Stuart Kaminsky - Dead of Winter

Mac handed Kindem a card. Kindem had placed the disks between two of the computers. "Don't have to read them," Kindem said. "Don't want to read them, certainly not on a computer screen. I spend enough time reading things on screens. When I read a book, I want it in my hands and on a page."

Mac agreed, but said nothing.

Kindem was smiling.

"I can tell you some things quickly," he said. "If your questions are simple. If you want a full analysis, give me a day. I'll have one of my grad students prepare and print out or E-mail you a report."

"Sounds fine," said Mac.

"Okay," said Kindem loading each disk into a tower between two computers.

Each of the six disks went in with a whir and a click.

"So," he said. "What am I looking for?"

"I want to know if the same person wrote all these books," said Mac.

"And?" asked Kindem.

"Whatever else you can tell me about the author," said Mac.

Kindem went to work displaying his keyboard virtuosity, turning up the volume of the CD he was playing, looking even more like a musician playing along with the music.

"Words, easy," said Kindem as he punched instructions moving from one computer to the next. "But don't tell my department chair. He thinks its hard. He pretends to understand it. I never call him on his encyclopedic misinformation. Words, easy. Music is harder. Give me two pieces of music and I can program them, feed them into the computer, and tell you if the same person wrote them. Did you know Mozart stole from Bach?"

"No," said Mac.

"Because he didn't," said Kindem. "I proved it for a supposed scholar who had worked the academic scam for a full professorship in Leipzig."

He went on for about ten minutes, talking constantly, drinking coffee, and then turned from one computer to another.

"Exclamation marks," he said. "Good place to start. I don't like them, don't use them in my articles. Almost no exclamation marks in scientific and academic writing. Shows a lack of confidence in one's words. Same is true of fiction. Author is afraid to let the words carry the impact so they want to give those words a boost. Punctuation, vocabulary, word repetition, how often adverbs, adjectives are used. Like fingerprints."

Mac nodded.

"First three books," said Kindem. "Overloaded with exclamation marks. Over two hundred and fifty of them in each book. Then, in every book after that, the exclamation marks disappear. The author has seen the light or…"

"We have a different author," said Mac.

"You've got it," said Kindem. "But there's a lot more. In the first three books, the word 'said' appears on an average of thirty times per book. I'll check, but the writer seems to be avoiding the word 'said,' almost certainly looking for other ways to ascribe dialogue. So, instead of 'she said,' the author writes, 'she exclaimed' or 'she gasped.' The later books average two hundred eighty-six uses of the word 'said.' Growing confidence? Not that extreme, not that soon. You want more?"

Mac nodded.

"Far more compound and longer sentences in the first three books," said Kindem, looking at the screen. "Casual reader might not be consciously aware of these things, but subconsciously… you'd have to go to someone in the Pysch Department."

"Anything else?"

"Everything else," said Kindem. "Vocabulary. For example, the word 'reciprocated' appears on average eleven times in each of the first three books. It appears in none of the others."

"Couldn't the change after the first three books be a decision to change style or a honing of the author's skills?"

"Not that big a change," said Kindem. "And I think I'll turn up more if you give me another few hours."

"The formula in all the books is pretty much the same," said Mac. "Woman is a widow or not yet married though she's in her mid thirties. She has or is responsible for a child who turns out to be in danger from a vengeful relative, the mafia, a serial killer. Police don't help much. Woman has to protect herself and the child. And somewhere in the last thirty pages, the woman confronts the bad guy or guys and prevails with a new man in her life who she's met along the way."

"Which means that whoever wrote those books followed the formula," said Kindem. "Not that it was the same person."

Mac was sure now. Louisa Cormier had written the first three books. Charles Lutnikov had written the rest.

But why would she shoot him, Mac thought. An argument? Over what? Money?

"You want printouts?" asked Kindem.

"E-mail," said Mac. "Address is on my card."

"Are you going to need me to testify at a trial?"

"Possibly," said Mac.

"Good," said Kindem. "I've always wanted to do that. Now back to the works of the now-exposed Louisa Cormier."

Stella sat in the car, drowsy and aching, while Danny drove. For the eighth time, Stella went over the Alberta Spanio file, which was in her lap.

She looked at the crime-scene photographs- body, bed, walls, side table. She looked at the bathroom photos- toilet, floor, tub, open window over the tub.

Something tickled at her brain. Something wrong. It felt like trying to remember the name of an actor or writer or the girl who sat next to you in a calculus class in high school. You should know, were sure it was inside you. You could go through the alphabet ten, fifteen times and not come up with the name and then, suddenly, it would be there.

She turned to the testimony of the two men who had been guarding Alberta Spanio, Taxx and the dead Collier.

Then as she continued to read, it struck her. She went back to the photographs of the bathroom, her photographs.

Collier had told Flack that he had stood in the tub to check and look out the window. If the killer came through the window, he or she had to have pushed the pile of snow blocking the window into the tub. There should have been some melted snow in the tub when Collier stepped in it. But there was no sign of moisture in the tub in Stella's photographs and no footprints from Collier's shoes, even though the bottoms of his shoes should have been wet from standing in the melted snow.

Why, she thought, had Collier lied?

Sheldon Hawkes sat at the desk next to Mac, looking at the videotape on the monitor in front of him.

"Once more," said Hawkes, leaning closer to the screen.

Mac rewound the tape and sipped coffee while Hawkes watched the twenty-minute tape again, sometimes fast-forwarding and halting.

"Let's hear the interrogation tape again."

Mac rewound the tape he had made of the interview of Jordan Breeze and played it again.

"You want to see him in his cell?" asked Mac. "My guess is it will confirm what we already know."

Hawkes stood and said, "You're right."

Mac listened while Hawkes told him what he had observed.

"Sure," said Mathew Drietch.

He was wiry, about forty, with sparse yellow hair and a boxer's face. He had answered Aiden Burn's request to see the.22 Louisa Cormier had used for target practice on the firing range, which was just outside the door to the office in which they now sat.

"You like the sound of gunfire?" Drietch asked.

"Not particularly," she said.

"I do," he said, looking past her at the glass-paneled door through which he could see the stations of the hand gun range. "The crack, the power. You know what I mean?"

"Not really," said Aiden. "Now, can you show me the gun?"

He got up slowly, hitching up his black denim slacks.

"When was Louisa Cormier last here?" she asked.

"A few days ago," he said. "Day before the storm I think. I can check."

He went to the door of his office, opening it to the cracking sound of gunfire. He held it open for her, then stepped out in front of her, and crossed behind the five people at the small-arms firing range.