Jeffery Deaver - The Devil's Teardrop

"Got something here," he said.

"What?" Cage asked.

Parker explained about the dot and how he'd named it.

"Devils teardrop?" Lukas asked. She didn't seem to like the name. He guessed she was more comfortable with science and hard data. He remembered that she'd had a similar reaction when Hardy had said that the Digger was like a ghost. She leaned forward. Her short blond hair fell forward and partially obscured her face. "Any connection with your perp?" she asked. "In that stalker case?"

"No, no," Parker said. "He was executed years ago. But this"-he nodded toward the sheet-"could be the key to finding out where our boy lived."

"How?" Jerry Baker asked.

"If we can narrow down the area to a county or-even better-a neighborhood then we'll search public records."

Hardy gave a short laugh. "You can actually find somebody that way?"

"Oh, you bet. You know Michele Sindona?"

C. P. shook his head.

Hardy asked, "Who?"

Lukas searched through her apparently vast mental file cabinet of criminal history and said, "He was the financier? The guy who handled the Vatican 's money?"

"Right. He was arrested for bank fraud but he vanished just before trial. He showed up a few months later and claimed he was kidnapped-thrown in a car and taken someplace. But there were rumors he hadn't been kidnapped at all but'd flown to Italy, then returned to New York. I think it was an examiner in the Southern District who got samples of Sindona's handwriting and found out he had this personal handwriting quirk-he made a dot inside the loop when he wrote the numeral nine. Agents went through thousands of customs declaration forms on flights from Italy to New York. They found a dot in the number nine in an address of a card filled in by a passenger who, it turned out, had used a fake name. They lifted one of Sindona's latents from it."

"Man," C. P. muttered, "collared because of a dot. A little thing like that."

"Oh," Parker said, "it's usually the little things that trip up the perps. Not always. But usually."

He placed the note under the scanner of the VSC. This device uses different light sources-from ultraviolet to infrared-to let examiners see through obliterations and to visualize erased letters. Parker was curious about the cross-out before the word "apprehend." He scanned the entire note and found no erasures other than under the obliteration. He then tested the envelope and noticed no erasures.

"What'd you find?"

"Tell you in a minute. Don't breathe down my neck, Cage."

"It's two-twenty," the agent reminded.

"I can tell time, thanks," Parker muttered. "My kids taught me."

He walked to the electrostatic detection apparatus. The ESDA is used to check documents for indented writing-words or markings pressed into the paper by someone writing on pages on top of the subject document. The ESDA was originally developed as a way to visualize fingerprints on documents. But the device turned out to be largely useless for that purpose because it also raised indented writing, which obscured any latent prints. In TV shows the detective rubs a pencil over the sheet to visualize the indented writing. In real life it would be malpractice for a document examiner to do this; it would probably destroy most indented writing. The ESDA machine, which works like a photocopier, reveals lettering that was written as many as ten sheets above the document being tested.

No one quite knows why the ESDA works so efficiently but no document examiner is without one. Once, after a wealthy banker died, Parker was hired to analyze a will that disinherited his children and left his entire estate to a young maid. Parker was very close to authenticating the document. The signatures looked perfect, the dates of the will and the codicils were logical. But his last test-the ESDA-revealed indented writing that said, "This one ought to fool the pricks." The maid confessed to hiring someone to forge the will.

Parker now ran the unsub's note through the machine. He lifted a plastic sheet off the top and examined it.

Nothing.

He tried the envelope. He lifted off the thin sheet and held it up to the light. He felt a bang in his gut when he saw the delicate gray lines of writing.

"Yes!" he said excitedly. "We've got something."

Lukas leaned forward and Parker smelled a faint floral scent. Perfume? No. He'd known her for only an hour but he'd decided that she was not the perfume sort. It was probably scented soap.

"We've got a couple of indentations," Parker said. "The unsub wrote something on a piece of paper that was on top of the envelope."

Parker held the electrostatic sheet in both hands and moved it around to make the writing more visible. "Okay, somebody write this down. First word. Lowercase c-l-e, then a space. Uppercase M, lowercase e. Nothing after that."

Cage wrote the letters on a yellow pad and looked at it. "What's it mean?" The agent gave a perplexed shrug.

C. P. tugged a pierced earlobe and said, "Don't have a clue."

Geller: "If it's not bits and bytes I'm helpless."

Lukas too shook her head.

But Parker took one look at the letters and knew immediately. He was surprised no one else could see it.

"It's the first crime scene."

"What do you mean?" Jerry Baker asked.

"Sure," Lukas said. "Dupont C-i-r-c-l-e, capital M-Metro."

"Of course," Hardy whispered.

Puzzles are always easy when you know the answer.

"The first site," Parker mused. "But there's something written below it. Can you see it? Can you read it?" He jockeyed the sheet again, holding it out to Lukas. "Jesus, it's hard to see."

She leaned forward and read. "Just three letters. That's all I can make out. Lowercase t-e-l."

"Anything else?" Hardy asked.

Parker squinted. "No, nothing."

"t-e-l," Lukas pondered.

"Telephone, telephone company, telecommunications?" Cage asked. "Television?"

C. P. offered, "Maybe he's going to hit one of the studios-during a broadcast."

"No, no," Parker said. "Look at the position of the letters in relation to the c-l-e M-e. If he's writing in fairly consistent columns then the t-e-l comes at the end of the word." Then Parker caught on. He said, "It's a-"

Lukas blurted, "Hotel. The second target's a hotel."

"That's right."

"Or motel," Hardy suggested.

"No," Parker said. "I don't think so. He's going for crowds. Motels don't have big facilities. All the events tonight will be in hotel banquet rooms."

"And," Lukas added, "he's probably sticking to foot or public transportation. Motels're in outlying areas. Traffic's too bad tonight to rely on a car."

"Great," Cage said then pointed out, "but there must be two hundred hotels in town."

"How do we narrow it down?" Baker asked.

"I'd say go for the bigger hotels…" Parker nodded toward Lukas. "You're right-probably near public transportation and high population centers."

With a loud bang Baker dropped the Yellow Pages on the table. "D.C. only?" He flipped them open. C. P. Ardell walked over to the table and began looking over the tactical agent's shoulder.

Parker considered the question. "It's the District he's extorting, not Virginia or Maryland. I'd stick to D.C."

"Agreed," Lukas said. "Also we should eliminate any place with 'Hotel' first in the name, like 'Hotel New York.' Because of the placement of the letters on the envelope. And no Inns' or 'Lodges.'"

Cage and Hardy joined C. P. and Baker. They all bent over the phone book. They started circling possibilities, discussing whether this choice or that was logical.

After ten minutes they had a list of twenty-two hotels. Cage jotted them down in his own precise handwriting and handed the list to Jerry Baker.

Parker suggested, "Before you send anybody there, call and find out if any of the functions tonight are for diplomats or politicians. We can eliminate those."