CHAPTER EIGHT

 

Loren bounced up the steps of the City-County Building three at a time. Splotches of dried blood marred the white tile just inside the door. Loren moved past the mess and found Cipriano in his office. The assistant chief was listening to a pre-football sports program on the radio and doing paperwork. A book about the New Mexico Water War lay open, facedown, by his hand. He looked up at Loren’s knock.

“What’s up, pachuco?”

“Nothing new, jefe,” he said. “Begley’s taking the cargo of drugs to Albuquerque. Chip Lone from the mortuary is taking the body to the Albuquerque medical investigator’s office at the same time.”

“Good,” Loren said. “Anything from Jernigan or Patience?”

“Nope.”

“Any idea why Patience is taking such an interest?”

Cipriano shrugged. “Because he’s an asshole, jefe.” He looked up and grinned. “And he’s not even a half-competent asshole. They’ve found cattle wandering around their security areas down there.”

“Cattle at ATL?” Loren was delighted by the thought. “Cattle got past those cameras and through alarmed chain link fences?”

“That’s what Begley said. He goes shooting with one of their security guys, and the guy told him they run across cows every so often. They’re so embarrassed the cows got through security that they just shoot them and bury them right there on the facility.”

“Waste of good beef.”

“That’s what I thought. Oh.” Cipriano looked surprised. “I forgot something. That-weasel-the-mayor wants you to call him.”

Loren felt his good mood start to slide away. “What did he want?” he asked.

“Guess.”

Loren sighed and went to his office to call the mayor. He used the speed dial for the mayor’s mobile phone and caught him just as he was setting off for the town’s nine-hole golf course.

”I wanted to talk about that body you found,” Trujillo said.

“That body more or less found me, Ed.”

“Any idea who the guy was?”

“Not yet.”

“Or who did it?”

Loren cleared his throat. “Same answer.”

“Because the city can’t afford a big investigation. The way I look at it, if no one knows who the body was, nobody’s going to get upset if we don’t go out of our way—”

“He looked like a local to me. There are a few of the ten thousand people in this county that I don’t know by sight. And that body didn’t drive very far, Ed. Someone in this county, maybe even in town, pulled the trigger.”

Trujillo’s voice demonstrated an exaggerated patience. “What about the last body, Loren?”

A cold wave of guilt poured like ice water down Loren’s back. “That was different,” he said.

“I don’t see how.”

Two years ago the county cops had found a dead man in the trunk of a car. He’d been killed by someone who had emptied a .45 automatic into the trunk. He’d been dead a week, and a television news helicopter hovering over the scene blew most of the evidence away in the propwash. After that Shorty lost the rest of the evidence, including the murder weapon, just in the act of getting it from the crime scene to his office. Probably one of his men ripped the gun off for a souvenir. There was no ID on the body and the car had been stolen in Boston fourteen months earlier, so no leads there. The crime was most likely drug-related and probably had nothing to do with anyone in the county.

“You and Shorty ruled that one suicide,” the mayor said.

Loren cleared his throat again. Guilt bounced around in his skull like a rocketing rubber ball.

“The coroner ruled it suicide,” he said. “And there’s a difference, Ed.”

“I don’t see any essential difference. A stranger killed in a stolen car.”

“The difference is that the guy didn’t die of gunshot wounds right in police headquarters, Ed. It’s kind of hard for us to ignore it under the circumstances.”

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate the efforts of your department, Loren. Don’t misunderstand me there.”

Loren frowned at his BUY AMERICAN sign. “I understand you perfectly well, Ed,” he said.

“But we’ve got to store the drugs in Albuquerque, and we’ve got a bill from the mortuary—”

“You’d get that in any case, Ed. Whether we investigate or not.”

“—plus we have to bear the costs of transporting your body to Albuquerque for an autopsy, and maybe burying it when it gets there.”

“If we find any next of kin, that last will be their problem.”

“If they’re solvent. I have no confidence in that.”

“Ed, there ain’t much we can do about any of these things. It’s our job to do all this.”

Trujillo paused for a moment. “Could you just keep the overtime to a reasonable amount?”

Loren smiled. “I’ll do my best, Ed,” he said.

He called the Hiawatha and asked for Amardas Singh. The sleepy voice that answered the phone had an accent far more Californian than Pakistani; Singh said he would be happy to talk to the officers if he could just take a shower first.

Before he left, Loren made a point of charging the battery in the recorder.

The Hiawatha was a U-shaped two-story motel that, like the Geronimo bar, featured a giant feathered Indian of green and red neon. Cipriano drove under the waving, flickering tomahawk and into the parking lot. He pulled up next to an Infiniti sedan that featured a bumper sticker reading HEISENBERG SLEPT HERE OR SOMEWHERE ELSE NEARBY.

More physicist humor, apparently.

Loren got out of the passenger seat and looked for a long moment at the neon Indian.

“Why Hiawatha?” he wondered suddenly. “Didn’t Hiawatha live in Minnesota or something? Why not an Indian from around here?”

Cipriano knocked on Singh’s door without giving the neon Indian a glance. “Tourists wouldn’t understand if this place was named after Mangas Coloradas,” he said.

“I guess.”

“Maybe they should name it after Heisenberg. Whoever he was.”

Loren ambled to the door just as it opened and stared at the room’s inhabitant in surprise.

Like the man Loren had seen the night before, this man was big and dark-complected; but unlike the turbaned figure Loren remembered, this character had a wiry beard reaching almost to his navel and long pepper-and-salt hair that hung almost as far. Give him a bed of nails and a robe instead of his T-shirt, jeans, and moccasins, and he could have passed for a guru on his way to pick up some converts among the rich and fashionable people who had, in recent decades, occupied Santa Fe in much the same fashion, and with more or less the same attitude, that the U.S. Cavalry had once occupied hostile Indian country.

“Hello,” the man said. “I am Amardas Singh. Please come in, sirs.”

Despite the somewhat formal language, this was still the Californian voice Loren had heard on the phone. The room smelled of fresh coffee. Loren and Cipriano took the two plastic seats available. “Would you like some French roast?” Singh said. “I just made some.”

Both accepted. Singh poured from a portable plastic coffeemaker that he had obviously brought with him. Loren noticed, as Singh handed him his cup, that the man had a steel bracelet on his wrist. Singh sat down on a print bedspread with a fake Navajo design. He smoothed the pattern and looked at it with a smile.

“I remember this pattern from Pakistan,” he said. “Odd to see it here in the western U.S.”

Loren looked at it. “Looks Navajo to me,” he said.

Singh shrugged. The gesture looked odd in a bushy-haired exotic. “I suppose the pattern could have been developed independently.” He turned back to Loren. “Dr. Jernigan said you would call.”

“I suppose he told you why.”

“He said you would wish me to verify his movements.”

“If you could.” Loren sipped the coffee. It had been made with the hard tap water and tasted dreadful. Waste of good beans.

“Do you mind if we record this?” he asked.

“Please go ahead, sir.”

“Could you give your full name for the record?” Starting the recorder.

“Amardas N.M.I. Singh.”

Amusement trickled through Loren. N.M.I.: no middle initial. Singh must have got used to official interviews during his years of dealing with Immigration.

Loren spoke into the recorder. “This is an interview with Amardas N.M.I. Singh, commencing at ten-forty A.M. Interviewing officers are Loren Hawn and Cipriano Dominguez.” He looked up at Singh. “Birthplace?”

“New Delhi, India.”

Loren frowned. “Someone told me you were Pakistani.”

“I was born in India. My grandparents were killed by Hindus in a riot when I was three, and my surviving family fled to Rawalpindi, in Pakistan.”

The words were matter-of-fact, said with a slight smile. Loren tried to picture Atocha divided along those kinds of bitter ethnic lines, with Apostles battling the LDS over their varying interpretations of early Mormon history, and armed Knights of Columbus cruising the plaza armed with shotguns, blasting Baptist heretics with iron pellets…

Atocha wasn’t as much as part of the Third World as Jerry liked to think.

“You’re a U.S. citizen now?”

“For seven years, yes.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-nine, sir.”

Loren sipped more of the horrible coffee. It tasted almost as bad as Coover’s at the Sunshine.

“And you are employed where?”

“I’m on the faculty at Caltech, but I’m sort of on loan to New Mexico Tech in Socorro.”

Loren blinked. “Why is that?”

“New Mexico Tech has this lightning lab up on a mountain— Langmuir?” Singh smiled hopefully, waited for a reaction from Loren, and didn’t get it. He shrugged. “Anyway, there’s a lot of hot science going on right now relating to the kind of plasmas that can be formed by lightning, so I thought I’d get in on that.”

Loren decided to stick to the facts. “Could you tell us what you remember of your movements?”

Singh cleared his throat. “I drove here from Socorro on Thursday night. I arrived around ten and called Dr. Dielh from the motel to let him know I was here. Dr. Jernigan picked me up the next morning and took me to the lab.”

“In his BMW?”

“Yes. License plate DELTA E.”

“You remember that?”

A modest smile. “It’s my job to keep track of Delta E.”

Whatever that meant. “Okay,” Loren said. “Do you remember the time?”

“Ten o’clock, I think.”

“And then?”

“We went to the labs. The experiment was supposed to start at ten-thirty, but there were computer delays, and the run started after noon.”

“And the nature of the experiment?”

Singh paused for a moment. “How much about high-energy particle interactions do you know, sir?”

“Assume,” smiling, “that I’m totally ignorant.”

“Very well, sir.” Singh pushed back his long hair with his hand, the one with the bracelet. “The new room-temperature superconductors have allowed us to see particle interactions at a higher energy level than before. But there has been a problem. During some interactions, at apparently random moments, the level of energy just seems to drop away, then resume. It’s really remarkable. If you put it on a graph, the energy dives clean off the scale in just a tiny fraction of a second.” One hand sketched a drooping line in the air. “Everything gets cooled down, and all the experimenters get really pis—get upset.”

Loren took another sip. At least the awfulness of the coffee would keep him from falling asleep.

“There have been several theories concerning what may be occurring,” Singh said. He seemed to have gone into a reflexive teaching mode: his tone was different, as if he were lecturing to students. “The most obvious thought was that the instrumentation was simply wrong— we are dealing, after all, with very tiny particles that exist for only a very tiny amount of time. The energy drops might conceivably lie within the span of experimental error. And Tim Jernigan suggested it might be a result of some unknown form of flux creep. But all of that was ruled out.” Singh halted his lecture for a moment, then offered a self-conscious smile. He’d realized he was lecturing. “Have patience, guys. This won’t take long.” The voice, and vocabulary, had returned to southern California.

“That’s okay,” Loren said. “Take all the time you need.” Even if he didn’t quite understand any of this, there might be something here he could trip Jernigan with.

“I had a theory as to what was happening. The run here was to test that theory.”

“That’s all?”

“It occurred to me that the energy might be filling up interstices in the Penrose tiling of the ceramic superconductors.”

Loren didn’t have any idea what had just been said. There was a long moment while he tried to work out what to ask next.

“So does it?” he said finally.

“Guess not, man,” Singh said. “The idea behind our experiment was to run the accelerator for enough hours, and at a high enough energy rate, so that the interstices would be filled and the power dropouts would not continue. Either my theory wasn’t correct or the interstices can pack an awful lot of particles.”

“So you were invited to watch the experiment because it was your theory that they were testing?”

“Yes. That and the fact that I played a part on the design team that built the superconductors used here on the accelerator facility.”

“It’s your design?” Surprised.

“Mine and a few hundred other people, yeah.”

Loren noticed that the formal vocabulary had eased, and that the “sirs” had vanished completely. Singh had forgotten he was talking to the authorities, and that was good— he’d feel a lot more inclined to talk freely.

“In that case,” Loren said, “why aren’t you working for ATL?”

“Ah.” Singh smiled again. “Too much of the work here is classified. I can’t get a security clearance.”

“Why not? You’re a citizen now.”

“I’m a Sikh!” Singh’s voice was almost jolly. “My grandparents were killed solely because they were Sikhs. As a consequence of this I have never ceased to work for the establishment of a Sikh homeland in the Punjab. My political activities put me at odds with the policies of the U.S. government, and the FBI’s been all over my ass for years, and I couldn’t get a clearance.”

Huh, Loren thought. Maybe he is a terrorist.

Cipriano, working through the information, reached a conclusion before Loren.

“You mean the experiment wasn’t classified?” he asked.

Singh shook his head. “No. There are loads of experiments done at ATL that have no national security application.”

Cipriano and Loren looked at each other, then at Singh. “Do you have any idea,” Loren said, “why ATL is trying to invoke national security in this?”

Singh shrugged. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve no idea. Maybe it’s a bureaucratic matter. Maybe the head of security wants this to become his investigation.”

Right on the money, Loren thought. Singh didn’t know William Patience but he sure knew the type. Maybe there were bureaucratic claim-jumpers in the sciences as well.

Loren tried to think of any further questions in this line, but couldn’t come across any. “You were at ATL how long?”

“We were in the control room or at the buffet till early the next morning. Three or four o’clock, I think.”

“ ‘We.’ That’s you, Jernigan, and Dielh?”

“And about fifty other guys, yeah. When a major experiment like that goes down, there are a lot of people who want to be a part of it— hook up their photon detectors and go crazy with the data. The list of authors on some of the papers is longer than the contents.”

“What then?”

“Dr. Jernigan took me home.”

“You planned to see him the next day? That would be yesterday?”

“Yes. We were going to repeat the experiment, but Dielh called it off. He said it would be more useful to reduce the data from the first experiment before beginning another.” Singh fell silent for a moment. “What an asshole!” he added cheerfully.

Loren looked at Cipriano. Jernigan hadn’t mentioned this. “When did this happen?” he asked.

“Yesterday morning. Perhaps ten o’clock. He said we would get together in the afternoon to go over the printouts from the first run.”

Singh looked a bit deflated. Loren looked at him. “How’d you feel about that?”

“I wanted to do the experiment at least twice. It decreases the chance of experimental error and makes the conclusions more certain.”

“Did you argue against the decision?”

“Yes. Dr. Dielh said we would schedule the second experiment for later, but I didn’t relish another drive all the way from Socorro in order to do something I could have done this weekend.”

“And then what happened?”

Singh looked annoyed. “I got another call a couple hours later that it would take some time to assemble the data, and I wouldn’t be able to see any of it till evening.”

“And you thought?”

“I started getting tired of these people pissing around. And then when I was walking home from dinner I saw Dr. Jernigan’s car crashed in front of the courthouse, and I figured there’d be more delay.”

Loren was surprised. “I don’t remember seeing you in the crowd.”

Smiling. “I was in my turban.”

“I did see someone in a turban, but he wasn’t you. Are there Indian tourists in town? Did you see the other guy?”

Singh laughed. “I’m afraid that was me, sir. Normally I braid my hair and beard and put it up in the turban.”

“Oh.”

“I washed my hair this morning.” He fluffed out his beard with both hands. “It was getting a little gamy.”

Cipriano cleared his throat loudly. Loren looked at him, then back at Singh.

“I suppose we should get this back on track,” he said. “When did you see Dr. Jernigan?”

“Eight or nine o’clock. He brought the data.”

“And Dr. Dielh?”

“I never saw him after we concluded the experiment.”

“Really?” Loren looked at him in surprise. “Did he ever say why?”

“He called yesterday afternoon, just before I went to dinner, to say that he’d been called to Washington on some kind of classified job. He took the ATL plane to Albuquerque.”

There was a long moment of silence. “Funny,” Loren said.

Singh smiled ruefully. “A little odd, yeah. But then Dielh’s a world-class jerk, anyway.”

Loren was amused. He’d never thought scientists spoke of each other in this way.

“What did Dr. Jernigan tell you?”

“He said that his car had been stolen, that the man who stole it was shot— not by him— and that he hoped I’d confirm his story.”

“He didn’t tell you what story he wanted you to confirm?”

A tight smile. “No. I’ve told you exactly what happened.”

“What’s your impression of Dr. Jernigan?”

Singh grinned. “He’s a brilliant man in his field. One of the best. But he lives in the microatomic world all the time— I envy his brilliance, but not his life outside the lab.”

“Ever known him to be violent?”

Singh laughed out loud. “I doubt he would know how!”

“Do you know if he drinks? Does drugs?”

“I’ve never seen him take anything stronger than soda pop. He’s a Dr. Pepper man.”

“Do you know his wife? Family?”

“Slightly.”

“Do you think his wife would have an affair?”

Singh’s eyes widened. “Wow. I wouldn’t know. I never heard anything.”

“Do drugs? Drink to excess? Become violent?”

Singh shook his head. “Based only on a very brief acquaintance, my impression of Sondra Jernigan is that she’s someone who wanted nothing more than to be a housewife and raise children. Dr. Jernigan was the safest man she could find to marry. He’ll never run around on her, and he’ll bring in a big paycheck every two weeks.”

“How about Dr. Dielh?”

Singh cleared his throat. “I know Joe somewhat better. I think he’s probably a better politician than a scientist.”

Loren thought about that one. “Political how?” he said.

“Not national politics. Office and science politics. He’s very good at explaining science to bureaucrats and writing grant proposals, that sort of thing. And if you can be useful to him, he courts you. Pays you lots of compliments, lots of attention, goes out of his way to be nice to you.” He shrugged. “That’s why Tim’s here. Dielh went out of his way to get him. And that’s why I’m here, I guess. Joe thinks it’s useful to have me coauthoring his papers.”

“Have you ever known him to be violent?”

“Not really, no.”

“What d’you mean not really?”

“He’s never hit anyone that I know of. But he can be abrasive. Opinionated. Especially when one of his projects is threatened.”

“Does he do drugs? Drink to excess?”

“He drinks the odd social martini. I’ve never seen him drunk.”

“Does he have a family?”

“He’s divorced. No children. I think the wife lives in San Diego.”

“Does he have a girlfriend?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me. But I don’t know.”

“Did you meet William Patience last night?”

“I don’t . . . think so. What was the name again?”

“He’s the head of ATL Security. He was driving Dr. Jernigan last night.”

“Oh.” Singh shook his head. “No, he didn’t come in. Dr. Jernigan said when he left that he was going to take the maglev train back home.”

“What time was that?”

“About three this morning. We went over the results as thoroughly as we could.”

“Did he leave the data here?”

“It’s on the table next to you.” Loren looked in surprise at a stack of wide computer printout. Cipriano hurriedly removed his coffee cup from the pile. Loren flipped through it, saw nothing but meaningless figures and graphs.

“What does it all mean?”

Singh gave a shake of his head. “It means I’d like to do another run before I publish.”

Loren looked at Cipriano and saw Cipriano looking back with the same questioning expression. Nothing left. Loren turned back to Singh.

“Last question. There’s been a lot of changing of plans going on with your colleagues. Not to mention a body turning up in Dr. Jernigan’s car. Do you have any idea what happened?”

Singh shrugged. “The confusion must have been caused by something coming up on one of ATL’s other projects,” he suggested. “The accelerator run couldn’t have been the cause of any of this— it’s a big experiment, but it’s nothing out of the ordinary. And as for the body, I have no idea.”

Loren reached out for the disk recorder. “This is Loren Hawn, ending the recording at”— looking at the watch— “eleven-seventeen A.M.” He turned off the recorder and turned to Singh. “Thank you,” he said. “And thanks for the coffee.”

“You’re welcome.” Singh started to rise from his seat, then dropped back. “I have a question, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure.”

“Somebody at the labs told me that there was a UFO landing field outside town. How do I get to it?”

Loren told him.

“And a flying saucer supposedly landed there?”

Loren and Cipriano grinned at each other. “Depends on who you talk to,” Cipriano said.

Loren looked at Singh. “See, back in ’99 there were all these millennial movements?” Singh nodded. “One of these guys, this guy named Westinghouse, had a vision, or whatever—”

“A saucer landed and told him,” Cipriano said.

“Yeah. And the mother ship was supposed to land here, in New Mexico, on January 1, 2000, and pick up all the good people, and teach them how to deal with the chaos that would follow when this other group of bad aliens started bombarding Earth with evil rays.”

“Zeta rays,” said Cipriano.

“Westinghouse— except he changed his name to Millennium 2000— was ordered to build a field for the ship. So he rented some land from one of our local ranchers—”

“Luis Figueracion,” said Cipriano.

“Yeah, Luis. So Millennium’s followers built this concrete pentagram out there, so the saucer would know where to land. And they sold tickets for six thousand dollars apiece for rides on the mother ship.”

“And suits!” Cipriano added. “Don’t forget the suits!”

“Yeah. He also sold flying saucer suits— he called them ascension robes— for five hundred bucks each. So that the mother ship would know who to pick up first. It turned out they were white gowns, like kids wear for graduation.”

“This is fascinating,” said Singh.

“He had to fence off the field to keep gate-crashers from getting a free ride on the saucer. And Cipriano and me had to help with crowd control, because there were a lot of curious and hecklers and good ole boys with a skinful showing up . . .”

“Cops work on New Year’s Eve, anyway,” Cipriano said, “so we’re used to it.”

Singh leaned forward. “What happened? I assume the mother ship didn’t arrive.”

Loren grinned. “That was the great part. He got all his followers to start chanting, mantras or whatever they’re called. After he got all the chanting going for long enough, he interrupted and told everyone that the mother ship had showed up and had taken everyone away.”

Singh seemed confused. “But how—?”

“He said that people who are taken off for flying saucer rides usually have amnesia afterward, and that all the saucer literature proves it, and that they’d all remember their ride eventually. And he said that the mother ship would be back the next year for another ride, and they should all tell their friends.”

“And then he got the hell out of Dodge with his money,” Cipriano said, grinning with his long yellow teeth.

“The thing was,” Loren said, “he was back the next year, with a bunch of the same people in robes. Only a few hundred this time. The ones who said they could remember the saucer ride.”

“But he never did get back for the third year,” Cipriano said. “I think there were a bunch of lawsuits.”

“It’s classic,” said Singh.

Loren looked at him. “Why are you interested?”

Singh gave an elaborate shrug. “I come from India, which is famous for all the attention it pays to religion. But I’ve never seen so many religions as here in the States, or such a wide variety of believers. Southern California, then New Mexico— is the whole rest of the country like this?”

Loren and Cipriano looked at each other. “We wouldn’t know,” Loren said.

“And all the new religions claim to be scientific. And they wouldn’t know science if it bit them. But science has become religion, at least for the masses— they don’t know the difference between science and magic. UFOs and the moon rockets are like the same thing to them.” He shrugged again. “I’m interested, anyway. I’ll probably take a look at the place on my way out of town.”

Loren rose from his chair. “Thanks very much.”

“I hope I could be of some help.”

Loren and Cipriano blinked in the bright sun as they stepped out of the motel. “At least he talked to us,” Loren said.

Cipriano’s voice was disgusted. “Only because he didn’t know a fucking thing, jefe.”

“Yeah.”

“Dielh’s flown off to Washington. I don’t know if I wanna believe that was coincidence.”

Loren shook his head. “Maybe he was just reporting the fact that Jernigan got involved in something that resulted in a dead body. I still think it was his family that started this— wife, kids, somebody.”

“Yeah. But Patience knows something he’s not telling us.”

“That’s my impression.”

“So what are we gonna do?”

The neon Indian waved its tomahawk back and forth. Sword and arm of the Lord, Loren thought. He walked to the car and got in the passenger seat.

“Let’s give Jernigan his car back,” he said.

*

Jernigan stood on his driveway and stared at his BMW. He wore blue jeans, sandals, and a T-shirt with an MIT logo, and his expression suggested he strongly wished he or the car were elsewhere. The floor and driver’s seat were still covered with dried blood, the shattered back window had crashed into the back seat on the drive to Vista Linda, and the bullet scars on the car’s flank were even more obvious in daylight.

“I thought you’d clean it up,” Jernigan said. His eyes blinked nonstop behind thick lenses.

“That’s not our job,” Loren said. “Maybe your insurance will cover it.”

The battered auto stood in violent contrast to Vista Linda and its coddled ambience. Immaculate green lawns, difficult and very expensive to maintain in New Mexico, lay like sheets of green velvet before ranch-style tract homes. The hard local water, brought up from the ground at great cost, hissed gently, forming rainbows, as it sprayed over the smooth green. Lawn mowers, the signature tune of suburbia, buzzed quietly in the background.

It didn’t look much like the Southwest. More like a piece of Pennsylvania sliced out of its bedrock and transported to the high desert by one of Millennium 2000’s flying saucers.

Jernigan’s lawn was half green grass, half crushed lava rock that matched the color of the blood in his car, with a neat curved border of white brick separating the two. Sitting in the middle of the lava rock, as in a Japanese garden, was a stunted piñón.

There were child-sized footprints in the lava rock where kids had run across it rather than use the sidewalk. Pebbles were scattered up and down the driveway. Loren hadn’t seen the children as yet.

“Can we talk to you, Mr. Jernigan?” Loren said. “We’ve got a few things to clear up.”

“I guess so.” Jernigan was still staring at his car, teeth nipping at his upper lip.

“Shall we go inside?”

“Oh.” Scratching his beard. “Yeah.”

Loren and Cipriano followed Jernigan into his house. A boy of maybe twelve, graying white sneakers propped up on a hassock, sat in the living room. He was wearing a video helmet on his head and had gloves on. The gloves were dancing in the air, manipulating objects in the artificial reality of whatever game he was playing. His head was bobbing in the odd, syncopated way of some blind people. “This is Werner,” Jernigan said.

Loren looked at the kid, smiled, and nodded. “Hi,” he said.

Werner’s head kept bobbing in its odd disconnected way. “Hi,” he said.

“My other son is Max,” Jernigan said vaguely. Loren looked left and right. Max did not seem to be present.

“I have a daughter Werner’s age,” Loren said. Neither Jernigan nor Werner acknowledged this.

Loren felt impatience building under his belt. Jernigan’s disconnected communications habits were going to drive him right over some certifiable edge in another minute or two.

Loren looked at Cipriano, then, more meaningfully, at Werner. Cipriano nodded and walked to stand next to Werner, pretending an interest in the equipment.

Loren followed Jernigan down the back hall into a study. It was spacious, lined with books and bound magazines. Science, Loren read, Nature, Science News, Physical Review Letters. A computer, black with gold baroque designs, sat atop a Victorian walnut desk. Above the computer hung a framed black-and-white photo of Albert Einstein on a bicycle. A large whiteboard stood on delicate polycarbon struts, its surface covered with red and blue felt-tip hieroglyphics. At least half of it seemed to be in another alphabet. Greek? Loren wondered. Russian? Inside a red circle, underlined several times, he saw a thing like a blue triangle followed by a cap E—okay, he thought, Delta E. And this was followed by another blue delta followed by a lowercase t, and then a sign that Loren remembered from high school as being less than or equal to, and then a thing like a lowercase h with a slash through it. Delta E times Delta t is less than or equal to— to whatever the slash h meant.

Jernigan sat in a black leather swivel chair and blinked up at him. Loren closed the door behind him, hitched his gun around behind, and started the disk recorder. He went through his usual preface, then looked at Jernigan.

“I spoke to Dr. Singh,” he said. “He confirmed your story, but he added a few things you didn’t mention.”

Jernigan looked at him.

“He said you’d originally scheduled a second run for yesterday, and that it was called off. Why was that?”

Jernigan was silent for a long time. Loren was about to repeat the question at the top of his lungs when the man finally answered.

“Joe— Dr. Dielh— that was his decision.”

“Why’d he make it?”

“He— got called— away.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“He—” Jernigan hesitated, then started over. “Dr. Dielh got called to Washington on some classified business, so he canceled the run.”

“When was this?”

“Yesterday.”

“When yesterday?” It felt good to raise his voice. He leaned forward over Jernigan, arms on his hips, glaring down into the thick spectacles.

“Morning?” Jernigan peered up inquiringly. “Ten o’clock?”

“You asking or telling?”

Jernigan leaned back, his face closing like a door. “I don’t remember.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It seemed simpler that way.”

“Why’d he get called to Washington?”

Ask the questions, Loren thought. Ask fast. Patience isn’t here to protect him and you can bust him wide open.

“I don’t know,” Jernigan said.

“Something to do with the run?”

“Something classified.”

“Why was the run called off?” Repeat. Repeat until the answers were different.

“I told you.”

“What happened at the first run?”

Silence.

Loren felt his blood bubbling like Perrier. Patience wasn’t here to protect the man and Loren was going to rip him apart.

“What happened?”

“Nothing.” A mumble.

Loren beat on the arm of Jernigan’s chair with one big fist. “What happened to the Delta E?”

No answer. Loren looked at the blackboard, saw the symbol circled and underlined.

“What happened to Delta t?” he demanded.

There was a flash of something in Jernigan’s expression, something that Loren triumphantly read as terror, not fear but utter terror, clear as spring water and as horribly fundamental and real as a razor drawn scraping along a nerve; and then the door opened and a tall, plump woman entered, her expression as fixed and ferocious as the neon Indian at the Geronimo. Behind her was Cipriano, his face carefully expressionless.

“What are you doing to my husband?” The voice was shrill.

Loren swung on her. “Trying to find out why somebody died,” he said.

“Get out of here!”

“You must be Mrs. Jernigan. I’m Loren Hawn. I’m chief of police at—”

“Get out, you bastard!” She swung toward her husband. “What were you thinking about?” she demanded. “The other goon was interrogating Werner!”

An uncertain alarm worked its way onto Jernigan’s features. He looked as if he were about to say something.

“Can we calm down here a minute?” Loren said.

“Out. Or I’ll call the police.”

Loren gave her a moment to think about what she’d just said. “A man was murdered last night,” he said.

“We don’t know anything about it!”

“I thought maybe you could identify the body.”

“I don’t know him! Get out.”

Try to get a foot in the door, Loren thought. “How do you know you don’t know him?” he said.

That stopped her for a moment. Loren tried to pry the door open a little farther.

“I mean, you haven’t seen the body, right? So how do you know that you don’t know who he is?”

She turned to her husband. “Will you tell them to leave?” she demanded.

Jernigan rose. “Time to go,” he said.

“Fine. Fine, I’ll leave.” Loren bought another few seconds while Sondra Jernigan and Cipriano danced around each other in the doorway.

“I should point out something,” Loren said to Sondra. “I’m going to go on working this case till I get a killer, okay? Now, I don’t think your husband shot anybody . . .”

The two in the doorway finished their promenade and Loren followed them down the hall. The parade moved past the computer game and the oblivious adolescent in the living room.

“But there’s such a thing as accessory after the fact,” Loren went on, “and I think Mr. Jernigan knows more than he’s letting on. If I find the killer without his help, I’ll try and see that your husband is prosecuted, and that will mean time inside. And Mr. Jernigan—” He stepped into the front hall, then swung toward the physicist. “You are not the type to survive long in the slams, okay? A bunch of real crude guys are gonna enlarge your sphincter by about fifteen inches just to watch the expression on your face when they do it.”

Jernigan stared at him with what appeared to be a mixture of disgust and horror. “Get out,” he said.

“Mrs. Jernigan,” turning to her, “I strongly advise that you find yourself and your husband a lawyer. Then tell him exactly what happened the night the man died and follow his advice very precisely, okay?”

She spoke from bloodless lips. “Get out of my house, you crude fucker.”

“I’m just giving you the best advice I can.”

“Out.”

“The man talked, you know.”

He said my name.

“Out.”

Loren stepped out into the bright suburban sun, blood singing in his ears.

Maybe Mrs. Jernigan had been listening. If she had any sense, she’d follow his advice.

Two children, one dark, one blond, had the driver’s door of the BMW open and were examining the interior. Both were about ten.

“Max!” Mrs. Jernigan shrilled. “Get in here!”

“I’m just looking at the—”

“Max!”

Max’s dark eyes got big. He ran into the house. His straw-haired friend seemed undecided about whether to follow.

Loren closed the door of the BMW. “Let his mother talk to him for a while,” he told the boy.

“Okay.”

“Ever seen a car with bullet holes in it before?”

The boy reached out to touch one of the bullet scars. He was wearing a Cybercops T-shirt. “It’s real frigid,” he said admiringly.

Loren smiled down at him. “Want to see our police car?”

The blond kid grinned. “Sure.”

Loren and Cipriano followed the Cybercops shirt down the driveway. “What’s your name?” Loren asked.

“Richard.”

“You live around here?”

“Down the street.” A vague wave of an arm.

Loren opened the driver’s door. “Go ahead,” he said. “Get in.”

Richard slid into the black imitation-leather seat and peered out above the wheel. “Frigid,” he said again.

“You good friends with Max?” Loren said.

A shrug. “I guess.” He looked at the shotgun propped between the two front seats. “Can I look at the rifle?” he said.

“It’s a shotgun. Hang on a sec.” Loren reached over the boy and took the shotgun out of its rack. He propped the gun on one hip and worked the pump until he emptied the magazine into his hand. Richard’s eyes shone at the businesslike clack-clack sound. Loren handed the shotgun butt-first to the kid and stuffed twelve-gauge rounds into his jacket pocket.

“Cool,” said Richard. Frigidity forgotten.

“You get along okay with Max’s dad and mom?” Loren asked.

“We get along okay. My mom and his mom go to church together ’cause our dads aren’t interested. They’re both in the choir.” Richard raised the shotgun to his shoulder level and took aim at a mailbox across the street. The gun was heavy and the barrel wavered.

“Bam,” said Richard. He tried to work the pump but his arm was too short, so he dropped the gun to his lap and slammed the action back and forth. He liked the sound so he did it again. Then he looked up at Loren. “You ever shoot anybody with this?” he said.

“I never shot anybody at all,” said Loren.

“Oh.”

“It’s never a good thing to shoot someone,” Loren said. “Someone got shot in Mr. Jernigan’s car and it wasn’t a thing you wanted to have to see.”

Richard frowned down at the gun. The Cybercops weren’t reluctant at all to shoot people. Loren tried to regain his interest.

“Let me show you the radio,” Loren said. “Cipriano, you wanna do a radio check?”

Cipriano got in the passenger seat and demonstrated the radio. Richard’s interest returned.

“The Cybercops have these implanted in their mastoids,” he said.

Loren didn’t know what a mastoid was, and he suspected Richard didn’t, either. Loren took John Doe’s picture out of his pocket.

“This is the guy who got killed. You ever seen him?”

Richard looked at the dead face. “Don’t think so,” he said. “This guy’s dead, right?”

“The picture was taken after he died, yes.”

Richard studied the picture with intense interest. “This is the guy who stole the car, right?” he said.

“Maybe. We don’t know. You’ve never seen him hanging around?”

“I don’t think so.”

“We got some helmets and armor in the trunk. You want to see it?”

Richard’s face lit up. “Yeah!”

Loren led the boy around the car and opened the trunk. “Were you around here last night when the car was stolen?”

“Naw. Max and Werner and their mom went to the movies.”

Loren took out one of the vests and draped it on the boy. His blond head grinned up from the mass of black armor.

“Did you see anything unusual happen? Anything at all?”

Richard shrugged. “Nothing. I saw Tim come back from work, that’s all.”

“Tim? Timothy Jernigan?”

Richard busied himself buckling on the armor. “Yeah. Him and Sondra like everybody to call them by their first names.”

Some of those, Loren thought, not quite knowing what he meant by it.

“You saw him drive home from work?” Loren said.

“He got dropped off.”

Loren looked at the boy for a long moment. Something weighty and implacable was moving in his brain, rolling like a flywheel. Sprinklers and mowers hummed in the background.

“Who dropped him off?” Loren asked.

“One of those jeeps. The ones that the security guys drive around in.”

Loren looked up triumphantly into Cipriano’s bleak eyes. Lie number one, he thought. The cover story is starting to come apart.

Cipriano didn’t look happy at this turn of events.

“You sure about that?” Loren said.

“Yeah. You can’t miss old Tim, you know. Not as tall as he is and the way he moves.” There was condescension in his tone. “Can I put the helmet on?”

“Sure.” The blue helmet came down over the boy’s eyes. He pushed the helmet back and peered out. “Wish I had my shades,” he said. “I got mirrorshades just like the Cybercops.”

“Did you see who was in the jeep?” Loren asked.

Richard’s head shook back and forth in a no. The heavy helmet atop the head barely moved at all.

Loren asked a few more questions, but they didn’t help. He put the gear away and Richard ran off to tell his friends about the police stuff he got to play with.

“I don’t like it, jefe,” Cipriano said.

“It’s going to be hard relying on a ten-year-old as a witness,” Loren said. Triumph bubbled through him like champagne.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“We gotta get confirmation.” Loren looked up and down the street. “We’re gonna interview every person in this neighborhood. Every single one.”

“And if we’re lucky we can nail William Patience and his whole security force as accessories after the fact? Jesus, jefe.”

“We nail whoever we nail.”

“And guess who’s watching.” Cipriano gave a deadpan look down the street. A chocolate-brown jeep had just come around the corner and pulled over to the curb.

“Who gives a shit?” Loren said. He slammed the trunk down. “Let’s find our witnesses.”

“I don’t like it.”

“24/24,” Loren said. “Let’s get humping.”

He hitched his gun forward, then picked the house across the street and headed for it.

It was great, he thought, the way things were breaking.