Their eyes all widened as they took in the words, ‘Like any journey you must start at the very beginning. As the song goes, it’s a very good place to start. Only then will you begin to see.’
‘What do you think it means?’ Hill asked, stroking his chin.
‘It means we need to go back to very beginning,’ Darnell replied, stating the obvious.
‘Well it is a very good place to start.’ Vanessa laughed but the room remained silent. ‘Is no one else a Sound of Music fan? Damn it.’
‘Do they mean to go back to the cemetery?’ Sommers considered the scene of the crime.
‘I think it means much further back than that. I think they mean the beginning of Lincoln’s life.’ Vanessa sighed, trying to interpret the riddle.
‘What do you make of the symbol?’ Jackson pointed to the image at the top of the email. They all glanced over the marking with a blank expression.
‘We’ll need a symbologist to interpret it for us. I have no idea.’
‘We’ll come back to this. Time is running out and we could try and catch this crook before we start going on journeys into Lincoln’s past.’ Hill took over before turning to Robert. ‘Lawson, do you think we can trace who sent the email?’
‘It is possible, but we have two problems. The first is the possibility that the sender actually has nothing to do with it and is just somebody who is trying to wind the police up. I’ve seen this a lot in my career.’
‘The problem is no one knows about this except us and the body-snatchers, therefore they must be somehow involved. So what’s the second problem?’ Vanessa asked.
‘The second problem is that sender could have used a Tor.’ The group gormlessly searched for any meaning in the technologist’s theory. ‘A Tor is an anonymous network whereby people can send emails from an untraceable address. It’s sent from a randomised place and so it’s impossible to track their IP address.’ Lawson lifted his specs, which were sliding down his nose, and replaced them onto the bridge of his snout. ‘The IP address gives us the location of the sender and without that, we’re screwed.’
‘How long will it take you to find out which is the case?’ Darnell quizzed.
‘Not long. I can get an answer for you today.’
‘What I can’t understand is why they’d have sent it directly to me,’ Darnell chimed in, waving the printed email. ‘I only joined the case yesterday and I received the email as soon as I got home. Is there a chance that this is an inside job? It would make a lot of sense given the circumstances as the culprit managed to get out of the cemetery unseen.’
Hill and Jamison looked to each other with a look of recognition in their eyes, which said they had both come to the same conclusion. Hill took a deep breath before sharing their findings with Darnell.
‘There is something we haven’t told you, Detective Jackson. We invited you onto this case for a very specific reason. Vanessa and I had already been down to the cemetery earlier that day while you were on the house raid at Chuck Cunningham’s. Upon arrival at the grave we found the lid of the casket on the floor. At first we thought they’d left it behind due to the weight of the damn thing. It’s damn heavy; it’s made of lead after all. But we soon realised there was another motive to leaving it behind, which we cleared out of the tomb before you arrived.’
Hill lifted out a photograph from his briefcase and handed it to Jackson. Darnell browsed over the image and his eyes widened as he took in the message left for him by the thief, painted onto the lid of the casket.
Detective Darnell Jackson, do you see?
Below was the same symbol copied into his email.
‘Why wasn’t I informed of this straight away?’ Darnell snapped.
‘We wanted to protect you and we worried you wouldn’t take the opportunity to work with us if you knew it had in some way been directed personally towards you.’
‘You mean you thought it could be me and you wanted to see if I showed any signs of guilt.’
‘OK, OK. That too. You know how this place works. But I’m confident you don’t have anything to do with it. Either way, I think it’s important you’re on this case as either you know this person personally or we can use you to lure the culprit towards you.’
‘So all that about the State Senator wanting me on the case was all a bunch of crap, wasn’t it?’
‘I’m afraid so.’ Hill lowered his head. ‘We thought you’d appreciate the compliment enough to take on the job. Either way you’re knee deep in this shit now so we’d appreciate your help. Can you think of anyone who would have a grudge against you?’
Darnell thought over his boss’s question. He’d had some serious run-ins with a whole host of criminals in his thirty-year career. From murderers to drug lords, he’d had the displeasure of meeting them all. But only one person stuck out like a sore thumb.
‘Chuck Cunningham comes to mind. We’ve had a long standing war with him. I’ve been trying to get him for years. That’s the only person I can think of who has a personal grudge against me. But he’s a drug mule, I don’t see how this has anything to do with Lincoln.’
‘Well Lincoln’s wife was addicted to opium,’ Vanessa suggested. The group all stared at her, while Darnell gasped at the accusation that the First Lady was a heroin addict. ‘What? She was. It was normal for that time. Anyone who had money was.’
‘Well I still don’t think it’s that. I don’t mean
