Free Checkmate by Steven James Page B

however, no groups had claimed responsibility for the attack.
    (6) There was no shortage of Colonial- and Revolutionary War–era weapons buffs out there, but so far the team hadn’t found anyone who could offer us the kind of expertise we needed on tomahawk design. Two agents were still looking, still making calls.
    (7) No prints on the semi’s side-view mirror. So far, no DNA, prints, fibers, or trace evidence in the truck. Whoever did this knew how to leave a clean crime scene.
    It appeared that he was aware of what we look for and how to avoid detection, leaving only what he wanted us to find: the hatchet, the arrows, the book, but nothing else that would lead us directly to him.
    But lack of evidence is evidence. It tells you something important about the offender’s preparation, sophistication, and background. Our guy had done his homework,he was forensically aware, and he’d thought things through.
    Whoever committed the crime was organized and careful, not impulsive. The location of the semi, of Cole’s house, of the gas station all spoke to the timing and location of the crimes.
    But how all that fit together was still a mystery to me.
    We were missing a lot of puzzle pieces.
    But we would find them.
    I studied the numbers that’d been written in the book left on Jerome Cole’s body, trying to find connections between them and my previous cases, poring over the pages in the two books I’d authored, trying to discern what the numbers might have been referring to.
    6'3" 2.53 32
    After an hour without coming up with anything, I rubbed my tired eyes, then glanced absently at my phone to see if there were any messages from Lien-hua.
    Nothing from my wife, but Tessa had texted me from her bedroom, asking when I would be ready to eat.
    As I tapped my cell’s screen to text her back, I paused midmessage and stared at her phone number.
    My thoughts began to rush ahead of me
    I scrolled to the numbered keypad.
    What if it isn’t a phone number, but a mnemonic of one? What if the letters on the numbers spell something?
    Quickly, I worked up a chart, then scrutinized it.

    Though I was able to identify a few words and phonetic combinations just by glancing at the columns, I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss any possibilities, so I wentonline to see if I could find a site that would calculate—if that was even the right word—words from phone numbers.
    It took me less time than I thought it would. The site I found was apparently for businesses that wanted to create memorable phone numbers that spelled certain words.
    When I plugged in the numbers, thousands of combinations came up, but only a couple dozen contained actual words.
    Of those, ten caught my eye:

    I wondered if the ones containing the words “fake” and “bled” would lead us anywhere—especially the one that spelled “me-bled-too.”
    What about “o-e-bled-2”? Could it be a phonetic version of “Oh, he bled too”?
    Does “Neal-Dea” refer to someone in the Drug Enforcement Agency?
    Or what about “Feb” and “Dec”? February and December?
    A timeline? A deadline?
    All possibilities.
    I uploaded the info to the case files, and a few moments later Tessa emerged from her bedroom.
    â€œReady for some lasagna?” she asked.
    I knew that my vegan daughter was thinking of veggie lasagna. And probably a spinach and kale salad to go with it.
    â€œI was thinking BLTs.”
    â€œDon’t even tease.”
    She’d never given up trying to convince me to switch to a plant-based diet, but today I was ready for her. As wewalked to the kitchen, I nonchalantly said, “I heard on the BBC last week that the latest research shows that plants actually make attempts to communicate with each other.”
    â€œThere’s also research that they respond to sound and feel pain.”
    â€œThere you go.”
    â€œSo you’re saying what?