14

I skulked into the office feeling like death on a plate, wondering if they could tell. If they would suspect. Everyone always suspects the worst, don’t they? At least about me they do.

I had not gone by the O’Bannons’ to pick up Darcy this morning-for a reason-so I was surprised to see him sitting beside my desk.

“Morning, Darce,” I said.

He scrunched his face up. “You smell funny.”

“I do?” I had showered, groomed, perfumed, brushed my teeth about six times, and consumed Altoids as if they were a breakfast food. “Must be my perfume.”

“Chanel No. 5?”

I stared at him. “That’s right. How did you-”

“One of the ladies at my day care wears Chanel No. 5. Till she stopped ’cause they use animals to test stuff.”

“I see,” I said, amazed. We were a good five feet apart. “You like it?”

He shook his head. “Stinky.”

I laughed.

“I like the normal way you smell better.”

“Okay. I’ll lay off the Chanel.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Because that explains why you thought I smelled bad.”

He fidgeted with a lock of hair curled behind his ear. “Did you know that a bottle of vodka contains more sugar than a Giant-Size Snickers?”

I slid behind my desk.

“That’s fascinating, Darcy. Did you get that from one of your almanacs?”

He shook his head. “Hollywood Squares.”

I was relieved to see a kid from the mail room loping up to my desk with a small package. “We found this on the front counter. It’s addressed to you. Someone must’ve dropped it off when no one was looking.”

I took one of the end flaps and started to tear it open.

“I don’t think that’s wise.” Patrick appeared at the top of the stairs. “It could be dangerous. I’ll call for a fluoroscope.”

“What, like it might be a bomb? Nah.”

“You can’t be sure.”

“Well, I’ve read two-thirds of the way through the complete stories and poems of Edgar Allan Poe, and I’ve yet to encounter anyone being blown to smithereens.”

“Susan, you know the proper procedure as well as I do. Let’s call the bomb squad and-”

“He doesn’t want to kill me. He wants to impress me.” Once I had the wrapping off, I closed my eyes and opened the box.

Nothing happened.

I peeked into the box. My lips parted.

I guess my shock registered, because Patrick immediately said, “You know, we can’t be sure this came from the killer. A case that garners as much publicity as this one is bound to generate copycats. This could be from some crank or would-be martyr or-”

I pursed my lips. “No. This is from the guy.”

“How can you be sure?”

I tilted the box toward him. And thirty-two blood-caked teeth slid into view.

It took us a few minutes to notice, but there was a note in the box, too, taped inside the lid. I put on some plastic gloves and carefully unfolded it.

The same old code, or another one like it. But it appeared to be longer than the previous messages. “Darcy?”

I showed him the note. It was fascinating to watch him go into action, his head tilting, his eyes slightly contracting. “Is it the same cipher?”

“No,” he said quietly. He continued staring at the paper. “This is a toughie.”

I suppose the killer realized, since we’d made the Poe connection, that we had broken his code. So he provided a new and even more insidious one. “Look, Darcy, it isn’t fair to put you on the spot like this. I’ll call my friend Colin-”

“No.” He seemed bothered. I don’t know if he was offended or just determined. As always, he was hard to read. But I let him work.

It was a full five minutes before he spoke again. “ ‘Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform.’ ”

“I remember that,” I said. “It’s from one of the stories.”

Darcy nodded. “ ‘Berenice,’ ” he said, pronouncing the c as if it were English, not like the Italian ch sound. How would he know? “The first line.”

The first line. Something we would be sure to identify. He was making it easy for us. “That’s the story where the psycho yanks the girl’s teeth. We already knew about that. I was hoping for something-”

Darcy interrupted. “There’s more.”

Patrick and I huddled around him, as if we might be the slightest help.

“It’s hard,” Darcy said quietly. “This one has five different symbols for each letter, but some of the letters don’t appear five times in the entire message.” As far as I was concerned, that made the whole thing impossible, but not a minute later Darcy read us the remainder: “ ‘I hope you like my present, Susan.’ ”

“Susan?” I said, eyes wide. “It says that? He calls me by name?”

He nodded, then continued: “ ‘There will be more messages. But only for you.’ ” He looked up. “And I guess the rest of it is numbers.”

“Numbers?”

“Seven of them.”

“A phone number. Can you read it? Did he give us a number where we could contact him?”

Darcy’s head twitched. “Do you think the bad man lives with you?”

“What? What are you talking about?”

Darcy looked at me with sad eyes. “It’s your phone number.”

Thank God I’d hidden the booze before I left the apartment that morning, because when I returned, it was with an entourage of twelve cops of various types, not to mention Darcy. While the trace team set up some extensions and all their recording equipment, I scurried around picking my underwear up off the floor and other such essential housecleaning chores.

Patrick had come, too, and I have to admit it gave me a bit of a charge, having him there, in the very place where I sleep and all. I made a resolution-as soon as all these interlopers cleared out of my apartment, I was going to insist that he go out with me. Shameless, I know, but let’s face it-I’m a squeaky wheel.

And I didn’t want to spend another night alone. Not if I could help it.

“We’ve added two extensions,” Tony Crenshaw explained, “so we can listen in and make a recording. We’ve also added an open line to Bell’s electronic switching center-ESS-and to humor Agent Chaffee, a hotline to the FBI’s communications room.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “How long does it take to make a trace these days?”

“Not as long as you might think. Depends on how the call arrives, but if it comes on all-electronic switches-and if it’s a local call from a residence, it will-we should have it in a minute.”

“So I have to keep him rambling for sixty seconds.”

“Not even. We’ve got a tone generator connected to your line. As soon as he calls, we’ll pick up and start tracing-but the tone generator will make a false ringing noise and fake him into believing you haven’t answered. We’ll cut it after four rings-otherwise he might hang up.”

“So that leaves me with, what? Fifty seconds of talk?”

“We could have someone else answer. Try to put him on hold.”

I shook my head. “He won’t buy it. He may be crazy, but he’s also smart.”

“Fine. After the fourth ring, click the interrupt button quickly to simulate the sound of the phone picking up. Then start talking.”

“Don’t seem too eager to chat,” Patrick said. “He’ll get suspicious.”

I agreed. “I think I can keep him talking. He’s concocted this brilliant scheme-in his eyes-but has no one to appreciate it. He wants me to be his audience. Who better to appreciate what you’ve done than the police officer who’s trying to catch you? He wants my admiration.” I gave Patrick a sly smile. “But I’ll make him work for it.”

Darcy sidled up beside me. “I think sometimes people’s voices on the phone sound scary. Do you think sometimes people’s voices on the phone sound scary?”

I patted his shoulder reassuringly. “I can handle it.”

His father cut in. “Darcy, why don’t you catch the bus home? Susan is very busy right now.”

Darcy frowned, then started stuttering again. “I-I-I would rather stay with Susan, I think. If-if-if-” He swallowed. “If you get scared, Susan, I’ll talk to him for you.”