The young man shrugged as though this were a tricky bit of sophistry.
“Item number seven is divided into subcategories,” said the genderless Sergeant Wigg (but perhaps not sexless, observed Gurney, noting the interesting eyes and finely sculpted mouth). “Item seven includes communications received by the victim which may be relevant to the crime, including the note found on the body.”
“I’ve had copies made of all that,” announced Rodriguez. “I’ll hand them out at the appropriate time.”
Kline asked Wigg, “What are you looking for in the communications?”
“Fingerprints, paper indentations…”
“Like impressions from a writing pad?”
“Correct. We’re also doing ink-identification tests on the handwritten letters and printer-identification tests on the letter that was generated through a word processor-the last one received prior to the murder.”
“We’ll also have experts look at the handwriting, vocabulary, and syntax,” interjected Hardwick, “and we’re getting a sound-print analysis of the phone conversation the victim taped. Wigg already has a preliminary take on it, and we’ll review that today.”
“We’ll also go over the boots that were found today, as soon as they get to the lab. That’s all for now,” concluded Wigg, tapping a key on her computer. “Any questions?”
“I have one,” said Rodriguez. “Since we discussed presenting these evidence items in order of importance, I was wondering why you placed the lawn chair first.”
“Just a hunch, sir. We can’t know how it all fits together until it all fits together. At this point it’s impossible to say which piece of the puzzle-”
“But you did put the lawn chair first,” interrupted Rodriguez. “Why?”
“It seemed to illustrate the most striking feature of the case.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The planning,” said Wigg softly.
She had the ability, thought Gurney, to respond to the captain’s interrogation as though it were a series of objective questions on paper, devoid of supercilious facial expressions and insulting intonations. There was a curious purity in this lack of emotional entanglement, this immunity to petty provocation. And it got people’s attention. Gurney noticed everyone at the table, except Rodriguez, unconsciously leaning forward.
“Not just the planning,” she went on, “but the weirdness of the planning. Bringing a lawn chair to a murder. Smoking seven cigarettes without touching them with your fingers or your lips. Breaking a bottle, washing it, and bringing it to the scene to stab a dead body with. Not to mention the impossible footprints and how the perp disappeared from the woods. It’s like the guy is some kind of genius hit man. It’s not just a lawn chair, but a lawn chair with half the webbing removed and replaced. Why? Because he wanted it all white? Because it would be less visible in the snow? Because it would be less visible against the white Tyvek painter’s suit he may have been wearing? But if visibility was such a big issue, why would he sit there in a lawn chair, smoking cigarettes? I’m not sure why, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the chair turned out to be the key to unraveling the whole thing.”
Rodriguez shook his head. “The key to solving this crime will be police discipline, procedure, and communication.”
“My money’s on the lawn chair,” whispered Hardwick with a wink at Wigg.
The comment registered on the captain’s face, but before he could speak, the conference-room door opened and a man entered holding a gleaming computer disk. “What is it?” Rodriguez snapped.
“You told me to bring you any fingerprint results as soon as we had them, sir.”
“And?”
“We have them,” he said, holding up the disk. “You’d better have a look. Maybe Sergeant Wigg could…?”
He extended the disk tentatively toward her laptop. She inserted it and clicked a couple of keys.
“Interesting,” she said.
“Prekowski, would you mind telling us what you have there?”
“Krepowski, sir.”
“What?”
“My name is Krepowski.”
“Fine, good. Now, would you please tell us whether you found any prints.”
The man cleared his throat. “Well, yes and no,” he said.
Rodriguez sighed. “You mean they’re too smudged to be useful?”
“They’re a hell of a lot more than smudged,” said the man. “In fact, they’re not really prints at all.”
“Well, what are they?”
“I guess you could call them smears. It looks like the guy used his fingertips to write with-using the skin oil in his fingertips like it was invisible ink.”
“To write? Write what?”
“Single-word messages. One on the back of each of the poems he mailed to the victim. Once we made the words chemically visible, we photographed them and copied the images to disk. It shows up pretty clearly on the screen.”
With a faint touch of amusement playing at her lips, Sergeant Wigg slowly rotated her laptop until the screen directly faced Rodriguez. There were three sheets of paper shown in the photo, side by side-the reverse sides of the sheets on which the three poems had been written arranged in the sequence in which they’d been received. On each of the three sheets, a single four-letter word appeared in smudgy block letters:
DUMB EVIL COPS
Chapter 24
“What the fuck…?” said the Cruise boys, aroused in unison.
Rodriguez frowned.
“Damn!” cried Kline. “This is getting more interesting by the minute. This guy is declaring war.”
“An obvious nutcase,” said Cruise One.
“A smart, ruthless nutcase who wants to do battle with the police.” It was clear that Kline found the implications exciting.
“So what?” said Cruise Two.
“I said earlier that this crime was likely to generate some media interest. Scratch that. This could be the crime of the year, maybe the crime of the decade. Every element of this thing is a media magnet.” Kline’s eyes glittered with the possibilities. He was leaning so far forward in his chair that his ribs pressed against the edge of the table. Then, as suddenly as his enthusiasm had flared, he reined it in, sitting back with a pensive expression-as though a private alarm had warned him that murder was a tragic affair and needed to be treated as such. “The anti-police element could be significant,” he said soberly.
“No doubt about it,” concurred Rodriguez. “I’d like to know if any of the institute’s guests had anti-police attitudes. How about it, Hardwick?”
The senior investigator uttered a single-syllable bark of a laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“Most of the guests we interviewed rank the police somewhere between IRS agents and garden slugs.”
Somehow, Gurney marveled, Hardwick had managed to convey that this was exactly what he himself thought of the captain.
“I’d like to see their statements.”
“They’re in your in-box. But I can save you some time. The statements are useless. Name, rank, and serial number. Everyone was asleep. No one saw anything. No one heard anything-except for Pasquale Cachese, aka Patty Cakes. Says he couldn’t sleep. Opened his window to get some air and heard the so-called muffled slap-and he guessed what it was.” Hardwick riffled through a stack of papers in his file folder and removed one, as Kline again
