I raised an eyebrow.
“And given the relative brevity of the messages, that leaves a lot of characters to decode on not much information. Over half of the symbols appear only one or two times. See, he starts by substituting each letter for another symbol, then transposes these symbols, creating a hybrid substitution-transposition cipher. The cipher alphabet changes after every seven letters. So each letter of the plaintext is represented by several different symbols in the cipher-text. It’s called polyalphabetic cryptology.”
“So,” I ventured, “have you cracked it?”
“No way. It’s a major accomplishment just to have figured out what it is. I suspect a full decoding will require one of those mainframe code-breaking computers at the CIA. All I have is a few words. That first cipher says something about a grave. A deep one, I think.”
“ ‘Deep, deep, and for ever, into some ordinary and nameless grave.’ ”
There was a pause. “Could be. Where’d you get that?”
“And the other one reads, ‘In the multiplied objects of the external world I had no thoughts but for the teeth.’ ”
“Teeth?” He fairly squealed into the receiver. “No wonder I didn’t- What kind of message is that?”
A damn good question. “You ever read Edgar Allan Poe?”
“ ‘The Gold Bug.’ ”
“ ‘The Gold Bug’?” I hadn’t gotten that far yet. “What’s that?”
“Short story. Big hunt for pirate treasure. Which they find by solving a substitution cipher.”
“Poe wrote about ciphers?”
“He was the first writer to ever use one in a story, if I’m not mistaken. He’s probably the granddaddy of American codes and code breaking. He was really into it. The story gives a mini-lecture on how to solve cryptograms. As I recall, he ran ciphers in whatever magazine he was editing at the time and challenged people to send him one he couldn’t crack. I don’t think he was ever stumped.”
Codes were important to Poe. And so of course they were important to anyone to whom Poe was important.
“You know, Susan, if your killer’s really into Poe, he may be up to some seriously bizarro business.”
I let Colin sign off, with that sobering thought ringing in my head.
After a brief stop, I pulled into the O’Bannon driveway at a quarter after nine. Darcy was waiting for me on the front porch.
“You came!” he said, plainly delighted. Was he worried that I wouldn’t? I approached bearing tall ones from the corner Starbucks clone. I needed a cobweb clearer, and I thought he might, too.
“How ’bout a cup of jamoke? Your choice-regular, or the more exotic white chocolate mocha.”
He stared at them, not taking either. “On Wednesdays I have two eggs and bacon and the eggs sunny-side up and not touching the bacon and a half glass of orange juice at eight o’clock. Then I take Bus 17 to the day care center so I can be there by nine, except today I called and told them I wasn’t coming so it’s okay that I’m not there yet.”
And they say autistics are inflexible. “So you want coffee or not?”
He was still staring at the cups. “Did you know that most coffee comes from the west coast of Africa?”
“I thought South America…”
“Less than ten percent comes from South America. Most comes from Africa, where acid rain is constant and bathes the coffee beans all year round.”
That explains the rich aroma. “Come on, Darcy. Choose your poison.”
“Caffeine has been used as a highly effective poison in many agricultural arenas.”
“Well, I’m not a plant. Take one.”
He hesitated, looking at the cups the same way he had looked at the spider. “Did you know that caffeine is more addictive than cocaine?”
My arms were getting tired. “No…”
“It’s also a diuretic. It dries you up and creates an addiction. Causes headaches and diarrhea and other physiological ailments.”
I sighed. “You don’t want any coffee, do you?”
“Scientists say that it’s best to avoid addictive substances. Do you think that it’s best to avoid addictive substances?”
The cups were starting to burn my fingers. I poured the mocha into the grass. “Absolutely. Horrible things, those addictive substances. Avoid at all costs.”
The Poe Gallery. Of course. The significance of this burial site was increasingly apparent, thanks to Darcy.
There were only a few cops left at the Transylvania. A couple of techs and one uniform standing guard. Another day or two and the room would likely be released back to the hotel. What they would do with it, I had no idea. I suspected the memory of a real corpse turning up in this Disney-Meets-Death joint might spoil the fun for some of the patrons.
Tony Crenshaw was on the scene. I decided to walk over and give him a good chin-wag. “Anything new?”
“No. Not here, anyway. There’s a rumor the coroner might release something later today.”
“Be still my heart.”
I noticed that Darcy was hanging back. Probably shy around people he didn’t know. I thought about introducing him around, then decided it was probably best to let him absorb the crime scene in his own way at his own speed.
“You see my e-mail on the Poe connection?” I asked.
“Jesus Christ, yes. The whole office was buzzing about it this morning.”
“What’s the general opinion at the watercooler?”
“Either the killer is crazy or you are. Possibly both.”
I smiled a little. “What do you think?”
“I think you should’ve kept your theories to yourself. Something that warped is bound to leak out.”
“What if it does?”
“This is nutty stuff, Susan. The press is already leading with this story. If they get wind of this development…” He made a slashing gesture across his throat.
“I just wanted to get my theory on the table so I could get input from the other geniuses in the department.”
“Other?”
And of course I wanted to show everyone that I wasn’t too inebriated to do my job. That O’Bannon hadn’t committed a spectacular error in judgment by involving me. I wanted to make sure I got credit. Even if my brilliant breakthrough was mostly attributable to a twenty-six-year-old autistic guy. “You read much Poe, Tony?”