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shoes. Are you trying to tell me
that you're smitten again?" Christine laughed. The
kids couldn't quite hear us, but they were laughing anyway.
"I am way beyond smitten. I am smote."
"Well thafs good," she said and continued to turn the
pink rope and smile at her kids, "because so am
1. And when this case is over, Alex -"
"Anything you want, just say the word."
Her eyes brightened even more than was usual. "A
weekend away from everything. Maybe at a country
inn, but anywhere remote will do just fine."
I wanted to hold Christine so much. I wanted
to kiss her right there, but that wasn't going to happen in
the crowded schoolyard. "It's a date," I said.
"It's a promise." "I'll hold you to it.
Smote, that's good. We can try that on our
weekend away."
Chapter 124
BACKHOME 'I worked on the Pierce case
until supper time. I ate a quick meal of
hamburgers and summer squash with Nana and the kids.
I took some more heavy heat for being an incurable and
unrepentant workaholic. Nana cut me a
slice of pie, and I retreated to my
room again. Well fed, but deeply unsatisfied.
I couldn't help it -- I was worried. Thomas
Pierce might already have grabbed another victim.
He could be performing an
4cautopsy" tonight. He could send us a
message at any time.
I reread the notes I had plastered on the
bedroom wall. I felt as if the answer were on the
tip of my tongue and it was driving me crazy People's
lives hung in the balance.
He had "pierced" the heart of Isabella
Calais. His apartment in Cambridge was an
obsessive shrine to her memory
He had returned "home" when he went to Point
Pleasant Beach. The opportunity to catch him was
there -- if we were smart enough, if we were as good as
he was.
What were we missing, the FBI and me? I
played more word games with the assortment of clues.
He always "pierces" his victims. I wondered if
he was impotent
or had become impotent, unable to have a sexual
relationship with Isabella.
ME Smith operates like a doctor -- which
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Pierce nearly was -- which his father and his
siblings are. He had failed as a doctor
I went to bed early, around eleven, but I couldn't
sleep. I guess I'd just wanted to try and turn
the case off. I finally called Christine and we
talked for about an hour. As we talked and I
listened to the music of her voice, I couldn't help
thinking about Pierce and Isabella Calais.
Pierce had loved her Obsessive love.
What would happen if I lost Christine now? What
happened to Pierce after the murder? Had he gone
mad?
After I got off the phone, I went back at the
case again. For a while, I thought his pattern might
have something to do with Homer's Odyssey. He was heading
home after a series of tragedies and misfortunes?
No, that wasn't it.
What the hell was the key to his code? If he
wanted to drive all of us mad, it was working.
I began to play with the names of the victims, starting
with Isabella and ending with Inez. I goes full
circle to I? Full circle? Circles? I
looked at the clock on the desk -- it was almost
one-thirty in the morning, but I kept at it.
I wrote -- L
1. Was that something? It could be a start.
The personal pronoun I? I tried a few
combinations with the letters of the
names.
I-S-U ...R C-A-D ...
I-A-D ... I stopped after the next three
letters: IMU. I stared at the page. I
remembered pierced, the obviousness of it. The
simplest wordplay.
Isabella, Michaela, Ursula. Those were
names of the first three victims -- in order. Jesus
Christ!
I looked at the names of all the victims -- in
order of the
murders. I looked at the first, last, and middle
names. I began mixing and matching the names. My
heart was pounding. There was something here. Pierce had
left us another clue, a series of clues,
actually
It was right there in front of us all the time. No
one got it, because Smith's crimes appeared to be
without any pattern. But Pierce had started that theory
himself.
I continued to write, using either the first or last or
middle names of the victims. It started IMU. Then
R, for Robert. D for Dwyer. Was there
a subpattern for selecting the name? It could be an
arithmetic sequence.
There was a pattern to Pierce-Smith, after all.
His mission began that very first night in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. He was
insane, but I had caught on to his pattern.
It started with his love of wordplay
Thomas Pierce wanted to be caught! But then
something changed. He had become ambivalent about his
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capture. Why?
I looked at what I had assembled. "Son
of a bitch," I muttered. "Isn't this something. He
has a ritual."
I Isabella Calais. M Stephanie
Michaela Apt. U Ursula Davies. R
Robert Michael Neel. D Brigid Dwyer.
E Mary Ellen Klauk. R Robin Anne
Schwartz. E Clark Daniel Ebel. D
David Hale. I Isadore Morris. S
Theresa Anne Secrest. A Elizabeth
Allison Gragnano. B Barbara Maddalena.
E Edwin Mueller.
L Laurie Garnier.
L Lewis Lavine.
A Andrew Klauk. C Inspector
Drew Cabot. A Dr. Abel Sante. L
Simon Lewis Conklin. A Anthony
Bruno. I Inez Marquez. S
It read: I MURDERED ISABELLA
CALAIS. He had made it so easy for us. He
was taunting us from the very beginning. Pierce wanted to be
stopped, wanted to be caught. So why the hell
hadn't he stopped himself? Why had the string of
brutal murders gone on and on?
I MURDERED ISABELLA CALAIS. The
murders were a confession, and maybe Pierce was almost
finished. Then what would happen? And who was S?
Was it Smith himself? Did S standfor Smith?
Would he symbolically murder Smith? Then Mr.
Smith would disappear forever?
I called Kyle Craig and then Sampson, and
I told them what I had found. It was past two in
the morning, and neither of them was overjoyed to hear my
voice or the news. They didn't know what to do with the
word jumble and neither did 1. "I'm not sure what it
gives us," Kyle said, "what it proves,
Alex." "I don't either. Not yet. It does
tell us he's going to kill someone with an S in his
name." "George Steinbrenner," Kyle mumbled.
"Strom Thurmond. Sting." "Go back
to sleep," I said.
My head was doing loops. Sleep wasn't an
option for me. I half expected to get another
message from Pierce, maybe even
that night. He was mocking us. He had been from the
beginning.
I wanted to get a message to him. Maybe I
ought to commu-
nicate with Pierce though the newspapers or
TV? We needed to get off the defensive and
attack instead.
I lay in the darkness of my bedroom. Could S
be Mr Smith? I wondered. My head was throbbing.
I was past being exhausted. I finally drifted off
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