Strip Search (31 page)

“Can I come, too?”

“I…don’t think so.” Crestfallen didn’t cover it; he looked as if he’d just lost his brother. “But tomorrow, if I can get off work, I’ll take you for Shrimp Limone at Zio’s. What’d’ya say?”

“Custard afterward?”

“Natch.”

He bounced like a pogo stick. “Very Excellent Day! Very Excellent Day!”

“Yes, yes.” I held him by the shoulders and tried to calm him. “I’m guessing by the way you came in here that maybe you had something you wanted to tell me?”

“I know what all that algebra is for!”

I inched closer. Could this be the break I’d been waiting for? The one that let me catch this killer? “Give it up, Darce.”

“It’s for numerology!” Even if he didn’t see faces, he must’ve noticed the decided lack of reaction from me. “Do you know what numerology is for?”

“I don’t even know what it is.”

He cleared his throat, and the odd, almost mechanical tone of his voice gave way to his recitation voice. “Numerology is the ancient occult belief that numbers influence the lives of people. It is based on the premise that numbers produce harmony throughout the universe. Thus, numbers can be utilized to acquire harmony in personal and professional relations, ranging from a successful marriage to a successful business. It is related to the ancient practice of gematria, the interpretation of scripture by examining the number equivalents of letters or words in the Hebrew or Greek alphabets. Even today, many people—”

“Stop already!” I said, holding out my hands. His eidetic memory was nothing short of amazing. I knew he’d gotten it word-for-word; I knew he could tell me what book he read it in and could probably tell me what page it was on. But recitation wasn’t the same as explanation. “Are you saying people use numbers to…predict the future or something?”

Darcy nodded with excitement. “All you need is the person’s name and their birth date. There are four methods. These formulas use the Birth Path procedure. You take your name as it appears on your birth certificate, excluding titles or qualifiers, give each letter its predetermined value, add them up, divide, and the remainder is your number. You do the same sorta thing with your birthday, add the two, average them, and get your final Destiny Number.”

“And that’s supposed to tell you something about yourself?” I scanned the room; I didn’t want O’Bannon to see me talking to his son. And I especially didn’t want him—or anyone—to eavesdrop on this wacky conversation. “So this is about as reliable as, say, astrology?”

“Many famous people have believed in numerology,” Darcy said, returning to recitation mode. “It was frequently employed by the ancient alchemists as a substitute for real science or mathematics.”

“Algebra and alchemy,” I muttered under my breath. “So this crap was cooked up by the same kooks who thought they could turn iron into gold?”

“Most of the basic precepts were formulated by Pythagoras and served as the foundation for his Brethren—”

“But why is this so complicated?” I asked, staring at the arcane formulas written in crimped handwriting on the scrap of paper. “You make it sound as if it’s all adding and averaging. Hell, I can do that.”

“That is because these formulas do not do it right.”

I tried to twist my head around that. “I thought you said—”

“Usually, you would start with a name and apply math to get a result. But these equations start with the result.”

“I don’t follow.”

“These equations are for putting names and birthdays into a mathematical formula and seeing which ones come up as ones. One is the primary and most desirable number in numerology. Anyone who liked numerology would want ones.”

Including anyone looking for a victim? I knew that this killer was obsessed with numbers, math. And there didn’t seem to be any rational pattern to the selection of the victims. Could that be because he wasn’t really picking them? They were being randomly selected by this formula?

“What if you have more than
one
one, Darcy? You’d have to, wouldn’t you, if your list of names was large.”

“I do not know how the ones are ranked. Maybe in order of birth?”

I thought a moment. No, Danielle Dunn was older than Spencer.

“Maybe in the order the birthdays fall in the year, not counting the year.”

Maybe; I didn’t remember every victim’s birthday. No normal person would—

“No,” Darcy announced, “that doesn’t work. Amir was born after Danielle. So was Spencer.”

“This is hopeless, Darcy. Are you sure there isn’t anything more?”

“There is nothing I can do unless I know what list of names is being put into this formula to—”

“Names? Darcy. If I gave you that list of names, do you think you could use this formula to figure out who the next victim is?”

He barely paused a second. “I think that maybe I could do that. Do you have the list of names?”

“Not exactly. But I have an idea—a hunch, anyway—how we can get it. Come on. We’re going back to my office.”

“But—my dad told me to wait in the car. If you go to your office, he will see me.”

“We’ll have to sort that out later,” I said, tugging on his collar. “You’re coming with me, big boy.”

NOT HERE, Tucker realized, as he stepped through the glass-paned doors, wearing a long overcoat to hide the knife within. As if this wasn’t sufficiently complicated already. He didn’t want to linger. Too conspicuous. There were likely hidden cameras that had already captured his image; he didn’t want to make it any easier for them than it already was. He couldn’t go away, either; too great a risk of missing his intended. What was he supposed to do? She hadn’t prepared him for this. She had said the target would be there; his challenge would be to create a diversion to get everyone else out of the building. As it turned out, the diversion was unnecessary. Everyone was gone.

He checked his watch, noticed that his hands were shaking. Every second he delayed was a second off schedule, a number lost, an inevitable subtraction. Too many and the plan would be off-kilter.

She wouldn’t love him anymore.

Something had to happen. Something. Maybe if he got down on his knees and prayed—

But that was what she wanted him to do, wasn’t it? In her own way.

He had the phone number. He could call, make up some story. But he knew from experience that every diversion from plan entailed a risk. Phone lines could be recorded, traced. A record would be made of who called whom. The person he sought might become suspicious, might not come alone.

What should he do? He was desperate with anxiety. He touched the tiny blue star tattooed on the inside of his palm, his physical reminder of her, what she had done for him. And all that he had done for her. Even the parts that gave him nightmares. The nightmares still continued. But he could live with that. He could live with anything. As long as he had her.

What could he do? What could he possibly—

And then he saw a face behind the glass doors. A face that matched the picture in the computerized database. The target.

He stepped forward. “Uh, ’scuse me.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m very busy.”

“Oh, I know, I know, but, see, I got information.”

“What kind of information?”

“’Bout that guy you’ve been lookin’ for.”

A beat. “All right. Follow me.”

And he did. As he followed downstairs into the acrylic walled chambers below, he marveled at how truly easy it could be to penetrate the inner chambers of the Las Vegas Central Downtown Police Department.

“CAN’T YOU MAKE that thing work any faster?” I didn’t mean to shout. I would never dream of shouting. But I couldn’t help myself. I knew this was the day. The magical mystical prime number day. It was barely an hour till midnight. Any delay would mean we were too late. “It can’t have taken the killer this long.”

“I think that maybe the killer had an algorithm or program set up to crunch these numbers,” Darcy said, never once removing his eyes from the screen. “I have to make one up.”

“Then do it already.”

He stopped, turned. “I was doing it. Was I doing something wrong?”

“No! Just—don’t stop! For God’s sake—” I wrapped my arms around him, but at the same time, pushed him gently back toward the computer. “Do you realize how important this is? You’re the one who told me the killer would strike again today.”

“Yes.”

“And the only chance we have of stopping him is to find the name of the next victim.”

“That is what I am trying to do.”

“But you’re not—” I pressed my hand against my forehead, pushing long strands of black hair out of my face. I knew I wasn’t helping. Every moment I spoke I distracted Darcy from what he needed to be doing. But I couldn’t help myself. Because I knew one detail Darcy didn’t. I wasn’t simply sure the killer would strike today. I knew he’d promised to hurt someone close to one of us.

I had called the Johnsons, strongly suggested that they get Rachel somewhere safe, someplace no one could get to her, no matter how smart they were. Thank God they listened. I told Granger he should do the same and pass the message on to his detectives. At the same time, I knew it was all probably futile. This creep wouldn’t have given us that information if he thought there was any way we could stop him from doing whatever it was he planned to do.

I’d gotten us back to my computer terminal as quickly as possible and re-entered the DHS database. This was playing a hunch in the extreme, but I felt certain the DHS records were the connection.

Unless I was wrong. Unless the killer really was Granger’s pathetic anti-porn crusader. In which case, the next victim was dead.

“Maybe this is not the answer to the puzzle,” Darcy said, frowning, obviously frustrated.

“It has to be,” I insisted. “The man is a signature killer. We just have to uncover the signature. He’s not going to change, any more than most people can change the way they sign their names. His signature gives him a feeling of power. He may be a loser in real life, but controlling others allows him to feel better about himself.”

“The computer is being very slow. Do you like it when the computer is slow? I get tired of looking at that silly hourglass.”

“Tell me you’ve got something, Darcy,” I muttered under my breath. “Come on. Tell me you’ve got something.”

“I have got something.”

“No, I mean—” I blinked, then crouched over his shoulder. “Really?”

“Yup. See the names the computer is spitting out? It is making a list. The same list it made for our killer.”

“But how could you do it so quickly?”

“I added a few parameters, like I limited the search to people who live inside the city, since all the victims did. And I screened out all the complaining parties. These are just people who had complaints made against them.”

I squeezed him tightly. “You are so damn…smart!”

“Is that a good thing?”

“Of course it is.”

“’Cause sometimes, my dad says, ‘Don’t be smart with me, young man,’ and I think, what’s wrong with being smart? Why is that a bad—”

“Darcy, pay attention to the computer!” I physically adjusted his head to face the screen.

“See!” he cried enthusiastically. “There’s the first name. Amir. That is why he was the first victim. It
is
all in the numbers.”

I watched as the computer added names to the list with what seemed painfully slow speed. “Danielle Dunn. Dane Spencer. Joshua Brazee. My God, Darcy, you cracked the code!” The computer was still thinking. I could barely breathe, waiting. It was the next name, I told myself. All we had to do was wait for the next name. And then we’d know.

What must’ve been seconds seemed an eternity. I could hardly stand it. Come on! I wanted to shout at the damned thing. Give me what I want. Give me what I—

And then it did.

“Oh, my God.” My hands clutched at the base of my throat. “Oh, no. God, no.”

“I do not know that person,” Darcy said. I do not think—” A picture appeared on the screen with a concise bio. “Oh! I do know that person! I do know that person! I just did not know her name. But now I do!” He turned to me. “She is your friend! Do you know where she is?”

“I sure as hell do,” I said, already racing away from the desk. How could I not know where she was? She told me. She said she’d be there till I showed up.

Amelia was waiting for me. But the killer was waiting for her.

“PLEASE DON’T HURT ME!” Amelia screamed, struggling against the handcuffs. “Please! I don’t know anything!”

“You’re not here ’cause of what you know,” Tucker said, calmly heating the branding iron with an acetylene torch, part of the lab’s standard equipment. “You’re here ’cause of what you did.”

“Do you mean what I did for the investigation? Because if so, you’ve got the wrong girl.” Veins throbbed on the sides of Amelia’s smooth forehead. Sweat dripped from her as if she had been out in the rain. She watched as he heated the iron, knowing all too well what he planned to do with it. “I don’t know anything. I’ve been no use to them at all. Useless.”

Tucker held the iron up to the light to see if it was hot enough. It was. “You sold your own child.”

“What?” She stopped, stunned. It took a moment to catch her breath. “You’re—wrong. I—”

“You traded your own flesh and blood for bucks.”

“You don’t know anything about it. I—I was just a child myself. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“God gives us brains so that we can know the right thing to do.”

“Does God know what you’re doing?”

Tucker froze. Even when he resumed movement again, he was slower. Some of the certainty had drained from his eyes. “Course. That’s the whole point. To make God…understand.”

“Then why can’t you understand what I did? Why can’t you at least try?”

“I didn’t choose you. The numbers did. You’re Tiferet, a part of the sacred Sefirot, a part of the holy body.”

“I’m not! My name is Ameila! I’m a scientist! I don’t even believe in—” She stopped herself.

Tucker came closer, holding the iron aloft with its red hot
T,
moving all too certainly toward her. “You will.”