The Cipher

by Maldonado, Isabella

  She figured most people who had gone to the trouble and expense of earning a PhD wanted the official title attached to their name.

  “Call me Wade.” His gravelly voice matched his rugged face.

  His grip was firm, the calluses on his palm surprising her. She noticed he wanted her to use his last name rather than his first, keeping a certain professional distance. Fine with her.

  “Guerrera,” she said.

  He tipped his head toward the man a short distance to his left. “Detective Mike Stanton, MPD Homicide.”

  Stanton acknowledged her with a quick wave.

  Wade lowered his voice. “If any of this becomes uncomfortable, I expect you to let me know.”

  She looked him straight in the eye and lied. “I will.” She was already fifty clicks past uncomfortable.

  “There’s no time to be delicate,” Wade said, shifting into investigative mode. “The scene’s no longer fresh. We need any insight you can provide, and we need it now.”

  She turned to the privacy screen, as much to avoid his penetrating gaze as to survey the scene. “Then I’ll get started.”

  Detective Stanton moved to intercept her. “Before you take a look at the body, can you describe the vehicle he used . . .” He shifted on his feet, obviously uneasy. “With you?”

  Logical. Someone who had specially outfitted a van for the purpose of abducting victims might keep it for years.

  “Blue Ford Econoline.” At his questioning look, she elaborated. “I figured out the make and model from pictures the police showed me after the incident.”

  The incident. A banal word she chose deliberately.

  He gave her a slight nod. “Anything else?”

  “Plain wrapper. Nothing stood out. At least, nothing on the exterior.” She swallowed to moisten her dry throat. “Inside was an empty shell, even the carpeting was yanked out. He put black vinyl flooring down to cover the metal beneath me. My wrists were taped together behind my back. Ankles too.”

  Wade and Stanton let the silence stretch when she finished. She realized they were waiting for her to continue.

  “There were these small round windows in the back.” She cupped her hands in front of her to approximate the size and shape of a dinner plate. “He blacked them out with dark spray paint.”

  Stanton wanted more. “How did the back open?”

  “Side-by-side doors. When he locked me in, he shut the one to his left first, then the one to his right.”

  “That never made it into the report,” Wade said.

  “There are a lot of small details like that.” She lifted a shoulder. “Stuff no one asked me, or no one wrote down, but I recall most of it very clearly.”

  One of Wade’s silvery brows inched up. “Most of it?”

  They exchanged silent glares. This was what had almost kept her from becoming an agent. She refused to apologize. “There are some parts I don’t remember. At least, I’ve never tried to remember.”

  She turned back to Stanton, continuing with her description of the van. “The engine ran smooth. No backfiring, loud pipes, or anything else that would draw attention.” She reached into the crevices in her mind, pulling out more scraps of information. “He drove me about half an hour or so before he stopped. There was a divider separating the front from the back, so he had to get out and walk around to open the doors.”

  “What did you see?” Wade asked.

  A monster in human skin.

  “It looked like we were parked in the woods somewhere,” she said. “The sun hadn’t come up yet, so I just saw a bunch of dark trees. Couldn’t make anything else out.”

  Detective Stanton slid his cell phone out, pivoted away, and began speaking in a rapid undertone. She figured he was asking dispatch to put out a BOLO for a vehicle matching her description. A long shot, but worth a try.

  “All right,” Wade said. “Crime Scene’s already finished. We were holding the body until you arrived.”

  He edged sideways around the screen shielding the body. Following him, she understood why they had erected a visual barrier. The girl’s long dark hair spilled over the ground behind her head, the right side matted with dried blood. She lay sprawled on her back, her nude body an obscene display on the grimy pavement.

  Nina bent forward to gaze into the filmy brown eyes staring sightlessly back at her. She scanned down, catching traces of silver duct tape clinging to the girl’s upper lip.

  Standing behind her, Wade gave a quick summary. “One of the busboys from the restaurant on the other side of the alley found her. He was dumping the night’s trash after closing, at about three in the morning. He saw her in the dumpster, thought she might be alive, and pulled her out. He ripped the tape off her mouth before he caught on that she’d already taken her last breath.”

  Detective Stanton returned from his phone call. “The killer placed the plastic baggie with the note in her mouth before covering it with the tape. Probably wanted to be sure it wouldn’t fall out.”

  She agreed. He was taking no chances about the note. A thought occurred to her, bringing with it a sense of dread. She addressed Stanton. “Has anyone from your Crime Scene Unit turned her over yet?”

  Stanton slid his eyes to Wade before he responded. “About a half hour before you arrived. We put her back the way we found her.”

  Careful to school her features, she considered what she had observed so far, juxtaposing the scene with the cryptic note the killer had left for her. He had to have known the FBI would bring her into the investigation, and he was sending her a message.

  “After years of seeking, I thought I would never have Hope again,” she muttered to herself, cocking her head to study the girl’s body from a different angle. “But today, everything changed.” She finished quoting the note and glanced up at Wade. “That means he has hope again, but how? In what way?”

  He eyed her speculatively. “You tell me.”

  He wouldn’t provide her with the benefit of his analysis, no doubt preferring to hear her take on the situation first. Turning away from both men, she bent down again. What else had he done to this poor girl? A glint of metal drew her attention. She sucked in air.

  “You okay, Guerrera?” Wade said, his tone changing to one of concern.

  “The necklace.” The two words were all she could manage. Once again, the monster had proved he could snatch control away from her anytime he wanted.

  A diamond-shaped charm on a silver chain lay on the filthy pavement next to the girl’s matted hair, its long chain looped around the girl’s slender throat. The same necklace Nina had on when he took her. She peered at the plastic beads that formed a multicolored pattern of concentric diamonds, confirming her suspicion.

  She refused to let moisture gather in her eyes. “That necklace was mine,” she breathed.

  “You’re sure?” Stanton said.

  “I made it in an art class when I was fifteen. The pattern is ancient. It’s called ojo de dios.” She straightened and pointed at the charm. “God’s eye.”

  Stanton signaled one of the evidence techs over. “Could you get extra pictures of the necklace and send them to my phone?”

  Nina turned away, feigning interest in the pavement on the other side of the body to buy time to compose herself. She did not want to look at Wade until she had a semblance of objectivity. This was much harder than she’d thought it would be.

  “Do you need some water?” Wade gentled his tone. “I have an extra bottle.”

  “I’m fine.” Another lie. She felt sure Wade could see through it, but she didn’t care. Instead, she focused on the facts before her, arriving at the only conclusion that put everything into perspective. “He’s re-creating his time with me.”

  Stanton stopped watching the tech. “What do you mean?”

  She crossed her arms. “How many marks did you find on her back?”

  “How did you—”

  Wade cut in. “Twenty-seven.”

  The same number of scars striping her o
wn back. How had the monster remembered the exact number of lashes? He hadn’t been the one to inflict them on her, but he’d been fascinated by them. She suppressed a shudder as she felt the sensation of his fingertip trailing down the center of her spine, tracing the ridges of her wounds.

  “And three burns on her back?” she asked him.

  Wade made no response.

  His silence felt like a test. He was still assessing her usefulness to the investigation. She faced him and elaborated. “A cigarette burn to mark each point in a triangle. Like the ones he gave me.”

  Pivoting away, she made a show of scanning every inch of ground. “I’ve got to keep looking. There might be something else.” She wasn’t consciously taking anything in until her gaze fell on the dumpster decorated with urban art. In the lower left corner of the scarred and dented metal front, four rows of numbers and letters stood out, spray-painted in fluorescent blue. The top row read “4NG,” followed by a colon. Something stirred inside her, drew her in. She squatted, narrowing her eyes.

  Wade’s knees creaked as he crouched next to her. “Paint looks fresh.”

  “He wore bright blue latex gloves,” she said. “Exactly this color.”

  He raised a skeptical brow. “You think he’s communicating something in code?”

  “He definitely did with the note and the necklace. And both were meant for me.” She angled her head. “What if 4NG means ‘for Nina Guerrera’? There’s a colon after that, indicating the rest of it is the message.”

  They both leaned closer. The next row down read 8, 15, 16, 5. The row below that had the numbers 9 and 19, and the final row consisted of 4, 5, 1, and 4.

  “Every other communication he left behind was securely attached to the body. Like he wanted to be sure we’d find it.” Wade swept a hand toward the dumpster. “This doesn’t match his pattern. Except for the color, it blends in with the random graffiti all over everything in this alley. He couldn’t be sure we’d find it.”

  “To be honest, we overlooked it,” Stanton said, motioning one of the crime scene techs over again.

  She hadn’t heard the MPD detective approach. His tone held a note of chagrin as he ordered the tech to photograph every inch of the alley.

  Wade got to his feet. “Damn,” he said under his breath.

  She stood as he snatched his mobile phone from his pocket. “What?”

  He ignored her, thumb-typing on the device. His gray eyes darted to the painted numbers again, then back to the screen in his hand. “Sonofabitch.”

  She was ready to grab him by his jacket collar and shake him. “What is it, Wade?”

  He finally answered her. “It’s a simple substitution cipher. Very basic. But it was definitely him.”

  “What does it say?”

  “It spells out the words hope is dead.”

  “Holy shit,” Stanton said. “I noticed something else when you first got here, Agent Guerrera, but I didn’t want to say anything in case I was overreading the scene.”

  “Noticed what?” she said.

  “Look at her.” Stanton gestured toward the still form lying nearby. “She looks a lot like you.”

  Nina stood and tried to see the girl through unbiased eyes. She was Latina, petite, and slender. Like her. Stanton was right. Perhaps she hadn’t seen it before because she was looking at someone who was much younger, a total stranger, and also deceased.

  “The victim’s hair is long, though,” Wade said. “He would have cut it short if he wanted to match Guerrera’s.”

  “No,” Nina said quietly. “He wouldn’t.” She reflected on the events of that night. “When he abducted me, my hair was long like hers.” Her gaze remained riveted to the girl. “He grabbed my ponytail to pull me inside his van.”

  After her release from the hospital that night, she’d gone back to the group home and stood in the shower until the water ran cold. Then she stepped out and stood in front of the bathroom mirror, droplets from her wet hair blending with tears. She’d clutched fistfuls of the damp locks, ruthlessly chopping with kitchen shears until her head looked shorn. To this day, she wore her hair in a pixie cut.

  “Maybe he’s done, then,” Stanton was saying as her thoughts returned to the present. “He felt like he couldn’t kill an FBI agent, so he chose another victim to take her place. He closed the circle.”

  “I’ve seen this kind of fixation before,” Wade said, shaking his head. “This isn’t only about murder. It’s about obsession.” He locked eyes with Nina. “And he’s just getting started.”

  Chapter 6

  Hermosa Vista Apartments

  Springfield, Virginia

  Nina pulled the enchilada casserole from the oven. She paused to check the golden-brown melted cheese bubbling at the edges before shooting a glance over her shoulder at Shawna Jackson. “You weren’t there. I could tell Wade really didn’t want me involved. He was totally aloof. After I spotted that spray paint, he didn’t believe it had anything to do with the case until he figured out the code for himself.”

  “You’re an investigative tool to him right now. It’s up to you to change that.” Shawna sat at the tiny glass-topped table in the cramped kitchen of Nina’s apartment.

  Situated on the top floor of a four-story building in the unofficial Latin corridor of the Springfield-Franconia district, Nina’s unit was what a Realtor would call modest or cozy. Like the cleaners, cooks, and landscapers who comprised most of its tenants, Nina was willing to live in the crumbling forty-year-old building for quick access to the nation’s capital.

  She rested the CorningWare dish on a pot holder to cool on the counter. “Honestly, how could you work with him every day?”

  For a fleeting moment, Shawna’s dark brown eyes held a wistful gleam. “He wasn’t always like that. There was a time when Wade was warm. Caring.”

  Nina sat at the other side of the table. “Before the Chandra Brown case, you mean.”

  “Before the Bureau hung him out to dry.”

  “You were an executive assistant director at the time,” she said. “You could’ve helped him.”

  “An EAD is not the Director. I did what I could when he . . .” Shawna hesitated, searching for the right word.

  “Imploded,” Nina supplied.

  Shawna frowned. “Sometimes we’re harder on ourselves than the criminals are. Wade took personal responsibility when Chandra died. Blamed himself.”

  “From what I understand, he didn’t believe her when she said a man was following her. He could’ve done more. Might even have prevented—”

  “You sound like the media.”

  “Because I’ve also been on the receiving end of one of his bad judgment calls,” Nina said. “What I don’t know is why you saved him.”

  Shawna let out a long sigh. “There’s a lot you don’t know. That’s why I stopped by. We need to talk.” She gave Nina a significant look. “Away from prying eyes.”

  Nina had last seen her mentor wear that expression at this very table three years ago when she recruited her to join the FBI. They’d first met many years before that when Nina was sixteen and Shawna was assigned to the BAU.

  The Fairfax County police had called the FBI to help develop a profile of the man who had abducted Nina. Quantico was only a half hour drive away, and Shawna took the unusual step of coming to speak with her in person. Nina had never met anyone as impressive as the tall, polished, self-possessed federal agent and bonded with her almost instantly.

  Shawna had kept in touch with Nina when it became clear no arrest would be made in her case. Concerned that her abductor was still at large, Shawna had worked with CPS to ensure no mention of Nina’s new surname or address appeared in their final report as they closed out her file. As an emancipated adult in the eyes of the law, Nina would no longer have visits from social workers or entries in a database that could be hacked. Instead, her legal name change would remain part of a sealed juvenile court hearing. Part of a past she wanted to leave behind.

  Shawna’s
example of professionalism coupled with compassion had inspired her to seek a career in law enforcement as soon as she could. While Nina’s career as a police officer blossomed, Shawna climbed the supervisory ranks in the Bureau. Throughout it all, Shawna had been her mentor and friend, spurring her evolution from victim to protector.

  “You’re not here for the awesome food, then?” Nina asked.

  Shawna didn’t take the bait. “I need to tell you something about Wade. Something I had never planned to discuss with you, but now that you’re going to work with him I—”

  The doorbell rang.

  Anxious to fend off the unwelcome intruder, Nina padded to the door and pulled it open.

  “Hola, mi’ja.” Her next-door neighbor, Mrs. Gomez, stood in the doorway with a ceramic tray cradled in her hands and her seventeen-year-old foster daughter, Bianca, by her side. “I wasn’t sure if you’d eaten, so I brought you some tres leches cake.”

  Perpetually worried Nina would starve, Mrs. G frequently brought homemade dishes or treats. Bianca came over whenever one of her six foster siblings got on her nerves, which amounted to at least three times a week.

  Nina duly performed her end of the ritual, taking the offering. “Gracias.”

  “Oh, but I see you have company,” Mrs. Gomez said. “I don’t want to trouble you with my problems.”

  Of course she did. “What is it, Mrs. G?”

  Mrs. Gomez slid her a sheepish smile. “I was going to make empanadas, but my stove is broken.”

  Apparently tired of her foster mother’s hesitation, Bianca jutted out a hip and got to the point. “We need you to call Jaime for us.” She wiggled her pierced brows. “He blows us off, but he’ll come running for you.”

  Nina sighed, stepped back, and held the door open. “Come in.”

  Mrs. G went into the kitchen and put the cake on the counter, then stood with her hands clasped expectantly while Nina picked up her phone to call the super.

  Jaime answered on the first ring. “Qué pasa, Nina?”

  “Hola, Jaime, there’s a problem with—”