Second Honeymoon

Chapter 65

SARAH QUICKLY CLICKED on the e-mail, the promise of “found something” edging her closer to the screen. The message couldn’t load fast enough.

Meanwhile, she was still on hold with McConnell. Where did he go for Ned Sinclair’s file? Cleveland?

She’d originally spoken to Sheriff Campbell in Winnemucca before heading out to Park City. The thinking was simple. If the John O’Hara Killer had indeed left behind that copy of Ulysses, perhaps he’d also left something behind with his first victim. A clue that hadn’t been found yet.

She wanted Campbell to reexamine the crime scene, every last inch of it, paying particular attention to the victim himself.

“Check all the clothing again,” she’d told him. “Socks, underwear…everything.”

Sarah knew she was being a pain in the ass, but it had to be done, simple as that. Sometimes the only way to catch a break is to chase down the long shots.

Campbell’s e-mail popped open at the exact moment McConnell got back on the line. Figured.

“Sorry about that,” said McConnell. “Couldn’t find it at first, but I’ve got it now.”

Curiously, he didn’t seem to be emphasizing random words in his sentences anymore, or maybe that was because Sarah was barely listening to him. Her ears had given way to her eyes as she began reading Campbell’s message.

“You were right,” it began.

Campbell described how his men had overlooked the cuffed hems that the first John O’Hara victim had on his khaki slacks. Peeling them back, the sheriff found a small, crumpled piece of paper, a note that was jammed into the fold of the right cuff, as if it were a prayer stuffed into the Western Wall. On it were two handwritten lines.

Sleep now little children who hear the monster roar.

Make me a witness of what he has in store.

Sarah’s first thought was that it came from an old children’s book, albeit one she didn’t know. She read the lines again. Maybe it was from a poem. Or maybe it wasn’t from anything—except the killer’s own mind.

She brought up Google while McConnell continued talking. He was reciting the highlights from Ned Sinclair’s file in bullet-point fashion. “Mathematics PhD…professor at UCLA…fired nearly four years ago…”

Sarah typed in the lines from the e-mail.

McConnell droned on. “Diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder…unnatural fixation with sibling…Nora, his sister…”

“Damn!” Sarah muttered under her breath as she looked at her screen.

The search results—there were thousands of them. She forgot to put the lines in quotation marks. Quickly, she added them, and—bingo—thousands of results turned into one.

It was a website for a certain musical group. The name said it all.

Sarah suddenly jumped up from her chair, practically lunging for her shoulder bag, which was on the floor behind her. The DVD of You’ve Got Mail was in the side pocket. She flipped it over to the back, scanning the credits. She’d read the name, knew it well, but wanted to make sure.

Back at her desk she rifled through her notes on Ulysses. She was positive she’d written it down, the woman James Joyce married.

“What did you say Ned’s sister’s name was again?” she asked McConnell, interrupting him.

His dyspeptic swallow and punching of random words had returned. But there was nothing random about this one word. It was dead-on.

“His sister’s name was…Nora,” he said.