“That’s great. Good job.”
“It’s only two sides. Besides, I was cheating. Are they gonna put him away?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “How?”
“How what?”
“How were you cheating?”
Her expression told me that I’d just asked the stupidest question of the week. “I had my eyes open.”
“Oh, OK… and?”
“There are these kids on YouTube who can do it blindfolded.”
“Wow.” I took the cube from her again. Scrutinized it. I could hardly believe anyone could solve it blindfolded, unless he’d memorized the pattern of turns. “So have you ever solved the whole thing?”
“Sure, yeah; it’s not that hard, you just have to understand how the pieces move in relationship to each other; so when will they decide? The jury, I mean?”
“Tessa, these things take time-”
Dora appeared beside me. Slipped past me into the room. “He said he’s gonna do all he can to swing by and pick me up. I told him it was no big deal.” She turned to Tessa. “I can borrow some clothes, right?”
“Yeah, no problem.”
The girls are fine, Pat. Get back to the case.
I set the cube on the dresser next to Tessa’s jewelry box, which she must have brought from home while I was in Chicago. “I have to go. I’ll see you two later tonight. If you need anything, call me.”
“By the way,” Tessa said, “am I ever gonna get my phone back?” “As soon as I can get a new one.”
Both girls told me good-bye, and I turned to go but stopped mid-stride. “Wait a minute.” I spun, leaned into her room. “What did you just say?”
“Um, that I want my phone back.”
“No. About the cube. Just a minute ago. You said something about solving the cube.”
She looked at me quizzically, almost defensively. “I don’t know. Just that you have to understand how the pieces-”
“Move in relationship to each other,” I finished her sentence for her.
“Yeah, so what? What’s wrong?”
“Yes.” Thoughts twisting, rotating, clicking in my mind. “That’s it. You’re a genius.”
“Yeah, right,” she grumbled. “Stupid tests are skewed toward-”
“I have to go. I’ll call you later.” My thoughts were spinning forward as I ran down the stairs.
I could see the pieces of the case-one side of the cube where everything fit together so perfectly: the abandoned mine… Cherry Creek Reservoir… the travel routes from Denver International Airport to the morgue… Elwin Daniels’s credit card purchase of the greyhound-one side solved.
Yes, on Saturday, all the evidence pointed to the ranch-because that’s where John wanted it to point.
“Have you figured out how I’m choosing the victims yet?” he had asked me on the phone. “That would really be the key, here.”
I rushed to the car for my laptop, set it on the kitchen table. Opened it up.
Relationships.
Yes, that was the key.
“What did Giovanni write to you about?” I’d asked Basque.
“You,” he’d said.
Yes, yes, yes. The tenth story. Someone gets buried alive.
My mother entered the kitchen and must have seen that I was in the middle of something because she quietly returned to the living room to work on a crossword puzzle.
It is essential for the investigator to understand his opponent’s intellect, training, and aptitude and then respond accordingly.
But I hadn’t been doing that. I’d been investigating John the same way I do other killers: looking at the clues, the patterns, the timing and location of the crimes he’d committed. But John wasn’t like other killers. He was smart, so smart that he’d planned out everything from the beginning.
And that’s what was going to help me catch him.
I clicked to the online case files.
To “Victim Files.”
Chose “New.”
John had always been one step ahead.
Yesterday on the phone, he’d taunted me by saying that the only way to catch him was to move out in front of him-and now I realized that he was right, but he’d made the mistake of letting me know where he was going.
He wrote to Basque about you.
He phoned you.
He chose you.
The secret to catching him wasn’t going to be studying the victims he’d killed but the ones he’d chosen.
And the one victim I knew about, the one piece of the puzzle I hadn’t included in the geoprofile yet, was the final victim in the story.
Me.
100
Giovanni left Amy Lynn’s unconscious body, now tightly bound, on the kitchen floor, and carried his duffel bag to the master bedroom.
He didn’t want their evening together to be interrupted, so he turned on the police scanner he’d brought with him and dialed it to the dispatch frequency.
Then he pulled ten Chantel candles out of the duffel bag, set them on the dresser.
Laid the knives that he would be needing next to them.
And began to light the candles.
Using FALCON, I brought up a map of Denver and overlaid the crime scene locations and victimology information from all of the other victims so far.
Then, just like I would have done for any other victim, I plugged my personal data into the geoprofile: my home and work addresses, typical travel routes, routine activity patterns, everything. And since I knew the scope of my geographic patterns better than any other victim I’d ever analyzed, I had the most detailed victimology information of my career.
At the trial on Friday, I’d told Richard Basque’s lawyer that the more locations, the more accurate the geoprofile can be, and now, by including my data, I hoped I might just have enough information.
You have to understand how the pieces move in relationship to each other.
On the flight, when I’d run the numbers, the computer had identified four hot zones, but now when I pressed enter, only one geographic area came up. According to the software’s calculations, there was a 71.3 percent probability that the offender worked in, lived in, or frequented a four-block radius downtown.
That was good enough for me to roll with.
I tapped the mouse, and a 3-D image of Denver’s downtown appeared on the screen. Using the cursor like an airplane, I cruised between the buildings. They tilted, pivoted, and slid past me like they would have in a high-end, three-dimensional video game. I studied the orientation of the businesses, apartment buildings, streets.
Nearly all of the victims’ travel routes-including mine-intersected on the southeast corner of one of those downtown blocks.
I zoomed in.
Reviewed the routes again.
Everything revolved around that one location.
That’s where our lives touch his. That’s where he’s choosing his victims.
Oh yes.
That was it.
The business on the corner.
The place the cube clicked together.
A coffeehouse.
Rachel’s Cafe.
101
I yanked out Tessa’s cell. Ran to the door. Punched in Cheyenne’s number.
She answered as the door banged shut behind me. “Hey, I’m on my way, I just-”
“Meet me at Rachel’s Cafe. Remember?” I was sprinting to my car. “Where we went the other night. We need to hurry.”
“What’s going on?”
“It’s all about the pieces-how they move in relationship to each other.”
“The pieces? What are you talking about?”
“How long will it take you to get there?”
“I don’t know. Fifteen minutes.”
“Make it ten.”
I jumped into the car, floored the accelerator, and peeled away from the curb.
Tessa heard the front door slam, and a moment later Patrick’s car roared into the street. She wondered what was up and headed down the stairs with Dora close behind her. “Does he always act this way?” her friend asked.
“No. Sometimes he can be a little impulsive.”