Deadly Row, A - By Casey Mayes Page 0,35

picture so I’d have a reference to carry with me, and then I turned the codes over and snapped a photo of the fronts. The two crime scene images were disturbing, but if I was going to help with the case, I had to steel myself for what I might see. Once I had the front pages in my phone, I turned the copies back over, and started recording the number sequences on a notepad. There were four sequences so far, two matching crime scene photos and two notes, including the latest entry.

3A, 5A, 2E, 4A, 1E, 4O.

I stared at it for what felt like an hour, hoping for some kind of breakthrough.

Nothing. If the forty meant anything, I’d have to figure it out later. For now, I had to focus on just the letter-number combinations.

Did the repeating pattern mean anything? A A E A E. Did that mean the next letter would be an E? Would it match the pattern? Even if it did, I still didn’t know what that might mean.

Okay, forget about the letters. How about the numbers?

3, 5, 2, 4, 1.

3, 5, 2, 4, represented a pattern, especially if the next entry was a 3. It was something to consider, but I couldn’t do anything with it yet. They added up to 15, and when they were added together, it made 6. Again, so what? 3 times 5 divided by 2 multiplied by 4 divided by 1 totaled 30, which added up to 3. Even though it was true, what could it mean?

I didn’t see any significance to any of the sequences I’d come up with so far. What else could they represent? How about if I took the letters and numbers and charted them on an x-y axis? Would that yield me anything? I took out a pad of paper from my purse and drew a rough graph, with numbers going vertically and letters horizontally.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

There was a pattern there only if the next note was 6A or 6E. That would create a stair-step segment, but so what? So far, I had a 1E, 2E, 3A, 4A, and 5A. Why had 5E been skipped? Was there a missing note, one that the police misfiled or accidentally threw away before anyone realized the significance of it?

I had another thought, and redrew my grid, this time substituting numbers in the order of the notes received where the stars now stood.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

No, that didn’t make any sense, either. Had something been missed, perhaps a vital clue to the whole thing?

I finally gave up. If there was a pattern of any significance there, I couldn’t see it. Most likely I didn’t have enough information to solve the puzzle yet. Given time, and enough entries, I should have more of a chance to see what the killer was trying to tell us. Or was there any hidden message there at all? Was it a prank, a ruse to make the police work harder than they should on nothing more than a nonsensical set of letters and numbers that in reality meant nothing? No, I couldn’t believe that. Each entry had been painstakingly drawn, as if the murderer was proud of what the segments represented.

There was a message there.

I just hadn’t figured it out yet.

I looked up from my pad to find my husband staring at me, a broad smile on his face.

“What’s so funny?” Steve was far enough away and so focused on his work that he probably couldn’t hear us, but I kept my voice low just in case. I knew how it was to be interrupted in the middle of a thought, and I didn’t want to do anything to disturb the investigation.

Zach matched my soft tone. “You look so intense when you’re working. It’s just like you’re creating a puzzle.”

“I wish that’s what it was. There’s a logic to my puzzles, but this is all just a jumble.”

“Well, you gave it your best shot,” he said. “Thanks for trying.”

“Are you kidding? I’m not giving up that easily. I’ve got a couple of ideas, but I need more information.”

“We may not get it,” Zach said. “Do you have anything so far?”

I looked at my sheets, and kept coming back to