Probably less than thirty.
The girl in the video hadn’t been efficient enough in her solution.
Dora returned and plopped beside Tessa on the bed. “My dad is so totally lost this week without my mom around.”
“Where is she again?”
“Some real estate convention thing in Seattle. Comes back on Wednesday. Anyway, he has to go to the hospital to do an autopsy and he needs me to run some errands. So I’ll have to drop you off at your house by ten.”
That gave them half an hour.
“No prob.” Tessa mentally assigned numbers to each of the fifty-four tiles on the cube. “I’m ready.”
“If you say so.” Dora held out her hand. “Let me mix it up.”
“It’s already mixed up.”
“I’ll mix it up more.”
Tessa managed not to roll her eyes. “Whatever.” She gave Dora the cube.
Dora turned her back, and Tessa could hear the sides clicking, turning.
In truth, mixing up the cube would be just like shuffling a deck of cards in which three times through was no different than twenty times-the degree of randomness introduced into the order of the cards was statistically identical; you could twist and mix it for five minutes, five hours, or five days and it wouldn’t really alter the number of turns required to solve it.
After about thirty seconds or so, Dora turned and handed Tessa the cube.
She studied it. Rotated it 360 degrees. Memorized the color combinations.
“Time me.” Then she closed her eyes.
“You can’t be serious.”
Tessa opened her eyes. “What?”
“With your eyes closed?”
“The Chinese girl did.”
“She probably practiced forever.”
“Maybe she didn’t practice at all. Who knows? I can do it.”
“No way.”
“OK, how about we put a latte on the line. If I can solve it, you buy me one on the way home.”
Dora shrugged. Chomped her gum. “OK. And vice versa. Do I need to get you a blindfold or can I trust you?”
Tessa closed her eyes again. “You can trust me.”
“All right, girl.” Then a pause. Tessa assumed that Dora was checking her watch. “Ready… set… go.”
She took a moment to mentally review the relationship of the fifty-four numbers.
“I started the time,” Dora said.
“Shh.” Tessa began turning the sides of the cube, reorienting the numbers in her head with each turn, visualizing them twist and flip around each other as if the cube were transparent and all the squares had the numbers stenciled on them. Calculating, recalculating their position, their movement, their patterns. It wasn’t as difficult as she’d thought it’d be.
“That’s thirty seconds.”
“Quiet.”
In her mind’s eye, she saw the sides forming, the red side complete, the white side missing only one side piece. She paused. Thought. Twisted.
There. Two sides.
Close.
She worked at the cube methodically. Systematically.
“Fifty seconds.”
“Dora, shh!”
Turn, turn.
Turn.
Yes. All the numbers aligned.
There. She punched the cube onto the bed and opened her eyes. “Time.”
“A minute four seconds,” Dora said. They were both staring at the cube, which was at least as mixed up as before. “Wow.” Dora used a friendly kind of sarcasm. “Impressive. I think I’ll get a grande.”
“Dang,” Tessa muttered. “That should have worked.”
“Here.” Dora stuck the cube into the satchel that Tessa used as a purse. “Take it. It’s yours.”
“No, that’s crazy.”
“Seriously. That thing is just way too hard for me.” She waited for Tessa to take it. “Go on. It’s cool.”
Finally, Tessa accepted it. “Sweet. Thanks.”
“Oh!” Dora said. “You are not gonna believe this. We’re getting a dog!”
Dora was the queen of randomness.
“A dog?” Tessa didn’t even try to hide her disdain.
“Yeah. Dad says he thinks it’ll help. Things have been hard, you know, ever since-”
“Yeah, I get it.”
“I know it seems kind of weird to get a dog when-”
“No-no-no-no.” Tessa squeezed all the no’s together into one word. She knew that coping with grief and guilt wasn’t easy, even if something wasn’t your fault. Lately she’d turned to journaling and writing poetry to sort through her feelings, but right after her mom died, she’d been into cutting, self-inflicting on her arm, to deal with the pain and loneliness. Getting a pet was a lot better way to cope than that.
“You don’t have to explain. But it’s just, a dog? C’mon, get a cat instead.”
Dora looked somewhat deflated. “What’s wrong with a dog? Dogs are man’s best friend.”
“Well, I have a policy: whenever my best friend starts sniffing my butt and eating his own vomit, it’s time to find a new best friend.”
“Oh,” Dora said. “Wow. Thanks for that image.”
“No prob.”
“Maybe we oughtta get a cat.”
“Good choice.”
And then Dora launched into an explanation of how her cousin had gotten a cat when she was visiting her last summer in Orlando and how she’d introduced her to this really hot guy who worked at Disney World-and then Dora sighed and started talking about how much she’d miss Tessa while she was in DC this summer and how she was hoping to get a job at Elitch Gardens after they were done with finals, which she was totally not ready for…
But Tessa’s attention had drifted back to Dora’s screen saver.
She carefully averted her eyes and pretended to listen to her friend.
I was outside Taylor’s house waiting for Cheyenne when Kurt approached me. He didn’t look happy. “That call I got a few minutes ago,” he said. “It was the captain. There’s something I need to tell you.”
By Kurt’s tone of voice I was pretty sure the captain hadn’t invited us to join him for a beer after work. “What is it?”
“You know how he’s not exactly dialed into your techniques…”
Here we go. “Yes?”
“Well, last night he talked with your supervisor at the Bureau-Assistant Director Wellington.”
Great.
Ever since I’d testified in an internal affairs review a few years ago that had temporarily set back her career plans, Margaret Wellington had been gunning for me with both barrels. I braced myself for bad news.
“She told Captain Terrell that with Basque’s trial and the shooting yesterday, she’s afraid you might be distracted, not at the top of your game.”
I could feel my temperature rising. “The top of my game.”
“Her words, not mine. She’s sending someone else to work the case with us. Captain Terrell already signed off on it. He’s a big fan of those profiling TV shows, so he-”
“She’s sending a profiler?” If Margaret was sending Lien-hua, things were going to get very awkward very fast.
“Yeah.”
“Did he say who? Was it Special Agent Jiang? Lien-hua Jiang?”
“No. Some guy named Vanderveld. Didn’t mention a first name.”
Oh, that was even worse. “Jake Vanderveld.”
“So you know him.”
“Oh yeah. We’re acquainted.”
Kurt stared at me for a moment, no doubt trying to decipher what lay beneath my words. “Anything I should know?”
Margaret knew how I felt about Jake. That’s probably why she’d assigned him to the case.
“Have you noticed how I’m not exactly the biggest fan of profilers?”
“I may have picked up on that.”
“Well, he’s the reason why.” I saw Cheyenne climbing into the driver’s seat. “I’ll run it down for you later. When does he get here?”
“He’s supposed to fly in sometime around noon. I guess he’ll probably want to be briefed this afternoon at HQ. I’ll let you know when I find out more.”
Cheyenne rolled down the window and slipped her key into the ignition. “What’s up?” she called.
“I’ll tell you on the way.” I opened the car door. “Let’s go visit the morgue.”
23
Room 404, Investigative Journalism SuiteThe Denver News BuildingDowntown Denver 9:22 a.m.