MIDNIGHT KILLER( The Beautiful Minds book2)

Chapter 38

Sitting in a living room and staring awkwardly at each were two of the unlikeliest people in this story to ever meet.

With an expression that suggested he was utterly clueless, Noah looked around at the messy living room of Stana Marcus. It looked as though all the contents of the room had the ability to fly. A large handbag was lying lopsided on the dining table, revealing spilled mascara, an empty perfume bottle and a lipstick of some weird colour : the top of which was rolling around near the sofa. A refrigerator stood blocking almost all of the space between the living room and bedroom. A huge bowl of vegetable salad and a bottle of flour was up in the mantelpiece close to a photograph of Stana wearing a yellow wig and performing ballet on stage. Noah thought he wouldn't be surprised if he walked into the bathroom and found a toaster in the place of the closet.

"So...ummm...what did you want to see me for?" asked Noah, now casting intrigued glances at the paintings and hanging on the walls.

"Not anything that would be too hard for you" replied Stana with that trademark smirk of hers. Her curious eyes swept every freckle on his face as she wondered that even though he shared the same father as Dana, he looked none like her.

Noah made an impatient sound and Stana yanked herself back to the present. "You're the mastermind behind the algorithm for the game 'Jumbo in the Gumbo' I heard?"

Whatever he might have expected, it definitely wasn't Jumbo in the Gumbo. It was a stupid game he designed for children back when he was an amateur in his career. The whole point of the game was to fix a jigsaw puzzle in order to find an elephant called Jumbo in a farm called Gumbo. The game hardly made a handful of sales and it made him flush to think that the greatest detective in the country actually wanted to talk about it.

"Oh yes, what about it?" he asked, sitting up straight and trying not to look embarrassed.

"Well, I have a sort of a similar scenario here" replied Stana sounding so casual that she might just as well have asked his opinion of a picnic spot. "I need you to use the algorithm and fix a jigsaw puzzle for me"

Saying so she walked gracefully to a table by the mantelpiece, picked up a laptop and took her seat next to him.

"You see here?" she said pointing to the screen and Noah inched closer to take a better look. There were barely eight pieces, the contents of which looked absurd. "I want you to arrange these pieces so that I can draw something sensible out of it"

Noah stared at the pieces for a long moment. "Do you have an idea of what to expect?"

"Nope" replied Stana without thinking.

Noah took a deep breath and pulled at his stubble absently. "Well, what am I to gain out of this?"

The last thing he expected her to do was chuckle. "I cannot pay you or give you any kind of reward because I'm doing it without the knowledge of the cops. It's a part of my personal investigation"

"Well then, I can't-"

"But, if seizing the man who murdered your sister sounds like a price- you'll have it"

Noah stared at her a few seconds, his mouth slightly open during the course of which Stana spotted the shadow of something terrible dancing in his eyes. Then, without another word, he dragged the laptop closer to him and started to work.

Lips curving in a triumphant smile, Stana watched him doing his work devotedly. That morning, she had been watching, once again, the video that had been sent to Dana the night she went patrolling Thornton's Holiday Spot. Having a hunch that she was failing to grasp something important from it, she listened to his words over and over again until she was able to recite them verbatim. She perused the screen so carefully that the image of the man sitting there in the dark was ingrained in the insides of her eyes. It was then that it occurred to her that the way the man's face had been blurred and spiralled wasn't just a technique he'd used to shield his face. He was giving them a clue. It was a puzzle.