11th hour

Chapter 14

I was still thinking about the six skulls in sealed paper bags and the young Jane Doe’s head in the cooler when I opened the door to our apartment on Lake Street. Martha, my border collie and pal of many years, whimpered and tore across the floor, then threw her full weight against me, almost knocking me down.

“Yes, I do love you,” I said, bending to let her wash my chin, giving her a big hug.

I called out, “Joe. Your elderly primigravida has arrived.”

Claire had told me that elderly primigravida meant “a woman over thirty-five who is pregnant for the first time,” and it was a quaint and unflattering term that I usually found just hilarious.

Joe called back, and when I rounded the corner, I saw him standing between piles of books and papers, wearing pajama bottoms, a phone pressed to his ear.

He dialed down the volume on the eleven o’clock news and gave me a one-armed hug, then said into the phone, “Sorry. I’m here. Okay, sure. Tomorrow works for me.”

He clicked off, kissed me, asked, “Did you eat dinner?”

“Not really.”

“Come to the kitchen. I’m going to heat up some soup for my baby. And for my old lady too.”

“Har-har. Who were you talking to on the phone?”

“Old boys’ network. Top secret,” he said melodramatically. “I have to fly to DC tomorrow for a few days. Cash flow for the Molinari family.”

“Okayyy. Yay for cash flow. What kind of soup?”

It was tortellini en brodo with baby peas served up in a heavy white bowl. I went to work on the soup and after a minute, I held up the bowl and said, “More, please.”

Between bites, I told my husband about the house of heads, which was what the Ellsworth compound would inevitably be called from that day forward.

“It was indescribable, Joe. Heads, two of them set up on the back patio. A display of some sort, like an art installation, but no bodies. There was no sign of mayhem. No disturbance in the garden except for the two holes the heads had been in. Then CSU exhumed five more heads, just clean skulls. Honestly, I don’t know what the hell we’re looking at.”

I told Joe about the numbers 104 and 613 handwritten on a pair of index cards.

“Cindy is running the numbers. So far we know that six-one-three is an area code in Ottawa. Lots of radio stations start with one hundred and four. Put the two numbers together and you get a real estate listing for a three-bedroom house in Colorado. What a lead, hmmm?”

“Ten-four,” he said. “Radio call signal meaning ‘I acknowledge you. Copy that.’”

“Hmmm. And six-thirteen?”

“June thirteenth?”

“Uh-huh. The ides of June. Very helpful.”

Joe brought a big bowl of pralines and ice cream to the counter. We faced off with clashing spoons, then had a race to the bottom. I captured the last bite, put down my spoon, held up my arms in victory, and said, “Yessss.”

“I let you win, big mama.”

“Sure you did.”

I winked at him, took the bowl and the spoons to the sink, and asked Joe, “So, what’s your gut take on my case?”

“Apart from the obvious conclusion that a psycho did it,” said my blue-eyed, dark-haired husband, “here are my top three questions: What’s the connection between the skulls and the Ellsworth place? What do the victims have in common? And does Harry Chandler have anything to do with those heads?”

“And the numbers? A tally? A scorecard?”

“It’s a mystery to me.”

“One of our Jane Does is relatively fresh. If we can ID her, maybe the numbers won’t matter.”

Four hours later, I woke up in bed next to Joe with the remains of a nightmare in my mind, something Wes Craven could have created. There had been a pyramid of skulls heaped up in a dark garden, hundreds of them, and they were surrounded by a garland of flowers.

What did it mean?

I still didn’t have a clue.