The Devils Teardrop

looked away from him quickly. Parker thought, for a moment, that another message had flashed on a nearby computer and caught her attention. But there wasn’t any. With her head turned away from him he could see her reflection in the screen and it seemed that her eyes were glistening with tears. This was something he never would haveexpected from Lukas but, yes, she was wiping her face.
    He was about to ask her if anything was wrong but she stepped abruptly up to the glass panes holding the burnt yellow sheets. Without giving him a chance to say anything about the tears Lukas asked, “The mazes he drew? You think there’s anything there? Maybe a clue?”
    He didn’t answer. Just continued to look at her. She turned to him briefly and repeated, “The mazes?”
    After a moment he looked down, studied the sheet of yellow paper. Only psychopaths tend to leave cryptograms as clues and even then they rarely do. But Parker decided it wasn’t a bad idea to check; they had so little else to go on. He put the glass panes holding the sheet on the overhead projector.
    Lukas stood beside Parker.
    “What’re we looking for?” Cage asked.
    “Do the lines make any letters?” Lukas asked.
    “Good,” Parker said. She was starting to get the hang of puzzles. They examined the lines carefully. But they found nothing.
    “Maybe,” she then suggested, “it’s a map.”
    Another good idea.
    Everyone gazed at the lines. As head of the District field office Lukas was an expert on the layout of the city. But she couldn’t think of any streets or neighborhoods the mazes corresponded to. Neither could anyone else.
    Geller looked back at his computer. He shook his head. “The anagram thing isn’t working. There just isn’t enough of the ash left to make any letters at all.”
    “We’ll have to figure it out the old-fashioned way.” Parker paced, staring at the blackboard. “‘. . . the black . . .’”
    “Some African-American organization?” Evans suggested.
    “Possibly,” Parker said. “But remember the unsub was smart. Educated.”
    Cage frowned. “What do you mean?”
    It was Lukas who answered. “The word ‘black’ is lowercase. If it were the name of a group he’d probably capitalize it.”
    “Exactly,” Parker said. “I’d guess it’s descriptive. There’s a good chance it does refer to race but I doubt it’s a reference to a specific organization.”
    “But don’t forget,” Cage said. “He also likes to fool us.”
    “True,” Parker admitted.
    Black . . .
    Parker walked to the examination table, stared down at the extortion note. Put his hands on either side of it. Stared at the devil’s teardrop dot above the letter i. Stared at the stark ink.
    What do you know? he asked the document silently. What aren’t you telling us? What secrets are you keeping? What—?
    “I’ve got something,” the voice called from the doorway.
    They all turned.
    Detective Len Hardy trotted into the lab, a sheaf of papers under his arm. He’d been running and he paused, caught his breath. “Okay, Margaret, you were right. I don’t shoot and I don’t investigate. But nobody’s a better researcher than I am. So I decided why don’t I do that? I’ve found out some things about the name. The Digger.” He dropped the papers on the desk and started through them. He glanced at the team. “I’m sorry about before. With the mayor. I screwed up. I just wanted to do something to keep people from getting hurt.”
    “It’s all right, Len,” Lukas said. “What do you have?”
    Hardy asked Dr. Evans, “When you were checking out the name, what databases did you use?”
    “Well, the standard ones,” the doctor answered. He seemed defensive.
    “Criminal?” Hardy asked, “VICAP, N.Y.P.D. Violent Felons, John Jay?”
    “Those, sure,” Evans said, eyes avoiding Hardy’s.
    “That was fine,” Hardy said, “but I got to thinking why not try noncriminal resources? I finally found it. The database at the Religious History Department at Cambridge University.” Hardy opened a notebook. There were dozens of pages inside, indexed and organized. The young detective was right; he sure knew how to research.
    “That group you mentioned in San Francisco in the sixties?” he asked Dr. Evans. “The one called the Diggers?”
    “But I checked them out,” the doctor said. “They were just an acting troupe.”
    “No, they weren’t,” Hardy responded. “It was a radical underground political and social