Salem's Cipher Read online

  A tiny sound from Bel mercifully forced Salem’s attention away from the horrific sight. Bel was rocking back and forth, the move so slight that Salem would not have noticed if she hadn’t reached for Bel’s icy hand. She followed her friend’s stare, her eyes landing three feet above the corpse. The investigators were scraping something off the wall. Salem kept her eyes moving, to the open doorway that allowed the beginning rays of the chilly Halloween sunshine to filter into the hallway. The furniture inside Gracie’s apartment, at least what Salem could see from this angle, was undisturbed.

  “We have one body.” Agent Stone’s voice was a deep rumble directly behind them. “She’s been positively ID’d as Carla Marie Gladia.”

  Bel’s hand tightened in Salem’s. “Neighbor.” Her eyes flicked to the body.

  “That’s right. And her dog, Dante.”

  Salem spoke past the pressure at the top of her throat. “Someone murdered a dog?”

  “Probably to keep the animal quiet.” Stone tipped his head toward the two corpses on the floor. “That’s exactly as the police discovered them.”

  One of the uniformed officers walked over to Agent Stone, whispered something to him, and then stepped onto the elevator. The mechanical door closed behind them as Stone continued. “We have the security tapes from the lobby for the past twenty-four hours. You know this is a women’s-only building?”

  Both Salem and Bel nodded, their eyes locked on apartment 307 as if love and wishes could coax Grace to walk out of it.

  “We’ll review the tape, but for now, it appears that no males have been in or out of the building in the past twenty-four hours. Not even a repairman or delivery man. Yet, from the blood pattern, we know at least one of the killers, if there was more than one, entered through the front door. That narrows our suspects to females.” Stone cocked his head, his eyes unreadable. “Ms. Odegaard, did your mother have any enemies that you know of?”

  Bel shook her head, the movement slow.

  Salem’s heartbeat picked up as she connected two dots. “Wait, you have a body. Two, with Dante. Maybe all this blood is from them!” She turned to Agent Stone, realizing too late how excited she sounded about this grotesque reality. She swallowed past the spongy lump lodged between her chest and mouth.

  Stone’s eyes remained trained on Bel. “I’m afraid that’s unlikely. There’s a secondary crime scene inside. If you’ll follow me?”

  He handed them shoe covers before walking along the carefully-marked trail skirting the blood, indicating that Bel and Salem should follow. “Everything in the apartment appears to be in order—all major appliances accounted for, dishes done, bed made. We haven’t located a safe.”

  “Mom didn’t own one.” Bel crossed the threshold and surveyed the apartment, her visual assessment snagged by drops of what looked like dried blood under the far window, two more examiners and a uniformed officer busy with the area. She paled. “You’re treating this as a murder-kidnapping?”

  Stone followed her glance. “For now.”

  She indicated the activity at the window. “The secondary crime scene?”

  “Yes, extending outside onto the fire escape.”

  “Can I check the bedrooms?” When Stone nodded his assent, Bel marched toward the open doorway.

  “Stay here and touch nothing,” Stone commanded, before following Bel.

  Stay was all Salem could do. Stay and stare at anything but all the blood in the hallway behind her, suffocating her, threatening to drown her like an encroaching crimson ocean, thick and salty, Mrs. Gladia’s screams echoing through its depths like whalesong. She reached out to the TV nightstand to steady herself, the glass edge a sharp return to reality. That’s when she spotted the wooden jewelry box her father had helped her craft for her mother when Salem was a seventh grader.

  What the hell?

  She’d sawn the balsa wood herself, loaded the secret spring that would open the box, glued it all together, heat-etched the om symbol on the top, and lined the interior with purple felt. She hadn’t laid eyes on it since she’d gifted it to her mom. She reached out a trembling hand, surprised at how light the container was. Her finger traced the black, looping groove of the om. When she was twelve, before her dad’s suicide, she’d been into Buddhism, or at least attracted to the concept of karma and the comfort of stretch pants.

  She hardly remembered that girl.

  The box made a clinking sound when she turned it over. Her heartbeat picked up. She glanced furtively at the window. The investigators there paid her no heed. Same with the ones behind her in the foyer. She held the box to her ear and shook it. There was definitely something inside. Squeezing the two long sides, she centered her pointer finger in the middle of the bottom to release the spring. The lid slid open. Inside lay a pair of ancient spectacles, and underneath, a note scratched out in her mother’s scrawling handwriting. She tugged both out and read the message.

  Bits: bwsmttmijwcbzmdmvombpmvowpwumnwttwebpmbziqtbzcabvwwvm

  Salem’s stomach somersaulted. “Bits” had been Salem’s dad’s nickname for her growing up. The moniker had cemented itself once she’d discovered her love for computers, though only her mom, Gracie, and Bel had ever called her that.

  What followed was a secret code.

  Her heartbeat thick and loud, she peeked again at the nearest investigators. They were photographing the base of the window, pointing at a spot, talking. Stone and Bel would return from the other room any second. She floated in a bubble of invisibility for the smallest moment.

  What do I do with the box?

  Salem felt like she was chewing on alum. She glanced a third time toward the window, a greasy sweat trickling down her neck. She clutched the code and spectacles, unsure if they’d been in the balsa wood box for ten hours or ten years, or if they were even meant for her. She didn’t want to steal, or pollute a crime scene. Nor did she want to ignore a message from her mother, not under these circumstances. The indecision was agonizing. She was about to close the box and return it to the TV stand when Bel stepped into the living room, Agent Stone on her heel. Salem instinctively shoved the glasses and note into her purse and slid the box closed, her pulse a rocket in her veins.

  Stone’s intelligent glance flicked at her hands. She held up the now-empty balsa box like a shield, unable to meet the ink of his eyes. “My mom, Vida Wiley, owns this. I made it for her when I was in middle school.” Her voice quavered. “She might have been here last night.”

  Stone stepped toward her and took the balsa box with his gloved hands, examining it from all sides. His voice was a controlled growl. “I told you not to touch anything.”

  She didn’t respond.

  He called over the uniformed officer from the window and commanded him to enter the box into evidence without taking his eyes off of Salem. “Do you have any reason to suspect she might have been here last evening other than this box?”

  Salem shook her head, biting her lower lip to keep it steady. “But she’s not answering her phone.”

  He studied her for a moment longer, an exclamation point of crisp darkness in the dawning light of the apartment, hair shaved close to the scalp, eyes bright and quick, nose strong over sculpted lips. Salem risked a glance, and his gaze laid her bare.

  “Are you and your mother close?”

  No, Agent Stone, we are not. “I last saw her a few weeks ago.” Her cheeks burned so hot that her eyes watered as she stared at her feet. “But she always answers when I call.”

  He paused a moment before answering. “I’ll send officers to her home immediately.”

  Salem clenched her jaw so no emotions could leak past, only words. “Thank you. Also, I’m not feeling well. ” She glanced at Bel, passing her a look they hadn’t used since high school. “Can you come with me?”

  The secret code hummed inside her purse.

  It sounded like an urgent, p
apery whisper of warning.

  4

  Linden Hills, Minnesota

  There was a whole lot FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Lucan Stone didn’t like about this case.

  He didn’t care for the fact that five victims had been reported in seven days, their throats cut with an identical weapon, their bodies discovered in each corner of the United States, from Florida to Arizona to Nebraska and now Minnesota.

  He also didn’t like the nagging sense that there were far, far more victims out there than they would ever know.

  And as head of a four-man task force, what really pissed him off? He hadn’t a single lead.

  Not one of the descriptions of the perp had lined up true, but they’d at least had a profile before this Linden Hills discovery. Their serial killer was certainly male, white, and between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. His victims were all female, four Caucasian and one multi-racial, two sets of them mothers/adult daughters and the fifth woman unrelated, none of them sexually violated. According to the FBI profiler assigned to the investigation, the killer had grown up with a domineering mother and an absent father. He also had a job that allowed him to travel without drawing suspicion. He was likely single and heterosexual.

  His MO was consistent: locate the victim in her home, slice her throat, vanish. No staging. The only signature was a lack of a signature. If not for the peculiar randomness of the victims other than the two mother-daughter connections—a Cuban grandmother in Florida City, a woman who sold sage and crystals in Sedona, a newly married farmer’s wife in Nebraska, a Maine attorney, and an elementary school teacher from Southern California—Agent Stone would have marked him for a contract killer.

  Then along came this Minneapolis murder of a woman and her dog and the potential kidnapping or murder of Grace Odegaard. This perp’s methods were identical—locate the woman in her home, slice her throat, disappear—which is why Stone and his partner had been called in, along with their task force. But this murder had taken place inside a female-only building, and the security tapes, which were as grainy as breakfast cereal and which he’d watched forward and backward twice, showed only women entering and leaving.

  He powerfully hoped that it wasn’t a serial killer couple they were dealing with because the only break they’d had so far was the media not yet connecting the cross-country killings. If it turned out they had a Bundy and Clyde on their hands, there’s no way the press wouldn’t catch wind of it. The FBI would lose their meager advantage.

  Frankly, it was amazing the connections between the killings hadn’t already been leaked. Senator Gina Hayes was likely to thank for that. The woman dominated the media. With the presidential election little more than a week away, she couldn’t sneeze without it making headlines.

  Stone didn’t particularly care for politics. He liked that a black man was the current president. He’d like that a woman was president, too, if she did a good job. But he had more immediate issues in his sightline.

  “Agent Stone?” The uniformed police officer stood a respectful distance away, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, like a kid who needed to pee.

  Stone glanced up from Vida Wiley’s FBI file, which he’d pulled the second Isabel Odegaard and Salem Wiley had left for the bathroom. Other than an unusual amount of cross-country and out-of-country flying for a history professor, nothing stood out. The examiners were closing up their murder bags and hoisting Mrs. Gladia into the body sack, which meant the cleaning crew would be arriving soon. He needed to find something, anything, any detail that had been overlooked. “Yes?”

  “We’ve located a human finger.” The officer jabbed his thumb over his shoulder, toward the back of the building. “In the dumpster. It’s been sliced off like a rat’s tail.”

  Stone was about to reprimand the officer for his cavalier word choice when he noticed his face. It glowed with that waxy sheen that comes right before you vomit. “Female?”

  “The techs say they think so.” The officer swayed, wiping at moisture collecting above his mustache. “It’s a pinkie.”

  “Goddamn.” Stone swallowed past his disgust because he knew what this meant: they might finally have a lead. “Get it to the lab.”

  “It’s already on its way, sir.”

  He’d have assumed as much. The Minneapolis police force was one of the most efficient he’d worked with, their techs the best in the business. He glanced at the uniform’s name tag. “Is there anything else, Officer Benokraitis?”

  “Not really.” The young officer twitched at the loud zip of the body bag closing. “The techs haven’t been able to enter the blood samples into the system. Too many cases ahead of you.” He nodded agreeably, on more comfortable ground now. “But some patrol cops were in the Powderhorn Park neighborhood and rushed to Vida Wiley’s house, like you asked. They radioed that there’s no sign of her, or of any trouble.”

  Stone nodded. That’s what he’d figured. He returned to the file, picturing Isabel Odegaard and Salem Wiley blowing in here like a hurricane. Odegaard was all business, scrambling to keep it together and be in charge all at once, an outlook that he understood intimately. Wiley he couldn’t read as well. All he knew for sure was that she was so pretty she’d squeezed his heart when he first laid eyes on her.

  He didn’t like what it meant for either of them that the perp—if it was the same slicer he’d been following—had gone quirky with the finger. A serial killer changing his MO this late in the spree indicated an increasingly unbalanced mind.

  The brutality of the crimes was guaranteed to escalate.

  5

  Linden Hills, Minneapolis

  With shaking hands, Salem smoothed the note from her mother on the bathroom counter of the third-floor apartment commandeered for police use. Bel stood watch at the door. Since they’d arrived at Grace’s, Bel’s gaze had grown hollow, her skin ashen, but she still held herself like a rod.

  Bel blinked toward the note. “What’s it mean?”

  Salem shot her a weak smile. “Not anything worth bothering the FBI about. I bet it’s a note Mom wrote years ago.”

  Yet, she didn’t quite believe that, or they wouldn’t be here now.

  She reached into her purse and tugged out a pen and pad of paper before grabbing the ancient spectacles. Their thin, rusting wire was wrapped around misshapen glass lenses. The ear bands were little more than metal sticks crafted of a copper so old it had turned green. Salem held them toward the light and squinted. The lenses were all scratched up. She set them to the side and pinned her attention on the note.

  Bits: bwsmttmijwcbzmdmvombpmvowpwumnwttwebpmbziqtbzcabvwwvm

  She was most comfortable solving computer problems. All the clean 1s and 0s could be perfectly lined up to crack a code as crisply as a key slid into a new lock. Her thesis research had taught her that Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine was conceived in 1822 and the computer program written for it by Ada Lovelace in 1842, but it was Turing’s Enigma cracker, first envisioned in 1936 and built in 1940, that demonstrated the code-breaking power of computing machines.

  Alan Turing developed the apparatus for the British government during World War II. Turing’s machine built off of an earlier model to crack even the most advanced German code, effectively shaving at least two years off of WWII and creating the first working model of a general computer. Salem wished for a handheld model now to help her crack the code her mother had left.

  “Agent Stone asked me if we knew where Grace or Vida were.” Bel’s words startled Salem. She glanced up from the note as Bel continued. “When we were both in my mom’s bedroom. I told him we didn’t know anything. We don’t, right?”

  “Not yet we don’t.” Salem returned her attention to the message, clicking her focus back into processor mode. When she’d initially shown an interest in computers, she’d been excited to discover how many females had been involved in their development.
Jean Jennings Bartik was one of six women who created programs for ENIAC, the first electronic general computer, in the 1940s. A decade later, Grace Hopper led the creation of COBOL, the original widely-used computer programming language. Computer science had been built on the work of women, who in the early years entered through the field of mathematics.

  With computers, Salem felt like she was home.

  But this code from her mom was old school, which was unsurprising given Vida’s general avoidance of computers. With all the ws and zs and js, it was unlikely to be a transposition cipher, where letters were jumbled to create an anagram. It was more probable that her mom had written her a substitution cipher, either a simple Caesar or a Vigenère.

  “I don’t think the FBI knows anything either.” Bel pressed her ear to the door. “And it looked like the beginnings of a task force out there. Plus, the ME would have come and gone by now if this was a standard homicide. I don’t like any of this.”

  Salem didn’t either. She tapped the pencil eraser on the paper while she pondered. In a Caesar cipher, each letter in the alphabet was replaced by a letter a fixed number of positions down the alphabet. So if the Caesar cipher had a right shift of four, every a in the code became a d, every b an e, every c an f, and so on. It was a fairly easy code to break by using frequency analysis, starting with short words. In English, for example, a single-letter word was only going to be I or a, and a three-letter word was most likely to be the or and. Once those letters were established, the cryptanalyst worked out from there, making educated guesses until the puzzle was solved.

  Salem began chewing on the end of the pencil. She held up the note so she could examine it from different angles. A Vigenère cipher was a Caesar cipher on steroids. If one didn’t know the keyword, the code was uncrackable. At least it was until Babbage discovered that modular arithmetic and a dash of intuition could break le chiffre indéchiffrable.

  Salem scribbled Vida’s note on her pad, trying the Vigenère cipher first, using Bits as the keytext. When that didn’t work, she switched to the simple Caesar cipher, testing every possibility in chronological order: right shift of one, right shift of two, right shift of three. It would have been easier if Vida had included spaces between words so Salem could run a frequency analysis, but she worked with what she had. Right shift of four, right shift of five …