Page 19 of Go Home (Kate Valentine #1)

“They call it a geometric cypher because the key involves putting the letters of the alphabet into a pair of grids, and it’s the relevant shape of the grid-section that creates the symbol used in the code.”

“Right.”

Even though he was nodding and saying the right things, Marcus had a faraway look in his eyes.

Ordinary people were like that with codes, Kate noted.

They appeared to be interested, but once you got down into the math, into the nitty-gritty of why the Enigma machine produced a cipher of such elegance, it was as if a curtain came down on their eyes.

They nodded and said “right” and “I get it,” but it was clear they didn’t.

Suppressing her irritation, Kate drew the grids – one like the start of a tic-tac-toe game, the other a large X. Then she filled the grids. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I went into the tic-tac-toe frame, J, K, L and M into each point of the X.

“Hey, I know this!” Marcus said, suddenly. “You do the same thing for N to Z by adding a dot, right? They taught us in Cub Scouts. We called it pigpen.”

“It’s got a lot of names, a lot of different origins. There’s an early decorated copy of the Kabbalah that supposedly uses the code to convey an extra level of truth.”

“Not exactly tough to crack,” Marcus said.

“True, but we wouldn’t have been onto it if Winters hadn’t looked at my screen.”

The killer had sent them three messages again. The first two were Bible references.

Psalm 106: and they sacrificed their sons and daughters to false gods.

1 Corinthians, chapter 19: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and make those who claim knowledge into fools.

“What do you think?” Kate asked. “Whitman being worshiped, idolized by sons and daughters. I’ll bet he has a few adoring students in every class.”

“But it’s bigger than that, surely. Isn’t he saying that people like Whitman are setting themselves up to be more than just people? To be like God?”

“Could be saying both at once. By the way,” Kate added, “you. In the Cub Scouts. Seriously?”

“I was highly decorated. I won every badge they had.”

The third message was a surprise. Eschewing the usual Bible quotes, it appeared to be a direct communication from the killer themselves.

CORRECT THE FALSEHOOD

I AM THE LAWGIVER

I DO NOT PURIFY

I AM THE LAWGIVER

CORRECT THE FALSEHOOD

“Where’s he get ‘Lawgiver’ from?”

“It’s one of the titles given to Moses. Who, of course, was very angry to see that his people had started sacrificing to false gods while he was up on the mountain receiving God’s word.”

“He doesn’t like being called the Purifier. I don’t blame him. Makes me think of my Aunt Cora’s schnauzer.”

“Her schnauzer’s called Purifier?”

“She had a schnauzer with, like, really bad wind. Made your eyes water, seriously. So, she had these little plug-in things in every room. Every ten minutes, it goes Pffffft. Sprays out room freshener. She called them purifiers. My dad said they smelled worse than the dog.”

“Thanks for that, Marcus.”

Kate continued clicking through the scans at high magnification in case the killer had imparted any further messages.

“Question is – what do we do now?”

“I think we sit on it,” said Kate. “If we start pandering to his every whim, it tells him he’s got the upper hand. We don’t even want him to be certain we’ve found the message. We could easily not have found it.”

“But there’s bound to be a lot of media interest, given who the victim was. Winters was only holding off so we could confirm the ID and decipher any messages.”

“Then we make it clear at the press briefing that we’re not calling him anything. That as far as we’re concerned, he’s a dangerous killer, not an action hero.”

“He might not like that.”

“Good.”

She reached the end of the scan, where there was a photograph of Whitman and a few lines of biography. In the photograph, Whitman was wearing a chunky fisherman’s sweater, and just behind him was part of a yacht sail.

“He looks like he’s modeling the winter collection.”

“Or advertising a cosmetic dentist. Look at that smile.”

“Both guys: good looking, a hit with the Fr?uleins.”

“Could inspire jealousy, revenge.”

“But only one of them goading the extremists.”

Kate was in the midst of swallowing a mouthful of cold coffee, and she almost choked.

“What’s the matter with you?”

Reminded by something, she typed Cove Trove into the search engine.

“I just remembered. Mand, the priest’s housekeeper, told me something about the local newspaper. A bit of trouble the Father caused.”

The online presence of the Cove Trove was charmingly awful, with a plethora of clashing fonts, visible chunks of code and queasy colors. It was, however, quite easy to navigate, and for Kate to find “The Christmas Letter” penned by Father Thomas for the publication, almost three years ago.

She read it out loud.

Extremes of faith are the same as any other extreme: toxic and to be avoided.

Whether it’s the priest or pastor interpreting the Bible too literally, or the fanatic driving a van into a crowd of partygoers, extremism represents a complete shutdown of what is, in fact, the greatest gift God has given us: our reason.

“She said he ruffled a few feathers. Got in a bit of trouble.”

“With that?”

The real trouble began in the first week of January where, in the midst of jokes about dieting and earnest lamentations regarding the commercialization of Christmas, people had started to express strong opinions and comments about Father Thomas’s message.

“Stick to baptizing babies,” Kate read aloud.

“Insulting to those with faith, and those with none,” Marcus added.

“Worryingly out of step with his community.”

“How dare he compare a Bible Christian with a terrorist?”

The row continued, with the language becoming more Old Testament in tone and intention, until, in the second week of February, the editor had declared the subject closed.

“It seems to have been a theme with Father Tom,” Kate said. “He wasn’t quite what people wanted from a priest. And when he tried to be, it backfired.”

“This is all pretty mild stuff, though,” Marcus argued. “’Worryingly out of step.’”

“But that’s what got published on the website. Maybe people said worse things, I’m sure, that the editor didn’t put up there.”

“Or thought them.”

Kate dialed the number for the editor, one Shona McLeod. There was no reply, but she left a message.

“Could be,” Marcus mused, “that Whitman got threats, too. I mean, you’d expect it with him.”

They both trawled the web for a while, but were surprised to find a lack of controversy or threats surrounding the provocative author.

“Maybe he’s not read by the sort of people who make threats,” Marcus suggested.

“I’ve got something,” Kate declared, quietly.

Marcus scooted over, keenly.

“What am I looking at?”

“This was a major lecture series at Brantley. Five nights of Whitman, debating faith with an eminent believer. Rumors that Pope Leo XIV would be one of them. The whole thing timed to build up publicity before the release of this year’s book.

The NYT telling its readers: ‘beg, borrow, steal a ticket, swim to Maine but don’t miss it!

’ Tickets selling at two-hundred dollars a pop. ”

“And it was canceled.”

“Unforeseen circumstances. What kind of circumstances?”

She phoned the Dean, who she’d interviewed briefly, back at the crime scene. She recalled a harried-looking man in a suit too large for him. She had a feeling he’d been ill, or still was.

“When I asked you if there’d been anything of note in the Professor’s academic life over recent months, you said no. But now it seems he had a major lecture series canceled.”

There was a pause. It suggested the Dean was searching for an answer.

“I’m afraid it slipped my mind,” he said. “It’s not every day that one of my staff is murdered.”

She noted the flash of sarcasm – the shift from answering the question to implying the questioner was at fault. Or was it just all academics? They felt this need to put you down. Even her mother did it, from time to time, almost without thinking.

“Why was it canceled?”

“A stupid reason,” the Dean replied. “You saw our new theatre, I take it? When you drove in from the south.”

Kate recalled a big rectangular building with bright red bricks and a gleaming steel roof. She hadn’t paid it much attention.

“We were going to sell two types of tickets for Alan’s lecture series. Seated and standing. Standing at fifty bucks a head, so that actual students could afford to come.”

Kate couldn’t imagine standing up for an hour, not to mention paying fifty bucks for the privilege. She wouldn’t even have done that for Patsy Cline. Okay, maybe for Patsy.

“Then we have a snap fire inspection. The inspector guy’s a Nazi.

The drapes are wrong. We say, fine, we’ll change the drapes.

Then someone mentions the talks, and the standing tickets.

That’s when he gets the big guns out. We can’t have any people standing, the whole building would need to be reconfigured, more doors, different doors, exit routes, trained up fire marshals, yadda-yadda. So we had to cancel.”

“I don’t understand,” Kate said. “Surely you could have stuck with all the people who had paid for sit-down seats. That would still be a big audience.”

“It would. Unfortunately, Professor Whitman had charged his fee for the lectures on the basis of an audience that was standing and sitting. We did try our best to get him to accept the lesser sum, but he was unmovable. He pulled out, leaving us with no option but to cancel the lectures.”

“Did that result in a degree of tension?”

“Yes. But I didn’t murder him. It goes with the territory, Agent Valentine.

These hothouse flowers get us a lot of attention.

Rich, cool kids get their daddies to send them to school here, and that’s solely because of star staff like Alan Whitman.

If you want that – and we do – then you have to put up with the egos and the tantrums.”