Page 40 of Counter Attack

Nathan had expected nothing less.

She turned to him. “Start with the first one?”

He nodded and opened an app on his tablet, one that would work with his pen. “That way we can see the pattern.”

He quickly made a page for each of the victims and thenreturned to the first page and wrote Courtney Johnson at the top along with her age of twenty-five. She’d been killed almost two years ago right before Christmas. The thought of the Christmas her family had experienced made his heart heavy.

Neither of them spoke as they focused on the articles in the bin. Black leather miniskirt and vest, white silk blouse, red purse, and four-inch red stilettos. Clothes of the trade. He glanced at the shoes again. How in the world women walked in those things, he’d never know. The purse held her driver’s license, lipstick, and a small package of tissues. And a weighted, almost-White pawn.

The pawn was a wooden piece that probably came from a chess shop. “Why would the killer use this pawn? Unless it’s a knockoff, it’s a Staunton chess piece, and the set could cost anywhere from a hundred bucks to two hundred. Why not use pawns from a ten-dollar set like you can get at any big box store?”

“It’s a real Staunton chess piece,” Alexis said. “Although I hadn’t heard the detectives mention it might cost that much.”

“Has anyone checked the chess stores around here? There are only a couple of places I can think of that might carry a set like this.”

“Yes, but her death happened around Christmas, and the stores sold quite a few sets due to the popularity of that Netflix series. Unless the customer made the purchase with a credit card, the game stores didn’t have a record of the sale. Do you seriously think the killer would risk buying the chess set from a business that could very well remember him? Don’t you think the set was bought online?”

Nathan shrugged. “The killer has a very high opinion of himself and likes taking risks, so it’s possible he bought it locally.”

He set the pawn back in the bin and picked up a clear plasticbag containing an index card. “Just one move—queen’s White pawn to line d, column 4.”

She nodded. “I’d just moved to vice and wasn’t part of the investigation yet, but of course I heard about the note. One of the homicide detectives told me it was a common opening move. When the second murder occurred, it was evident the killer was letting us know the ‘game’ had started.”

Alexis picked up the second box marked “Rebecca Daniels.” She turned to him, a question on her face.

“What?”

“D4. How did you know it was a pawn? It doesn’t have a letter in front of it like the other pieces. You know, K for king, Q for queen,” she said. “I wanted to ask Madden, but I didn’t want him to know I was that ignorant of the game. And it wasn’t in any of the research I did.”

He smiled. “I don’t know why it doesn’t use the letter—that’s just the way it is. I never questioned it.”

“Most people probably wouldn’t, but when you start out not knowing anything about the game...” She shrugged and then took out a clear plastic bag containing another small index card and handed it to Nathan.

He stared at the neat lettering of the algebraic notation.Fool’s mate. “Here the killer is saying you’re incompetent because in the very first move, White puts himself in check.”

“I got that much from what Madden said. Then I looked it up and learned it means that White made a stupid move, and that it rarely happens even with rank beginners.”

Nathan chewed the inside ridge of his cheek. “Our killer is playing Black in this note, but in the note left on Gina Norman’s body, he’s playing White. Does he switch sides in any of the other notes?”

“Good question, one I don’t have the answer to, but maybe you can tell me.” She opened the third box and handed himthe note. “At the end of the notation, he calls uspatzers, German for ‘blunderers.’”

“It’s a slightly different variation of the fool’s mate. But by calling you patzers, he’s calling you amateurs.”

“It doesn’t get any better with Maria Brooks and Trinity Collins, the two victims who frequented the Lemon Tree.” She handed him the bags with their notes. “They’re identical. Madden called this move the scholar’s mate, and then the killer added some names to indicate what he thinks of us.”

Duffers and wood-pushers meant the same thing as patzers, and Nathan didn’t have to picture the chessboard to know this notation was checkmate in four moves. Was the killer using the moves to give clues to the next victim? Or simply taunting the police? He looked through the property boxes of the other women, leaving George Smith for last.

“Homicide ran the cases through NCIC.”

The National Crime Information Center database. “Any hits?”

“No. Because the pawns were present in the second murder, homicide thought we might be dealing with a serial killer, so they requested a profile from the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.”

The Chattanooga detectives had done everything Nathan would have. “Have you received the profile yet?”

She nodded. “But, as you can see, it hasn’t helped. The BAU indicated the murders were premeditated and well thought out. The profile indicated the killer is someone in their midtwenties to midthirties with a higher-than-average IQ, possibly outgoing but more than likely an introvert and very organized. Other than the pawn in each woman’s hand and the note, the killer left nothing behind. The report also validated our detectives’ belief that the first three victims were practice. Each murder the killer gets away with increases his sense of power.”

“How about ethnicity?”

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