Cat & Mouse - James Patterson [115]
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.
Mr. Smith operates like a doctor—which 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—I.
I. 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 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 stand for Smith?
Would he symbolically murder Smith? Then Mr. Smith would disappear forever?