Death by Sudoku (14 page)

“Who?” Kevin asked, mystified.

“Mrs. H., of course.” Liza dug out her cell phone and gave her neighbor a call. After she explained what they were looking for and why, Mrs. Halvorsen sat in hesitant silence for a moment.

“Fires in the Bible. Well, there was the pillar of fire when the Israelites left Egypt, and the fiery furnace that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego got thrown into. I think Matthew’s Gospel refers to the fiery furnace, too.”

“This has something to do with grumbling,” Liza said. “At least that’s what my friend said.”

“Well, then that last one doesn’t count,” Mrs. H. said. “That fiery furnace was reserved for people who didn’t believe.” The phone was silent for a moment. “I just got my Bible. There’s something I remember . . .”

Liza heard the rustle of pages, then Mrs. H. began reading: “And when the people complained, it displeased the Lord: and the Lord heard it; and His anger was kindled; and the fire of the Lord burnt among them, and consumed them that were in the uttermost parts of the camp.”

After a brief pause, the woman said, “That’s from the book of Numbers, telling about how the Israelites wandered after escaping from Egypt. The exact chapter and verse for what I just read is Numbers, chapter 11, verse 1.”

“Numbers?” Liza echoed. “Um—where does that fall in the Bible?”

“It’s the fourth book in the Old Testament,” Mrs. Halvorsen answered. “Look—my granddaughter got me one of those all-in-one machines. I’ll copy the page and fax it to you.”

Liza gave her the
Oregon Daily
’s fax number, but her voice was distracted as she thanked her neighbor and hung up.

“What’s the matter?” Kevin asked.

“Since I talked with Uncle Jim, I’ve sort of been going on the idea that this was a book code—a string of numbers for page, line, and word in the line—hidden in a sudoku puzzle.”

“And?”

“Mrs. H. just pointed out to me that there’s a different method for finding passages in the Bible—book, chapter, and verse. She just read me something from the book of Numbers—”

“Good choice for a sudoku code,” Kevin said with a chuckle.

“It’s the fourth book of the Old Testament,” Liza said, “so I guess you could represent that with a 4. But it’s chapter 11, and in sudoku, the numbers only go up to nine.”

“I guess you could put in two numbers that added up to eleven,” Kevin suggested.

“Yeah, but that leaves lots of ways to encode book 4, chapter 11, verse 1.” Excusing herself, Liza turned to her cell phone again, this time dialing the number Will Singleton had given her for Max Frisch. She was lucky, catching the professor in his office.

“Will’s already given me a heads-up call,” Professor Frisch said. “Anything I can do for Liza K . . .”

“Here’s the situation,” Liza said. “We have a possible Bible citation that might be hidden in some sudoku puzzles.” She outlined what Mrs. Halvorsen had told her, along with her own thoughts. “I can get the puzzle solutions to you as soon as I get back to my office,” she said. “Do you think you can do some sort of computer search?”

“You said you’d be sending three months’ worth of puzzles,” Professor Frisch said. “Figure each puzzle has eighteen rows and columns—thirty-six if you read them backward as well . . . That’s more than three thousand strings to search through. And with the vague variables you’re giving me, we could end up kicking out a bunch of possibly valid results. It won’t be like searching for a needle in a haystack—more like looking for a needle in a pincushion.”

“I’d like to try the search anyway, if it’s okay with you,” Liza said.

“I can finagle the computer time,” Professor Frisch said with a laugh.

“Thanks.” Liza disconnected the call. “Well, so much for the high-tech approach.” She told Kevin about Professor Frisch’s warnings.

“Well, it’s better than nothing,” he said. “At least you’ll find places to look at more carefully.”

“It also means I should get back to the
Oregon Daily
offices.” Liza sighed. “Not only have I got that stuff to send, I should be working on next week’s columns.”

“I’ll see you over there,” Kevin said.

“It’s not really necessary.” Liza shifted in her seat.

“I want to, Liza. Then I’ll head back to Killamook.” Kevin rose, putting a hand in his pocket, only to be waved off by Calvin. “On the house.”

Kevin’s SUV shadowed Liza all the way from downtown Maiden’s Bay to the strip mall that housed the
Oregon Daily
’s offices.
Well, he’s close to the highway now
, Liza thought.

She had to hide a smile as Kevin got out of his truck and escorted her up the stairs to the office itself. When Liza caught sight of Janey Brezinski, she looked more like the flustered temp receptionist at Markson Associates than her usual self.

“Oh, uh, Liza—” Janey almost babbled.

“How’s that for timing?” The cheerful tone in Ava Barnes’s voice was totally synthetic. “We finish the nickel tour, and here’s Liza herself!”

Liza turned to look down the hallway—and did her best not to gape at the reason for Ava’s false heartiness.

Looks like Michael’s not content with driving me crazy over the phone
, she thought in dismay.
Now he wants to do it face-to-face.

Watching the two men walk toward each other, Liza was reminded of the way Rusty acted when he met a strange dog. And, unfortunately, this wasn’t the fairly benign, butt-sniffing reaction. Michael’s voice held a decided growl as he asked, “Who’s your friend, Liza?”

“Oh, we’ve known Kevin forever,” Ava said. “We all went to school together here in Maiden’s Bay.”

Liza wasn’t sure whether this was intended to pour water or oil on the fire.

Michael stuck out his hand. “Hello, Kevin. Michael Langley. Sorry I don’t remember you from the wedding, but then, ten years is a long time.” His voice was less growly, but still challenging.

Kevin decided not to snap, though. He took Michael’s hand, saying, “Sorry, I didn’t make the wedding. I was stationed overseas at the time. Nice to meet you, though. And it was good to see you, Liza. As for you, Ava, I still have some issues to thrash out with your advertising people.”

“Any time, Kevin,” Ava said. “Call me when you get back to your office.”

“I’ll do that,” Kevin said, heading out.

“I’ve got to get back to business, too,” Ava said, striding off to her office. Even Janey suddenly found paperwork to dive into. Liza caught a hint of movement from the corner of her eye. Hank Lonebaugh had been peeking around a corner. But he hurriedly pulled back as Kevin began walking away.
Probably afraid he’ll go into a homicidal rage
, she thought.

Left alone with Michael, Liza braced her shoulders. “Let’s go to my office, such as it is.”

She suspected that before Ava took her aboard the sign on Liza’s office probably read, “Supplies.” However, it had a door, which allowed her to cut off the newsroom chatter when she was working on a tricky puzzle. Otherwise, the place boasted a work surface, mainly taken up by a computer, a work chair, a bookcase, and a visitor’s chair.

“Markson Associates has bigger closets than this,” Michael said as he dropped into the chair that Liza indicated.

“Yes, but it also has Michelle.”

He sighed. “You know, I came up here to apologize, even though that hasn’t exactly worked out so far. I thought this would be better than another telephone call.”

“That last one was sort of interesting.” Liza couldn’t help the dry tone that crept into her voice.

“Dutch courage,” Michael confessed. “I still can’t speak to that whole
‘in vino veritas’
thing, but I can testify that two martinis is lubrication enough to get your foot deep into your mouth.” He sighed. “Also, knowing you, I can’t imagine you letting this code thing slide. But have you thought about how dangerous this could get?”

“The thought crossed my mind, after my house got broken into,” Liza confessed.

Michael nearly shot out of his chair, but restrained himself. “Now if I wanted to start a fight, that would be a great place to fly off the handle,” he said. “What exactly have you been doing?”

“I’ve just been checking into the sudoku end of this,” she replied, “and somebody—maybe several somebodies—has been trying either to screw me up or scare me off.”

Michael’s face tightened as she described the hacking attempt and the break-in. Liza herself stumbled over the story, remembering the strange visions that had plagued her. Could Hank have been in her house? Why would he steal her computer? He certainly had the technical savvy to get what he wanted out of Liza’s machine without taking the whole box.

Unless he wanted it to look like some nontechnical person had been in there
, that unpleasant voice in the back of her head chimed in.

Still, she found it weirdly more comforting to imagine Hank as the intruder rather than the person or people who had killed Derrick.

She took a deep breath, concentrating on bringing things to a coherent end. At least Michael leaned forward with interest as she talked about her efforts to decode the puzzles.

Sudoku will get him every time
, she thought.

“You say some of these puzzles are a little weird,” Michael said. “What do you mean?”

“I’ll show you.” Liza switched on her computer and printed out a file. “This is what I call Sudoku 101.”

Michael looked over the puzzle. “Symmetrical, and it looks simple. If you just run the rows and columns, the initial clues let you fill a bunch of spaces . . .” His voice trailed off for a moment as he fumbled out a pen. “A 6 goes here . . .”

“Why?” Liza pounced. “There are four empty spaces in that column.”

“Well, yeah,” Michael said. “But in the top left-hand box, there’s only one empty space, and there’s a 6 in the column next to it. Down in the bottom left-hand box, there are two empty spaces, but there’s a 6 in column three to the
right. That eliminates any other 6 in the box. By process of elimination, the empty space in the center box has to be the the 6 for that column.”

“Simple—for someone like you, who’s trained himself not just to cross-check rows and columns, but to scan boxes and zoom in on situations like that. For a beginner, that relationship isn’t so evident. A novice would feel pretty good for spotting that 6. That’s actually what my column will be about, dissecting the solution to this puzzle. You know that I rate a puzzle’s difficulty based on the number of techniques you need to solve it.”

Michael nodded. “The twelve steps to sudoku mastery.”

“I changed that—it made sudoku sound like some kind of addiction,” Liza said. “Anyway, that technique you just used rates about four or five on the difficulty scale. For an untrained eye, it’s probably easier to start crunching the candidates for each box than to try a cross-check like that. With a real starter puzzle—the kind that usually appears on a Monday, you might go as far as naked pairs. What would you make of
this
appearing as a Monday puzzle?”

She handed over one of the out-of-place sudoku. Michael frowned as he looked it over. “Computer-generated, probably. It would give fits to the people who say, ‘If it ain’t symmetrical, it ain’t sudoku.’”

His frown deepened as he began looking for a pencil. “Interesting.”

“Because you’ve got to start listing candidates almost immediately?” Liza asked. “This is like throwing a
London Times
crossword at a rank amateur and saying, ‘Good luck, newbie.’”

“Mmm,” Michael said, still working the puzzle.

Liza took it out of his hands. “The techniques you’ll need to solve that go way up the scale—trust me on that. How about this one?” She dug out one of the puzzles that had annoyed her on the plane ride to L.A. and passed it over.

“It’s not symmetrical, but otherwise, this isn’t so different from the Sudoku 101 puzzle you showed me—”

“Check the date. That’s a Sunday puzzle you’ve got in your hands.”

Michael checked the dateline—and then his datebook. The sudoku spell broken, he frowned in thought. “So these mystery puzzles turn up on the wrong days. Why—besides tormenting the newbies and driving the veteran solvers crazy?”

“That’s what I’m wondering,” Liza said.

“You’ve been going on this book-code notion. It can’t be that hard to hide a particular string in the solution of a puzzle,” Michael mused. “Although, from what you’ve told me, you’re leaning toward biblical citations being hidden instead of individual words.”