The Fractal Murders

by Mark Cohen

  “You’ve been very helpful,” I said as I stood to leave, “and I know you were under no obligation to speak with me.” A final question occurred to me as I neared the door. “Just out of curiosity,” I said, “how many times did the FBI interview you?”

  “Twice,” she said. “Once in person and once by telephone.”

  “Let me guess. Two agents from Lincoln interviewed you here and an agent from Denver called you a week or two later.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “The one on the phone make any kind of impression on you?”

  She thought about it. “He seemed a bit high on himself,” she offered. I shook my head up and down knowingly and said good-bye.

  I walked back to the motel, changed into shorts, took the dogs around the block, flopped on my bed, and clicked on CNN. I listened to the anchorwoman highlight the day’s events as I paged through the university’s catalog. Dale D. Hawkins, associate professor of finance, had received his B.S. at Duke, his M.B.A. at the Wharton School, and his doctorate at the University of Chicago. He’d been at Nebraska six years.

  Scott came bopping in an hour later holding a large white T-shirt with “Nebraska Football” emblazoned across it in big red letters. “Might as well blend in with the locals,” he said. “Got one for you too.” He tossed it to me.

  “Jesus,” I said, “let’s just buy some overalls and John Deere hats while we’re at it.” He removed his pants and changed into shorts.

  “What’d you learn?” he asked.

  “Buddy Holly is alive and Carolyn Chang was dating a business professor. What’d you learn?”

  “Carolyn Chang was a harlot.”

  “A harlot?”

  “That’s what one of her neighbors called her. Little old lady who spends all day listening to some AM station preaching hellfire and damnation. Said sometimes Carolyn wouldn’t come home at all.”

  “The slut.”

  “Sometimes a man would stay at her house until the wee hours of the morning.”

  “Same man?”

  “Same guy for the past year.”

  “She describe him?”

  “Tall, trim, dark hair, always wears a tie.”

  “Dale Hawkins,” I said. “M.B.A. at the Wharton School.”

  “That’s his name?”

  “Yeah. You talk with anyone other than grandma?”

  “Yeah. It’s an older neighborhood. A lot of the houses are rented by students. I talked with as many as I could, but a lot of them weren’t living there last winter. Of those who were, a couple of people remembered seeing a sedan in front of her house around six that evening.”

  “The cops have that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You get a description on the car?”

  “Nothing firm. It was dark and cold and nobody was paying attention. The consensus seemed to be it was a big Ford or Mercury. Dark blue. Brand new. Definitely a four-door. Possibly with Nebraska plates, though one guy insisted it had Colorado tags.”

  “Anyone get a plate number?” I asked.

  “The guy who thought it had Colorado tags said the first three letters were A-M-K. He remembered because those are his initials.”

  “That’s a Denver prefix,” I said. “I wonder if anyone checked that.”

  “If it was a Colorado plate, that would narrow it down to ten thousand vehicles, at most.” In Colorado, the first three characters on most license plates are letters, the last four are numbers.

  “Out of every ten thousand cars, there can’t be that many brand-new Ford or Mercury four-doors that are dark blue.”

  “Be nice if this broad Amanda would talk with us.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” I said. “What else did you get?”

  “Nobody saw anything. Nobody heard anything. But a couple of people swore up and down she would never get into a car with a strange man. She was real rape conscious. Carried pepper spray and wasn’t afraid to confront strangers who looked out of place in the neighborhood. She was like a mama bear to all the coeds in the neighborhood.”

  “She would’ve fought like a bobcat if someone had tried to force her into a car.”

  “That’s the impression I got,” he said. “You want to go visit this Hawkins tonight?”

  “Let’s catch him tomorrow,” I said. “I’m sure the cops have interviewed him and obtained pubic hair samples, so I’m assuming he’s not a suspect.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “The blondes are down at the pool.” I closed my eyes because I knew what was coming. At a minimum, I was going to drink more than I should. I didn’t even want to think about the worst-case scenario. “C’mon, marine,” he yelled as he changed into his new shirt, “the party’s just getting started.” What could I do? I put on my new shirt and followed my pal to the pool.

  Except for the blondes, the pool was deserted, but Scott laid claim to a table right next to them. Real subtle. The table was protected from the sun by a giant green-and-white umbrella. “We’re albinos,” he explained as we sat down. “Can’t take much sun.” They laughed. “My name’s Wally,” he continued, “and this is my friend Theodore.”

  “My friends call me the Beaver,” I said from beneath my aviator’s glasses.

  “Monica,” said the taller of the two.

  “Mindy,” said the other.

  We gave them our true names and got their story. They had just completed their junior year at USC and had been driving home to Ohio when the fuel pump on Mindy’s ’79 Duster gave out. They’d been stuck in Lincoln since Sunday, waiting for the right part, and hoped to leave the next day.

  “So,” Monica said, “what brings you to Lincoln?”

  “We’re private investigators,” Scott said. “We’re on a case.”

  “Give me a break,” said Mindy.

  “We are,” he insisted. He turned to me and said, “Show them one of your cards.”

  “First of all,” I said, “I don’t keep business cards in my swim trunks. Second, I’m a private investigator; he’s an unemployed astrophysicist who just likes to hang out with me.”

  “A groupie,” Mindy said.

  “Exactly,” I said. “That’s what he is. A groupie.” I stood up, removed my shirt, and dove into the pool. By the time I emerged, my flirtatious friend had convinced them we were, in fact, investigating the mysterious fractal murders.

  The four of us spent forty-five minutes discussing everything from the Nebraska National Forest (they had never heard of it) to their majors (economics for Monica, anthropology for Mindy). When we’d been there an hour, Scott asked if they’d like to join us for dinner. They looked skeptical. “You’ll be safe,” he assured them. “We were Eagle Scouts.”

  They knocked on our door just after six. Both were clad in tan hiking shorts; Mindy wore a blue short-sleeved shirt and Monica a thin white shirt with a mandarin collar. They were somewhat surprised to see that we were sharing a room with Buck and Wheat. “I thought they didn’t allow pets,” Mindy said.

  “We’re not very good with rules,” I said.

  “The Eagle Scouts?” Monica teased.

  “We do pretty well,” I said, “with trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, cheerful, thrifty, brave, and clean, but we’ve always had problems with obedient and reverent.”

  “That’s still eighty-three percent,” Scott said.

  13

  I WOKE UP IN BED WITH BUCK and saw Scott’s tousled hair poking out of the covers on the bed opposite mine. The sun was bright, and he was slowly coming to life. The digital clock read 8:37 A.M. I sat on the edge of my bed, then slowly walked to the sink. I assembled my morning regimen of vitamins, then opened my briefcase, found my Motrin, and added four of those to the mix. Without removing the protective wrap, I filled one of the motel’s plastic cups with water and swallowed the pills.

  “Too much to drink?” Scott asked.

  “Nothing I can’t run off,” I
said. I splashed cold water on my face, combed my hair, then rummaged through my backpack for my jogging shorts and running shoes. “Get your gear on,” I said, “it’s time to pay the piper.” Ignoring me, he turned over on his stomach. I took the dogs for a walk around the block, but when I returned Scott was still on his belly with the covers pulled over his head. “Let’s go,” I said. He gave me the finger.

  I grabbed the ice bucket, walked to the machine at the top of the stairs, filled it with ice, returned to our room and added some water, then took great delight in dumping the entire contents on him. He made a loud reference to our Lord and Savior, but got geared up to run.

  “You know,” he said as we trotted through the city, “either one of those girls would’ve slept with you.” The four of us had dined at a Mexican restaurant, then started a process of drinking, club hopping, and dancing that had lasted until two A.M.

  “Wouldn’t have been a good idea,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Some variant of the incest taboo.”

  “Fuck the incest taboo,” he said. “That’s just the bureaucrats in Washington trying to run our lives again.”

  I gave in to a smile. “The other thing is—and this is going to sound really weird—but I would’ve felt like I was cheating on my client.”

  “I knew that was coming.”

  “How’d you know?” I asked.

  “I’ve known you since the Cuban missile crisis. I can tell when you’re stuck on a woman.”

  “It’s probably a moot point. I think she’s got something going with this guy Finn.”

  “What’s he like?” Scott asked.

  “I’ve only met him a few times,” I said. “He’s young, maybe twenty-six or twenty-seven. Competes in triathlons. A little high on himself, but I was too at that age.”

  “You think?”

  “Just a little,” I admitted.

  “Ask her out,” he said. “We can always kill him if we have to.” I laughed.

  We continued running and I thought about Jayne Smyers. She was pretty, no doubt about that. And she was certainly smart. But some other quality was drawing me to her. She possessed a certain perky optimism—something I felt I lacked. I tried to put her out of my mind, but I kept hearing that Sam Cooke song. Maybe by being an A student, I could win her love for me.

  Even at that hour it was warm and humid. I was covered with sweat, and it felt good. I estimated we’d gone six miles when the Best Western came into view. I sprinted for it and Scott took off after me, but I’d been a college sprinter and I’ve always been fast for a man my size. By the time he reached the parking lot, I had my hands above my head and was catching my breath. He did the same. Eventually we got control of our breathing and stopped walking.

  “So, what’s the plan for today?” he asked.

  “We eat breakfast, visit Hawkins, and get the hell out of Dodge.”

  Parking at the college of business wasn’t a problem; there were plenty of meters beside the faculty lot. We scanned the lobby directory, found what we needed, and went upstairs. His door was open, and he was reading a text placed flat on his desk.

  “Professor Hawkins?”

  “Yes.” He pushed the book to one side.

  “Hi. My name is Pepper Keane and this is my associate, Scott McCutcheon. We’d like to talk with you about Carolyn Chang.” He seemed neither surprised nor afraid.

  “Come in,” he said as he rose from his chair and extended his hand. He stood six-two and weighed about one-seventy. Fiftyish. He was handsome and possessed the trim waist of a department store mannequin. His hair was mahogany, dark brown with a red tint. He wore gray slacks, a white shirt, and a maroon tie. A gold-plated pen graced his monogrammed pocket. A matching gray jacket hung on a hook behind his door. It was a conservative suit. We shared the same taste in clothes.

  “Are you with the police or the FBI?” he asked. Lying was a felony. More to the point, it was an easy-to-prove felony.

  “Neither,” I said. “We’re private investigators.” I handed him a card and he studied it. “We’re looking into the possibility that Professor Chang’s death may have been related to several others.” He sat down and invited us to do likewise.

  “The FBI mentioned that,” he said. I removed a clipboard and legal pad from my briefcase.

  “We want to be as thorough as possible, so we’re interviewing everyone who might have relevant information.” I surveyed the room. His many degrees and awards were double matted and proudly displayed in matching chrome frames on the wall behind him. An ego wall. One of Carolyn’s watercolors hung on the wall to his left.

  “You’ve come a long way,” he said. “I’ll do my best to answer your questions, but I’ve got to leave by noon. I’m speaking to the Chamber of Commerce.” I promised we’d be done long before then.

  “We understand you’d been dating Professor Chang.”

  “For about two years,” he said. I thought I noticed a trace of a Southern accent.

  “How did you meet?” I asked.

  “We met by chance, actually.” The memory made him smile. “I had gone to a movie and noticed her as I was leaving. I knew she was a faculty member and asked her to join me for coffee.”

  “I assume the police questioned you about your whereabouts on the night of her disappearance.”

  “Yes, they did. I was at a faculty dinner.” I said nothing. “They also requested saliva, blood, and pubic hair samples, if that’s what you’re wondering, and I provided those.”

  “When did you learn of Professor Chang’s death?”

  “A detective contacted me. Amanda something. Carolyn disappeared on a Friday, I think, and the detective contacted me the following Monday.”

  “Had you tried to call her between Friday and Monday?”

  “No, we didn’t talk every day. Carolyn valued her time alone, and I tried to respect that.” That seemed reasonable, but something bothered me.

  “What did you know about Carolyn’s work?” I try to ask open-ended questions—the kind that can’t be answered with a yes or no.

  “I knew what her field of expertise was, and that she loved teaching, but beyond that I can’t tell you much.”

  “What do you teach?” I asked.

  “My doctorate is in economics, gross national product and things like that, but I teach finance and investments.”

  “I read some of Carolyn’s papers,” I said, “and I’m told she liked to write. Was she working on anything at the time of her death?”

  “Not that I know of, but we seldom talked about work.”

  I continued down my mental checklist and when I’d run out of questions about Carolyn Chang, I asked him about himself. He’d spent his early years in North Carolina, but he’d grown up in Chicago. He’d been at Nebraska six years. He’d taught at a number of different schools and admitted liking the academic lifestyle. “I could earn more in the private sector,” he said, “but teaching offers greater freedom.” I stood up, ready to depart. Scott took the cue and did likewise. Then I thought of another question.

  “You said you also spoke with the FBI?”

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “How many times?”

  “Just once.”

  “Local agents?”

  “I think so,” he said.

  “Did anyone from the bureau phone you after that to conduct a second interview?”

  “No,” he said. “I told them everything I knew the first time around.”

  We thanked him for his time and walked out into a blast furnace. It was going to be a hot one in Nebraska. As we crossed the faculty lot, we stopped to admire a silver Jaguar, then noticed the license plate. DDH PHD. “I’d say he’s doing pretty well in the public sector,” said Scott.

  We boarded the truck and rolled down the windows. “So what do you think?” I asked.

  “I liked him,” he said. “Except for all the crap he had on his wall, he seemed like a pretty regular guy.”

  “Me too,�
� I said. “He has a certain charisma.”

  “The one thing I thought was strange was that he didn’t try to call her. I don’t care how casual their relationship was. I’ve been in a lot of relationships like that, and we always talked two or three times a week. Hell, before Bobbi moved in, she’d get pissed if I didn’t call every night.”

  “Something’s bothering me about that too, but I can’t put my finger on it.” I loosened my tie, pulled onto the main boulevard, and headed for the motel.

  “He never mentioned the CIA,” Scott joked.

  “He might’ve been with the CIA,” I replied. “They hire economists. If some bureaucrat wants to know what the price of carrots in Finland is going to be next month, I guarantee you the agency has someone who can provide a damn good guess.”

  We pulled into the motel lot, exited the truck, and headed to our room. “Something bothering you?” Scott asked. “You’ve got that deep-in-thought look.”

  “It’s probably nothing,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I just thought it strange that he never asked who our client was.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We barge into this guy’s office and announce we’re investigating the possibility that his girlfriend’s murder may have been related to two other deaths—a theory the FBI already rejected—and he doesn’t even ask who we’re working for. It just seems odd.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “I guess it does. You think someone told him to expect us?”

  “I don’t know who it would’ve been,” I said. “Nobody knows we’re here, except Bobbi and my brother.”

  “Who knows we’re on the case?”

  “Nobody who would’ve called Hawkins,” I said. “I think we can rule out Jayne Smyers, Gumby, and Dick Gilbert.”

  “What about the professors you spoke with?”

  “The department chairman didn’t even know about Hawkins. The lady professor knew about him, but it didn’t seem like there was any love lost between them.”

  Scott shrugged and removed his tie. “Hey,” he said, “why’d you ask him how many times the bureau had interviewed him?”