Absent Pity, page 6
To her surprise, Simon did it for her.
“Amber is the reason that we found Willow Matthews. She’s the one who cracked the killer’s code. She’s the one who then called us again to show that we’d misinterpreted the results. Without her here, we wouldn’t have anything, Detective.”
“I’m also… not a reporter,” Amber added, in case that made a difference. “I just edit the puzzles page.”
The detective shot an angry look her way, but then seemed to relent, the anger passing as suddenly as it had come.
“All right,” she said. “You have a point. And we should probably thank you for helping to get us this far. I just wish that we’d been able to get to Willow Matthews quicker.”
Before she died. Before Amber had to look into those cold dead eyes. She felt slightly nauseous again just at the thought of it.
The detective walked away, heading towards a large evidence board. Amber stayed behind with Simon.
“If it’s all right, I’d like to go home now,” Amber said. Her car was still outside somewhere. She wanted to drive home, put all of this behind her, and have nothing more difficult to show for it than maybe having to do a couple of interviews at work tomorrow. She was only asking because she suspected that she might have to give a statement or something before she left.
“Actually, Amber, there was something I wanted to talk to you about,” Simon said.
“What? I know I shouldn’t have gone into the house, but-”
“This isn’t about that, although you’re right, it would have been better if you didn’t go in there. No, what I want to talk to you about is whether you’d be prepared to work here as a consultant for a few days.”
That took Amber completely by surprise. What possible use did the police and the FBI have for an editor?
“As a consultant?” she repeated, not quite understanding why Simon would want that.
“We’re dealing with a killer who likes to send codes and puzzles,” Simon said. “Our best chance of being able to find his victims while they are still alive is if we’re able to decipher those puzzles quickly, and you’ve already proved that you can do it.”
“There must be someone else,” Amber said. “The FBI must have access to all kinds of code breaking technology.”
“I had this conversation with Detective Kale,” Simon said. “I can, in theory, call the NSA to try to get their assistance, but we’re not the only life and death matter they have to deal with. It would take time, and I don’t think the victims here have time. It’s obvious that they’re being abandoned to die, so it’s a race against time to get to them before it’s too late. You’re our best shot at deciphering the clues the killer leaves.”
Amber understood that, and a part of her wished that she could say yes. She knew how important this was, but still, the very thought of it terrified her.
“I can’t go running around trying to solve cases with the FBI,” Amber said. “I have a job. My lead editor would never allow it.”
It was an excuse and she knew it, but it felt better than just coming out with the truth: that she was scared.
“We would clear it with your boss,” Simon said. “On something this important, I’m sure they’d go along with it. If necessary, I could sell it to them as embedding someone with the FBI to get the inside story of the case.”
Amber still shook her head. It was hard. She felt like she might cry. She had to do this. She had a job, and a life, and… and it was all too much.
“I can’t. I just can’t. Seeing that poor woman’s body in there… I couldn’t do that again, and I’m not cut out for the rest of it: chasing down suspects, kicking in doors. Even the idea of danger just makes me shake with nerves. All I want is to go home and get on with my own puzzles. Now that you know what to look for, you don’t need me to crack a code for you.”
“Please, Amber,” Simon said. “You’ve made a huge difference so far, and-”
“And it just led to me having to stare at a dead woman in a basement!” Amber said, the words coming out in a rush, almost involuntarily. Now she was crying and hating the fact that she was. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do this, I can’t. I… I need to go home.”
She headed for the door without waiting for Simon to say whether she could or not. She’d already done her part in this. She couldn’t face doing any more. Now, she just wanted to get home, continue to beat Idea at chess, and try to forget as much about today as she possibly could.
***
Forgetfulness wasn’t coming easy to Amber. She had a prodigious memory at the best of times, and some images just burned their way into the brain. The sight of Willow Matthews’s body was one of them. She very rarely drank, but now she was a couple of glasses into a bottle of merlot, hoping that it would do something to blot out everything she felt after what had happened today. Images of what she’d seen in the basement just kept coming back to her, strong enough that in her ongoing chess game, she made a move without thinking about it and only then realized that it allowed Idea to win one of her knights.
What was wrong with her?
Amber knew the answer, of course. Probably some shock, maybe even some mild PTSD. The kind of thing that she hoped being back in her own home, as far away from everything to do with the case as possible might help with, but which was obviously going to take far more than just an hour or two.
Amber started to read through one of her bigger books of quiz questions, the repetitive nature of getting the answers right and wrong starting to soothe her a little. She deliberately didn’t put the TV on in the background because the news was bound to come on at some point, and the last thing Amber needed was to see the latest developments in the case flashing up on the screen.
“I did the right thing,” Amber told herself. “I had to reject his offer. There’s no way I could go running around on a murder investigation.”
It was better to be here, where it was quiet and safe, just Amber and her puzzles. It was quiet, even boring.
“I like boring,” Amber assured herself.
Although that wasn’t strictly true. After all, someone who liked boredom didn’t make a career out of puzzles, didn’t get obsessed with every quiz, game of strategy, and brainteaser she could find. Someone who craved boredom probably took a normal job, with a normal boss, not the high pressure of working at a major newspaper, even as the puzzles editor.
There was a difference between that, though, and wanting to go running after murderers. Amber didn’t want that kind of danger. She didn’t want…
Amber found her thought process interrupted by an insistent knocking at her door. She got up and went over to it, wondering as she did how someone had gotten into her building. She looked through the spy hole and was surprised to see Simon standing there.
Amber opened the door, wondering what he was doing there.
“Simon?” she said. “Is this about earlier? Because I haven’t changed my mind.”
“Something new has come up,” Simon said. “The killer has sent us another message, with another cipher embedded in it. It’s the same and not the same as the last one, Amber. I don’t know what to do with it.”
“I told you,” Amber said. “I can’t do it. I’m not cut out for it.”
“You won’t be the one who has to chase down murderers,” Simon said. “You won’t have to see any more dead bodies. You shouldn’t even have seen the last one. All I want is your help in understanding the latest message.”
He held up an evidence bag containing a sheet of paper. This one didn’t have the swirls that the last one had, but instead had a full page picture that looked as if it might have been taken from the dust jacket of a book. There was the familiar sudoku box at the bottom.
Amber had to admit that it intrigued her. She had a hard time ignoring puzzles at the best of times, and this one potentially had a chance of saving a woman’s life.
Amber sighed, already knowing what her answer was going to be.
“All right. I’ll look at it. You’d better come inside.”
CHAPTER TEN
Maddie Francis woke in near darkness, the only light coming from a window somewhere so high above her that it barely illuminated anything. She was in some kind of big, industrial space, with sloping concrete walls and a strange sense of pressure, as if she were underground somewhere.
Her throat hurt and it took her a moment to remember why her throat hurt.
Her house, the man who’d attacked her…
Just the thought of it made Maddie jump up to her feet frantically, determined to get away, determined to work out what was going on, determined to do something. At least, she tried. She got to her feet, but couldn’t go any further because her right arm was attached to something. A glance back showed her that she was handcuffed to a solid looking bracket that seemed as if it could have moored a boat, the steel was so thick.
Maddie’s terror only increased at that, so that for a second or so, she simply wrenched her arm, hoping it would come free, that the cold metal of the handcuffs attached to her wrist would somehow give way, letting her get out of there. She put one foot against the wall and hauled against the bracket with all her weight and strength, but neither it nor the cuffs gave in the slightest. Maddie kept going for at least a minute or two longer, even though she knew it was futile, but then she slumped back in a heap. She was trapped.
As she sat there, Maddie saw something dangling on a string, catching the little light that there was: a key. The key to the handcuffs? Maddie lunged for it, stretching out as far as she could to try to reach it, but she fell a good couple of feet short. Even trying to hook it with her foot and drag it closer didn’t work.
Maddie’s terror was hardening into something more then, a fear that ran right through her, seeming to consume every part of her, because she knew what this was. She’d read about it in the news. She knew about the man who was taking women and leaving them to die in abandoned places.
“Help!” Maddie cried out, as loud as she could. “Somebody help me!”
She guessed that the man who had taken her wouldn’t have left her anywhere where there were people to hear, but Maddie knew that she had to try. The first woman had been found by kids. Too late, but she’d been found. Maybe there would be someone to find her in time. Maddie had to keep calling for help.
“Help! Somebody help me!”
Maddie kept shouting until her voice was hoarse with it, because it was the only thing she could do. She felt powerless. She felt trapped. She felt…
Strange.
She felt a kind of weakness running through her as she shouted, the world out of focus as if she were drunk, her muscles feeling as if they didn’t want to respond to her. She felt as if she’d been drugged, or… or poisoned.
Maddie looked around again, and now, past the key, she saw an ampule and a syringe lying there. The poison, or an antidote to it? If this was like the key, then it would be the latter. Maddie lunged for it, but again, she was well short of reaching it. She couldn’t get to it without help.
“Help!” she called again weakly. People had to be looking for her, didn’t they? “Somebody help me!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“You’d better give me the note,” Amber said, stepping back to let Simon inside her apartment.
“Here,” Simon said, passing it to her. Amber could see him looking around her apartment as he did it. “This place is…”
He didn’t seem to have the words to describe it. Or he was just trying to avoid the word “strange.” Amber was used to people finding her apartment a little eccentric, with the sheer number of puzzles and games there taking up most of the available space. Amber watched him pick his way through it all, pausing at one of the chess sets. He reached down towards one of the pieces.
“I’m in the middle of a game,” Amber said, before he could touch it.
“Against whom?” Simon looked around now as if he might be interrupting something, checking for the presence of a second person.
“It’s a correspondence game against a man called Raymond Johns. You might know him better as Idea.”
Simon shrugged. “I don’t know who that is.”
It never ceased to amaze Amber just how little normal people knew about the complicated world of puzzling.
“He’s the puzzle editor for the Gazette,” Amber explained.
“It sounds like a pretty close-knit world,” Simon said.
Amber nodded. “It can be. Other puzzlers are the often the only ones who really understand, and we need one another.”
She saw Simon frown at that. “I thought it was kind of a solitary hobby?”
That was something a lot of people got wrong. “A puzzle isn’t a solo effort. It’s a conversation between two people: the one setting the puzzle and the one trying to solve it.”
“Which begs the question of what kind of conversation this killer is trying to have with us,” Simon said.
That was a more complex question. Amber couldn’t begin to understand the motivations of killers, and frankly she didn’t want to. But she could understand the kind of person who set puzzles.
“I think this is just his way of saying that he’s superior,” Amber said. “He gives us a chance, and it has to be a genuine chance or it wouldn’t be any fun for him, but it’s designed so that he doesn’t think we’ll be fast enough.”
“So you don’t think that he makes it impossible for anyone to win his game?” Simon asked.
Amber shook her head. That was one part of this that she was reasonably sure of. “A puzzle that’s impossible to solve isn’t a puzzle, and a contest where you plan to hold back the prize isn’t a real contest. If he cares enough about puzzles to set all of this up, then he cares enough that there must be a genuine chance. He’s backing himself to produce a puzzle that he doesn’t think people will solve in time.”
“Then let’s hope he’s wrong,” Simon said. “Can you solve this, Amber?”
Amber didn’t know yet. She hoped so. She gestured for Simon to take a seat on her couch, since her armchair was currently buried under a stack of game boxes. It occurred to Amber that if she wanted to sit down, she would have to do it closer to a stranger than she really wanted, so she paced instead, holding the puzzle out in front of her and trying to focus on it.
It took her a couple of minutes to solve the sudoku. The top line was CFGBIDEAH, which in turn gave her the key she needed to pick apart the numbers on the page.
“If you want to find the missing woman, Alice, eat me,” Amber translated, quickly piecing the cipher together.
“So he’s just insulting us now?” Simon asked.
Amber paused, looking over at him. “No, you have to think like a puzzler. It’s a clue of some kind. We have to assume that everything here is. Which is why I find myself wondering why this one is a picture, rather than just a set of swirling lines.”
Not just a picture, though. The moment Amber had seen it, she’d thought that it looked a little like the dustjacket from some old book. More than that, there was something faintly familiar about it.
Amber went over to her bookshelves. Most of her books were non-fiction, things that she might be able to use in the course of her work, or that were relevant to her hobbies. There were large collections of quiz questions for her to train with or rewrite, books on history and myth, collections of chess openings and biographies that she could raid for details.
Amber dug through them, her memory telling her that there was something there, something that matched this image.
“Amber?” Simon asked. “What are you doing?”
“The picture is a reference to a book, I’m sure of it,” Amber said. “If I could only remember which… there!”
She grabbed a book from one of the higher shelves, in such haste that half a dozen other books came tumbling down along with it, in a shower of paperbacks that bounced from Amber’s head and shoulders.
“Amber, are you all right?” Simon asked.
It was embarrassing, having that happen in front of him. Still, she came up holding one book triumphantly: a battered copy of The specialist’s book of puzzles. The cover was what she’d remembered, exactly the same in this classic edition as the one on the killer’s note.
“This is what the image means,” Amber said. “And I know what the message means, too.”
“You do?” Simon still looked confused.
“Think Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”
A moment or two later, he got it. “Because in Alice in Wonderland, she eats things to get bigger? I remember reading it.”
Amber nodded, slightly surprised that a tough FBI agent would have read the book.
“Exactly, which tells me that there’s something on this page that we need to make bigger. Something that forms the next part of the puzzle.”
Amber went hunting through her home again, this time going in search of a magnifying glass. Simon was more direct, though, taking a high resolution image of the picture on his phone and then zooming in. It was a clever way of achieving the same effect, one that Amber wished she’d thought of. She watched as he zoomed in on different sections of the picture, one after another, being systematic about it so that he didn’t miss anywhere. That was good, the way Amber would have done it herself. She guessed that Simon had probably been taught to do that, because searching a space efficiently would be a key skill that an FBI agent would need to learn.
“Here,” Simon said at last, showing a section of the screen to Amber. Sure enough, when Amber looked, there were strings of numbers there.
There was only one problem with them.
“These numbers don’t fit the same pattern as the previous cipher,” Amber said. “They’re not just one to twenty-six.”
Instead, the numbers seemed to come in two parts: an initial number, followed by a second after a dash. It took Amber a second or two to realize what she was looking at.
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