Sidney Sheldon - Chasing Tomorrow

The lamb.

Death on a cross.

The pain had stopped for now. Idly Jeff wondered whether anyone would come to his rescue. Was anybody even looking for him? The police? Interpol? The FBI? Cooper was obsessed with Tracy. But Tracy wouldn’t come. How could she? Tracy knew nothing about any of this.

Besides, Tracy didn’t love him anymore.

Tracy hadn’t loved him for a long time.

The bitter liquid worked its magic.

Jeff slept.

JEAN RIZZO WAS READY to cry with frustration.

“There must be something. Have we checked passenger lists for every airline?”

His colleague sighed. “Out of Denver yesterday? Yeah. We have. No Tracy Schmidt. No Tracy Whitney.”

“How about domestic flights? Maybe she had a stopover in another city.”

“If she did, she used a different ID. She’s a con artist, right?”

Retired, thought Jean.

“She probably has a lot of passports. You released her picture?”

Jean grunted. He had given the photograph of Tracy that Interpol had on file to the staff at Denver Airport and had it mass–e-mailed to law enforcement agencies across the United States and in a string of major European cities, along with Jeff Stevens’s image. The problem, in both cases, was that the pictures were about fifteen years old. Why the hell didn’t I take Tracy’s picture when we were together in New York? I had all that time. He could have asked Blake Carter for a more up-to-date image, but he knew such a request would only cause the old man to panic. The last thing Jean needed was for Tracy’s disappearance to go public.

“Call me as soon as you hear anything.”

While he waited in vain for the telephone to ring, Jean turned his attention back to Daniel Cooper’s riddle. He suspected strongly that Jeff Stevens was already dead. With the other victims, the women, Cooper had never hung around but had dispatched them swiftly and mercilessly. But Tracy was a different story. Wherever Tracy had gone, she’d been following the clues Cooper laid out for her. Jean Rizzo had no doubt that Tracy would be walking right into Cooper’s trap. But if she could decode Cooper’s message, so could he. And if Stevens was alive, the trail would lead to him too.

Jean’s first stop was at his friend Wiliam Barrow’s apartment. Barrow was a foreign transplant in Lyon, just like Jean. A Londoner by birth, Thomas Barrow taught international relations at the university. He and Jean Rizzo had become friends years ago, when Thomas consulted on a case Jean was working on. He’d done a lot of work with Interpol since and the two men remained close.

“I don’t see how I can help.” Thomas poured Jean a cup of coffee so thick it was technically a solid, and he turned down the Wagner that was playing on his sound system. Jean had given Thomas a brief history of the Bible killings and Daniel Cooper. He explained that Cooper was holding a man hostage and that the man’s life, among others, depended on his, Jean’s, deciphering Cooper’s letter to Tracy.

“You’re a crossword nut,” said Jean.

“This isn’t a crossword.”

“It’s a puzzle. Crosswords are puzzles.”

“Well, yesss . . .” Thomas answered hesitantly.

“Just read it as if it were a crossword and tell me if anything comes to mind. I need a time and a place.”

Jean watched as his friend read in silence. After about a minute Thomas announced cheerfully, “I’ve got a few ideas.”

“Great!”

“They’re just ideas. I’m not a psychiatrist. I don’t know how your average mass murderer thinks.”

“Understood. Go on.”

“All right. So starting at the beginning. If this were a crossword—which let’s not forget, it isn’t—then ‘twenty knights’ might really mean ‘twenty nights.’ Puzzle writers use that sort of ‘homophonic’ wordplay a lot. ‘Three times three’ is nine. So your bloke might be waiting for somebody, the queen, for twenty nights, at nine o’clock.”

Jean’s eyes widened in astonishment. “That’s amazing!”

“It might be total bollocks, remember. It’s just a thought,” Thomas reminded him.

Jean calculated how long it had been since Cooper wrote the letter. Assuming the twenty nights had begun the day after he wrote it, that meant they had . . . eight days left.

A week in which to save Jeff Stevens’s life. If he was still alive.

“Moving on then, line by line.” Thomas was clearly warming to the task. “ ‘Beneath the stars’ probably means what it says: outside. The meeting place is outside. But references to altars and such suggest a place of worship. So it may also be a church with stars painted on the ceiling, for example? Lots of possibilities.”

Jean scribbled feverishly on a notepad.

“ ‘Thirteen lambs slain’ has to be your thirteen murder victims. I imagine ‘fourteen’ is the hostage.”

Of course! It sounded so obvious when Thomas said it.

“If he’s ‘suffering daily pain, soon to end . . .’ ” Thomas paused. “That sounds like a death threat to me. Torture and death. Especially followed by references to a shroud. Shrouds go with bodies, don’t they? You need a corpse to make a shroud.”

Jean shivered.

“The next two verses are the most important,” said Thomas. “The ‘dance in black and white’ has to be a reference to chess, especially with all your knights and queens.”

“I thought so too,” said Jean.

“In which case ‘where masters meet’ is a place reference. Somewhere where chess masters play. Perhaps outside? I know in Russia they play in the parks, don’t they? Or a chess championship of some kind. ‘Six hills, one was lost’ is another place reference, his most specific. But don’t ask me what it means because I haven’t a clue. I suspect ‘on the stage of history’ is place specific too. All your geographical information is in that stanza. You just need to untangle it.”

“Okay,” said Jean. “Is that everything?”

“That’s it.”

Jean finished writing. And stood up to leave. “Thank you.”

“It’s not much, I’m afraid,” Thomas Barrow said, handing Jean his jacket. “But if I were you, I’d look into six hills, and chess games in outdoor venues. Or weirdos hanging around the same spot at nine o’clock at night for three weeks in a row.”

JEAN RACED INTO HIS office, made himself another coffee from the machine in the lobby and had just sat down at his desk to start following up on Thomas Barrow’s ideas when his colleague burst in.

“Progress. Tracy Whitney took the two fifteen P.M. Delta flight from Denver to London Heathrow. Someone at a fast-food restaurant in the airport recognized her picture!”

Antoine Cléry was young and ambitious, with a wiry frame, pale, pockmarked skin and a permanently eager expression. He delivered this news to his boss like an enthusiastic puppy dropping a ball at its master’s feet. If he had a tail, Jean thought, he’d be wagging it. On this occasion, however, Jean shared Cléry’s excitement.

“Did she take a connecting flight out of London?”

“No. Not that day. She cleared customs.”

“Under what name?”

Antoine looked at the paper in his hand. “Sarah Grainger. She used a British passport.”

“Terrific work,” said Jean. “I want the British police on high alert.”

“I’ve already spoken to our office in London.”

“Not just at Heathrow. I want her picture at all the airports, and the Eurostar and the ferry ports. Dover, Folkestone, all of them. I don’t believe Cooper’s in London. Chances are she’s already left England and I want to know where she went next and when.”

“Sir.”

Antoine Cléry left the room. Jean Rizzo felt elated. It was the first piece of good news he’d had in days.