Chapter One
Ryan Cook stepped in. The room smelled of gun powder and faint lavender. The sudden chill from air conditioning stung his body. The early morning sunlight filtering through the closed windows partially lit the room. Small glittering glass shards littered the room. Ryan looked up to see the remains of the chandelier hanging precariously from the ceiling. A flower vase lay toppled on the floor, glass in the bookcases was splintered, a strange looking modern art sculpture stood like a leafless tree with thin protruding iron rods while all its clay molding crumbled down on the carpet. A wooden cupboard had a round bullet hole and the cushioned hand rest of a chair had been ripped off and thrown in a corner.
In the center of the room, a woman sat on a chair with her back facing Ryan. As he approached her, he found she was tied to the chair with a nylon rope. Holy Gosh!
Ryan circled around and studied the corpse. Her head hung loosely to one side with a bullet hole in the temple. She must be Nancy French, the wine merchant, Theodore Wilson’s wife, as per the telephone message he received. Dried blood covered her face and stained her blouse, skirt, hand-rest and the carpet. Few meters apart from her, a three-foot-tall doll dangled from the ceiling by a metal chain. The doll held a gun which pointed directly at the dead woman’s face. Ryan glanced at the doll. It looked like a Japanese samurai warrior with intricately woven designs. What a weird way to die. A tablet sitting on the table flickered to announce that its battery power was getting low.
Ryan noticed a remote lying beside the dead woman’s chair
When activated by the remote, the doll probably would turn around with the toy gun spilling rubber bullets. The toy gun had been replaced with a real one and the end result, a ravaged room and dead woman.
Who replaced the gun?
Nancy?
Ryan looked at the ceiling. The chain that carried the doll hung from a metal hook. Ryan removed the penlight from his pants pocket and shone it on the flat metallic base to which the hook was attached. There was no sign that it was screwed to the ceiling. It could be a magnetic one. The killer or Nancy would have fixed it on the ceiling to hang the doll.
Something flickered in the room. Ryan turned and to his left, a painting of huge dragon with fiery tongue and long tail appeared on the wall. The little lights embedded on the painting shone giving life to the dragon. Who powered the lights?
Ryan turned.
An owl perched on the power switch stared at Ryan with its big eyes.
He walked toward it.
The owl flapped its wings, flew toward a cupboard, and sat on it.
How it gotten inside the locked room?
Ryan circled the room and came across a cupboard filled with soft toys and dolls. He found two more pieces of evidence as well. A yellow wig under a chair and a single shoe print near the computer table.
Ryan walked out of the room. Theo was still in the same position, sitting immobile in a cushion chair in the living room and staring vacantly at the opposite wall. Ryan knew Theo had been selling local brand whiskey, Jackal. He might be in his early thirties and he looked tired with bloodshot eyes. The small group, an old man in shorts, a young woman with a freckled face, and a beautiful woman who looked to be in her late twenties, had been waiting in the foyer. The old man approached him and shook hands. “I’m George, Theo’s neighbor. We broke the door and found the body. We never thought Nancy would be dead. Theo believed she might be in need of help. So we forcibly entered the room without informing you.”
“That’s okay.”
“I was out on the street, jogging toward the golf club. Theo ran out of his house and met me. He was trembling. At first, I didn’t understand what he was saying. He pointed back at the house and blabbered. I knew something was wrong. I accompanied him to his house. He stood in front of the study room and said. “She was inside. But I couldn’t open the door.” I pushed the door. It was locked airtight. I pacified him, made him drink water, and learned that all the doors had facial identification lock.”
The young woman came forward and brushing her hair aside, she said, “I’m Diana Meyer. I represent a company FaceLock. We have done the security surveillance system for this house. Let me explain how it works. Infrared sensors are placed at the gate, windows, walls, and various places of the building. You know humans emit infrared radiation which are invisible to the human eye. If a person comes in front of the gate, the detector senses his presence by the infrared emission and sends the signal to the control unit kept inside the house in the cellar. The control unit in turn triggers the camera positioned at different places of the building, on the roof, wall, and rear side the building and the cameras starts recording. The video feed is sent to the control unit and from there it is transmitted to the cell phone of the owner through the Wi-Fi router in the house. The owner can check the video feed and alerts police if the person seems to be a burglar.
“If the person is not a burglar, he opens the gate, walks inside, and stands in front of the door which is fitted with a camera and a sensor. Again, the sensor activated the camera and it captures the person’s face and sends it to the control unit as well as owner’s cell phone. The picture is analyzed and compared with the pictures already stored in the database in the control unit by the way of computer algorithm. If the person’s picture matches, the door opens automatically. The owner should only register his picture, that of his spouse, and those close to him in the database.
“If the person’s picture doesn’t match, the owner, who can be anywhere in the world, can operate our apps and opens the door remotely if the person standing outside his door is his friend or relative. If the visitor is a perky salesman, the owner can announce he is busy to the apps and it will transmit the message to the salesman through the speaker in the door. If the visitor is a delivery man, the owner can announce to leave the parcel at the door.
Ryan asked, “How does the lock recognize the human face?”
“By blink test, the blinking of eyes.”
Ryan continued, “Suppose a burglar takes the house owner’s picture from his social network page, creates a number of pictures, makes the eyes closed in some of the pictures, runs the pictures continuously in a tablet, or hand held device in front of the camera in the lock, it will appear as though the picture is blinking, then, will the door open and let the burglar inside?”
Diana explained, “No, the pixel created by the video image is different from the pixel created by the real image. So the lock will reject outright the photographs or blinking video image. Don’t forget, a message is already sent to the owner through the surveillance camera once he opens the gate. The owner can contact the police immediately.”
The old man George continued, “Theo said that Nancy’s and his pictures were stored in the database of every lock fitted on the door and only they two could enter the room. But the study room’s door didn’t let him inside.” He started to cry. “Nancy was definitely inside the room. She was not answering her cell phone. Something bad had happened to her. I wanted to break in and save her.”
“I asked him. “Is there something to bypass face recognition in case of emergencies?” Theo said, “Yeah, we can type the password. But it didn’t work. Also I have the physical key as the third option.” Theo showed me a small key. “But that didn’t work either. I suspected that someone might have changed the entire set of locks.”
Diana intercepted again. “Mrs. Nancy only had the admin rights. She had the power to add or delete the picture or change the password. She had done so, no doubt about that. Nancy’s husband called us in the morning and explained the situation. I came here, since I do not have the admin rights, I can only physically break the lock. I did so with the tools I brought with me.”
The old man said, “We entered the room only to find Nancy dead.”
“But she was tied to a chair.”
“Yeah, I found that strange. I didn’t know why she did it like that.”
“Do you know anything about that samurai doll?
”
“The doll that killed her? No, I didn’t know anything about that. But I knew she had been in Japan for two years. She loved dolls and purchased a lot. She liked children too. Maybe they planned to have a baby soon.”
"How do you know?"
"Well, we weren’t that close. But we were friends in social net work sites. I learned a lot about her from there. Before marriage, she was a sales manager in her dad's wine company; they produced whiskey called the vampire. After marriage, she fully involved herself with charities and social activities. She loved dolls, children, flowers, music and books.”
"Did she mention in her social net work sites that she was upset about anything?"
"No, her attitude was always positive."
"Did she have a happy married life?"
"Sorry, she never mentioned it. The only thing is I didn't see Theo around here much. Maybe he was busy with his work."
The beautiful woman introduced herself as Judy Price. “I’m a fund raiser for Nancy’s non-profit social organizations. Recently, I collected funds for the Ebola victims. When Theo called in the morning to say that Nancy locked herself inside a room and was not answering, the first thing that came to my mind was the web page she was browsing yesterday in her office. She had planned her suicide already.”
“What web page?”
“I went to her office yesterday to help her with the paperwork. I had to type a letter in her computer and Nancy left it to me without closing the browser. I had the chance to see the web page before I opened the word processor. She was reading an article about suicide, what drove people to kill themselves. I didn’t take it seriously at that time. But now, I know.”
“Why did she commit suicide? Did you know any reason?”
“No, I have no idea.”
Ryan walked out of the foyer and stood on the porch. A media person who crouched beside the gate was aiming his camera to take a picture of the murdered woman’s luxury home. The neighborhood was serene and Ryan watched the distant golf course. He knew Grayhawk was one of the elite communities of North Scottsdale.
Twenty minutes later, after assisting the pathologist and the forensic team, Ryan came back to the living room. It was more crowded now and Theo was not there. Ryan moved around and saw shoe prints on the staircase. Ryan climbed on the steps, remembering the shoe print he noticed in the study room where Nancy was killed. A fat, old woman who looked like old female version of Theo stood guard at the door of an upstairs room.
“Please leave him alone, he is not yet ready.”
Theo spoke from inside the room. “Let them in, Mom. The initial shock is over. I’m ready to face anyone. I’m composed now.”
Ryan gently pushed the woman and she hastily moved aside.
Theo motioned Ryan to sit in a chair opposite him. His eyes and his nose tip looked reddish. “Actually, I wanted to get over it sooner. We can’t bring back the dead. It’s over.” He glanced at the framed picture on the wall of Nancy sitting on a pony in a cowgirl dress. “I met Nancy at a party. Since we were in the same business, I took a liking to her. We started dating and one day I proposed. She accepted and we got married. The only mistake I made was in assuming that Nancy was a business woman, she was not. She didn’t come to the office, instead she participated in fundraising events. She started various social organizations. In the meantime, Nancy’s dad merged his liquor company with mine. He said he was getting old and didn’t have the energy to look after his business. I had not anticipated this and I had already expanded my business in Pacific Asia. My workload had doubled. Nancy didn’t care. I didn’t hate Nancy for that. In fact, I began to see the other side of Nancy, a soft caring woman who wanted to help humanity. I started to love her more for her ideals.
“Nancy had other ideas too. She wanted to have kids, one, two, three and four of them. I was shocked. I said I was not ready for children. “Let’s have kids after five years. I will have become more stabilized by then and will be having better control over family and business. ” She was very upset. I started to worry. Finally she won. But she didn’t conceive. She wanted to consult the doctor, but I hated it. She literally dragged me to the hospital. The doctor checked both of us and said we were fine and compatible to have a baby. The only problem being we were so tense. We needed to relax. The doc suggested, “Go on a second honeymoon. This time, it should a month or two month longer. Don’t fret about anything, free your mind about the routine things you do, switch off your cell phone, take a jolly ride around the picturesque places, enjoy life, do simple things, love each other whole heartedly, and make love as if the world is going to end tomorrow.”
“Nancy started to nag me. I said no. She was asking too much. One month away from the office would be murder. I could lose my business. We fought. We didn’t speak for three or four days. Three times a week I stayed at my office to communicate with my staff in Pacific Asia. Yesterday, I was at the office the entire night. I returned in the morning. Once I knew, Nancy had changed the lock in the study room, I knew something was amiss. We broke the lock and found Nancy dead inside, she had committed suicide.”
Ryan asked, “How did you come to that conclusion?”
Theo stared at him with his red eyes bulging in surprise.
“How could anyone can go inside, kill her, and come out? The lock recognized Nancy only. It wouldn’t let others in.”
Nancy’s tablet also confirmed Theo’s statement. The forensic people had dusted the tablet found near Nancy on the table for fingerprints. She had left a message which was saved in her message box.
Sorry, Mom, Dad. My life has become a great mess. I’m so depressed. I’m going away. Please don’t blame anyone for my death.
-Nancy French.