The Arcturus Man

by John Strauchs

  Krissy’s jaw dropped. “What are you complaining about? You hit the jackpot.”

  “Krissy…I’m Swedish. I DON’T SPEAK SWEDISH. He speaks Swedish. He speaks absolutely off-the-boat perfect Swedish.”

  “You have to stop running yourself down. I know a dozen guys who would kill for a date with you”

  “Sure.”

  Jenny couldn’t admit the real reason to her little sister, let alone to herself, but she knew. She had already hinted at it. Her breasts were too small. She was too tall. Her skin wasn’t perfect. She had bony knees. Her butt was too flat. She wasn’t glamorous. She didn’t know anyone famous. She was never going to be famous. She had very little money. Jared could find women who were all the things that she was not. It wasn’t Jared who was the problem. It wasn’t that he was perfect. She was the problem. She was so imperfect. Why would he want her?

  “Can you hear yourself?” asked Krissy. “Didn’t you say he graduated from MIT when he was nine?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re shocked to find out that he is a genius? What are you thinking?”

  “It’s irrational, I know. I felt like this even before I talked with Father O’Connor. I started to think this way the last time I left the island. I don’t know why I’m doubting myself so much. That isn’t me.”

  “Stop it. Look, let’s Google him. What do you have to lose?”

  Krissy pulled out her Sony VAIO. She checked. It was a good Wi-Fi site. Of course, being a few blocks from MIT didn’t hurt. She began to type. Jenny pulled her chair around. They tried every variation of Jared Siemels they could think of. Jenny never saw it written so she thought that she might have the spelling wrong.

  Nothing!

  They searched the MIT data base. The alumnae data base.

  Nothing!

  Jenny edged Krissy over and started typing.

  Latvian. “10 year old” “MIT graduate” prodigy.

  There was a hit. Jorens Ziemelis. There were 4,112 hits.

  “My God, Jenn, do you believe this? And, this is not an ordinary name.” “What did I tell you?”

  “You call Jake a snake? This guy didn’t give you his real name.” “Actually, he did. I forgot.”

  Krissy gave Jenn her infamous, “you-Rat-you-lied-to-me,” look.

  Chapter Ten – Smolenskiy’s Death

  Boston & Augusta – August 2013

  Jared was walking across the Boston Common when his cell phone rang. Only a handful of people had that number. Not even Jenny had the number, although he did intend to give it to her the next time there were going to be together.

  “Hello.”

  “Mr. Jared, Marie.” He knew that. Marie still didn’t understand caller ID. Marie Bird was Jared’s housekeeper for many years. She was a Montreal French

  Canadian who married a Maine lobsterman. He died in the freak storm of 1991—the Halloween Storm. At one time she had been an exceptionally beautiful young woman. Her hair was now white and her skin was heavily wrinkled, but that she had once been finelooking still showed through. Most people found her difficult to understand. She had that quaint mix of French Canadian and North Maine accents. It wasn’t that uncommon, however, on the coast. No university ever conducted a study to find out why, or even thought about it, but many young women from Quebec married Maine lobsterman. There are many folk theories, but that’s all they are. On the surface, however, it wasn’t logical. Lobstering is a hard life—a very harsh life, especially for families. She thought herself lucky that they never had children, but as she grew older, she sometimes regretted it. Only her sisters were family now and they lived far away. None of them married a lobsterman.

  “What’s up Marie?” It took some time to convince her not to call him Mr. Siemels. It wasn’t in her nature, but eventually she relented. And it wasn't in Jared's nature to be given a meaningless title, such as mister. It was even more difficult to get her to speak English. Although Jared spoke French fluently, few in Rockland did and her accent was tough enough without adding French to the fray.

  “Fellow from State Police in Augusta here looking for you,” said Marie. “That is strange,” thought Jared. Why didn’t someone come from Troop D out of Thomaston? Augusta is more than a 70 mile drive. Moreover, getting out to the island meant that he had to call for a hired boat to take him out. He went to a lot of trouble. Otherwise, the news didn’t surprise him.

  “Did he say what he wanted?” asked Jared. He was hoping they were looking for a donation. That seemed to be unlikely, however. The solicitation usually arrived in the mail.

  “Professor from MIT, Dr. Smolenskiy, I think, he say found dead in apartment in Boston last night. They had question for you. Didn’t say who it was, but someone who know you say you seen near doctor’s apartment. You call them right away.”

  “Fine. What is the number?”

  She read him the phone number.

  “And the name?”

  “Holob, Officer Holob. H-O-L-O-B. He say he with state crime lab.”

  “I’ll give them a call when I have time. Thanks for letting me know, Marie.”

  She hung up without another word. She knew that Jared didn’t like wasted words and neither did she.

  Jared’s cell rang again. Jared’s phone had an ordinary ring. He thought that musical and other odd ring tones were the worst kind of affectation.

  “Hello, Dieter.” He spoke in German.

  “I just wanted you to know that the Swiss account for Ms. Ginger Siemels is in order and ready to receive transfers. When may I expect them Jared?”

  “Soon. I don’t have a date yet. It depends on other developments. In any event, I plan to come to Zurich next week,” said Jared. “We’ll finalize this when I get there.”

  “Excellent. Tschuss!”

  The sooner he took care of this the sooner he could see Jenny again. He drove his Lexus out of the garage and headed north out of Boston. When he got to 95, it was a straight shot. In just under three hours he exited into Augusta. It would have taken less time if there wasn’t that never ending airport construction to get out of Boston. Jared was speeding the entire way.

  Jared hacked his Maine toll road E-ZPass® transponder so that it never ran out of money and wired it into another gizmo that fooled radar. It was ridiculous to have to pay tolls for a public roadway. He didn't so much care about the money as it offended him that this was yet another tax and that the government could track him. It was mostly privacy matter. He would scan drivers he passed to capture their electronic identification and then randomly feed it to the toll receiver each time he went through a toll booth. The radar spoofer was even easier. He simply altered the characteristics of the return signal to report a legal speed. It didn’t end there.

  Jared quickly came up on a red Toyota that was driving at least ten miles under the speed limit, wandering in and out of the lane. He pulled in the passing lane and glanced at the driver. It was a young girl on a cell phone. Jared pulled out in front of her and slowed down to her speed. He stayed in front of her for fifteen minutes until he saw that there were no cars behind her within five hundred feet. He pushed a button on his console. Jared looked in the rear view mirror. The Toyota was slowing down. By the time he was about a quarter mile further, he could see that she had pulled off the highway. Jared smiled. He had activated a high energy radio frequency device—a HERF— that fried every computer chip in the girl’s car. There was a bonus. It destroyed her cell phone too.

  He quickly found Hospital Street and pulled into the parking lot of the Maine State Police Crime Laboratory. Jared had a phenomenal GPS system in his car that he had tweaked to do more than would have been imaginable to the folks in Detroit. He intended to get a patent for it, but hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

  He parked in a visitor spot, bounded out of his car, and ran up the steps, two at a time. It was a stark single-story brick building with a hideous blue door. It offended Jared’s sense of aesthetics. Jared thought that this was a clue as to
what to expect.

  He found the receptionist.

  “I am here to see Holob.”

  “May I tell Major Holob your name?”

  “Jared Siemels.” He spelled it for her.

  At few moments later, she handed him the phone.

  “This is Major Holob. I will be there in a few minutes.”

  Jared found a chair and sat down to wait. Less than a minute later, Major Tommy Holob and a much younger man walked into the waiting area.

  Major Holob didn’t extend his hand. He just walked up to Jared. That he didn’t identify himself was conspicuous.

  “You Siemels?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Dr. Crichton. He is with the medical examiners office in Boston. The Boston PD asked him to come up here to collect DNA samples. Yours for starters.”

  Dr. Crichton put out his hand. Jared accepted the greeting and they shook hands. He glanced at Holob’s tie. The tie tac was a miniature set of gold handcuffs. That spoke volumes for Jared.

  “Nice tie tac,” said Jared.

  “Yea! Let’s step into the waiting room for a few minutes. This won’t take long,” said Holob.

  “Fine! Can you tell me what this is all about,” asked Jared as they went into the interview room. “And for the record, I am doing this voluntarily.”

  “Yea Sure. Do you know one Dr. Ivan Smolenskiy, AKA Sasha Smolenskiy?”

  “Yes, he is a professor at MIT.”

  “He was found dead in his apartment last night. His death is suspicious. Hell! He was a homicide.”

  “So what does that have to do with me?” asked Jared.

  “You were seen near his apartment by someone who knew you, knew the victim, and knew you knew each other. We’re just following up every lead. There were hairs and fibers found at the crime scene. Right Doc?”

  “Yes, we found some hair, “said Dr. Crichton.

  Jared knew that they were both lying. There was no trace evidence, or at least not from him.

  “Who said they saw me? Sounds like someone doesn’t like me.”

  “That is police business. And, you and the vic are both Russians.”

  “I am a Latvian. He was a Russian.”

  “Whatever! Were you in Boston last night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you visit the Russian?”

  “Yes, several months ago, but not recently,” said Jared. ” Jared knew that if they did find his hair..and he didn’t think that likely…there was no way to determine when it had been deposited. Denying that he had been in the apartment would me a mistake.

  “What were you doing in Boston?”

  “I was visiting my attorney. His name is Brett Koutsanoudis. He is brilliant. You will enjoy talking with him. Anything else?”

  Holob jotted things into his little black notebook.

  “Go ahead Doc,” said Holob.

  "The BPD wants to talk to you tomorrow morning,” said Dr. Crichton.

  "That isn't convenient for me. It will have to be another day."

  "You don't want to cooperate with the investigation? Is that right?" asked Holob.

  "Unless you want to hold me as a material witness for a while, I will cooperate when it suits me. Since I don't know anything, it hardly matters."

  Holob walked over to the window and just paced for a while. Jared was getting to him.

  Dr. Crichton unscrewed a sample tube and removed a sterile swab. He ripped open the plastic bag and gingerly took out a Q-Tip.

  “Do I have your permission?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “This won’t hurt. I just need to swab the inside lining of your cheek. We need a DNA sample from everyone of interest to the police.”

  “JUST GO AHEAD.”

  Jared didn’t like Holob. He knew intelligent and dedicated police officers, but he also knew that sadists were disproportionately attracted to law enforcement and corrections. As far as Jared was concerned, Holob was a dim-witted thug.

  Dr. Crichton swabbed inside Jared’s mouth.

  “You’re a pretty smart guy. It’s all here,” pointing to a large legal sized manila folder. He wasn’t about to tell Jared that he was the only suspect they had. He was going to rattle him a bit and see what happened.

  “Tell him what you know, Doc.”

  “Well, let’s see. How do I explain it in lay terms?”

  “I said this is a real smart guy. Give it to him straight,” said Holob.

  “OK. We initially thought it was simple congestive heart failure, aggravated by infection from recent dental surgery. Non-sterile dental instruments could have been contributing factors. The symptoms are classic. In fact, that is how we stumbled on the signs of foul play. The key diagnostic clues for heart valve infection are bright red spots on his palms…..”

  “Janeway lesions,” interrupted Jared.

  “How could you know that? You’ve had medical training,” asked Dr. Crichton.

  Jared just shook his head. “I read a lot.”

  Dr. Crichton continued. “Another key symptom—in fact the most important one—is a splinter hemorrhage under one finger nail—or at least I initially thought it was a splinter hemorrhage—you know, a red streak in the nail bed—which is why it is called splinter hemorrhage—it looks like a splinter under the finger nail.”

  “OK, OK. Can you get to the point, Doc?” said Holob.

  “That is when I discovered upon a closer examination that he had been injected underneath his fingernail with some sort of toxin. It wasn’t a splinter hemorrhage at all. It was the track from a needle. It probably took some time to develop. It was pure luck that we spotted it. We still haven’t isolated the toxin but it is something that was undetectable in the preliminary blood and urine analyses. You know, all of the symptoms pointed to a heart valve infection and congestive heart failure, but it….

  “Endocarditis?” asked Jared.

  Dr. Crichton was surprised again, “Well, yes, probably.”

  “See, I told you we had a smart boy here,” said Holob. “It would have taken us weeks to get these results, but the Boston PD got it in a day. They got all the latest scientific stuff. “

  “The coroner’s office, not the PD, and this isn’t typical for us either,” said Dr. Crichton.

  Holob ignored the corrections. “Whatever! Anyway, only the murderer would know this stuff.”

  “That is incorrect. You have it backwards. Were it not for a preexisting condition that the victim had, we would never have discovered the murder. If the killer had known that the splinter hemorrhage would lead us to searching his finger nails, he would have picked a different lethal method,” said Dr. Crichton.

  Holob didn’t understand, but he always recognized the value of keeping ones mouth shut in the face of authority or more intelligence. He knew he wasn’t smart—at least that much could be said for him.

  “At the moment we are thinking culture-negative endocarditis. Nothing showed up in the early blood test. We haven’t had enough time to do definitive cultures, so something might still show up. Of course, he may have started an antibiotic regime prior to his dental surgery which would have prevented finding a causative organism, but I doubt that. There are many things that could inhibit a positive culture,” said Dr. Crichton.

  Without a pause for discussion, Dr. Crichton went on. “I suspect that he had rheumatic fever in childhood. We need to find a relative to verify that. His recent dental treatment—it was obvious—probably was the source of a new infection that attacked the lining of a heart valve. It could have been a dental abscess that was missed. That would be my guess. Regardless, he didn’t die from congestive heart failure, although he eventually would have. He died from a toxin injected into his blood stream. We were damned lucky finding it.”

  “Did you run a GSR on Smolenskiy?” asked Jared.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact we did,” said Dr. Crichton.

  “And?” Jared already knew the answer.

  “There was gun shot residue.�
��

  “And what did you conclude from that?” asked Jared.

  “That’s enough Siemels. We’ll ask the questions,” said Holob.

  “Fire away, Tommy,” said Jared.

  Calling him Tommy irritated Holob. It was meant to. It was entirely proper, of course. It was on his name plate.

  “So, Siemels, you seem to know a lot about the medical condition the Russian had,” said Holob.

  “Yes, I am a pretty smart boy.”

  Holob turned red.

  “Is that it?” asked Jared.

  “For now! Don’t leave Lincoln County without telling me. Here’s my card.”

  “I live in Knox County,” said Jared.

  “OK, don’t leave Knox County wise guy.”

  "I hope you have some piece of paper that would compel me to obey; otherwise I plan to do whatever I want,” said Jared.

  Holob was now scarlet, but he kept his mouth shut.

  "We'll be seeing each other Siemels. Count on it,” said Holob.

  "I do. I do."

  Jared bolted out. He couldn’t stand being around a moron like Holob. He left the building, beeped his car to unlock and start the engine. He flew down the steps, jumped in, and sped away. He resisted squealing his tires.

  He had been very careful. He knew there would be a forensic investigation. It was probably a fishing trip by the police. It was highly improbable that he left a hair at the crime scene, but he had to admit to himself that it wasn’t absolutely impossible. He did know with certainty that they hadn’t found anything yet. The crime scene was probably contaminated by now. It had taken him some time going through the closets until he found the cases containing the crossbow and rifle. This wasn’t going away.

  Chapter Eleven – A Meeting with Antonides

  Boston – August 2013

  Jared walked into the office. A plush mahogany leather wing chair was positioned in front of the massive teak desk, waiting for him. A cup of black coffee was on the coffee table. It was still steaming. Brett was accustomed to Jared’s directness and distaste for wasting time. Brett shared these traits. They would skip the pleasantries but Brett knew that the coffee would be appreciated. It was pure Colombian. His secretary was on the ball.