by Steven James
“OK. See you soon.”
Pocketing the phone, I turned to Cheyenne. “We can let CSU finish up here. If we leave now, I think we’ll have just enough time to inspect the corpse before Dr. Bender gets started.”
She pulled out her keys. “Let me take one more look around. I’ll meet you at the car.”
22
Tessa and Dora had taken some time away from the videos to shower, dress, and eat a breakfast of cold pizza before returning to the computer to check their Facebook pages.
After ten minutes, Dora slapped the desk.
“I just remembered this other video I wanted to show you.”
Every one of her words sounded slightly squished because of the strawberry bubble gum she’d popped into her mouth a few minutes earlier. “Have you seen the ones of those kids doing the Rubik’s Cube blindfolded?”
“Uh-uh.” Tessa had heard about the Rubik’s Cube videos and knew they’d been around for a while but hadn’t really been that interested in them. But now it sounded like it might make Dora happy, might keep her from thinking about the reason she hadn’t been able to sleep so well, so she acted like she was into the idea. “Sure, yeah, let’s check ’em out.”
“It’s pretty insane.” Dora was tapping at the keyboard. “You ever try to figure one out?”
“Nope.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, why?”
Dora shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just, you’re so into puzzles and stuff.” She scrolled to a frozen video image of a Chinese girl about their age holding a Rubik’s Cube. “Here’s the best one. She does it in less than a minute.”
She pressed “play,” and Tessa watched as the girl in the video studied the mixed-up cube, waited while someone else blindfolded her, and then twisted the sides until, only fifty-seven seconds later, the entire cube was solved. Then she set it down, removed the blindfold, and smiled.
“Amazing, huh?” Dora pulled her own Rubik’s Cube off her bookshelf and handed it to Tessa. All the sides were mixed up. “At first I thought maybe she memorized the moves, but I don’t know, she must have twisted it like forty or fifty times.”
“Let’s watch it again.”
They did.
“Seventy-two,” Tessa said.
“Seventy-two what?”
“She twisted it seventy-two times.”
Reaching across the keyboard, Tessa slid the cursor to the “play” icon and tapped the mouse button. Dora took the opportunity to look in the mirror and pick at her hair.
When the video was done, Tessa began to study the cube Dora had handed her.
“It’s wild, huh?” Dora said. “I can’t do it. There are like a billion different combinations.”
Tessa considered that… six sides… nine squares on each side… “Probably more than that,” she mumbled.
“So, see?” Dora said. “That’s what makes it so amazing that those kids can solve it blindfolded.”
“I think I can do it.”
“Do what? Solve it?”
“Yeah,” Tessa said. She was already practicing twisting the sides, getting a feel for the way the cube worked, the way one turn would affect the color combinations on the other sides.
“Well, yeah, if you practice for like-”
Dora’s dad called to her from the other room, and she tapped a finger against the air. “Hold that thought.”
While her friend slipped away, Tessa examined the cube. There were at least three ways to go about solving it. First, cheat. Look up the solution online. Maybe watch an instructional video.
Not exactly her thing.
Second, work the cube until you instinctively knew the patterns, sort of like typing or learning a musical instrument. But that would take days, weeks. Maybe longer.
No, to solve it quickly, you’d need a different approach.
So, math. By assigning a different number to each of the fifty-four squares, solving the cube became nothing more than a slightly-OK, a little more than slightly-complex three-dimensional algebraic equation. And since the middle pieces didn’t move, and each of the other squares was fixed in relationship to the neighboring square on the adjacent side of the cube, the number of turns needed to solve it shrank exponentially.
She figured that, however mixed up the sides were, the cube could always be solved in fewer than forty turns.
Probably less than thirty.
The girl in the video hadn’t been efficient enough in her solution.
Dora returned and plopped beside Tessa on the bed. “My dad is so totally lost this week without my mom around.”
“Where is she again?”
“Some real estate convention thing in Seattle. Comes back on Wednesday. Anyway, he has to go to the hospital to do an autopsy and he needs me to run some errands. So I’ll have to drop you off at your house by ten.”
That gave them half an hour.
“No prob.” Tessa mentally assigned numbers to each of the fifty-four tiles on the cube. “I’m ready.”
“If you say so.” Dora held out her hand. “Let me mix it up.”
“It’s already mixed up.”
“I’ll mix it up more.”
Tessa managed not to roll her eyes. “Whatever.” She gave Dora the cube.
Dora turned her back, and Tessa could hear the sides clicking, turning.
In truth, mixing up the cube would be just like shuffling a deck of cards in which three times through was no different than twenty times-the degree of randomness introduced into the order of the cards was statistically identical; you could twist and mix it for five minutes, five hours, or five days and it wouldn’t really alter the number of turns required to solve it.
After about thirty seconds or so, Dora turned and handed Tessa the cube.
She studied it. Rotated it 360 degrees. Memorized the color combinations.
“Time me.” Then she closed her eyes.
“You can’t be serious.”
Tessa opened her eyes. “What?”
“With your eyes closed?”
“The Chinese girl did.”
“She probably practiced forever.”
“Maybe she didn’t practice at all. Who knows? I can do it.”
“No way.”
“OK, how about we put a latte on the line. If I can solve it, you buy me one on the way home.”
Dora shrugged. Chomped her gum. “OK. And vice versa. Do I need to get you a blindfold or can I trust you?”
Tessa closed her eyes again. “You can trust me.”
“All right, girl.” Then a pause. Tessa assumed that Dora was checking her watch. “Ready… set… go.”
She took a moment to mentally review the relationship of the fifty-four numbers.
“I started the time,” Dora said.
“Shh.” Tessa began turning the sides of the cube, reorienting the numbers in her head with each turn, visualizing them twist and flip around each other as if the cube were transparent and all the squares had the numbers stenciled on them. Calculating, recalculating their position, their movement, their patterns. It wasn’t as difficult as she’d thought it’d be.
“That’s thirty seconds.”
“Quiet.”
In her mind’s eye, she saw the sides forming, the red side complete, the white side missing only one side piece. She paused. Thought. Twisted.
There. Two sides.
Close.
She worked at the cube methodically. Systematically.
“Fifty seconds.”
“Dora, shh!”
Turn, turn.
Turn.
Yes. All the numbers aligned.
There. She punched the cube onto the bed and opened her eyes. “Time.”
“A minute four seconds,” Dora said. They were both staring at the cube, which was at least as mixed up as before. “Wow.” Dora used a friendly kind of sarcasm. “Impressive. I think I’ll get a grande.”
“Dang,” Tessa muttered. “That should have worked.”
“Here.” Dora
stuck the cube into the satchel that Tessa used as a purse. “Take it. It’s yours.”
“No, that’s crazy.”
“Seriously. That thing is just way too hard for me.” She waited for Tessa to take it. “Go on. It’s cool.”
Finally, Tessa accepted it. “Sweet. Thanks.”
“Oh!” Dora said. “You are not gonna believe this. We’re getting a dog!”
Dora was the queen of randomness.
“A dog?” Tessa didn’t even try to hide her disdain.
“Yeah. Dad says he thinks it’ll help. Things have been hard, you know, ever since-”
“Yeah, I get it.”
“I know it seems kind of weird to get a dog when-”
“No-no-no-no.” Tessa squeezed all the no’s together into one word. She knew that coping with grief and guilt wasn’t easy, even if something wasn’t your fault. Lately she’d turned to journaling and writing poetry to sort through her feelings, but right after her mom died, she’d been into cutting, self-inflicting on her arm, to deal with the pain and loneliness. Getting a pet was a lot better way to cope than that.
“You don’t have to explain. But it’s just, a dog? C’mon, get a cat instead.”
Dora looked somewhat deflated. “What’s wrong with a dog? Dogs are man’s best friend.”
“Well, I have a policy: whenever my best friend starts sniffing my butt and eating his own vomit, it’s time to find a new best friend.”
“Oh,” Dora said. “Wow. Thanks for that image.”
“No prob.”
“Maybe we oughtta get a cat.”
“Good choice.”
And then Dora launched into an explanation of how her cousin had gotten a cat when she was visiting her last summer in Orlando and how she’d introduced her to this really hot guy who worked at Disney World-and then Dora sighed and started talking about how much she’d miss Tessa while she was in DC this summer and how she was hoping to get a job at Elitch Gardens after they were done with finals, which she was totally not ready for…
But Tessa’s attention had drifted back to Dora’s screen saver.
She carefully averted her eyes and pretended to listen to her friend.
I was outside Taylor’s house waiting for Cheyenne when Kurt approached me. He didn’t look happy. “That call I got a few minutes ago,” he said. “It was the captain. There’s something I need to tell you.”
By Kurt’s tone of voice I was pretty sure the captain hadn’t invited us to join him for a beer after work. “What is it?”
“You know how he’s not exactly dialed into your techniques…”
Here we go. “Yes?”
“Well, last night he talked with your supervisor at the Bureau-Assistant Director Wellington.”
Great.
Ever since I’d testified in an internal affairs review a few years ago that had temporarily set back her career plans, Margaret Wellington had been gunning for me with both barrels. I braced myself for bad news.
“She told Captain Terrell that with Basque’s trial and the shooting yesterday, she’s afraid you might be distracted, not at the top of your game.”
I could feel my temperature rising. “The top of my game.”
“Her words, not mine. She’s sending someone else to work the case with us. Captain Terrell already signed off on it. He’s a big fan of those profiling TV shows, so he-”
“She’s sending a profiler?” If Margaret was sending Lien-hua, things were going to get very awkward very fast.
“Yeah.”
“Did he say who? Was it Special Agent Jiang? Lien-hua Jiang?”
“No. Some guy named Vanderveld. Didn’t mention a first name.”
Oh, that was even worse. “Jake Vanderveld.”
“So you know him.”
“Oh yeah. We’re acquainted.”
Kurt stared at me for a moment, no doubt trying to decipher what lay beneath my words. “Anything I should know?”
Margaret knew how I felt about Jake. That’s probably why she’d assigned him to the case.
“Have you noticed how I’m not exactly the biggest fan of profilers?”
“I may have picked up on that.”
“Well, he’s the reason why.” I saw Cheyenne climbing into the driver’s seat. “I’ll run it down for you later. When does he get here?”
“He’s supposed to fly in sometime around noon. I guess he’ll probably want to be briefed this afternoon at HQ. I’ll let you know when I find out more.”
Cheyenne rolled down the window and slipped her key into the ignition. “What’s up?” she called.
“I’ll tell you on the way.” I opened the car door. “Let’s go visit the morgue.”
23
Room 404, Investigative Journalism SuiteThe Denver News BuildingDowntown Denver 9:22 a.m.
Amy Lynn Greer sighed.
Her husband Reggie was working a crime scene, so she was the one who’d had to drop their three-year-old son off at day care half an hour ago, even though she had two articles that were both due to her editor by noon.
She would have loved to be covering the murders that Reggie was investigating, rather than writing her column on local politics or the follow-up piece on the amount of drug use in children of professional baseball players who use steroids, but her boss refused to assign her any articles that related to Reggie’s cases.
When Reggie had first gotten the job, she’d thought that in her line of work, being married to one of Denver’s crime scene unit forensics specialists might have its advantages, but Reggie was under the scrutinizing eye of Lieutenant Kurt Mason, who’d informed him when he got the job that if he ever released any details about any investigation to his wife, he would be without a job and in court facing criminal charges before her story ever ran. Period. She’d met Lieutenant Mason and could tell he was a man of his word.
She took a small break from outlining the steroids story, checked her email, and found five rejection letters, one from each of the literary agents she’d sent her book proposal to.
Five in one day.
That actually might beat her old record.
A knock at the door interrupted her thoughts.
“Yes?”
The door opened, and a vaguely familiar female voice said, “I’ve got something for you.”
Amy Lynn glanced over and saw one of the secretaries, a sandy-haired, thick-wristed woman she could never remember the name of, standing in the doorway, holding an oversized ceramic flowerpot filled with a shiny-leafed plant sprouting a cluster of half-inch-long, purplish-white flowers. The pot was so large she needed to use both hands.
“What’s that?”
“Flowers.” The woman explained as if Amy Lynn couldn’t tell. Her voice was strained with the effort of holding the oversized pot. “Can I set ’em down?”
“Sure.” Amy Lynn slid some papers out of the way. She tried to remember the woman’s name but couldn’t. She thought it was maybe Britt or Brenda or Brett or something preppy and girlish like that.
The secretary eased the pot onto her desk. “So, what’s the special occasion?”
Amy Lynn gazed at the flowers.
“There is no special occasion.”
Flowers?
Who would send you flowers? Reggie would never do that.
Small clusters of stamen stuck out of the center of each of the feathery-white flowers. The leaves overlapped and grew in layers, each set of two leaves at a perpendicular angle to the ones beside them. The strong minty scent was somewhat familiar, but also unfamiliar at the same time.
She knew how to identify a few kinds of flowers, but mostly just the ones everyone knew-lilies and daisies and roses. She didn’t have a clue what kind of flowers these were.
But she was more curious about who might have sent them than what kind they were. “Was there a note?”
The secretary with the all-too-forgettable name fished out a small envelope from where it had fallen behind some leaves.
The envelop
e was eggshell white and had only four words handwritten on the front: “To Amy Lynn Greer.”
She immediately realized that it wasn’t her husband’s handwriting and that if he’d sent her the flowers he wouldn’t have included her last name.
But if not Reggie, who? She had a few sources who were male, and a few friends who were a little more than friends-but none of them would have been brash enough to send her flowers. At least she didn’t think so.
The secretary lurked. “I didn’t open it.” She pointed to the envelope.
“Thank you… um, wait, I’m sorry. What’s your name again?”
The woman looked hurt by the question. “Brett Neilson. I’ve been working here for-”
“Thank you, Brett, yes. I’m sorry. I’m not so good with names.”
“It’s OK,” Brett said, but she didn’t leave, just stared longingly at the flowers. “My husband never sends me flowers.”
Amy Lynn didn’t know what to say to that. Finally, she just mumbled, “Well, men. You know.” It sounded pathetic when she said it, but it somehow seemed to satisfy Brett Neilson, who gave her a parting half-smile and backed out of the room, pulling the door closed behind her.
After Brett was gone, Amy Lynn studied the flowers again. They had a formal, functional quality about them rather than a flirty, romantic one. And that scent. Was it a spice?
And who sent them?
She had no idea.
The note.
Ripping open the envelope, she found a small slip of card stock paper with a short, cryptic, handwritten message:
Must needs we tell of others’ tears? Please, Mrs. Greer, have a heart. -John
John?
John who?
She didn’t recognize the handwriting.
Amy Lynn considered all the Johns she knew and almost immediately eliminated all of them from her list of people who might possibly send her flowers, especially ones with an enigmatic note like this.
Maybe a reference to a story she’d done? Something about grief? Tragedy? Someone’s death?
Amy Lynn turned to her computer and felt excitement stir inside of her for the first time that morning.
Figuring out who sent the flowers was much more interesting than analyzing local politics or writing about the families of drug-abusing baseball players. Her editor would just have to wait.
