But I’ll know if you do, and she’ll go missing. The only way for her not to go missing is for you to succeed. Is that understood?”
“I thought you were tipping the scales in my advantage,” I said.
“I am,” Uretsky replied. “I just want you to know there are consequences for failure.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to figure out what my next clue means. No crime this time, just your smarts. That should make it easier for you to play along. Do you have a pen and paper ready, John? Get those items now.”
I found a scratch piece of paper and a pen nearby. My throat had gone dry as I looked at the picture of Tinesha at the park, knowing that I held her life in my hands, and not just her life, but all lives tethered to her.
“I’m ready,” I said.
“Good. Write this down exactly as I say it. I won’t repeat myself. Forty-two, twenty-six, twelve, seventy-one, six, fifty-seven. Do you have it? If so, repeat those numbers back to me now.”
I was still scratching down numbers, but I was able to repeat the sequence without error. “What does this mean?” I asked.
“That’s for me to know and for you to figure out,” Uretsky said. “Now remember, for Tinesha’s sake, every minute and every second counts. Text me when you have the answer. Once again, John, best of luck to you. Game on.”
CHAPTER 42
Ruby studied the sheet of paper with the numbers scrawled on it.
42, 26, 12, 71, 06, 57
“It’s code,” Ruby said. “How the heck are we supposed to crack some code? John, we’ve got to take this to the police. They have experts in cryptography. They can figure this sort of thing out.”
The look I gave Ruby conveyed my disagreement. “He’d told me he’d know if we did that,” I reminded her. “He’ll kill the woman in the picture. We know that he will. He picked her because she’s somehow connected to us. We can’t let her down.”
“We’ve got to get out from this, John!” Ruby said, pulling her hair to show her exasperation. Ruby slumped down on the futon, and Ginger took the opportunity to move in for a little snuggle. Despondent as she was, Ruby couldn’t resist giving Ginger what she needed. The cat purred delightedly while Ruby studied the numbers some more. “How will he know if we take this to the police?” Ruby said. “We tell them it has to be contained. We tell them everything.”
“I don’t know how he’ll find out, but say that he does. Maybe there’s a leak,” I said.
“By a leak, you mean Clegg?” Ruby said.
I shot my wife an angry look. “Are you back on that?” I said. “Do you still believe that Clegg is helping Uretsky?”
“Think about it, John,” Ruby said. “Who was the guy Clegg arrested the night Rhonda was killed? We don’t know anything about him. Maybe he’s helping Clegg out. Maybe Clegg got a computer guy to set everything up. He’s had time to plan this. I don’t know how Clegg is doing it, but I have a gut instinct about him. You’ve always trusted my gut. Why aren’t you trusting me now?”
I thought back to Ruby’s vision board, her penchant for asking the universe for answers. It was true she seemed to always be in the know.
“So if it’s Clegg,” I said, “then is he helping Uretsky or pretending to be him?”
“I don’t know,” Ruby said. “We don’t even know what Elliot Uretsky actually looks like.” Ruby correctly judged my expression as one of dismay. “What’s wrong?”
“I should have asked Ruth Shane what Elliot looked like when we were at Uretsky’s house,” I said, angry with myself. “She’d know. Maybe she even has a picture of him. If we had that, we could have matched it to the mug shot of the guy Clegg busted and we could be done with this debate.”
“Fine. You should have done that,” Ruby said. “But there was a lot going on, and we’ve got to do something right here and right now. I say we go to the police.”
I looked down at my phone and once again fixed my gaze on the smiling faces of Tinesha and her son. It was sickening to think that Uretsky was there—hiding in the shadows, watching them from a distance. He took this picture, and he sent it to me for a reason. What did he want us to do?
Uretsky’s words came back at me like