“Look at this,” she said, slapping the pages down. “Leonardo’s of Pisa, Mr. F. Leonard, Leon F. Pisano, and Leonidas Pissaro are all based on this guy. Leonardo Pisano Bigollo. Also known as Leonardo of Pisa, also known as Fibonacci. A mathematician, born in 1170, died in 1250. So obviously he’s not our man. But look at this.” She pointed to a paragraph a third of the way down the page.“Fibonacci series,” Peller read. “Never heard of it. Okay, let’s see: it starts with zero, followed by one, and each number thereafter is the sum of the previous two. Zero, one, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one, thirty-four, fifty- … my God.”
“That’s where the numbers come from.”
Peller looked up at her. She looked quite pleased, and so she should be, he thought, except for one thing. “Good work, Corina. Now if we just knew what the numbers mean.”
“I know. But there’s a pattern in the numbers, and he told us what it was. This series. That’s one key to his plan. Is there a second key as well, a pattern in what the numbers mean? Is he telling us that through these notes as well?”
The idea was definitely worth considering. “Okay, let’s think about this. The first day was zero, so—zero victims. Next day was the snowplow driver—one shot. Then the firstborn son, two victims and two shots.” Peller pushed himself back from the desk, rather more forcefully than necessary. “Two and two. Why isn’t that four? If three, five, and eight come next, will it be three victims, five shots, and an eighth-born son?”
Montufar leaned on the edge of his desk, her eyes staring off at nothing. “Or five sisters, with eight cups of poisoned tea, at three in the afternoon? Five cars with eight passengers in three parking lots? It doesn’t have to be simple. It probably won’t be. He could work those numbers in all kinds of ways. For a long, long time.”
Peller gazed at her until she met his eyes. For the first time since he had met her, she was utterly still. In the silence, he knew they were both thinking the same thing: this was very, very bad. By giving them the sequence—an infinite sequence—had Leo shown them that he planned to go on killing without limit?
∑
What he really needed to know was why Mark Patterson and Andrew Carrington were chosen for death. Did they have some connection to Leo? It seemed unlikely. At least, no connections between the victims had so far surfaced. Maggie Patterson had suggested to Montufar that her husband had died simply because he was a target of convenience. That was possible. But could Carrington, a first-born son, simply have been a target of convenience? No. Leo knew his next victim when he wrote the note because he knew how the number figured into the killing.
Which could point to another inconsistency: one victim a target of opportunity, one planned in advance. Peller fished a bottle of aspirin out of his desk drawer. He was going to need it. Before he could get the bottle open, the call he’d been dreading came in.
Two shots. Two victims.
∑
The line separating Howard County from Baltimore County is in fact the Patapsco River. At the end of its course, the Patapsco flares into the estuary of the Chesapeake Bay where Baltimore’s Inner Harbor lies in the heart of the city. Eight or so miles upstream from the harbor, a railroad crosses the river at Ilchester Road, and about a quarter mile further upstream, the river rushes noisily over a spillway. It is secluded, well-forested, perhaps a good spot to get away from the pressures of work during lunch break. Today, at least three people had visited: a retired man who lived a couple miles north of the river who had been walking for exercise, and the dead couple he happened upon.
Peller parked at the rail bridge where a smallish parking lot lay on the north side of the road. Several other vehicles were already there: a couple of police cruisers, a crime scene unit van, and a Lincoln Zephyr. He walked along the tracks to the crime scene, which was engulfed in a rush of activity that somehow seemed an extension of the spillway. The weather had warmed considerably since the snowstorm and most of the snow had already melted, swelling the river perceptibly but not to flood stage. The ground fairly squished beneath his feet. A few birds twittered somewhere overhead.
The victims were a male and a female: he solidly built, of fair complexion but with a dark mop of hair; she short and Mediterranean. They were sprawled haphazardly on the bank of the river, close together, face up, each killed by a single shot to the forehead. The ground in the area was a confusion of smeared mud and trampled undergrowth. Crime scene tape cordoned off a few areas where individual footprints were in evidence.
“Do we know who they are?” Peller asked one of the officers, a young black woman who looked almost lost in her uniform.
“The man’s name is Zachary Rymer and the woman’s is Helen Kamber. They both had driver’s licenses on them.” She directed a hesitant look towards the bodies before turning her attention to the river.
“First murder scene?” Peller asked.
The officer nodded.
“Detective Rick Peller,” he said, tapping himself on the chest. “What’s your name?”
“Sheila Crane,” she said. “Rookie.” Then, with a nervous laugh, she added, “Very.”
“Well, Sheila, I’ll tell you the secret. Don’t think too hard about it and you’ll do okay.”
She nodded her thanks.
Returning his attention to the victims, Peller took in their manner of dress. Rymer wore a pale blue button-down shirt, khaki slacks, black dress shoes, and a North Face jacket over the top. Kamber was clothed in a green knee-length skirt and a pale printed blouse—leaves?— but it was so splattered with mud that the pattern was almost hidden. The mud was odd. It looked as though it had been thrown at her or kicked onto her after she fell, whereas Rymer’s clothes were almost pristine.
Leaving Crane’s side, he examined the ground farther out from the bodies. Police personnel had entered the scene via the railroad, which allowed them easy access and prevented them from disturbing the area before it had been photographed and examined. The victims would have walked in the same way, he figured. They weren’t dressed for scrambling through the woods or along the riverbank. The Lincoln was probably theirs.
As for Leo—Peller had no doubt this was his handiwork, since it fit the note so well—he would also have come back this way. But how would he have known he would find the requisite two victims here?
Clearly this wasn’t the first time the couple had come here, and Leo knew it.
Somehow.
Peller found Crane bagging up something. “What’s that?” he asked.
“A ring. We found it just over here,” she indicated a spot about ten feet from Kamber’s body. “It looks like costume jewelry to me.”
Peller squinted at it. “Maybe. What do you think? The killer takes it off of her finger, decides it’s not real, and drops it?”
“Probably. It has to be hers. If it had been lost out here for any length of time, I don’t think it would look this good.”
Interesting, he thought. Leo was a killer, not a thief. Unless Dumas was right and Leo was also the mad golfer. “Have it checked out as soon as possible. Could be important. Also, we need to go over that Lincoln Zephyr back at the parking lot. It could have belonged to one of these two. Can you pass all that along for me?”
“Will do. But what are you going to do?”
Peller gazed thoughtfully at the river, then did an about-face. “I’m going for a walk,” he replied, starting toward the tracks.
∑
By all rights, Montufar should have accompanied Peller to the murder scene, except that twenty minutes before he got his call, Dumas got a call of his own: another golfing had been reported, this time in the back yard of a house on the northern edge of Centennial Park. “You’d better come with me on this one,” he told Montufar. “The victim is a woman. She’s apparently in hysterics.”
So they hurried to the Lakeside Court residence, a good-sized t
wo-story home near the end of the street, nestled among a collection of trees and bordered in the rear by what looked like a forest but in fact was simply a stand of trees that ran along the edge of the park.
They parked in the driveway behind the police cruiser that had arrived on the scene earlier. A male officer was standing guard at the door and let them in. Dumas motioned Montufar to go first, figuring it would be better if she did most of the talking.
Inside, they passed beneath cathedral ceilings to the living room, which was populated by a collection of wood furnishings tastefully upholstered in creamy white fabric. Deep rugs dotted an expanse of glossy oaken parquetry. Dumas guessed all of it was beyond a detective’s means. Not that it suited his tastes anyway.
A tall, angular woman with the build of a personal trainer and a clothing ensemble to match was muttering to herself as she circled the room. She seemed to take no notice of the newcomers. Her relentless activity reminded Dumas of a tiger pacing about its cage. He wondered if she was going to stop anytime soon.
A female officer standing to one side of the room stared at the floor as though deliverance might perhaps come from that direction. Dumas motioned Montufar forward, then took up a position next to the officer. He mouthed, “How long?”, surreptitiously indicating the victim. The woman raised her eyebrows and rolled her eyes expressively.
“Hi,” Montufar said, approaching the woman. “I’m Corina Montufar from the Howard County Police. You’ve had some trouble here.”
The woman didn’t stop moving. Rapidly, she said, “Thanks, thanks for coming. I’m Regina. Regina Collins. You know I was robbed? Right here in my own house! My husband’s in California on a business trip and I’m here all by myself and I’ve been robbed!”
Montufar gave Dumas a confused look. He shrugged. All the dispatcher had said was there had been another golf club attack at this location. It sure didn’t look as though the woman had been clubbed.
“We’re going to help you,” Montufar told Collins. “Why don’t we sit down and you can tell me what happened.”
Collins continued her frantic back-and-forth. “No, that’s okay. You sit, I’d rather not. I’ll tell you what happened. I was robbed!”
Montufar sat down gingerly on the edge of the sofa—almost, Dumas thought, as though not to wrinkle the upholstery. “What were you doing just before you were robbed?”
“I was out back, of course. I had to get the cat back in the house. He belongs to my husband. I wanted him to give him away when we got married, but no, he wouldn’t do it. He sheds on everything. And he’s black. That cat hates me. Dumb animal always manages to escape. I bent over to grab him, and when I stood up there he was.”
“The cat?” Dumas asked, having lost count of the male pronouns.
“The burglar! He was standing right next to me. Leering at me. Scared me to death!”
“Now wait a minute,” Dumas said before Montufar could react. “You say he was leering at you?” He exchanged glances with Montufar, who shook her head. This didn’t sound like the mad golfer at all.
“Well, I was just in my underwear. So I guess that’s why he was looking. But what was he doing there in the first place? Him and that golf club?”
Dumas didn’t want to ask.
Montufar apparently did. “Wait. You went outside in your underwear?”
Collins stopped and gave Montufar a curious look, as though she couldn’t decide whether to be surprised by the question or astounded at the questioner’s stupidity. “What? You never wear a bikini?”
“Never mind. Tell me about the golf club.”
“It was a golf club. I don’t play golf. It was just this golf club. He was holding it up like he was going to hit me with it. When I stood up and saw him, he didn’t move. Just stood there staring at my boobs.” She paused and cast a sideways glance at Dumas. He quickly turned to look at the fireplace that monopolized one wall of the room. “Then he put the club down and said, “If you give me your cash and jewelry, I won’t hurt you. Or your cat.’”
“Your husband’s cat,” Dumas said, deadpan.
“Cat, yes. He threatened the cat. Of all things. Like I would have cared. Well, maybe I would have. I’d have a hard time explaining to Josh what happened to his cat. So I did what he said. He followed me into the house—right to my bedroom, which believe me was the last place I wanted to go with him right there behind me! But that’s where the money and jewelry were. Once he had them, he left. By the front door, if you can believe that.”
“What time was this?” Montufar asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe nine o’clock? What time is it now?” She looked around for a clock, but there was nothing so mundane in the living room.
The woman officer glanced at her watch. “Ten-fifteen,” she volunteered, then immediately looked sorry that she’d consented to be part of the conversation.
Montufar patted the seat next to her, inviting Collins to sit, which she finally if grudgingly did. “I guess you got a pretty good look at him, then?”
“Yes. But I can’t remember much now. I was so upset.”
“Try anyway. Whatever you remember might help us catch him.”
“Well.” Collins looked up at the ceiling, eyes narrowed. “He wasn’t as tall as me. I’m six-one, so I’d guess he was maybe five-ten or five-eleven. Looked like he was in good shape, not overweight anyway. Dark brown hair. Clean-shaven. Hazel eyes. Maybe thirty years old, maybe a bit older.” Unexpectedly, she grinned at Montufar. “He was dressed like he was actually playing golf. Kind of old-fashioned. And an overcoat, unbuttoned. Made me think of Cary Grant in Bringing up Baby. Have you ever seen that movie? Hysterical!”
If Montufar was rattled by the machine-gun speech, she didn’t show it. “Can’t say I have. What about the golf club?”
The mention of the club seemed to disturb Collins. She leapt to her feet and began pacing again. “I told you. I don’t golf.”
“Let me help you. Iron or wood?”
“Oh. Iron, I guess. It was metal, and skinny.”
“What about the handle?”
Collins stopped and gave Montufar another one of her looks. “The handle? I don’t know, it was a handle. That wasn’t what he was going to hit me with.”
“How long was it?”
Collins pulled her hair out of its ponytail and redid it. “I don’t know. Really, I wasn’t looking at the handle.”
“That’s all right,” Montufar assured her. “You’ve already given us a lot of information. We’re going to want you to sit down with a sketch artist. If we can get a decent picture of this guy, we’ll have a much better chance of finding him.”
Once they were outside, Dumas walked to the end of the driveway and took a look up and down the street. “We’ll have to canvass the neighborhood, see if anyone saw him. But nobody did, I’m pretty sure. He came in from the park and probably after he was out the door he circled around and went back into the park.”
Montufar likewise gazed about. “Agreed. Although it looks pretty quiet. He might have risked parking down the street.”
Deadpan, Dumas suggested, “Maybe we should reconstruct the crime. Cat and all.”
“Why?” Montufar asked with a grin. “The fluorescent yellow sports bra wasn’t good enough? You want to see her in her real underwear?”
He glanced back at the house. “No,” he replied. “Not particularly.”
∑
What bothered Peller about the murders by the river, and what set him off upstream along the railroad tracks, was the lack of access to the area. Bordered by the river to the east and heavily forested, the only obvious way in was from the small parking lot under the rail bridge at Ilchester Road. But if the killer had parked there, his victims might have known they weren’t the only ones about. The murder of Mark Patterson, the snowplow driver, suggested that Leo preferred stealth. Even if the
couple had been shot at close range, Leo would have wanted to catch them by surprise.
He wondered, therefore, if there were some way into the area from the north, and following the tracks for about half a mile gave him the answer: sort of. It looked like at least a few people had come this way over time. Beneath the oak, maple, and ash—all barren of leaves at this time of year—he noticed the occasional discarded candy wrapper, aluminum can, or dilapidated sheet of newsprint. Then, half a mile from the crime scene, he noticed a large house partially hidden by the woods a football field or more to the west.
The vaguest hint of a trail seemed to stretch from where he was towards the house, but it may have been nothing, or possibly a game trail. A few sharp cracks caught his attention; then he spotted the doe picking her way through the woods.
It was at least worth a look, so he pushed his way along the might-be-a-trail, brushing branches out of his way and getting snagged a couple of times on blackberry thorns hidden in the understory. The house, when he came to it, was a three-story brick monstrosity with a four-car garage and its own parking lot. Someone, Peller mused, must have money here. He took his time circling to the other side of the house, looking over the grounds. The lawn and soil underneath were damp, and in shaded areas patches of snow remained. A four-foot pile of dirty snow marked the end of the parking lot farthest from the house.
Of greater interest was the private drive meandering into the woods to the west. Through the trees, Peller glimpsed several other big houses. Somewhere that drive would connect to a road. He would have to check a map, but clearly there was a way to get to the crime scene from the north, if one didn’t mind walking for a mile or two.
“Who are you?”
Peller nearly jumped at the sharp voice behind him. When he turned, he was confronted by a woman dressed in a powder blue warm-up suit who was pointing a handgun at his forehead. He put his hands up. People expected that when they trained a gun on someone. “Rick Peller,” he said matter-of-factly, “Howard County police.”
The Fibonacci Murders Page 4
