Steven James - The Bishop

Angela has a big heart but usually wears a slightly concerned expression. Late thirties. Slightly overweight. Thick glasses. Big loopy earrings. Kind but anxious eyes.

Three computer screens sat on the desk in front of her. The one on the left was scrolling through hundreds of names, presumably from the credit card search. The right screen was filled with tiny icons of live video feeds from the mass transit system, scanning faces.

The center screen showed a spam email ad.

I wondered about the letter permutations, but for the moment, I didn’t ask.

Angela glanced at us only momentarily. She looked more worried than normal.

“Are you all right?” Lien-hua asked.

“Take a look at this.” She directed our attention to the middle screen, then slid the ad to the left to more clearly reveal a timer I hadn’t noticed when we first walked in.

A countdown.

Endgame: 49 minutes 15 seconds

Endgame: 49 minutes 14 seconds

Endgame: 49 minutes 13 seconds

Immediately, I thought of the traces of military grade C-4 found in the back of the van the killers had used.

“A bomb?” I said.

“I don’t know,” Angela replied. “The timer was embedded in the email I pulled up.”

“When did the countdown start?” Lien-hua asked.

“The message arrived earlier this afternoon, at 3:29.”

Endgame: 48 minutes 53 seconds

Lien-hua looked at the computer’s clock, did a quick calculation. “So 9:29. But what happens then?”

“It might be nothing,” Angela said.

“No,” Lien-hua replied. “It’s something.”

An explosion?

Another murder?

What’s the endgame?

Taking into consideration the C-4 and the explosion that occurred at the gas station last night Endgame: 48 minutes 22 seconds

“Could this laptop itself be an explosive device?” I said.

Angela shook her head. “I inspected it inside and out this morning. It’s just a laptop, nothing more.”

“Is it possible it’s a detonator though?” Lien-hua asked. “Or could it be used to initiate a detonation sequence?”

A slight hesitation. “It did send an auto reply to the ad.”

I was a bit surprised she hadn’t already looked into it. “Pull it up.”

The reply appeared, mostly techno-jargon, but the subject line included a “return to sender” notice. That was all.

“Return to sender,” Lien-hua said reflectively. “If there is a bomb, it could be a message: ‘return to sender,’ i.e. ‘return to God.’”

That seemed to be on track with the way these killers thought.

“Can you back trace this?” I asked Angela. “Find out where the ad was sent from, or who received the reply?”

Endgame: 47 minutes 4 seconds

She typed, then said, “The ad was sent to this computer from a Motorola Droid.” She pointed to the longitude and latitude coordinates on the screen.

Lien-hua drew out her phone and called the command post to have them send a car to the downtown DC location.

I leaned over Angela’s desk. “Can you tell where the reply went? Who received it?”

Angela explained something about a mail server host and a Cybrous 17 cellular modem relay sending out bits of code that could have been accessed from anywhere. “We might be able to trace it, but it’ll take time. An hour, maybe more.” She tapped at her keyboard. “I’ll get a team on it.”

An hour.

That’s too long…

“You’re sure there’s nothing explosive in this laptop?” I asked her.

“Yes.” But she sounded more uncertain this time. “I guess you can have the bomb squad check it out though, just in case.”

Lien-hua nodded, ended one call, made the other. My attention went back to the computer monitors. “Do we have anything on Basque or Adkins?”

“No. But I did finish those permutations for you.” Angela tapped at her keyboard, and the middle screen switched to a seemingly endless display of letter combinations.

“I think you should stick with interpreting it, ‘I promised you are,’” she said. “Lacey analyzed the other letter combinations that contain actual words, but she thinks that the letters in their original order make the most…” She paused for a long time and stared at the screen, at a small portion of the list that contained nearly 120,000,000 sets of letters.

“What is it?”

“Patricia E.,” she muttered. “How could I have been so stupid.”

“You know who Patricia E. is? Who is she?”

Angela pulled up Lacey’s permutations calculator and typed in the name PATRICIAE.

Instantly, thousands of nine-letter combinations began scrolling down the screen.

Angela tapped the keyboard, paused the list. Scrolled up a few dozen lines. Then pointed.

ARIAPETIC.

“An anagram,” I whispered. “Angela, you’re a genius.” I tried to process the implications. Calvin had uncovered the clue about Patricia E. three weeks ago, which meant that somehow he knew about these crimes.

Or the killers knew about his note.

But how…?

“The bomb squad’s on the way,” Lien-hua said, pocketing her phone.

“Angela found Aria Petic,” I told her.

“Where?”

“Not where, who,” Angela said. “It’s Patricia E.” She explained the connection but was eyeing Mollie’s laptop computer uneasily the whole time. “Listen, if this is a bomb I don’t want it anywhere near Lacey.”

She had a good point. If the laptop was an explosive device, it didn’t make sense to leave it in the building. “I’ll take it to the parking lot,” I said.

“No, Pat. Just leave it,” Lien-hua objected. “The bomb squad will be here any minute.”

“Angela already checked the laptop this morning,” I said. “There’s no indication that it’s a bomb; all we have is this timer. Besides, it’s been shuffled around all day and there’s still over forty minutes before the countdown ends. I’ll be fine.”

I donned latex gloves to avoid leaving yet another set of prints on the laptop. “Call Cassidy and Farraday,” I told Lien-hua, “and find out where they are. It might be good to… touch base.”

She was quiet, then pulled out her phone. “Be careful.”

“I will.”

“Please don’t blow yourself up.”

“I won’t.”

Day folded in on itself across the bottom of the sky. A sliver of sunlight fingered out from beneath the clouds and then it was gone.

And then it was night.

Brad was surprised that Detective Warren was here; he’d expected Tessa to be alone, but really, it was perfect. He couldn’t have planned a more fitting ending to the game.

He knelt beside the rear bumper of Cheyenne’s car, unscrewed the plates.

He could see the two of them through a slit in the living room curtains and was tempted to smile, to gloat, but held back, stayed attentive. What he had in mind was so elegant, so devastating, no one would see it coming.

The rematch he’d challenged Bowers to.

Eight months in the making.

And now Detective Cheyenne Warren would play one of the most important roles.

He finished with the plates, returned to the woods. Pulled out his Walther P99.

And sent the final text message to the next victim.

34 minutes left…

8:55 p.m.

While I waited for the bomb squad, I phoned the command post and told them to check for a bomb in the handicapped-accessible van, the Honda Accord that had been left in front of police headquarters, all related crime scenes, the congressman’s home, and to notify every agency working even peripherally on the task force to put them on alert.

Despite all of these steps, however, considering the way these killers worked, if they truly had left a bomb somewhere, I didn’t expect it to be someplace obvious.