“Half a million people,” she reiterated, ignoring my comment. “But when it comes to dogs you don’t even hear the stats reported on the news. But it makes sense that they bite—I mean, what do dogs eat? I’ll tell you what they eat—meat and bones. What does it look like I’m made out of, broccoli and falafel? So, what about helping you?”

I sighed. “Alright. You can help me look at the cipher. But that’s all. Once we figure out how to decode it, that’s it. Do you know the name of the guy with the encrypted gravestone?”

“No.” She took a seat beside me. “But let’s find out.”

++++

Dark water lapped at the pier.

The icy wind skidding across the river left no doubt that winter was on its way.

Julianne studied the road paralleling the shoreline but didn’t see Timothy’s car.

Though it was nighttime, there were sporadic exterior lights on the warehouses and dock buildings near her that illuminated small sections of the parking area, the boat ramps, and the pier. She waited in a pool of light so that he could see her, just in case he walked rather than drove.

To get to know him better and to study his methods, she’d spent most of the day perusing excerpts of his writing online, the book she’d gotten from Miranda’s bedroom, and a copy of The Nesting Dolls, the book that’d come out since the young woman’s disappearance.

And she wasn’t sure what to make of what she read.

When Timothy had suggested this location, he’d said that he knew “a good place by the river” for them to meet. Now she wondered why he’d phrased it like that—said it was “a good place”—and if he’d been here before, maybe with Miranda.

It was the same phrase Lonnie Stillman, one of the killers in The Nesting Dolls, had used.

She made sure she had a round chambered in her gun as she waited for Timothy’s arrival.

30

It took a little time, but eventually we tracked down what we were looking for.

James Leeson’s tombstone in Trinity Church Cemetery was located near the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway. He died in 1794 and was buried there on the north end of the graveyard near a soldier’s memorial monument.

However, it wasn’t until 1889 that the Trinity Record newspaper printed the solution to the cryptogram:

Once you saw the way to decode the cipher, it was relatively easy to visualize since it was based on a tic-tac-toe board’s layout.

The letters A through J contained one dot with the corresponding parts of the tic-tac-toe grid drawn around them. The letters K through S had two dots along with their corresponding lines, and the remaining letters only contained the lines with no dots.