Salem's Cipher (16 page)

44

Massachusetts

T
he interior of the sedan was redolent with the fried sugar-salt smell of McDonald's mingling with Clancy Johnson's Old Spice. If it were up to Stone, there'd be no fast food stops, no cologne you could buy from a drugstore shelf, no gum-chewing allowed in the car. But Clancy was still pissed at him for the double op in the Hawthorne Hotel lobby and Stone didn't want to waste any more energy on Clancy.

He kept his thoughts to himself.

The lurid neon of the Holiday Motel sign didn't quite reach their car parked tight to the abandoned gas station. Still, Stone kept his iPad on no-see mode, covered with an FBI-issue filter that gobbled up the light using reverse night vision technology. This allowed him to read in the dark with no telltale glow from the device. He was in the passenger seat. Clancy was behind the wheel, eyes on the door to room 11.

“The girls just got a pizza delivered. Four of 'em, it looks like. Any luck finding out who their two ragtags are?”

“Have you
heard
my phone ring?” It was out of character for Stone to snap at his partner. He kept emotions out of the business. It'd been a long two days, though, and Clancy knew better than him that the lab would call if they got anything on the photos they'd been sent.

Clancy grunted.

Stone never glanced up from his search, which, despite the high-end tech allowing him to use the device unseen in the dark, was research anybody with access to a free desktop at the library could do. He was looking for national, or at least Minnesota-local, news on the suspected kidnapping of Grace Odegaard and Vida Wiley.

Back in Minneapolis, he'd been relieved that the media hadn't stumbled on the serial killer cases he and his team had been following for the last week, but since the Hawthorne Hotel lobby, he'd decided to get suspicious. His luck had never been that good. In fact, in his experience, if it looked like luck, you were missing something. So he'd started sniffing around the news sites. He'd located information on the five murders leading up to the Minneapolis case, but it was buried and too short for the murders of four white women.

Then he'd decided to see what a regular citizen could find out about the kidnapping of a successful realtor and a high-profile history professor in Minneapolis.

Turns out, nothing.

Not one peep on all of the Internet, though Mrs. Gladia's murder had been reported.

Goddamn.

This went up high, up to someone powerful enough to muzzle the media and buy Stone's partner. In this age of the Internet, where everyone with a phone had a camera and could find an online audience, that took bank and connections of a staggering scope. Stone pulled his eyes from the device and refocused them onto a spot about four feet in front of the hood of the car.

God
damn
.

Since the lobby, Stone had upgraded Clancy from neutral to enemy, which added another level of hassle to a situation that was already so far out of control as to be a joke if there weren't lives at stake.

But what Stone knew that Clancy didn't was that he'd finally received a break, the tiniest thread of hope that might lead out of this pit.

It had come moments earlier in the form of an email from a forensic scientist in the New Mexico Regional Computer Forensics Lab, the closest RCFL to the first murder and the location to which Stone had sent the hard drives and phones of all five murder victims.

She'd found something.

A connection.

Three of the victims—the New Age woman from Sedona, the Maine attorney, and the Nebraska farm wife—had all attended the same conference a month earlier, an all-female retreat in San Diego. He Googled the conference, called Women in Numbers.

The site was simple, consisting of a single page, soft blues and
browns behind black lettering. The conference had been held October 1
and 2 in the Los Milagras Resort and promised two days of panels and breakout sessions designed to explore the role of women in history as well as their current role in politics, education, and the sciences.

The keynote speaker?

Dr. Vida Wiley.

A hot rush of triumph had pumped through Stone. Finally. He finally had a lead. The bottom of the page included an email address and a phone number, plus the tagline:
Let's Not Do Our Work Underground Anymore.

Bookmarking the page, Stone let his eyes drift back outside into the space of night. He thought his mother would have liked that, a group of women standing up and claiming what was theirs. She'd look up from the hamburger and noodles and canned peas she was pulling together for her two sons after a ten-hour shift cleaning houses, right before going to whatever floating part-time job she juggled to keep food in their bellies and a roof over her head, and she'd say, “Goodness, Luc, doing our work underground? We've been doing that shit right in front of your eyes for years. Just open 'em up.” Then she'd laugh that sweet, deep laugh that pushed aside every dark thought a person had ever entertained.

He'd give up his career, the one he'd scratched and fought and sacrificed for, just to hear that laugh one more time.

“They're coming out,” Clancy said, starting the car. “They've got their bags and the pizza. Looks like they're on the move.”

45

Eleven Years Old

“Y
ou know how magicians make their magic, don't you?”

It's the winter Salem decides to try bangs. Rather than looking like Uma Thurman in
Pulp Fiction
, which had been her goal, she resembles a poodle at Westminster. Bel tells her she looks fine—fluffy—and subsequently talks Salem out of dropping out of sixth grade.

Salem's dad's shop is insulated, and he is working on a simple TV stand. She doesn't understand why he's wasting his time on something so basic—a cube of wood with two drawers in the front, big enough to support a twenty-three-inch before the US got rid of the fat-backed cathode ray TVs. You could pick up a table just like it at Sears.

“I suppose,” Salem says, though she's never really given it thought before, “that they get you to look one way and do their trick another.”

Daniel slaps his knee. “Exactly!”

Salem feels the warm drops of his pride speckle her skin, just like she always feels when she works with her dad. She points at the ugly lump he's working on. “Is that what you're doing here? Is there a prettier piece of furniture inside?”

Daniel laughs. He's never been mad at Salem, not that she can remember.

“If there's ever been a smarter child, I don't want to meet her. No, this plain piece of furniture is all there is to it. Unless,” he says, holding up a finger, his eyes twinkling, “you try to open the drawers.”

Intrigued, Salem reaches for the round knob holding the top drawer. It doesn't budge. She tries the bottom drawer. Same.

Vida dances out to the workshop to inform them dinner is ready, bringing in the solid cold of winter. Her cheeks are flushed. She's happy because her parents are visiting, and she's made all their favorite foods—a chicken, walnut, and pomegranate stew aromatic with saffron and cinnamon, rice and fava beans flecked with fresh dill, lamb kebabs flavored with lemon and salt. Their house has smelled succulent all day. Vida kisses Daniel on the cheek, and he slips his hand around her waist and dips her for a full kiss. Salem looks away. She's embarrassed and proud that her parents love each other so much.

Vida giggles and pushes away from Daniel.

“Mom,” Salem says, “Dad made a TV stand with drawers that don't work.”

Her parents exchange a glance. Daniel speaks. “Think of the magicians, Salem. Move your focus away from what you see.”

Salem works at it for ten minutes, but the drawers are solid, no trip switches on any of them. Vida murmurs something to him. Daniel's smile drops. He leans forward, grips the top edges of the stand, and turns the whole rectangle 45 degrees counterclockwise. Underneath lies an unfinished piece of wood. Next, Daniel pulls out both drawer knobs exactly as if they are the handles on cigarette vending machines. Finally, he places a hand flat on each side of the stand and presses gently. The front of the unit pops open, not two drawers as the design suggests but one.

“But it's just a drawer, exactly as it appears!” Salem exclaims. “Why would you make it so difficult to open?”

Daniel's smile has returned. “The best place to hide something is always in plain sight.”

This is one of Salem's earliest exposures to the furniture equivalent of steganography. In a year, she will use the same principal to craft a balsa box etched with an
om
for her mother.

46

Massachusetts

S
alem's hands were shaking.

Bel and Ernest watched her from the doorway. Mercy was dragging her feet, trying to soak up one last second of television. Time had become a great syrupy broth.

The text from Vida Wiley was twenty-one words long:

Follow the trail to the end, no matter what. Stick close to Bel. Trust no one else. I love you, always.

“Salem? Who texted?”

Was Bel watching her oddly? Well, of course she was. Salem was not answering a direct question, shivering, holding her phone like it was both a scorpion and a life raft. An idea was birthing itself, ripping through Salem's stomach, shredding her throat, too big to push past her mouth, tearing through sinew and skin in its effort to escape: if her mom was texting her right now, that meant Gracie was dead. Beautiful, sassy Gracie, who lit up any room she walked into and treated everyone like she was their best friend.

Gracie, whom Salem had always secretly wished was her own mother.

No way could Salem tell Bel that Gracie was gone. She couldn't destroy her best friend's life the way her own had been razed by her dad's suicide. Daniel's death had turned Salem into a shadow rather than a person. She wouldn't inflict that on her best friend.

She
couldn't
.

She closed her eyes, her brain pounding against the prison of her skull.

Because maybe the text didn't mean Grace was dead. Maybe both their mothers were still alive, and Ernest had lied or gotten bad information or found out what sort of necklace Grace and Vida wore and located a replica. Or maybe Salem's own mother was dead, and somebody was using her phone to get to Salem and Bel.

Somebody who wanted to lull her into believing them, trusting them, revealing information she shouldn't.

Or her mom was alive and Grace was dead.

Salem couldn't control the racing thoughts, couldn't look Bel in the eye. She dropped her phone into her pocket and hugged her elbows. “It's Connor. He wants to know when I'll be back in the Cities so he can come over for a booty call.”

Bel snorted. “A gentleman to the very end.” She stepped aside so Ernest could pass her. “Come on, Salem. I want to get going.”

Salem drew in a shaky breath. “I have to pee. I'll meet you in the car, 'kay?”

Bel began to walk toward her. “Are you feeling all right?”

Salem backed into the bathroom, her hands up. “Fine. Just a quick pee. Promise.” She closed and locked the door behind her and dropped onto the closed toilet. Every bone within her was vibrating. She pulled out the phone and reread the message.

With thumbs as cold as the lie she'd just told, she typed a reply:
Mom?

She breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth, ten times. She counted backward from twenty. No response. She slipped her phone into her pocket, flushed the toilet and washed her hands in case Bel was listening, and shoved down the lava flow of guilt that was searing her insides. She would tell Bel, she would figure out how, but not just yet.

She stepped out of the bathroom.

The hotel room was empty. Salem did a visual sweep to make sure they hadn't left anything. Finding it all clear, she dropped the key on the nightstand and made her way outside. The air was bracing, the moon a waxing crescent, a judging wink staring straight into her yellow heart. She yanked open the Buick's door and slid into the backseat next to Mercy.

Ernest adjusted the rearview mirror. “You sure you're okay? You look pale.”

“Just hungry,” Salem mumbled.

“Here you go.” Bel passed back one of the pizza boxes. Mercy was already tearing into hers. The oily smell made Salem's stomach spasm.

“Thanks.” Salem took the box, knowing she couldn't eat, certain the pizza would taste like cardboard and rot and shame.

“That sedan's gone,” Bel remarked as they pulled out of the parking lot. “The one that was in the gas station lot. I never got a look at who was driving it.”

Salem watched the glow of the hotel's neon sign from the backseat and nodded, the only response she could muster.

She was falling through smoke.

As the dark Massachusetts highway rolled away beyond the Buick's window, her brain drifted away from the lie she had told to a burning question. Had her parents and Gracie pushed her and Bel into their future careers of cryptanalyst and police officer, not by force but by planned, manipulative gestures? Things like a new code book brought home from the library for Salem weekly, or math camp sold to Salem and law enforcement camp to Bel every summer, like it was the lottery they'd won?

The thought that her dreams and passions had never been her own sent her into an emotional free fall. She didn't want to believe it, that her parents' support and encouragement of her had been so calculated.

Salem didn't even know she'd fallen asleep until Bel's scream woke her.