DIRTY BLOND Read online

  “Yeah, yeah, what do you want?”

  “I want to borrow your bike.”

  “C’mon, Carter.”

  “For a week.”

  “You’d better get me something good.”

  “The Ducati. For a week.”

  “Fine.”

  Hanging up, he muttered, “Robbery.” Turning to Beach, he said, “How do you know Guy LeClare?”

  “I was wondering how long it would be before you asked.”

  “How’d I do?”

  “You showed either a remarkable lack of curiosity or restraint.”

  “It’s not lack of curiosity,” Derek said. “But, um…”

  “He was my partner on the force.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “And he keeps coming back.”

  “Like herpes,” Sandy said.

  “I’m sure he has some redeeming qualities.”

  Beach smirked. “Not obvious ones.”

  “What’s your professional opinion on what we’ve got so far?”

  Beach maneuvered deftly through traffic. “We have a connection and not much else. I can work with it. Do you think the DoD will clear you for the background?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you be able to share it with me?”

  “Good question.”

  Beach glanced at him. “Is this a need-to-know thing, all that crap? Are you going to say, ‘If I told you, I’d have to kill you?’”

  “I’ll tell you what I can. What I can’t, I won’t.”

  “So I’m trying to solve a triple homicide with one hand tied behind my back.”

  He laughed. “Fun, huh?”

  8

  Sandy

  It was pretty much a coin flip when it came to Professor William Stonewell—heads we go and talk to his family, if he had family, tails we visit the university and talk to his colleagues. We decided on the university and headed to Northwestern. Northwestern University is everything a Big 10 university in a major metropolitan area should be—white granite and redbrick buildings, some of them even covered with green ivy, plenty of carefree college students whose yearly allowance exceeded my annual salary, and overeducated academics who mistook themselves for the center of the universe.

  The Northwestern math department was in Lunt Hall on the Evanston campus, and the building looked about as academic as it was possible to look, as if it had been dragged out of Venice by a big crane and dumped into a Chicago suburb. Granite, marble, a pillared cupola or whatever that porch-like thing was called.

  As we walked there, I said to Stillwater, “With a PhD, how come you’re not teaching at a university?”

  “I tried it for a while,” he said. “Well, Annapolis, anyway. I didn’t have the personality for it. You know that expression, I think Kissinger said it, about how the reason the infighting in academia is so bitter is because the stakes are so small? I found terrorists easier to deal with. You can shoot them if they get recalcitrant. Shooting college students and other faculty members is frowned upon in academia.”

  “But you’re Army. Why Annapolis?”

  “Close to home.”

  “Ah.”

  We badgered our way to the Math Chair’s office, a woman who appeared to be about seven hundred years old. Silver hair she wore long, ancient plaid wool suit on a hot summer day, and a permanent frown. Her name was Dr. Inga Weissmann, PhD, and her accent was properly German, although her English was impeccable.

  “Bill died from food poisoning. That crazy man. Horrible tragedy.”

  I said, “I’m sure it was. What was Dr. Stonewell’s particular area of interest?”

  It was at this point that Dr. Weissman began spouting gibberish. There were words I understood, like “navigation” and “GPS” and “lasers,” but there were a lot of other word like “interial measurement units” and “stacks” and “matrices” and “holomorphic functions” and “Sobolev spaces” and “spectral invariants.”

  Stillwater cleared his throat. “In plain English for us mere mortals, Doctor?”

  “Some of what he did was develop algorithms for controlling lasers. They were primarily used, in the real world—“ She said real world the way one might say bleeding hemorrhoid ”—to assist in laser eye surgery.”

  “Are there military applications?” I asked.

  “Undoubtedly, although I don’t believe Bill had any funding from the U.S. government.”

  “Who did fund his work?” Stillwater asked.

  “I believe it was corporate. Let me check.” She tapped away on her computer keyboard and after a moment said, “Oh yes. Maeda Photonics and the Makatashi Corporation.”

  I knew about the Makatashi Building in downtown Chicago—it was not that long ago that its construction totally messed up traffic in the city—but I didn’t know anything in particular about the corporation.

  “Did he have family?” Stillwater asked.

  “Long divorced,” Weissmann said. “No children.”

  “Could we see his office?” I asked.

  “Of course.” Weissman opened a desk drawer and drew out a ring of keys. Striding hurriedly out of her office and down the hallway, she stopped at a door at the end and unlocked it.

  Across the hallway was an open office. A short young Asian woman was working on a laptop computer and drinking Monster from the can. She peered up at us in surprise, as if she’d never seen human beings this far down the building.

  “Do you know if Dr. Stonewell had any visitors in the few days before he died?” Stillwater asked.

  Weissmann shook her head. “No, not that I remember.”

  The woman across the hall said, “A couple students.”

  Almost apologetically, Weissmann said, “Bill taught an undergraduate course in differential equations.”

  Stillwater turned to the woman. “Did you recognize them?”

  “Sure. One of them was Won Fong Lee. I’ve had her in a couple of my classes. The other one I didn’t recognize. I thought he might be a graduate student, although I hadn’t seen him before. He was a little older.”

  I got a little tingling sensation from that and I suspect Stillwater did, too. He said, “How old, do you think?”

  “Oh, maybe late twenties, early thirties.”

  “Was he white, black, Asian?”

  “Oh. Hmmm. Might have been Asian. I don’t really remember.”

  Stillwater smiled at her. “Can I ask you a few questions?”

  The professor smiled and I thought briefly of my own reaction to Rick Reilly.

  “Of course,” she said.

  “I’ll get this,” he said, and disappeared into her office. I followed Weissmann into Stonewell’s office and blinked. There was a desk with a large monitor on it, but there didn’t seem to be a computer attached to it. It wasn’t one of those all-in-one computers either. There were books on a shelf and a filing cabinet. I stepped over to the filing cabinet and pulled it open. It was empty.

  “That’s odd,” Dr. Weissmann said. “He probably had his laptop with him. He died at the hospital, you know. But I know the computer was here after we were notified by the hospital and the police department. I checked.”

  She turned back to me. “This isn’t a coincidence, is it?”

  What are the odds? I bet she could tell me.

  “No, Doctor. I’m sure it isn’t.”

  9

  Derek

  Derek flashed his most charming smile at the math professor. He thought she was kind of cute. In her thirties, Asian, although he couldn’t pin down exactly what part of the world. Her name was Lisa Vhong.

  “What’s with this guy?” she asked him. “And who are you again?”

  He showed her his ID and introduced himself. “And the woman over there is Lieutenant Sandy Beach, with the CPD.”

  Vhong�
��s eyes grew wide. “I heard of her. She’s like a hero.”

  “That’s what I hear. Anyway, did Dr. Stonewell have many visitors?”

  “No. Not many students come down to his office. He only teaches the one class and works with a couple graduate students.”

  “So this guy could be a graduate student?”

  “I’d know him if he was a grad student in the math department here. He could be a prospective student, or someone from one of Bill’s consulting gigs.”

  “He do a lot of that?”

  “Just the two that I know about. Maeda Photonics and Makatashi.”

  “What’s he do for them?”

  “Laser targeting algorithms.”

  “Like for laser-guided missiles?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My understanding is that the military has primarily moved to GPS-guided missiles.”

  “This would be a combination of GPS and laser guidance. GPS is great, but this would create even more specificity. You know, not just smart bombs you can drop on the right car, I guess, but that will fly in the window and steer the car to the side of the road before blowing up.”

  He grinned. “Okay. So next-gen laser guidance. I guess I don’t really understand exactly what he did, though.”

  “You know the space shuttle?”

  Where the hell was she going with that? “Yeah, of course.”

  “You know, when it docks with the International Space Station? I mean, you’ve got this delicate thing flying through space at 20,000 miles per hour and you need to jam a twenty-ton spacecraft into a docking hole without crashing. So back in the ‘80s somebody at NASA developed a laser-guidance system to help do that.”

  “Okay, I’m with you so far.”

  “Then somebody realized that using lasers to pinpoint the movements of objects to other moving objects could be applied to laser eye surgery.”

  Derek thought about that. “And so missiles and bombs targeted to moving objects.”

  “Or whatever you want.”

  “So Dr. Stonehill was involved in all the math behind that.”

  “Exactly.” She smiled as if the slightly dull student had just had a spectacular breakthrough. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why are you investigating? Bill died because he ate dinner at the wrong place and the Chemist killed him. Right?”

  “We don’t think so.”

  Lisa’s eyes grew wide. “You mean, it wasn’t an accident?”

  “No.”

  “A copycat?”

  “It seems more specific than that. There appear to be multiple victims and they seem to be related.”

  “Oh my God! Why would someone want to kill a mathematician?”

  “I don’t really know. But it seems to be related to his work with Maeda Photonics. Before we talk about that, though, let’s talk about the person you saw talking to him. What day was that?”

  She frowned, eyes rolling back as she stared at the ceiling. “Must have been last Wednesday.”

  “What time of day?”

  “Late afternoon. Around this same time. Because I was here.” She giggled. “I mean, I teach a couple classes in the morning, then I work out and have lunch, then I usually have a couple committee meetings after lunch, then I’m in my office until I leave.”

  “So Wednesday three o’clock to six?”

  “Probably closer to four.”

  “Okay. Male.”

  “Yes.”

  “And your door was open?”

  “My door is almost always open.” She put a little sexual spin on how she said it. When he glanced at her, she met his gaze straight on. Yeah, intentional, he thought.

  He smiled back at her. “Describe him.”

  “Oh, I didn’t really get a good look at him.”

  “Male.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Tall?”

  She frowned. “Don’t really know.”

  “Compared to me?” Derek stood six feet even.

  “Maybe. Although I’m thinking a little bit shorter.”

  “But not short.”

  “No. Sort of average. Say five-nine or five-ten.”

  “What was his build like?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “Fat?”

  “No.”

  “Skinny?”

  “No. Sort of wiry. Strong. Like you, but not as tall.” Her face tinted a little bit. “Nice ass.”

  “His or mine,” he said.

  “Oh.” She giggled again. “Uh, his. And yours.”

  “Thanks. And you said he was Asian.”

  She frowned. “Maybe.”

  “What makes you think he was Asian?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Hair color?”

  “Dark. Really dark. So black.”

  “Long?”

  She shook her head. “No. Short. Straight. Sort of business-like. Parted. Shorter than yours. Yours is a sort of dirty blond color.”

  “It gets lighter during the summer, especially if I’m out running or kayaking. What was he wearing?”

  She hesitated.

  “He had a nice ass,” Derek commented.

  “Oh. He wore cargo pants. Black. Maybe that’s why I thought he was a student. He wore black cargo pants, black running shoes, and black T-shirt. And a black jacket. All in black.”

  “What kind of jacket?” He made a note to check the weather last Wednesday. He thought it had been summer warm, probably in the upper 70s, lower 80s.

  “Leather jacket.”

  “Like a biker jacket?”

  “No, dressier than that.”

  “How old?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you were sure he wasn’t an undergrad.”

  “Well, he could have been. We get older students who are undergrads, but I just meant that he seemed older.”

  “Why?”

  She frowned. “Just something about his attitude, I think. And his face.”

  “Gray in his hair?”

  “No,” she said slowly. “I don’t think so. Despite the all black, there was something about him that made him seem, oh, in his thirties maybe. Maybe even late thirties.”

  “As old as me?”

  She looked at him carefully. “How old are you?”

  “I’ll never tell.”

  She giggled again. “No. Not as old as you. You look, uh, I don’t know. Not young, exactly, but you’re really fit.” She flushed slightly as she said it.

  Derek broke out his laptop, hooked into the ‘net and brought up a Homeland Security intranet application, a photographic Identi-Kit program. He opened it and showed her what he was doing.

  “Cool. I’ve played with a couple of those but they never really look like the people I’m trying to draw.”

  “Well, this one is a little more professional.” He started with what she had told him, then showed her.

  “His face is shaped differently. More … rectangular. Pointed chin. Round cheekbones.”

  He adjusted, asking her questions, filling in the details. She studied the image. “That’s pretty close. But … he had a small scar on his neck. Right about here.” She touched the computer screen on what would be the man’s left side, just along the jaw line.

  “How long?”

  “Maybe two inches.”

  “Like a surgical scar?”

  “Not sure. It was white. I didn’t really remember it until we were putting the image together.”

  They looked at the image for a second. He asked her a few more questions and they made a few more adjustments. “Yes, I think that’s him. Is he Bill’s killer?”

  “I have no idea. At the moment it’s just some guy who talked to him a couple days before he died. Could be totally unrelated.”

  Sandy
Beach appeared at the door. “What’ve you got?”

  Derek showed her the image and explained. “You?”

  “Somebody cleaned out his office. No computer. No files.”

  “What?” Lisa gasped. “What about his laptop? Or his backup hard drive?”

  Beach shook her head. “Nothing. Did he use a cloud backup?”

  “No. He didn’t trust their security. That’s why he had a huge backup. It was portable. One of those ones covered in orange rubber? He’d take it with him.”

  “We need to check his house.”

  “Apartment,” Lisa said. “He has an apartment over by Wrigley Field. He’s actually a couple blocks over from where I live.”

  “Orville will have the address,” Sandy said. “Are you finished here?”

  “A couple more questions,” Derek said.

  “I’ll meet you at the car. I’ve got a couple calls to make.”

  After she left, Derek said, “What can you tell me about Bill’s work? I don’t really understand it.”

  She smiled at him. “How about at dinner?”

  “You’re asking me out to dinner?”

  “Sure. What do you like?”

  Raising his eyebrows, he said, “Just about everything.”

  10

  Sandy

  Stillwater was only a minute or two behind me. I had just enough time to call Orv and check in. He had home addresses and tax information on our three victims and asked how I was doing with Stillwater.

  “He’s pretty good. Comes at things from strange angles sometimes and he doesn’t always behave the way I’d expect him to. He’s unpredictable, but he seems pretty good.”

  “Yeah, well,” Orv said, “I looked him up. Be careful, Sandy. He seems like a good guy, but he’s been before some locked-door congressional hearings and there are some hints that a fair number of people in law enforcement think he should be doing time.”

  “Sounds ominous.”

  “Frankly, the other stuff makes me think he’s some kind of hero, but seems like there’s a lot of dead bodies in his wake, you know what I mean?”

  Been there, done that. Orville and I had all too many ghosts visiting us in our nightmares. “I’ll watch my back. Email me the files. And thanks, Orv.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  I watched Stillwater striding over to the car. I liked the way he moved. A lot. Athletic, confident, sort of aggressive.