Flash Point (21 page)

Hattie dragged a step stool from the end of one aisle down the second row they came to, gingerly climbed the rungs, and stretched as tall as she could make herself. ‘Well, call numbers don't have a standardized length. They all start with the same sort of thing … the Dewey system has ten main broad categories, so the broad category would account for the first three call number digits. But after that, every category is broken down into sub-categories over and over in order to shelve the book as specifically as possible. With certain books, the numbers are pretty short. After all, when shelving Nancy Drew books, there's really no operative need to breakdown the categories beyond fiction, mystery. But you get into some of the nonfiction stuff, and those sub-categories can get
really
specific. Can make for some nice long numbers,' she said, reaching toward the spot the book with the call number matching their final leftover numbers would normally be.

Her mouth widened. ‘Yep,' she said, making a valiant push to stretch just a half an inch more, ‘I think this is it.'

Her pale pink-painted fingertips brushed the top of the book just downward enough to cause it to fall to its spine, the top jutting out just enough that Hattie could grab it easily. She brought it down and handed it to Jenna.

‘It
definitely
isn't shelved in the right place, but somehow I'm thinking that wasn't
our
mistake,' she said as she brushed off her trousers.

As Jenna opened the front cover of the copy of
To Kill a Mockingbird
someone had deliberately placed to eventually be found, her gaze fell on the pocket glued inside the book that, before library systems were computerized, held a card that would be taken out and filed as part of the checking out process.

Jenna strode back to the aisle opening where Dodd and Porter were waiting. She stepped between them and held the book open to display the pocket.

‘What's that?' Dodd asked.

But Porter was already digging in his back pocket, snapping on latex gloves. ‘It's a ticket to Hawaii, Dodd. What do you think it is? It's a note!'

As Jenna followed his lead and pulled on the pair of gloves she kept in her back pocket, Porter produced tweezers from a zipped-pocket on the inside of his jacket and gently tugged the folded piece of notebook paper out. He carried it a few steps to a square table by the window with four plastic chairs. As he sat in the closest one, Dodd pulled a plastic evidence bag from his own coat and laid it on the table. Wasn't the best for preserving clean evidence, but they had to open and read this thing, and now.

With the care of a surgeon, Porter worked the paper open until it lay flat atop the plastic bag, its black, block letters staring up at them:

I
F YOU'VE FOUND THIS, IT MEANS SOMETHING SPECIAL ABOUT
YOU
:

Y
OU'RE NOT JUST INTELLIGENT, BUT YOU'VE UNEARTHED SOME DETAILS, TOO.

A
ND BECAUSE YOU'RE SO OBVIOUSLY EQUAL TO THE TASK

W
E'LL SAVE YOU A STEP AND SAY, ‘PULL THE INSPIRATIONS FOR OUR MASKS.'

T
O PROVE WE'RE WORTH CONSIDERING AND THAT WE AREN'T INTENT TO MISLEAD,

W
E FEEL IT TO BE A SPORTING GESTURE TO GIFT YOU TOOLS YOU DON'T KNOW YOU'LL NEED.

T
HE FIRST TOOL IS IN YOUR HAND, BUT IT SHOULDN'T BE ALONE.

Y
OU WON'T NEED A SECOND COPY, ONLY HOW TO TRACK IT WHEN IT ROAMS.

Y
OU'LL RUN INTO ANOTHER PROBLEM: AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES

B
UT CHOOSE THE ONE FOLLOWED BY TWO SEQUELS, THOUGH COMPARATIVELY THEY WERE MISSES

T
HE SEQUELS YIELD TO ANOTHER PAIR OF A PROBLEM:

D
OUBLE TROUBLE, IF YOU WILL

B
UT WHEN IN DOUBT, START AS YOU WOULD WITH ANY SERIES

T
O SEE IF IT FITS THE BILL.

T
HERE IS A THIRD PAIRING WHICH WE MUST GIVE, LEST YOU BE SET UP TO FAIL

B
ECAUSE IT'S BEEN HIDDEN AND ONLY WE SEE, PICK UP A WHALE OF A TALE.

W
HEN THE MASKS ARE PULLED AND YOU'RE LOOKING FOR A PATTERN OR TREND

Y
OU WOULDN'T DO WELL TO WASTE YOUR TIME ON WORDS JUST YET,

N
OT WHEN NUMBERS ARE STILL YOUR FRIEND.

O
UR FINAL PIECE OF ADVICE TO GIVE INVOLVES A DOUBLE DEBUT.

L
INE UP THE MASKS, TAKE ONE FROM EACH,

A
ND YOU'LL GET A DOUBLE ON ONE OF TWO.

‘Not this shit again,' Porter groaned. He craned his neck to see back in the room with the beanbag chairs. ‘Grey! We need your help!'

Dodd shook his head. ‘We don't need Grey for this. Not all of it at least. ‘
Pull the inspirations for our masks
.' That's obvious right? Since they say one tool is already in our hand –
To Kill a Mockingbird –
they obviously want us to pull the books that feature the individual characters that inspired each killer's literary moniker.'

That Russian violet Jenna kept seeing any time the ‘show' the killers put on at the bank flashed in, and she tried to ignore the tumble in her stomach at the memory of all the blood and body parts in favor of trying to count the number of killers on the grainy black and white video. ‘So we need, what? Twelve books? How many of the nicknames do we know for sure?'

It turned out, not as many as they might've hoped. They already had Scout and
To Kill a Mockingbird,
and though the team hadn't pegged any of the other UNSUBs with a nickname from the book, the poem made clear there was one. All the other copies of the book were checked out, but as the note had inferred, they didn't need them.

‘If they say all we need from a checked out book is the way to track it, the numbers we're looking for on the books have to be the barcodes. Every library book's barcode sticker number would be different, though, so wouldn't the code be dependent on us picking the right checked out copy?' Porter asked, turning to Hattie.

‘At some libraries, maybe. But here, all copies of a single title share the same numerical code. Individual copies are differentiated by a letter sequence tacked on
after
the barcode,' Hattie replied. She blushed. Sheepishly, she said, ‘The note
does
say that numbers are your friend.'

Porter nodded, scribbling the barcode on
To Kill a Mockingbird
twice on a fresh sheet of notebook paper from the stack Hattie had set out from them. ‘Next on the list?'

‘“Embarrassment of Riches”' being referred to as a problem we'd have has to be talking about Richelieu. They gave us the name, but they knew good and well when they did that we'd have about as good of a chance of finding the correct John Smith we're looking for on Facebook as we would singling out which book featuring Cardinal Richelieu they had in mind,' Jenna said.

‘How true,' Porter said. ‘Embarrassment is an understatement. How the heck
did
that old codger manage to show up in so many stories, anyway? He had to have bribed people. Or slept with them.'

Dodd rolled his eyes, turned around and started toward the beanbag room. ‘I'll get Grey.'

Porter continued copying barcodes to his list, and, adopting a haughty tone, said, ‘It's a shame about that cardinal bribing people and sexing them to be famous. Tsk. Tsk. Men of the cloth aren't supposed to conduct themselves in such a manner.'

Jenna stifled her laughter when Dodd returned with Grey and asked her ex-patient which books featuring the character of Cardinal Richelieu had two sequels.

‘I wouldn't place dollars on it, because there might be another set that matches up that way, too, that I'm not thinking of, but because it said the sequels were misses, I'd go with
The Three Musketeers.
The two after it brought tears,' Grey said.

Porter looked up from his list. ‘Grey? Did you just make a joke?'

Grey smiled sheepishly. Her pale cheeks tinged.

Porter gave her a single nod. ‘Not bad.'

So, they retrieved and copied the barcode number for Alexander Dumas's famous tome, then pulled
Les Miserables
, banking on their hunch that the UNSUB with the long briquet sword was Marius.
Moby Dick
came next, based on the reference to the whale of a tale, though that mention had added a new level of confusion to the mix.

Porter wrote
Moby Dick
's barcode once, then cocked his head. ‘It says something else, though … something funny …'

Jenna glanced over the phrase referring to the book again, and this time, light khaki flashed in as she read the word “pairing.” ‘A third pairing. So there's another UNSUB with an alias from the whale book.'

Porter copied the
Moby
barcode a second time underneath the first. ‘WASP UNSUB, maybe? That WASP knife was made for big game hunting. I'd think picking a fight with the whale embodiment of evil probably qualifies as big game hunting. But who's the other?'

Dodd's phone rang, and everyone in the room knew it must be Saleda calling back. She and Teva were reviewing the bank video in hopes of pulling together evidence pointing heavily to – if nothing else – some strong educated guesses about other literary nicknames the killers they had yet to label might've chosen. As he stood and walked to take the call in the other library section where the reception was better, he called back, ‘After we get all these nicknames, I'm telling you, if we ever have five minutes we don't have to spend running around libraries pretending we're in a Dan Brown novel, we're gonna have a
whole
lot of fun profiling these bastards now.'

‘What? You mean doing our jobs?' Porter called after him. He shook his head, now copying down the barcode off of the first of the two Sherlock Holmes books Hattie had pulled at their request. There were more Sherlock Holmes installments in existence than seemed possible, but the letter had said to treat them like any other series you'd start, and to the team, if that wasn't book one and two, they'd been doing it wrong for years.

Jenna nodded as her phone vibrated with a text. This hot trail was definitely where they needed to be for now, but the more they guessed at nicknames and books, the more antsy she was to use the choices to psychoanalyze what different life experiences and personality types could bring a group like this together.

She read the words on her screen, jumped up. ‘Just got a text from Irv. With the video enhancement, they were able to call in some weapons experts and identify one of the weapons the last guy was carrying.'

Eyes on the signage labeling the book sections and range of call numbers each aisle held, Jenna rushed toward the 800's section, dashed toward the section for epic poetry. As she scanned the row, grayish-blue flashed in, as did the image of the surveillance video figure jabbing the carotid of the white-collared victim that Cutthroat UNSUB had so viciously left with blood pouring from the gash in his throat.
Something about that.

But then, her eyes landed on the book. She snatched it up, making a beeline back to the window table and slamming it down in front of Porter.

‘The weapons guys identified the short knife he was carrying as a Scaramasax dagger. That's apparently the type of dagger Beowulf used to kill the last dragon in this over-hyped Odyssey rip-off.'

Porter started copying the
Beowulf
barcode number on to his list, joking in his best mechanical computer voice: ‘The word of the day is Scaramasax. Your Scaramasax is looking very healthy today, Bill.' He laughed. ‘Where the hell does somebody get a Scaramasax dagger?'

‘Believe me,' Jenna said, sitting down to type a text to Irv, ‘if there's a Scaramasax R Us on this planet, Irv is about to find it and send me the names of anyone who has so much as breathed in it.'

Dodd appeared and set his phone in the middle of the table. ‘OK, Saleda, you're on speaker. Everybody's here. Tell us you've narrowed some names down for us.'

‘Right,' Saleda said, the authority in her tone easing Jenna's nerves. With every second that went by, she just knew her cell would vibrate and they'd be called to another attack scene.

‘We're looking specifically at two. One is the Slender UNSUB who attacked high, knifing her first victim in the eye. The other is the shorter guy, kinda huskier build that went straight for the athletic black guy in the suit. I remember talking when we first watched the video footage not just about how him ducking and charging into the victim low, like a football player, then stabbing him in the stomach seemed highly strategized, but also how those quick upward slashes into the auxiliary armpits suggested training, maybe military. Well, the enhanced video doesn't just show he was using a SOG Seal Pup—'

‘Military tactical knife,' Porter explained to Hattie, who had nosily sidled up to the table to listen in.

‘—from the clearer footage, we can tell that football charge strategy was for protection as much as to throw his victims off balance. The low protective stance was him using his body as his secondary weapon, because he couldn't hold one in the other hand. He doesn't
have
another hand.'

‘So, if he was military and lost a hand …'

Brain, think quicker!

‘He'd get a nice pretty set of discharge papers to frame for the mantle,' Dodd filled in.

‘Couldn't be in the army anymore …' Jenna muttered, trying to force the concept to become a revelation.

Grey, who up until then had been sitting quietly at the end of the table, stirring a cup of pencils, cleared her throat. ‘He's like Johnny Tremain. He was an apprentice and should've been silversmith, but a big dumb bully tricked him and made his hand so hot it melted.'

Everyone stared at her for a long moment.

Finally, Jenna pushed back from the table. ‘And you're saying Johnny Tremain didn't have a hand? And, because of that, he couldn't do the job he dreamed of?'