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Gil found his way to the Greene Building at RPI, an unimpressive structure for a School of Architecture, he thought. He was ushered into Dr. Fallaci’s office by the professor himself. The room had an old conference table along with the professor’s desk. “Please Mr. Novak, have a seat. Could I get you some coffee?”
“Please call me Gil. If I could just get some water, I’d be happy.”
“Please call me Carlo. I’ll be right back with your water.” Carlo left the room and Gil looked around. He saw an impressive variety of building designs, most very complex and some quite artistic. Carlo brought back a large paper cup of water and an FBI Agent. “Gil Novak, this is Special Agent Davis from Albany.”
Davis showed his badge and Gil said, “I’d like Detective Karen Tindall to join us by videoconference, if that’s okay. She’s from the Greenfield, Mass. Police Department and this is her case. I’m just a lowly consultant.”
“You have a pretty high security clearance for a lowly consultant, Mr. Novak,” said Davis.
“That’s from my work before I retired. I was a robotics engineer up in Saratoga.” Gil worked with Carlo for a few minutes to set up a video-link with Karen.
Karen’s face came up on the screen. “Hello, I’m Detective Karen Tindall from the Greenfield Massachusetts Police Department.” She held her credentials to the camera.
“I’m Carlo Fallaci, Professor of Architecture at RPI.”
“I’m Special Agent Jameson Davis from the FBI’s Albany office.” He showed his credentials to the camera.
“And I’m Gil Novak, consultant to Detective Tindall.”
Agent Davis said, “Professor Fallaci showed me a video of a tunnel in Greenfield that he is convinced is the work of Katrina Ryu. Ms. Ryu was reported missing by RPI and by her mother in June of 2022, almost a year ago. None of our leads panned out and we haven’t heard anything, even though there is a substantial reward offered for information leading to her recovery. Detective Tindall, what is the nature of the crime you are investigating?”
Karen smiled and said, “We’re actually investigating what seems to be a minor matter. Somebody has illegally entered three buildings in our city, broken through the foundations, and dug several tunnels. These tunnels don’t lead to anything in particular, as far as we can tell. The structure of these tunnels is very unusual.”
Gil asked Karen to display a picture from one of the tunnels. “I inspected the tunnels using a small remote-controlled robot,” said Gil. “The tunnel structures seem to be made of a composite material formed into an expandable mesh. The mesh would have been brought down in a compressed form and expanded into the tunnel. Each tunnel has a series of these meshes. The fact that these tunnels don’t collapse using such a gossamer structure is impressive to me. One unusual feature I observed is that, rather than being complete cylinders, the tunnels are open at the bottom. This tells me that the people passing through these tunnels wanted access to the ground below.”
Karen said, “We were able to take a sample of the tunnel structure from one of the openings. The tunnel is made from a material composed of wood and plastic called a PLA. The lab couldn’t match it to any of the more popular commercial forms of wood-plastic composite.”
Agent Davis asked, “Professor, what makes you think this is the work of Ms. Ryu?”
Carlo brought up some pictures of projects done by Katrina Ryu. Some were designs and others were physical models. “Most of our students focus on building designs. Roo, however, seemed to be fascinated by access-ways, tunnels, and entryways. She did some work on establishing an engineering process for designing expandable mesh structures based on their structural design, material of construction, and installation. She surprised our community by how strong she could make these structures with very little material. I’d say she’s somewhat of a genius. A very unusual personality.”
“In what way?” asked Karen.
“She’s like a force of nature,” said Carlo. “Whatever she worked on, she would have very energetic and enthusiastic interactions with a variety of professors, architecture students, engineering students, building inspectors, and even researchers from other colleges in a variety of disciplines. Her results were always fascinating and amazing. But, she didn’t seem to form ongoing relationships with any of the students or staff here.”
Agent Davis said, “We found no evidence of relationships with anyone other than her mother. She was estranged from her father who repatriated to South Korea when she was a young child. Katrina was born and raised in New York City. She has no siblings, except maybe some half-siblings in South Korea. We couldn’t find information on any friendships at all, even from high school. No hobbies, either.”
“Besides the structures,” Gil said, “the process for excavating these person-sized tunnels is unknown. Professor, do you have any contacts that could figure out how they would have dug those tunnels?”
Carlo thought for a few seconds and said, “I would have to put that question to our Civil Engineering department, but we may have to ask people from some of the mining schools about that.”
Agent Davis said, “Professor, please put the question out there and see what you can find. Detective Tindall, the FBI has no specific interest in your crime investigation, other than finding Ms. Ryu. So, please keep me in the loop if you find something that may help us. I’ll update her mother. This will give her hope.”
Karen asked, “Agent Davis, have you spoken to her father? Maybe he knows something.”
“I spoke to him at the beginning of our investigation and he’d had little contact with his daughter. But it may be a good idea if I follow up with him. I think I’ll also contact Ms. Ryu’s half-siblings, perhaps through the American Embassy in South Korea. I don’t know if they’ve ever even heard of her.”
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LILI AND GIL STROLLED along the wide sidewalks of Broadway in Saratoga Springs, while he filled her in on the FBI meeting. It was an unusually pleasant evening in April and a lot of people were out and about.
“That’s twice we’ve encountered the FBI lately.” said Lili. “Your case is now two cases. The strange tunnels in Greenfield and a missing genius. If I were the FBI, I’d try to find out where this Roo was getting her money. Somebody must have hired her for something. Tunnel building in Greenfield must have cost quite a bit.”
“They say her accounts show no activity. They didn’t even have any indication that she was alive until yesterday. So, I don’t know how they’d trace money.”
“Maybe Karen will find out where they bought the tunnel materials. It sounds like it’s rare stuff.”
“I’ll give her a call tomorrow.” Gil was quiet for a minute. “I wonder how Martha’s doing. I can’t even imagine what her life is like now.”
“Yeah, unfortunately I don’t have any way of finding out. The US Marshals have her and I’m sure they won’t divulge any information, even to the FBI. I can only guess that she’s kind of going with the flow. It’s not like she has a lot of close ties to people. She always seems to be kind of cheerful, but her friend Barbara getting killed must have been a huge shock.”
“I wonder if we’ll ever even see her again.”
“Maybe we’ll find out in Florida next winter.”
They found a table at Boca Bistro and ordered some wine and a paella to split. “I think I’ll go back to Northampton on Friday.” said Lili. “When do you think you’ll come down?”
“Maybe Sunday. I have an eye appointment Friday and I want to hang out with the kids on Saturday and watch Jazz’s gymnastics.”