John Verdon - Think of a Number

“Zero.”

“Isn’t that odd?”

“Extremely. Item number three-a broken whiskey bottle, incomplete, brand label Four Roses.”

“Incomplete?”

“Approximately half of the bottle was present in one piece. That and all remaining shards recovered add up to somewhat less than two-thirds of a complete bottle.”

“No prints?” said Rodriguez.

“No prints-not a surprise, really, considering their absence from the chair and cigarettes. There was one substance present, in addition to the victim’s blood-a minuscule trace of detergent in a fissure along the broken edge of the glass.”

“Meaning what?” said Rodriguez.

“The presence of the detergent and the absence of a portion of the bottle suggest that the bottle was broken elsewhere and washed before being brought to the scene.”

“So the frenzied stabbing was as premeditated as the gunshot?”

“So it appears. Shall I continue?”

“Please,” said Rodriguez, making the word sound rude.

“Item number four-the victim’s clothing, including underwear, bathrobe, and moccasins, all stained with his own blood. Three foreign hairs found on the bathrobe, possibly from the victim’s wife, yet to be verified. Item number five-blood samples taken from the ground around the body. Tests in progress-so far all samples match the victim. Item number six-bits of broken glass taken from the flagstone under the back of the victim’s neck. This is consistent with the initial autopsy finding that four puncture wounds from the bottle glass passed through the neck from front to back and that the victim was on the ground at the time of the stabbing.”

Kline had the pained squint of a man driving into the sun. “I’m getting the impression here that someone has committed an extremely violent crime, a crime involving shooting, stabbing-more than a dozen deep stab wounds, some of them delivered with great force-and yet the killer managed to do this without leaving a single unintentional trace of himself.”

One of the Cruise twins spoke up for the first time, in a voice surprisingly high-pitched for the macho look of the body it came from. “How about the lawn chair, the bottle, the footprints, the boots?”

Kline’s face twitched impatiently. “I said unintentional trace. Those things look like they were left behind on purpose.”

The young man shrugged as though this were a tricky bit of sophistry.

“Item number seven is divided into subcategories,” said the genderless Sergeant Wigg (but perhaps not sexless, observed Gurney, noting the interesting eyes and finely sculpted mouth). “Item seven includes communications received by the victim which may be relevant to the crime, including the note found on the body.”

“I’ve had copies made of all that,” announced Rodriguez. “I’ll hand them out at the appropriate time.”

Kline asked Wigg, “What are you looking for in the communications?”

“Fingerprints, paper indentations…”

“Like impressions from a writing pad?”

“Correct. We’re also doing ink-identification tests on the handwritten letters and printer-identification tests on the letter that was generated through a word processor-the last one received prior to the murder.”

“We’ll also have experts look at the handwriting, vocabulary, and syntax,” interjected Hardwick, “and we’re getting a sound-print analysis of the phone conversation the victim taped. Wigg already has a preliminary take on it, and we’ll review that today.”

“We’ll also go over the boots that were found today, as soon as they get to the lab. That’s all for now,” concluded Wigg, tapping a key on her computer. “Any questions?”

“I have one,” said Rodriguez. “Since we discussed presenting these evidence items in order of importance, I was wondering why you placed the lawn chair first.”

“Just a hunch, sir. We can’t know how it all fits together until it all fits together. At this point it’s impossible to say which piece of the puzzle-”

“But you did put the lawn chair first,” interrupted Rodriguez. “Why?”

“It seemed to illustrate the most striking feature of the case.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The planning,” said Wigg softly.

She had the ability, thought Gurney, to respond to the captain’s interrogation as though it were a series of objective questions on paper, devoid of supercilious facial expressions and insulting intonations. There was a curious purity in this lack of emotional entanglement, this immunity to petty provocation. And it got people’s attention. Gurney noticed everyone at the table, except Rodriguez, unconsciously leaning forward.

“Not just the planning,” she went on, “but the weirdness of the planning. Bringing a lawn chair to a murder. Smoking seven cigarettes without touching them with your fingers or your lips. Breaking a bottle, washing it, and bringing it to the scene to stab a dead body with. Not to mention the impossible footprints and how the perp disappeared from the woods. It’s like the guy is some kind of genius hit man. It’s not just a lawn chair, but a lawn chair with half the webbing removed and replaced. Why? Because he wanted it all white? Because it would be less visible in the snow? Because it would be less visible against the white Tyvek painter’s suit he may have been wearing? But if visibility was such a big issue, why would he sit there in a lawn chair, smoking cigarettes? I’m not sure why, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the chair turned out to be the key to unraveling the whole thing.”

Rodriguez shook his head. “The key to solving this crime will be police discipline, procedure, and communication.”

“My money’s on the lawn chair,” whispered Hardwick with a wink at Wigg.

The comment registered on the captain’s face, but before he could speak, the conference-room door opened and a man entered holding a gleaming computer disk. “What is it?” Rodriguez snapped.

“You told me to bring you any fingerprint results as soon as we had them, sir.”

“And?”

“We have them,” he said, holding up the disk. “You’d better have a look. Maybe Sergeant Wigg could…?”

He extended the disk tentatively toward her laptop. She inserted it and clicked a couple of keys.

“Interesting,” she said.

“Prekowski, would you mind telling us what you have there?”

“Krepowski, sir.”

“What?”

“My name is Krepowski.”

“Fine, good. Now, would you please tell us whether you found any prints.”

The man cleared his throat. “Well, yes and no,” he said.

Rodriguez sighed. “You mean they’re too smudged to be useful?”

“They’re a hell of a lot more than smudged,” said the man. “In fact, they’re not really prints at all.”

“Well, what are they?”

“I guess you could call them smears. It looks like the guy used his fingertips to write with-using the skin oil in his fingertips like it was invisible ink.”

“To write? Write what?”

“Single-word messages. One on the back of each of the poems he mailed to the victim. Once we made the words chemically visible, we photographed them and copied the images to disk. It shows up pretty clearly on the screen.”

With a faint touch of amusement playing at her lips, Sergeant Wigg slowly rotated her laptop until the screen directly faced Rodriguez. There were three sheets of paper shown in the photo, side by side-the reverse sides of the sheets on which the three poems had been written arranged in the sequence in which they’d been received. On each of the three sheets, a single four-letter word appeared in smudgy block letters:

DUMB EVIL COPS

“What the fuck…?” said the Cruise boys, aroused in unison.