The Fractal Murders Part 15

"What about secretaries?" I asked. "If Fontaine and Underwood exchanged letters concerning the textbook, you'd think there would be someone who remembers typing the correspondence."

"We checked that," he said, "but a lot of these professors do their own typing. None of the people we interviewed could connect one victim to another. The 302s are in the file." A complete copy of the bureau's file was contained in an accordion folder resting at my feet. I picked at my salad as I struggled to make sense of what I'd learned.

"Thanks for sharing all this," I finally said. "I know you didn't have to."

"You got my curiosity going with that textbook thing."

We continued eating and talked about matters unrelated to the case. Things like my life in Nederland and his recent second marriage. It was also a chance to catch up on the gossip I had enjoyed when I'd worked in the federal building.

"So," I said, "what's happening at the FBI? Got any good gossip?"

"Not that I can share," he said. "I'm already in trouble with Dittmer. He's from the old school, and lately he has been one tough son of a b.i.t.c.h. He'll cut my nuts off if he finds out I gave you this s.h.i.+t. He was p.i.s.sed that we had to waste manpower on it in the first place."

"What's his story?" I asked. "I heard he was some kind of spook in 'Nam."

"He doesn't talk about it much," Gumby said, "but he won the Silver Star. Speaks fluent Vietnamese. Did some clandestine stuff over there. One of those Green Beret types who can kill you a dozen different ways. Been with the bureau twenty-five years. His next a.s.signment was supposed to be in D.C., but the director chose a woman with nine years on the job, so you can imagine how he feels about being here."

"Yeah, you told me that," I said.

"Then his wife gets cancer."

"Why are you in hot water?" I asked.

"We did a bank robbery case last year," he said. "Now we can't find the gun, so everyone involved is under the microscope."

"Who logged it in?"

"This'll make your day."

"Polk?"

"Yeah." He caught my smirk and smiled to himself.

"Do you need the gun?" I asked.

"No, we've got the guy on video, and he confessed anyhow, but he had a religious conversion in jail, and Allah's telling him to take it to trial. Losing the weapon makes us look bad-and you know how the bureau feels about that." The last remark was a reference to the Big Crow case.

As an a.s.sistant U.S. Attorney I'd been tasked with prosecuting a tribal member charged with molesting a three-year-old girl on the Ute reservation in southern Colorado. Walter Big Crow had confessed, so it seemed like a slam dunk, but he later sought to suppress the confession, claiming two FBI agents had beaten it out of him. I'd heard such claims often and didn't put much stock in them, but he'd been smart enough to have the medical personnel at the jail doc.u.ment his injuries. I started an investigation and learned that one of the agents had bragged about the incident to Mike Polk. Big Crow's confession was thrown out and the case against him dismissed.

Relying on Polk's reluctant testimony, I obtained indictments against the agents on civil rights charges. They were no longer in prison, but the bureau had never forgiven me. As a sad footnote to the whole affair, Big Crow had later raped an eight-year-old girl.

"What are you thinking about?" Gumby asked.

"Nothing," I said. He didn't push it. We continued enjoying our lunch and eventually our waiter presented the check. Gumby reached for his wallet, but I grabbed the check and said, "It's on me." I had picked up $750.00 in cash from Big Matt earlier that morning for my work on the appellate brief.

"Going back to this fractal thing," Gombold said, "are you making any progress?"

"A little," I said. "I've got the name of a mathematician who studied or taught with all three of the victims, but he's disappeared."

"Anything I can do?"

"No, the detective in Walla Walla already ran an NCIC, but there was nothing."

"What if you can't find him? Where do you go from there?"

"d.a.m.ned if I know," I said.

I was in the Boulder Bookstore on the Pearl Street Mall. I'd spent the day waxing my truck and performing ch.o.r.es around the house. Lacking anything better to do on a Sat.u.r.day evening, I'd driven to Boulder.

Pearl Street is an eclectic district and consists of much more than the mall, but the mall is the heart of it. Four blocks long, the outdoor mall is a collection of high-end shops and galleries complemented by an ever changing array of trendy restaurants. Jugglers, musicians, and others with varying degrees of talent performed as people strolled the redbrick walkways. Street vendors hawked everything from felt hats to falafel. The well-kept gardens added color to an already colorful scene and gave the air a pleasant sweetness.

This was my second bookstore of the evening. I was in the philosophy section when I heard her voice. "Mr. Keane?" I turned around. It was Jayne Smyers.

"Hi," I said. I looked like c.r.a.p. I was clad in tan shorts, the Top Cat s.h.i.+rt my brother had given me for my birthday two years ago, and some old running shoes. At least I'd had the good sense to run an electric razor over my face and slap on some Old Spice.

She, on the other hand, looked like a model in an L.L. Bean catalog. Pleated seersucker shorts the color of rose petals. White sleeveless cotton s.h.i.+rt. Brown leather sandals. Pink lipstick.

"Are you a big fan of Top Cat?" she teased.

"He's the indisputable leader of the gang," I replied.

"As I recall," she said, "his intellectual close friends get to call him T.C."

"Provided it's with dignity," I said. We laughed. Two well-educated adults sharing lyrics to a cartoon theme song neither had heard in decades.

"Do you know any others?" she asked.

"All of them."

"I didn't know Top Cat was into philosophy."

"An unfortunate habit I picked up in college."

"Really?"

"I even took graduate cla.s.ses," I said. "Thought I might like to teach, but a year of symbolic logic cured me of that. What brings you here?"

"Oh, I don't know. Just killing time. Looking for a good read."

"Looks like you found some." She had several books under her arm.

"Too many."

"That's the way I am," I said. "They turn out good books faster than I can read them." I didn't know what to say next; I'm not much for small talk.

"What's happening with the case?" she finally asked.

"Pay for your books," I said. "I'll buy you a cup of coffee." We walked downstairs, each scanning the new paperbacks as we neared the cas.h.i.+ers' counter. After she'd made her purchases, we strolled east along the mall.

"I apologize for the way I look," I said. "I did ch.o.r.es all day and didn't plan on running into anyone tonight." Some Eagle Scout. I had forgotten the Boy Scout motto-"Be Prepared."

"You look fine," she lied. "It's refres.h.i.+ng to see a Boulder man who prefers Top Cat to Ralph Lauren." We pa.s.sed a mime and approached Ben & Jerry's.

"How do you feel about ice cream?" I asked.

"I love it," she replied.

She ordered one scoop of lemon sorbet and I ordered two of pistachio. The total came to $6.32, but that was cheaper than Haagen-Dazs.

We found a table, and I related the details of the trip to Lincoln, leaving out anything having to do with Monica and Mindy. I told her I'd sent inquiries concerning Thomas Tobias to the DMV in all fifty states and the District of Columbia, but so far hadn't received any positive responses. "I can't believe what you've accomplished in such a short time," she said.

"It was a good trip," I admitted. "We obtained some useful information."

"I wonder if Stephen knows Professor Hawkins."

"I want to keep Finn out of this," I said. "He may be in touch with his colleagues in Nebraska and I don't want them to know you're my client. The fewer people who know about this, the better I'll feel about your safety and mine."

"I won't say anything," she a.s.sured me. I had finished my ice cream, but she was picking at her sorbet with a plastic spoon. "By the way," she said, "I listened to the tape you gave me. Where did you get it?"

"One of my neighbors is a musician."

"It took me a while to figure out the significance of it. Essentially, the composer relied on fractal patterns to create three-dimensional music, using pitch, duration, and volume as the x, y, and z coordinates."

"That's what I thought," I said. It took her a second to realize I was joking.

After she had spooned up the last of her sorbet, we stepped outside. It was past nine and the sun had set, but the temperature was comfortable. A guitarist played across the way. He looked like a young Frank Zappa, but played mostly Elton John and John Denver. We shared a wooden bench and enjoyed the music. "You know," she said, "on nights like this, I could just sit outside for hours."

"I do that all the time," I said. "Not much else to do in Nederland."

"What made you decide to live there? I thought Nederland was mostly counterculture types."

"It's a long story," I said, "but I'm finding I have a little of that in me."

Our troubadour took a break. We stood, and I placed two dollar bills in his guitar case. "I think I'd like that coffee now," she said. "Or do you need to be getting home?"

"I'd love the company," I said. "My dogs are great companions, but their conversational skills are limited." We continued walking east.

"What kind of dogs?" she asked.

"One's a schipperkee and the other is a cross between a Rhodesian Ridgeback and a Great Dane."

"What's a schipperkee?" she asked.

"Picture a black fox," I said.

We ended up at a coffeehouse several blocks east of the mall. We talked more about the case, and when we'd exhausted that, I encouraged her to tell me about herself. She was grateful for the opportunity, sharing stories of growing up in New Mexico. Her grandparents had owned a ranch, and she had fond memories of the times she'd spent there. As our conversation progressed we discovered neither of us had ever been engaged or married, and this led to a discussion of family.

"Mary Pat told me about your parents," I said. "That must have been difficult."

"It caused me to reevaluate some of my beliefs," she said. "I'm no longer a pacifist." I steered the conversation away from politics by asking if she had any siblings. She said no, then switched topics on me by asking, "Is Pepper your real name or just a nickname?"

"It's my real name," I a.s.sured her. "It's on my birth certificate."

"Is there a story behind that?"

"Not that I know of," I said.

"Well, Pepper Keane, tell me about yourself."

"Not much to tell," I said. "Grew up in Denver. Went to school in Boulder. Joined the service, worked as a prosecutor for a few years, then went into private practice."

"Why did you give that up?"

I thought about it. "The law is a confrontational profession," I finally said. "At first I enjoyed the compet.i.tiveness, but after a while I felt I was in a constant state of battle. I was burned out, so I decided to move to the mountains and start over."

"What about your parents?" she asked.

"They'll probably outlive me."

"What do they do?"

"My dad's retired," I said.

"What did he do?"

"He was a junior high princ.i.p.al and a brigadier general in the Marine Corps Reserve," I said. "He lives in Vegas and listens to Rush Limbaugh every day. Still has one of those 'I'm Not Fonda Hanoi Jane' b.u.mper stickers on his car. Seventy years old and still runs five miles a day. My mother's a nurse in Barrow, Alaska. She's what you might call a free spirit."

"Brothers and sisters?" she asked.

"One brother. He owns a gym in Denver."

"Troy Keane's Gym, that's your brother?"

My brother's picture is on half the buses in Denver. "Yup."

"My G.o.d, does he really look like that?"

"No," I said. "That picture was taken a long time ago." And those muscles were the product of a lot of steroids.

She smiled and finished her umpteenth cup of coffee. It was eleven-thirty, and we decided to call it a night. "Can I walk you to your car?" I asked.

"I walked," she said. "My town house is only a few blocks away."

"I'll walk you home."

"You don't have to," she said.

"It's a nice night, I don't mind." We walked west on Pearl Street, past the Indian restaurants and bicycle shops, into an area occupied primarily by Rastafarian wanna-bes and kids with pierced body parts. The dreadlock crowd was drinking it up and banging away on their drums as they sat on the sidewalk. The yuppies hadn't yet captured that block of Pearl Street. It's lined with Depression-era apartments and older houses converted into rental units.