The Sixth Idea

by P. J. Tracy

  “We’re spitballing here,” Gino replied. “But this is just one more coincidence in a long line of coincidences in this batshit case. Chuck Spencer and Lydia Ascher, two descendants of eight men who worked on the H-bomb, miraculously seated next to each other on a plane? What are the odds?”

  “And then Wally Luntz, another descendant about to meet his Internet buddy Spencer, murdered the same night as Spencer was murdered?” Magozzi interjected. “And then there’s Alvin Keller and Ed Farrell, and now this? I’m not real big on conspiracy theories, but we’d be idiots to look the other way on this one.”

  Grace spoke carefully, quietly. “Harley and I read every entry on that website. None of those people even knew what the Sixth Idea was or if it even existed at all. Why would they be killed for something they knew nothing about?”

  And that was the big question. Magozzi, Gino, and Harley were watching her like soldiers staring at a grenade with no pin, waiting for it to explode in their faces.

  “It has to be the government, Magozzi,” she said finally. “Who was involved with developing the H-bomb? The scientists working on it and the government they worked for.”

  Funny that she had addressed that specifically to him. He had the strange feeling it was a loyalty test of some kind and had a terrible feeling that he would fail.

  “Why hasn’t anybody put these murders together before now?”

  “Because the victims were scattered across the country,” Magozzi said. “Without Lydia Ascher and her freak encounter with Spencer on the plane, and more importantly, without you and Harley recovering the website, we wouldn’t have pulled it together either.” Magozzi looked down at his phone when it started chiming. “It’s McLaren. I’ll put it on speaker.”

  “Hey, Leo, are you guys still with Monkeewrench?”

  “Yeah, what’s up?”

  “What’s up is we printed the dead lady in the chinchilla coat, and I think we just went a little further down the rabbit hole. The prints popped right away on NCIC, but they’ve got a federal cover on them. Access restraint.”

  Magozzi let out a puff of air and looked at Grace. “Which means anyone from the DOD to the FBI doesn’t want anybody to know who she is.”

  McLaren cleared his throat. “Exactly. But I happen to know a guy who helps me out with stuff like this. He got me a name to go with the prints—Natalia Smirnova, a Russian national.”

  All the eyes in the room were fixed on Magozzi’s phone. “Who is she?” he asked.

  “Don’t know. He couldn’t pull any more information from where he was sitting. But I thought maybe if you had a name, you might be able to dig a little deeper, if you know what I’m saying.”

  Magozzi knew what he was saying. This was the sort of thing Monkeewrench excelled at. “Thanks, McLaren. Any word on Alvin Keller?”

  “Haven’t found him yet, and your tip line is dead empty. The news is twenty-four/seven on a blackout in Boston, and a missing elderly man doesn’t get a lot of coverage when you’ve got a bunch of stuck elevators in a big city.”

  “That’s bullshit. Boston’s in the middle of a blizzard, which they have like every twenty minutes. It’s winter, for Christ’s sake. There are blackouts all over the place. In the meantime, Alvin Keller is out there somewhere with a rapidly expiring life expectancy. Call the TV stations. Tell them their lack of coverage is facilitating the death of a helpless, sick old man and we’re going to make sure everybody knows it.”

  “I’ll give it my best shot, but the news cycle has kind of been dry for a while, so they’re trying to spin Boston in with the blackouts in Detroit and Fort Collins last week. You know how it goes. There haven’t been any plane crashes or terrorist attacks or Ebola cases lately, so they need a new way to scare people into thinking they’re going to die any minute. For now, it’s the power grid collapsing. In an hour, it might be thyroid cancer or rickets.”

  “Christ.” Magozzi’s phone started clicking and his screen flashed on and off. “McLaren, my phone’s on the fritz again, so we’ll catch up with you at City Hall.”

  Magozzi clicked off and tapped his phone screen in frustration. “Damn thing. Whoever named these things smartphones should be drawn and quartered.”

  Harley got up out of his chair and held out his hand. “Give it to me. Your phone, too, Gino.”

  Gino reluctantly passed his phone to Harley. “Why?”

  Harley raised his eyes. “Didn’t you hear that clicking?”

  THIRTY-ONE

  The assassin was already here, so it was fortunate that the target Max was here to protect didn’t happen to be home. There was always a way into any building, no matter what its security. This one was no different, but easier, because the man Max was following had already done the initial work and was leading the way. The alarms had been disabled with the snip of a phone line, ingress obtained—rather flawlessly, he had to concede—and all that remained was to follow silently, unseen, unfelt, undetected. There was no question this man was smart, young, and well-trained, but his youth would work against him. Brawn, agility, passion—none of those things could match the calm precision that came with maturity and experience, something Max had amassed in great measure over the past few decades.

  He could smell adrenaline as the man sought out a place to conceal himself comfortably while he waited for his quarry to return.

  It was a fast job. Unsavory, of course, but quick and silent. He had some disposal choices here, unlike this morning’s job in the city, and as he pondered the efficacy of each one, he smelled somebody else behind him. He ducked, spun, and saw a door opening, a shotgun rising up in the gloom of the basement. Max had no choice but to fire.

  He stood over each of his kills for a moment, taking deep breaths to slow his heart. Murder didn’t bother him; to have been taken unaware disturbed him greatly, but that was for later contemplation—the larger issue at hand was that he now had two bodies to deal with. The story line had changed, and he would have to adapt. As he pondered his options, his nose picked up another scent, the scent of exhaust, and he heard a garage door creaking open above him. Suddenly, all his choices were gone.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Lydia didn’t know how long she’d been holding her breath, but when she finally turned into her driveway, she let it out in a great, shaky rush. Her knuckles were sore from her death grip on the steering wheel, and she felt a trickle of nervous sweat rolling down her spine.

  Note to self: don’t ever drive in a snowstorm again, you idiot.

  It had been all fun and games on the way into town, like driving through a postcard. Pretty, fat white flakes tumbled from the sky and frosted the evergreens, scarlet cardinals flashed through the woods like sparks of fire, and deer and turkeys appeared by the roadside, scavenging whatever forage they could find before it was buried under the gathering snow. That should have been her first clue—watch the wildlife, they know a hell of a lot more about the weather than you do.

  By the time she’d left the general store, the roads had deteriorated in a big way—the wet snow she’d enjoyed on the drive in had quickly accumulated on the tar and turned to wicked, slippery ice. She’d almost lost control of her car a few times, and with sketchy cell coverage in this part of the world, a careless maneuver could launch her into the ditch, where she’d probably be waiting a very long time for a stray passerby to notice and help.

  But she was safely home now and could look forward to a cozy fire in the hearth, preparing a nice meal she and Otis would enjoy together, and the wicked sense of a snow day, when the weather forced you to stay at home and do absolutely nothing but enjoy life.

  She hooked her parka over a peg on the coatrack, then turned as she always did, to what she’d seen the first time she entered this house. A wall nook next to the front closet where she’d placed a spider plant with graceful green and white arms rising from the roots and flowing like the splash of a waterf
all down toward the tile floor. The leaves shuddered in the heated puffs of the register that blew warm air up into the foyer, welcoming her home.

  Lydia took one of those deep breaths that let everything else go, because this was sanctuary; but her shoulders tightened a little, because that deep breath had pulled something different, something alien, into her nostrils. A faint, subtle scent that didn’t belong in her house.

  She stopped by the spider plant, looking into the obviously empty kitchen. Everything was as it should be—her coffee mug sat by the sink next to a plate with toast crumbs, waiting for washing. Everything was in its proper place, and yet there was that strange scent.

  Chuck’s murder had put her on edge in some deep part of her psyche—why else would she slip her hand into her purse and pull out her little gun, thinking that damn, she had to get a bigger one.

  Silliness, really. She crept through the kitchen, the gun slipping on the sweat of her right palm, and then she stopped, focusing on the oak table with its bamboo placemats and the artful arrangement of pine and holly circling the frosted yarn snowman that had been her mother’s from the time Lydia had been a child—part of Christmas, part of her life—and suddenly things from the past and present seemed to clash and crash into each other in a strange way she couldn’t make sense of.

  Prickle, prickle.

  Oh, come on, she told herself. There’s nothing out of order here. Just your wild imagination. But still, there was that strange smell.

  She followed it to the open stairs that led to the basement and thought, hey, she was impressively brave. Here she was, an insecure, uncertain, probably insane person pretty much terrified by a weird smell.

  It was stronger here, floating up from the lowest level of her house, totally unfamiliar and somehow wrong. She should call someone—911, maybe.

  Hello, there’s a strange smell in my basement, I’m here alone with a gun in my hand . . .

  No, that was nonsense. It was broad daylight, nothing wrong here except my stupid nose, so I can walk down these open-backed stairs and look around and everything will be in its proper place just like it was upstairs. Yep, the pool table with its pretty green felt and the dartboard on the wall, and oh my God. Otis lay in a pool of blood right there in front of her, a cylindrical hole in the middle of his forehead.

  • • •

  Half an hour later, Lydia was sitting on the sofa next to a Deputy Terry Harmon while other deputies covered her yard and the scene in the basement. It was utterly surreal—her basement was now a crime scene and Chuck and Otis, two people she’d known personally, had both been shot to death in the span of forty-eight hours. What were the odds of that?

  They weren’t connected to each other in any way except you—you’re the common denominator.

  Lydia tamped down the ridiculous inner voice, the part of the human brain that always tried to explain the inexplicable, tried to connect random events and put a neat bow on them. The truth was, Chuck had probably been the victim of a mugging—the sinister man she’d seen at the airport had been a creation of her overactive imagination. And Otis had probably surprised a burglar. If she hadn’t invited Otis over for dinner, he would probably still be alive; and if she hadn’t decided to go shopping in the middle of a snowstorm, she would probably be dead.

  If, if, if. She took a deep breath, trying to shake the feeling that something very bad was starting to coalesce around her.

  “I’m sorry about Otis,” Deputy Harmon was saying. “I know he was a neighbor and a friend.”

  “Yes, he was. Thank you.”

  “Did you recognize the other man?”

  Lydia’s brain stuttered to a dead stop. “What do you mean, the other man?”

  “The man in the laundry room.”

  Lydia’s world started to spin, but it was a slow spin. “I . . . I don’t understand. I only saw Otis.” Her hands found each other between her knees, and started twisting together. “There’s a man in my laundry room? Is he dead, too?” She knew it was a stupid question, but it just came rolling off her tongue anyhow.

  “Yes. Lydia, do you think you can come downstairs with me? Just in case you can identify him?”

  Well, yes, of course she could go downstairs and look at a dead body she didn’t even know was there. All part of a normal day.

  She let Deputy Harmon lead her downstairs by the arm. She pinched her eyes shut as they passed Otis, and she suddenly realized she would never, ever be able to work in this formerly beautiful space again. She could never do laundry again, she probably couldn’t even live here. No, she definitely couldn’t live here.

  She let her mind obsess over finding a new house and selling this one, but all too soon, she was standing in the laundry room over a dead man who also had a hole in his head, just like Otis.

  “Lydia? Are you all right?”

  No prickles—just an all-encompassing, black sense of dread. “The man from the airport,” she whispered.

  THIRTY-THREE

  In the hour since Harley had commandeered their phones, Magozzi and Gino had been working Monkeewrench’s secure landlines, following up with local law enforcement on the other murder victims in other states. Grace was still trying to trace the source of the cyberattacks on the Chatham server and Spencer’s website, and Harley had been largely silent at his desk, all his attention focused on their cell phones.

  “Bingo,” he finally barked. “You guys are clean now, but you had ears on you, and pretty impressive ones at that. We’re not talking some drive-by bluejacker looking for your personal information. Whoever it was went through your carrier, and believe me, that is hard to do, unless you’re the NSA.”

  “Jesus,” Gino murmured.

  “Hey, it could be a good thing. It’s one more path for Grace and me to follow. But here’s the deal—no telling how long you stay clean. This isn’t amateur hour.” He smiled and turned over their phones. “Of course, I took the liberty of uploading a new firewall that will make anybody who tries to hack you deeply sorry they did, but that’s beside the point. You could have infected the whole MPD communication network, or maybe that’s where you got your bugs in the first place. Either way, call Chief Malcherson, tell him you’ve been compromised and that the department needs to do a deep security sweep and clean up the system.”

  Gino stared down at his phone like it was a mortal enemy. “Sure thing. Should I tell the chief we’re considering the possibility that the government is behind it, and by the way, we also think they’re assassinating innocent people who pay their salaries?”

  Harley shrugged. “Our government, somebody else’s government, Chinese hackers, terrorists—at this point it doesn’t really matter. Safety first.” He reached under his desk and pulled out a lockbox. “Answer your calls on your regular cells, talk to Angela and ask her what she’s making for dinner, but use these temporarily for more sensitive conversations.” He tossed them two cell phones. “Burners. Untraceable, unhackable.”

  Magozzi looked out the window at the worsening snow that was now blowing sideways. Forty-eight hours ago they were investigating a simple shooting in a downtown Minneapolis alley; now they were using burner phones and spinning government conspiracy theories.

  “Guys?” Grace called from the other side of the room. “We got something from the Beast.”

  Harley rolled his chair over to a printer that was spitting out pages. He read and reread them, then passed them over to Magozzi and Gino and went to his computer.

  “What is it?”

  “A BOLO on an Arthur Friedman, an advanced Alzheimer’s patient who supposedly wandered out of his care facility, but I have my doubts about that.” He started typing furiously on his keyboard.

  Magozzi frowned down at the photo of Arthur Friedman and the list of pertinent details. “What do you mean? And why would the Beast spit out a ‘Be on the Lookout’ for some Alzheimer’s patient?”


  “Because we linked the Beast to Spencer’s website so it could access all the data there and make any connections. See here?” He tapped his screen. “Arthur Friedman is one of the original eight physicists, the only other one alive besides Alvin Keller. If Alvin Keller is still alive.”

  “Shit,” Gino muttered. “Somebody took them both—two sick old men, goddamnit. I’m going to make some calls and turn the fire up on this.”

  Magozzi started when his cell rang from its cradle in his sweaty palm. “Unknown caller.”

  Harley rubbed his hands together and returned his attention to his computer screen, making a few quick strokes on his keyboard. “Goody. Answer it, I’m monitoring you right now. If it’s legit, call them back on our landline.”

  “Magozzi here.”

  The voice was timid, quaky, frightened. “Detective Magozzi. This is Lydia Ascher. I met with you and Detective Rolseth yesterday at the Chatham.”

  “Of course. Ms. Ascher, can I call you back at the number you’re calling from?”

  There was a slight hesitation. “Can you call back right away? Because there are two dead men in my house, and one of them is the man in the sketch I drew for you yesterday. The sketch of the man I thought was following Chuck Spencer in the airport.”

  Magozzi was instantly focused, alert, totally wired. “Are you alone?”

  “No, the police are here—”

  And then there was another voice talking to him, a Deputy Harmon, giving him a concise cop summary of what had happened.

  “I’m on my way,” Magozzi answered in a rush of breath. “Jesus Christ, don’t leave her alone, Deputy. I’ll explain when I get there.”

  THIRTY-FOUR