Page 8 of Go Under

Darnell’s upper lip curled. “This is what the city considers a low-priority neighborhood. The street cameras haven’t worked in months. No one here can afford such luxuries as home security.”

“The neighborhood with high crime is a low-priority neighborhood?”

“Obviously, they would say differently. Their actions, unfortunately, speak louder than their words.”

Marcus shook his head. “Have you talked to the neighbors yet?”

Darnell nodded. “No one heard anything suspicious. This is a troubled neighborhood. Violence is common. It doesn’t often end in bloodshed, but fights happen all the time. Last night, there was an altercation between two young men that resulted in police being called.”

“So, what you mean is that the neighbor’s heard a lot of suspicious stuff and dismissed it as ordinary urban background noise,” Marcus said.

Darnell cracked a smile. “I suppose so.”

Kate didn’t see what was so funny. They were standing next to a brutally murdered elderly man. “Who called it in?” she asked, her voice terse.

Darnell’s smile vanished, and he had the decency to look ashamed of his smile. “The mail carrier delivered a package and slipped on the ice. She reached for the door to steady herself, and it flew open. That was about eleven this morning.”

Kate’s lips thinned. “Time of death was?”

“Since rigor is already dissipating, CSI believes time of death was well before midnight.”

Kate looked back at Gerald. “So, someone walked through Gerald Mace’s front door, stabbed him to death, sewed his mouth shut, and carved a cipher on his kitchen table, all while the front door hung ajar, and no one noticed and thought they should call the police.” She remembered the story about the fight and said, “The police were here in the neighborhood, and no one saw anything amiss.”

Darnell smiled, but it was a bitter smile. “Welcome to the jungle.”

Kate took a deep breath and released it in a huff. “Get CSI back out here. I want details on the murder weapon and the tool used to make this cipher along with any assumptions that gives us about the killer. I want written statements from the neighbors and the police officers who were here last night. If they saw anyone who doesn’t live here—suspicious or not—I want a description including any vehicles they were driving, traffic cams, ring cams, et cetera.

“And I want every ounce of data there is about Gerald Mace’s history as a court clerk. Someone punished him for breaking the ninth commandment. I want to know who might have a reason to believe that he bore false witness.”

“I’ll get statements from the neighbors and officers involved,” Marcus said. “Maybe they’ll remember more the second time around.”

“I’ll look into Mr. Mace’s employment history,” Darnell offered. “It’s going to be a challenge getting access to thirty-year-old court records. I have connections in the Court of Common Pleas that can smooth that process.”

“Good,” Kate replied. “I’ll get to work on the cipher.”

“Take the car,” Marcus said. “I’ll Uber to the hotel. Just give me the address when you select one.”

Kate gave him a thumbs up. Before she left the house, she took one final look at Gerald Mace. The killer’s sewn mouth gazed at her; his lips doubly sealed in death. What had he said that this killer wished he hadn’t been able to say?

And who else had lost their right to speak?

CHAPTER FOUR

Kate sipped her coffee, and closed her eyes briefly, savoring the rich, toasty brew. She tasted hints of dark chocolate fading to a roasted cacao note before she swallowed.

Wow. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had coffee that good. The food, too, was unusually delicious, a cheesesteak made with Cheez Whiz and onions, a popular alternative to the older recipe which called for no cheese or for melted provolone. How the hell they made fake cheese from a can taste so good, Kate would never know.

A breeze wafted through the window of the hotel room, pleasantly chill and carrying the unique detergent odor of snow mixed with grease, oil, and the must of a large city. She looked at the open window, open because she had opened it, and realized why everything felt so good.

She was back. She was where she belonged. Instead of being cooped up in her apartment staring at ancient history and praying that something would jump out that would give her the answers she craved, she was at work, hunting a killer, cutting off the next head of Cox’s hydra.

She gave the cipher on the table a triumphant smile. Okay, Cox. Time to prove that you still haven’t beaten me.

She sipped more of her coffee, set it on the coaster, and got to work.

The cuneiform was absolutely Akkadian. Her first hour had proven that and yielded confirmation that the killer was “correcting” those who violated the ninth commandment. As with all of the Commandment Killing ciphers, this one opened with the relevant commandment. “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”

That code was the simplest code, a basic substitution that replaced the first phoneme of the Akkadian lexicon with the last, the second with the second last, and so on. The hour of work came from the fact that rather than consider the consonants before the vowels as academics did, the killer placed the vowels first. Once Kate made that leap, she had the first sentence decoded in no time.