Beverly Connor - Dead Past

“You think you need to slow down a bit?” said Frank.

“Why?” said Diane.

“Because you just got out of the hospital and you have a concussion?”

“I’m fine,” she said, keying in her code and entering the lab.

David looked up from his computer when she entered.

“You’re looking better than when I left you,” he said. “I just called the hospital and they told me you had been released. I figured you’d be back here.”

Diane sat down at the round table. David and Jin joined her while Neva was on the phone. Frank sat off to one side.

“Archie Donahue smokes Dorals,” Diane said. “Those are probably his you picked up at tent city. There is nothing to connect his Dorals with the ones you found on the ridge.”

“But…,” said David.

“But nothing… that’s it,” said Diane.

“That’s not all of it,” said Neva, joining them. “I was talking to someone at the station. Archie Donahue left right after he checked in this morning. No one knows where he went.”

“So it’s in the hands of the police,” said Diane. “Neva, call Garnett and tell him about the Dorals and leave it with him.”

Neva left and made the call to Garnett. It was quick. Diane heard Neva say they didn’t know what it meant; it was just information. None of them wanted the murderer to be a policeman, and if it was, they all had the uncomfortable feeling of not wanting him caught. Not a good philosophy for criminalists.

Neva sat back down at the table. “Garnett asked about you,” she said. “He said he’d drop by later today.”

Diane saw a paper rolled up in Jin’s hands.

“OK, Jin,” she said, “what do you have on the code?”

Jin looked at the paper in his hand and turned red. Neva and David laughed.

“You don’t have anything, do you?” said Neva.

“It’s not a cryptogram,” said Jin. “It can’t be. I don’t think it’s anything.”

“May I see it?” asked Frank.

Jin handed him the paper, and Frank unrolled the page and examined the letters.

“This is the code that was in the doll you were telling me about?” asked Frank.

“Yes,” said Diane.

“Have you tried other decoding techniques? If it’s not a simple cryptogram, it might be another kind of cipher.”

“Do you think you can decode it?” said Diane.

“Don’t know till I try,” said Frank.

Jin looked more depressed than when the cigarette butts were stolen from him.

“Jin,” said Neva, “you can’t know everything. Don’t look so glum.”

“It’s just, I’m really good at codes,” he said. His entire face was turned down in a frown as he watched Frank studying the string of letters on the wrinkled paper.

“Do you know anything about the guy who wrote it?” asked Frank.

“A little,” said Diane. She related the story of Leo Parrish, the treasure train, and the Labor Day hurricane of 1935.

“So,” said Frank, “this whole thing may be a hoax.”

“That’s what I think,” said Jin. “It’s just a string of random letters.”

“Could be,” said Frank. “You know it’s not a cryptogram because the frequency of occurrence of the letters didn’t lend itself to an answer, right?”

“No,” said Jin. “Nor does looking at the two-and three-letter words or the endings or beginnings of words. Nothing makes sense.”

“Then we need to look at another type of encryption method. You say Leo did his thing in the 1930s?”

“Yes,” said Diane.

“OK, so it’s not modern. No computer to help him with it. Maybe it’s something popular among coders of his time, like Vigenere’s method,” said Frank. “Where, for example, the cipher letter for e in one word isn’t necessarily the same cipher letter for an e in another word.”

“Well, you’ve completely lost me,” said Neva.

“Wow,” said Jin, leaning forward, his eyes now sparkling with interest. “No wonder I couldn’t decipher it. How do you know about this stuff, Frank?”

“It’s only what he does for a living,” said David.

“No kidding. I didn’t know that’s what you do,” said Jin.

“It’s part of what I do,” said Frank. “A lot of cybercrime involves hiding things by use of encryption.”

“Can you decipher it?” Diane asked.

“Probably. It will be easier if I have the keyword,” he said.

“Keyword?” they all said in unison.

“Several of the early ciphers required a keyword. Even without the keyword, there are other ways it can be deciphered and a good computer program can work it out, but if I have the keyword, I can do it fairly quickly. Are there any possible keywords from this story of yours?”

“How about a key sentence?” said Diane. “ The making of palimpsests was possible even with papyri. ”

Frank raised his eyebrows and she explained about the amazing coincidence of hearing that phrase in the library, Juliet’s fear of the word palimpsest and her dramatic reaction to hearing the complete sentence.

“Well that’s certainly odd,” said Frank.

David, Neva, and Jin stared at her with their mouths open.

“Wow,” said Jin again. “We hadn’t heard that story, Boss.”

“There’s been so much going on lately,” Diane said. She turned back to Frank. “Do you think palimpsest could be the keyword?”

“Could be. I’ll give it a try. Can I use a computer?” said Frank. “You do have word processing programs on your computers, don’t you?”

“Of course,” said David.

He led Frank to his computer and called up Word-Perfect. Frank sat down and started typing.

David moved an empty chair next to Frank, and Diane sat down. She was feeling a little weak, and her headache was back, but she didn’t want to mention it. David probably guessed, she thought. Frank reached over and squeezed her hand. He probably senses my weakness too, damn it.

Frank made a grid twenty-seven by twenty-six. On the top row he keyed in each letter of the alphabet in lowercase. Under the a in the first column, he repeated the alphabet starting with an uppercase B and putting the uppercase A on the bottom of the column after Z . He did the same thing in the next column-under the lowercase b he put an uppercase C and put the uppercase A and B at the bottom of the column after Z . Each successive uppercase alphabet was shifted one letter with respect to the previous column.

“This is called a Vigenere square,” said Frank when he finished. “The lowercase letters across the top represent the plain text. The uppercase letters in the columns represent the cipher text.”

Neva made a gesture with her hand going over her head. “This looks too much like math with letters,” said Neva.

“Not far from wrong,” said Frank.

“This is great,” said Jin. “Where have I been that I didn’t know this?”

“I don’t know,” said Frank grinning. “This is Secret Code 101.”

“How does it work?” said Diane.

“Let’s say the keyword is DIANE. In the left column I will use only those letters.” He used the word processing program to highlight the letters of DIANE and continued the shading all across the row in the table for each letter.

“Now, suppose we have the message, ‘The house that Jack built.’ So, we have to make another table…,” began Frank.

“OK,” said Neva. “You mentioned something about a computer program that would do this?”

“Yes, but I don’t have it,” said Frank. “Let’s have a little patience. Think of this as fun. Jin does.”

“You betcha,” said Jin. He pulled up a chair and leaned forward, staring at the screen. “You said you use a second table?”