The Fibonacci Murders Read online

  “But he didn’t change his name. Not exactly, anyway.” She joined him at the window, looking upward.

  Following her gaze, Peller saw several turkey vultures wheeling overhead. “Leonardo’s of Pisa. Mr. F. Leonard. You think he’s telling us his name?”

  “Not necessarily. That might just be what he wants us to call him.”

  “It means lion, or something about lions.” Before he could pursue the thought, he was called back to his desk by the phone warbling. He snatched up the receiver, said, “Peller,” and listened for a moment. “Okay. Corina and I will be over.”

  Montufar wheeled, ready for action. “What now?”

  “I guess the storm is over. There’s been another golfing.”

  Chapter 2

  Although not always obvious, there are reasons for our decisions. I, for example, became a mathematician because of my adoptive father. My biological father was killed in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. I was spared only because I was yet in my mother’s womb, and on that day she was visiting her parents far outside the city.

  After the war, the Americans came to study the results of the radiation, monitoring and testing the survivors over many years. My adoptive father was one of the doctors in that program. He became enamored of my mother, married her, and when he returned to the United States we of course came with him. My love of numbers was born of his influence. And so I became a mathematician and studied arcane aspects of number theory.

  Others have come to a similar place through very different causes, and still others have through very similar causes ended up in very different places. Life is not quite so tidy as mathematics.

  Then again, many sequences start with the numbers zero and one. Very few continue with two. Perhaps mathematics is less tidy than one might think. Or perhaps life is more so. ∑

  The victim, Bess Williams, was a Caucasian female, twenty-eight years old, a good Samaritan dropping off food donations at the Presbyterian church across the street from Centennial Park when she was clobbered from behind. Stunned but not knocked unconscious, she was relieved of her cash, engagement ring, and a gold-chain necklace set with her birthstone, amethyst. After her attacker left, she’d been lucid enough to call 911 on her cell phone.

  Having arrived at the crime scene just after Williams was taken to the hospital, Peller and Montufar quickly noticed that there was little to notice. The parking lot had been plowed, although four or five parking places remained half-buried, and a path shoveled to the main door of the church. Half a dozen plastic grocery bags filled with canned goods sat near the door, while three more with contents spilling out lay behind the trunk of Williams’s blue Volvo, which was parked parallel to the building near the door. She had apparently been attacked while removing the bags from the trunk. No blood was in evidence; one of the officers at the scene informed the detectives that Williams had been wearing a thick hat.

  And she had seen the golf club: a Wilson nine-iron resting on the ground beside her while the attacker, standing over her prone body, rummaged through her purse.

  “I’ll talk to her,” Montufar said. “You should look around some more. Something’s odd about this attack.”

  “As opposed to the previous ones?”

  She gave Peller a sidelong glance, lips pinched tight.

  He shrugged and shuffled toward the pile of bags by the door. Behind him, he heard Montufar slam the car door and drive off with a squeal of tires.

  Peller turned up his collar against the cold. The temperature was in the high twenties and the air still, not bad compared to what he was used to, but he was finding cold weather increasingly unpleasant. Must be getting old, he told himself. Although he wasn’t sure that at forty-six he was quite ready to think of himself as old.

  As the crime scene unit finished work and its members departed, the parking lot grew quiet. The persistent rush of traffic in the distance scarcely registered as he let his eyes play over the area: the church, the bags of food, the car, the winter-bare trees, the snow gently blanketing the yard and piled into Himalayan foothills at the edge of the parking lot.

  Montufar was right. Something was odd about the scene, and he knew what it was. “Hey Scott,” he called to the photographer who was loading his equipment into the trunk of his car. With a gesture, Peller indicated the entrance to the parking lot. “Did you notice anything over there?”

  Squinting into the snow-reflected light, Scott Sahin pondered for a bit, his dark features pulled into a look of concentration. Sahin’s parents were from Turkey. He had been born in the U.S., but his given name wasn’t Scott. Peller didn’t know what it was, only that Scott had grown tired of people butchering it and had settled on “Scott” as something Americans could get right most of the time.

  “No, but I see what you mean. There’s no sign of anyone entering the parking lot from any other direction, so the attacker must have come in that way.”

  “And he didn’t drive in,” Peller said, “or the victim would have heard the car and looked to see who it was.”

  “Maybe there are some footprints on or near the road.”

  They headed that direction, scanning the ground as they went. The emergency vehidles had churned the snow into slush, and there was no indication that any walker had passed that way. The road showed only tire ruts.

  The road itself was a long lane that led onto the church grounds, lined on one side with tall pines burdened with wet snow and on the other with small trees and bushes half-buried in plowed-up piles. It would have been easy for someone to walk in unobserved. The lane extended beyond the parking lot towards a second building behind the church. Peller walked it and about two hundred feet along found another parking lot entrance flanked by a pair of bare trees. There, as though a car had parked under the leftmost tree, he spotted a set of depressions in the snow. Alongside them he found a single footprint, somewhat smeared.

  He motioned to Sahin, who took one look and then returned to retrieve his equipment. As Peller waited, his cell phone went off.

  “You got another letter, Rick,” a deep, gravelly voice told him. The voice belonged to Detective Sergeant Eric Dumas, Peller’s second-closest associate after Montufar. Montufar and Dumas were his protégés, after a fashion—officially under his command, but in Peller’s eyes equal to himself as team members.

  “What’s the name on the return address?” Peller asked.

  “Leon F. Pisano. Another variation on the theme. This one sounds like a lawyer.”

  “Have you opened it?”

  Dumas rattled the paper. “Yep. It says, and I quote, ‘A first-born son.’ Not very informative.”

  “And not in keeping with the pattern. We were expecting something about two.”

  “So he’s not just a lunatic, he’s a lunatic who can’t count.”

  Peller stared at the lone footprint in the snow, puzzled. “I don’t think so. Something else is going on here.”

  “If you say so. All I know is, it’s going to be a challenge protecting all the firstborn sons in the county.”

  ∑

  The hospital door closed behind Montufar. She took a deep breath of the cool antiseptic air to calm herself and immediately regretted it. Montufar hated hospitals: the code announcements, the white lab coats and hypocritically-cheerful scrubs, the air itself. All of it reminded her painfully of her mother’s long dying, She wondered why she had volunteered to talk to Bess Williams, but she also realized that the woman would probably be more comfortable talking to her than to one of the male detectives. And Peller’s keen eye was needed at the crime scene in any case. So she did her best to shut out her surroundings and concentrate on her job.

  Mamá would have told me to pray. Mamá would have told me to ask the Blessed Virgin for strength.

  Mamá was dead.

  Montufar located the bed where Williams was being treated. A nurse ju
st leaving had pulled the curtain around. Montufar nudged it open it far enough to look in.

  Her head bandaged, Williams rested in the half-raised bed, nursing a cup of water and gazing blankly at the top of the curtain. Her shoulder-length dark hair spilled haphazardly around her slender face. The sheet was bunched around her waist.

  “Bess?”

  Williams lowered her eyes to look, but said nothing.

  “I’m Corina Montufar. I’m a detective with the Howard County Police. May I come in?” Beckoned by a half-hearted wave of the hand, she stepped in and pulled the curtain shut again. “How are you doing? Are they treating you well?”

  “Okay, I guess. It doesn’t hurt much anymore.”

  Montufar pulled a chair over and sat. “We’re doing everything we can to find out who did this to you. I know you probably don’t feel much like talking, but if it’s all right with you I’d like to ask you a few things.”

  “I didn’t see much,” Williams said. “He came up behind me. I didn’t even know he was there.”

  “You didn’t hear anything?”

  She shook her head slowly, took a sip of water. “I guess I was focused on what I was doing.”

  “You were delivering food donations?”

  “Yeah. The church collects for the food bank year round.” She laughed, although Montufar thought it sounded forced. “My dad always says no good deed goes unpunished. I guess he’s right.”

  “But you did see something, at least a little bit of something.”

  “It’s a bit fuzzy. I thought something had fallen on me, maybe a tree branch. Maybe the snow broke a branch and it fell on me. I was on the ground and then this golf club was there, lying in front of my face. That’s when I knew what was happening. I’d heard about the other attacks on the news, you know?”

  Montufar nodded.

  “He was tugging at my hand. I played dead. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Make them think they got you.”

  “How long were you there?” Montufar asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe five minutes, maybe ten. He didn’t rush. He took my necklace and . . .” Williams looked away, choked up. Montufar waited patiently. After another sip of water she continued, “And my engagement ring. I don’t know which is worse. My grandmother gave me that necklace.” Her eyes drifted back to Montufar. “And my cash, which at least wasn’t much, only about fifty dollars, I think.”

  “Did you know when he was gone?”

  She nodded. “He picked up the golf club and walked away. Casually, like he was on the course. He was whistling.”

  “Did you see him? Can you describe him? Height, weight, clothing?”

  “Not really. I was too scared to move, and my head hurt like crazy, but eventually I peeked. He was almost to the road by then, and I don’t think I was seeing too clearly. I only remember a sort of grayish blur in the shape of a man. I’d say . . .” Williams put a hand to her forehead as though taking her own temperature. “I don’t know. Medium height, I guess. But I could be wrong.”

  Montufar nodded. “One last thing. I understand you had a pretty good look at the golf club.”

  “Yeah, that I could see. It was a Wilson nine-iron. But it looked short.”

  Montufar had no idea if golf clubs came in different lengths. She supposed they must, probably to accommodate players of different heights.

  “No, not just short.” Williams sounded surprised. “It was actually cut off. I remember now. Like somebody cut it off. It only had about half a handle.”

  “A sawed-off golf club?” Montufar laughed, then quickly added, “Sorry, it’s not funny, I don’t suppose.”

  Williams smiled weakly. “Well. Maybe put that way it is!”

  Chapter 3

  The word “famous” is seldom used to describe mathematical concepts. There are a few exceptions. Einstein’s equation from the Special Theory of Relativity, E=mc2, is rightly regarded as famous. The Golden Ratio might be called famous, although the number of people who have heard of it is far larger than the number who can state its numerical value. Even fewer can state its algebraic expression.

  Thus, non-mathematicians are usually hard-pressed to recognize a famous mathematical idea, even when hints are liberally provided.

  So it was in this case. ∑

  “A sawed-off golf club?” Peller almost laughed. Almost. He held the latest note from Leo, as they had begun to call him, by the corner of the evidence bag. God, but his work had become bizarre of late.

  Montufar pulled a chair over to Peller’s desk. “He must have cut it off to carry it concealed under his coat.”

  “I suppose it would look a bit odd, gallivanting around town with a nine-iron in hand. And of course once people started hearing about the attacks, anyone doing so would immediately be bound, gagged, and left on our doorstep.”

  Eric Dumas sauntered into the conversation, casually flipping a quarter with his right hand. As Peller watched, Dumas gradually increased the height of each toss until he achieved an impressive amplitude of about three feet without a miss. “From what we know so far,” Dumas said, “he’s something of a magician. Nobody sees him coming, nobody hears him coming. Then bam!” He caught the coin with a swipe of the hand that nearly connected with Montufar’s nose.

  She glowered at him. “So he walks quietly.”

  “More than that,” Dumas said. “He times his approach just right, when his victim’s attention is fixed on something else. Like this.” He curled his fingers around the quarter, held up his hand, and blew on it. When he opened his fingers again, the quarter was gone.

  Impressed, Montufar looked to his left hand dangling by his side. He brought it up and opened it. Empty. “Where is it?” she asked.

  “In your left trouser pocket,” Peller said without expression.

  Dumas looked like he’d just bitten a lemon. “So much for misdirection.”

  “It just needs rehearsal. Unfortunately, the mad golfer is little more than a nuisance at the moment.” He dropped the letter on the desk and tapped it. “Leo wants to kill somebody. Again.”

  “Or already has,” Montufar added.

  Dumas pulled the quarter from his pocket and scowled at it accusingly, as though it had ruined his trick. “No new homicides reported yet,” he said. “Wait a minute!”

  “Yes,” Peller said, deadpan, “it really is the same quarter.”

  “Exactly. I mean, it could be. What if Leo is the mad golfer?”

  Montufar looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.

  “No, seriously,” Dumas continued. “How likely is it we’d have two nutcases running around at the same time?”

  “It happens,” Peller said. “There isn’t anything to connect the two cases aside from their weirdness.”

  “And the thought that’s gone into the crimes.”

  “True, but the golfer is after money,” Montufar objected. “Leo looks like a serial killer.”

  Peller looked away. “Don’t even think that,” he said. But that spectre had already taken up residence in his own mind, and silence wouldn’t banish it. Most murders were ghosts of yesterday merely awaiting exorcism. Serial killings were ghosts lurking in the shadows of tomorrow, intent on transforming morning into darkest night.

  Montufar said nothing. Dumas studied his quarter in silence for few moments, then half-heartedly repeated the disappearing quarter trick. In spite of the gloom that had settled over them, this time he pocketed the coin flawlessly. “Misdirection,” he said, continuing his previous line of thought. “He gives us something to think about other than what he’s really up to.”

  “We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Peller said. “We don’t have many facts in either case. But point taken, Eric. It could be one person behind both crime sprees. Something to keep in mind, perhaps.”

  Dumas finished the thought for h
im. “But not to run with just yet. Agreed.”

  He tried the coin trick one last time.

  And the quarter fell to the floor with the unconvincing clatter of base metal.

  ∑

  Montufar drew the task of visiting Maggie Patterson, widow of Mark Patterson, mother of Mandy and Mark Junior. Montufar wondered why people would inflict identical initials upon their children. At least they weren’t like some she’d encountered in her law enforcement career, truly bizarre appellations bestowed by aging hippies or drug addicts.

  She recruited one of her junior underlings, Detective Theresa Swan, to accompany her, and the pair arrived at the Patterson home just after three o’clock. As Montufar rang the doorbell of the white and sky-blue bungalow surrounded by incongruously large maples and oaks, Detective Swan shifted nervously. “I’ve never done a murder investigation before,” she said quietly.

  “Don’t worry,” Montufar reassured her. “I’ll ask the questions. Well, most of them. Chime in if you think I’m overlooking something, but otherwise focus on observing and taking notes.”

  When Patterson opened the door, she proved to be a tall, lanky blonde with a corpse-like face: thin, bony, creased, and expressionless. Montufar guessed this wasn’t her normal look but one she’d be wearing for some time to come. Her husband, after all, had been shot to death on the job. And all he did was drive a snowplow.

  Of all the stupid ways to die, Montufar thought. She introduced herself and Swan and asked if they might come in. Patterson motioned them in with a slight nod. Inside, Montufar found the living room to be small and simple, but comfortable enough. The furniture was old and a bit worn but clean, upholstered in red and yellow floral patterns. A grandfather clock that appeared to be a genuine heirloom ticked off seconds at one end of the room; a modest TV quietly occupied the other. The detectives and their host sat on opposite sides of a mission-style coffee table whose cherry finish suggested it was newer than the rest of the furnishings.