The Codebook Murders

by Leslie Nagel

  Unleashing this group on Berkeley Dye’s files had seemed like a stroke of genius at two a.m. After a few hours’ sleep and far too little coffee, Charley found herself questioning her judgment. Would the exercise turn out to be a complete waste of everyone’s time? Well, it was too late now, she thought as she mustered a smile.

  “Thank you all for coming. As I explained, the man who robbed me yesterday, the reporter who’s been researching the Regan Fletcher story for two decades, has asked for help in solving this cold case. He and I both believe that the real murderer was never discovered.”

  A murmur ran around the table. “You believe this asshat’s claim that he’s not the one who kicked your door in?” Frankie’s big blue eyes flashed with outrage. “He violated Old Hat, Charley. Sacred space. That is not okay.”

  “It’s not okay, but I do believe him,” Charley said firmly. “And unless we’re dealing with an incredible coincidence, it means there’s someone else after Regan’s journal.”

  “Not such a cold case after all.” Heddy patted her haphazard topknot, gray and purple wisps already floating free around her wrinkled face. “Thank goodness you have us to help.”

  “These boxes”—Charley touched the two nearest—“contain all the records from the official investigation, everything Carter Magellan’s attorney turned over to Berkeley Dye at Carter’s insistence. Most of them are photocopies, but since the attorney would have no reason not to comply, we can assume nothing was removed. This other one is Dye’s own work product.” She glanced up to see Marc hovering in the doorway, coffeepot in hand. “May we help you, handsome?”

  “Mind if I sit in? I do have some experience in working cold cases.” He hefted the pot. “And I come bearing gifts.”

  Charley’s heart gave a little twist. Marc might insist he was perfectly content with civilian life, but the hopeful, almost wistful, look in his eyes told a different story.

  And while the chance to dig into a puzzler like the Fletcher case would intrigue any investigator, she knew another part of his desire to be involved stemmed from his need to keep her safe—particularly if, as Heddy had observed, this wasn’t a cold case after all.

  “I suppose you might be useful.” Charley held out her empty mug. “Fill me up, stud, and you’re on the team.” He smirked at the innuendo, and she sent him a saucy grin. She couldn’t deny that the prospect of collaborating with her sexy ex-detective on another investigation sent a thrum of anticipation up her spine.

  Afiya, Heddy, and Vanessa offered words of welcome as Marc dutifully refilled everyone’s coffee, then took the vacant chair on Charley’s left. Behind him stood a whiteboard on an easel. After helping Marc haul over Berkeley’s files that morning, she’d added the whiteboard and cleared the dining table of everything but the boxes, a stack of fresh legal pads, and an assortment of pens and sticky notes. Their impromptu command center was a respectable facsimile of the murder room at the Safety Building, she thought with a touch of pride. All it lacked was a multiline phone and a tattered collection of take-out menus.

  “Where were we?” she asked. “Oh, yes. These.” She pulled off the box lids and everyone’s brows rose at the sight of all those files. “I know it looks daunting. There’s a ton of material.”

  Vanessa flipped her long black braid over her shoulder. “With the shop closed, I’ve got nothing better to do. Bring it on, boss.”

  “We did ask to have a role in your next mystery.” Afiya folded her elegant hands on the tabletop. “I, too, welcome the challenge.”

  Heddy murmured, “I’m glad there’s no actual body this time.”

  “So, do we just read stuff?” Frankie asked. “Make piles?”

  Charley took a deep breath and, with a glance at Marc, who nodded encouragement, she began. “When you reinvestigate, you’re walking in someone else’s footsteps. That means you have to navigate their thinking, their organizational style, everything. What we want to do is try to find the gaps. What questions were left unanswered? What witnesses might have something else to say? Can we find inconsistencies anywhere in the evidence? I’m guessing there’s some overlap of information between the court records and Berkeley’s stuff, but honestly?” She shrugged. “Our best bet is to make no assumptions.”

  “Except,” Afiya said quietly, “for the assumption that both Carter Magellan and Yousef Alsayegh are innocent.”

  “What you want are avenues of inquiry.” Marc indicated the whiteboard on its easel. “When I approach a cold case, I make a list of questions, any evidence that needs to be reexamined, any witness statement that seems incomplete. If you’re not sure about something, pull it. Of course, it’s been forty years, and many of the witnesses are dead.”

  “One thing in our favor is that this Berkeley Dye fellow is still alive and eager to work with us,” Heddy remarked.

  “In fact,” Vanessa added with a smirk, “he’s dying to.”

  Everyone groaned.

  Charley assigned Heddy, Afiya, and Frankie to the box containing Dye’s material. Because of Vanessa’s upcoming enrollment in the Criminal Justice program at Sinclair College, Charley put her to work with Marc and herself on the two boxes containing the official investigation. As promised, the files contained a complete record from Carter’s murder trial: transcripts, witness statements, autopsy report, police reports, even photocopies of the attorney’s courtroom notes.

  Marc whistled. “I’m developing a new respect for this clown. Dye is an excellent record keeper.”

  “And an exhaustive researcher,” Frankie added. “He’s saved every news article remotely connected to the murder. The guy’s even got photographs of all the football players from that Homecoming game.”

  Afiya held up a wallet-sized portrait. “Regan Fletcher’s eleventh-grade class picture,” she said solemnly.

  The girl was gorgeous, Charley saw, with glossy, dark red hair that tumbled in thick waves over her shoulders. Her mouth was wide and generous, and even in this contrived posed shot, her eyes sparkled with spirit. Everyone was silent for a moment.

  “She looks like Charley,” Vanessa said at last.

  Charley shook her head. “No.”

  “Yes,” Marc contradicted. “But it’s not just the red hair and gray eyes. It’s the proud way she’s holding her head, that smile that says she’s got a secret.”

  “Do I smile like that?”

  He winked at her. “Yep. Luckily, I read you like a book.”

  Charley began with a fat manila envelope labeled CRIME SCENE PHOTOS. She poured out the contents and discovered that for each official photograph, there was a second one paper-clipped behind it. On one of his visits to Oakwood twenty years ago, Dye had reproduced the angles of every shot. She noted several changes that had been made to Smith Gardens during the intervening years, mostly to the layout of beds and paths. The springhouse, concrete driveway, and pond all looked about the same. She laid several of the photos side by side for comparison.

  “There used to be a stone bench here, on the strip of lawn between the building and the water.”

  Frankie looked thoughtful. “I think it’s been moved to the other side, closer to the lilac border.”

  Charley found another envelope of photos, pulled out the first one, and froze.

  Marc laid a hand on hers. “Sweetheart?”

  She released a slow breath. “I’m okay,” she murmured. The photo was of Regan, her red hair now wet and matted to her pale, lovely face, the gray eyes wide and staring, her green sweater and tan slacks muddied and misshapen. The carved leg of a stone bench was just visible behind her head.

  “This is where they…placed her body after they pulled it from the pond.” With an effort, Charley kept her voice steady.

  “According to the police report,” Marc said, “they never determined precisely where she was killed. It rained off and on during those few days
between her murder and the discovery of her body.”

  Faced with this photograph, Charley felt the sadness and horror of that moment. Had Regan been conscious when she entered the water? Was she aware that she was going to die?

  Since she’d already had her cage rattled, she took another deep breath and opened the file containing the autopsy report. She glanced quickly at the accompanying photographs, swallowed hard, and slipped them back into the file. Turning to the written report, she skipped over all the medical jargon about blood analysis, description of internal organs, and so on. Toward the bottom of the third page she found what she was looking for.

  CAUSE OF DEATH: CARDIAC ARREST RESULTING FROM CEREBRAL HEMORRHAGE CAUSED BY SEVERE BLOW TO PARIETAL BONE; ACUTE CRANIAL FRACTURE WITH BONY OCCLUSIONS. WEAPON UNDETERMINED OBJECT WITH SMOOTH CURVED SURFACE APPX 23 CM DIAMETER. WOUND CONSISTENT WITH LANDSCAPE STONES FOUND AT SCENE.

  “No water in her lungs,” Charley whispered. “Thank God.”

  Frankie reached across the table and squeezed her hand. No need for words between BFFs.

  Charley slid the autopsy report to Marc. “Would you photograph all this and send it to our favorite coroner? This is her area of expertise.”

  “Good idea.” Marc quickly photographed the few pages with his cellphone and emailed them to Sharon.

  Charley next picked up one of the police photos. “She was found wearing a yellow sweater and tan slacks. That might explain why she went into the tunnel—she was changing out of her cheerleading uniform. But why the different backpack? The blue one I found didn’t have any clothing in it.”

  Silence. “What if,” Frankie began slowly, “what if Regan hid her traveling things down in the tunnel ahead of time? Her mom would’ve thought it was mighty odd if she took a pack filled with clothing to a football game.”

  “She was seen with the yellow pack the night of the game.” Vanessa scanned a file. “Unlike the football players, the girls weren’t allowed into the school building, so they’d bring backpacks with lip gloss, combs, tampons, stuff like that, and leave them in the ticket booth for safekeeping.”

  “Regan grabbed hers on her way into the tunnel,” Charley said, working it out as she spoke. “She’d gotten the blue backpack from somewhere, and at some point she filled it with the stuff she’d need to elope—including her precious journal—and hid it in the tunnel. But she wanted to travel with her favorite yellow one, so she swapped her stuff from the blue one when she changed clothes.”

  “In the dark and in a hurry, it’s no wonder she missed the journal,” Marc said. “That narrative fits with the known facts. Good job, babe. You, too, Frankie.”

  Frankie preened as she and Charley bumped fists. “One mystery solved.”

  “Okay, her clothes were stuffed with seven of these big white stones, presumably to weigh down the body. That’s consistent with Yousef’s confession.” Charley examined a shot of a stone pictured with a ruler for scale. “They’re about the size of a grapefruit, eight or so inches across. How heavy would you guess they are?”

  “No need to guess.” Marc checked an inventory sheet. “They weighed between nine and twelve pounds each. Not so heavy that the average person couldn’t reasonably pry them out of the ground.”

  Charley did a quick calculation. “Once the body was loaded down, it would weigh perhaps two hundred pounds or more.”

  “If she was next to the water when she died,” Heddy mused, “there’d be no need to lift or drag the body any distance.”

  “Listen to you, going all Sherlock on us,” Vanessa teased.

  “Jealous,” Heddy said loftily, and everyone laughed, breaking the tension.

  Charley shuffled photos until she found the one she wanted. “Those stones aren’t in Berkeley’s photos. I mean, the seven went into evidence, of course. But the others? The pond is edged in flat natural-looking ones now.” She glanced up. “I think that should be our first lead. We need to visit the scene. I’d like to see what changes another twenty years has produced.”

  “Carpo.” Frankie’s eyes were wide. “We should reenact the crime. We’ve never done that before! Of course, we’ve never investigated a cold case before, either.”

  “Allow me.” Marc reached over and wrote VISIT SMITH GARDENS on the whiteboard.

  Vanessa held up the file she’d been reading. “Kendall was seventeen at the time, a senior like Regan. The girls became friendly after Carter left for college. Even though Kendall turned eighteen that November, she never testified at her brother’s trial, which seems weird to me, seeing as how she was at the game that night.”

  “I can guess why Kendall wouldn’t talk to Dye twenty years ago—she didn’t want to risk losing her job by digging up the old scandal.” Heddy held up a small headshot clipped from a newspaper. The caption read: OAKWOOD ’79 ALUM FILLS ENGLISH DEPT. VACANCY. A young Kendall Magellan smiled dutifully for the camera, shoulder-length black hair in an eighties flip. “Thank heaven those bow blouses went out of style.”

  “Not to mention the shoulder pads. Kendall’s definitely worth a conversation,” Charley decided. “If we can get her to talk.”

  “She’ll talk to you.” Frankie smirked. “Girls, our fearless leader was a total teacher’s pet back in the day.”

  “Perhaps this explains why Kendall did not testify.” Afiya held up another newspaper clipping. The inset photo was also a school portrait, this one of an even younger Kendall, enormous dark eyes watchful, full lips just lifting in a Mona Lisa smile. The headline read: SISTER OF ACCUSED SUFFERS BREAKDOWN.

  “I had no idea.” Charley conjured memories of her beloved teacher. Ms. Magellan had been confident, energetic, passionate about literature, theater, and art. It was difficult to picture her as a teenager, much less a traumatized one.

  “I’ve got another lead,” Marc said. “After reading these witness statements, I think Merritt Vance was lying.” He tapped the file in front of him. “Two students saw Vance arguing with Regan a few days before her death. Vance claimed he was chiding her for dumping a trash barrel in the cafeteria. Once Carter was charged with the murder, it doesn’t look like the investigators ever talked to Vance again.”

  “What makes you think he was lying?” Charley asked.

  “The two witnesses described the interaction as ‘an intense whispered argument.’ ” Marc raised one eyebrow. “Not exactly how I’d describe an adult scolding a student. It might be nothing, but my gut tells me there’s more to Vance’s story, and a good detective listens to his gut.” He added KENDALL MAGELLAN and MERRITT VANCE to the whiteboard.

  Vanessa pulled out a photograph clipped to stapled pages. “Here’s the insurance rider on the Fletcher necklace. Wow. No wonder the papers went crazy for this story.”

  The photo showed a necklace of delicate gold links. Every half inch the links connected round bezel settings containing clear pea-sized gems that Charley assumed were diamonds, twenty-four in all. In the center was a cluster of four larger round stones. These were a vivid sky blue, each one bigger than her thumbnail.

  “This story of a missing necklace reminds me of the book we have been reading, Death on the Nile,” Afiya murmured.

  “That fictional necklace was just a red herring, a false flag,” Heddy reminded them. “Its theft had nothing to do with the murder plot. Do we think this real one is the reason Regan was murdered?”

  “Anything’s possible.” Charley examined the photo with interest. “Until and unless we find out what happened to it, we may never know.”

  Vanessa consulted the attached pages. “Dye’s got a note dated 1998. Adjusted for inflation, that fifty-thousand-dollar necklace was worth closer to a hundred thousand. Wonder what it’s worth today?” she muttered. “Anyway, this insurance report says the four center sapphires had GIA certification numbers—that’s the Gemological Institute of America. As of a few years ago those st
ones hadn’t surfaced, at least not on the legitimate market.”

  “That’s something I can ask Paul to check via law enforcement databases,” Marc said.

  As he added it to the whiteboard, Charley decided she liked having semiofficial resources at her fingertips. It opened up all sorts of interesting possibilities.

  Frankie held up a spiral-bound notebook. “Dye’s personal notes. He typed up most of them, but he also saved these.” She flipped open the cover. “He’s a doodler.”

  Afiya tilted her elegant head. “He drew a box with…is that a book?”

  “Yep. He’s actually pretty good. Some excellent naked ladies in here,” Frankie said appreciatively. “But I digress. It’s hard to see, but the book cover has four hashtags down the spine. You see this question mark next to it underlined, like, fifty times? It’s drawn next to his notes about Regan’s school friends. He’d been reading police interviews of everyone who’d ever so much as taken a class with her.”

  “Remember,” Charley said, “this started out as a missing person case.”

  “Dye contacted a dozen of these students twenty years ago and asked them a bunch of the same questions again. None of them had anything new to add, except,” Frankie concluded sarcastically, “that all of them claimed they never believed Carter was guilty. Eye-roll.”

  Afiya flipped through a file. “In Mr. Dye’s typed version, there is no mention of any book.”

  “What do the hashtags mean?” Vanessa wondered. “A swearword?”

  Heddy said, “Back in the day, children, hashtags meant numbers.”

  “A four-digit number?” Marc frowned. “Combination? Password? Could he be referring to the journal?”

  “Her parents didn’t include it in the list of items missing from her room, and not one person ever mentioned seeing Regan with a journal.” Charley shook her head. “I don’t believe anyone knew it existed.”