Chapter 17

Puzzled

 

 

Parker lived less than seven miles from the FBI research center offices on the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia. Before he’d been shot, it had been an easy fifty-minute run. Now, his doctors worried about him making the ten-minute drive. After the Detroit incident, Becky had convinced Warner to sign off on a car service, but Parker refused to use it. His car drove itself. He wasn’t a threat to anyone. When he reached the point that he couldn’t get himself to work, he’d retire, perhaps using a bullet fired from his Glock to finish what the Devil’s rounds hadn’t.

A FedEx van was backing out of his driveway when he pulled up to the three-bedroom townhouse Carrie and he had purchased twelve years ago when he’d left his posting at the Newark, New Jersey field office to join the BAU. It was supposed to be temporary, something requiring little maintenance while they established themselves in their careers. The plan had been for Carrie to make partner at her law firm and Parker would become an assistant director. Then they’d trade up to something with a large backyard suitable for a big dog and maybe children. But careers are ravenous beasts that must be fed, and what they eat is time. And time is a funny thing. It seems endless until it’s not.

Parker beeped his horn, and the van stopped. He left his car in the street and hobbled over to the FedEx driver’s window. The driver was waiting with a thick envelope. Parker took the envelope back to his car and studied the return address. Detective Donna Baker, Nashville PD, Homicide. He’d spoken to Baker when he’d first received the Collector file from the Nashville field office. She had not been optimistic about finding Ms. Reddy’s killer.

“He’s a fucking magician,” she’d said. “Got in without damaging the door. No one saw or heard anything, including the half dozen cameras that should have picked him up. No evidence. No witnesses. In, out, and gone. Poof, like magic.”

He’d asked Baker for a copy of the case file. That had been almost two weeks ago. He’d expected her to send an email. Guess I’m not the only luddite in law enforcement. He considered the file’s weight before dropping it on the passenger seat. No wonder she’d grumbled about the workload before agreeing to send it.

Inside his house, Parker tossed the envelope on the dining room table next to the partially completed jigsaw puzzle and put a kettle on the stove. His grandmother had been from London, and she’d taught him the proper way to brew and steep tea. She’d also left him the kettle and some fine china cups. Carrie had always been amused by the tea-brewing production, offering on many occasions to teach him how to boil water in the microwave.

He stood in the kitchen doorway waiting for the kettle’s whistle and stared at the puzzle. It had sat there unfinished for three years. He’d added pieces here and there, blown off the dust that dulled the glossy finish of the completed sections, but other than that, hadn’t paid much attention to it. The box containing the remaining pieces sat in the middle of the table. The box’s top photo showed the sun rising over three pyramids with nothing but desert sand stretching to the horizon behind them. A camel with a saddle lay on its belly in the foreground, as if waiting for its rider. Carrie had longed to visit Egypt and take in that view for herself. She’d been so disappointed when they’d discovered the pyramids were actually surrounded by the sprawling cities of Cairo and Giza, and the puzzle’s romantic view required precise camera positioning to avoid capturing high-rises and expressways.

The kettle whistle pulled him away from the memory. He dropped six tea bags into a pot and poured in the boiling water. Then he returned to the doorway to study the puzzle while the tea steeped. It struck him that his leg didn’t ache. Every so often, the muscle seemed to tire of aching and just went numb. The absent throb wouldn’t allow him to go run around the block or anything like that, but it would keep the painkillers in their vial.

A splash of milk, two spoons of sugar, and with a proper cup of tea in hand, Parker returned to the dining room table. He slid out a chair and sat down. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done so. After a moment, he realized something wasn’t right. He was sitting where Carrie had always sat. He moved to the other side of the table and emptied the box of pieces.

He picked through the pile, testing pieces, and joining the ones that fit. As he did, he inventoried what he knew about the Collector case. He started a new group of assembled pieces to represent the case facts, dubbing it the victim’s group and saying their names to himself as he pressed the pieces together, Abby Loveridge, Jyothi Reddy, and Charles Tate. He added more pieces to indicate where the victims were killed, Clearwater, Nashville, and Las Vegas—all in different cities. Then he added more for their vocations, Computer Programmer, Computer Programmer, Computer Component Engineer—all technology workers. He assembled two more pieces for the traces of the Adderall found in Jyothi and Abby’s blood and withheld a third he’d found to represent Charles’s assumed stimulant usage. Not a fact, yet. It would be another week before they had Tate’s toxicology report.

He stretched and rubbed his leg. Still no pain. He dug into the box, looking for pieces to denote the killer’s methods. One bright yellow piece caught his eye, and he held it up. It was the center of the rising sun, and he chose it to represent the killer removing the victim’s heads with a sword. He found another sun piece to mate with the first to indicate the taking of the victim’s ears, and another for the ritualistic poses. He slid the completed sun next to the victim group and searched through the pile for a new group that he named selection.

“How does he choose his victims?” he asked out loud to Carrie’s empty chair. How does he know them? Came the reply in his head. The ice cream and heat lecture on confounding variables came to mind again. Vocation was not the heat. The game.

A puzzle piece with the very tip of one pyramid caught his attention. He designated it the start of the selection group. Collecting and trying more pyramid pieces, he fit one to represent the game he’d watched with the over-stimulated boys. “What was it called?” he said to the chair. “Ah, yeah. The Land of Might and Magic.” He fit two more pieces to represent the character killing he’d observed. Swords and ears, he said to himself. Then he tried several other pieces until he found another fit. Chi Chi had said gamers use stimulants for an edge. Adderall. He snapped it in place.

He pushed himself out of the chair with his cane and gazed down at the three groups of newly assembled pieces. The victim’s group was forming the camel’s body. Next to it sat the completed sun representing the killer’s grisly methods, and next to that was growing a pyramid for the selection group, the Land of Might and Magic.

Now all we have to do is connect the camel with the sun and the pyramid. He sorted through the pieces until he found another camel part that belonged with the victims and their vocations. Chi Chi had said people who play the Land of Might and Magic were overwhelmingly technology workers. He snapped the new camel piece into place, then detached it and set it aside as he had done with the one connecting Tate to Adderall. He wasn’t ready to make that connection until he had confirmation that the victims played the game. “How do we connect them, baby?” he said to Carrie’s chair. Tate had Metaverse gear in his bag. Stands to reason he used it. He checked his watch. Still early in Vegas. He sipped some tea and called Jaden.

“Breaux, I’ve been doing some thinking.”

“Don’t hurt yourself, sir.”

Parker smiled at the phone. “I need you to call Chavez and find out if Charles Tate played that Land of Might and Magic game we watched with Chi Chi.”

Jaden understood right away where Parker was going and promised to call as soon as he connected with Chavez.

Two hours later, and after multiple bathroom trips, Parker had finished the entire pot of tea and assembled a large part of the puzzle when his phone buzzed with Jaden’s call.

“Chavez spoke to Tate’s wife,” Jaden said. “She about jumped through the phone when he asked her about the Land of Might and Magic. Tate was addicted to the game.”

“Addicted?”

“That’s what Chavez said Tate’s wife told him. It was destroying their marriage. Chavez got some more info and he’s putting it in an email. I’ll forward it when I get it.”

“Good work, Breaux. Still think cyber’s the way to go?”

“It looks like this case is all about cyber, sir.”

Parker snapped the puzzle piece into place, connecting Tate to the Land of Might and Magic. It was only one piece. He wanted to connect two more for Jyothi and Abby, but it was too late to call Tennessee or Florida.

He reached across the table and retrieved the thick FedEx envelope and tore it open. It contained about 200 single-sided pages. A third of the pages were the M.E. report, which he’d already read. Another third were the crime scene investigators’ findings, which also had been in the file he’d received from the Nashville field office. The last third were Baker’s notes, including the results of Jyothi’s criminal record search and transcriptions from the interviews Baker had done with Jyothi’s neighbors and the apartment building manager. Like Abby and Charles, Jyothi had no criminal record of any kind.

Parker read through the transcripts. As Baker had said, no one had heard or seen anything, and nothing was captured by the security system. The building manager was adamant all the cameras and motion detectors on the property worked, and no one had tampered with the apartment locks. Like magic.

The last several pages contained notes from Baker’s conversations with Jyothi’s parents and siblings. None of them could think of anyone who would want to hurt Jyothi or any activities that would have brought her into contact with a murderer. Just like Abby Loveridge and Charles Tate, Jyothi Reddy was a low crime risk person.

The last few pages contained copies of photographs of Jyothi provided by her parents. They included those taken during her college graduation ceremony at Penn State, candid shots at family gatherings, and a picture of Jyothi holding a plastic sword and wearing a white T-shirt sporting a phrase stenciled in red Parker had seen floating on a monitor in a cold, smelly room in Las Vegas. He used his phone to snap a picture of the photo. Then he chose a puzzle piece from the shrinking pile that fit with the selection group containing the game pieces and snapped it into place. He slid the whole group over to the larger puzzle assembly and merged it in. The entire Khufu pyramid was complete.

“Look at that, baby,” Parker said out loud. “We’re almost done.”