is to support my players and my coaches. If people in our system know that there's opportunity, they flourish. If that means one day Steve Sarkisian takes off to be a head coach somewhere, I'm never gonna stand in his way. In fact, I'll make some calls and try to help.'
It went on for another thirty minutes, until Coach Carroll said it was time for him to leave. Franco was still sitting at his feet and before he could stand, our marmalade cat jumped up and landed in the coach's lap. Obviously, Franco's mind was made up. He wanted Chooch to wear cardinal and gold.
We still hadn't had our visit from Joe Paterno at Penn State, or Karl Dowell from UCLA. Both visits were scheduled for the following week. But I liked Coach Carroll. After he left, we sat in the living room and talked it through.
'What a cool guy,' Chooch said.
'He's good-looking, too,' Delfina teased, her long black hair and dark eyes shining. She had brought more than I could have imagined into our family since she came to live with us.
'He sounds like a player's coach,' Alexa added.
I nodded, but didn't want to put in too strong an opinion or use my influence to help Chooch decide. 'What do you think, Dad?'
'He's obviously a quality person. But in the long run, it's got to be your decision.'
'I wish he'd talked more about football.'
'I liked that he didn't,' Alexa said. 'Anybody can come in here and make promises. What he was saying is he wants to build in you a sense of teamwork and inner strength. Let's face it, if you want success in life, it's inner strength that counts.'
Chapter 8
After dinner that evening, Alexa and I got into a rare, but somewhat heated, argument. It ended up being about Zack.
We were sitting in our backyard looking out at the shimmering canals of Venice, California. The development was a Disneyesque version of Venice, Italy, designed by a romantic dreamer named Abbot Kinney, back in the thirties. The five-block area was spanned by narrow bridges that arched over three-foot-deep canals. Several of our neighbors had added rowboat-sized gondolas that bobbed like plastic ornaments on the shiny, moonlit water.
Alexa and I had just popped open two Heinekens, and agreed that Pete Carroll and USC would be a good fit for Chooch, when I decided to get something off my chest. I'm not good at keeping secrets from Alexa, so I launched into my theory on why I thought John Doe Number Four might be a copycat murder, running all the evidence past her.
She greeted the information in typical Alexa fashion. Her analytical mind dissected and examined what I was saying. When I finished, she nodded in agreement, realizing that there was good reason for my suspicion. But like Jeb Calloway, she wondered how a copycat would know about the symbol carved on Forrest's chest.
'It's something I can't explain. Maybe it leaked.'
'Damn,' she said softly. 'I was counting on this one to give us something. We already told the press about finding the bullet. If you're right, and this is a copycat, I'll have to figure out how to downplay their expectations.'
'Why tell those assholes anything?' I said, my anger flaring.
