Chapter 29
When I send Lana a 911 text that she needs to come home, she responds that she’s in the area and just ten minutes away. By the time she arrives, Marco and I—well, pretty much just Marco—figured out the third set of movie titles are clues to Lux’s location.
When Lana walks in to find Marco there, she doesn’t look too happy.
“Hi, Marco. Um, Chanti, can I see you in the kitchen for a second?”
I follow her out of the dining room. “Mom, Marco and I—”
“Exactly. I’m glad you and your friend are . . . friends again, but you know I don’t allow boys up in here when I’m not home.”
“I know, but he’s been helping me solve these clues from the DVDs. I think we’ve figured out where Lux might be. We don’t think he’s dead.”
“Whoa, back up,” Lana says, walking back into the dining room, where Marco is still looking over the third group of titles. “What’s going on and how much does this one know?”
Marco looks up to see if he’s the “this one” Lana is referring to.
“It’s okay. Marco knows you’re a paralegal and your boss is defending MJ.”
“Oh—right, okay.”
“I’m glad Chanti finally told me about you being a paralegal. It explains a lot about why she’s kind of obsessed with crime-solving,” Marco says.
“Yeah, but paralegals don’t solve crimes. We leave that to the police.”
“That’s what I keep telling her, Ms. Evans.”
“So she doesn’t listen to you, either? Maybe if we both keep trying . . .”
I’m glad to see Lana and Marco are having a bonding moment over my recalcitrance, but we really need to find Lux before it’s too late for him, MJ, and possibly me. I bring Lana up to speed on everything, right up to where Marco has figured out Tragic is holding Lux somewhere near the Denver Zoo.
“How did you get the Denver Zoo out of this?” Lana asks, waving her hand over the table full of DVDs.
“First he tells us this third set of DVDs are instructions To Catch a Thief. His general location is North by Northwest.”
“That could be the whole northwestern corner of the city, state, or country for that matter.”
“No, Lux is close by,” I say. “My theory is this is a game with Tragic. He wants to see if he can be caught so he’s going to make sure the possibility exists. And for some reason, it’s me he wants to play the game with. We think Tragic is saying Lux is northwest of me.”
I think I might know the reason Tragic wants to play this game with me—he knows I busted Donnell, Lux probably told him I was on to him as early as the fire, and now he wants to see if I can catch him. Fortunately Lana is too deep into deciphering the clues to ask why I think Tragic sent these clues to me, or maybe she’s figured it out for herself.
“Okay, what does this next clue mean?” Lana asks.
“The Birds?” Marco asks. “We got online and figured out we don’t have an aviary in the area, but we remembered the zoo has Bird World. All those grade-school field trips—never thought they’d help me find a killer.”
“Let’s hope he isn’t a killer yet,” I say. “At least not of Lux.”
“I’m starting to see it now,” Lana says, looking at the third group of DVDs. “The zoo is northwest of where we are, and the zoo is inside City Park, which is bordered by Seventeenth Avenue. Number 17. That’s in my zone.”
“Yes, where your law office is,” I say, surprised Lana made that slip in front of Marco. But I can tell she’s really getting into the clues.
“Wow, this is good work, Marco,” she says.
Uh, hello? I helped.
“So what did you get for Topaz?”
“I was just getting to that one,” I say.“It stumped me for a second because I was looking for Topaz on the map—a street, a restaurant name, a housing subdivision. But I’d heard Tragic had a meth operation, and figured he might know his chemistry.”
“If I remember right, that’s how he got started in his life of crime, as a meth cook.” Lana stops and looks at Marco. “I read that in the paper, a story about his arrest a while back. Some of those guys do know science. What about this clue made you think of that?”
“The chemical composition of topaz gives it a crystalline structure,” I explain.“It’s one of the less stable silicates—which is kind of funny since Tragic doesn’t seem too stable either, right?” Marco and Lana are looking at me like they don’t get the joke. “Anyway, topaz is a crystal, and on Seventeenth Avenue, right across from City Park, are the Crystal Pointe Apartments.”
“Take a look,” Marco says, passing my laptop to Lana. “In Rear Window, Jimmy Stewart thinks he witnessed a murder take place from the rear window of his apartment. This clue doesn’t match exactly because you can’t see City Park from a rear window of any Crystal Pointe Apartment.”
“We checked it on Google Earth,” I explain. “If there weren’t a bunch of trees in the way, an apartment facing Seventeenth Avenue would have a perfect view of Bird World. We think that’s the part Tragic is trying to tell us.”
“And Torn Curtain?”
“Look for an apartment window with a torn curtain? That’s all we could come up with for that one,” Marco says.
“But the most important DVD is this last one. Murder! I think Tragic has added a ticking clock to this game,” I explain. “We need to find Lux before he’s killed. Marco and I just did a pretty sweet job of figuring out these clues, but it’s still all a hunch. It’ll sound completely crazy in court if MJ is charged for murder.”
“But how can MJ be charged if she’s been in jail all day?” Marco asks.
“It depends on how Tragic plans to kill Lux,” Lana says. “To be able to blame it on MJ, Lux was probably hurt this morning about the time she was in Limon waiting for him to show up, when Tragic took away any alibi she may have had.”
I add, “Prosecution will say she hurt him before her arrest and left him for dead, when really Lux might be in an apartment across from City Park, being finished off by the pretty lady and the tall man.”
Despite Marco’s protest, we leave him at the house in case more DVDs arrive to be deciphered. For someone who wants nothing to do with detective stuff, he sure seems like he wants to get involved. But Lana tells him his parents probably wouldn’t appreciate it, and all Lana is going to do is relay the information to MJ’s lawyer. When Marco asks why we can’t just call the lawyer, neither Lana nor I try to come up with a story for that. We just leave and tell him to call us if any more packages arrive or if he thinks of any new clues.
The minute we get in the car, Lana radios to Falcone to meet her at the Crystal Pointe Apartments, along with a couple of black-and-whites.
“I should have left you back there with Marco,” Lana says.
“I thought you didn’t want me at the house alone with a boy.”
“Don’t get smart.”
“Admit it, Lana—you need me. I might figure out more clues on the way. We can find Lux a whole lot faster if I can direct you to his precise location instead of knocking on every apartment door.”
She doesn’t respond, which means I’m right. We drive in silence for a few minutes.
“Mom, I know it’s a weird time to bring this up with everything that’s going on, or maybe it’s a good time with all that’s going on, but I can’t help but think about him . . . my father. Did you find anything on him yet?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Nothing. I found out nothing at all.”
“Why’d you say yes, then?”
“Because nothing is something. I have access to all kinds of records—NCIC, prison, birth, death—and I couldn’t find a damn thing.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s like he doesn’t exist. Few people on the planet get to disappear, and they tend to work with some very secret offices based in Washington. Maybe he’s black ops for the government,” Lana says, adding a laugh. That means my father’s disappearance—on paper, at least—has spooked her. Lana always laughs off the few things that ever frighten her.
Since things that scare Lana have a tendency to completely freak me out, I return to thinking about the movie titles, something I can handle. Before we left the house, I took a picture of the table with the DVDs with my phone. I have an eidetic memory—what most people call photographic—but I didn’t want to rely on just that for something this important. I can’t find any more clues in the titles, so I zoom out to look at the whole table and the rows of DVDs. Marco was right about the order Tragic sent the DVDs being a clue, and I think there are clues in the order to more than just Tragic’s reason for running this whole game or Lux’s location.
When we arrive at the Crystal Pointe Apartments, I see that I’m probably right. The building has three stories.
“Lana, he’s on the third floor. If there’s an apartment number 337, that’s where he’ll be.”
“Where’d you get that?”
“The DVDs—he sent them in four groups, three in the first two packages, seven in the next, and one in the final delivery.”
“What about the last number—the one?”
“This place is too small for a four-digit apartment number, but it’s just a guess.”
“No, this is good. We can start with that, looking for apartment 337,” Lana says as Falcone pulls in, followed by two uniforms. “Stay here. I wish I hadn’t let you talk me into bringing you.”
“Bringing me helped, didn’t it? I’ll be okay. If Lux is really in there dying, the tall man and pretty lady—or whoever did this job for Tragic—are long gone. They don’t want to be caught, just like Tragic wouldn’t be playing this game if he weren’t already serving a life term. He has nothing to lose. Whoever is working for him does.”
“Just the same, stay put until I get back.”
As soon as I promise to stay put and Lana is gone behind the building, the half a pitcher of iced tea I had at the house while Marco and I were clue-solving becomes a problem. Now I know why Lana always says a Big Gulp before a stakeout is a very bad idea. I guess all the adrenaline pumping through me as Lana drove across town like a bat out of hell kept me from noticing before, but now I really have to go. I spot a gas station two blocks down the street and get out of the car. But I never make it there.