The previous chapter unfolded in a distant laboratory, far from the minds or immediate concerns of Dr. Kerr, Tom Purdue, Capt. Jean-Baptiste Ritard, or Lawrence Bridges. In fact, beyond those directly involved with the experiments taking place there, including the town of Orient in rural Iowa just outside its walls, no one was really aware of the implications for the world-at-large once the project they'd spent months working on was ready to be unveiled. We'll return there for some later chapters, but meanwhile other things are happening in a cabin in Swanville, Maine; near the Express Motel in Orient, IA; in the New York office of the International Music Police; and at the currently unoccupied home of Dr. Kerr in the quiet Philadelphia suburb of Doylestown.
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CHAPTER 13
It was the first time Mrs. Danvers had come in to clean and get caught up on some cooking for Tom Purdue since his friends Dr. Kerr and that nice boy, Cameron, had left. “So soon,” she thought. “Odd, they'd only arrived over the weekend – just for a few days? I wonder what might've happened.” Tom told her that “something came up.” She imagined they'd probably had a fight. “That Kerr fellow seemed cranky enough, if you ask me. I can imagine him getting on somebody's nerves easily enough.” She'd already swept the hallways, emptied the upstairs and downstairs wastebaskets, and had the trash bag ready to take to the dump on her way home; she just needed to tidy up the kitchen. Now that all the meals she'd cooked were cooled off and packed away in the refrigerator, she was ready to leave.
At first, it startled her because she hadn't heard Dr. Tom coming back from his walk, but there'd been one of those odd flashes of something dark off on the edge of her vision, a quick movement she might have imagined before remembering how frequently these things happened now since her cataract surgery last year. She quickly turned, a sudden motion which made her feel for one brief second “a tad dizzy,” but she quickly recovered, hurrying up the steps in time to see someone going around the corner.
“That's no hallucination,” like her husband would explain. “I definitely didn't imagine that,” as she bustled down the hallway after it.
Definitely no hallucination: dark, yes – a man, not too tall, not too old.
“You, there,” she called, addressing the figure sternly as you'd expect from a woman escaping out of some old Hawthorne story.
Having no weapon on her, the frail old woman considered maybe he could be a burglar intent on doing her harm. She stopped there, looking like she'd hit him with a powerful curse instead.
“Who're you...?”
The man glanced at her, unconcerned. He looked somehow familiar, vaguely. She didn't think she'd seen him before and Dr. Tom hadn't mentioned other friends'd be stopping by.
“What do you want?”
He stepped into the room after pausing in the doorway just long enough as if he'd challenged her to follow him.
At the doorway, she wished she'd had a broom with her in case he'd hidden himself behind the door, ready to assault her. Instead, he stood in front of the closet and looked around. “Nonchalant” was not the word that came to mind, nor was he “indifferent.” But he was neither challenging nor even menacing.
The stranger was more a silhouette standing there in front of the window. The dim remains of sunlight meant it was getting dark out, making her uncomfortable. She never liked staying here after dark.
She wanted to ask him so many things, like where he'd come from or how he got in, what it was he wanted – who it was he wanted – but in fact she said nothing.
Both of them stood there, mute. Muted. She began to wonder how much time was passing: Minutes? Probably seconds. She waited.
“Dr. Kerr asked me to find this box for him,” the man said, speaking slowly. “He forgot it when he left.” The voice sounded distant, a bit muffled, but it might, when younger, have been a fine baritone voice, if it sang. For some reason she thought there'd been illness behind that haunting – haunted – sound.
“This was his room – the 1954 Room,” she added. The man's brow contracted, not understanding what that meant or why she'd mentioned it. Her own brow contracted, not sure why she'd mentioned it either.
“Yes, of course,” her interior monologue argued, “he could be a friend of Dr. Kerr's – he knew which was his room. And didn't I see Dr. Tom sorting through that old box last week, the one that'd been in this very closet for years? But was it still there the day before Dr. Kerr arrived?” Then the opposite side of that same monologue pointed out “Something's not quite 'legit' about this stranger, though: I feel it.” She touched her cross, suspended under layers of fabric covering her desiccated bosom.
As if preparing herself for the inevitable discussion with Sargent Quint of the Swanville Police, she began to take mental notes. He was taller (but not by much), and thin (quite thin, even skinny). His hair was dark, cut short but curly, not someone from the town. She couldn't think whom he reminded her of.
Those eyes, though. She tried not to stare at them because, quite simply, they began to frighten her. “Those be Evil Eyes,” she thought – how would she word that, not to sound so over-the-top? They were green, too, piercing, even; the nose, large but bony thin, “patrician.” The cheek bones were pronounced, the chin pointed.
“Clean-shaven,” she'd noticed that, but with long sideburns and hair that was combed forward on the sides – again, the word “patrician.” Very old-fashioned, she thought, the dark clothes and coat, too, some daguerreotype come-to-life.
Perhaps, she considered, he was one of those backwoods farmers occasionally wandering into town for supplies – no, too smooth to be a farmer, not with those hands. How would Dr. Kerr have met him? Why ask him to fetch it, whatever was in it? How would he get the box to Kerr, wherever he was? And why would Kerr want the box, anyway? Wasn't it Dr. Tom's, now that the house was his? He owned anything that'd once been the Nortons'. “I'm sorry, you'll have to ask Dr. Purdue.”
“It's not there. Dr. Kerr told me it would be there.” She could only think “he intoned” rather than “he said.” There was something about the voice, like it rarely spoke – “spectral,” she thought.
Rather than a farmer, she thought the stranger might have been a backwoods preacher. Were there many of them still around?
“Not there? But I saw...” – she started to step forward and then realized she shouldn't say anything more or get any closer to him. She glanced quickly toward the closet but couldn't see inside.
Mrs. Danvers immediately stiffened up. “What is your name, sir, and who...?” But when she looked back, the intruder was gone.
Stumbling back as she turned toward the empty hallway, she hadn't heard anything, hadn't seen anything, definitely didn't even sense anything. She was even conscious she'd sniffed the air, half-expecting a hint of brimstone.
Before going after him, she took a quick look in the closet which, as the trespasser said, was empty – well, not empty but the box certainly wasn't where it had been the other day. As she examined the possibilities, aware she was racking up a regular thesaurus of terms for “stranger,” she followed after him.
“Perhaps,” she tried to reason as she hurried down the steps, “he's trying to distract me. He's probably after something else.” But he did know about Dr. Kerr, about the old box, about where the old box had been stored, at least until recently – hidden there, come to think of it, for how many decades?
“Perhaps,” she continued, hurrying into the kitchen to check the silverware, “he's a distant relative upset Dr. Tom inherited everything, who thinks he has a rightful claim, in search of old deeds or wills?”
Checking through various drawers and cupboards to see if anything obvious was missing, Mrs. Danvers contemplated what she should do next.
“Call the police, obviously,” but then wondered should she check to see if the intruder was still somewhere in the house? What if she cornered him on those back steps, where her mother died?
She'll let the police take care of the heroics, thinking it was good she'd already vacuumed before calling them; but she'll need to vacuum again after they'd tracked dirt on her clean floors, anyway.
But what could the police do if nothing's missing? – well, that box is missing but she didn't see him take it. The man wasn't wearing gloves so there might be fingerprints, if they're lucky.
And shouldn't she make sure Dr. Tom is safe which then reminded her perhaps she should go and check the safe?
She stopped in the middle of the parlor to catch her breath – she wasn't as young as she used to be and it wouldn't help anybody if she dropped over from a heart attack. She saw the front door was closed, hadn't noticed the back door wasn't. How'd he get in? “How'd he get out!”
The police! Her husband joked Chief Quint was as useless as the Pope's testicles (she was shocked this even came to mind!). The first thing he'd say was she'd imagined everything, one big hallucination.
One thing's certain, whatever she saw in the 1954 Room was no hallucination, the product of being old, tired, or over-worked, even if it's true she might've been all three and in that order. If she'd been fifty years younger, she'd've grabbed her phone and taken a picture of him, if she'd had a phone.
“A picture!” It stopped her in her tracks. “Now I remember who that stranger reminded me of – I'm sure of it.” She'd never met him, but that photo her sister-in-law had on their mantlepiece – he was a young man, then – Edward Poole was strikingly handsome and spooked old Aunt Emaline every time she saw him.
This man was the living image of that photo, her nephew Lonny's great-great-grandfather. “But he's been gone for over eighty years. Those nasty rumors” – speaking of useless testicles – “they've haunted this house for generations.”
Tom stood at the front door and waved. She hadn't seen him approaching, whether he'd come from the driveway or from around the back (no, that way, he'd come in through the kitchen door).
“Halloo,” he called out, in that mock-pompous way he'd affect with someone so formally old-fashioned as his housekeeper. “Is everything alright?”
“Did you see him, then?” she asked, conscious she'd been propping herself against the back of a chair. “He just left.”
“No, I didn't see anyone – who was it?” Tom glanced over his shoulder.
She began to explain, nodding at the stairs, pointing toward someplace down the hall, not, Tom admitted, making lots of sense.
“Did he say who he was, what he wanted?” Tom removed his jacket.
“He did say Dr. Kerr asked him to retrieve a box he'd forgotten in his closet – but it wasn't there.”
“A box?” Tom's back stiffened but he masked his response by stretching his arms over his head, unwinding after his walk. “Did he say why Terry wanted this box?” knowing he hadn't forgotten it. Not only did he go to Iowa on an entirely different matter, why ask someone else to “retrieve” it for him?
“I'd seen the box before – most recently before the time your friends arrived.” Then realizing she might appear nosy, prying into family business, she added, “I've no idea what it was – it looked old.”
“Yes, I found it there when I was moving in after Burt's death,” he explained, one of only a handful of items Mrs. Danvers and her husband had left for him to sort through. Inside, he'd found that old wooden box which had piqued his curiosity but he decided he'd sort these things out later. He almost took it to a nearby locksmith to have it opened, but turned out it wasn't really locked, the hasp tied with a fragile ribbon and otherwise sealed with some wax, still unbroken.
He didn't know if the “1954” Room ever belonged to any one specific ancestor. There'd been a lot of stuff piled in that closet, mostly old children's books left behind, purposely stored or forgotten. It wasn't till later he'd gone through the box and found those pieces of music by Cousin Emaline and her husband.
Only a few knew about the box, even fewer what was in it – just Terry and Cameron, really, the only ones he'd shown the contents to. In an old house, what's unusual about that? Nothing special about the box otherwise beyond the scrolls of manuscripts tied up with ribbons – oh, and that old rusted key.
Of course, Mrs. Danvers saw it – she said she hadn't seen the box recently, only when they were cleaning up the place before Tom moved in. Had her husband seen it, or that nephew?
Tom wondered if this was a visitor from this Casaubon Society: he'd forgotten about them. He almost laughed as he helped Mrs. Danvers into her car, after making sure she was okay to drive. Terry may have his reasons to be paranoid, but Tom also had his, especially with those memories from Graham Ripa's farmhouse.
Walking back into the house, more conscious of locking the door than usual, Tom wondered if there weren't more papers: perhaps it was the key? No one seemed to know what it was for. Maybe it leads to another box somewhere, like a scavenger hunt the kids set up on one of those summer holidays?
And who would've known about Terry's letter, the one he'd found in Doylestown? Cameron had transferred the photos from his phone onto a thumb drive, a back-up he placed in the box “for safe-keeping.”
He saw no reason to tell Mrs. Danvers he'd moved the box. “Like they say in the thrillers, 'it's better you don't know,' – like anybody'd get anything out of her in the first place.” It really was for her own good, he thought, glancing around, not that he didn't trust her. “Now, her nephew, well...” On the other hand, thinking back to his too recent experience over the Clara software and Graham Ripa's botched kidnapping plot, how much torture would it take to get anything out of him, now?
Could that be what this all about, a continuation of that? Clara had disappeared, taking the code with her. Besides, he no longer had the complete program: it would take too much to rework it from scratch. He kept his original notes locked up on an encrypted thumb drive, written in his own home-made language.
“But the guy specifically mentioned 'Dr. Kerr asked me' about 'retrieving' it. How was he going to get it to him? Why wouldn't Terry ask me himself? We'd only talked a few hours ago. Ah... yes,” he realized, the proverbial light bulb. “The phone...” He walked into the study and cautiously looked behind the door.
If anybody'd been hiding there since disappearing upstairs, wouldn't he have attacked him by now or hurried out the back door?
“Somebody's hacked into my phone – or his. The question is why? And who?”
Tom walked over to the window, checking to see if anyone was standing around the edge of the woods. He wouldn't see him if he's further back in the bushes, now that it's getting dark, even with the leaves not out full yet, especially if he's dressed in dark clothes. He could still be watching. He pulled the drapes to, turned on the banker's lamp on his desk rather than the overhead light, feeling uneasy, and slid the one painting aside (so obvious) to check the safe – still locked.
“There's no sense calling the police,” he thought. There'd been no break-in, he hadn't seen the guy, nothing was apparently stolen. He looked under the desk – no bugs obvious; maybe a hidden camera somewhere? Fortunately, the floorboards under the desk appeared undisturbed.
“I'll send Terry a cryptic e-mail later.” Then he settled back to wait.
* * ** *** ***** ******** ***** *** ** * *
“If this guy was in his 50s, then he couldn't really be Hawthorne,” Sheriff Diddon thought to herself, driving over to the Express Motel, “but if he'd died recently, could he be that decomposed?”
This end of town always depressed her, more because of the memories it held. In fact, Orient in general depressed her. But she had to admit, it's like the prosperity of a small town stopped just before you got to the motel and there, just next door, was this little pocket of a run-down neighborhood.
“The body, now, was too short and too old 'at the time of death,' Femorsen told me.” She parked the car. “But he still couldn't give me a decent estimate about when that was. She adjusted her hat and looked around: nobody. “Or how he ended up out there: washed up from some shallow grave?”
She hiked up her pants. “Damn uniform,” she complained not for the first time. “They couldn't find a pair of trousers to fit a woman my size? Do I have to start wearing suspenders?” She liked her job, just some of the accoutrements annoyed her, some days more than others. Today's one of those days.
As she started across the street, feeling people probably think she walks like John Wayne in these pants, she kept wondering about those DNA results, proving whether it's Hawthorne or not. “Hoping for 'not'...”
Of course, the good thing – one of the few good things so far – about that meddlesome TV show was, they already had all these handy DNA samples lying around from Hawthorne and his family. “Part of their 'investigation,' they said,” as she put “mental air-quotes” around investigation. “Good thing they were happy to share them.” If nothing else, it saved her jumping around a lot of bureaucratic hoops, if they want results faster than she does, what with their production deadlines breathing down their backs. “Them and their deadlines!”
They're sure this is the big breakthrough for their show. “I'm thinking, if it's not Hawthorne, that'll set 'em back nicely. How long have we been sitting around with this case, anyway? Thirty years? Those TV guys think we've got this state-of-the-art Crime Scene Lab next to my office and it's all done like magic.”
She had to laugh when her hapless deputy Roger wondered what “clueless idiots” would go ahead and schedule a broadcast date before they've gathered all the evidence and started final production on the show? He'd been totally unaware he'd called them “clueless idiots” and she'd had to explain it when he still didn't get it.
“So, if 'John Buck' doesn't turn into Phillips 'Trazmo' Hawthorne, the formerly missing but now possibly dead subject of their story, if they didn't have a clue before, they'll have one less clue, now.”
Her phone jangled with Femorsen's ring-tone (he was never amused she'd chosen the Shower Scene music from Psycho for his number), and she sent up rapid-fire prayers to anyone in the universe who'd listen. Quick to answer it, she tried to hide her smile as she said, “Afternoon, Dr. Femorsen – what've you got for me?”
“Good news and bad news, I'm guessing,” the coroner's mellifluous tones rolled out. “The DNA's not a match for Phillips Hawthorne.”
“Right, so that's good news for Phillips Hawthorne whether he's dead or not.”
“And the bad news is, if it's not Hawthorne, he's still 'John Buck'.”
“That's bad news for 'Great American Cold Cases'...”
“True, but maybe they can spin him as some new hint of mystery. He is, or rather was wearing Hawthorne's boots, so he's still a cast member and a fairly significant one, I'll wager.”
Dr. Femorsen had been able to sneak in a few other tests along with the DNA, as long as he could ride the eager coattails of the GACC production staff's willingness to help themselves, specifically pertaining to a bunch of technical things he mentioned which, all these years later, Diddon still had trouble focusing on.
“Nothing conclusive, I admit,” his voice becoming clear again, “but as to time of death, I'd say our remains have been lying out there waiting to be discovered for around thirty years or so.”
There'd been nothing about the bones beyond some long-healed fractures and the arthritic deposits of a man much older than Hawthorne. “My estimation is he could've been a man in his late-50s, maybe older, unless he'd contracted arthritis as a younger man. But without the flesh to go by, nothing I can see was 'cause-of-death'.”
Diddon was happy it wasn't the slam-dunk the TV guys were hoping for, but if it had been Hawthorne, it might've brought the light at the distant end of the tunnel a little closer. Now, here was this fork in the tunnel – is that a thing? – which didn't have any apparent light anywhere at all.
The bad news was, deadline or not, it didn't mean the guys from GACC would be leaving Orient any time soon. What if they got an extension on their deadline and postponed the broadcast?
But the guy on the slab – that sounded disrespectful... “the remains in the morgue” sounded even worse, though, so completely indifferent. At least “John Buck” was a place-holder for an identity, this man's name. She went through this every time with an unidentified person was brought in and given a toe-tag and a case number.
This person, what's left of him, whoever he was, however he died, had a life, maybe a job, a career, self-respect, family who loved him, friends who missed him, strangers who'd seen him around.
Maybe Femorsen could get one of those forensic dudes to make a facial reconstruction from the skull, get an image they could show around so someone might recognize him, give him his identity back.
“The Guys from GACC would love that – bet they'd even pay for it, filming someone bursting out “Hey, I remember him!”
On her way to inspect Room #12, not sure why she was bothering, she looked around, wondering if anyone saw her and may be thinking “what's up with her? She's acting kind of weird...” It's been thirty-three years and one month since the room was a crime scene, thoroughly checked and cleaned, maybe even renovated. It's not like she's going to find anything after this amount of time. Would a CSI team GACC shipped in from St. Louis find any stuff that could conclusively point to that very day?
Since the body they found wasn't Phillips Hawthorne, why's she examining the motel room at all, now? And was it ever really a crime scene if the guy hadn't been killed there or abducted? There was no sign of a break-in, nothing in the report about evidence he was abducted at gunpoint, no violence, nothing.
Except this guy, their latest John Buck, was dead, either somebody's victim or just some poor schmuck who died “by misadventure.” (She chuckled again at her choosing to call an unidentified male “John Buck.” A female could be “Jane Doe,” that made sense, but a “John Doe”? Fortunately, Femorsen hadn't thought the joke “too disrespectful.”)
If he'd stayed around in the area, he probably hadn't killed Hawthorne, most likely wasn't involved in a kidnapping. A burglary? How'd he happen to choose Hawthorne's room and find clothes that fit him?
Maybe, she tried to free-associate, he was a vagrant who'd found Hawthorne's clothes – but then where would he have found them? On a body frozen in some snowbank out beyond the edge of town? Had he broken into the room, seeking refuge from the storm, and then stole the clothes before high-tailing it at sunrise?
She laughed to herself, catching her own pun and imagined trying to explain it to Roger: “Buck? 'High-tailed it'? – Get it?” Knowing Roger, she assumed, no, he probably wouldn't have and this embarrassed her.
“And there's also, whoever he was, whenever he died, don't you think somebody would've noticed an old dude wearing those boots if the guy had hung around?” She slowed down, approaching Dr. Kerr's room.
“Oh, crap,” Diddon thought, unable to keep her expression under control, “there's that kid, Doc Kerr's assistant.” She nodded at him.
Cameron, on his way to grab some coffee at the diner, asked if she was coming by to see Dr. Kerr. “Any news?” Judging from her indifference, maybe he shouldn't have asked her that.
“No, and no,” she answered but offered nothing further.
He noticed she seemed more hostile than indifferent and wondered what's wrong.
There was another awkward moment before Cameron nodded an equally awkward farewell. “Beautiful day,” he said, waving as he turned away. Diddon walked on, reminding Cameron of someone doing a bad John Wayne impression.
“Oh, Sheriff – almost forgot,” Cameron called back to her. She stopped without turning. “Dr. Kerr was wondering if they'd found anything, you know, back when they were cleaning out the room after Trazmo's disappearance – maybe something hidden up in the dropped ceiling, like around the light fixture? Were there dropped ceilings here back in '83?”
She turned around and looked at him, completely puzzled. “Not that I'm aware of. Why? What's he think they would've found?” She made a mental note to check the reports, remembering nothing about that.
“Something that came up. His mind works that way. Just passing it along.” Then he continued on to the Dining Car.
What she was aware of, if it's no longer Hawthorne's body, Kerr no longer needed to be involved with the case. Then why tell him about the DNA – or deal with his little assistant?
* * ** *** ***** ******** ***** *** ** * *
This whole business was patently absurd. “We do nothing but wallow in absurdity!”
Capt. Ritard, ready to scream, mulled over the book that's recently become his favorite bedtime reading, Camus' Myth of Sisyphus. “Seriously...!”
At his desk, he waited impatiently as his new computer was (finally) hooked up, the technician sweating under Ritard's fierce gaze. “We live in hope for tomorrow, which only brings us closer to death.” Ritard drummed his fingers on the desk. “And everything, life itself, ends up in nothing more than meaningless abstractions and metaphors.”
“I could get hit by a bus when I went out for lunch, or,” looking over at his second-in-command working at his desk, “Streicher could. How would I feel about that, losing my friend? Would grief-like intensity affect me now, or a few months later – still five years from now? The uselessness of mindless metaphysics...”
Ritard arrived in New York hoping for better things, turning the page – “O metaphor, ye thankless diadem of life's supremest absurdity!” The drumming intensified. “New York! – bah! such a foreign place,” especially for one attuned to the mellow pace of Paris. “Inhuman!” A veritable thunderstorm pummeled the technician hunkered in the knee-hole connecting myriad cables.
“And what greater metaphor for the absurdity of existence than these vacuous cases!” Ritard sank back in his chair as he started riffling through imaginary index cards in his mental file, his veritable memory-bank.
Two investigations were now blended into one and it was his job to consolidate them and bring them both to completion, two factions within the same company, each fighting to bring down the other. In the process, SHMRG, one of the worst conglomerates in classical music, could well destroy itself, not exactly a bad thing. Founder and former CEO N. Ron Steele remained missing, operating incognito (Ritard placed the accent on the second syllable, sighing volubly when others didn't); usurper Lucifer Darke hung on by a barely metaphoric thread.
There were several unsolved deaths and disappearances associated with Steele during his rise to power and all of them possibly linked to him directly or indirectly as murders, associates possibly punished for their disloyalty. One item all these cases had in common was this substantial lack of any convincing evidence to tie him to them.
Darke's case, though more recent and more complex, involved, above all else, the greater number of deaths, though the link to Darke was more through “product malfeasance” and corporate irresponsibility than outright murder – manslaughter. First of all, having a music licensing organization branching out into product development and marketing sales offended Ritard's sense of propriety. But nowadays, cornering the market on all things musical, especially gaining control of the typically intransigent and often moribund Classical Division, meant more income for SHMRG and less for their already less lucrative competitors.
The question in Ritard's mind – and here he had to slow down and focus on the various individual threads – was “Why?” When had it ceased being about Art and become entirely fixated on Money? He sighed and stopped drumming on the desktop, aware this was well beyond the scope of his investigation, regardless how absurd.
The Darke Investigation involved the Artificial Creativity software developed by SHMRG engineers adapted from the Thomas Purdue prototype originally called “Clara,” after Clara Schumann, muse to both her husband Robert and his protege, Brahms. Reconfigured and now labeled “z'Art,” a kind of “Garage-Band” for would-be Classical Musicians-turned-Composers, the self-learning program could compose its own music.
The purchaser uploaded certain pieces he (or she) liked, stylistic finger-prints the composer (or would-be composer) had (or wanted to have). Even the software's gender could be re-programmed along with its own unique name.
It was their undercover agent who found proof the Purdue prototype had not been purchased legally as Darke claimed, but had been pirated through a hacker in their engineering department (identity still at large). It was through Dr. T. Richard Kerr the IMP knew about Dr. Thomas Purdue, composer and would-be programmer, who verified this. Kerr reported the first murder committed by the software, specifically Purdue's assistant found electrocuted in his basement next to the computer. Purdue was sure no code existed that could prompt Clara to do this.
The theory at the time was Clara, taught to develop compositional skills from the stylistic data uploaded into the core library, had evolved into something self-aware enough to commit murder completely on her own. Exploring Kerr's suggestion, they discovered several inserted bits of code and additional music, operas mostly, validating Kerr's insistence she'd been hacked.
To complicate matters, at the same time, Purdue had been abducted by an agent of the Aficionati, another shady classical music society, that wanted the software for its own purposes, still to be determined. This facet of the investigation was being led by IMP Director Sarah Bond and again Purdue and Kerr were key witnesses.
Once the technician informed Ritard his computer was fully functional, he wanted to explore this very “key-ness” of Purdue and Kerr, wondering if either of them had been placed under any kind of protection.
Within days of arriving in America, Ritard started interviewing several of SHMRG's board members, an undercover agent identifying several still loyal to Steele, all very likely spying for him, determined to undermine Darke's control. Darke, according to this agent, had worked hard to oust disloyal members who, as a result, became more secretive, going “underground.” Once the IMP agent had been compromised – another investigation that was still on-going – he had been immediately placed under protective custody. Given SHMRG's past history with disloyalty, their agent's life was clearly in danger.
As he sat there drumming and free-associating about Camus and Sisyphus, it occurred to Capt. Ritard perhaps, if SHMRG had known about Purdue's and Kerr's statements, should they too be placed under protective custody? As reluctant as he was to become involved with Kerr, he should contact Bond and check. Then finally his e-mail opened.
And there, waiting for him as his account unfolded once he'd recalled his password, were 987 new messages. Ritard sank back in his chair, slammed by a force comparable to several Gs. Streicher looked up at the expletive, convinced it was fairly arcane French, far stronger than anything he'd ever heard the boss utter before.
Since the standard IMP protocol was not to identify any specific case reference in the subject field, most e-mails consisted of a date and various meaningless subjects like “Hi, Capt. Ritard” or “Happy Tuesday.”
Everything else was probably spam (this recent move to a new server indicated their security protocols required some serious attention, too), so anything without the encrypted icon he moved to a folder called “Limbo.” Beyond 133 headed “Welcome to the new office building,” he skimmed through the 610 remaining e-mails for any from Sarah Bond.
Zero.
He'll ask his secretary, Agent Tenuto, to filter through the “Limbo” File but he couldn't trust her with the encrypted ones which might have sensitive information about the investigation nobody else should see. He could sort those into two folders for Streicher and Boumdier to summarize, while keeping the highest ranked “senders” for himself.
“And you wonder why workers go crazy and implode!” He had never been one to suffer bureaucrats and other fools gladly, but wasn't this what he'd be doing to Agents Tenuto, Streicher, and Boumdier?
As exasperation gave way to futility, his Sisyphian Fantasy aside, Ritard suddenly smiled, recalling a former colleague from their early days who, in a moment of bureaucratically induced frustration, hacked into his supervisor's document folder (everyone knew how to do this) and found a memo he knew would go out first thing the next morning. Opening it easily, he strategically inserted the French equivalent of various forms of the word fuck into almost every other sentence. Then, saving it, backed out, wrote and submitted his resignation letter, effective immediately.
He was long gone before the memo was being read, his supervisor already in considerable trouble before the prank was discovered, much to the amusement of many lower-ranking colleagues and a few senior administrators.
But then Ritard had another of those free-associating epiphanies: what if the “Clara” hack had been done by a disgruntled employee?
Convinced his computer's sole purpose was to taunt him, he could understand why his friend chose to quit and out of sheer vexation commit an irrational act, going out in a blaze of absurdity. What could have led an otherwise rational person to do something like that, an act of vandalism, against his own employer? Did one of SHMRG's engineers leave suddenly before their “z'Art” went into production? Was this his grand finale, a small cog's way to wreak some kind of havoc, a covertly satisfying form of revenge?
Or had he stayed, watched its progress, making sure his plot would, in the long run, succeed – and maybe then resign? This could easily be a lone wolf's action; too risky for a conspiracy. But what could possibly have been the man's grudge to make him put so many otherwise innocent people at risk? Humiliation?
Perhaps not a man, necessarily, Ritard considered, but a thin-skinned younger person with enough arrogance to feel cold and clinical toward humanity merely to cause his company corporate pain where it hurt the most? Could they conduct a “profile” of the engineering staff, check personnel files for personality flags, someone frequently in trouble with HR?
He wrote Bond a detailed e-mail, wondering if there was an agent who could infiltrate SHMRG again. Satisfied, he hit send.
Then his computer crashed, the screen ominously black, and he considered volunteering, himself.
* * ** *** ***** ******** ***** *** ** * *
“Well, yeah, if we had a helicopter, Cap'n Ritard, we'd be there by now, wouldn't we, but a helicopter that has to drive through rush-hour traffic in suburban Philadelphia, not bloody likely, is it?” Ollie Breverton, a decorated senior agent, had been highly recommended by Bond before but Ritard admittedly found his absurdist logic annoying.
Agent Rhonda Montaigne rarely enjoyed being yoked up to Breverton on these cases. He always treated her like “a damned rookie,” despite earning a few decorations of her own over some six years' service.
“I could drive a team of six white horses through this traffic faster than you could drive a helicopter,” Montaigne said.
“Is that so, Officer Smarty-Pants?”
“That's Agent Montaigne to you, Officer Ollie.”
“Yessir!”
“Who's talking about driving anything but a squad car,” Ritard said, his exasperation mounting. “Call me when you get to Kerr's.”
After his computer crashed, Ritard commandeered Streicher's computer, re-writing his e-mail to Bond through his assistant's account instead of his own. When he hit send, it went flawlessly, without any further dire side effects. It only further enhanced his growing sense of paranoia, familiar with typical backbiting social politics but not comfortable with work-place espionage.
Almost 5:00, he knew Chief Inspector Bond wouldn't get the e-mail till morning. A call to HR, asking why Kerr, a Consulting Agent, had no personnel file in the system, went directly to voice-mail.
Ritard sent his staff home, then sat on the subway train deep in mostly pessimistic thoughts about this new chapter in his life, about his no longer practical apartment, particularly about this hour-long commute. As yet, there'd been no call from Breverton, no doubt also mired in a long commute (how do Americans do this?).
There was a quiet French bistro near Columbus Avenue he liked, and dinner passed uneventfully; likewise, the walk to his apartment. Once settled into his favorite chair, the phone jarred him back to reality.
“Capt. Ritard, Breverton here. We just arrived at Kerr's” – Ritard glanced at the time: after 7:00 – “and the place's been ransacked. Seems they broke in by the patio door; the security system's been by-passed. Looks like it was hacked two hours ago? – and no sign of Kerr. And Agent Montaigne's out checking with the neighbors.”
“What's going on? Who're you?” Ritard could hear a concerned voice challenging Breverton in the background. “OMG, I'm calling the police!”
“Lady, we are the police – well, sort of. Agent Oliver Breverton,” he said.
“What's happened? I was here three hours ago!”
“I'm with the International Music Police, Philadelphia Branch.”
“I'm a neighbor, Alice Quigley.”
Ritard thought she sounded near tears. “Agent Breverton, put me on speaker, please.”
She was explaining she's been looking after Dr. Kerr's house but stopped short, as if suspicious of offering too much information.
“That's okay, Mrs. Quigley, I'm Capt. Jean-Baptiste Ritard of the IMP's New York office and... I'm an acquaintance of Dr. Kerr's.” (Well, not exactly, he thought; close enough...) “Is he there? Could I speak...?”
“No,” she said, “no,” sounding less abrupt, “he's not here. What's going on?”
“I'm trying to reach him. Could you call...?”
She said she would and walked into the yard. Breverton, meanwhile, described the scene, off-speaker: just books and scores strewn on the floors of a few rooms. “They must be looking for something specific.”
Ritard chose not to comment. “Something specifically thin enough it could be hidden in the pages of a book or score?”
“That's basically what I thought – probably not a thumb-drive or back-up CD, sir.”
“But no desk drawers or cupboards opened? Just books and scores?”
“Yeah. So, whaddaya think – maybe a list or a letter?”
“If it was cash they were after, he'd've rooted around more, looking for a box in a desk drawer or something. Still,” Ritard suggested, “better alert the local police. Any joy with the neighbors?”
Agent Montaigne returned with nothing from the neighborhood.
“Strange,” Mrs. Quigley said. “When he didn't answer, I couldn't even get voice-mail...”
Breverton called 911 and reported there'd been a burglary, giving them the address. The dispatcher connected him with the local police.
“Yeah? Another one!” The officer sounded surprised. “Lot of that goin' 'round tonight.”
Once Breverton identified himself, the policeman said a call just came in from the Doylestown Historical Society. “Some guy'd been attacked. Hey, that's not far from where you guys are. When did yours happen?” The policeman said the old man there, a Mr. Vole, had been hit from behind. “Only came to a bit ago.”
Agent Montaigne told Ritard that it was just books and scores on the floor in several rooms; upstairs, more of the same. “A few pictures were placed on the floor, some facing the wall.” Regarding Ritard's question about CDs and any LPs Kerr might've had, she said, “No, nothing like that. Why do you ask?”
He'd recalled, as a young man, hiding some important papers in a specific box of LPs – old-fashioned recordings, for Montaigne's benefit – things that were too big to hide in a CD box or book.
Ritard doubted this was just a routine burglary, especially if the Historical Society had been broken into about the same time. What were they looking for? Could there be some connection with Dr. Kerr? Maybe – just theorizing – he had stuff about SHMRG and asked his friend at the Society to hide it in their archives?
“Agent Breverton,” Ritard said, “ask the neighbor if Kerr knew the guy who'd been attacked. Any association with the Historical Society?” Regardless, somebody was looking for something Kerr had. Better call Bond about this.
“Mr. Vole was attacked?” Mrs. Quigley started shaking. “Why, Dr. Kerr went over to see him at the Society the other day, wanted to ask him about something. That's not a coincidence. Oh, my...”
Her legs went all wobbly and Montaigne barely caught her before she fell. “I could've been here when...”
Then she fainted.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = =
©2022 by Dick Strawser for Thoughts on a Train
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