Free John: The Senior Killer by Robert Waggoner Page B

without either Sujin or him with her. She took the warning
seriously and had no need to venture out in this
weather.
    Breakfast was fish soup and
Korean pancakes. Wendy wasn’t much of a fish lover, but hungry was
the better part of valor and she dug in with relish. She found the
taste excellent and sheepishly wondered what was for
lunch.
    After breakfast Brad
suggested they have a meeting in the basement to discuss the case.
Almost on cue the high sound of someone coming denoted the arrival
of Mike. Wendy was amazed how well it worked. Mike declined
breakfast and made for the stairs saying hi and good morning to
all. Billy was standing in the kitchen wolfing down an egg sandwich
and milk. He ran back to the door for a last minute smoke and once
all were in place around the glass top coffee table, the discussion
at first surrounded the contents of the kitchen from the house of
John.
    Mike said, “We all know the
questions, but what are the answers. He cleaned out the house save
the kitchen and books.” He’d made an easy to read list of the
inventory and had passed around to all a copy. “Let’s go around the
room after a minute and see what pops out of the box.”
    After a few minutes Billy
offered, “If it had been me I wouldn’t take condiments and pancake
mix with me either. That tells me he left it to confuse us and to
stall for time frustrating the investigators.”
    Brad looked up and said with
his usual soft spoken voice, “Maybe that is the case Billy, but
let’s look a little deeper than what is on the surface. What do you
do with condiments and such things? You mix them to make something
is what you do. Now he is mixing up an alphabet soup. We need to
take a first letter of each item and see what we come up with.”
Billy was scrambling for his laptop and decided that was not what
he needed and left for the computer room.
    Brad continued by pointing
out, “B for baking soda: Barstow; C for cookie: for Cantil; S for
salt: Santa Clarita; N for nuts: Needles; and so on.”
    Wendy thought this was so
off the wall she almost laughed. Steve sensed her thoughts and gave
her a glare that would have devastated her in grad school. She was
smarter than that and gave herself a verbal warning to listen with
an open mind.
    Brad went on to say, “If we
look at the size of the area he used for the two letters A and N,
then follow that with the next two sites further north to connect
the C, something tells me he didn’t follow his plan of making the
‘Catch me if you can logical or symmetrical. If you follow Sac and
add Bishop then connect the line to Baker a nice C is visible.
However, if you make a C out of Bakersfield to Bishop to Baker you
have again a C. In addition you have the three C’s.” A frown on his
face was felt by all at the meeting. Steve thought this was way
over his head and excused himself to make a phone call. Wendy had
to use the bathroom, but was afraid to leave.
    Billy came back in with a
random list of words three pages long. Sujin took a look and left
to the computer room without a word. Mike changed the subject to
the books. Everyone looked at their copy of the list of books and
magazines found in the John house. Mike keyed in on one book he
found as an anomaly to the rest of the books. He said, “This book
about raising pigs is totally alien to the rest of them and to my
thinking why would a guy have a book about raising pigs when you
live in a city?”
    Wendy was looking over the
list and was now starting to get in on the feel of things. Her
brain was starting to gear up and forget about the deeper thoughts
and think about what is staring you in the face. Pigs, why the hell
would he have a book about pigs? She blurted out, as all heads
turned towards her, “Maybe in his history, that is family history,
pigs were raised by a relative.”
    Brad said, “I like it and
Mike run this guy’s genealogy through Utah and see what comes up”
Wendy looked pleased as punch and Brad gave her a