"The photograph!"
"Oh, you mean from the third crime scene?" Sebastian asked, placing the photograph on the table once more. The corpse, with the left arm and right leg severed. Germain pulled two other photographs out of her bag and placed them next to it. Crime scene photos of the first and second victims. Pictures of all the victims, showing the condition in which they were found.
"Notice anything, Sebastian?"
"What?"
"Anything about these photographs strike you as unnatural?"
"They're all dead?"
"Being dead is not unnatural."
"How philosophic."
"Be serious. Look-the bodies are in different positions. Believe Bridesmaid is on his back, Quarter Queen is on her front, and Backyard Bottomslash is on her hack. Back, front, back."
"And you see a pattern in this? Connecting it to the nine days, four days, nine days between the murders? Meaning that tomorrow the fourth victim will be found lying on her front?"
"No, not at all. I mean, that might be true Stanely, but... I was thinking of a different possibility. In other words, the very fact that Quarter Queen's corpse was left lying on her front is itself unnatural."
Sebastian's reaction was not very satisfactory-at least, it didn't look that way. Perhaps what Germain was trying to say wasn't getting across. She'd only just hit upon the idea and was talking quickly, fueled by excitement, without fully thinking it through, so that was understandable. "Let me think a minute," Germain said, sitting down in the chair next to him.
"Well, Germain? You mean Quarter Queen being on her front is a message from the killer? Pointing to the third victim..."
"No, not a message-this is the missing link, Sebastian. An extension of what you said about their initials..."
"The victims' initials-B.B., Q.Q., B.B. Having both initials be the same isn't enough to be a missing link, but... both the first and the third victim have the same initials-B.B. If the second victim's initials were B.B. instead of Q.Q., then that would be a missing link, right?"
By simple arithmetic, twenty-six times twenty-six equals one in 676 people. Moving from matching initials to only one letter narrowed the odds by that much... and given how rare names beginning with B were, the actual number was even lower.
"An interesting theory. But Germain, the second victim's name is Quarter Queen, and her initials are Q.Q. Are you implying that perhaps she was killed by mistake? That the killer was aiming for someone with the initials B.B. and accidentally killed a Q.Q. instead?"
"What are you talking about? The message at the first scene clearly said Quarter Queen. There's no mistake there."
"Oh, right. I forgot."
Had he really forgotten? The phrase seemed phony... but if she puzzled out every one of Sebastian's reactions, they'd never get anywhere.
"Nine days, four days, nine days. B.B., Q.Q., B.B. Back, front, back. It's certainly possible to see this as alternating, like you suggested, and I certainly considered the idea, but... the killer's exacting approach to things makes that seem unlikely. Doesn't suit his personality. People that anal usually behave more coherently..."
"But the murder methods-strangulation, blunt force trauma, stabbing... they don't show any kind of consistency."
"Except that they're consistently different. He's painstakingly trying something new every time. But alternating is different from varied. Which is why, Sebastian, when I was looking in the mirror a moment ago, it hit me-B and Q are shaped the same."
"B and Q? They're completely different!"
"As capital letters. But what about lower case?" Germain said, drawing the letters on the table top with her fingertip. b and q. Over and over. b and q. b and q. b and q.
"See? Exactly the same shape! Just the other way around!"
"So that's why she's face down?"
"Exactly," Germain nodded. "A rough estimate of one in 676 people have the initials B.B., so if we take that as the missing link, then the killer must have had a lot of trouble finding victims. One was easy enough, but two, three, even four... even more so. He had no choice but to use a Q.Q. instead."
"I agree with everything except that last sentence. I don't believe it would be easier to find someone with the initials Q.Q. than it would be to find someone else with B.B. Even if it was, I think it's better to view the replacement as part of a puzzle designed for the investigation team. If they were all B.B. right from the start, the missing link would have been too obvious. But this is only supposition. No more than a thirty percent possibility."
"Thirty percent..." Annoyingly low.
If this were a test, she'd have failed. "Why?"
"According to your theory, your conclusion is that all of that tells us why Quarter Queen was found lying face down. Face down led you to reverse theory and to b and q... but this progression doesn't work logically, Germain."
"Why not?"
"Lower case," Sebastian said. "Initials are always capital letters."
"Oh..."
Right.
Initials were never written lower case. They were upper case every time. Quarter Queen was always
Q.Q., never q.q. Just as B.B. was never b.b.
"And I thought I was on to something," Germain said, burying her face in her knees.
So close... but even the assertion that a killer this anal would never alternate had been more than a little bit of a stretch. But even so, the connection between b and q seemed so meaningful...
"Come now, Germain. Don't be so disappointed." Sigh...
"Frankly, I'm glad your theory was wrong. If Quarter Queen had been killed as a substitute... that's a horrible reason for a child in her teens to die."
"Yeah... if you put it that way..."
Mmm? Germain frowned, suddenly. A moment before, Sebastian has insisted there was no difference between killing a child and killing an adult, but the motive for it bothered him? A reason like this one... did that have anything to do with anything? A child in her teens...
A child? A child? A little child? "...No, Sebastian."
"In this case-lower case is perfect," Germain said, her voice shaking. Shaking with anger.
"That's why the killer chose a child." A thirteen-year-old child.
Her initials.
Upper case, lower case.
"Because she was a child-lower case. And that's why she was face down-upside down!"
It would be some time later before Germain realized that it was Sebastian who had enthusiastically pointed out the matching initials, who had pointed out that the victim was a child, and who had given her the sugary coffee that had sent her into the bathroom, where the mirror provided the inspiration she needed to figure things out.
But either way... the Wara Ningyo Murder Cases.
The missing link had been found, the critical detail that would, in later years, give the case its name.
Why West L.A.? Because on that day, Germain Germain, the suspended FBI agent fronting for the century's greatest detective, 707, was going to be there. "Germain Germain. Germain Germain. 707's hands. 707's eyes. 707's shield. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! No, that's not right... I should laugh more like this... Kya ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Yeah, that's better."
"Kya ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Kya ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha."
Laughing wildly, Beyond Birthday got out of bed. A harsh, cruel laugh, but an unnatural laugh, a phony laugh. As if laughing was just another task he had to perform.
