Chapter 7

Chapter 7—Kate’s puzzle, 

and her old friend Kurt

6:10 p.m., Sunday, December 25

The two hugged each other closely, as only a dad and his loving daughter can hug. “And how’s my favorite daughter?” Jack asked.
“I’m your only daughter, Silly,” Kate chuckled.
Still gripping his daughter’s arms, Jack pushed her back to get a good look at her. “Man, you just get better looking every day. How can a beautiful young girl like you still be single … and in New York City, no less? Aren’t there any red-blooded males in this town?”
“Thanks for the compliment, Dad, but you know I’m not interested in getting married—at least not right now. You’re the only man in my life.”
They had similar discussions before. Jack would like to see his only daughter find a man, a worthy man. He and Kate’s mother had something really special, and he wanted to see Kate find a love like that.
“I know, I know,” Jack said. “I’m just messing with you. … Where’re we headed? Isn’t there a coffee shop around here?”
“Sure is,” Kate replied. “Follow me.”
Kate then grabbed her father’s hand, and pulled him toward the steps leading down into Penn Station. Being that it was Christmas, there were not many other people to deal with. She tightly gripped his hand while they walked. This reminded Jack of the times he and his wife would hold hands just like that. Beth’s hands would be cold, much like Kate’s hand was cold on this night, and he would warm his wife simply by holding her hand.
“Right around this corner,” Kate said. “Here. This is an okay place. At least they have great espressos. I think you will like it.”
As the two of them walked in, Kate pointed to a table in the corner, and told her dad to go capture it. “Still like double espressos?” she asked, as she headed toward the counter.
“That would be great,” Jack said, squeezing into a chair in the corner. This gave him a panoramic view of the mostly empty coffee shop. Kate knew many of her dad’s idiosyncrasies, including his desire to always be in a position to size up his surrounding.
Just a few minutes later, Kate carried two double espressos over to the table. “I’ll grab a couple waters,” she said, setting both of the cups down in front of her father. She returned quickly with two small plastic glasses of water.
“I can’t believe this place is open on Christmas,” Jack marveled.
“365,” Kate said, as she sat down in front of her father.
“Okay, Kitten, what’s going on in your life that’s got you so troubled?” Jack asked his daughter.
Her countenance immediately changed, as though a somber cloud descended over her. He knew something major was up. She just silently stared down at her coffee for a few moments. Finally, Kate looked up at him. The expression on her face puzzled him. He had never before seen her this unsettled.
“Dad, I’ve got myself into something that I do not know how to deal with,” Kate said. “I’ve had tough cases before. I’ve had my life threatened before. But always I felt like I had a handle on what was going on. Gang killings—I can handle them okay. Domestic crime, I can deal with that too.  But I do not know what to do with one of my new cases.”
“What can you tell me about it?” Jack asked, making sure not to lead his daughter where she should not go.
“It’s a murder,” Kate said. “That’s obvious, after all, I am a homicide detective,” Kate looked down at her espresso again, and forced a strained chuckle. “But this one has a different feel to it, Dad. It feels like something bigger—something a little strange.”
“Strange in what way?” Jack asked.
“Dad, how many people get murdered with an ice pick, in public, during rush hour, waiting for a train? Doesn’t that alone sound strange to you?”
“With an ice pick?” Jack asked rhetorically. It was obvious that his daughter now had his undivided attention. “I always thought that only old men and crazy women killed with ice picks. And then only on trains, not waiting for them.”
“Right. Exactly.” Kate said. “But this murder was committed in a train tunnel. The victim was on his regular evening commute from DC back to Penn Station. Someone walked up behind him, slid an ice pick right through his left lung, puncturing his heart, pulled it out, and pushed it into him again, piercing his right lung. Death was almost instantaneous. And it wasn’t an old man or a crazy woman. Witnesses say that they saw a young man walk up to the vic and talk to him. Several describe the man as in his mid-thirties, white, well-dressed, powerfully built, and wearing glasses.”
  “The glasses might have been to throw you off,” Jack said.
“That’s what we thought, too.”
“Sounds like an episode of Sherlock Holmes to me,” Jack said, trying to lighten up the conversation. “Any one able to come up with a tentative ID for this guy? Or a motive?”
“No. All they saw was the victim being shoved against one of the vertical support beams. He held himself up for a few moments, and then just slid down it. It was during the busy rush hour, and he did not bleed out much. Most thought he had suffered a heart attack.”
“What about the ice pick? Did the killer leave it in the victim, or pull it out?” Jack inquired.
“Strange that you should ask. He broke the handle off, leaving the pick part in the victim,” Kate answered. “… But you already knew that didn’t you?”
“Yeah, that’s what I suspected. It sounds almost like a prison hit. They usually break the shiv off inside the victim, and take only the handle. Much more effective when carried out like that. If it is broken off inside the victim, the vic can’t pull it out. So he just bleeds internally. Plus, it leaves no fingerprints.”
“So, you think that the killer has done hard time? Is that what you are thinking?” Kate asked.
“Not necessarily. Obviously, an ice pick is not a sharpened toothbrush. But the same principle might apply. A break-away tip on an ice pick could suggest a professional hit. In fact, that’s exactly what my initial observation would be.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Kate replied, quite contented to see that her father agreed with her line of thinking. “What makes this even more interesting,” she continued, “is what turned up inside the lining of the vic’s jacket. That’s really why I called you. I want you to take a look at,” Kate said, reaching into her purse and pulling out an envelope.
“Maybe you can make something of this,” Kate said, as she slid the contents out of the envelope, and pushed it toward her father.
“This is a copy,” she said, “the original is still in Forensics.”
Jack received a folded, hand-written sheet of paper from his daughter, and studied it. After a minute, he said, “this is a simple cryptogram. Couldn’t this guy afford a computer?”

SGCN JNRE SDHC SDCJ MHVW
CECP DCQJ MRPP NCNG TNTQW
CRVR DDPKS CDJR DJADA PXZZ
FQOPO PJKA TFGJS

“Oh, he could afford one all right,” Kate replied.
“What sort of work did he do?” Jack asked.
“State Department, mid level,” She said.
“State Department,” Jack repeated.
“Did you say this was a simple cryptogram?” Kate asked. “Can you decipher it?”
“I did say that,” Jack answered. “But simple does not necessarily mean easy. By simple I mean basic. It’s not a complicated encryption. But it is probably not easy at all to decipher. And it would be inscrutable to any encryption software. In fact, without the key, or keys, short cryptograms such as these are virtually impossible to decipher.”
“What do you mean by “keys?” Kate asked.
“Think like this,” Jack said. “All a cryptogram does is substitute one letter for another, in some orderly fashion. It requires that the recipient of the code have the key, which merely explains the method of letter substitution employed by the creator of the code. Knowing the key is critical. Especially if there might be multiple keys. Which I suspect is the case here.” Jack then laid the paper down on the table so he could explain it to Kate. But before he commented on it, he flipped it over to take a look at the back. “This is a copy, right?” Jack asked.
“Right, it is a copy,” Kate told him. “The original is stored as evidence.”
“Take a look at how the message is divided into four lines of characters. That suggests there are probably four keys—a separate key for each line. There’s no software out there that I know of that could crack this without the keys. The lines are too short to develop patterns, or to apply methods involving order and frequency. These things can be created on the fly, and are very effective.”
“So, there’s nothing you can do with it without a key?” Kate asked.
“I didn’t say that,” Jack said. “This guy was with the State Department, you say. Just what was his area of expertise? Do you know that?”
“East European and Asian, primarily,” Kate answered.
“Russia, China, Poland?” Jack asked.
“Russia and China—mostly Russian affairs,” she said.
“I’ll show you how simple this can be,” Jack said. “It probably won’t work, but I think it’s a reasonable place to start. Who knows, we might get lucky. Let’s assume that one of the keys is ‘Russia.’ Let’s apply it to the first line. If Russia is a key for one of the lines, then ‘r’ will take the place of the first letter in the alphabet, ‘a.’ Then ‘u’ is ‘b’, ‘s’ is ‘c’, and ‘s’ is also ‘d’, ‘i’ is ‘e’, and ‘a’ is ‘f.’ From there you basically start the alphabet over, plugging in the unused characters in order.”
“You lost me.”
“Okay, just follow this, Jack said, pulling out a tablet from his pocket and writing as he talked. ‘B’ wasn’t part of the key, so that will stand for the next letter, ‘g’; ‘c’ is ‘h’; ‘d’ is ‘i’; ‘e’ is ‘j’; ‘f’ is ‘k’; ‘g’ is ‘l’; ‘h’ is ‘m’; ‘i’ was used in the key, so we would move on to ‘j,’ which would be ‘n’; ‘k’ is ‘o’; ‘l’ is ‘p’; ‘m’ is ‘q’; ‘n’ is ‘r’; ‘o’ is ‘s’; ‘p’ is ‘t’; ‘q’ is ‘u’; ‘r’ was used, and so was ‘s.’ In fact ’s’ was used twice.  That moves us to ‘t,’ which would be ‘v’; ‘u’ was used, so ‘v’ would be ‘w’; ‘w’ is ‘x’; and ‘x’ is ‘y’; and ‘y’ is ‘z.’
Now, because ‘s’ was used for two letters, so ‘z’ wasn’t used at all, we can assume your puzzler used ‘z’ as a null. That means he could just throw a ‘z’ in as a place filler wherever he wished. For instance, to fill out a line; or just to throw people off.
“The likelihood of ‘z’ being used as a null is tipped by its being used for the final two characters of the third puzzle. That suggests that the puzzler employed all the characters in his key, even when duplicated. That produces nulls. It is common practice with short puzzles.”
“Dad, you’re amazing,” Kate said.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Kitty. We don’t know if this will work. To this point this is still mere conjecture—what we came up with is just one way of looking at it,” Jack said, even though he already saw that the third line ended with two ‘z’s’, which strongly suggested he was on to something.
 “Take a look at the third line. It looks like it might have two nulls at the end. If we’re right, then this guy of yours was no genius. That would have been too simple. ... Anyway, let’s plug it in and see if it works.”
Kate slid her chair around a little so she could look over her father’s shoulder.
“Here we go,” Jack said, as he applied his potential solution to the puzzle. ‘Hawaii to China in fifty.’ That’s it, for the third line. But you can be sure that the other three lines employ different keywords. We just got lucky with that one line.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me, Dad. You figured it out that fast? Our best computer guys spent days on it without any success. … But they were using code-cracking software. And you say that approach might not work so well for a puzzle like this. That’s amazing. But if that’s right, ‘Hawaii to China in fifty,’ what would it mean?” Kate asked. “‘Hawaii to China in fifty’ sounds like a fast plane.”
“Beats me, but I doubt that this guy was planning a vacation—and certainly not to Beijing.” Jack said, shrugging his shoulders, and chuckling slightly. “This thing sounds to me like something for the FBI. This was definitely not a gang related killing. How did you get this case?”
“Do you think you can do anything with the other three lines?” Kate asked, disregarding her father’s last question.
“I’m gonna need some time with this. Can I take it with me?” Jack asked.
“Sure—not a problem.” Kate replied, folding it up, she tucked it back into the envelope and handed it to her father.
“Kate,” a man said as he walked up to the table where she and her father were sitting. “Is that really you?”
Kate’s head snapped around. The voice was somewhat familiar, but she could not place it.
“The academy,” he said. “What’s it been, ten or twelve years? I’m Kurt, Kurt Jefferies. Don’t you remember me?”
“Yes, sure I do. How are you doing? You left the force, didn’t you?”
“I did,” Jefferies said. “The private sector pays better.”
“Private sector—exactly what does that mean?” Kate asked.
Jack observed that the man was sizing him up more than should be expected, particularly when there was a beautiful woman present.
“I do investigations for some attorneys. You know, following rich cheating husbands around. It’s nasty work, but it pays well. And you, you’re still with the department?”
“I am. I’m a homicide detective,” Kate replied, just a little uncomfortable about being questioned.
The man then turned to Jack, and asked. “Do you work with Kate?”
“Kate’s my daughter. We’re just enjoying a cup of espresso.”
Jack now was growing a little tense about the encounter—he was fairly certain that it did not happen by chance. And, he was not pleased to be sitting down with this questionable stranger standing over him.
Jack examined the man closely to be sure that he had not seen this Jefferies fellow before. Convinced that he had not, Jack rose to his feet and squared himself off in front of the visitor. As he stood, he again opened the knife inside his pocket, and made certain that he would be able to wield it quickly and effectively should he need to. “We were just leaving, Mr. Jefferies, hope you will excuse us,” Jack said, not taking his eyes off the man standing beside his daughter.
Kate took the cue from her father, and arose from her chair as well.
“Good to see you, Kurt, but we really have to be going,” Kate said, pushing her chair under the table.
“Sure, it was good to see you again too. Can’t imagine bumping into you like this,” Jefferies said, taking half a step backwards, as he sensed his space was about to be violated by Jack.
“And you,” Jefferies said, reaching out to shake hands with Jack, “it was nice meeting you.” Jefferies had observed the Jack was gripping something in his right hand, and he wanted to see if Jack would release it to shake his hand.
But Jack was not ready to take his hand off the knife in his pocket, so he acted as though he did not see the gesture. Feigning indigestion, Jack placed his left hand over his stomach, and said, “Kate, that espresso did not set well with me. How about you? Don’t you think it was a little bitter?”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” she said, playing along with her dad. “It is Christmas, after all. Business is slow and maybe it sat out too long.”
“That’s probably the case,” Jack replied, steering his chair with his left hand, as he pushed it under the table with his foot. He still had not acknowledged Jefferies’ gesture. Then, noticing that the stranger had ceased trying to shake his hand, Jack looked over at him, and said, “You will excuse us?”
“Sure, it was good to meet you,” Jefferies said. “What did you say your name was?”
“Kate’s Dad,” Jack said, flashing an icy stare, causing Jefferies to take a full step back. “I’m Kate’s Dad.”
“Now, if you will excuse us,” Jack said, brushing the man back with his right elbow, and taking his daughter’s arm in his left hand. “Have a good day,” Jack added as he walked away with his daughter, still not taking his hand off the opened combat knife in his pocket.
“What was that all about?” Jack asked his daughter, as they walked away. “That guy was no private dick. He was built like a rock. When I brushed against him, he did not budge. And I don’t think that husband chasers pack Glock 20s, at least not in Manhattan.
The 10mm round is more powerful than either the .45 ACP or the .357 Magnum. While the 10mm handguns were initially regarded by law enforcement as a superlative size for their application, beginning in the late 1980s it was generally replaced by the smaller .40 S&W cartridge for police use.
The reason the smaller firearm won out over the 10mm had to do with the type of officers being recruited at that time. Because the 10mm round was considerably longer than both the 9mm and the .40 S&W, it caused the handgrip of the firearm that fired it also to be larger. That because the magazine holding the rounds had to fit inside it.
Beginning in the mid to late 1980s, a concerted effort to recruit more women into law enforcement led agencies to abandon the 10mm in favor of the .40 S&W, and to the even smaller 9mm. Both of these semi-automatic handguns had measurably smaller handgrips, and also a more manageable recoil.
However, the raw knockdown power of the 10mm won the hearts of private professionals, such as Jack Handler. And the Austrian made Glock 20 10mm was deemed the best. Not only was it reliable and accurate, it reputedly absorbed and distributed the recoil better than other 10mm handguns.
When Jack observed the bulge of a firearm, he could determine whether it was a semi-auto or a revolver on the basis of its shape and dimension. And if it was a semi-auto, he could further tell if it was a 9mm, .40 S&W, or a 10mm. He knew this on the basis of the lump caused by the size of its handgrip.
Of course, it was always possible that a large semi-auto could have been a .45 APC, but the odds were great that a professional would be not carrying that piece.
So, if it was a 10mm, Jack thought it a safe assumption that Jefferies’ weapon of choice would be the Glock 20.
“Who do you think he really was? … And what’s this about the espresso setting out too long?”
“You caught that slip up? ... Well, I knew you were ready to go, and I had to say something.
“… But that was weird—the business with Jefferies.” Kate replied. “But I do remember him from the academy. I don’t recall much about him, though, except that he was a little older than the rest of us. I think he had been in the service. Maybe the Marines.”
“That figures. Probably some sort of Special Services,” Jack said. “He’s definitely a formidable dude. And our encounter was not by chance. He sought you out. Must have been tailing one of us.”
Jack wanted to alert his daughter to the danger he sensed. Yet, he did not want to alarm her.
“You, my dear, need to watch your step.” Jack said, carefully choosing his words. “I think you might be in some danger.”