“Carefully composed letters, number mysteries, directions to send a check to the wrong address, a series of increasingly threatening poems, hidden messages to the police that could only be discovered through latent-prints chemistry, surgically clean cigarette butts, a concealed gunshot wound, an impossible trail of footprints, and a fucking lawn chair for Chrissake! That’s a hell of a dragged-out bang.”
“My sketch of the situation was not meant to exclude premeditation,” said Kline. “But at this point I’m more interested in the basic motive than in details. I want to understand the connection between the murderer and his victim. Understanding the connection is usually the key to a conviction.”
This lecturing response generated an unpleasant silence, broken by Rodriguez.
“Blatt!” he barked at Gurney’s guide, who was staring at his copies of the first two messages as though they’d dropped into his lap from outer space. “You look lost.”
“I don’t get it. The perp sends a letter to the victim, tells him to think of a number and then look in a sealed envelope. He thinks of six fifty-eight, looks in the envelope, and there it is-six fifty-eight. You saying that actually happened?”
Before anyone could answer, his partner broke in, “And two weeks later the perp does it again-this time on the phone. He tells him to think of a number and look in his mailbox. Victim thinks of the number nineteen, looks in his mailbox, and there’s the number nineteen in the middle of a letter from the perp. That’s some pretty weird shit, dude.”
“We have the recording the victim made of the actual phone call,” said Rodriguez, making it sound like a personal achievement. “Play the part about the number, Wigg.”
Without comment the sergeant tapped a few keys, and after a two- or three-second interval the call between Mellery and his stalker-the one Gurney had audited via Mellery’s conference-call gizmo-began at its midpoint. The faces at the table were riveted by the bizarre accent of the caller’s voice, the taut fear in Mellery’s.
After a moment Sergeant Wigg tapped two keys and said, “That’s it.”
The brief playback left Gurney feeling bereaved, angry, sick.
Blatt turned his palms up in a gesture of confusion. “What the hell was that, a man or a woman?”
“Almost certainly a man,” said Wigg.
“How the hell can you tell?”
“We did a voice-pitch analysis this morning, and the printout shows more stress as the frequency rises.”
“So?”
“The pitch varies considerably from phrase to phrase, even word to word, and in every case the voice is measurably less stressed at the lower frequencies.”
“Meaning the caller was straining to speak in a high register and the lower pitches came more naturally?” asked Kline.
“Exactly,” said Wigg in her ambiguous but not unattractive voice. “It’s not conclusive evidence, but it’s strongly suggestive.”
“What about the background noise?” asked Kline. It was a question on Gurney’s mind as well. He’d been aware of a number of vehicle sounds on the recording that placed the source of the call in an open area-perhaps a busy street or an outdoor mall.
“We’ll know more after we do an enhancement, but right now there seem to be three categories of sound-the conversation itself, traffic, and the hum of some sort of engine.”
“How long will the enhancement take?” asked Rodriguez.
“Depends on the complexity of the data captured,” said Wigg. “I’d estimate twelve to twenty-four hours.”
“Make it twelve.”
After an awkward silence, something Rodriguez had a talent for initiating, Kline asked a question of the room in general. “What about that whispering business? Who wasn’t supposed to hear Mellery say the number nineteen?” He turned to Gurney. “You have any ideas?”
“No. But I doubt it has anything to do with not being overheard.”
“Why would you say that?” challenged Rodriguez.
“Because whispering is a lousy way of not being overheard,” whispered Gurney, quite audibly, to underline his point. “It’s like other peculiar elements in the case.”
“Like what?” Rodriguez persisted.
“Well, for example, why the uncertainty in the note referring to November or December? Why a gun and a broken bottle? Why the mystery with the footprints? And one other small matter that no one’s mentioned-why no animal tracks?”
“What?” Rodriguez looked baffled.
“Caddy Mellery said that she and her husband heard the shrieking sounds of animals fighting behind the house- that was why he went downstairs and looked out the back door. But there were no animal tracks anywhere near there-and they would have been quite obvious in the snow.”
“We’re getting bogged down. I don’t see how the presence or absence of raccoon tracks, or whatever the hell we’re talking about, matters.”
“Christ,” said Hardwick, ignoring Rodriguez and shooting Gurney an admiring grin. “You’re right. There wasn’t a single mark in that snow that wasn’t made by the victim or the killer. Why didn’t I notice that?”
Kline turned to Stimmel. “I’ve never seen a case with so many items of evidence and so few that made sense.” He shook his head. “I mean, how on earth did the killer pull off that business with the numbers? And why twice?” He looked at Gurney. “You sure the numbers meant nothing to Mellery?”
“Ninety percent sure-about as sure as I get about anything.”
“Getting back to the big picture,” said Rodriguez, “I was thinking about the issue of motive you mentioned earlier, Sheridan-”
Hardwick’s cell phone rang. He had it out of his pocket and at his ear before Rodriguez could object.
“Shit,” he said, after listening for about ten seconds. “You’re sure?” He looked around the table. “No bullet. They went over every inch of the rear wall of the house. Nothing.”
“Have them check inside the house,” said Gurney.
“But the shot was fired outside.”
“I know, but Mellery probably didn’t close the door behind him. An anxious person in a situation like that would want to leave it open. Tell the techs to consider the possible trajectories and check any interior wall that could have been in the line of fire.”
Hardwick relayed the instructions quickly and ended the call.
“Good idea,” said Kline.
“Very good,” said Wigg.
“About those numbers,” said Blatt, abruptly changing the subject. “It pretty much has to be some kind of hypnosis or ESP, right?”
“I wouldn’t think so,” said Gurney.
“But it’s got to be. What else could it be?”
Hardwick shared Gurney’s sentiments on this subject and responded first. “Christ, Blatt, when was the last time the state police investigated a crime involving mystical mind control?”
“But he knew what the guy was thinking!”
