Beyond Birthday remembered how he had attacked Tabitha Germain three days before, on August 16th, in the alley downtown.
If he attacked her with intent to kill, he would absolutely fail. He knew that he would. Ensuring his path of escape was far more critical. Tabitha Germain was nothing but 707's servant, and if she died there would be dozens of replacements-from the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA-even the Secret Service. So he had only been testing her. Seeing if Tabitha Germain was capable of being 707's substitute.
"Hmmm... mmmm... hmmm... Huh huh huh huh... no, hee hee hee? I could go with ho ho ho ho, but that's a little too jolly... anyway. Oh, Tabitha Germain, you are pretty good. A shame to waste someone like you in the FBI."
She had passed the test, so far.
Today she would visit the scene of the third murder, and she would most likely find the message Beyond Birthday had left for her. Then she would try to prevent the fourth murder, the victim Beyond Birthday had selected.
That was good.
Only then would the competition begin. Only then would the real game start. The competition between 707 and B.
707 and B's puzzle.
"If 707's a genius then B's an extreme genius. If 707's a freak, then B's an extreme freak. Now it's time to get ready. There are things I must do before B can surpass 707. Henh henh henh henh."
This thought was the only thing that made him laugh without needing to think about it.
Still grinning to himself, he faced the mirror, brushed his hair, and began applying his makeup. The reflection of himself in the mirror. Himself.
So, August 19th.
Tabitha Germain was in the west side of the city, in the townhouse where the third victim, Backyard Bottomslash, had lived. She had shared the place with a good friend of hers, but she had been killed while her friend had been out of town on business. Like the second victim's mother, the roommate had moved back in with her parents after the murder.
Backyard Bottomslash's bedroom was on the second floor. There was a thumb turn latch just below the knob. And two holes on the walls where the Wara Ningyo had been. One on the far wall, directly opposite the door, and the other on the left hand wall. The floor was covered in a frankly bizarre number of stuffed animals for a twenty-eight-year-old, and the entire room was ornately decorated. There were stuffed animals piled against each wall. In order: two, five, nine, and twelve. Twenty-eight in all. While the room had been cleaned, it still smelled faintly of blood, which destroyed the effect of the decor.
"Where is Sebastian?"
She glanced down at the silver wristwatch on her left hand, and saw that it was already two thirty in the afternoon.
They were supposed to meet at two.
Germain had been here since early that morning, checking the place out in advance. She had searched the entire house, not just this room, but five hours later she had completely run out of things to do and was rather bored. And she had failed to uncover anything of interest, which had left her feeling frustrated. She bit her lip, annoyed that she had been unable to figure anything out without Sebastian around.
Then the phone in her bag rang. She answered quickly, assuming it was 707, but it was her boyfriend and coworker, Ryan.
"Hello? Ryan?"
"Yeah... let me speak quickly, Germain," Ryan said, in a low voice. At this time of day there must be other people around him. "I checked up on what you asked me."
"Oh, thanks."
She'd asked him on the 16th, and it was now the 19th, and he was a very busy FBI agent, so this was pretty fast work. When she thought about how much he did for her, she found herself wanting to thank him every time she spoke to him.
"So?"
"Basically? There is no private detective named Stanely Sebastian."
"So he's unlicensed?" An unprivate detective. He had said so himself
"No. There are no records of anyone named Stanely Sebastian at all. Not just in America, but in the records of every country in the world. The name Sebastian is reasonably common in your home country, but none of them are named Stanely."
"So it's a fake name?"
"Presumably." Ryan was silent for a moment, but then blurted, "Tabitha! What are you doing?"
"You promised not to ask."
"I know I did. But your leave of absence will be over next week, and I was just thinking about the future... are you coming back to the FBI?"
"I haven't thought about it yet."
"I know I always say this, but..."
"Don't. I know what you're going to say, so don't say it."
"I don't have time. I'll call again."
Germain hung up without giving him a chance to respond. She spun the phone around between her fingers, feeling a little guilty. It wasn't that she hadn't thought about going back, but that she didn't want to think about it.
"Next week already? Nah focus on the case at hand." This might be running away, but since Sebastian still wasn't here...
(She'd suspected the name was fake from the moment she met him, so she didn't particularly care... although she did wonder why he'd chosen that name in particular. But the real problem was why the victim's parents had hired a private detective that didn't exist)... Germain told herself to forget about it and go over the facts they had uncovered one more time.
First, the message left by the killer downtown, at the second crime scene, Tabitha Germain had figured it out about an hour after they had found the missing link, that the victims were all connected by their initials. It was the eyeglasses the victim, Quarter Queen, was wearing. While she never got down on all fours the way Sebastian did, Germain had checked the room over from every conceivable angle, until her eyes ached from looking-without finding anything. Then she wondered if there was something on the victim's body, like the cuts on Believe Bridesmaid's chest, and had looked at the photos of the body again, but there was nothing there by the little girl lying face down, with her eyes crushed in...
When Germain was at her wit's end, Sebastian had said, "Maybe the damage to the eyes is a message." It sounded reasonable... in fact it seemed like the only possibility. Which meant... her eyes?
Germain had gone back to the cabinet and taken out the album of photographs again. She looked through them once more, checking every picture of the little blonde girl.
And realized...
that there was not one picture of her wearing glasses.
The only picture of her with glasses was the one of her dead. Not because there wasn't a problem with her eyes-her chart was in the file, showing her right eye at 0.1 and her left at 0.05-but that she almost always wore contact lenses. After her death, the killer had put the glasses on and taken the contact lenses away They were disposable lenses, so the investigative team had not noticed them missing. Germain had contacted the victim's mother, who had confirmed not only that Quarter Queen almost never wore glasses, not even at home, but that the glasses she was wearing in the crime scene photograph did not belong to her.
"Surprisingly hard to notice... who would ever think to ask if the glasses a murder victim was found wearing belonged to them? Literally a blind spot... perhaps that's what the crushed eyes mean?"
Sebastian had said. ''And the glasses looked so natural on her... making it even less likely that the police would notice. She never realized that she was meant to wear them."
