Nick's expression was frozen. For over a minute, he had been staring motionless at the disturbing image of Teacher Matthai sitting opposite his severed body parts. Neither Rupert Mardas nor Maggie wanted to be the first to break the silence.
"All right," Nick finally began after staring at the picture for another twenty seconds. "What have we got?"
Mardas now took the floor. "Ishmael went about it very carefully," he explained. "He has again managed to ensure that there are no witnesses. We suspect that he committed the murder very early yesterday. Matthai's toothbrush was dry, his post was in the mailbox, and the coffee machine was unused. We think his killer surprised him before he got up."
Nick nodded slowly and looked at the older sergeant. "Traces?" he inquired, looking at his mother-in-law.
"It doesn't look too bad," the ME replied. "The perpetrator has, well, treated Matthai on his bed."
"Dismembered is more like it," the lieutenant replied, and the redhead rolled her eyes, but she couldn't disagree.
"Anyway, he pulled a chair up to the bed and sat on it. We found fibers from clothing on the backrest that wasn't in the apartment."
Nick made a half-turn in his chair and spread his arms out powerlessly. "A few textile fibers, as. What else have we got?"
Mardas had spent some time at the crime scene after Elizabeth and Nikki's hasty departure, trying to identify parallels to the murder of Dr. McMillan. "The scene we found seems to be a continuation of Praetorius' murder. It's as if he wants to tell us a story in several chapters."
Nick didn't need help understanding what Mardas was trying to say.
"Well, after the doctor has treated himself, the teacher teaches himself. First comes the diagnosis, and then comes the teaching. The only question is, what comes next?"
"Has Ishmael hidden another riddle at the crime scene?" Nick asked without going into the speculation.
"We don't know yet. Elizabeth left the crime scene unexpectedly and hasn't been in touch since."
"You can't find anything without Liz?"
Mardas paused for a moment, unsure what to say.
Finally, Nick relieved him. "It's all right, I know what you mean. But while we're at it, How on earth did Liz come across Paul Matthai in the first place? What does this teacher have to do with the notes?"
Mardas didn't have the explanation he wanted. "As far as I know, Elizabeth hasn't told anyone yet," he said.
"We'll probably only find out when she returns from Hartford."
"Harford?" Maggie wondered with furrowed brows.
Nick nodded slowly. "Liz called me from the car earlier. She's gone to Connecticut with Nikki. The captain will probably tell us more later."
Rupert Mardas didn't even try to question the information. "So, Mike's just summarizing everything there is to know about Matthai," he said instead. "Police clearance certificate, personnel file, account history, medical records - everything."
Nick leaned back in his chair and made a gesture with his hand. "And then Liz opens her little magic box again and says abracadabra; after that, we get to drive to the scene of the third part of our little horror story. Without the faintest idea of how she figured it all out again," he predicted. "Why the hell haven't we found that damn Ishmael yet?"
"I'm afraid he'll decide when we find him himself."
"And he gets away with it? Against the entire fucking investigative apparatus of Boston? Who is this guy? The number one most wanted criminal of all time? A fucking genius of the century?"
Mardas crossed his arms in front of his chest as he replied without any particular emotion: "Anyway, he manages to make us look like shit pretty convincingly."
"Then perhaps we should start preparing our terms of surrender?"
Mardas lowered his arms and arched a brow. "I'm afraid Ishmael isn't about surrender. More like annihilation!"
xxx
The round tower with its floor-to-ceiling glass fronts could be seen from afar, where limousines were waiting to be rented out.
Elizabeth and Nikki were greeted by a senior staff member who had not only invited his guests from Boston on a private tour of the glass building but had also arranged for Elizabeth's request to be processed as quickly as possible. While a list of vehicles matching the one Ishmael had driven was compiled, the two investigators were now at the Max Downtown.
"Now tell me," Nikki urged her mother once again.
During the drive to Hartford, Elizabeth had limited herself to talking about the general facts of Dr. McMillan's murder. She had refused to answer any further questions about the background to her separation from Leonore or the death of Paul Matthai.
"If you don't tell them how you cracked the code, you're withholding important results from the team. Man, Ma, they must know what's behind this!"
"Not at all," the captain finally replied. "It would only confuse you all and divert you onto nonsensical tracks. Just as Ishmael wishes."
With these words, she put the starter cutlery down on her plate and wiped her mouth with her napkin before taking a sip of wine with relish. "Ishmael is showing me again how much he knows about me. He's either trying to intimidate me or make himself popular with me," she continued while her daughter leafed through the menu to choose a main course after the first course.
"You said that Matthai only died because of his name," the young woman repeated. 3SGINDIPFA. What does that have to do with a name?"
"3SGINIMPFA is a t. Ishmael spelled out the name of his next victim for me with his little pieces of paper."
Nikki looked up from the menu in astonishment. "You're not serious, are you? So, if 3SGINDIMPFA stands for t, what does 1SGIMPA mean?"
"It stands for ai."
Nikki leaned back demonstratively, crossed her arms in front of her chest, and gave a critical look to show that she finally wanted to know what her mother had found out.
"All right," Elizabeth finally opened up. "3SGINDIMPFA means third person, singular, indicative, imperfect, active. 1SGIMPA means first person, singular, imperfect, active. 1DUPERFA means first person, dual, perfect, active."
Nikki now had a rough idea of what her mother meant. However, she felt miles away from being able to derive meaningful insight from it. "Then is as 3SGAORA the third person, singular, uh --"
"... Aortis, active. Exactly. That leaves 2SGOPTA - that's second person, singular, optative, active."
Nikki, who had never heard terms like optative or aorist before, was speechless.
"This is about exotic grammatical constructions, about verb endings," Elizabeth explained as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "If you inflect a verb in the second person, singular, optative, active, then it ends with -h. The other forms end with - ma, - t, or -ai, whereby we have the -t twice in different forms. Putting these endings together, you can form the name Matthai."
Nikki looked closely at her mother. "You can also make the German word Hai. But also Hai Matt," she thought aloud.
Elizabeth smiled smugly as she replied: "Exactly. That's why I've launched an investigation into chess-playing marine biologists alongside the search for a human named Matthai."
Nikki blinked slowly and didn't respond. Her hasty objection was now making her uncomfortable herself. "You can't possibly be serious," she replied instead, having become mentally overwhelmed by the jumble of grammatical terms despite her best efforts. "How are you supposed to come up with that?"
Elizabeth remembered her youth. "Sometimes, when I was bored, I made up endings for verbs in different languages."
"Of course," Nikki responded sardonically with lowered brows. "I do that every day, too. Friends often visit us; it's more fun together."
Elizabeth laughed sympathetically. "It might seem strange, but you must keep your mind awake somehow."
"After all, a basketball ace wasn't challenging enough," the young woman replied.
The captain rolled her eyes. "Wouldn't you like to know how I came up with the language in which I had to look for the right endings?"
"Not English?" Nikki replied, puzzled.
"Oh, Nikki," Elizabeth said affectionately. "There's no optative in English. It occurs in Finnish or Turkish. And in several other languages. However, Ishmael's constructions refer to Sanskrit, an ancient Indian language. The whole thing wasn't entirely straightforward, by the way. I have to admit, he's something."
Nikki looked at her mother skeptically and ran her fingers along her lower lip. "And how did you know it was about Sanskrit? Or did you go through all the languages that use the optative?"
"Frankly, that would have taken a little longer," Elizabeth admitted. "Just remember Mike's question."
"You mean why Ishmael left you the notes in such a way that you still have to put them together?"
"Exactly!" Elizabeth emptied her glass. "Sanskrit means 'that which is put together'. So through the individual pieces of paper, he told me the language I had to search in."
Nikki raised her hands but could not remember what she had ordered. She smiled mischievously at her mother, "Want me to tell you something?"
Elizabeth began to grin mischievously.
"We used to beat up girls like you in the school playground!"
"And that's why I was such a sporting ace!" the captain replied.
Nikki laughed briefly and closed her eyes. If the case had been less explosive, she would have filed this lunch under 'normal.'
xxx
Tick, tick, tick, tick.
Can you hear the time ticking away?
I've had to wait so many years. After all, it was supposed to be perfect. And you're different from the kind of person to devise a half-baked plan!
Is it hard for you to keep your secret? Or have you gotten used to living in lies? After all, you've been doing it for ages. And well, I have to admit.
Take it easy for a few more hours in your unspeakable life. Enjoy the simple life, the music, and the wine with which you numb your worries. You know what the problem with this world is. But don't worry.
You'll soon be over it.