Chapter Fifty
N
o one was impressed with the artwork Sophia had purchased. She would have brought some pieces to work if she didn’t think the others would take them to use under their desks for their wet Wellies. Crystal just laughed when she showed her the photos.
Sophia brought one of the pieces over to her flat and placed it beside a print she got at auction for four times the price. It looked ridiculous beside the classics she had up. Tipring’s art reminded her of a grade school assignment where she had to place pasta on a cardboard. Maybe everyone was right, and no one created art like this. There had to be a purpose. If she had to stare at the art for the rest of her life, she wanted to know what was going through the artist’s mind.
She fetched her laptop and typed in the name of the artist, Maddock Tipring. Nothing came up. So she tried Doc Tipring, and more about the artist came up—three articles in total. The first showed a picture of Doc at a city hall in Mandy Ford. He sat in a wheelchair before one of his art pieces, at least ten times the size of the ones she owned. She read the article, hoping to discover more, but the only thing he said was that the town had meaning for him and that he used to come there many times as a boy to hunt. And as far as she was concerned, the art had nothing to do with hunting.
The next was a short interview, also from a Mandy Ford newspaper. Sophia scanned the page until she came across the question:
Why do you create art with tile? What does it symbolize?
On occasion I had used tile when working as an electrician and when I had to stop, boxes of leftover tiles sat about my upstairs flat. No one I knew wanted them so I began to use them for an idea I had.
So it doesn’t symbolize anything?
The tiles, no. However, the art, though it looks like nothing, has a great deal of meaning. Reminds me of the days before I lost my leg. There’s a story behind every single one.
A story behind each one? She couldn’t see any story. The folder containing information on each piece of art held no clues either—he had only numbered them. What possible meaning could they have held?
What was she doing? She was running in circles.
Why run in circles
, she said to herself,
you’ll vomit
. Onto the bed beside her, she threw the art reference folder and stretched her legs. Why couldn’t she just enjoy art like everyone else? Even in school, she over-analyzed art until the point her teacher told her she had taken all meaning out of it. She couldn’t help it. Every day she worked with numbers and codes. Her job entailed finding meaning in what others wouldn’t. Maybe Liam was right. Perhaps she liked them because they would resemble code she would have created herself.
Of course she would. In fact, the phrase
Why Run Backwards You’ll Vomit
was a code phrase. She paused. It was a code phrase. Could it be? His uncle worked in intelligence and Doc sent one to his uncle. Perhaps they were a message. A message only Doc and his uncle could understand. She had to understand too.
On the Internet, she looked up the phrase again. The first group of colors in the telecommunications wiring code was white, red, black, yellow, violet. Her eyes examined the tiles. Yes, there was a white tile, a red one, and also black, yellow, and one that could be violet. It couldn’t be. She looked at the next set of colors in the code: blue, orange, green, brown, gray. Her heart skipped a beat.
If she matched a color from the first set to each color in the second set she had a twenty-five pair code. With twenty-six letters in the alphabet, it wouldn’t be too difficult to make the letter Z a double white tile.
Her hands went to her mouth. She wasn’t just trying to find a code. There was a code staring at her. There was a reason she was drawn to the art! She wasn’t mad. The desire to immediately decrypt the code struck her but she held back. How was this different from reading Doc’s diary? He had never sold the pieces, but had kept every one. That must mean the messages were personal. She shook her head. If he meant them to be private, he wouldn’t have sold them. Perhaps he meant for someone to eventually figure it out. Maybe he meant for his uncle to decrypt them. He was the only person who would.
She started seeing if she could find a message in the tiles. The first two tiles were black and gray. Based on the code, that gave her the letter O. The next two tiles were white and gray which gave her an E. White and brown which gave her a D. A red and a brown gave her an I. And back again with the white and gray for an E. She looked at what she had so far O-E-D-I-E. What did that mean. OED? IE? Those were the endings to words and mostly vowels. She could pick out the word DIE but what is the OE before it?
The only thing she could do is continue on. After a few more letters she had: OEDIESOFULLOFGRACE. O Edie, so full of grace. That made much more sense. Who was Edie? She went over to her computer and did a search through the stolen Doc Tipring file. There was no mention of any Edie. Perhaps it was someone Doc used to love. So, she finished the code.
O Edie, so full of grace
I had nothing left
So it was only right
That you did burn that night.
What kind of poetry was that? Was Edie someone he had loved and lost? She went through all the files she had on Doc Tipring but found nothing. She decoded all the other pieces of art. What she read disturbed her even more. This was something she needed to talk to Theo about. She needed to examine Earnest Tipring’s notes further.
Her hands shook as she pushed the send button on her mobile. All she asked was whether she could discuss the art with him. She didn’t like to find any excuse to see him but Theo intrigued her. Almost as much as Doc did.
Within a minute, she received a reply:
I’m in the office, can you meet me here?
She replied in the affirmative, printed out the code reference, and took pictures of each painting. At least Theo could see what she was on about. Not that he wouldn’t think she was crazy.
1
A half hour later, she entered the incident room. It was almost dark, only a small office in the back of the room had light.
“Theo?” she yelled.
She heard a squeak of a chair and saw a shadow cross the office behind closed blinds. The door opened, and a scruffy Theo stood before her.
“Were you working late?” she asked. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your work, especially to bring up an old case.”
“No,” he replied, “no bother.” His hair parted in a large round circle on the right side of his head. Clearly he had been sleeping for a while. “I’m just going to make myself a cup of coffee. Would you like some?”
She nodded.
“What old case did you want to discuss?”
“The Tipring murder. I know you think it’s because I bought his art that I’m concerned, but I’ve come across some really interesting . . . codes. Ones that I think will give us insights into the case. I decrypted all the art.”
“What? Are you telling me those tile things were actually code?”
“Not only were they code, they were incredibly disturbing as well. Read these.” She handed him the poems and he sat down to read them.
“He seems to be talking about women. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, but each of the poems is pretty morbid, some implying the woman dies. Don’t you find that odd?”
“They could be just women in his mind or symbolic of something else.”
“Maybe, but don’t you find it odd that his uncle kept a file on him?”
“Not after reading these.” He held up the sheets of paper. “Perhaps it was just a game they played. His sister did say they got on. From the time he was a boy Tipring and his uncle exchanged codes.”
“Oh.” She sat down. “I feel so stupid. I can’t actually believe I thought there was something to this. I’ve been off my game lately.”
“I understand the feeling.”
“Here, you take these notes and add them to his file. You never know when they’ll come in handy. I best be off, it’s getting late.”
He took the papers and laid them on his desk. “You don’t have to leave you know.”
She paused for a moment before replying, “See you around, detective.”
She left the building and got in her car when her mobile rang. It was Theo. She hesitated to answer.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Where are you?” Theo asked.
“In my car. Why?”
“Come back up. You’re going to want to see this.”
When she re-entered his office he motioned her to the other side of his desk.
“I started flipping through the sheets and saw these numbers. Do you know what they are?”
“The ones I decoded from Earnest’s notes?”
“Yes. They’re case file numbers, police case files. We don’t use this filing system anymore but I still recognize them. I pulled up one of them.”
“Edith Grace Maven? I don’t understand.”
“Edie so full of Grace. Does it sound familiar?”
“From the poem. Could it be the same? What happened to her?”
Together they read the report. Edith Maven had died in a fire, in 1991. A picture of her burned body lay on a white plastic sheet. The next few photos showed scenes around her house. In Doc’s poem, Edie had been burned as well. It couldn’t be a coincidence.
Theo read the notes. Cause of death was listed as unknown. Why didn’t she try to escape the fire? A paragraph was highlighted in the autopsy report. All the bones were there except for the kneecaps. What? What happened to them? And then he read on, they had been taken from her body with a serrated blade. Someone had removed them before her body was burned, leading the investigators to suspect she had been murdered before the fire was started. Edie Grace had been murdered. The killer had never been caught. There had been a struggle in the kitchen where the fire had started. The kitchen, although mostly destroyed by fire, had been ransacked. Cutlery was strewn all over the floor.
“So what do you think? Could the same person who killed Edie also have killed Tipring?” asked Theo.
“I think it’s more likely Doc was there that night, when Edith died. He could have been the murderer or could have seen the murderer. Mind, this is all speculation, but I’m going with the former because of the nastiness of the poems.”
“You’re saying Doc murdered her and then started the fire? Let’s say that’s true—and I’m not saying I agree just yet—why would his killer wait for years and years to kill him? Did they just find out what he did? How could they have known? The police have no clue.”
“I don’t know.” She sat down on a chair. “And maybe it doesn’t matter anymore. No one seemed to care what happened to Maddock Tipring except me. And if he’s a murderer himself, maybe it doesn’t matter.”
“No, it does matter. But I’m not sure I can justify opening the Tipring case again based on this. I don’t have the team for it nor the funding. I’m in the middle of another stabbing case.”
“You may think that,” she replied, “but I think we need to look into it further.”
Chapter Fifty-One
T
heo moved his chair to the side as Sophia pulled up beside him and sat down at his desk. One by one they went through the files Earnest Tipring had written down in his notes. Had Earnest cracked the tile art or had he done research into these women’s deaths another way?
Sophia leaned against Theo’s arm to read the notes on the computer screen. He was afraid to move. He didn’t want her to feel he minded the touching, but he did mind. It had been so long since a woman had been this close for so long. Her perfume wafted over him. Why did she have to be so damn attractive? She sat back suddenly.
“All nine of these cases match poems written by Tipring,” said Sophia. “If he did murder them, how was he never caught? He couldn’t have been that good, could he? Do you think his uncle had provided him with protection?”
“I sure hope not,” replied Theo.
“What if Earnest helped? What if they murdered these women together? And now both are dead. Will we ever be able to find these girls? Eight of the nine girls have never been found, if they are indeed dead. Their poor families. They have no closure. How did Doc even meet these women?”
“And how are we even going to be able to find the others?”
“Well, we know he had a fetish for knees. Perhaps we can find cases relating to kneecaps?”
Theo did a computer search for any other deaths where there were missing kneecaps.
Surely this had to be a special note in the file.
Only one result appeared.
Seven years before Edie Grace’s death, a girl named Anna was found strangled and left in the forest. Her kneecaps had been cut out.
Could that be Doc Tipring? Could he be Anna’s killer? Theo could only picture him as an old man. How could an old man do this to anyone? Had he created artwork for Anna?
Theo rifled through the papers that Sophia had brought. A five page list of names and their relative poems were stapled together. He ran his finger down the list. Ah, here was an Anna—under artwork number one.
He did another search: strangulation, cut legs, legs missing, female, death in a fire. Strangulation was a common form of death for female victims, but the combinations didn’t match. The cases were either too old or too current. If only he could narrow it down further. If only he had names. Wait, he did have names to search for.
He tried a few more names: Abigail, Janine, Bernice. They all appeared in the missing person’s database but it could be a coincidence. Even if it were true that these girls had been murdered by Doc, what could he possibly do now? It’s not like he could question Doc and find out what happened to the girls.
It didn’t even help him to find out who killed Doc. Although it did give them a motive.
“So far,” said Theo, “according to our search, only Anna, the first poem, and Edith, the last poem, have been found dead. The rest are missing. The first and the last, you know what that means?”
“No. What?”
“He probably didn’t mean for them to be found. Anna was his first. She was found. Tipring probably worried that the body would be tied back to him so everybody after her was buried. That was until Edith. Something went wrong. He had to burn the body to destroy the evidence.”
“And that’s exactly what the poem states: Edie took his left. She took his left leg. He was missing his left leg, right?”
Theo sat forward. “He was. He told everyone that he fell at work and the wound in his leg became infected. Eventually it had to be amputated. But if he was trying to hide the reason, he wouldn’t give anyone the correct answer.”
The search kept them awake all night. Theo knew Sophia was aware of the approaching dawn from her repeated clock checking and glances out the window. She must have felt as tired as he. But if the search was as fascinating for her as it was for him, she couldn’t leave.
“Imagine if we solve this,” he said. “We could bring closure to so many families.”
“After so many years . . .”
She trailed off when she caught sight of Dorland entering the incident room.
“Well good morning,” said Dorland. “What have you two been up to? I’m not interrupting, am I?”
“Morning, Inspector Dorland,” replied Sophia cheerfully, perhaps too tired to notice the interrogation.
“Dorland.” Theo wasn’t sure how much he should disclose about the previous night’s work. He still had an important case to solve.
“Boss, I may not have had as busy a night as you but you won’t believe what I found when I re-watched some of the CCTV footage,” Dorland replied. He threw a photo down on Theo’s desk. “Look who I caught a glimpse of on the CCTV footage?”
Theo lifted the photo and squinted at it. His eyes were so tired.
“Who is it?” asked Theo. “She looks familiar. Who is she?”
“The nurse from our last case. We questioned her about the Tipring murder because she used to work for him. However, she had an alibi. Well, right at the time of the Yoder’s murder, look who’s entering the car park. The nurse we interviewed for the Tipring case—Ms. Dorie Armes. Can that be a coincidence?”
“The Tipring case?” asked Sophia.
“It’s funny you brought up Tipring,” Theo said. “We just spent the night looking into the Tipring case. He may not have been the innocent man we had suspected him to be. He may have murdered two if not more girls.”
“What?”
“The man hid coded messages about girls in his artwork. Sophia decoded them.”
“I knew those pieces of tile art couldn’t just be art,” said Dorland. “It was ridiculous. How did you know to look at them like they were code?”
“It’s a long story,” said Sophia. “But it’s not important. What’s important is what we found. Look here, these poems.”
Theo pulled out the poems from Doc’s file and watched as Dorland carefully read through them. Theo explained what they had found.
“These are incredibly strange. If it’s true what you say, it gives us a motive into his murder. Someone must have found out who he was. But how? Why would they not come forward? We could have questioned him, found out information about the missing women.”
“I don’t know, but I think we’re going to have to find a connection. We should see if anyone who worked with him—and we will start with Ms. Dorie Armes—could have been related to any missing woman’s case. It may be a perfect coincidence that the nurse was at our new crime scene but I want to make sure. Let’s pull up her statement. What was her alibi for the Tipring murder? She may have only worked for Mr. Tipring for three days, but it may have been enough to concoct a plan.”
“What about Sharon?” asked Dorland.
“There must have been a reason she died as well. That’s why we need to ask more questions, like why she was at the building at the time in question. Please bring me a copy of Dorie’s statement.”
Theo and Sophia spent the next hour searching for the tie between Dorie and Doc. No girls with the last name Armes appeared anywhere in the missing person’s database.
“Tipring may not have murdered a family member, but a friend,” said Theo. “In which case, finding a connection would be nearly impossible unless Dorie Armes disclosed one.”
When Dorland brought Dorie’s statement, the answer came. Dorie had a different last name than the rest of her family for she had been married for a short while. Her mother’s last name was Standford. When they did a search for that name, a Charlotta Standford appeared as missing from the London area. He pulled up the file and read it carefully. They were sisters. Maddock Tipring might have murdered her sister.
But how did she find out?
Theo had invited Sophia to join him on his interview of Dorie, but she refused. Sophia needed to go to work and so left soon afterward. She promised to check in with him later. He decided to go home and shower.
When he returned home, he saw the light on in his wife’s room and thought she must be awake. But when he knocked softly, no one answered. He opened her door and saw her laying on her bed, a textbook lay on her chest—English for Dummies. He went over to her and took her glasses from her face.
“Morning, dear,” he said to her, and switched the light off on the way to his bedroom. He was glad no one in his family knew about the cases he worked on. How many of Tipring’s neighbors knew they lived beside a murderer, perhaps a serial killer? He went to the front door to make sure it was locked before taking a shower and falling into bed.
A knock at the door woke him up.
“Who is it?” he asked.
The door slowly opened and Agneta poked her head around it. She didn’t look tired in her pink star pajamas and fuzzy bathrobe.
“Did I wake you up?” he asked her in Greek.
“No, not at all. You look tired.”
“I am a bit, but I have time for you. What is it?”
“I have been thinking of this for a long time. I feel like I’m just wasting more and more years of my life because nothing is coming back.” She tapped her head with her finger. “I don’t want to wait any more. I want to move on.”
“You want a divorce?”
“A divorce? No, nothing like that. I want to go back to school. I want to learn English, I want to get a job, a career. If my memory returns, that’s wonderful. However, if it doesn’t, at least I haven’t wasted more time.”
He nodded. What she said made perfect sense.
“What do you want of me?” he asked.
She rubbed her hands together in a nervous fashion. “It will take some money to go to school. And I totally understand if you say we have to wait. Maybe we don’t have the money right now. I can wait. I just wanted to ask . . .”
“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” he said finally. He did have some money saved up. It wasn’t for schooling, but what else did he have to spend it on? If she wanted to go to school, what right did he have to stop her?
He put his hand on her arm and rubbed up and down softly. She didn’t want a divorce, but she wanted to move on, live life again. He wanted to jump for joy, but the trepidation of what moving on implied made him hesitate. What if she wanted to move on without him?
He knew he didn’t have a choice. And she deserved it. Although she did not remember loving him, he still loved her and would do anything to make her happy.