57

Nikki’s enthusiasm for solving Finney’s riddles had been dampened considerably by her conversation with Agent Flynn. She now believed it was entirely possible that Finney had been duped by the show’s producers into thinking that a murder conspiracy was afoot when it was really just part of the show.

Wellington held the opposite view. If the agents were no longer going to help in the investigation, Finney’s fate now rested entirely in Wellington’s and Nikki’s hands. “The judge is too smart to get suckered by a game,” he argued. “There’s more to it than that.”

He was so insistent that Nikki agreed to meet him at Starbucks after the show. Wellington had his computer up and running by the time she arrived. He motioned her over before she could even order a drink.

“I TiVoed the show and then transferred it to my computer,” he said, clicking on a desktop icon. “Then I cut and spliced a couple segments I want you to see.”

Another few clicks, and Wellington’s Windows Media Player showed Finney being strapped into his chair for the Chinese water torture. “Listen to what he says,” Wellington told Nikki.

On the screen Bryce McCormack asked Finney if he had any predictions. “I would say myself and the Swami are the ones to watch,” Finney said. “We’re the only ones who know the key to outlasting this thing.”

Wellington hit the Stop button. “Did you hear that?”

Nikki nodded, watching as Wellington pulled up another clip. “This is the Swami,” Wellington said.

The clip started playing. The Swami was already strapped into the chair, and the camera zoomed in for a close-up. “You want to know who’s going to win this thing?” the Swami asked.

“Sure,” Bryce McCormack’s voice said off camera.

“Judge Finney or me,” the Swami said. “I taught him a few relaxation techniques, so we’re the only ones who know the key to beating this thing.”

Wellington hit the Stop button and looked at Nikki. “What do you think?”

“Sounds pretty coincidental,” Nikki admitted. “They both refer to themselves as understanding the key.” She tried to act calm, but a rush of excitement was crawling across her skin. “Sounds like another message from Finney.”

“Exactly. Since he can’t access the Internet anymore, he’s using the show itself.”

“Maybe,” Nikki cautioned. “But how did he even know that the show would air both those remarks? I mean, they edit out a lot of stuff.”

“Maybe he didn’t. Maybe that’s why both he and the Swami said basically the same thing, hoping the network would air at least one of them. And let’s face it—a boastful prediction by a losing contestant is bound to get airtime.”

As usual, Wellington was making sense. “Wonder when that footage was shot?” Nikki mumbled. She was in her thinking-out-loud mode now. “Maybe it was shot even before we got his last message.”

“I doubt it,” Wellington responded. “He didn’t send any messages on the other shows. As long as he could communicate through Westlaw, it was safer. I think this is a recent message. I think it’s a last resort.”

“Let me watch them again,” Nikki said.

After a second time through the clips, Nikki was still confused. “But what’s the message? What’s the key?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” Wellington said. “It’s certainly not obvious. So far, I’ve come up with two possibilities.”

“I’m all ears.”

Wellington twisted his lips, searching for the best way to explain this. “There’s either a message in the words that he and the Swami used or there’s a message tied in to the amount of time they spent in the chairs. I’m thinking it’s probably time in the chairs because Finney would have no way of knowing how much of what he and the Swami said would be edited out.”

Nikki could sense the start of a long night. “You want something to drink?”

“Bottled water and pound cake,” Wellington said.

Code breakers are such creatures of habit, Nikki thought.

Nikki felt a hand gently shaking her shoulder. “Ms. Moreno.”

She cracked an eyelid and tried to reorient herself. The cobwebs cleared enough so that she remembered where she was. Wellington’s house. They had changed locations when the Starbucks closed. Wellington had been working on cracking any possible code formed by the amount of time Finney and Hadji had stayed with the Chinese water torture. Nikki had written down everything that Finney and Hadji said on the Thursday night show and started looking for clues in the words. She remembered curling up on the couch for a quick nap around 2:00 a.m.

“What time is it?” Nikki asked, her voice hoarse, her eyes still closed.

“Um . . . I’m not really sure. Maybe about four or so.”

Nikki grunted and rubbed her face. She was about to sit up when she felt a little fur ball jump on top of her, wiggle around, and then lick her face.

“Corky!” Wellington yelled, but it was too late. Nikki had already backhanded the little monster onto the floor.

Corky yelped and Nikki sat straight up, wiping her cheek.

“Sorry about that,” Wellington said, rubbing the dog’s head. “He likes waking people up.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Nikki muttered. She stared straight ahead, still waiting for her full senses to come back to her. Nobody had ever accused Nikki of being a morning person.

“Let me run Corky up to my mom’s bedroom, and then I want to show you something,” Wellington said.

“Good idea,” Nikki managed. She checked her watch. It really was 4:00 a.m.

When Wellington headed upstairs, Nikki stumbled to the kitchen and poured a glass of water. Her mouth felt like scum. Her only goal in life was to get into her own bed as soon as possible.

She was standing against the counter finishing the water when Wellington returned. His eyes were bloodshot and his hair tousled. “You want some coffee?” he asked.

“I want my bed.”

“Okay, but first let me show you what I found.” His voice smacked of enthusiasm. Nikki didn’t do enthusiasm when she was this tired.

“Wellington, can’t it wait—?”

“Just one second. You won’t believe this!”

He went into the living room and retrieved his Cross Examination book. He placed it on the counter in front of Nikki alongside a piece of paper with all kinds of numbers and letters that blurred together. At the top were the numbers 8, 16, 35, 17, 33, 59.

“This is the amount of time that Finney and Hadji stayed with the water torture,” Wellington explained as he pointed. “I’ve watched the video a dozen times. They were both watching the clock at the precise moment when they pushed the panic button. That’s significant because both of them had their eyes closed for most of the time but opened them right at the end.”

Nikki yawned. She could feel a long explanation coming, and she could barely keep her eyes open as it was.

“Both of them mentioned Finney’s name first when they talked about knowing the key, so I wrote down Finney’s time first.”

“Makes sense.” Another big yawn.

“So what do these numbers mean?” But before Nikki could give Wellington a dirty look, he recovered. “That’s the question I asked myself. The next two chapters in the Cross Examination book use letters as the ciphertext, not numbers, so I ruled out those chapters.”

“Can we sit down?” Nikki asked. The couch wasn’t the same as her bed, but it beat standing.

“Sure.”

Wellington took a seat next to Nikki on the couch and placed the paper on the coffee table in front of them. Nikki glanced longingly at the couch pillow. “So I started looking at chapter 7, which is the next chapter that uses numbers for the ciphertext,” Wellington explained. “Maybe the water torture was filmed while Finney was still using the Internet, so maybe he didn’t know what chapter we would be on when the show aired. He figured he would just skip ahead a few chapters to the next one with numbers and make it easy.”

Nikki leaned back and snuggled down into the couch. She felt her muscles begin to relax.

“But then I couldn’t figure out the key to chapter 7 and therefore couldn’t even test my theory. I tried every type of frequency analysis and every other trick known to cryptanalysts. I nearly gave up but then decided to do something I should have done at the beginning—just run the sequence of numbers as a search on the Internet. Guess what I came up with?”

The words had been fading in and out, Wellington’s adolescent voice putting Nikki to sleep. Ironically, it was the quiet that brought her back. “I’m sorry—what?”

“Guess what I found out on the Internet?”

“Oh. I’m not really sure,” Nikki said, yawning again.

“The Beale cipher!” Wellington exclaimed. “The numbers in chapter 7 have been copied from the Beale cipher.”

“I never would have guessed.” Nikki sank lower and put her legs up on the coffee table.

“You ever heard of it?” Wellington asked.

“Sure,” Nikki said, hoping to avoid another convoluted story about some super-duper cipher person. But it didn’t work. Wellington started a windy monologue about the history of the Beale cipher, and Nikki could tell he wasn’t going to stop and catch his breath anytime soon. She rested her eyelids and, for the next ten minutes, listened to his story. Wellington actually gave her the twenty-minute version, but she didn’t hear the last half until he woke her up at 7:00 a.m. and repeated everything he had said in the wee hours of the night.