The number 23.
Sitting at his desk, he doodled the number several times. There was a very good chance it didn’t mean a damn thing.
He thought about the squirrels. Just the squirrels.
Let’s say you’re some sick bastard trying to make a statement. You decide the way you’re going to get your point across is by killing some animals. And that’s what you do. But why not ten? Why not a dozen? Maybe twenty-five.
Why do you pick a number like twenty-three?
Duckworth Googled it. The first thing that came up was the Wikipedia entry. “Always a reliable source,” Duckworth said under his breath.
It was the ninth prime number.
It was the sum of three other consecutive prime numbers: five, seven, and eleven.
It was the atomic number of vanadium, whatever the hell vanadium was. Duckworth thought that might be one of the coffee flavors Wanda had offered him.
It was the number on Michael Jordan’s shirt when he played for the Chicago Bulls.
In one of the Matrix movies, Neo was told that—
The phone rang.
“Duckworth.”
“It’s Wanda.”
“Hey, I was just thinking of you. What’s vanadium?”
“It’s a kind of mineral,” she said. “It has some medical applications.”
“How do you know that?”
“I took science. You take a bit of that when you become a doctor. Is this important?”
“Probably not. I was just—”
“I don’t care what you’re doing,” the medical examiner said. “Just get your ass over here.”
“What were you doing three years ago this month?” Wanda Therrieult asked him after he’d arrived.
“I don’t know, offhand,” Duckworth said. “Working, I’d guess.”
“I’m betting you weren’t. I wasn’t. I was taking some time to be with my sister, who was in her last few weeks.”
“I remember that,” Duckworth said. “Duluth.”
“That’s right.”
Duckworth was thinking. “Vacation,” he said. “Opening of pickerel season. In Ontario. Went up with a friend to a place called Bobcaygeon. Was gone the better part of ten days.”
“Sit down,” she said, and pointed to a second chair she’d wheeled over to her desk. She moved the mouse to make the screen come to life. There appeared three autopsy photos.
“I’m guessing these look familiar to you,” Wanda said.
Duckworth pointed, keeping his finger away from the screen. They were all close-up shots. “Yeah. This is where Rosemary Gaynor was grabbed around the neck. There’s the thumb imprint here, the other four fingers here, and that’s where he stabbed her. The... smile. This is all kind of familiar, Wanda. It’s only been a couple of days.”
“This isn’t Rosemary Gaynor.”
Duckworth moved his tongue around the inside of his teeth. “Go on,” he said.
“This is Olivia Fisher.” She paused. “You remember Olivia Fisher.”
She clicked, brought up a small picture of the dead woman. Young, black hair to her shoulders, smiling into the camera. In the background was Thackeray College, where she had been a student.
“Of course,” Duckworth said. “But I was never the primary on that. It was Rhonda Finderman. Before she became chief.”
“That’s why we didn’t make the connection right away.”
“Shit,” Duckworth said. “She should have. She’s so busy with things that have nothing to do with Promise Falls she doesn’t know what’s going on in her own backyard.”
Wanda did a few lightning-quick keystrokes and mouse maneuvers, and brought up autopsy photos from the Gaynor case, as well as a photo of the woman that had made an online news site.
“You’re right,” Duckworth said. “The wounds are nearly identical.” He reached a hand out toward the screen, as though he wanted to touch the face of Rosemary Gaynor.
“Look at her hair, her face,” he said. “The black hair, the complexions of the two women.”
“Very similar,” Wanda said.
Duckworth shook his head slowly. “God, I need a doughnut.”
“Who killed Rosemary Gaynor, Barry?”
He hesitated. “Finderman likes the doctor for it.”
Wanda pointed at the screen, the two dead women. “You think Sturgess did this?”
Barry Duckworth studied the images. “No.”
“Then you know what this means,” she said.
Duckworth nodded.
“It means our guy’s come back,” he said. “Or maybe he never left. Maybe he’s always been here.”
Seventy-three
I feel rested.
Ready to get back at it.
Still so much to do.
Acknowledgments
Authors need help, and I had plenty. Thanks go to Susan Lamb, Heather Connor, John Aitchison, Danielle Perez, Bill Massey, Spencer Barclay, Helen Heller, Brad Martin, Nick Whelan, Kara Welsh, Graeme Williams, Gaby Young, Paige Barclay, Ashley Dunn, Kristin Cochrane, Juliet Ewers, Eva Kolcze and D. P. Lyle.
And, as always, the booksellers.