Riddles that Kill Read online

  “Good grief.” Maria shook her head. “The woman is a nightmare. She tried to get on the city council but offended both the liberal and conservative voters. She had no support from anyone. She seems to have gone on a crusade to make as much trouble in town as possible since then.”

  “Well, Ms. Stone told Beth Hill she had better watch her back. Apparently she said something about bad karma. Beth doesn’t remember the exact words. Fourteen hours later, Beth’s kid turns up missing. The idea she would be involved seemed a little farfetched until we checked. Lo and behold the woman has a past criminal record. She moved here from Douglas, Georgia where she had several arrests for disturbing the peace. And before she was in Georgia, she had a run-in with the law in Portland, Oregon. That one was a misdemeanor for car theft. She served time.”

  How had someone with a criminal record escaped Maria’s watch? Then again, it wasn’t the job of the police chief to do background checks on every single person in town. This woman had run for public office.

  “I just saw Karen out at the reservoir. Let’s bring her in.”

  “That was my next question—if you knew where to find her. We’ve already been to her house. She wasn’t there nor did her neighbors know where she’d gone.”

  “Let’s go!” Maria was already standing.

  “No, I want you to stay here. I’ll bring Karen in,” said Agent Carter.

  Maria was already pulling up the coordinates of the Kanab reservoir on the computer. “I’m sending you the exact location. It will take twenty minutes to get there.”

  Just then a tall, lanky, middle-aged man barged into Maria office. “I found something.”

  Agent Carter pointed. “Maria, this is Floyd. He’s a skilled cryptologist. He has ten years of experience behind him. He used to be a computer programmer. He’s been looking at the perp’s ransom note.”

  “I knew there was something familiar about this thing the first time I saw it.” Excitedly Floyd held up a copy of the riddle the kidnapper had left. “But I couldn’t place it. Anyhow, I was using my typical analyzing methods and coming up with nothing. I was beginning to think that perhaps this was just another hoax when I had the idea to Google it.”

  “You Googled the ransom note and came up with something? Seriously?” Agent Carter’s face showed his disbelief.

  “Yeah. With all the letters and numbers in the third line of the riddle, I got distracted. I mean, I was sure it had some algorithmic base, but even so there had to have been something more than what I was seeing.” The man’s words came out at lightning speed. “I mean, I’ve been doing this a long time, and you tend to see patterns and rhythms to numeric coding such as this, so I was feeling a little confused. But when I Googled the first two lines of the riddle I got a million and a half hits. This ransom letter is, word for word, the Veil Treasure Riddle. It’s been online for at least eight years.”

  Maria felt like she needed to breathe for Floyd, let alone for herself. “Can you slow down and start from the beginning. I’m afraid I’ve never heard of The Veil Treasure Riddle.”

  “Me too,” said Agent Carter, turning to Maria. “Floyd tends to forget we all don’t process information like he does.”

  “Sorry.” Floyd looked around sheepishly. “I need to work on that.”

  “Go on,” said Agent Carter.

  “As I’m sure you’ve surmised,” Floyd began, “this doesn’t appear to be a typical kidnapping ransom note. There’s no mention of money.”

  “Agreed,” said Maria. “Plus, they would have chosen a richer family if it had been money they wanted.”

  Floyd nodded. “About eight years ago, an eccentric art dealer named Steven Veil from New Mexico converted his money into precious metal and jewels and hid it in a gold box somewhere in the Western United States. He then wrote a book about his life and sold it on the internet. In the book was a riddle of where to find the man’s treasure. People now call it the Veil Treasure Riddle.”

  “And people believe this guy?” Agent Carter asked.

  “Yep,” answered Floyd. “He’s been on USA Today. He was interviewed by The Washington and The Huffington Post and a bunch of other big news media outlets. He certainly enjoyed his time in the sun. Of course, some people say that it is a hoax. Others have dedicated their lives to trying to find the treasure.”

  “And what does Veil’s riddle have to do with me?” Maria tapped a pencil on a notepad on her desk. She’d forgotten she was supposed to be taking notes.

  Floyd leaned forward, staring directly into Maria’s eyes. “Are you good at solving riddles?”

  “No,” Maria answered firmly.

  “Me neither, actually. I mean, I’m a code breaker. Riddles are too random, subjected to opinion and personal perception. I’m no Bilbo Baggins.”

  “And this isn’t a Lord of the Rings fantasy,” added Agent Carter. “This is real life and a boy is missing.”

  Floyd pushed up his glasses. “My theories are either someone wants Maria to figure out the riddle or it is a smoke screen to distract us from the real case.”

  Agent Carter picked up his car keys. “Floyd, you keep working on the riddle. I’m going to see if I can track down Karen Stone.”

  “And what do you want me to do?” asked Maria.

  “Nothing.” Agent Carter brushed past her. “As the local law enforcement, we’ll keep you up to date on the case, and we’d like you to keep up the community search parties, but other than that, the FBI will do the investigating.”

  As Agent Carter exited Maria’s office, she was left speechless. There was nothing for her to do? She would go insane waiting for something to happen.

  “Before I go,” said Floyd, pulling out his laptop and setting in on the desk, “I wondered if you could tell me a little more about an incident you were involved in at the Kanab reservoir yesterday.”

  Maria shifted in her chair uncomfortably. “There was an altercation at the reservoir. I went there to restore order. Not sure what you mean by incident.”

  “Someone caught some unique footage on their cell phone camera and posted it on the Kanab Facebook page. It was pretty shaky, but it looks like you called a skeleton out of the water. Online they were calling you a medicine woman. Someone with mystical powers.”

  Before Maria could respond, the FBI officer typed on his keypad and turned his laptop around so Maria could see the monitor. On the screen was an image of herself crouching down by Jim at the edge of the reservoir.

  The audio on the video was in uninterpretable, but Maria could see herself reach out and touch the water. Unnatural ripples formed around her fingertips. The ripples grew in size, radiating outward first one foot and then as far as fifteen, twenty feet on the water surface.

  “Interesting.” Maria’s voice shook. “That does look strange, but it wasn’t really like that. You know how distorted videos can be.”

  “Agreed,” said Floyd. “But that doesn’t mean someone else doesn’t believe what they see. What, exactly, was going on?”

  “The reservoir was supposed to be clean and free of any sacred Native American remains, but a Native American expert came to the site as a consultant and he found the remains of pit houses and even a skeleton in the water. Construction has now stopped. There’s not much more to tell.”

  “And those ripples?”

  “The ones in the water?” Maria asked as innocently as she could.

  “Right,” Agent Carter answered, “those. Do you want to explain how they formed?”

  “I can’t.” Maria sighed. “The man named Jim had his fingers in the water as well. Maybe both of us putting our fingers in created some sort of weird physics reaction. I have no clue.”

  “And you also have no clue how the skeleton rose to the top and floated its way straight toward you?”

  “A coincidence.”

  The FBI agent turned his laptop back around. “Of course that is what I believe as well, but someone else may think you have some special power to find things. It’s po
ssible they took Justin as bait to make you find something—something we now know is the Veil treasure.”

  Maria thought about all of the treasure hunting stories she had heard while visiting the Superstition Mountains. There had been a lot, and some hunters had done some pretty crazy things. But kidnap a kid? That was insane.

  “How are you and Justin connected?” Floyd clicked his mouse and exited Facebook.

  “He’s my best friend’s son—I’m like a pseudo aunt.”

  “And do most people in Kanab know this?”

  “Normally I would have said no, but this week an article came out in the newspaper. It did mention our relationship. I think there was even a quote from Justin in it saying I was his hero.”

  “So anyone who reads the newspaper would know you and Justin are close?”

  “Yes.”

  “And anyone with access to the internet would know you called a skeleton from out of the reservoir?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Well, then. I guess we’ve managed to narrow our suspects down to … anyone.” Floyd smirked at his own sarcasm.

  Maria glumly stared at the laptop screen. “So what should I do?” She hoped Floyd had plans to involve her more than Agent Carter did.

  “Personally, I think if someone wants you to look for the treasure, then you should pretend you’re doing that. You should go places, but not alone. That would be stupid. Keep the kidnapper guessing. We need him or her to believe it’s worthwhile to keep Justin alive while Agent Carter tracks the perp down.”

  “So I’m the decoy pretending like I’m looking for the treasure?” Maria winced at the thought of such a pathetic assignment, but at least it was something.

  “In my opinion, yes. Agent Carter may disagree. But I say it couldn’t hurt. Of course, it may turn out the riddle is a smoke screen. If that’s the case, you pretending to look for the treasure won’t hinder Agent Carter’s investigation either way.” Floyd snapped his laptop shut and stood up. “Then again, I’m just a cryptologist.”

  As soon as Floyd left the room, Maria shut the door. She needed some time alone to think.

  Why, why, why?

  Why had she let Jim talk her into doing something so stupid in front of so many people? Look where it had gotten her. More importantly, look where it had gotten Justin. Someone might have taken him to force her to solve some stupid treasure hunting riddle, which of course she couldn’t do. Whatever the Sight was, it didn’t work that way. At least not for her.

  If there was one thing Maria did know, it was that she was going to make this right. It seemed every decision she made in the past was wrong. Consequently, everyone she loved was put in danger because of her. Even those in Kanab weren’t safe with her around. She needed to go off the grid. Head out and live in the mountains somewhere. With her luck, though, she’d build a cabin next to someone like Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, whom she would somehow anger and throw into a rampage.

  For the moment she would find Justin. After that she would figure out her future—one that wouldn’t include anyone she could hurt.

  Chapter Eleven

  At the age of 58, antiquities dealer Forrest Fenn was diagnosed with cancer. By then, he was already a local legend— a mysterious, square-jawed Air Force veteran [who] had quickly earned a reputation as a treasure hunter.

  “Fenn’s treasure: Our 5-day quest for $2 million hidden in the Rockies” by Zachary Crockett, updated on June 30, 2017, https://www.vox.com/a/fenn-treasure-hunt-map

  With the FBI agents gone, Pete at the Kanab newspaper talking with Mark Lyon, and the front desk receptionist helping with the search, Maria was alone in the police station.

  Quiet was something she didn’t enjoy. She’d had too much of it in Tehran. It was at times like this she was reminded of what the steady drip of water in solitary confinement could do to a person’s sanity. Maria shivered and turned on some music to dispel the oppressing silence. Gathering her notes from the interviews she and Pete had conducted earlier that morning, she wondered what the best way to organize them would be. She had never worked with the FBI before as a non-CIA operative. As the police chief of a small town, she could already sense she held little clout in their eyes. Regardless, she was glad they were here. They had the manpower she didn’t. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to do everything she could to help speed the case along. And the first thing she needed to do was give them copies of everything she’d learned thus far, even if it seemed irrelevant.

  As Maria stepped out of her office and into the hall, music coming from the radio in the front entrance of the station echoed throughout the building, reminding her she was all alone. It wasn’t that she was scared. It was the inability for her to “fix” the situation with Justin that made her jittery. Good thing the copy machine was only thirty seconds down the hall. It was so old, the racket it would make copying the notes for the FBI would dispel the heavy quietness.

  On her way down the hall, as she passed the room they used as the detaining cell, something caught her eye. Maria took several steps back toward the doorway and peered inside. The light was off, yet she could easily make out the shape of the bed in the left-hand corner of the room as well as the garbage can next to it. As her gaze drifted to the rest of the empty room, she paused a moment on the folding chair that was typically on the opposite wall as the bed. Something was on the chair.

  At first it appeared to be a large dark garbage sack. As Maria’s eyes adjusted to the dark room, however, she noticed the sack was moving. Not back-and-forth. No, that wasn’t it at all.

  One moment the garbage sack was round and full, and the next moment it had morphed into a tall, lean object. Taking a few more steps forward, she saw the black shape continue to expand and shrink. She wished she’d thought to turn on the light before getting too far into the room.

  Maria squinted to see if maybe some sort of an animal covered in a blanket might be the cause for the odd phenomenon. Visually, she couldn’t tell. She clapped her hands to see if whatever it was might jump from the chair and scurry away.

  Nothing moved.

  Maria took another step forward, thought better of it, and then stepped backward. She needed some light.

  Reaching behind her to find the light switch, Maria’s fingers crawled over the wall. She found what she was looking for and flipped it on. Light filled the room. In front of her, Maria could now see a grayish silhouette of a man.

  The more Maria stared at the figure, the more she realized there was a fogginess to its edges. That reminded her of how the ghost Acalan looked, but Acalan had had a solid form and stable shape. Not this. It was more like the echo of a body.

  The figure was of average height, moderately broad shoulders, and had shaggy hair. Definitely masculine. Maria couldn’t make out any details—including any features on the man’s face. It was as blank as a shadow on the pavement. The outline was obvious, but there was nothing inside of it.

  “What are you?” Maria asked out loud, voice shaking.

  The shadow raised his hand, beckoning Maria to him.

  “This is just like one of those horrible movies where the idiot actor walks right into a trap,” Maria mumbled to herself. Despite knowing better, she approached the figure. Its features remained just as dark as before. No eyes. No cheekbones. No mouth. A blackened slate that could be written on with a piece of chalk.

  Again Maria asked, “What are you?”

  It waved her closer still.

  Maria shook her head. “Nope. Before I act like a stupid imbecile and voluntarily walk straight into some paranormal black hole from which I can never escape, you need to answer a few of my questions.”

  The silhouette was silent.

  If Maria hadn’t been so used to seeing ghosts, and if she hadn’t just experienced seeing a man turn into a bird in Arizona, she might have thought the situation was odder than she did.

  As it was, the shadow didn’t seem all that evil. Then again, that might be because she couldn
’t see his face. But at least it was different than her PTSD hallucinations. The last thing she wanted was for those to come back.

  “Who are you?” Maria questioned.

  Nothing.

  Clearly, a friendly conversation was not going to happen.

  “Am I going to have to … I don’t know … call the police?”

  Okay, that was stupid. I am the police.

  Nothing.

  Maria wished that Jim hadn’t left. She really could use some help knowing what to do in situations like these. Behind her, the hinges to the door creaked. She jumped and spun around.

  “M-Maria?” Rod asked hesitantly.

  “Rod! What are you doing here?” Maria tried to not act guilty. And why should she be? It wasn’t her fault her brain went around seeing these things. If only the Sight could be a little more predictable.

  “What’s in here?” The bags under Rod’s eyes were as noticeable as her discomfort at having been caught by him talking to an empty room.

  Maria turned back around and looked at the now empty folding chair. “Nothing. I was checking for mice.” She made an attempt to resituate the chair and then looked at her ex-boyfriend of two days, ignoring the fact that her heart beat in double time. It wouldn’t be like this forever. She would adjust to not having him as part of her life.

  “Sorry, I thought I heard you talking to someone.” Rod kept the door to the room open. “I wanted to check in with you or Pete before I head down to Phoenix. Search and Rescue is running smoothly. The FBI wants us to continue the community searches—like in the park and in the mountains around town—but that’s all they need. I figure they know a lot more about these sorts of things than we do.”

  “Oh, absolutely. You guys were amazing to come on a moment’s notice. I’m so grateful. Pete and I aren’t staffed to run a kidnapping investigation.”

  Rod nodded. The two of them looked at each other without speaking for several seconds. These moments of awkward silence were getting more and more common.

  It was Rod who finally broke the silence. “Listen, I’m so sorry about Justin. I’m sure you’re worried sick. We all are, but I know you guys were … are … good friends.”