The Fibonacci Murders

by Dale E. Lehman

  She gave him a skeptical once-over. “Where’s your uniform?”

  “I’m a detective. I don’t wear a uniform.”

  “Got ID?”

  “If you’ll let me get it.”

  She nodded but didn’t lower the gun. He hoped she knew what she was doing with it as he got out his shield and showed it to her. Warily, she lowered the gun. “What are you doing here?”

  “There was an incident back in the woods along the track,” he said. “Did you happen to see anyone walk through here earlier today?”

  She shook her head. “Only person I’ve seen walking through here is you. What kind of incident?”

  “A couple was murdered. It’s possible the killer came into the area through here.”

  The woman put her hand to her throat as a sickly look crossed her face. “Oh my God.”

  “Don’t worry,” Peller told her, “there’s reason to think he was specifically after these victims. It’s not likely he’ll be back. We’ll be sending someone around to talk with you and your neighbors later.” He eyed the gun for a moment, then said, “I have to be going.”

  The woman nodded absently, and he left her standing there, pointing the gun at the ground.

  Chapter 5

  Mathematicians deal with infinities all the time. But that’s the abstract world of mathematics. Whether infinities exist in nature is a philosophical issue, one that has been debated for centuries without resolution.

  In the world of human life, the subject is not an issue. We do not live forever. We do not have infinite powers. Even the sun which gives us life and the Earth which sustains that life are finite creatures.

  So even a series of crimes based upon an infinite sequence must sooner or later end. ∑

  Nobody got much of a weekend. Captain Morris pulled the strings required to get a lot of things done over the following twenty-four hours, and on Saturday she joined the three detectives to review the results.

  The weapon in the most recent murder was identified as a nine-millimeter handgun, probably fired from a distance of around fifty feet. The victims—Zachary Rymer and Helen Kamber—had, according to one of Kamber’s co-workers, been seeing each other for a few months. Rymer had been an accountant with a small firm in Ellicott City; Kamber, an assistant manager at a deli down the street, where the two had met. On Kamber’s days off she would meet him and sometimes the two would wander off for a while, although never long enough for Rymer to be late returning to the office.

  Until the day they were killed.

  The ring was identified by a relative as a gift to Kamber from Rymer. It was nothing fancy, just an agate set in a low-carat gold band, but she had treasured it.

  Very little new turned up with regard to the robbery. Detectives had knocked on every door in the neighborhood only to learn that no one was home, outside, or looking out the window during the critical time period, so nobody had seen anything of use. A list of stolen jewelry had been drawn up and was being distributed to law enforcement agencies and pawnshops. A sketch had been completed which, Regina Collins remarked, “Was so good it was scary.”

  “I think,” Montufar suggested after the evidence had been reviewed, “that we might be ahead to release the sketch, and mention that the murders are based on the Fibonacci sequence.”

  Morris shook her head. “Sketch, yes. But we don’t want to inspire crackpots, homicidal or otherwise.”

  “I agree,” Peller said. “If we do that we’re likely to get a million notes. Remember Jack the Ripper. We’ll have no idea which ones are real—if any of them are.”

  “We will if we withhold any other information,” Montufar pointed out. “We don’t have to say what the numbers refer to. We don’t even have to say that we’ve been receiving notes. We just say that these murders appear to have a connection to the Fibonacci series.”

  “Which accomplishes?” Morris asked.

  Before Montufar could reply, Dumas rode to her rescue. “It tells Leo that we’ve figured it out. He wanted us to figure it out. He told us that in the last note. So now that we have, we have to let him know.”

  Morris pondered this. “Which may change the game somehow, but that’s his call. We can’t predict how it changes the game. I just don’t know.” She looked to Peller, eyebrows raised.

  He spread his hands and shrugged.

  “Two possibilities,” Montufar continued. “One, he thinks he’s smarter than we are. Once he knows we figured out the numbers, he’ll get mad. That makes it more likely he’ll make a mistake. Two, as Eric said, he wants us to figure it out. We did, so he moves to the next thing we’re supposed to figure out. That gives us more information and moves us closer to apprehending him.”

  “You think he wants to be caught?” Morris asked.

  “Not necessarily. He could be playing chicken with us. But either way, the result is the same. The more information we get him to give us, the closer we get to him.”

  Dumas was nodding in agreement with Montufar, and although Peller was noncommittal Morris knew he trusted Montufar’s instincts. “Okay,” she told them. “We’ll call a press conference for this afternoon, and put both the sketch and the number thing out there.”

  ∑

  Following the press conference there was little else to do, and since he was effectively on call 24/7 until Leo was caught, Peller told Morris he was going to go home and get some rest before anything else happened.

  “Just keep your cell phone charged,” she told him.

  He stopped at a deli for a crab cake sandwich, a bag of chips, and a soda, which he ate sitting in his car in the parking lot before driving home. When he arrived, he saw Jerry Souter next door in his favorite rocker, one of three stationed on the old man’s front porch. Peller waved to Souter, and Souter motioned him over.

  As Peller climbed the steps to the porch, Souter asked, “Want some iced tea?”

  “A bit cool for that, isn’t it?”

  “Nah. It got all the way to sixty-three today. Almost summer.”

  Peller laughed. “You talk like you didn’t grow up around here.”

  “I growed up lots of places,” Souter replied with a wink. “You look like death warmed over. Sit awhile.”

  Peller sank into the rocker to Souter’s left. For a few minutes the two watched the road and the birds and clouds in a companionable silence.

  Finally Souter said, “I hear you got your hands full.”

  “Overflowing,” Peller replied. “Two nutcases at once. I don’t think Howard County has ever seen anything quite like it.”

  Souter waved that away with a dry laugh. “Lots of nutcases around here. Just most of ‘em don’t whack people.”

  Peller laughed.

  “I don’t guess you can talk about it, though, huh?”

  “Not much, no.”

  “How ‘bout your son? You hear from him lately?”

  Peller shook his head. “Last time he called was about a month ago. I’ll call him tonight, maybe.”

  Souter stretched his legs and adjusted himself in the rocker. “Best do that. He’ll be worried.”

  “About what?”

  “You. You’re hunting dangerous game.”

  “I doubt he’s even heard about it.”

  Souter fixed Peller with a jaded expression. “Son, the whole country’s gonna hear about this one.”

  “So you heard the press conference?” the detective asked. Souter must have. When Morris had revealed that there was “an apparent pattern in the murders based on the Fibonacci series,” it took only a heartbeat for the Baltimore Sun’s reporter to ask if that meant a serial killer was on the loose. “It would seem so,” the Captain had replied. That would surely set the stage for national coverage of the crimes.

  But Souter replied, “What press conference?”, leaving Peller to wonder how he’d known the
case was that big. Then again, it was hard to put one over on Jerry. He’d been around too long, seen too much.

  “You’ll hear about it soon enough,” Peller told him.

  ∑

  While Peller was talking with Souter, Montufar received a phone call. The caller had asked for Peller, but as he wasn’t there it had been routed to her desk.

  “I’m glad he figured it out.”

  Montufar had difficulty making out the speaker’s thin, raspy voice. She wondered if it was being electronically processed or disguised in some other way. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Peller,” the voice whispered. “He figured out my name. I’m glad.”

  Montufar pushed back from her desk, stunned. The caller could only be Leo. But this wasn’t how he worked. Leo sent notes, he didn’t make phone calls. But no mention of the name had been made in the press conference. Only Leo would know the link between the name and the numbers.

  “Are you still there?” he asked.

  Montufar found her voice. “Yes, I’m here. What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to take a message for Peller.”

  “Okay.” She grabbed a pen and a pad of large sticky notes. “What’s the message?”

  Dry as autumn leaves, the voice murmured, “It happens on the third floor.”

  She wrote and waited, but for a moment heard nothing more than the faint sound of his breathing. “What happens on the third floor?”

  “You know,” he said and hung up.

  Montufar bit her lip. Three. The next number in the series, but with a totally different meaning than anything that went before and no possible way to know where to look. The third floor of what?

  Snatching up the note, Montufar hurried to Morris’ office and found the Captain on her way out. “I’m late for a meeting with Jeffries and Baldwin,” she said, naming the Chief of Police and the Howard County Executive. “They’re already getting hammered by the press. The reporters must’ve run straight to Baldwin’s house after they got done with me. Nobody waits for Monday anymore.”

  “You’ll want to know this,” Montufar said, handing over the note. “He called, Whitney. I talked to him.”

  Morris gave the note a look of disgust, as though she were holding a roadkill skunk. “He doesn’t call. You sure it was him?”

  “Positive. He knew we’d figured out the name.”

  Handing the note back, Morris shook her head. “All right. Any point in setting up for a trace in case he calls again?”

  “I doubt it. He’s too smart for that. He didn’t give me much chance to draw him out. You want me to call Rick?”

  The Captain nodded. “Tell him, but there’s no point in hauling him back here. This doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. I have to go.”

  Returning to her desk, Montufar sank into her chair, set the note before her, and stared at it, mind racing. She disassembled every known element of the murders, then twisted and turned and pounded them into place like pieces of a poorly-cut jigsaw puzzle. No picture emerged. Why the third floor? The numbers were not random; why would their meanings be?

  Frightened, frustrated, and exhausted, she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. In the back of her mind, her father’s voice whispered reassuringly, “You can do this. You’re smarter than anyone I know.” But she didn’t feel very smart at the moment, and all the while Leo was laughing at their inability.

  Then a different voice entered her thoughts. “Pray.”

  That was always her mother’s answer, no matter which of life’s problems assailed them. Lost dogs and lost toys that returned, lost grandparents that didn’t. Pray. In her mind’s eye her mother held a rosary.

  I’ve forgotten how to pray, Mamá.

  Her mother’s voice was calm and certain. No one forgets how to pray.

  Disturbed, Montufar sat forward again, shaking off the vision, and called Peller’s cellphone. When he answered, she related the news.

  “It does tell us one thing new,” Peller said after digesting the information. “It tells us what three means.”

  “But does that really mean anything? I can’t see any pattern. Zero victims, one shot, firstborn son, two victims with two shots, third floor. There should be a pattern. I want there to be a pattern. But what if there isn’t?”

  “Victims, shots, birth order, then victims and shots together, then floor number. Next would be five. Five victims or shots or both?”

  Montufar shuddered. In the silence that followed, something else occurred to her. “Why is Leo so interested in talking to you? He addressed all his letters to you and asked for you when he called. He even said he was glad you had figured out his name.”

  “Good question. A personal contest, maybe? His wits against mine? But why me instead of you or Eric or even Whitney?”

  Glad for a different puzzle, Montufar turned it over in her mind, hoping Peller wouldn’t grow impatient with the silence. Dead air in phone conversations made most people edgy. But he said nothing.

  “I can think of two possibilities,” she said at last. “One, he knows you personally. Two, he got your name from a news article. There are other ways he could have gotten your name, but they would more random. If nothing else, Leo’s deliberate.”

  “I’ll ponder that. Let me know if anything else happens.”

  Once she was off the phone, Montufar leaned on her desk and cradled her head in her hands. Had she been wrong? She had thought that once Leo knew they had worked out the numbers, the game would change. But it hadn’t. He’d merely provided them with another clue like the ones gone before. The phone call had been a surprise, but it probably was his way of making sure he communicated his next move before the inevitable pranksters muddied the waters with bogus letters and phone calls. Something about Leo was evading her, something important. There was a gaping hole in her mental picture of him.

  Her father’s encouragement echoed in her mind once more. She wished she could talk to him. He had a way of helping her step back, see the larger patterns in whatever problems confronted her. But he had been slipping into the fog of Alzheimer’s for the past year and a half. Most of the time, he didn’t even know who she was.

  That was the last thing Montufar wanted to think about. Focus, she told herself, but on something other than Leo. Rising, she rushed to Dumas’ desk, where she found him poring over reports on the earliest of the golf attacks.

  He looked up at her swift approach. “Now what?”

  “I’m hungry,” she said. “Let’s get something to eat.”

  He glanced at the time on his computer. “Okay. What sounds good?”

  “Chinese.” Turning to go, she waved her hand behind her toward the desktop. “Bring those along. You can tell me what you found.”

  “I can tell you right now,” he said. “Absolutely nothing.” But he gathered up the papers and followed, as she knew he would.

  Chapter 6

  A significant aspect of mathematical research is the search for patterns. Some mathematicians spend their whole lives doing little else, with varying degrees of success. Humans like to think there are patterns everywhere, and our success is largely based on the amazing ability of our brains to tease out even the most esoteric of patterns.

  But sometimes they do the job too well. Have you ever looked at the random bumps on a stucco wall and suddenly seen a human face looking back at you? You’ve found a pattern in the noise, but it’s a meaningless pattern, a random happenstance. It was not put there intentionally.

  The trick, it turns out, is not merely to find patterns, but to find meaningful patterns. There are times when it is very hard to know the difference. ∑

  “The first four attacks tell us very little,” Dumas told Montufar around a forkful of General Tso’s chicken. His taste buds couldn’t be happier. This was one of his favorite dishes, done to tangy
perfection by one of the best Chinese restaurants in the state of Maryland, a place that to outward seeming was just a hole-in-the-wall, a smallish storefront on the end of a smallish strip mall tucked into a wooded corner a block off the main road. It couldn’t seat more than about a dozen people, yet each bite the chefs served up was exquisite bliss, seducing the palate with flavors bold or subtle as suited each dish.

  Unlike Montufar, Dumas hadn’t mastered the use of chopsticks and had no desire to try. He twirled the bit of chicken on his fork, gazing at it lovingly even as he set forth the facts in the case.

  “First was Chelsea MacIntyre, age thirty-four, married with two children. Clobbered in the parking lot of the Dorsey’s Search Village Center. She had backed into a space along the outer edge of the parking lot under a line of trees. She was putting her purchases into the trunk when she was struck from behind. She didn’t see the attacker, but saw what she thought was the head of a golf club, an iron, on the ground in front of her before she blacked out. Her money, necklace, earrings, and wedding band were stolen.”

  Montufar seemed more intent on her plate of shrimp with lobster sauce than his narrative, but he knew she was taking it all in.

  “Second, Latasha Childress, age twenty, college student. She parked her car by the tennis courts at the southeast corner of Centennial Park and went for a jog around the lake. She left her purse and laptop computer in the car. When she got back, she was struck from behind while unlocking her car door. Her money and laptop were stolen. She remembers seeing a man walking away from her with a golf club over his shoulder before the attack, while she was still approaching her car. He looked like a soldier with a gun. Her words. But she can’t be sure he was the one who attacked her, and she didn’t see his face.”

  “He took her computer? That’s not his usual style,” Montufar said.

  “I think it tells us he’s after valuables that are easily liquidated,” Dumas replied. “He could have driven off with her car—or by now, several cars. But he’s mostly gone after cash and jewelry. The laptop happened to be there, so why not?”