A Cruel Season for Dying by Harker Moore Read Free Book Online Page A

lock.
    “What about the gay community?” she said to his back. “Don’t people have a right to be warned of the danger?”
    “I feel certain, Ms. Kahn, that you’ll continue to take care of that.” He had spoken as he opened the door. He climbed in
     while she continued to pepper him with questions.
    “I’m not ready to say anything about this case.” He spoke mildly. “You can contact the Public Information Section. I’m sure
     they’ll have a statement.”
    He started the engine and backed out. She stood watching, as his car moved away and disappeared up the ramp. Her little ambush
     had accomplished its purpose. News out of no news to feed tomorrow’s cycle. She ran the lead in her head:
In an interview yesterday Lieutenant James Sakura of the Special Homicide Unit did not deny a bizarre ritual aspect to the
     recent murders of Metropolitan Ballet danseur Luis Carrera and David Milne, co-owner of a popular Alphabet City art gallery.
     Sakura, however, refused comment on widespread speculation that his budding investigation may be dealing with a serial killer
     targeting members of the city’s prominent gay community.
    She smiled her satisfaction, tossing back her signature blond mane and tugging her short skirt into alignment. Whether he
     liked it or not, Sakura was set to play the star in the little morality tale she was about to spin for the city’s hungry readers.
     The problem for the lieutenant was that, this time out, he might prove to be no more than a shooting star, or the kind that
     finally collapsed on its own brilliance. That crack of his about the department’s Public Information Section was a symptom
     of his contempt not only for the press but for the way the game was played in general. An impressive clearance rate had so
     far protected Sakura from the jealousy of his betters, but goodness and light could get you only so far when you operated
     in a shark tank. And she, for one, was betting on the sharks.

    James Sakura thought Dr. Simon Whelan looked like a gnome. The linguist was an aging scholar, sitting at an ancient desk behind
     adisorganized accumulation of books and papers. His shock of white hair was startling above almost transparent blue-gray eyes.
     The single incongruity, tacked to the wall behind the professor’s desk, was an outof-date calendar displaying a smiling Vargas-like
     beauty advertising Jose’s Cantina, El Paso, Texas. Sakura watched as the linguist’s untidy head bobbed against the backdrop
     of the señorita’s ample breasts.
    Whelan spoke directly to the black-and-white photographs of the crime scene walls. “No spaces between the letters.” He rotated
     the shots toward Sakura, tapping a finger against one of the series of ash-drawn letters. “They’re words, freestanding words.”
    “Not just random strings of letters?” Sakura looked at the photographs he’d examined a dozen times before.
    “No, the letters follow graphotactic rules.” The professor leaned back into his chair. “Permitted sequences of letters. Vowels
     occurring in appropriate places. Some fairly standard consonant patterns…. Say them, Lieutenant Sakura.”
    Sakura read off the words that had been written over the victims’ beds.
    Whelan’s laugh was electric. “They’re a mouthful but still pronounceable within the context of certain rules of the English
     language.”
    “What do they mean, Doctor?”
    “Linguists are not magicians, Lieutenant Sakura.” Whelan shook his white head in a parody of modesty. “But I think we may
     reasonably assume that the killer is an English speaker and that these foreign-sounding words are Anglicized versions of words
     from another language, probably Indo-European or Semitic. The
k
and the
q
sounds, which we see here, frequently occur in both those language groups.” He paused, stopping the flutter of his birdlike
     hands. “There is something else you might consider, Lieutenant. These words may have significance beyond their