expected Becker to find it by himself, and that meant without elaborate scientific help.
And the longer he thought of it, the more convinced Becker became that there was a message there somewhere. If, as he had first suspected, someone had intercepted the message, why mail just the envelope? Why alert the recipient that something had gone wrong? Especially when the recipient of the letter was someone in the FBI? Much safer, and much more likely, that whoever removed the message would have withheld the envelope as well.
Therefore, the message was in the envelope, on the envelope, or the envelope itself and not impossible to decipher because the writer expected Becker to do it.
Closing his eyes, Becker ran his fingers across the surface of the stationery, thinking to find some pattern of bumps, perhaps in the address, a primitive Braille that Becker could comprehend. The envelope was perfectly smooth except for the address and the stamp. He gently rubbed the address again and again. It was rougher than the surrounding paper, which indicated that it had been typed and not laser printed, but if there was any meaning in the roughness, Becker could not detect it.
Perhaps a blind man could, but Becker was not blind and did not have that kind-of touch and the correspondent must have known it.
The only true relief on the front surface of the envelope was at the stamp, where the glue had failed to adhere in one small spot, raising up the perforated edge enough for Becker's fingers to detect it. He studied the stamp itself under Jack's magnifying glass and found nothing unusual.
Feeling like an amateur detective, Becker turned on the flame under the teakettle. Hercule Poirot would not have done it like this, he thought.
Agatha Christie would have found a way for her prissy, abstemious sleuth to have solved it through sheer deduction. But I'm not as smart as old Hercule, he admitted, I usually have to get my hands dirty.
When the kettle whistled, Becker held the envelope over the spout and steamed the stamp until it curled. Underneath the stamp and slightly smudged by the steam was a series of dots, another number in binary code. This time the dots had not been made by a pin, so they could not be detected from the inside of the envelope. They were as small as pinpricks, however, and looked as if they could have been made using a pin as a stylus, but this time with ink. Or a substance substituted for ink.
It'was a reddish brown, the color of iodine, and Becker guessed that it was blood. Perhaps as a touch of melodrama, or perhaps a matter of convenience. It was almost impossible to find a bottle of ink lying around the houseor around the prison-these days, and blood, one's own blood, was always readily available, especially in small amounts and when the writing instrument was a pin. A jab or two in the finger would provide enough to write a number in dots, Becker thought.
The number this time was a longer one. Becker drew a series of boxes and labeled them underneath from right to left, advancing by an order of 2, 4, 8, 16 and so on until the boxes had crossed the page. He placed a dot in each box that corresponded to a mark on the envelope, then toted up his result with a pocket calculator. The number was 15113054.
Karen found him sitting in the den, staring into space.
There was a pizza box on the kitchen table, evidently to serve as dinner, but no plates, no napkins. Becker was certainly not fussy about the niceties of dining, but in the last months he had become increasingly conscientious about the small things and this sudden neglect served Karen as a warning that something was wrong. Not that she needed much warning. She had noted his increasing withdrawal since the arrival of the first letter, and his current fugue left no doubt about his mood.
'The latest letter?'
Becker did not look up at her.
'The final letter,' he said.
She moved behind him and rubbed his neck and shoulders. He took the massage like so much stone and she quickly stopped.
'How do you know it's the final one?'
'He won't write again.'
'Well, then, good. Now you can forget about it, whatever it is.'
'He has summoned me,' Becker said sarcastically.
Karen paused, hoping she would not have to pump every single answer from him.
'How do you mean, 'summoned you'?' she asked at last.
'He's told me where he is and who he is and he can't very well come to me.'
He continued to stare at a spot on the wall; he had not looked at her since she entered the room.
'So I'll have to go to him.'
'What is it, really?' she asked.
'I'm scared,' he said.
'Then don't do it.'
He chuckled humorlessly.
'If I didn't do things I was afraid of, I wouldn't get much done.'
'You've got nothing left to prove, to yourself or to anyone else.
Certainly not to the Bureau.'
'Maybe to myself, though… You know what it's like, Karen. You know how seductive it is.'
Karen was silent. On a case with Becker she had — killed one person while allowing another to die of self- inflicted wounds. Both had deserved to die-they had killed many times-but it was not the morality of her choices that had bothered Karen. It was her reaction. She had felt, for the first and only time, the savage thrill of killing, the thrill that Becker feared would consume him. Horrified and exhilarated, she had confessed to him that she understood and shared his passion. But she had denied it ever since, keeping her strongest denial was to herself. She had transferred to Kidnapping to decrease her possible exposure to temptation and had been grateful for each promotion that took her higher up the ladder and farther from the dangers of the field.
'Not really,' she said. 'I know that it troubles you.'
He looked at her searchingly for a second. He never pressed her on the subject. Becker knew what he knew but respected her desire to forget. He wished that he could do the same.
'Yes. It 'troubles' me.'
'You're out of it, John. Stay out if that's what you want.'
'I kept solving the puzzles of the letters, didn't I? I knew it was trouble from the first, but I kept solving them.
Maybe it's what I want to do.'
'They're just letters-you didn't solicit them-they aren't forcing you to get involved.'
'I know.'
'If there's a problem, let the Bureau handle it.'
'They are handling it,' he said. 'With me.'
She stopped massaging his shoulders and slipped her chin to his head, her hands to his chest.
'Just don't do it. Stay out of it. It costs you far too much.'
'I need to get into a prison to talk to an inmate,' he said. 'Can you arrange it for me?'
Karen hesitated. 'You can visit without any help.'
'I need to be alone with him. We can't do it through Plexiglas with cameras on us and a guard standing ten feet away.'
'John..
'I don't want Hatcher involved in this. If he is, I won't go near it.
You have the authority to arrange it.'
'John-I can't.'
'Does Hatcher have a marker on me?' A marker was a directive that Deputy Director Hatcher was to be informed of any Bureau action involving a subject agent.
'You know this is touchy,' Karen said.
'Restricted information, right? Okay, I understand. But it wouldn't be restricted if he didn't have a marker on me, would it? You could answer the question then.'
'No comment.'
