I stood and looked around.
Reggie was staring at me. “Blood spatter’s not your specialty?”
“That’s right.” I was studying the sight lines out the window to Brigitte’s car. If the lights had been off inside the garage, her headlights would have partially illuminated the room.
Reggie must have been listening in on my conversation with Kurt a few moments earlier, because he said, “But if the killer snuck into the house and unloaded the guns, why didn’t he just kill Taylor while he was defenseless in the shower? Why wait?”
“Maybe this wasn’t just about killing him. I don’t think he wanted it to be over quickly: trap him in the garage, disable him, but leave him the guns to make him think he’d be able to get away. Like a cat toying with a mouse.”
“Death isn’t enough,” Cheyenne said softly. “He wants to see them squirm first.”
I heard a cell ring, and both Kurt and I reached for our pockets. When I pulled out my phone, I noticed I’d forgotten to turn it on for the day. Kurt tapped at his screen. “I gotta take this.”
He stepped away. I turned on my cell, and Reggie resumed dusting for prints on the doorknob. Cheyenne stood beside me quietly for a moment, then said, “Did you get to the evidence list page in the case files?”
I put my phone away. “No.”
She pointed to a receipt on the far end of the workbench. “It’s for Chinese takeout. CSU found three empty cartons of food.”
“You’re kidding me.” I checked the time on the receipt. The cashier had rung it up at 8:18 p.m.
“No. Brigitte picked up the food on the way here, but none of it was in her stomach.” Then she added grimly, no doubt referring to Brigitte’s dismemberment, “We didn’t need an autopsy to figure that one out.”
But Taylor had showered, changed, and was about to get into his car when he was attacked… He wasn’t expecting takeout, he was expecting to leave…
We could check the incoming calls and text messages on Brigitte’s phone, but for now it looked to me like the killer had somehow contacted her and convinced her to bring over the food.
And the food cartons had been empty when CSU found them.
Which meant that he ate the Chinese food while he killed and dismembered those two people.
This guy was the real deal. As cold and disturbing as they get.
“Has Dr. Bender completed the autopsy on Taylor yet?” I asked Cheyenne.
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
I speed-dialed his number, and when Eric picked up I apologized for calling him so early, then asked how the sleepover had gone. “Good,” he said. “The girls are in Dora’s room right now on the computer.”
It surprised me that Tessa was already awake, but I stuck to the case. “Eric, when is Sebastian Taylor’s autopsy scheduled?”
“I’m leaving for the hospital in about half an hour.” Then he added soberly, “It’s been a busy week. I’ve barely been able to keep up. I plan to get started about ten.”
I’m not a fan of watching autopsies. I looked at my watch: 9:09.
It struck me that in less than forty-eight hours I would be back on the stand in Chicago. I decided not to think about that. “Is it all right if I swing by and have a look at the body before you get started?”
“Sure. I’ll have Lance Rietlin meet you. He’s my resident this year. He’ll get you whatever you need. Something specific you’re looking for?”
“I have a few questions about the wounds, the way he was attacked. I’ll see you there.”
“OK. See you soon.”
Pocketing the phone, I turned to Cheyenne. “We can let CSU finish up here. If we leave now, I think we’ll have just enough time to inspect the corpse before Dr. Bender gets started.”
She pulled out her keys. “Let me take one more look around. I’ll meet you at the car.”
22
Tessa and Dora had taken some time away from the videos to shower, dress, and eat a breakfast of cold pizza before returning to the computer to check their Facebook pages.
After ten minutes, Dora slapped the desk.
“I just remembered this other video I wanted to show you.”
Every one of her words sounded slightly squished because of the strawberry bubble gum she’d popped into her mouth a few minutes earlier. “Have you seen the ones of those kids doing the Rubik’s Cube blindfolded?”
“Uh-uh.” Tessa had heard about the Rubik’s Cube videos and knew they’d been around for a while but hadn’t really been that interested in them. But now it sounded like it might make Dora happy, might keep her from thinking about the reason she hadn’t been able to sleep so well, so she acted like she was into the idea. “Sure, yeah, let’s check ’em out.”
“It’s pretty insane.” Dora was tapping at the keyboard. “You ever try to figure one out?”
“Nope.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, why?”
Dora shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just, you’re so into puzzles and stuff.” She scrolled to a frozen video image of a Chinese girl about their age holding a Rubik’s Cube. “Here’s the best one. She does it in less than a minute.”
She pressed “play,” and Tessa watched as the girl in the video studied the mixed-up cube, waited while someone else blindfolded her, and then twisted the sides until, only fifty-seven seconds later, the entire cube was solved. Then she set it down, removed the blindfold, and smiled.
“Amazing, huh?” Dora pulled her own Rubik’s Cube off her bookshelf and handed it to Tessa. All the sides were mixed up. “At first I thought maybe she memorized the moves, but I don’t know, she must have twisted it like forty or fifty times.”
“Let’s watch it again.”
They did.
“Seventy-two,” Tessa said.
“Seventy-two what?”
“She twisted it seventy-two times.”
Reaching across the keyboard, Tessa slid the cursor to the “play” icon and tapped the mouse button. Dora took the opportunity to look in the mirror and pick at her hair.
When the video was done, Tessa began to study the cube Dora had handed her.
“It’s wild, huh?” Dora said. “I can’t do it. There are like a billion different combinations.”
Tessa considered that… six sides… nine squares on each side… “Probably more than that,” she mumbled.
“So, see?” Dora said. “That’s what makes it so amazing that those kids can solve it blindfolded.”
“I think I can do it.”
“Do what? Solve it?”
“Yeah,” Tessa said. She was already practicing twisting the sides, getting a feel for the way the cube worked, the way one turn would affect the color combinations on the other sides.
“Well, yeah, if you practice for like-”
Dora’s dad called to her from the other room, and she tapped a finger against the air. “Hold that thought.”
While her friend slipped away, Tessa examined the cube. There were at least three ways to go about solving it. First, cheat. Look up the solution online. Maybe watch an instructional video.
Not exactly her thing.
Second, work the cube until you instinctively knew the patterns, sort of like typing or learning a musical instrument. But that would take days, weeks. Maybe longer.
No, to solve it quickly, you’d need a different approach.
So, math. By assigning a different number to each of the fifty-four squares, solving the cube became nothing more than a slightly-OK, a little more than slightly-complex three-dimensional algebraic equation. And since the middle pieces didn’t move, and each of the other squares was fixed in relationship to the neighboring square on the adjacent side of the cube, the number of turns needed to solve it shrank exponentially.
She figured that, however mixed up the sides were, the cube could always be solved in fewer than forty turns.