Piper’s eyes widened. “What did you find out, Fenway?”
Fenway pulled her to the rear of the dais, its back to the rest of the courtroom, and motioned to Piper to pull her chair over too. “I tried to get her to tell me who a couple of the codenames belonged to,” she said, sitting down.
“And she told you?”
“No, but remember you said that the word and number combinations didn’t mean anything?”
“Yes,” Piper said. “Was I wrong?”
“I think so. At least when it comes to our mole.”
“37cuckoo37?”
“That’s the one. I asked Rose about cuckoo37 and she corrected me, with both the 37s. So I think the name means something.”
“Hmm. It could be lots of things. It could be a reference to a year, like 1937, or a month and a day, like March 7th, or it could—jeez, even be a reference to a Las Vegas jackpot—three 7s, you know.”
“What if one of the sheriff’s deputies hit a jackpot on March 7th?”
“All right. What are the pool of suspects?”
“I don’t think there’s anyone who we shouldn’t look at. Probably McVie, since he’s the one who said there was a mole to begin with, and you and me.”
“What about other county employees?”
“The key is, they would have to have access to the jail. If they couldn’t open Dylan Richards’ cell, they aren’t the mole.”
“Gotcha.” Piper paused. “That’s a lot of people who we know, Fenway. Some of whom we really trust.”
Fenway nodded sadly. “It sucks, I know. We’ve got to know, though. Whoever it is, they’re responsible for at least one death that we know of—and probably some others indirectly, especially if they’ve warned the money launderers about what we’re doing, or somehow misdirected our investigation.”
Piper hesitated.
“What is it?”
“Well—I told you, I still have access to the county’s network. They haven’t turned off my account yet.”
Fenway shrugged. “You were directed to access the files by a law enforcement representative. You have plausible deniability. If anything, I’ll get in trouble.”
“But I don’t—” Piper began.
“Seriously, Piper,” Fenway interrupted, “we’re talking about four murders in the last two weeks. If we don’t catch this person, more people will die. And this is the first whiff of a clue we’ve had in months about the mole.”
“The what?”
Fenway and Piper both startled and spun around. The voice belonged to Jennifer Kim, who was peeking over the top of the bench.
Fenway exhaled. “Don’t sneak up on us like that, Jennifer.”
“Sorry, but you were talking to Rose Morgan for a really long time. Did she say anything to you?”
“She didn’t reveal any information about any of the leaders of the money laundering ring, if that’s what you mean. I pressed her pretty hard on some of the codenames—”
“I’m sorry, the codenames?”
Fenway rolled her eyes. “Listen, Jennifer, we have about twenty different avenues of inquiry we’re going down. Yes, there are codenames in the files. I was trying to get the codenames out of Rose, but she wouldn’t budge. But as I was talking to her, I thought of other ways we could try to match the identities up to the codenames.”
“Did she give you those ideas?”
“You mean, is she suddenly on our side now?” Fenway chuckled. “Not a chance. I started looking at the codenames a little bit differently, that’s all. Don’t you dare go easy on her when we finally arrest her. She was far from cooperative.”
Kim nodded. “Okay. And—did you say there was a—”
Fenway shot her a warning look. “Don’t say it,” Fenway hissed. “Whoever killed Professor Cygnus is still in here, and I don’t want them warning anyone or thinking they have to shoot their way out.”
“We’re on the same side, Fenway.”
“It sure seems like we’ve got different ideas about how to solve problems,” Fenway said. “I respect you most of the time, Jennifer, but you can’t go around accusing me of things I haven’t done.”
“I’m just saying that taking the check from your dad looks bad. You know I’m right.”
“But calling me out in front of the whole courtroom wasn’t cool, Jennifer. You know me better than that.”
ada Kim took a step back, then nodded solemnly. “You’re right. It wasn’t cool. I’m sorry. I should have spoken to you privately.”
“Okay,” Fenway said. “And now, if you don’t mind, we still have a murderer to catch.”
Jennifer turned slowly and walked back through the gallery gate.
“I’ve got another idea,” said Piper. “I’ll look at the key card usage, too. Entrances and exits, and I’ll cross-reference any time somebody goes through an area they don’t normally have access to with the days that payments are made. See if anything else sticks out.”
“Yeah, but the guards all have access to the jail—and they’re always in and out of there.”
Piper shrugged. “Maybe it’s a long shot, but at this point, what do we have to lose?”
“All right.” Fenway looked across the courtroom again. Jennifer Kim had taken her seat, and Leda Nedermeyer was stretched out across a few chairs.
Xavier and Amanda were trying to make eye contact.
“Oh,” Fenway said. “You keep working on the personnel files, Piper. Amanda and Xavier want to tell me something.”
She started walking back around the witness stand, and to her relief, Amanda and Xavier walked toward her as well. She sat on the steps next to the witness stand and waited.
“Professor Nedermeyer sobered up before you let her lie down, right?” Fenway asked sharply.
Xavier nodded. “I would have asked you if it was okay, but—well, you looked really busy.”
She nodded. “If she was coherent, the worst of it’s out of your system. Is that what you wanted to tell me?”
“No,” said Amanda.
“Oh. Well, then, what?”
“We thought of something,” Amanda said. Her voice had a note of sadness in it. “I don’t know if it’s helpful.”
Fenway leaned against the wall. She was getting a little lightheaded from the lack of food. She hoped the electrician would be able to get the doors open soon. “Anything at this point might be useful,” she said.
Amanda darted her eyes at Xavier, who nodded. “Well,” Amanda began, “Professor Nedermeyer has been a little bit out of it this semester. I’m a freshman, so I didn’t notice anything was wrong, not really, but she missed a couple of classes in September and then a couple more in October.
“I sat in on a couple of her classes, too,” Xavier said. “And it was odd. Long, awkward pauses, and sometimes she’d just ramble.”
“I forgot about a paper I had until the night before,” Amanda cut in, “and I turned in a pile of hot garbage.”
“It wasn’t that bad—”
“It was a pile of hot garbage,” Amanda said forcefully. “And I got it back with a 92 written on the front and not a single comment on the whole paper. Honestly, I was embarrassed. I was praying to get a c on it, but there I was, with a 92, on a paper I’d been ashamed of handing in.”
Fenway nodded. “Well, sometimes people have a problem with certain prescription medications.”
“That’s it,” Xavier nodded. “lt was such erratic behavior. I know most of the students didn’t care—she was passing all of us, and letting our mistakes slip past her—”
“You two were in the same class?”
Xavier shook his head. “Amanda’s got her for English 1b, and I have her for Comparative Literature 206. But it’s the same in both our classes—she’s distracted, she’s sometimes insulting to her students or to other professors.” Xavier paused. “Look, my aunt was on pills for a long time and it took a while for her to kick it. She had a pill dealer for a few months before my mom found out about it. I know how nasty some of this stuff is.”
“Was your aunt on Divenamine?” Fenway asked.
“Not quite—it was an anxiety medication, but it’s the one they took off the market last year because it was so addictive.” Xavier stared up at the ceiling, blinking hard. “Anyway, my aunt wound up being okay, but she had a lot of people worried. And I don’t think Professor Nedermeyer has the kind of interfering, bossy family members that my aunt did. I just don’t want her to—well, die. I know Divenamine is hard on the body, and if she’s double or triple dosing, it’s just a matter of time before she hurts herself.”
Fenway nodded.
“You said she was okay when you left her?”
“Yes. I walked her around for almost an hour. She wasn’t acting drunk or slurring her words. But she was really tired.”
“That’s to be expected. And she went to sleep?”
“I just woke her up five minutes ago. She was still lucid.”
“Good,” Fenway said. “Well, it seems like we dodged a—uh, we, um, aren’t in hot water with her.”
If either Xavier or Amanda noticed Fenway’s faux pas, neither of them said anything.
“How are the two of you doing?”
“All right, all things considered,” Xavier said. “But we’ve missed a whole day of classes.”
Amanda nodded. “I had a midterm in stats today, too.”
“I think,” Fenway said, “your professors will excuse you today for being on lockdown.” She considered for a moment. “You just wanted to tell me that Professor Nedermeyer’s been acting strange all semester?”
Amanda shifted from foot to foot. “I just—well, when Xavier told me that one of his friends stabbed someone when they were high on the same stuff, I was worried.”
Fenway attempted a smile, but didn’t quite make it. “I appreciate you telling me. I think this required a lot of forethought and planning. Someone who was just experiencing a drug side effect wouldn’t have been able to put everything in place.”
Amanda looked worriedly at Professor Nedermeyer. “I guess.”
“You don’t like Ms. Nedermeyer?”
“I don’t know,” Amanda said. “I guess she’s okay. I just wish she’d leave Professor Cygnus alone.” She sunk down. “Oh—shit. I guess I—I wasn’t thinking.” Her breath caught. “He’s really gone.” She turned and buried her face into Xavier’s chest, and he wrapped his arms around her.
“She’s been strange all semester,” he mumbled, and the two of them turned back to their seats.
Fenway sighed and watched them go. They don’t seem to have any problem telling each other how they feel. And they haven’t been seeing each other as long as Craig and I have.
She walked to her chair and sat down heavily, then she noticed Piper’s face, scrunched up in concentration.
“You’re onto something?”
“I think so, but I can’t believe it’s this obvious,” said Piper. “Officer Todd Young.”
“Officer Young? The one who was assigned to protect me after the car bomb incident?”
Piper nodded.
Fenway remembered waking up from a nightmare the night after the car bomb exploded, feeling like she was choking. And Officer Young had been in the room already. He’d said she was screaming and he’d rushed into protect her—but maybe he’d really been choking her.
Rachel hadn’t trusted Officer Young from the start. Fenway had dismissed Rachel’s mistrust a couple of weeks ago. Now, however, with Piper saying suspecting Young of being the mole, perhaps Rachel had been onto something.
“What makes you think that it’s him?”
“Okay, do you know when his birthday is?”
Fenway shook her head. “It never came up in conversation. I take it he was born on March 7?”
“No—good guess, but no. He was born in Boston on July 26, 1988.” She paused. “Your dad’s a big Red Sox fan, right? Do you remember what happened on that day?”
“Umm,” Fenway said, searching her memory banks. That had been two years after the heartbreak of losing the World Series to the Mets. That had been the year the Oakland A’s had lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers—as if the baseball fans around Estancia would have allowed her to forget it. Kirk Gibson pumping his arm after hitting the game winner off the best closer in baseball, limping around the bases as if he were in his late seventies instead of his late thirties, but giving the Dodgers a World Series win. Her father’s beloved Red Sox had dominated the al East that year. Had they made it to 90 wins? Maybe not. Fenway knew they got swept by the A’s in the division series. It had been after Nathaniel Ferris had married Joanne Stevenson, but before Fenway had come into the picture.
But July 26? Obviously a famous day in Red Sox lore. A long home run? No—certainly not longer than the one Ted Williams hit, where they still had a seat in the outfield seats painted red. What in the world could it be? That would make Officer Todd Young—
Oh.
“That was Jasper Todd’s no-hitter,” Fenway said. A 31-year-old left-handed call-up from Triple-A Pawtucket, Jasper Todd had made five spot starts for the Sox when Oil Can Boyd went on the dl. He’d dominated in every one of his five starts, making the Boston press go crazy. He wasn’t a fireballer, but his curve was filthy and the bottom fell out of his split-fingered fastball. He had a dozen strikeouts in his debut right after the All-Star Game, then a heartbreaking 1-0 loss to the hated Yankees—his only run unearned, by the way—and then… the glorious no-hitter.
It was against the Kansas City Royals, a team not far removed from their own World Series appearance, but at the front end of a decade of bottom-dwelling. Jasper Todd walked two batters in the game, both in the first inning, and Mike Greenwell made a diving catch of a pop fly that caught the wind just right to end the seventh inning.
Fenway had watched the tape of that game with her father a few times, and when Todd Benzinger caught the ball at first base to end the game, it was pandemonium at Fenway Park. Players streaming out of the dugout, Jasper Todd looking like a five-year-old who’d just met his favorite Ninja Turtle, Van Halen’s “Jump” blasting through the stadium speakers. Fenway had to give it to Todd Young’s parents for naming him Todd instead of Jasper.
“And what was Jasper Todd’s uniform number?”
Fenway blinked. She didn’t know, but she could guess. “Thirty-seven.”
“Right you are,” Piper said.
“And where does the cuckoo come from?”
“So Todd Young also has a bunch of pictures of the hip-hop artist Forty Fresh on his Facebook page.”
Fenway shrugged. “Lots of people like Forty Fresh.”
“Right—but Officer Todd is an admin for their fan page.”
“Really? How many admins are there?”
“Well,” Piper said, “about a dozen, but that’s still relatively few in the grand scheme of things.”
“I don’t know what’s so odd about that. I listen to Forty Fresh too. I’ve got their big album from a few years on vinyl, even. Or—I did, up in Seattle.”
Piper cocked her head. “And what’s the name of their debut album from 2007?”
Fenway blinked. “Well, since we’re talking about where cuckoo came from, I’ll guess that it had something to do with that.”
“It’s called If the Cuckoo Doesn’t Sing.”
Fenway nodded. “I can honestly say I’ve never heard of that album.”
“It wasn’t very popular, but hardcore fans would know it. The name of the album is a famous quote by one of the three damiyo who unified Japan in the late sixteenth century.”
“Remind me never to compete against you at trivia night.”
“But,” continued Piper, as if Fenway hadn’t spoken, “that’s not the whole quote. The end of the quote is, kill it.”
“’If the cuckoo doesn’t sing, kill it’?”
“Right.”
“Kind of morbid, don’t you think, Piper?”
“Exactly. So we’ve got a connection to the number thirty-seven and a connection to cuckoos.”
“It’s a connection, all right, but both of those are a stretch.”
“If you’re going for a username that no one else will understand, though,” Piper mused, “wouldn’t you want the references to be obscure?”
Fenway furrowed her brow, but nodded. “And now can you cross-reference payments with Officer Young’s bank accounts, or maybe his purchase history?”
“Even better,” Piper said, “I’m doing what you said earlier and cross-referencing it with card key usage. I think he was on duty the night that Dylan Richards was killed. There are several doors that lead in to that section of the jail, so if Officer Young used his card on one of those doors, chances are pretty good that it was him.”
Fenway paused. “Is there any way you can bring up a map of that section of the jail?”
“Sure. Give me a minute.”
Less than thirty seconds later, Piper had the blueprints of the jail on the screen.
“What doors have card key entry?”
“These four here,” Piper said, pointing to the screen. “From the common room to the main jail hallway, and then there’s a door to the gated yard, and then the side hallway here, and finally the guard station here.”
Fenway cocked her head. “Isn’t there one more?”
Piper frowned. “Not on the blueprints.”
“No, it wouldn’t be on the original blueprints. The administrative annex they built a couple of years ago—that abuts this hallway here, right?”
Piper’s mouth dropped open. “Right, of course it does. I didn’t go over there very often, but yes, there’s a door in the annex with a card key reader on it.”
“Can you get the records from that one too?”
Piper nodded. “It’ll take a little work for me to get the identification number for that reader, but yes, I can do it.”
Fenway nodded. “Besides Todd Young, are there any other suspects?”
Piper shook her head. “I thought of a few things. Cuckoo clocks, obviously. I don’t have any way of checking out whether any of the deputies of county employees own cuckoo clocks—that’s the kind of purchase people often make on vacation anyway. Although it turns out that Jennifer Kim was born in Triburg, Germany.”
“Germany?”
Piper nodded. “Her father was stationed there—an Air Force Base is only a few miles away.”
“And what’s so special about Triburg?”
“Home to the world’s largest cuckoo clock.”
Fenway laughed. “And just how large is the world’s largest—”
“Forty-nine meters high.”
Fenway nodded. “That’s a pretty big cuckoo clock. So she grew up there too?”
“Nope. Moved to a town north of San Francisco—Novato, when she was about eighteen months old.”
Fenway nodded. “I’ve heard of it.”
“Then her parents got divorced, and she moved a little further east. A city called Vallejo.”
“I’ve heard of that one too. Just because I grew up in Seattle doesn’t mean I don’t know these cities, Piper.”
Piper’s cheeks reddened. “Sorry. Lots of people suck at geography. One of my friends in high school didn’t even know where San Diego was.”
“So Jennifer Kim never spent any time with that cuckoo clock growing up.”
“Nope.”
“And when was she born?”
“July.”
Fenway sighed. “Anyone else with the number thirty-seven?”
Piper shook her head. “Not that I’ve found.”
“One thing, though.” Fenway rested her chin on her hand. “Thirty-seven appears twice. We certainly know the meaning of one of them in Officer Young’s life. Shouldn’t there be another?”
Piper scrunched her face up. “Yeah. That bothered me too. I mean, maybe it’s a personal thing that you wouldn’t find anywhere else. Maybe one of his heroes died at age thirty-seven, or maybe his high school had thirty-seven people in his favorite art class or something. Not all of this information is online.”
Fenway nodded. “You’re right. And of course we don’t know for sure that ‘thirty-seven’ and ‘cuckoo’ aren’t relevant for any of the other employees either.”
“Right. But so far Officer Young seems like the one that makes the most sense.”
Fenway sighed. “Just like Rose Morgan makes the most sense to shoot and kill Professor Cygnus.”
“Oh,” Piper said, leaning forward. “You don’t think so. Not anymore.”
“I can’t put my finger on it,” Fenway said. “But no, I don’t think so. Not after I talked with her. She was willing to talk with me a little too much—sort of like she knew that if I really dug into it, I wouldn’t find anything.”
“But you haven’t eliminated her.”
Fenway scratched her nose. “If you mean whether or not I’ve found anything that proves her innocence, no, I haven’t. It’s just a feeling I get.”
“Your feelings aren’t usually wrong, Fenway.”
“That’s not true,” Fenway said. “I’m wrong about half the time. I really thought it was Rose Morgan. Now, whether it was or not, my hunches have finally betrayed me. I don’t know which one it is.”
There was a moan from the gallery, and Fenway got partway out of her seat to see who it was.
Judith Cygnus was standing hunched over in the aisle, holding onto the back of a chair for support.
“She’s white as a sheet,” Piper whispered.
Judith looked up and locked eyes with Fenway for a moment.
A sinking feeling in Fenway’s stomach.
“Judith?” Fenway called. “Are you all right?”
Not even a flicker of recognition.
Her right arm began to twitch.
Fenway leaped over the judge’s bench, knocking over the ceremonial gavel with her right knee. She landed on her feet and bolted through the gallery gate.
She was ten feet from Judith when it happened.
Judith’s eyes rolled into the back of her head.
She sank like a stone to the floor of the aisle.
And started to shake violently.