“Eric?”
With a start, Dumas turned to find Graham at his elbow. “What’ve we got?”
“Officer Patel found a woman up in the attic.”
Dumas blinked. “You mean alive?”
“That’s what Patel said. Bound and gagged like the victims, but it doesn’t look like she was harmed.”
“What the hell is this?” he snapped at nobody, then followed Graham back inside. “Where are the EMTs? Go find one. I’ll need to talk to the victim if she’s in any shape to answer.”
“They might all be gone by now, but I’ll see what I can do.” Graham hurried off.
Dumas returned to the living room. The neatness of the chairs where the family had sat waiting to be killed mocked him. Did they think they were simply the victims of a burglary? When did they begin to suspect that they were marked for death? Who was shot first, who last? What torture their last moments must have been.
No way in hell was this a one-man job. Leo must have had help this time. How else could he tie up eight people without a struggle? The precision of the killing shots was consistent with the previous homicides. But the arrangement of the bodies beneath their photos—that was something new. Something extreme, as though Leo were shouting, “Look at me!”
What was Leo’s purpose? He always seemed to have one. He was deliberate. What had been similarly deliberate about the other killings? Dumas recalled all that he could, but since he hadn’t worked the cases he didn’t have Peller and Montufar’s detailed knowledge of them. He couldn’t relate the arrangement of the bodies to anything that had gone before.
Nor did he have time to think about it further. A new crime scene officer approached him. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”
Dumas took the proffered bag, astonished by the weapon within. “A Luger? Where did you find it?”
“In a rose bush at the back corner of the house. I had quite a time getting it out without losing my arm. Damned thing has thorns a foot long.”
“Must be a rugosa. They’re straight out of Sleeping Beauty.” Dumas, whose mother had exhibited roses, was fairly knowledgeable about the varieties. Some folks planted rugosas around their homes for security. If that was the case here, it hadn’t helped.
He turned the gun over several times, his eyes running over the slanted, reddish grip, the blocky and angular frame, the circular trigger guard, the sleek barrel. He’d seen photos, but never held one in his hand before. What was a World War II pistol doing in his crime scene? Had Leo actually used it? He was too clever to leave behind a murder weapon. The gun must be a distraction—or had some other, more esoteric, meaning to Leo.
He handed the bag back to the officer. “All right. Get this checked for prints and turned over to ballistics as soon as possible.”
“Will do.”
As the officer walked away, Graham took his place. “The lady from the attic can talk to you now.”
∑
The surgery lasted nearly two hours, after which the surgeon, Dr. Fran Kendrick, came out to talk with the Montufar sisters. She settled them in a comfortable corner where they could have some privacy and told them, “Everything went very well. Eduardo’s going to be fine. He’ll need some physical therapy and we’ll have to monitor his brain functions for awhile, but I don’t expect him to have any trouble getting back to normal. He’s strong.”
Ella gripped Montufar’s hand and let out a relieved sigh. Montufar patted her shoulder.
“Eduardo was very lucky,” the surgeon continued. “He did receive a concussion, but it doesn’t appear to be severe. The fracture is a simple one, so we don’t have to worry as much about further injury to the brain tissue. It occurred over the left temporal lobe, which is primarily involved in verbal memory. We’ll know more once he’s recovered sufficiently to talk with us. The hip fracture was actually more troubling. He’s going to be setting off airport metal detectors for the rest of his life, I’m afraid.” She flashed Ella an impish grin and got a weak smile in return. “They’ll page you once he’s awake, and you can see him for just a few minutes. He’ll be very groggy and won’t feel much like talking. They’ll move him up to a room about an hour after that, and you can see him more then. But don’t expect too much from him for the rest of today.”
Montufar thanked Kendrick and once she was gone leaned heavily against the back of the couch. Ella remained perched on the edge and muttered, “Thank God.” She looked back at her sister.
“Once he’s recovered,” Montufar said, “I’m going to kill him.”
Ella laughed. “I’d help you,” she said, “but I don’t think I’ll be up to it.”
“I think I can manage it myself.” Montufar closed her eyes for a moment and took a few deep breaths. Slowly she became aware of the sounds around her: a couple of older men nearby talking about fishing, a young mother trying to keep a little boy entertained and out of trouble, a voice on the television talking about a homicide in Clarksville.
Her eyes snapped open and focused on the TV in time to see Dumas, twenty feet behind the reporter, climbing into the back of an ambulance. She whipped out her cell phone and called Peller.
Ella glanced at the television and then back at her sister. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. I have to check in. Hang on.”
Peller answered on the third ring. “How’s your brother?” he asked.
“He’s recovering from surgery now,” she replied. “The doctor says he’ll be okay.”
“That’s a relief.”
“What’s going on in Clarksville? I just saw the end of a news report. Looks like Eric is on site.”
There was a pause while, she suspected, Peller weighed how much to tell her. Finally, he said, “A family of eight was murdered.”
“Oh, my God. Children, too?”
“Yes, but you have your own problems right now. We’ll give you all the details later. I don’t actually know much at the moment. I was at the Harrison murder scene when the call came in. I’m on my way there now to give Eric a hand.”
Montufar said nothing. Her first instinct was to get the address and rush over to help. Eduardo probably would have told her to go, but she owed it to him to stay. Besides, couldn’t leave Ella alone here.
“I can stop by for a few minutes if you want,” Peller offered.
“No, that’s okay,” she told him. “Help Eric. The two of you nail Leo to the wall.” She didn’t add, because she didn’t want Ella to hear it, And once you have him hanging there, I’ll finish him off.
∑
The officer led Dumas outside where an ambulance was parked in the driveway. Looking in, he found a young female EMT tending to a middle-aged, caramel-complexioned woman who looked like she wasn’t sure whether to swoon or scream. Either, Dumas thought, would have been appropriate under the circumstances.
“Ms. Chavez?” he asked. Maria Chavez, Graham had informed him, was the cleaning lady. That’s all they had learned about her so far.
Wild-eyed, she nodded.
Dumas climbed into the ambulance and perched next to the EMT. “I’m really sorry to have to bother you right now, but it’s important. Could I ask you a few questions?”
She nodded again. Dumas hoped she was capable of more.
“Thank you. Can you tell me what happened?
Another nod, but this time accompanied by a torrent of words in a thick Mexican accent. “I clean every week for Mason family. They are good people. They be nice to me. I am cleaning kitchen when doorbell rings. Two men come in with guns, make everyone sit down and be tied up. The tall man is saying it’s not right, too many people. The short man says is easy to fix. He will put me upstairs in a bedroom. But when we get up there he sees the attic door. He laughs at me and pushes me up there. After that I don’t know what happens, except I hear lots of shooting.” She shuddered. “Lots of shooting.
I thought they would come up to shoot me, too. But I hear nothing else until the police come.”
So Dumas’s guess was right; there had been two of them. On a hunch, he leaned out and called one of the officers over. Tossing him his car keys, he told him to bring the file from the back seat.
“Do you think you could describe these men?” he asked Chavez.
“The tall one, he looks like a soldier. The short one, no. He looks like maybe a computer guy.”
Dumas nearly laughed, but he thought he knew what she meant. “The soldier, how tall was he?”
With a shrug, Chavez said, “I don’t know. I’m not big, so many people look tall to me.”
The officer returned with the requested folder, which contained information on the mad golfer, Julian Szwiec. Dumas pulled out the sketch of Szwiec and held it up before Chavez.
She frowned, but managed to focus on the picture. “Yes. He is the one who locked me in the attic.”
Dumas took back the sketch and gazed at it. They had him. Now all they had to do was find him.
“Are you done?” the EMT asked. “We should take Ms. Chavez to the hospital.”
“Is she hurt?” Dumas asked, alarmed that he’d forgotten to inquire about that at the outset.
“Nothing serious, but she got knocked around when they shoved her up the stairs. And I’m not really equipped to address the psychological issues. Best to be safe.”
Peller arrived moments after the ambulance left. “Looks like I solved your case for you,” Dumas told him with a grin, then turned more serious as he filled his colleague in on the details.
“You think Szwiec is Leo, then?” Peller asked.
“Well, maybe. The other man could be Leo. But if Maria Chavez remembered it right, it sounded to me like Szwiec was the one who had the answer to the problem of too many people. That’s a Leo-like trait.”
“Either way,” Peller said, “if we nab one of them we’ll have a good chance of nabbing both. I’m going to have a look around. Why don’t you call Whitney, give her an update and tell her we need all the lab work on this done yesterday.”
“You got it,” Dumas said, feeling nearly as upbeat now as he had earlier. It might be cruel to find anything in the situation that might warrant gladness, he reflected, but he was powerless to bring back the dead. What he could do, he hoped, was make sure this family’s tragic end was also the end of Leo’s career.
∑
By four forty-five that afternoon, Captain Morris had pushed, pulled, prodded, and intimidated everyone necessary to get the full workup on the latest murders. Most of the results were entirely expected and fairly uninformative, but one thing stood out: a set of clear fingerprints had been lifted from the gun found in the rosebush outside the Mason home. The FBI had promised to run the prints as fast as possible.
Everyone had forgotten about Tom Kaneko, the mathematician, until Peller happened upon him, still sitting in the cubicle Dumas had assigned to him, a pad of notepaper filled with neatly-lettered notes and the case file arranged just so in front of him. He was staring at a crime scene photograph of the double murder victims, Zachary Rymer and Helen Kamber.
“A psychologist may be of more help to you than I can be, Lieutenant Peller,” Kaneko said by way of greeting.
“What do you mean?”
Kaneko picked up the photo, still focused on it. “When I first saw the photo of the snowplow driver, I had a flashback to my youth and my first encounter with photos from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was quite horrible. But I imagine one grows inured to such sights over time.” He turned and handed the photo to Peller. “Doesn’t one?”
Peller studied the image. There was nothing new to find. He’d stared a dozen holes through it already over the past couple of days. “I don’t know about inured,” he told Kaneko. “You focus on what you have to focus on, I guess.”
“What do you focus on in this case?”
“Two victims, each killed by a single gunshot to the forehead. The bodies were left as they fell. They must have been standing close together, facing the killer. They knew they were going to die.” He set the photo on the desk. He didn’t need visual reminders. The scene was so burned into his memory that he was sure it would leave a permanent scar. “Rymer’s face is turned towards Kamber, but hers is looking almost straight up. Likely she was killed first.”
“One cannot deduce that,” Kaneko said. “But it is a reasonable supposition.”
Peller tapped the image of Kamber. After the briefest of moments, the mathematician craned forward to look. If Kaneko was disturbed by the photographs, Peller thought, he was, in his own words, becoming inured. “The perpetrator kicked or threw mud on her after killing her.”
“Yes. Mud.” The mathematician invested the word with a gravity that chilled Peller. “That is what drew most my attention. This is the act of one who despises his victim, or wishes to degrade her. Do you believe the murderer hated this young woman?”
“Probably not. There’s reason to think he had watched the couple in order to understand their movements, but we have no reason to think he knew either of them. There’s nothing to suggest that Leo knew any of his victims.”
Kaneko cocked his head. Peller thought he looked like a dog whose curiosity had been piqued. “So why commit an act of hatred? Curious, isn’t?”
Peller picked up the photo again, a frown fixed on his lips. “Very. What are you suggesting?”
“Leo made some connection between Helen Kamber, who he never knew, and someone who he knows and despises.” He turned to the file on the desk and extracted the photograph of Mark Patterson, the snowplow driver. “You won’t see the crucial fact about this murder in the photograph.”
Peller took the photo, glanced at it, then set it back on the desk. Again, he didn’t need to see it to know what it showed. “What would that be?” he asked, curious what the mathematician would suggest.
Kaneko placed both photographs back in the file. “The killer was waiting to kill someone in particular.”
“I doubt that. We’ve tried without success to connect Patterson with anything that might have marked him for death. He appears to simply have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
As if reading Peller’s thoughts, Kaneko allowed a slight smile and continued, “I don’t mean he was waiting for Mr. Patterson personally. But consider: if you are going to kill someone driving down a primary street, and you choose to commit the murder during or after a heavy snowfall, who are you guaranteed to find if you but wait a short while?”
“A snowplow driver,” Peller said. “We’ve considered that. But we can’t get past one problem. What’s the point of killing a snowplow driver? It’s a dicey way to start a series of murders. How do you know you’ll get the snowstorm?”
“Snowstorms aren’t that uncommon here. At most Leo might have had to postpone his plans until next year.”
Peller couldn’t help but laugh. “That degree of patience would be creepy.”
“Which Leo is,” Kaneko said, not laughing.
Peller had to admit that. “Granted. But what’s the point of killing a snowplow driver? Why do you say that’s the key detail?”
“These are not random acts. The Fibonacci sequence is very specific. As with Ms. Kamber, Leo made a connection between a snowplow driver he never knew and someone he did know.”
“You mean someone who drives a snowplow?”
Kaneko shook his head. “Not necessarily, but someone who drives something big, something that may in some ways be like a snowplow.”
Peller sat on the edge of the desk and looked from Kaneko to the photos. “You’re saying these are reenactments of events Leo experienced earlier.” It made as much sense as anything else they’d considered, but even if Kaneko was right, it didn’t seem to put them much closer to stopping Leo. He could be reenacting almost anything. “You th
ink the other murders fit that pattern?”
“Exactly. Each murder,” Kaneko said in a tone reminiscent of a professor concluding a proof on a whiteboard and setting down the marker, “contains such a deliberate feature, different each time, quite subtle, and almost certainly of great significance to the killer.”
Chapter 10
At the end of a logical proof it is customary to write “Q.E.D.,” the acronym for “quod erat demonstrandum,” the Latin for “which was to be demonstrated.” It is a signal that the proof has been successfully concluded. None of us realized at the time that the execution of the Mason family marked the end of a proof of sorts. The killer had concluded a demonstration that was to have a more chilling consequence still. But it had not been stamped “Q.E.D.,” so the fact only became clear in hindsight. ∑
Once out of recovery, Eduardo drifted in and out of sleep for the rest of the day. He managed a few smiles along the way, sufficient to reassure his sisters that it was okay to go home and get some sleep themselves. Ella had regained sufficient optimism to do so, but Montufar found sleep difficult. Though the details of the Mason killings trickled out with successive news updates throughout the day, she knew that her colleagues had much more information than the reporters. She had the feeling that whatever it was that had so far eluded her about Leo would become clear if she could only get that information.
By the time Tuesday morning dawned, she’d had quite enough of on-again, off-again sleep. She dressed and drove to headquarters, grabbing a fast food breakfast along the way and arriving well before her colleagues. Pulling up the computer files on the latest murders, she pored over them, forcing herself to remain detached.
Once she had absorbed everything, she went to the break room for a cup of coffee then, spilling not a drop of the steaming liquid, rushed back to her desk where she ticked off items on a mental checklist. Mark Patterson, sniper attack. Andrew Carrington, shot point-blank in a corridor. Zachary Rymer and Helen Kamber, surprised and shot in the woods. Lorna Bigelow, killed surreptitiously in her sleep, the only victim who hadn’t been shot. Roger Harrison, another sniper attack. The Masons, lined up and executed in their own home.
The Fibonacci Murders Page 9
