Page 190 of King’s Ransom

‘So, Merritt,’ I said. ‘Are you gonna take my gun or what? And when do you plan on drawing yours?’

I turned to face my fellow detective and saw that his gun was already drawn and aimed at me.

Merritt Garrett quickly took my (Audrey’s) gun and patted me down for more.

But all my pockets were empty, save for little clumps of concrete dust. (Seriously, that stuff got everywhere.)

‘You can also stop pretending you don’t know her.’ I jerked my chin at Vasha. ‘You knew exactly who she was at the cemetery.’

‘When did you figure this out?’ Garrett asked as the elevator rose.

‘Stop the elevator,’ I said.

Garrett gave me a look, then he hit the emergency stop switch.

The elevator halted.

‘Talk,’ he said.

‘It was the only thing I couldn’t understand,’ I began. ‘Why bring five detectives to 59West and go to the trouble of arranging a bunch of riddles and elaborate deathtraps for us to solve?

‘I knew that Modern Alchemical Solutions had three clients that day and I’d found two: the Chinese and Winnie Tan. So there was still a third client to be uncovered.

‘Then I thought about Modern Alchemical Solutions and how they create transformations. I wondered: who benefited the most from the events of December 21st? Or put another way: who was transformed by that day the most?

‘The answer was you, Merritt.

‘You were the biggest winner of that day. Fame, fortune, admiration in every corner of the media for not only bravery but smarts as well. I mean, you solved more riddles than any of the rest of us did—including the key ones that led to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and Aristo King being buried alive—and you won a one-against-three gunfight which even came with a witness: her.’ Again, I nodded at the silent Vasha. ‘And after all that, you scored a plum new job as Aristo King’s head of security. It was as if that whole day had been designed to transform you into the world’s greatest detective.’

Garrett said nothing.

‘But I didn’t know for sure until I received an email from a dead man.’

‘What do you mean?’ Garrett said in a low voice.

‘Monty Woods, the Tech Detect, died last night. The assholes from Modern Alchemical Solutions drowned him in concrete. But before they nabbed him, he’d sent me an email. It arrived mid-afternoon, while I was unconscious, so I only saw it tonight.’

I recalled being in the cab earlier, reading my emails on Heidi’s laptop and seeing the subject line in my inbox:

TheTechDetectYesterday 3:31 p.m.

Last few lines of corrupted plaintext

I’d clicked on it.

The full email had read:

Sam, read this now!

My algorithm decoded those last few lines of corrupted plaintext.

Shit, dude.

Here is the original messed-up plaintext:

Here it is with the corruptions deciphered:

Now, here it is, spaced out and punctuated, with the zeroes and ones removed: