FRESHMAN MURDERS
A RESIDUE CLASS MYSTERY
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PUBLISHED BY:
Gerald M. Weinberg on Smashwords
Freshman Murders
Copyright © 2010 by Gerald M. Weinberg
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Chapter 2. He could use your help.
Chapter 3. Rosy's Residue Class
Chapter 4. Where the bodies go
Chapter 5. Let's have a tour first.
Chapter 7. Secret key encryption
Chapter 9. More anthropological than mathematical
Chapter 10. The mystical Möbius symbol
Chapter 13. Does she really eat grasshoppers?
Chapter 14. Washed by the Word
Chapter 15. Stop rationalizing!
Chapter 16. How can you sit there playing dominos?
Chapter 17. It's much faster with a tiny clue.
Chapter 18. One-tenth of a septensexagintillion
Chapter 19. Crazy Harry was a mad bomber.
Chapter 21. It uses fuzzy logic
Chapter 22. But you didn't? Why not?
Chapter 23. She wouldn't kill a mosquito.
Chapter 24. The hidden universe inside your head
Chapter 25. There's erased and then there's really erased.
Chapter 27. The second interview
Chapter 28. Falling further behind
Chapter 29. Does C0421X mean anything to you?
Chapter 30. Everything is connected to everything else.
Chapter 31. It's just a bunch of numbers.
Chapter 32. How about mathematics disorder?
Chapter 33. Sunk deeper than the Titanic
Chapter 34. The VAX operating system
Chapter 35. Psychobabble for suicide.
Chapter 36. A misuse of our profession.
Chapter 37. Maybe I need a Good One.
Chapter 38. The Electronic Frontier Foundation
Chapter 40. It's for your own good.
Chapter 41. Time to attend to your faculty duties
Chapter 42. The problem is the data.
Chapter 44. Better than Nancy Drew
Chapter 45. Not that dog thing again.
Chapter 46. That's how we write big numbers.
Chapter 47. Try to picture the janitorial process.
Chapter 49. Don't forget your crayons.
Chapter 50. You can drink some of it, too.
Chapter 52. What took you so long?
Chapter 53. I know where they went.
Chapter 54. Five million dollars.
Chapter 55. Are we making any progress?
Chapter 56. Mahna Mahna, Do doo be-do-do
Chapter 57. It's not the list.
Chapter 58. Archimedes. Bernoulli.Cantor.Dodgson.
Chapter 60. They're not in the lodge?
Chapter 61. That was just a demonstration.
Chapter 62. I think this is a note.
Chapter 63. Upper Ohweetakah Dam.
Chapter 64. Good thinking, Doris
Chapter 65. He doesn't know topology.
Chapter 66. The English is a different story.
Chapter 67. I think I broke my leg.
Chapter 68. My God. What a monster.
Chapter 69. You, little girl, are one nasty kitten.
Chapter 70. I'm going to deliver them personally.
Chapter 71. I'll make you a rich man.
Chapter 72. Of course I'll talk to the Commander-in-Chief.
Chapter 73. We might split it fifty-fifty.
Chapter 74. The explosives are becoming unstable.
Chapter 75. I have a lot to lose.
Chapter 76. Have you given up?
Chapter 77. The land of OJ and Martha Stewart
Chapter 78. There's still time to stop it.
Chapter 79. Stupid is a two-edged sword.
Chapter 80. One of those TV vans is broadcasting!
Chapter 81. It's your turn not to peek.
Even though the giant sycamores were naked now, Josh loved these lush woods as much as he despised the barren city. Last night's storm had cost the silver maples half their dried leaves. Still, their irregular ranks blocked the sunrise wherever the thick trunks of white oaks failed to do the job. Overhead, now, he could see the lightening sky, but in summer, these trees had shaded out all the small plants underneath, creating a flat carpet of red and gold leaves.
In his youth, Josh's Marfan syndrome had damaged his connective tissue, producing the tall, gangling body and fragile joints that kept him away from all athletics. Then, one hip failed utterly, and had to be replaced. Seven years later, the other hip fell to the same fate. Now, the doctors insisted he practice regular, but moderate, exercise, to care for his two artificial hips.
In recent years, the syndrome became quiescent. He was in better condition than ever before. He might even have enjoyed this drenched jog, but at forty-nine, a morning romp in the rain on two artificial hips was not his idea of sylvan recreation. For Heathcliff, though, these matutinal expeditions rivaled every sport save barking at escaping squirrels.
Josh plugged on–ten steps running, ten walking, feet cold and muddy, hips aching, stooping every so often to pick up a morsel of trash and place in it a black plastic bag. He actually looked forward to spending the afternoon in a dry, heated office, even if he despised working on some bit of academic administrivia, like grades. But he would actually be working on a case both important and fascinating. Later that afternoon, he would drive to the airport to meet the Presidential helicopter waiting to take him to Camp David for a report on the SNG case. No doubt Carmela would once again try to persuade him to change his clothes before meeting the President.
"Don't you want to change?" he remembered her saying as he prepared for this previous presidential trip.
"Why? I'm comfortable." Of course, now he would have to change just because he was wet, but on that occasion it was dry autumn.
"A jacket at least," she pleaded.
"I certainly don't need a jacket. It will be even warmer in D.C." The President had been at the White House when they kicked off the SNG project.
"But it's the President?" she had argued. "You can't let him see you without a jacket."
He had shrugged without understanding. "So? I've met lots of presidents without wearing a jacket. What's different about this one?"
He laughed at himself and turned his mind from the recent past to the near future. Ideally, I would arrive at Camp David in wet running clothes and find the President waiting to congratulate me for saving the nation. Why not? Because it's not going to happen until I solve this impossible SNG case.
If I hadn't allowed my ego to take precedence over my logic.
He spotted a Coors can and added it to his collection. When all else failed, collecting garbage kept his ego in check. Won't the president be impressed by today's can collection of nine different brands? Perhaps he'd prefer to see a collection of nine different passwords, cracking open SNG's secrets.
Fantasizing about introducing his friend, the President, to his garbage collection, helped shorten the two woodsy miles from campus to home. But the fantasy distracted too well. While imagining a get-together in Laurel Lodge conference room, he caught his toe on an exposed root. His ankle gave way, twisting with electric pain. He grabbed a tree for support, but wound up skinning his palm. Drawing blood.
His ankle throbbed and his hand stung, excuse enough to take the shortcut home. But once he had committed to a task, Joshua Rosemont never permitted himself excuses–not even for stabbing pain every time he planted his foot. Jogging back into a gimpy rhythm, he coaxed his brain into overriding the pain by performing the mathematics of decoding the Solarian files.
He knew that cracking the encryption would turn the Solarian Natural Gas case around. He also knew that if he couldn't do it, nobody else in the world could.
At least that's what the President thought.
Billions are at stake, billions that were about to be siphoned into terrorist coffers. If they're lost, the press would pulverize the president's re-election campaign, but that isn't my problem. All the motivation I need is the math itself, the problem only he was supposed to be able to solve. In my world, all problems must be solved. Damned ego again.
If it was true, was it arrogance? His record had given the President plenty of spectacular reasons for believing Josh could solve any problem. Saving the hostages by cracking the Cincinnati bank vault. Pinpointing the source of the Guelph virus-z epidemic. Breaking the trigger codes for the Allah's Fist dirty bomb. Yes, those and many others.
Each solution added to his reputation, so now he had trapped himself. Even though he had retired, hoping for a quiet life of mathematical contemplation, his name always came up when something terrible happened–like billions in fraudulent gains. And all those fraudulent gains would soon pass into the hands of some nasty people if he couldn't find them and steal them back.
Josh stumbled agonizingly on, lost in his mind. Unexpectedly, Heathcliff stopped running, snuffing instead through the pile of damp leaves. At first, Josh didn't notice. Too involved reexamining his code-cracking procedure, he ran a good fifty yards farther along before he realized his German Shepherd companion was no longer at his side.
By the time Josh had turned around and threaded his way back through the sucking mud, Heathcliff's nose was trembling over a dead rabbit crucified on a plank with four-inch spikes.
Blood stains pronounced evidence that the bunny had been alive when the nails were driven through its four limbs, its belly, and, perhaps in a final obscene mercy, through each eye.
"Leave it," Josh commanded. Heathcliff backed off, eyes on the rabbit.
The sight was revolting, but Josh forced himself to notice that the skewered rabbit was outlined by a sequence of carefully painted digits on the bloody plank:
His mathematician's eye instantly recognized the numbers, but before he could puzzle over this oddity, he was distracted by the sound of Heathcliff burrowing in the leaves.
A blaze of scarlet caught his eye–a red boot trimmed with brown fur. At first, he imagined it was merely a boot, lost by some coed making out in the woods behind the campus. Instinctively, his mind tried to connect the two found objects. Was the sadist female? Had she left the area barefoot?
He caught himself speculating, so he stopped. Repelled by the mutilated rabbit, he urged Heathcliff to come away. The dog ignored him and continued pawing at the cold leaves.
The boot was not loose.
The boot was attached to a black-clad leg.
"Sit!" Josh commanded. Heathcliff obeyed.
Josh studied the position of the leg and the size of the leaf pile, then estimated where the head would be if indeed an entire human body lay underneath. Because of his artificial hips, he knew better than to kneel to test his theory. Bracing himself on the nearest tree, he squatted, painfully. Ever so carefully, he picked away slick wet leaves, one by one, just enough to determine if it really was a body underneath, with minimum disturbance to the scene.
His thick glasses fogged from the breath of his own exertion. He wiped them with his gloved finger and began to recognize the shape, then the color, then the size of a human face. Exactly where he had calculated.
He lifted away one more large red-rimmed leaf for confirmation. Suddenly, the face was Jenny.
His legs turned to jelly and failed him. He slumped to the ground, afraid to open his eyes and look more closely at his long-dead daughter.
Heathcliff whined, jolting open Josh's lying eyes. Yes, it was a woman. A girl, really, like Jenny. The same age–the age Jenny would perpetually be.
But not, of course, Jenny.
That wasn't logical.
He studied the face more closely now, wondering why he had thought it was Jenny. It was impossible, of course. Jenny was dead. Ten years dead. Aside from the hair, he now saw only a superficial resemblance to the face he loved so well.
She looked alive. No, she looked dead. He couldn't tell how she looked.
He brushed away a few more leaves, the better to see her face. Some green ones among the red and gold stuck to her forehead. Not fallen leaves. A wreath. Like the crown Jenny had worn–in her coffin.
He snapped out of his reverie, recovering his logic, assessing what actions he needed to take. Not to revive her–she was certainly dead. Or was she? The pale bluish face bespoke death, but that was no scientific proof.
With an effort of will, he swept away the last fog of his emotional reaction. He didn't want to disturb a possible crime scene any further, but he was too meticulous to accept an incomplete proof. If she was alive, even barely, he had to act fast to save her.
He wiped his glasses as dry as he could with the hem of his soggy t-shirt. To test his hypothesis, he held them under her nose.
No fogging. Thus no breathing.
No breathing. Thus no life.
Hypothesis confirmed.
He held the glasses for a full two minutes, in case for some reason she might be holding her breath, but, no, she was certainly dead.
He was a code cracker, not a homicide detective, but during his problem-solving career, he'd been at least peripherally involved in dozens of murder cases. He knew enough not to touch anything else. Even so, a message from deep in his gut urged him to brush away the leaves so he could see her hands. See if she held the wildflowers that had gone with Jenny to her grave.
No, it wasn't logical. He had already seen it wasn't Jenny. His better sense took over. Or was it his fear? Fear of becoming involved, again, with a problem he was not equipped to solve.
He decided there was no need to disturb this scene–almost certainly a crime scene–any more than it had already been disturbed by small animals. By Heathcliff. By his own clumsy bungling. He would see her hands later, when he brought back the police.
He rose with great difficulty, leaning against the tree, not bothering to brush the leaves off his wet sweatpants. Though it was unlikely anyone else would come through these woods in the rain, he wanted to stay and protect the body. But someone had to fetch the police. No doubt, he thought, Carmela would use this occasion to prove to her husband how useful a cell phone could be. He would resist. His well-trained dog was far more reliable than any clumsy technology.
"Down," he told Heathcliff.
Heathcliff lay down, his long nose pointing toward the body. Without question, he was a smart dog, with exactly the right training and instincts. He was perfectly capable of guarding the body.
But Josh wanted to stay.
He untied his nylon jacket from around his waist and fetched the plastic bag with pen and note cards he always carried to record his inspirations. He penned a note to his wife, put it in the plastic bag, and wedged it into Heathcliff's collar.
"Go," he ordered. "Go home to Carmela."
Heathcliff hesitated only a moment, then took off running. Josh moved ten yards away from the body, put on his nylon jacket, and sat down with his back against an evergreen. The green needles above him somewhat diminished the light rain, but he was far from comfortable.
He massaged his painful ankle, then rotated his arms to keep from growing stiff while he tried to figure out how the body came to be here.
But his mind kept slipping back to Jenny's unsolved death. His greatest failure. The last thing he wanted to think about.
Chapter 2. He could use your help.
The police arrived a full half-hour later, led by Heathcliff towing Carmela, who was toting a large red canvas bag. Her black, braided hair glistening wet as she ran to him, her soaked yellow nylon jacket clinging to her tiny, voluptuous body. He smiled, knowing that the sight of her was the only thing in the world that could distract him from a math problem–or the problem of a corpse in the woods.
"You're going to get seriously ill," she said, more worried than accusing. "I was about to send someone out looking for you when Heathcliff arrived." She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled his face way down to her level for a kiss.
After a long moment, she turned away and looked past him. "Where did Heath go?" Her smile disappeared.
"I suppose he's guarding the corpse," he gasped, pulling his lips back to his. He couldn't bring himself to say "dead girl." "He knows better than to touch it."
"Corpse?" She stiffened. "My God, there really is a corpse?"
He heard a commotion and turned to see Heathcliff growling at two uniformed policemen. "Heath found it."
"Not another dead deer! He'll be dragging in the rotten parts for weeks, just like the last one."
"Not a deer. A person." He still couldn't bring himself to say "girl."
He called out to Heathcliff. "Okay, Heath. Come!" The dog left the body and trotted swiftly to his master, coming to a perfect sit directly in front of him.
Carmela dug into the canvas bag and pulled out a crumpled down jacket. "Here, put this on. You'll freeze out here, …" She looked at his muddy pants. "… but you'll have to remove those filthy things before you'll be allowed inside the house."
They stopped talking and watched a plainclothes detective examining the body, guarded by the two uniforms. After a few frigid minutes, Lieutenant Jameel Brown left his assistants and strode over to ask about finding the body.
Josh had worked with Brown before, so telling the story of how he had found the body added only five more minutes to his broken schedule. But telling it a second time, with questions, took ten more–until he told Brown he was freezing and would answer any more questions at home.
Josh gathered up his second trash bag and limped back home on his now-stiffened and swollen ankle, consuming another fifteen minutes even though Carmela found him a walking stick and Heathcliff herded them along. Once they emerged from the woods in their back yard, Carmela directed him to the back door where she set up the kitchen step-stool so he could sit and undress. By now, he thought, he was at least an hour behind schedule.
His schedule, of course, meant nothing to Carmela, who was now patiently drying Heathcliff and telling him what a good dog he was. Josh knew he had to wait patiently, though patience was not his best quality. He knew he could not leave without satisfying his wife's unquenchable curiosity, even if he hadn't promised the lieutenant he would stay. If he was to be spared her fiery temper, he had to offer at least the gist of the story.
"If Heathcliff and I hadn't been picking up trash," Josh said, sitting down, "the body might have been buried in snow until April." There was no way he was going to tell her about seeing a momentary resemblance to Jenny–or his irrational outburst of uncontrolled emotion.
"Trash?" Carmela bent her head to the side the way Heathcliff did when he heard La Boheme. She was already out of her wet coat. He could see she was dressed for class in one of her lady anthropologist outfits–long, full black skirt, multicolored long-sleeved Bolivian peasant shirt, hand-woven sandals from somewhere in Africa, about twenty bracelets encircling each forearm, and a bamboo-beaded voodoo necklace with a large yellowed fang hanging down into her cleavage. "Why were you picking up trash?"
He tried to change the subject. "Your feet will freeze in those sandals."
She waved him off. "I'll put on boots again before I leave, and change at my office. Wasn't there a breakfast meeting of the budget committee?"
"Precisely." Josh offered her his left leg. "Here, see if you can untie these wet laces? And hand me the towel. I'll dry Heath."
Keeping her skirt well away from his mucky shoes, she set to work on the double knot, not missing a syllable of her questioning. "What precisely does precisely mean?"
"After the previous budget meeting, I created a new principle." He placed his hand gently on hers. "Don't pull on the long lace, you'll only tighten the knot."
"I can do laces," she said, continuing to tug, but holding back her skirt with one hand. "Tell me about your new principle."
"You weren't so fastidious when you were drying Heathcliff."
"That's because he's neater than you. Now what did you mean by precisely?"
"I mean that from now on, I'm going to measure the value of my committee service against an activity with a known value to the campus. And stop pulling on the lace."
Ignoring his instructions, she yanked the long lace and the knot came loose. "I can't think of any campus activity that has known value. Other than teaching."
"Sure you can. Try gathering the litter in our beautiful woods. I calculated what it would cost to hire someone to do the job at minimum wage. Since the committee's value doesn't measure up, I pick up trash." He proudly kicked his black plastic bag, rattling the aluminum cans inside, grateful that this irrelevant argument was distracting Carmela from talking more about the body. "I left a full bag to pick up later. Would have had both full if we hadn't been interrupted."
"But the budget committee is the most powerful, important committee on the faculty. Wait, let me get another towel." Heathcliff followed her into the kitchen, hoping for a treat. She paused in the doorway. "You think collecting garbage is more valuable?"
He hollered in through the kitchen door after her. "Precisely. I have more than an entire bag of aluminum cans. Once I separate them, their value can be added to the minimum wage. Since all the committee ever does is rubber-stamp the administration's budget, my time there isn't worth even the two or three bucks I can get from recycling the cans."
She came back, luring Heathcliff with a stick of desiccated bull penis. After dispensing the treat, she wrapped a faded orange towel around Josh's size-fifteen shoe. "That many? I knew the students used the woods for drinking, but this time of year?"
"Well, somebody was out there doing more than drinking." Reminded of Jenny again, he steered away from the subject of drinking. "You saw how pissed Brown was until I assured him I hadn't messed up his crime scene any more than necessary."
"Brown would have been pissed at you no matter what you did. When I was on the force, I was always pissed when some civilian found a body." Carmela finally yanked off his cross-country shoe and began working on the other one. "How's the lieutenant now?"
"Pissed. … But not at me. He likes me. At the murderer."
"So he thinks it was murder?" She shuddered involuntarily, causing her matched voodoo earrings to jangle. "Right out there between the campus and our house?"
"If you want, we can start locking our doors." He knew retired police officers always locked doors, even if they were now sophisticated anthropologists. He also knew that their husbands, who had never seen the seamy side of the street, always kidded them about it so they wouldn't get too serious. "But we have Heathcliff to guard us."
Hearing his name, the dog's ears perked up. Carmela ignored her husband's teasing. "How was she killed?"
"Brown said there was no obvious cause. There wasn't a mark on her. No blood. No sign of violence at all."
"So why does he think it was murder?" She worried the wet knot back and forth.
"I'll let you guess. Next to the body, nailed to a board, was a mutilated rabbit." He had to tell her now, since it could soon be public knowledge. Then she'd want to know why he hadn't described the body. "This young woman–possibly a student–was posed on the ground with her arms crossed on her chest, a fresh wreath around her head, holding a little bouquet of dried flowers in her hand."
Josh wasn't sure if Carmela knew the significance of that pose–Jenny's funeral pose. If she did, she knew enough not to comment, for which he was grateful. "Doesn't sound like suicide, but first impressions of crime scenes can be misleading. Maybe she froze to death while doing some mystical pagan rituals."
"Something you teach in class? Sacrificing animals?"
"Nothing I teach, you can be sure of that. I try not to teach anything dangerous. Certainly never animal sacrifice. But you know kids."
No, he thought. I don't know kids at all. I didn't even know my own daughter.
She poked him in the ribs, breaking his reverie. "Here, put your shoes on the mat."
"Shoes, yes, that's it." He took his shoes.
"That's what?"
"That's how Brown knew it was murder." The shoes hung from his fingers while he was lost in thought. As he stepped into the kitchen, he automatically ducked his head. Even in his bare feet, he was too tall for most doors. Ducking on entry had been an automatic reflex since high-school.
"How did he know?"
"The soles of the boots were clean. She didn't walk into the woods."
"Maybe they were wiped clean as part of the ceremony." She held out her hand. "Here. I'll wipe yours. And hand me that towel, so I can wipe off the rest of the mud off of you. It would have helped if you wiped your boots on the mat first, but I know that never happens."
"Sure it happens."
"What?"
"Murder. But you're right–Brown says not very often. This is the first case in the campus area since about three years ago."
"I remember that one. Strangled with the yellow cheerleader scarf. You hacked the killer's computer for Brown, if I recall correctly."
"It was a trivial problem. Anyone could have done it."
She shook her head, tossing her braid from side to side. "I certainly couldn't have. Nor Brown. And not anyone could have known which computer to hack. Did he ask you to help him this time?"
"Yes." Josh was trying to pull one arm out of his thermal parka.
"Good. I'll help you."
"I can do it." Josh's long arm snapped out of the sleeve, flicking water on Carmela.
She checked her shirt for spots. "You could use my help."
He pulled off the other sleeve, then tossed the parka onto the one empty hook. "Why? It's already off."
"Not your parka. Pay attention," she said, not sounding very hopeful she could pull him out of whatever mysterious place his mind had wandered. "On the case."
"What do you know about encryption that would be helpful?" he asked, glancing at his watch. I'm going to be rather late.
"Not the SNG case, darling. The murder case. I've worked dozens of murders in my day. I can help."
"That was a long time ago. You're not a cop now, darling. You're an anthropologist."
"It could be a ritual murder. I heard Brown say something about cryptic writing on her chest."
"We don't know it's a murder. There's such a mess of clues, it could be anything."
"So I can help you?"
"How can you help me? I'm not working on the case."
"But you said Brown asked you."
"That's correct. He asked me. I refused."
"Oh, no. Don't refuse. I could probably publish a paper or two based on this case. I could use a few more publications before my contract comes up."
"Isn't that rather callous? You're beginning to sound like a real academic." Then he saw she was grinning at him. He believed he had a good sense of humor, but she always seemed able to trap him with her jokes.
She stopped grinning and turned serious. "Why aren't you helping? You've helped before on any number of interesting cases. You're smarter than the locals, and even if you weren't, your government experience puts you way ahead of them."
I know I should be embarrassed by her adoring compliments, but, unfortunately, they're true. The curse of intelligence. "That's just it, sweetheart. When I was with NSA, I was a government employee. It was my job to help any time they asked. Now, I don't like to solve murders, so I don't solve murders. Not when I can avoid it. Murders aren't interesting."
"Not interesting? Maybe you're not so smart. Murders are the most fascinating of all crimes."
He reached out and caressed her shoulder, loving, not patronizing. "No, murder is merely a crime of weakness–weak mind, weak-self-esteem–people who can't think of more creative ways to solve their problems. Or earn the attention they crave. Stupid people do murders. Smart people find other ways to right the wrongs they perceive in their lives. Like computer crimes and swindles. Like SNG. Those are the crimes that interest me."
She stood with her knuckles on her hips. "Thanks for the lecture, Doctor Rosemont. What's it hiding?"
"Sorry," he said. He meant sorry for revealing too much of his thought process. He started to head for the shower to avoid answering, stripping as he went. "It's a bad habit. Anyway, I haven't got time to solve murder mysteries. From now until the trial, all my spare time has to be dedicated to SNG. I'm having enough trouble finding time to exercise."
She followed him, gathering all his wet clothes. "Now who's being callous? Aren't you concerned about that poor girl?"
"Of course I'm concerned," he said. Too concerned. "But she's only one person, and she's already dead. Solving the SNG case–keeping all that money out of hostile hands–could prevent the death of millions. Which choice is logical?"
"For me, the one closer to home. Our logics are different."
"True, which is one of the reasons we make such a good team. Besides, I think the police can handle it quite nicely without my help. How complicated can it be?"
"Darn. Well, if we're a team, I wish you'd thought of me. You know ritual and crime are my specialties."
"Of course I know. That's why I told Brown he could use your help."
Before she could thank him appropriately, Heathcliff began barking and ran to the back door. "That's probably Brown now," Josh said. "Why don't you talk to him while I'm getting clean and changing clothes. Greta's going to kill me for being late."
Chapter 3. Rosy's Residue Class
After he parked his restored black London taxi, Josh paused in the parking lot to examine his off-campus headquarters. He noticed that the exterior of the building was unchanged by the transformation still in progress inside. The building still looked like a never-used relic of the internet bubble, an unadorned warehouse built on a weedy, triangular chunk of real estate bounded on its shortest leg by the interstate, on the next by the river, and on its hypotenuse by the railroad tracks. Yes, exactly like what it had been when we moved in at the start of the SNG project a few months ago That's good, because there's no better security than invisibility.
He noticed that despite his lateness, Greta's government car was nowhere in sight. When he'd crossed the graveled lot and walked through the steel door, he decided the interior, too, looked exactly like what it was–an advanced computing facility where not a penny had been wasted on anything cosmetic. No, there's nothing in here that doesn't contribute directly to extracting the maximum possible computing speed from a thousand and twenty-four linked processors.
As his footsteps echoed from the bare concrete floor through the vast emptiness overhead, Josh was satisfied. The image of the dead body had been banished from his mind by the thought that at long last, he had created a safe home for his team.
Helen, Sonia, and Rajesh were huddled around a console, too busy with some problem to greet his arrival. Helen was tall and heavy, dressed in baggy green pants and sweatshirt and a black Mao cap that matched her clipped black hair.
Sonia's hair was equally black, but hung all the way down to her waist. She was a head and a half shorter than Helen, and wore a red plaid skirt and white blouse and matching long socks. Had he noticed her Korean schoolgirl outfit, Josh might have thought it incongruous with her graduate student status. He always said, "What they wear on the outside is irrelevant. What counts is what's in their heads."
Rajesh was even shorter than Sonia, and even more slightly built, but his clothing did make him stand out among the team. Although he wore greasy jeans and t-shirts when working in the pits at the local sprint car dirt track, here in the laboratory, he changed into his immaculate traditional Indian kurta and pajamas If asked, he explained that this outfit was his own version of a lab coat—white because it would proclaim the tiniest speck of dirt. To Rajesh, their hardware and internet guru, dirt was forbidden anywhere near his beloved racks of circuitry.
Though Josh was confident the trio would welcome his contribution, he knew better than to disturb them. He sat on a bench and watched from a distance, soaking in the pleasure. He reflected how this Utopian life path had opened for him, seven years earlier, the moment he slit open a wrinkled envelope half-covered with red, green, and orange stamps.
The envelope contained a single sheet of yellow paper on which was carefully written a mathematical proof of an important theorem in coding theory. A smaller scrap of sticky blue paper held an address in Hong Kong, scrawled in English. Under the address were the English words, "Want to learn with you. Helen."
The proof was astonishing.
He wrote back immediately, on the same note. One word: "Yes."
He took the letter to his office at the National Security Agency where he had a colleague write the word in Mandarin. He used the maximum postage, but heard nothing for more than a year. Every day, he wondered what was wrong. Every few weeks, he sent a new note.
Late one steamy day in August, he drove up to his house in Kensington, Maryland and found Helen. She sat cross-legged on his front porch and wore every piece of clothing she owned. She spoke no more than fifty words of English.
He brought her inside the air-conditioned house and called his Chinese translator. Together, they pieced together her story. Helen Wong, awkwardly tall, chunky, and plain to the extreme, had been born in a tiny rural village in China. She had been a quiet child, so quiet that the family assumed she was dim-witted. When she was eight or ten–Helen was never sure of her age–her parents sent her away to become a cleaner at Beijing University, hoping to earn government permission to try again to have a boy child.
She was assigned to clean the math department's offices, at night so as not to disturb the professors. When she was twelve, by her reckoning, Professor Yeng caught her studying the journals she was supposed to be dusting. Yeng quickly recognized her unique talent and coached her for two years–until she surpassed his ability to keep up with the development of her amazing mind. Through a cousin in Hong Kong, he had sent the sample of her work to Josh, the one person in the world who might be able to match her brilliance.
When they received Josh's response, Yeng arranged to move Helen into Hong Kong where another of Yeng's distant cousins provided housing. For almost a year, she worked days cleaning poultry and nights scrubbing toilets until she saved enough to book a cheap tour to the United States.
She slipped away from the tour in Hannibal, Missouri, where they had stopped to visit Mark Twain's boyhood home. She hitched rides to Maryland, fought off a few unwelcome advances, and wound up on Josh's porch. At the time, Josh noted that she arrived exactly fourteen months after his daughter had been sexually assaulted and taken, or been given, an overdose of heroin.
Helen's talent proved to be light years ahead of any of his mathematical associates at the Agency. He showed his department head some of the decoding theorems she had proved. He naively assumed these were all the credentials she would need for prestigious position at the Agency. But Agency wouldn't hire her. She had no degrees, which might have been circumvented, but she was Chinese, illegal, a minor, and unreliable. A national security risk simply could not be allowed to work in the National Security Agency.
Josh thought the bureaucrats were being illogical, for he considered her mathematical genius to be the only important factor in her resumé. He argued that NSA was not going to find another Helen Wong for at least a generation, and by that time, he would be dead. By that time, some enemy genius would concoct a code that only Helen Wong would have been able to crack.
Worn down by the bureaucracy, he conceded defeat. I will never convince NSA to hire my logical successor. Therefore, my only logical choice is to quit.
He called in some favors with the State Department and Department of Justice to obtain asylum for Helen, then took a faculty position at Hurlesburg, which agreed to accept her as a student with a small stipend. Now, seven years later, she had learned English, earned citizenship, and published fifteen seminal proofs in high-prestige journals. She had received dozens of job offers, but refused to leave Josh. He didn't pay much, but she didn't need money, having applied her math skills to mastering the capital of capitalism, Wall Street. Making money was her hobby. Spending it was not. She never seemed to spend any of the small fortune she'd accumulated.
She still doesn't know how to dress, Josh thought, forcing himself to notice because Carmela was still trying to teach him to be a good detective and see clothing. As he sat watching her lead the team, he read the message on her loose sweatshirt: "I'll be nice if you'll be smart." Not exactly the message he wanted to send to his visiting grantors, but he knew better than to try to influence her taste–in clothes or in people.
Helen had snubbed half-a-dozen potential colleagues until bantam, dark-skinned Rajesh had come along, escaping from a rich, domineering mother in India. In two days, he captured her undying friendship by pointing out a subtle error that even Josh had missed in one of her proofs.
Later, Rajesh won Josh's gratitude by pointing out that Josh's six-foot-nine frame would be more comfortable in a London taxi. After Josh imported the taxi, Rajesh supervised the modifications necessary to bring the classic up to modern American standards–while retaining its right-hand drive, just as he had done for his own red 1967 Austin Healy. Cars were Rajesh's third passion, after electronics and math. When he wasn't working in Josh's lab, he hung out at the sprint car track outside New Milton, building websites for the teams and helping them optimize their cars.
After Rajesh, there had been numerous applicants for Josh's team, but none met the lofty criteria until earlier this year. Sonia had won Helen's acceptance before the two had ever met, having read her undergraduate thesis from Catholic University of Korea. Now the three of them formed the team that the Department of Justice was betting could help him crack the SNG case.
The team had a secret name, Rosy's Residue Class, based on Josh's nickname and two mathematical puns. Whatever their name, Josh felt that his grantors–the lawyers from the Attorney General's office–were more than pleased with the team they had hired. Pleased, that is, if only they cracked the SNG codes in time for the trial.
As if in response to his musings, those lawyers were just now trooping through the door, led by a determined-looking Greta. Apparently she'd been on time, missed Josh, and went somewhere else with his secretary.
Chapter 4. Where the bodies go
When the Five-Town fathers built the new center of government, they spent lavishly on everything but the morgue, deciding that the old one would serve the dead. The dead don't vote. As a result, morgue visitors like Carmela and Lieutenant Brown had to leave the heat of the squat, yellow brick City-County Hall and cross the exposed parking lot to the colorless cinderblock morgue building.
The ancient building was well-heated, but Carmela shivered, knowing that her chill was psychological rather than physical. The parking lot could not be blamed.
The corridor inside was lit by a single buzzing fluorescent ceiling fixture with one of its two bulbs flickering. It was giving her a headache, but she supposed the City Fathers were right. The dead didn't mind.
Lieutenant Brown doesn't seem to mind, either. In his fifty or so years, he's probably been in the morgue hundreds of times. With his shaved head, weight lifter's body, and sparkling eyes, he looked like an ebony-skinned, brown-eyed Mr. Clean, ready to tackle the grimiest job. His gray suit was well cut, but straining a bit in the upper chest, as if pushing his badge out for her inspection.
"You have to sign the register," Brown said, steering her into a small empty office just inside the corridor. While they sat waiting for the clerk to appear, the lieutenant took the opportunity to express his doubts about her participation. "Your husband says you're the one to help us with this magic crap. I said I would talk to you, but frankly, police work–murders–is no place for a hothouse flower college professor."
She was prepared for this rather frigid welcome, knowing from experience that she always had to win the confidence and respect of male police officers. They always saw her petite size, her sex, and her attractiveness as negative evidence of competence. She would have her work cut out winning him over.
If Brown expected an argument, he was disappointed. "I agree, Lieutenant. I guess Josh didn't tell you I was on the force for thirteen years."
His eyebrows moved up a notch. "No, he said something about police work, but I just figured you'd helped him consult in another case or two." He seemed to relax halfway, but there was still a hint of doubt in his voice. "But if you're really a veteran, how come I never met you? I've been here twenty-three years myself."
"I was in New Mexico."
"You're Mexican? I wouldn't have known it from your accent–or I should say lack of accent."
She knew he was trying to be complimentary, but ignorant Easterners always pissed her off. She tried not to show it. It wouldn't help her win him over, but she could hear annoyance leaking into her voice. "Not Mexico, Brown. New Mexico. Part of the USA?"
He eyed her suspiciously. "On a beat?"
"At first. For seven years. Then detective. Until the government–the Feebs–were looking for an unknown Spanish-speaking cop, someone clean, to come to Washington and work undercover on a federal drug case."
"I'm impressed." His body language supported his words, relaxing to show he still had reservations, but now at least partially accepted her as one of the tribe. "So how come you're a professor now?"
She tapped her hip. "Medical retirement. Friendly fire during the big bust." Her battle scars would help her quest for acceptance, if she didn't overdo it.
He nodded with appreciation and sympathy. "One of the hazards of undercover."
"One of many."
"You okay now?"
"You saw me come in. I limp a little … " She debated about telling the rest, but decided she could advance her standing by being open with him. "… and no kids."
He shook his head. Unlike most men Carmela knew, he was apparently smart enough or sensitive enough to avoid saying anything stupid. One point for him.
"Well, I'm not looking for pity," she said, to let him off the emotional hook. "Besides, it wasn't all bad."
"That's hard to believe."
"No, really. That's how I met my husband."
Brown seemed to understand. "He was working on the case, too?"
"No, it wasn't his kind of case, though his daughter Jenny was probably one of the gang's victims. OD. She was a naive freshman, and somebody took advantage of her … "
Brown looked over his shoulder in the direction of the morgue. Carmela didn't want to dwell on Josh's relationship with his daughter and her death. As he always did when it came to Jenny, Josh had clammed up about what he was feeling. Even though he said nothing, she had seen how intensely this case disturbed him. She suspected it was because of Jenny. But that's between the two of us. Not for Brown.
She quickly continued with her story, taking it in a safe direction. "He was having his hip replaced–his first–at the same time, so we were in rehab together."
Brown smiled. "Love works in mysterious ways. I met my wife in a candy factory–they're closed now, but back then, they were experiencing robberies. Tough case, so I spent a lot of time there. The chocolates weren't bad, either."
She smiled. I can feel his deep affection for his wife. I'm going to like working with this lieutenant. He isn't going to be one of this male partners who hit on me if I make a few jokes. "If I could have been on the chocolate patrol, I wouldn't have retired, hip or no hip."
Just then the bedraggled clerk entered through a dented steel sliding door in the rear of the office. He apologized for making them wait, then set to work filling out forms. In between questions, Brown continued the conversation. "So how did you get from cop to college professor? What was the attraction?"
"My shrink said it would be good for me to work with kids. I had to study a lot about magic–voodoo and other traditions–for my undercover role in Spanish Harlem. And I learned a lot more by direct experience once I was immersed. So I took an anthro degree based on my observations inside Central American gangs." More than observations, but I won't bring up those experiences.
"Awesome."
The clerk handed Carmela a badge, which she clipped to her collar. "Not really. It was easy, because nobody else had access to the kind of fieldwork I did. They pretty much had to give me the degree."
"Still awesome." He stood. "So, you could maybe tell us if this is gang related? I mean, if you're still willing to look at DBs?"
"Not my favorite hobby, but lead me to it."
When they reached the examining room, Brown paused. "You sure you want to see the body? Somehow it's worse when they're not mutilated. The young ones look like they should still be alive."
"I want to see her, though it probably won't do any good. But many eyes mean fewer mistakes. I'm not particularly looking for medical things, so before we go in, just give me the bottom line of what you know so far."
"Well, we don't have a lot of forensic evidence from the vic, and our tiny crime lab is not that well-equipped anyway. They tell me the body–and the clothes–were probably washed, and she was dressed after death. A few common carpet fibers, might be useful for conviction, but won't help us find the perp."
"Sounds like an experienced unsub–maybe done this before?"
"We're checking for a VICAP match, but nothing so far."
"Other forensics?"
"There's the wood panel, which is old. Maybe we can trace it to some demolition site, but there's a lot of them around here. Again, good for conviction, but not for locating him."
"What about the rabbit? There can't be that many sources of rabbits."
He laughed, bitterly. "You'd be surprised how many people keep rabbits. But we're checking the pet stores for purchases of bunny food."
She shook her head. "And grocery stores for lettuce? Not much help there?" She glanced at the door. "What about COD?"
"Throat cut. Probably bled out."
She was puzzled. "But Josh said there were no visible wounds."
"Oh. Sorry. I thought you meant the rabbit." He pointed his thumb in the direction of the door. "Drugs. Death from overdose. Sexual penetration. But the body looks like it might have been placed in a ritual position. No wounds, but there were markings. Symbols. That's where I hope you can help the most."
"You mean the numbers surrounding the crucifixion of the rabbit? That's more my husband's schtick."
"I wanted to ask him about those," said Brown "He refused to get involved. But there were more symbols, under the clothing, that didn't show until we brought her in here."
"I'll need to see those, and the clothing. And if it's indeed a ritual killing, I'll need to look for telltale marks on the body. Once I've seen the markings myself, we won't have to stay. The photos will suffice for documenting the symbolism."
In contrast to the depressing hallway, the examining room was bright, clean, modern. She'd seen fancier motels for the dead, but what the City Fathers hadn't spent on the building itself had apparently gone into equipping this room with shiny stainless steel carts, tables, and sinks. Neatly arranged, hanging on the tiled walls were everything a butcher might need–knives, shears, saws, and all sorts of specialized devices for probing and pulling. The air smelled of formaldehyde and chlorine disinfectant, but their odors didn't detract from the impression of bright orderliness. Not so the smell of death.
It's almost cheerful, Carmela thought. Except for that smell and the young woman's body on the cold stainless steel table, neck resting on a cold stainless steel brace. She examined the DayGlo orange toe tag: Colleen Minerva Wright. I wonder if Colleen loved her middle name. Or hated it
"You okay?" Brown asked when she seemed to be hesitating. "We can look on the video monitor if these damn smells are getting to you."
"No. I'm used to the smells. I need to be up close to examine these symbols written on her chest."
"Why? We have the photos."
"To see if I can tell which way the letters were written–especially the order and direction of the strokes. Different traditions do it differently."
He nodded, not as if understanding but more like he was deferring to her expertise. She took that as permission to proceed. She forced her mind into police mode–scientist mode–and set to work.
After ten unpleasant minutes circling the table studying the writing and searching vainly for other telltale ritual wounds or markings, Carmela had seen more than enough. Colleen's corpse was nothing like the drug-devastated bodies she'd seen almost daily in ghettos. In its way this is worse. Well-nourished. No needle tracks or pimp tattoos. No rotted teeth. The one burst acne pimple on the side of her nose was probably Colleen's greatest problem–until she was kidnapped, drugged, raped repeatedly, and murdered.
Carmela reverently pulled the green sheet over the young girl's nakedness, waving off Brown's silent offer to help. She whispered her last goodbye to Colleen Minerva Wright, absentmindedly reaching for the missing rosary. She hadn't worn it since the day she removed it to submerge in Washington's underworld. Touching the voodoo necklace instead seemed to shake the fog out of her head. The pagan beads seemed almost appropriate, but blasphemous.
"Is the coroner sure the cause of death was really drugs? It does seem likely, but I didn't see any obvious needle marks, even between her toes."
He pointed toward a small door between two large cabinets. "I don't have the final chem report, but it should be ready by now. We should try the lab."
Carmela heard the "we" and smiled to herself. Maybe I'm making progress with Brown.
Chapter 5. Let's have a tour first.
Josh's anxiety faded when he saw Greta being guided to the building's northeast corner–the open office space–by Millie Chandler, his efficient British Jill-of-all-trades. Millie preferred to be called "secretary," though she was always quick to add, in her Mancunian accent, "the British secretary, not the poor American substitute."
When Josh phoned in late, Millie must have taken the two Department of Justice folks out for a snack. She seemed to have Greta's emotions well in hand, so he joined the Residue Class to look into their work. Since discovering the body, he had not been able to stop thinking of their welfare.
Rajesh confirmed that all hardware and software were running smoothly. Sonia, always impatient, whined that there hadn't been any startling breakthroughs. Helen agreed Josh could go to Manhattan and they wouldn't miss him, but urged him to bring back some useful clue about the codes.
After checking for the algorithms' progress on the "dashboard" screen that summarized the entire project, Josh moved with long strides over to Millie's domain to greet his sponsors. It wasn't Josh's style to offer apologies or excuses for being an hour late, nor was it Greta Kleist's style to expect any. They both believed that apologies and excuses only wasted more time, time that could be spent solving problems and convicting crooks. No wonder Greta insisted to the President that she must have Dr. Rosemont on her team. No wonder the President overrode his advisors' fuss about "foreign nationals" working on this sensitive case. The press would slice and dice any President whose administration allowed billions of dollars in ill-gotten gains to be funneled to an international terrorist organization.
Greta, as was fitting for the lead attorney in the case, was first to shake Josh's hand. Her grip was like a man's, something Josh was sure she had practiced conscientiously. Nothing about Greta or her career was unintentional. Fully aware of what was needed to advance in the male-dominated Attorney General's office, she managed to look like a German nun. She hid every possible hint of her gender behind short hair, medium gray wool business pants suit, light gray shirt, and dark gray men's tie. Still, Josh thought as she released her grip, she can't hide the beauty of her face and hands.
Ronald McKeen, Ron, Greta's right-hand, looked more like her twin brother in dress, though not in body. His hair was thick, blond, and slightly longer than Greta's reddish brown. His eyes were light blue, to her medium brown. He was taller, but she appeared to be more sturdy. Josh thought her sturdiness was probably psychological intensity more than physical bone and muscle.
Greta was all business. "We probably won't understand most of it, but we'd like a tour before we get down to progress and strategy."
"How about we discuss all that in the car on the way down?"
"Let's have a tour first," said Greta. "The bureaucrats back in DC will want to know what their four mil bought us.
"We're particularly interested in security," said Ron as they headed across the largely vacant concrete floor toward the electronic clutter. "At this point, we believe the Solarian people are capable of anything."
"Why?" Josh asked. "What happened?"
"There was a break-in–attempted break-in," Greta said, "at the SNG HQ Tower up the interstate. The dogs spotted the intruders–smelled them, probably–and our marshals managed to stop them from getting at any of the computers. But the bad guys got away clean."
"So maybe it was just ordinary burglars trying to ravage the building while nobody was working there."
"Maybe, but we can't take chances. But you're right about the building. We'll keep it locked, but we've pretty much searched every piece of equipment in the HQ twice. Or more. If there's any useful data still hidden there, we would need a data-sniffing dog to find it. And those don't exist, so it's pretty much all in your hands now. We've shifted our security focus. We'll still keep a skeleton crew up there, but from now on, we'll have most of the marshals here at your offices twenty-four-seven. And we're bringing out a lawn service."
Josh held up his hands, fingers spread in surprise. "You're going to landscape this warehouse? With government funds?"
"No, just cut the weeds to increase visibility," said Ron, making a snipping gesture with his fingers. "And give the dogs free rein. This is a big property. Your building's not as tall as Solarian's tower, so there's much less to guard inside. But you have a much bigger perimeter, so the dogs will be useful. Any problem with that?"
"No problem, as long as they don't bother Millie."
"She's already offering them treats when she brings the marshals tea."
"Fine. But no dogs inside here. The hair would be a problem for the filtration system. I don't even allow Heathcliff in here. Let's hope he gets along with the other dogs outside."
And finds no more bodies. The thought came spontaneously. He didn't like it. There's no way I'm going to keep thinking about it.
He became aware of Greta speaking to him. "Don't worry. These dogs are all business. Like the marshals."
Josh pointed to the huge ducts in the ceiling, and paused for a moment to listen to the comforting susurration of the state-of-the-art system. "Do the marshals know what it is they're protecting?"
"They're aware it's the SNG case, but that's all."
"I'll have Rajesh brief them on which equipment here needs the most protection, in case it comes to that. Some of it can be replaced overnight, but some is custom-made."
They reached a large bank of disk drives. "What about data?" Ron asked.
"That shouldn't be a problem." Josh laid his hand on top of the drive rack, something only he could reach without standing on a chair. "Everything here is backed up over our dedicated line to your own offices, where I assume it's backed up again."
"It is," Greta said. "How often?"
"Changes are logged continuously, so if everything here went dark, we might lose a few seconds of computing, that's all. And it would be completely recoverable."
"And how secure is the dedicated line?"
"Data-wise, very secure. Everything's encrypted. But if someone wanted to cut the line somewhere between here and Washington, we couldn't do much about that."
Greta jotted a note. "What effect would that have on your operations?"
"We could switch to a lower-speed line in an hour or less. That is, we will be able to when I can get one of my grad students to finish setting it up. In any case, it wouldn't affect our computing. Our backup would be a little less current, but that's not critical."
"What's the holdup on your grad students? Not enough qualified candidates?"
"No, it is hard to find the quality I require, but I've got a small queue ready to come in if I give the word." And if Helen accepts them.