Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

I’m Lieutenant Deviled Yeggs.  I work homicide in the big city of Tracy.  Working for me are my old partners: Detective Sgt. Jim Wednesday and Detective Poached Yeggs, my nephew who is slowly becoming a good detective.

My daughter has been the head of the codebreakers since a suspected serial killer has challenged Sophie, Pauline Niblick, and GrandPa in a game of solving riddles.  The codebreakers were stumped until GrandPa finally figured out the code, at least halfway.  He is not sure if he has arranged the tickets in the right order to produce the passport numbers of our killer’s victims.  Hugh McAdoo sent the possible passport numbers to the places where we have not gotten any social media success.  We have found four more.  A couple of old ladies were taking some kind of sleeping agent and fell to their deaths.  And two other ladies had suspected food poisoning.  With eight deaths worldwide, we had several of the accidental deaths being reopened.

But then as part of the Rogue Scholars, Sophie enlisted several very ditzy female friends to go to their local mail carrier and ask, “Our school is, like, having a contest.  We want someone to give a talk about their adventures, but they also have to be in a service to the community, like, you know, through their jobs.  It would be so cool if you could tell me who the adventurers are among the mail carriers.  You know, travel the world, climb Mount Everest, something cool.  The school is going to make it an award for the winner, and then they can talk about their adventure at a school assembly.  But don’t tell the people you nominate.  We want it to be, like, a surprise.”  Through Margie and a few others who are in sports, they covered nearly every mail route in Tracy, but Sophie and Margie were not among those asking for nominations.  She was hoping to have her results soon.

Oh, some of you may not be up to speed.  I first got tickets for twelve events in 2023, at the end of the year.  They came with a taunt that Sophie, GrandPa, and Pauline were the only ones that could break the code.  That was disturbing in that this person knew too much about things in Tracy, but the tickets were for events around the world, nothing in the USA.  Since then, GrandPa got the idea that the code was connecting the victims to their passports.  With our first four possible victims, he confirmed that was the code, but he had to shuffle the tickets around to get the code to work.  With two tickets to twelve events, there are gaps in the shuffling, but even then, we have found eight of the twelve victims.  But in the meantime, the perpetrator followed my wife, Glyce around and threatened her with a note in a diaper placed there by the perpetrator into her diaper bag when she accidentally left it in the pediatrician’s waiting room.

And then, Poached got the idea it might be a mail carrier or postmaster.  Someone with enough money to travel the world, and enough time to do so, but had connections to people all over the big city of Tracy to obtain information.  Mail carrier seemed to work, but who among them had the time and money? Then they stretched it to recently retired postal workers.  Thus, we come to Sophie’s ruse.  Since Sophie loves center stage at police meetings, the rest of the story is her first person report.

I (Sophie) started my report with a welcoming statement.  “I want to thank you all for coming.  This is a bigger crowd than I expected, and they are not all from the Tracy Police Department.  It’s so nice to see the mayor here.  Hi, Cuz!”  I said with a snicker.

Mayor Boaz cleared his throat.  “Sophia, I am here on official Tracy business. Please refer to me in such public venues as Mr. Mayor.”  My Daddy mumbled something about how that might not work too well with me, and there were snickers around the room.

I replied, “Okey Dokey, Mr. Mayor!” which got a few more snickers.  Daddy said, “Less comedy, more report, Sophie.”  I batted my eyelashes, “Of course, Daddy!”

“Many of you know that I am the youngest of the codebreakers, but I was named the leader of the group due to my past successes investigating Cold Cases here in the summer.  Besides, GrandPa would break out in hives if he walked in here, and there are a few people who are afraid of Pauline Niblick, especially Guy Weiss, but I don’t see him in the room here.  We were all three named by the perpetrator of what we think are twelve international homicides.  None have been reclassified as such, but eight victims have been tentatively identified.  The effort so far has been predominantly identifying the players in the twelve events from 2023.  They are all listed on the paperwork that was sent to each of you.  Since the tickets and the invitation to the codebreakers to solve the code were delivered to Lt. Deviled Yeggs, my Daddy, we have created a working hypothesis that has changed very little from the beginning.  For those that do not know about the three codebreakers, GrandPa started communicating with me in code years ago, and his codes kept getting harder as time went on.  What I did not know until a year or two ago, GrandPa communicated with Pauline in the same manner ever since she was a precocious teen.  So that is how we became the codebreakers.”

I took in a deep breath before continuing, “How the perp knew this is still a bit puzzling, but with a suggestion from Detective Poached Yeggs, we have enlisted a number of ditzy teens around town to help us, but more on that in a bit.  First, GrandPa came up with a novel idea.  The code was supposed to be contained in twenty-four tickets to events in 2023, two tickets to twelve events roughly one month apart.  All in the eastern hemisphere, on four continents.  Okay, the lady connected with the O2 in London might be on the edge.  None of the events in the Americas.  The ticket numbers and the seat numbers, no matter how they were arranged, made no sense as a code.  But then GrandPa thought that passport numbers might not seem to make sense either.  We had four suspected deaths.  He obtained the passport numbers, and he partially deciphered the code.  Part of the code was shuffling the tickets in a seemingly random pattern.  So, he identified the four known victims.  The pattern helped identify four more, but we have yet to shuffle the remaining tickets to develop the rest of the pattern.  Besides for an example, was the female handball enthusiast going to a match in Denmark from Denmark or supporting someone at the competition from another country?  France won the event, but the other three countries in the semi-finals were Scandinavian.  Just too many variables at this point.  But with eight of the twelve identified, it is giving us reasonable information that the code is an admission to twelve murders, although none have been classified a murder yet.  One of our possible victims was a Christmas enthusiast from Munich, Germany.  She went to various Christkindlemarkt around Germany.  The tickets were for two people, first class cabin on the train from Munich to Nuremberg, the only tickets that were not to an event specifically.  The victim opened her house as a museum, but she did not open it this year, having fallen from her roof with a heavy dose of sedation.  It was listed as accidental death, but Detective Poached Yeggs has more.”

Poached cleared his throat.  “A few of the deaths involve falling, the rest are listed as food poisoning.  We think the perpetrator uses two substances, a poison in the food poisoning family, probably botulism bacteria, and a heavy knockout drug.  We may have the formula of the knockout drug soon.  A Munich detective called me.  He had been told to close the case, but he held onto such things as the blood sample containing the drug.  He ran it through mass spec once we called.  You see, he lived in the same building and his children loved the museum displays that this old woman designed, and her history display was impeccable.  The dioramas would have porcelain and wooden people, but finding the prune people in the displays was like a game of Where’s Waldo for his children.  I may get the lab results tomorrow from Munich.  Then we can share that with the authorities for the possible other victims to see if they might have discovered a trace.  We are finally getting somewhere.”

I nodded, “Thanks, Po.”  Poached replied, “Any time, Shorty!”  There were a few more snickers.  I continued, “This leads me to our latest efforts that involve the Think Tank.  Poached suggested that to know who the codebreakers were and how they communicated, a postal employee might be our perpetrator.  That information may not leave this room.  The Think Tank produced a ruse that a local school wanted to honor a servant of the community, but that person had to be someone ‘cool’, someone who had interests outside the job.  The school had plenty of assemblies on job-oriented career ideas, but with the unsung heroes that deliver the mail, they might do something adventurous away from the job.  You know, world travel, mountain climbing, swimming with whales, something ‘cool’.  A couple of our youthful Think Tank members came up with ditzy girls from almost every mail route in Tracy.  Ditzy in that they talked a mile a minute and they were cute, disarming, and the mail carrier would think nothing of it afterwards, just a silly girl.”

I took another deep breath.  “We have just tabulated three nominations from each mail carrier that was questioned, and we might just have a winner.  Daddy does not like his detectives getting tunnel vision, but this one is too good to ignore.  We have nearly 200 nominations for this fictitious award.  And seventy-six nominations are all for the same man.  He is partially retired, but before he cut his hours, he was a roaming mailman, filling in for people who were sick or on vacation.  He got to work all over Tracy.  He knew all the other mailmen and gossiped around the coffee pot with everyone in town.  Thus, he could easily know a lot about a lot of people, including the codebreakers.  He is a world traveler, having come into a lot of money about ten years ago.  A couple of the mailmen said he could talk your ear off about rugby, cricket, and table tennis.  Those are three of the events on the tickets.”

I turned to Daddy and asked, “Daddy, do you remember a mailman who won the lottery about ten years ago?”

Daddy swallowed hard, “Yeah, but I cannot remember his name off the top of my head.”

Jim Wednesday suggested, “Willie something.”

I nodded, “Thanks, Detective Sgt. Wednesday, his name was William ‘Willie’ McLane.”

Daddy scoffed, “I heard he ran through the money really fast.”

I nodded, “And what better way to have a motive to con old ladies, who he probably romanced while he had money.  That fits our working hypothesis and could be a very strong motive.”

Daddy nodded, “Yeah, and he was not on our radar at all.  We need to get some candid photos of him and filter that into your social media system.”

I giggled, “Already done, Daddy, and we hit paydirt.  The Munich detective remembers the guy in the building, but he cannot say that he was there when the lady fell from the roof.  And a couple of party boat people in Australia recognized him as the silver-haired American with the lady who fell off the party boat and was partially eaten by sharks.  Don’t worry.  With the party boat people, it was all nonchalant conversation.  Gordie and Angel are working on their rugby fan, who may have been an All-Blacks fan, but she was from Brisbane, Australia.  The lady on the party boat from Melbourne.  The woman killed in Paris from Brisbane, and an unknown woman who we suspect was an angel of the opera in Sidney.  And guess where Willie McLane first visited after winning the lottery?”

A few people asked, “Australia?”  I nodded.

Then Daddy said, “My stomach has been turning ever since you mentioned his name.  Your Mom has been threatened by this guy quoting a Ray Stevens song about an obscene phone caller.  In the song, the caller is named Willard McBain.  Willie McLane is too close to be a coincidence.  If we do not have our guy, we have someone doing a great job of redirecting us to just one person.”

Then Daddy turned to the crowd, “None of this leaves this room.  We do not wish to tip this guy off.  At this point, we have none of the deaths recategorized as possible homicides.  We only have eight of the possible twelve deaths having their cases reopened, and we have no real evidence.  But with one person to look at, we can dig deeper.  Let’s get this thing solved, and quick.”

The police commissioner added, “And if this works out, Sophie might be in for a key to the city.”

I gasped, “But, Sir, I am just the leader of a three-person team.”

The commissioner laughed, “And she plays politics like a champ.”

This ends her report.

After everyone left, Sophie asked me, “Daddy, why didn’t you say anything about the live chicken in our front yard this morning?”

I replied, “For one thing, the chicken ran under the tires of the neighbor’s SUV as he was backing out of the driveway.  For another, it would freak your mother out.  I want no explosions.  We loves Polly, but she hates having a bodyguard.  I cannot be there all the time to give her a hug.  This case is eating at her, and we need to move on our leads and get some real evidence on this guy.  What have you learned?”

Sophie replied, “He talks about all the sports for which we have tickets.  He knows a lot about them.  He has taken people in this area to a variety of concerts.  He loves picking up things from around the world, and he has a collection of prune people from Nuremberg.  And he has a weird side hobby.  He is into robotics.  He has helped some STEM teams with their battle bots.  You know, robots that battle the other robots until only one remains operational.  He was working with these robots even before he won the lottery.  Now, he seems to have split his spare time between robotics and world travel, and his interests range over all the topics found in the tickets.  Everything points to him, but we have no real evidence.”

I groaned, but I agreed with her.

Credits

Where’s Waldo started as a series of books but is almost a cult classic to mean finding something innocuous in a huge crowd.

Prune people were a big attraction at the Christkindlemarkt in Nuremberg, Germany.  You take a wire skeleton and then apply prunes for the head, body, arms and legs.  Then you add some clothing items or “tools” to identify them as a maid, chimney sweep, etc.  In the photo, you will find a prune person chimney sweep in the centerpiece of the table setting, and maybe a glimpse of the prune person maid next to him.