“Anybody else here?” Tal asked the cops as they returned to the main floor.
“No, it’s clean. Neatest house I’ve ever seen. Looks like it was just scrubbed. Weird cleaning the house to kill yourself.”
In the kitchen they found another note, the handwriting just as unsteady as the warning about the gas.
To our friends and family:
We do this with great joy in hearts and with love for everone in our family and everyone we’ve known. Don’t feel any sorrow; weve never been happier.
The letter ended with the name, address and phone number of their attorney. Tal lifted his cell phone from his pocket and called the number.
“Hello.”
“Mr. Wells, please. This is Detective Simms with the county police.”
A hesitation. “Yes, sir?” the voice asked.
The pause was now on Tal’s part. “Mr. Wells?”
“That’s right.”
“You’re the Whitleys’ attorney?”
“That’s right. What’s this about?”
Tal took a deep breath. “I’m sorry to tell you that they’ve…passed away. It was a suicide. We found your name in their note.”
“My God, no…What happened?”
“How, you mean? In their garage. Their car.”
“When?”
“Tonight. A little while ago.”
“No!..Both of them? Not both of them?”
“I’m afraid so,” Tal replied.
There was a long pause. Finally the lawyer, clearly shaken, whispered, “I should’ve guessed.”
“How’s that? Had they talked about it?”
“No, no. But Sam was sick.”
“Sick?”
“His heart. It was pretty serious.”
Just like Don Benson.
More common denominators.
“His wife? Was she sick, too?”
“Oh, Elizabeth. No. She was in pretty good health…Does the daughter know?”
“They have a daughter?” This news instantly made the deaths exponentially more tragic.
“She lives in the area. I’ll call her.” He sighed. “That’s what they pay me for…Well, thank you, Officer…What was your name again?”
“Simms.”
“Thank you.”
Tal put his phone away and started slowly through the house. It reminded him of the Bensons’. Wealthy, tasteful, subdued. Only more so. The Whitleys were, he guessed, much richer.
Glancing at the pictures on the wall, many of which showed a cute little girl who’d grown into a beautiful young woman.
He was grateful that the lawyer would be making the call to their daughter.
Tal walked into the kitchen. No calendars here. Nothing that gave any suggestion they intended to kill themselves.
He looked again at the note.
Joy…Never been happier.
Nearby was another document. He looked it over and frowned. Curious. It was a receipt for the purchase of a restored MG automobile. Whitley’d paid for a deposit on the car earlier but had given the dealer the balance today.
Tal walked to the garage and hesitated before entering. But he steeled up his courage and stepped inside, glanced at the tarps covering the bodies. He located the vehicle identification number. Yes, this was the same car as on the receipt.
Whitley had bought an expensive restored antique vehicle today, driven it home and then killed himself.
Why?
There was motion in the driveway. Tal watched a long, dark gray van pull up outside. Leighey’s Funeral Home was printed on the side. Already? Had the officers called or the lawyer? Two men got out of the hearse and walked up to a uniformed officer. They seemed to know each other.
Then Tal paused. He noticed something familiar. He picked up a book on a table in the den. Making the Final Journey.
The same book the Bensons had.
Too many common denominators. The suicide book, the dangerous but not necessarily terminal heart diseases, spouses also dying.
Tal walked into the living room and found the older trooper filling out a form — not his questionnaire, Tal noticed, though every law enforcer in Westbrook was supposed to have them. Tal asked one of the men from the funeral home, “What’re you doing with the bodies?”
“Instructions were cremation as soon as possible.”
“Can we hold off on that?”
“Hold off?” he asked and glanced at the Hamilton officer. “How do you mean, Detective?”
Tal said, “Get an autopsy?”
“Why?”
“Just wondering if we can.”
“You’re county,” the heavyset officer said. “You’re the boss. Only, I mean, you know — you can’t do it halfway. Either you declare a twenty-one-twenty-four or you don’t.”
Oh, that. He wondered what exactly it was.
A glance at the sports car. “Okay, I’ll do that. I’m declaring a twenty-four-twenty-one.”
“You mean twenty-one-twenty-four.”
“That’s what I meant to say.”
“You sure about this?” the officer asked, looking uncertainly toward the funeral home assistant, who was frowning; even he apparently knew more about the damn 2124 than Tal did.
The statistician looked outside and saw the other man from the funeral home pull a stretcher out of the back of the hearse and walk toward the bodies.
“Yes,” he said firmly. “I’m sure.” And tapped loudly on the window, gesturing for the man to stop.
The next morning, Monday, Tal saw the head of the Crime Scene Unit walk into the detective pen and head straight toward LaTour’s office. He was carrying a half-dozen folders.
He had a gut feeling that this was the Whitley crime scene report and was out of his office fast, to intercept him. “Hey, how you doing? That about the Whitley case?”
“Yeah. It’s just the preliminary. But there was an expedite on it. Is Greg in? LaTour?”
“I think it’s for me.”
“You’re…”
“Simms.”
“Oh, yeah,” the man said, looking at the request attached to the report. “I didn’t notice. I figured it was LaTour. Being head of Homicide, you know.”
A 2124, it turned out, was a declaration that a death was suspicious. Like hitting a fire alarm button, it set all kinds of activities in motion — getting Crime Scene to search the house, collect evidence, record friction ridge prints and photograph and video the scene; scheduling autopsies; and alerting the prosecutor’s office that a homicide investigation case file had been started. In his five years on the job Tal had never gotten so many calls before ten o’clock as he had this morning.
Tal glanced into the captain’s office then LaTour’s. Nobody seemed to notice that a statistician who’d never issued a parking ticket in his life was clutching crime scene files.
Except Shellee, who subtly blessed herself and winked.
Tal asked the Crime Scene detective, “Preliminary, you said. What else’re you waiting for?”
“Phone records, handwriting confirmation of the note and autopsy results. Hey, I’m really curious. What’d you find that made you think this was suspicious? Fits the classic profile of every suicide I’ve ever worked.”
“Some things.”
“Things,” the seasoned cop said, nodding slowly. “Things. Ah. Got a suspect?”
“Not yet.”
“Ah. Well, good luck. You’ll need it.”
Back in his office Tal carefully filed away the spreadsheet he’d been working on then opened the CSU files. He spread the contents out on his desk.
We begin with inspiration, a theorem, an untested idea: There is a perfect odd number. There is a point at which pi repeats. The universe is infinite.