“That’s because you think logically, in one direction only. Crosswords are like Bach. Or jazz. They demand you think in several different directions simultaneously. Call and response, question and answer, all in the same moment.”

She examined the bracelet again.

“The point is . . . All the information you need is there. In front of your face. Nothing is missing. You just have to make the links.”

Middleton looked interested. It was the mention of Bach that did it.

“My problem,” she added, “is I still think in Polish, not English. I love crosswords but they’re too hard for me in your language. I used to wish you could see them instead of read them. You know what I mean? Look at cross pictures. Not words. That way language isn’t so important.”

They had what weapons they wanted. They were ready to go. Middleton held out his hand and she passed to him the note and the photograph of the dead Indian with the curious eyes. He placed them back in the evidence packet and slipped them into his carryall. She clung to the copper bangle, waiting for the question.

“If the pictures on the bracelet were a crossword,” Middleton asked, “what do you think they might mean?”

Leonora Tesla shook her head. “We’re giving these to a bunch of forensic people, Harry. Not a crossword expert.”

“That’s a shame,” Felicia said.

They looked at her.

“Because? . . .” Middleton asked.

She pointed at the moon on the bracelet

“This would be the answer, I think. The part that is calling. See how it’s separate, and the other two elements are subsidiary to it, as if their response somehow answers everything. The elephant. The way he blows his trunk comically into the sky, like a fountain, except that the liquid doesn’t go very far, does it? The stream falls to earth so quickly, as if it weighs more than it should. This seems obvious to me.”

“Obvious?” he asked.

“Look! It’s an elephant. The biggest land animal on the planet. What’s he doing? Trying to spray the moon, and failing. Two words. Maybe it’s me being crazy but remember: I was born in the year of Chernobyl. We weren’t far away. Five hundred kilometers maybe. At school they came along every six months and took our blood to see if the explosion had done something bad to us.”

That blunt needle, the same one they used on everyone, hurt which was why she had read so avidly to understand its cause.

She put her finger on the carefully carved beast on the bracelet and said, “Heavy.”

Then she indicated the fountain of liquid rising from the beast toward the sky and falling back again, too quickly. “Water.”

Felicia Kaminski couldn’t help but notice that Harold Middleton went a little paler when she said that.