Nonconsecutive. Seemingly random.
“Yeah. But...” Darnell read from a list that Landon had made. “I’ve got two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three, and twenty-nine, I think? Landon’s writing sucks. What the hell do they mean?”
“Those were the numbersinthe boxes?” Vaughn asked.
“Yep. One number in each box—I’m guessing, as most were on the floor—and one number engraved on the top. Not the same number, though. Box nineteen had number three inside. Box seven, number two. Can only guess at the others. I’m thinking that the guy in the middle room lost the game or whatever and went ape shit. Smashed everything.”
Seemed like a reasonable assumption.
His thoughts still on the numbers, Darnell attacked his keyboard.
Vaughn, on the other hand, was thinking about the gas. Post 9/11, whenever gas was used in some sort of crime, the first thing that came to mind was a terrorist attack. A biological weapon.
Anthrax, smallpox, the bubonic plague.
But nothing about the incident at the farm struck Vaughn as an act of terror.
Secluded, rural New Jersey. Not an airport, shopping mall, or sporting event. Nothing highly populated.
Delaney had said that the barn was owned by a defunct LLC. Darnell had added generating a more comprehensive ownership report to Delaney’s growing list of things to do, which could have easily been renamed “Things Darnell Didn’t Want To Do,” but Vaughn doubted that this would lead anywhere.
Terrorists got off on media coverage. The media spread fear as efficiently as any airborne pathogen.
Besides, the victims had likely come to the barn of their own accord—the ME hadn’t noted any defensive wounds other than minor damage to the fingers and nails of some of the victims.
Wounds that he’d hinted were conceivably, feasibly, probably, perhaps a result of them desperately trying to get out when the gas started flowing.
The victims were all men, all between twenty and fifty, if Vaughn had to guess.
These weren’t high school kids. This wasn’t a ‘let’s find a place where we can get high and drink without our parents finding out’ thing.
Maybe itwasa game show.
But hydrogen sulfide gas? What the hell even was it, besides something that smelled like someone shit their pants?
Now it was Vaughn’s turn to address his computer. He typed “Hydrogen sulfide gas, H2S” into the search bar.
Primary industrial uses included petroleum refinement, chemical manufacturing, and various lab and research facility applications. It naturally occurred in wastewater plants. No central registry, but to use H2S, a corporation required permits from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Surprise, surprise—no mention ofSquid Game.
Vaughn compiled a list of local places that had or might have access to H2S tanks: River Road Wastewater Treatment Plant, Princeton’s Chemical and Biological Engineering Department (CBE), and some random ass company that offers gas solutions, whatever the hell that meant.
“Prime numbers.”
Vaughn wasn’t sure he’d heard Darnell correctly.
“What?”
“Prime numbers. All of the numbers in the barn are prime numbers.”
“What?” Vaughn said again.
“Prime numbers,” Darnell repeated a third time, his eyes darting to his monitor. “A number that can only be divided by one and itself.”
“I know what a prime number is.”Sorta. “What does it mean?”
Darnell shrugged.
Sometimes it was hard to believe that he was the senior detective, the lead.
