“You’re doing well,” Leo said, his voice sounding distant and strained.
“My boss doesn’t agree,” Peller replied. “She thinks I should have you in irons by now.”
“She doesn’t appreciate your talents the way I do.”
“What do you want?”
“The ground floor, then building thirty-three. I’ll give you the final number tomorrow.”
There had been seven numbers in the initial sequence, and with the two just received they had six in the new sequence. The meanings of the numbers in the new sequence matched exactly to those in the first, so Peller knew what was coming: tomorrow’s number would be some number of victims. But would a third sequence start, or was the end of this sequence Leo’s real purpose?
“And then what?” Peller asked.
Leo’s breathing remained unchanged, but he took a moment to reply. “Then we will see. I fear our relationship may be short-lived. A pity, really. I find I rather like you.”
Before Peller could reply, the connection was cut. He ran a hand through his hair and looked around at his colleagues.
“He’s going to disappear into the night,” Dumas said. “He’s going to finish this sequence and vanish. We’re going to have a pile of bones and no justice for any of them.”
“He wants to,” Montfar said. “But he’s not sure. In spite of everything, he thinks we might catch him.”
Morris directed a sour look at the ceiling. “I agree with Rick. We need contact the military. We need to see if they can give us any names. Even if we have to obscure Leo’s background for public consumption, we need a name.”
Peller wasn’t at all sure it would help, but he knew none of them had a better idea. “You have any likely contacts?”
The captain pondered. “Not directly, but I think I can manage it. Which reminds me—I saw Blake Compton last night.”
“Blake?” Peller was astonished. “I thought he was dead—didn’t he die up in Maine a couple of years ago? Not too long after he retired?”
She nodded absently. “It was in a dream. Some big gathering or another. He was there. He said to tell you hello. So hello from Blake. Weirdest dream I’ve ever had, and so real.” Sitting forward, she said, “I’ll try to get us a contact. You call Tom and give him the latest numbers. We have to figure this out before Leo drops off the face of the Earth.”
It wasn’t until Peller was sitting down at his desk that he remembered. Six years ago Blake Compton’s retirement party had been held at the Columbia Sheraton. It was a big gathering, drawing in police and military personnel he had worked with over the years. The Pentagon had sent some big-name general to speak, and Peller had been asked to speak for the department. The event had been covered in all the local papers, the Baltimore Sun, and the city TV stations. It was a great local story: wounded war hero retires from outstanding career in law enforcement, covered head to toe in stars and bars.
Leo, had he not been overseas at the time, would have heard about it. Peller nearly bolted from his chair, intending to pass this along to Morris, but the phone rang before he could take two steps. He snatched up the receiver and snapped, “Peller.”
“I’m calling about my son,” the caller said. The woman sounded hesitant, as though wishing she hadn’t placed the call but having done so was committed to seeing it through.
“Your son?”
“Yes. I saw it on TV this morning. He’s . . .” She choked back a sob. “They killed him.”
Confused, Peller asked as gently as he could, “What’s his name?”
“Julian,” she said. “Julian Szwiec.”
∑
The telephone book might be approaching obsolescence, Kaneko mused, but it still had its uses. It had quickly shown that a handful of his “missing persons” were alive and well in the area. Between that, and a few phone calls and internet searches, he had satisfied himself that the list of eleven now on the desk before him represented the most likely candidates for Leo. If the prevailing assumptions were correct, at any rate.
He considered taking the list directly to Detective Lieutenant Peller and removing himself from the investigation, but it bothered him that it was so large. It shouldn’t have, he knew. The police had the resources to check on eleven people, surely. Still, this wasn’t a solution. It was merely a set of possible solutions. How could a mathematician be satisfied with that?
The whisper of shoes against the carpet signaled Sarah’s approach. He turned and looked up at her, his expression apparently giving away his thoughts.
“You’ve finished,” she said.
“I have a list.”
“And is that the finish?”
He picked up the paper and studied it.
She sighed and held out a hand. “Let me see.” He passed it to her and she looked it over: names, addresses, phone numbers. “How do you want to go about this?”
“I thought I might call them. I can use the same story I gave my colleagues. I can find out more about their military experiences and what they’ve been doing since returning home.”
“Nobody is going to admit to a killing spree.” She handed the list back.
“Of course not. But they might give details that can be checked. At best we might catch the killer in a lie. At worst, we might get a feeling for the most likely suspects.”
“No. At worst we might be killed.”
He pondered that for a moment. Death didn’t frighten him particularly, but certainly he would not want to expose Sarah to unnecessary danger. “Should I use a false name?”
“Let me call,” she said. “I’ll identify myself as a research assistant at the university.”
Kaneko rose and wrapped his wife in his arms. “I don’t know how you put up with me,” he said. “But I must be the luckiest man in the world.”
“Let’s see how this ends before we decide how lucky you are,” she said and gave him a peck on the cheek.
A moment later they were interrupted by a phone call from Eric Dumas, who had two new numbers to report.
∑
Peller wanted to check newspaper archives for stories about Blake Compton’s retirement party, so he sent Montufar to talk with Debra Szwiec, Julian’s mother. In spite of their inability to locate her before she called, she was surprisingly close by, living some twenty-five miles to the west in an apartment complex on the northwest edge of Frederick.
After a courtesy call to the Frederick police department, Montufar made a beeline to the apartment. When Mrs. Szwiec opened the door, Montufar was confronted with an almsost-skeletal woman with deep-shadowed eyes, whose trembling fingers seemed barely able to keep hold of a cigarette. Montufar introduced herself and the woman let her into an apartment that was immaculate but had an air of faded neglect, as though its occupant simultaneously suffered from an obsessive disorder that kept her scrubbing and vacuuming long after it was necessary, but was long past caring where she was.
“Would you like some coffee?” Mrs. Szwiec asked as they seated themselves on a frayed sofa.
Montufar declined. “Tell me about your son.”
“Julian’s father died in a crash,” she said, her eyes looking everywhere but at her visitor. “His name was Frank and he was a drunk. I divorced him when Julian was nine. I never should have married him in the first place, but you know how it goes. We were involved in high school and everything was just great fun then. After Julian was born, it went to hell. I guess it was going that way even before. Frank was drunk half the time, then most of the time, then finally all the time. He’d hit me when he was mad and try to rape me when he wasn’t. Since he was drunk, that usually didn’t go too well for him.” She forced a laugh, but it came out more a pathetic bark.
“What happened after the accident?” Montufar asked, trying to sound sympathetic. She had never understood why a woman would stay in a situation like that.
Why put up with nine years of hell before getting out?
Mrs. Szwiec shrugged. “Julian was about grown up. He’d dropped out of high school and made it pretty clear he wanted to live life his own way, without mommy interfering. He moved in with a friend and I said to hell with it and left.” She picked at her nails. “That sounds like I didn’t love him. I did. I just didn’t know what to do with him anymore.”
“I’m sorry things turned out this way,” Montufar told her sincerely. She pitied this woman, pitied her pain and her empty life. “Maybe he fell in with the wrong people. We don’t know because we haven’t been able to find out much about him. We only know that the last person he thought was his friend killed him. Do you know any of the people in his circle?”
Mrs. Szwiec stubbed out her cigarette and lit another. Montufar, who had not grown up around smokers and felt ill at the smell, tried hard to keep hold of her lurching stomach. “He was a loner. The other kids pushed him around and made fun of him. I don’t think he had many friends, certainly not before I left. The only guy he hung out with at all as far as I know was the guy he moved in with. I think his name was Larry Fry or something like that. He was pretty good-looking and always seemed to have a couple of girls hanging around him, but I thought he was a creep. At the time I wondered if that was why Julian hung out with him. The girls all hated Julian. Maybe they saw something I couldn’t see. I wondered if maybe this Larry guy got him some action. Some girls, they’ll do anything if the price is right.”
“Any idea where this Larry Fry lives?”
“Hon, I’ve been out here a few years now. I don’t know where anyone from back then would be.” Her last cigarette had gone to ash, and she reached for the pack again.
“Did you try to keep in touch with him? Or any of the other members of your family? We couldn’t find any trace of you before you called. It was like you’d vanished off the face of the earth.”
“You’re probably wondering why I even bothered.” Mrs. Szwiec studied the glowing tip of her cigarette for a moment before continuing. “You’re out of your jurisdiction, so I suppose it’s okay to tell you. I don’t use my real name anymore, and I live on a cash basis. No bank account, no credit cards. I don’t even have a current driver’s license. I make what money I can servicing men who are as sick as Frank was, each in his own way. Seems I couldn’t get away from him even after he died.”
She cast a quick glance at Montufar as though to gauge the detective’s reaction, but there wasn’t any. Montufar kept her gaze level and didn’t as much twitch.
“Anyway,” she continued after another drag on her cigarette, “I did have one reason to call you. When you’re done with him, I want Julian’s body so I can give him a decent burial.”
∑
The scanned papers that Peller reviewed had all carried essentially the same story. He was surprised at how often his name appeared in the articles. He had given a short speech at Compton’s retirement party, and snippets of it had been repeated by the press. In their version, what he remembered as a fairly short and simple tribute to a man who had given the county years of devoted service had been exaggerated until it sounded like a eulogy delivered by a loving son. Or maybe he only thought that because death was so much in the air of late.
It took Peller no time at all to realize that Leo could have gotten his name from any of these stories. The military connection seemed telling, assuming their hypothesis was correct, but it remained mere hypothesis. Two possibilities still existed: either Leo knew him personally, or Leo had found him through the news. He thought the former unlikely, but the latter was just plain odd unless Leo had somehow also known Compton. In the depths of Leo’s mind, did he identify Peller with Compton? And if he did, why?
“Excuse me, Detective Peller.”
Peller looked up with a start to find Kaneko standing by his desk, a worried look on his face. “Oh, Tom. Sorry. I just learned something that may be important. Or it may not. I wish I knew which.”
“Are you no closer to Leo than before?” The question was asked timidly, almost awkwardly, as though it had to be asked but Kaneko didn’t want to give it voice.
“Afraid not. Have a seat.” Peller waved to a chair next to his desk. “How about you?”
Kaneko sat, his posture perfect. “Detective Dumas sent me the latest numbers. Using them, I’ve been able to determine the sequence Leo is using.”
It sounded to Peller’s ears like the best news he’d heard since the whole business began. He knew that was irrational—knowing the sequence would be of little help—but he desperately needed something to hang onto. “So what are we dealing with?” he asked.
“I told you before that the Fibonacci sequence is generated by a complementary pair of Lucas sequences. The sequence Leo is using now is also generated by a complementary pair of Lucas sequences. It’s easy to generate such a sequence if you know the rules. You can set up a spreadsheet to do it for you. All you need are the seed numbers, but I won’t bore you with the details. The numbers we have are two, three, one, negative three, one, and thirty-three. The next number, I’m afraid, is one hundred nine.”
Peller sat back, the good feeling gone. “One hundred nine?”
“Yes. And it refers, like the original sequence, to the number of victims.”
Peller felt as though he were trapped in a nightmare. “My God. But like you said before, how do you manage to kill exactly the right number of people when the number is that large?”
The mathematician shuddered. “I don’t want to know.”
Peller remembered that he was talking to a man whose life experiences included the death of tens of thousands. He stared blankly at his computer screen for a few moments. The background noise of the office—people talking, phones ringing, the hum of the heating system—failed to mask the sounds of the two men breathing.
“What have you just learned?” Kaneko asked.
Peller turned back to the monitor, where the scanned story waited patiently. “Well, about six or seven years ago, Blake Compton retired from the force. He’d been in the Marines, won medals in Vietnam, all kinds of awards from the police force. When Captain Morris and I were rookies, he took us under his wing and made sure we didn’t screw up too much. Anyway, when he retired there was a big party, and I made a farewell speech that the papers picked up. They ran my name along with his. So I wondered if—” A thought sprang from his subconscious mind, dark and deadly.
Retirement party. There were so many people.
Party.
“Yes?” the mathematician prompted.
“A party! Damn it! I know what he’s doing!”
Kaneko leaned forward, his expression intense.
“How do you kill exactly one hundred nine people? By attacking a gathering of exactly one hundred nine people. A gathering where the guest list is known in advance. Something like a retirement party!” He turned the monitor to face Kaneko.
Kaneko skimmed the story. “Yes,” he said. “That makes sense. Do you think Leo knew Blake Compton?”
“No way to know yet,” the detective replied. “But I do think this is how he got my name, and I do think it suggests we’re on the right track with the military connection.”
“Ex-Marines would be weighted higher as suspects, then.”
Peller looked at Kaneko, sensing that there was something the mathematician hadn’t told him yet. But the other quietly resumed an upright pose, looked away, and said nothing. “If you know something, or even just suspect something,” Peller told him, “now would be a good time to let us know.”
Kaneko shook his head. “It’s nothing but a hunch. If Leo is recreating events from his armed forces days, it seems likely he would have been in the Army or Marines rather than the Navy or Air Force. Blake Compton was in the Marines, according to the news article.”
Peller considered this for a moment. It made sense, but
they were still piling speculation upon speculation. “I just wish we could get to a real name. Or even five real names.”
“Yes,” Kaneko agreed. “That would indeed be helpful.”
∑
From her husband’s home office, Sarah Kaneko quickly worked through the list of eleven suspects, calling them each and delivering her prepared speech.
“I’m calling on behalf of a research study being conducted by the mathematics department at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. We’re interested in talking with former students who either majored in mathematics or received significant mathematics instruction at the University and later served in the military to study the contributions of higher education in mathematics to our nation’s armed forces. We were wondering if you would be willing to participate in such a study?”
If the suspect answered affirmatively, she proceeded to ask a few questions: How many hours of mathematics instruction did you receive? What was the most advanced mathematics course you took? What branch of the service were you in? What was your reason for enlisting? Did you utilize any of your mathematics training while serving? If so, in what way? Are you available to answer follow-up questions if needed?
Of the eleven, four declined to answer and seven answered all questions in what she thought was a reasonable manner. But there had been one peculiar moment. After Sarah had recited her speech to suspect number six, for a heartbeat or two all she could hear was him drawing in a breath, slowly, deliberately, as though he had to gauge whether or not she was who she said she was. But then he said, “Yes, of course. I’d be glad to help,” and the rest of the conversation was as uneventful as any other.
At the end of the call, she tapped her pen on the suspect’s name, wondering how much to make of it. Maybe at first he just hadn’t been sure whether to take part. Four others had declined, after all. Finally, she circled the name and moved on to the next call.
∑
The Fibonacci Murders Page 14
