I stood, brushed some sawdust from my knee, and went back into the house.
The windows seemed normal, untampered with. There was broken glass on the floor by the window where the uniforms had entered. Other than being shattered, it also appeared normal.
The front door was unlocked; after breaching the residence through the window, the uniforms had opened the door to let the rest of the crew inside. I examined the door, and didn't find anything unusual.
The kitchen was small, tidy. A Dell puzzle magazine rested on the table, next to the salt and pepper. Another sat by the sink. The dishwasher contained eight clean mason jars, with lids, and a turkey baster. Nothing else. No garbage in the garbage can. The refrigerator was empty except for a box of baking soda. The freezer contained three full trays of ice cubes.
I checked cabinets, found a few glasses and dishes, but no food. The drawers held silverware, some dishtowels, and a full box of Swedish Fish cherry gummy candy.
I left the kitchen for the den, sat at the late Edward Wyatt's desk, and inched my way through it. There was a bankbook for a savings account. It held $188,679.42—up until last month when the account had been emptied out.
I kept digging and found a file full of receipts dating back ten years. Last month, the victim had apparently toured Europe, staying in London, Paris, Rome, and Berlin. Bills for fancy restaurants abounded. The most recent purchases included several hundred dollars at a local hardware store, a dinner for two at the 95th Floor that cost over six-hundred dollars, a one week stay at the Four Seasons hotel in Chicago, a digital video recorder and an expensive new stereo, and a bill for wall-to-wall carpeting; the beige shag Mr. Wyatt was currently staining had been installed last month.
I also found several grocery lists, and the handwriting seemed to match the handwriting on the suicide note.
Next to the desk, on a cabinet, sat a Chicago phonebook. It was open to BURGLAR ALARMS.
The den also had a cabinet which contained some games (Monopoly, chess, Clue, backgammon) and jigsaw puzzles, including an old Rubik's Cube. I remember solving mine, back in the 1980s, by pulling the stickers off the sides. This one had also been solved, and the stickers appeared intact.
I left the den and found the door to the basement. It was small, unfinished. The floor was bare concrete, and a florescent lamp attached to an overhead beam provided adequate light. A utility sink sat in a corner, next to a washer and dryer. On the other side was a workbench, clean and tidy. The drawers contained the average assortment of hand tools; wrenches, hammers, screwdrivers, saws, chisels. Atop the workbench was an electric reciprocating saw that looked practically new.
A closet was tucked away in the corner. Inside I found an old volleyball net, a large roll of carpet padding, a croquet set, some scraps of decorative trim, and half a can of blue paint. Also, hanging on a makeshift rack, were three badminton rackets, an extra-large super-soaker squirt gun, and a plastic lawn chair.
After snooping until there was nothing left to snoop, I met Herb back in the living room.
“Find anything?” Herb asked.
I described through my search, ending with the Swedish Fish.
“That was the only food?” Herb asked.
“Seems to be.”
“Are we taking it as evidence?”
“I'm not sure yet. Why?”
“I love Swedish Fish.”
“If I poured chocolate syrup on the corpse, would you eat that too?”
“You found chocolate syrup?”
I switched gears. “You figure out the note?”
Herb smiled. “Yeah. Funny how the note is perfectly clean when everything around it, and behind it, is soaked in blood.”
“Find anything else?”
“I tossed the bedrooms upstairs, found some basics; clothes, shoes, linen. Bathroom contained bathroom stuff; towels, toiletries, a lot of puzzle magazines. Another bookshelf—non-fiction this time. Some prescription meds in the cabinet.” Benedict checked his pad. “Diflucan, Abarelix, Taxotere, and Docetexel.”
“Cancer drugs,” Phil Blasky said. He held Wyatt's right arm. “That explains this plastic catheter implanted in his vein and this rash on his neck. This man has been on long term chemotherapy.”
A picture began to form in my head, but I didn't have all the pieces yet.
“Herb, did you find any religious paraphernalia? Bibles, crucifixes, prayer books, things like that?”
“No. There were some books upstairs, but mostly philosophy and logic puzzles. In fact, there was a whole shelf dedicated to Free-Thinking.”
“As opposed to thinking that costs money?”
“That's a term atheists use.”
Curiouser and curiouser.
“I found receipts for a new stereo and camcorder. Were they upstairs?” I asked.
“The stereo was, set-up in the bedroom next to that big bay window. I didn't see any camcorders.”
“Let me see that note again.”
The suicide letter had been placed in a clear plastic bag. I read it twice, then had to laugh. “Quite a few religious references for a Free-Thinker.”
“If he was dying of cancer, maybe he found God.”
“Or maybe he found a way to die on his terms.”
“Meaning?”
“The terms of a man who loved mysteries, games, and puzzles. Look at the first letter of each sentence.”
Herb read silently, his lips moving. “G-E-T-A-C-L-U-E. Cute. You know, I became a cop because it required very little lateral thinking.”
“I thought it was because vendors gave you free donuts.”
“Shhh. Hold on...I'm forming a hypothesis.”
“I'll alert the media.”
Phil Blasky snorted. “You guys have a drink minimum for this show?”
Herb ignored us. “Wyatt obviously had some help, because the note was placed on top of the blood. But was his help in the form of assisted suicide? Or murder?”
“It doesn't matter to us—they're treated the same way.”
“Exactly. So if this is a game for us to figure out, and the clues have been staged, will the clues lead us to what really happened, or to what Wyatt or the killer would like us to believe really happened?”
The word 'game' made me remember the cabinet in the den. I returned to it, finding the Parker Brothers classic board game, Clue. Inside the box, instead of cards, pieces, and a game board, was a cryptogram magazine.
“I'm going out to the car to get my deermilker cap,” Herb said.
“It's deerstalker. While you're out there, call the Irregulars.”
I removed the magazine and flipped through it, noting that all of the puzzles had been solved. Nothing else appeared unusual. I went through it again, slower, and noticed that page 20 had been circled.
“Herb, grab all puzzle magazines you can find. I'll meet you back here in five.”
I did a quick search of the first floor and gathered up eight magazines. Each had a different page number circled. Herb waddled down the stairs a moment later.
“I've got twelve of them.”
“Did he circle page numbers?”
“Yeah.”
We took the magazines over to the dining room table and spread them out. Herb made a list of the page number circled in each issue.
“Let's try chronological order,” I said. “The earliest issue is February of last year. Write down the page numbers beginning with that one.”
I watched Herb jot down 7, 19, 22, 14, 26, 13, 4, 19, 12, 16, 13, 22, 4, 7, 12, 12, 14, 6, 24, and 19.
Herb rubbed his mustache. “No number higher than twenty-six. Could be an alphabet code.” He hummed the alphabet, stopping at the seventh letter. “Number seven is G.”
“Yeah, but nineteen is S and twenty-two is V. What word starts with GSV?”
“Maybe it's reverse chronological order. Start with the latest magazine.”