“That’s the number I recall from the press reports.”
“Then obviously this is a very different situation. That was basically a fraudulent direct-mail campaign-a big net thrown out to catch a few guilty fish. That’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about handwritten notes to a handful of people-people for whom the number six fifty-eight must have had some personal meaning.”
Gurney slowly opened his eyes and stared at Kline. “But it didn’t. At first I assumed it did, because why else would it come to mind? So I kept asking Mark Mellery that question-what did the number mean to him, what did it remind him of, had he ever thought of it before, had he ever seen it written, was it the price of something, an address, a safe combination? But he kept insisting the number meant nothing to him, that he never remembered thinking of it before, that it simply popped into his mind-a perfectly random event. And I believe he was telling the truth. So there has to be another explanation.”
“So that means you’re back where you started,” said Rodriguez, rolling his eyes with exaggerated weariness.
“Maybe not. Maybe Sergeant Wigg’s con game is closer to the truth here than we think.”
“Are you trying to tell me that our killer sent out a million letters-a million handwritten letters? That’s ridiculous-not to mention impossible.”
“I agree that a million letters would be impossible, unless he had an awful lot of help, which isn’t likely. But what number would be possible?”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s say our killer had a scheme that involved sending out letters to a lot of people-handwritten, so each recipient would get the impression that his letter was a one-of-a-kind personal communication. How many letters do you think he could write in, say, one year?”
The captain threw up his hands, intimating that the question was not only unanswerable but frivolous. Kline and Hardwick looked more serious-as if they might be attempting some kind of calculation. Stimmel, as always, projected amphibian inscrutability. Rebecca Holdenfield was watching Gurney with growing fascination. Blatt looked like he was trying to determine the source of a foul odor.
Wigg was the only one to speak. “Five thousand,” she said. “Ten, if he were highly motivated. Conceivably fifteen, but that would be difficult.”
Kline squinted at her with lawyerly skepticism. “Sergeant, these numbers are based on what, exactly?”
“To begin with, a couple of reasonable assumptions.”
Rodriguez shook his head-implying that nothing on earth was more fallible than other people’s reasonable assumptions. If Wigg noticed, she didn’t care enough to let it distract her.
“First is the assumption that the model of the private-eye scam is applicable. If it is, it follows that the first communication-the one asking for money-would be sent to the most people and subsequent communications only to people who responded. In our own case, we know that the first communication consisted of two eight-line notes-a total of sixteen fairly short lines, plus a three-line address on the outer envelope. Except for the addresses, the letters would all be the same, making the writing repetitive and rapid. I would estimate that each mailing piece would take about four minutes to complete. That would be fifteen per hour. If he devoted just one hour a day to it, he’d have over five thousand done in a year. Two hours a day would result in close to eleven thousand. Theoretically, he could do a lot more, but there are limits to the diligence of even the most obsessed person.”
“Actually,” said Gurney with the dawning excitement of a scientist who finally sees a pattern in a sea of data, “eleven thousand would be more than enough.”
“Enough to do what?” asked Kline.
“Enough to pull off the six fifty-eight trick, for one thing,” said Gurney. “And that little trick, if it was done the way I’m thinking it was done, would also explain the $289.87 request in the first letter to each of the victims.”
“Whoa,” said Kline, raising his hand. “Slow down. You’re going around the corners a little too fast.”
Chapter 45
Gurney thought it through one more time. It was almost too simple, and he wanted to be sure he hadn’t overlooked some obvious problem that would blow a hole in his elegant hypothesis. He noted a variety of facial expressions around the table-mixtures of excitement, impatience, and curiosity-as everyone waited for him to speak. He took a long, deep breath.
“I can’t say for certain that this is exactly how it was done. However, it’s the only credible scenario that’s occurred to me in all the time I’ve been wrestling with those numbers-which goes back to the day Mark Mellery came to my home and showed me the first letter. He was so baffled and frightened by the idea that the letter writer knew him so well he could predict what number he’d think of when asked to think of any number from one to a thousand. I could feel the panic in him, the sense of doom. No doubt it was the same with the other victims. That panic was the whole point of the game that was being played. How could he know what number I’d think of? How could he know something so intimate, so personal, so private as a thought? What else does he know? I could see those questions torturing him-literally driving him crazy.”
“Frankly, Dave,” said Kline with ill-concealed agitation, “they’re driving me crazy, too, and the sooner you can answer them, the better.”
“Damn right,” agreed Rodriguez. “Let’s get to the point.”
“If I may express a slightly contrary opinion,” said Holdenfield anxiously, “I’d like to hear the detective explain this in his own way at his own pace.”
“It’s embarrassingly simple,” said Gurney. “Embarrassing to me, because the longer I stared at the problem, the more impenetrable it seemed to be. And figuring out how he pulled off his trick with the number nineteen didn’t cast any light on how the six fifty-eight business worked. The obvious solution never occurred to me-not until Sergeant Wigg told her story.”
It was not clear whether the grimace on Blatt’s face resulted from an effort to pinpoint the revelatory element or from stomach gas.
Gurney offered Wigg a nod of acknowledgment before going on. “Suppose, as the sergeant has suggested, our obsessed killer devoted two hours a day to writing letters and at the end of a year had completed eleven thousand-which he then mailed out to a list of eleven thousand people.”
“What list?” Jack Hardwick’s voice had the intrusive rasp of a rusty gate.
“That’s a good question-maybe the most important question of all. I’ll come back to it in a minute. For the moment let’s just assume that the original letter-the same identical letter-was sent out to eleven thousand people, asking them to think of a number between one and a thousand. Probability theory would predict that approximately eleven people would choose each of the one thousand available numbers. In other words, there is a statistical likelihood that eleven of those eleven thousand people, picking a number entirely at random, would pick the number six fifty-eight.”
Blatt’s grimace grew to comical proportions.
Rodriguez shook his head in disbelief. “Aren’t we crossing the line here from hypothesis to fantasy?”
“What fantasy are you referring to?” Gurney sounded more bemused than offended.
“Well, these numbers you’re throwing around, they don’t have any evidentiary basis. They’re all imaginary.”
Gurney smiled patiently, although patience was not what he felt. For a moment he was distracted by the awareness of his own dissembling presentation of his emotional reaction. It was a lifelong habit-this reflexive concealment of irritation, frustration, anger, fear, doubt. It served him well in thousands of interrogations-so well he’d come to believe it was a talent, a professional technique, but of course at root it wasn’t that at all. It was a way of dealing with life that had been part of him for as long as he could remember.