Page 106 of The Morning After (Savannah 2)

“Always a good sign.”

“Don’t be smart.”

“You’d rather I be stupid?”

She grinned, flashing white teeth and showing off her dimple again. “So you do have a sense of humor.”

“Upon occasion.”

“Well, let’s be serious for a sec, okay?”

“Okay.”

As the cat ate noisily, Nikki pushed some paperwork to the side of her café table, clearing a working space, then reached into a zipper pocket of her bag and withdrew some folded sheets of paper. Carefully, she smoothed the pages over the Formica. Reed recognized copies of the notes she’d received from the killer.

He leaned closer, caught a whiff of her perfume.

“Look at these. Two of the notes are basic. Simplistic.” She pointed to the first two letters she received. “They’re kind of a ‘heads up, Gillette. Pay attention. I’m going to do something. Something big.’ They remind me of a little kid who’s jumped into the pool and is yelling at his parents, ‘Watch me. Watch me!’ She shifted the two simple notes to one side of the table. The words: TONIGHT and IT’S DONE seemed stark against the white paper. “These are obviously in reference to a killing, probably the second one, but the next communication I got”—she moved her hand to the final note—“is much more sophisticated. It’s lots different from the others. It’s a rhyme, in the same tone as the ones you received. Right?”

“Yes,” he agreed, eyeing the note, listening to

her logic.

“It’s another tone of voice, a bigger hint or broader clue: ‘Will there be more? Until the twelfth, no one can be sure.’” She tapped her finger on the poem as Jennings hopped on the table and began washing himself. Without losing her concentration, she placed the cat on the floor. “It’s not so much bragging as the first ones seemed to be. Uh-uh. It’s meant to be a clue, a seduction, almost a dare that begs me to solve the mystery. Just as the notes to you are. Look at the third line, ‘No one can be sure.’” Deep in concentration, her eyebrows yanked together, her teeth gnawing at her lower lip, she thought aloud, “First of all, the words ‘more’ and ‘sure’ don’t really rhyme, so I do think that this entire letter is supposed to be read after yours. But why repeat the line, ‘will there be more?’ Yours already had the ‘will there be more’ question. And check out ‘no one.’ Two words. Not ‘noone’ all put together as some people misspell it.”

She looked up at him with her intelligent green eyes and it clicked. He reviewed the other notes he’d received.

TICK TOCK,

ON GOES THE CLOCK.

TWO IN ONE,

ONE AND TWO.

Then,

ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR…

SO, NOW, DON’T YOU WONDER HOW MANY MORE?

And finally,

NOW WE HAVE NUMBER FOUR.

ONE THIRD DONE,

WILL THERE BE MORE?

“They all have twelve words,” he said, “including the one you received. That’s why the meter’s off and the first line of your note repeats the last line of mine.”

“Exactly!” Her expression was serious, but her eyes glittered with anticipation and he noticed striations of gold punctuating her dark green irises. “And when we put the two together, it makes sense. The way I read mine was that on December twelfth, something would happen, and it may still, yet. You know, twelfth month, twelfth day, but really, the killer wants us to tie the two notes together, making the meaning entirely different. Your half didn’t indicate a date at all, but by saying a third was done with four deaths, gave you the clue that there will be twelve victims, and that probably both people in the coffins were part of the master plan.”

“Except he didn’t kill Thomas Massey or Pauline Alexander.”

“But they were chosen for a reason.”

Reed agreed and let her run with her theory. “And that is?”

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