Plank Factor

by Debbi Mack

  Be careful. You may be in danger.

  A concerned friend.

  “And this person on the phone. You didn’t recognize the voice?”

  I nearly wept with frustration. How many times was the cop going to ask that?

  “No! I didn’t recognize the voice. Couldn’t even tell you if it was male or female. They mentioned a van. It was there, then it was gone. Now, I’ve got this creepy anonymous note.”

  I paused, trying to calm down. The cop, a tall, skinny guy who looked about sixteen, gazed at me with eyes like blue glass, as devoid of expression as the rest of his face. A nameplate above his left breast pocket read “A.J. Montgomery.”

  “I wish I could help you,” he said, waving the letter. “But this isn’t a threat.”

  “But that phone call—”

  “Yes, I understand. That is strange.” His eyebrows rose, and the side of his mouth turned up in seeming acknowledgment. “I’m afraid I don’t know what to tell you. Except keep a record of your calls and hang onto any other notes you get.”

  “Could you dust for fingerprints or something? Figure out if this guy—gal—whatever—is in your system?”

  “I’m sorry. We can’t ask the forensic lab to do that without some indication of a crime.” He looked solemn. “Unless there’s evidence of a genuine threat, we can’t do anything.”

  My shoulders slumped. “So I’m right back where I started. Nowhere.”

  “Not really,” Officer Montgomery said. “I’ll file a report. Maybe we can’t act on it now, but as I said, if you get more phone calls or notes like this, it might—and I want to emphasize might—establish a case for stalking.”

  “So I have to wait for something else to happen.”

  The cop nodded solemnly.

  I sighed. “Goody.”

  Instead of the park, I decided to head to The Cup on East Pearl Street, where I could work on the novel and drink socially responsible coffee at the same time. While I was at it, I’d treat myself to a turkey club sandwich. I could already taste the bacon, avocado, and Swiss cheese. Maybe I was being stalked by some loony, but I wasn’t going to deny myself life’s small pleasures.

  I pondered the situation as I drove. Who could’ve written that note, and why? Then a bizarre scenario suggested itself. Could it have something to do with Fred’s failure to return my phone calls? Or the thing he wanted to talk to me about? No way, I thought. It has to be a coincidence. Just my overactive imagination running away with me. Same for the note written by the anonymous caller. And what did the van have to do with anything?

  Writing a novel hardly seemed like a dangerous occupation to me, but now I wasn’t sure. Whatever the reason for my current problems, I felt glad to have taken all those free self-defense courses the university offered.

  I parallel parked near Pearl Street, trying not to think about it. How much danger could I be in surrounded by people in downtown Boulder? The Cup seemed like a pretty good place to be.

  Not that there was any shortage of good coffee shops in Boulder. The Cup was usually busy but not jammed to the gills with the regulars who hung out at Rocky Mountain Bookstore. Nor was it overrun with the earnest students in endless discussions of consciousness, the nature of time, and inter-dimensionality who favored the second-floor trappings of Java Joe’s Café. Such conversation could be stimulating—to a point. Right now, I needed to focus on my story. Work out the details of what would happen next to Alexis and Swede.

  I’ll admit that I felt a smidgen of guilt for hanging out at The Cup, agonizing over the fate of fake people in a made-up situation instead of working on my thesis. But I was so eager to review this draft of my novel and put the final touches on it, I simply couldn’t stop now.

  I ordered my coffee and sandwich and then set up at a corner table to write.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Alexis

  They found a cheap motel well off the freeway, halfway to Portland. Swede peered out the window between the closed curtains, while Alexis stretched out on the bed and clicked through the ten available channels on the small TV.

  “Are you ever going to tell me what this is about?” she asked, stopping on TBS to check out what might be a watchable movie.

  “I told you,” Swede said. “It’s about the research.”

  “Which tells me nothing.”

  “Like I said--”

  “I know what you said.” The movie was some cop flick, full of stupid banter and chase scenes. Alexis muted the sound, tossed the remote aside, and rolled over to face Swede. “You need to tell me more. I wouldn’t have even come this far, if you hadn’t freaked me out. But I insist on getting a few details. I’m not going any farther with you unless you tell me what’s going on.”

  “I’m trying to protect you.” Swede turned from the window. He looked exhausted. “Please. Just trust me.”

  Alexis considered this. “No.”

  “No?”

  “I need an explanation. You’re disrupting my life. I have a master’s thesis to work on and classes to attend. And a limited time to finish my studies, so if you’re going to insist that I live my life on the run, I have to know why I’m running.”

  Swede shook his head. “I had hoped to avoid this.”

  “Clearly, but if you don’t explain now, I’m calling a cab or catching a bus back home.”

  Swede sighed. “Well, I can’t really force you to come.”

  “They call it kidnapping.”

  Swede grimaced and glanced out the window again. He froze as the flash of headlights illuminated him briefly, then relaxed as they disappeared.

  “All right,” he said. “Did Daniel ever explain the theory we were testing?”

  “I told you. Daniel didn’t explain a thing.”

  “Well, you did know he was a cosmologist.”

  “Yes, yes. You were both studying the origins of the universe.”

  Swede grabbed a chair and turned it backward. He straddled it and dropped onto the seat with a grunt, resting his arms on the back, his solid torso settling like a sack of cement. “You’ve heard of Albert Einstein, of course.”

  “Gosh, no, Swede. Who’s he?”

  Swede’s mouth turned up on one side, but the half-smile quickly vanished. “You probably know that under Einstein’s theory of relativity, the speed of light is constant.”

  “Yes, I know. I took basic physics, remember? Even thought about majoring in it, but philosophy was a better match for me.”

  Swede nodded. “That’s right. Remind me. Why did you change your mind?”

  “Couldn’t hack the math. Calculus was my downfall.”

  Swede nodded. “There’s a lot of that.”

  “Don’t change the subject. You were talking about Einstein and the speed of light.”

  Swede paused, as if gathering his thoughts. “Have you ever heard of João Magueijo?”

  “No. What the hell is that?”

  “It’s a who, not a what.” Swede explained that João Magueijo was the name of a Portuguese cosmologist. “He was trying to figure out certain inconsistencies between what we know about the universe and the Big Bang theory.”

  “Magueijo came up with this notion that maybe Einstein had it wrong. Maybe the speed of light wasn’t a constant. To boil it down, if light moved faster than it does now when the Big Bang occurred, it would explain a whole lot of things that hadn’t made sense up until then. Like the ‘horizon problem.’ Are you familiar with that?”

  Alexis shook her head.

  “Essentially, the background radiation in our universe is too evenly disbursed, too homogeneous. The universe is so huge, this shouldn’t be the case. The edges of the universe are 28 billion light years apart, but the universe is only 14 billion years old. If nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, heat radiation simply couldn’t have travelled between the two horizons fast enough to even out all the hot and cold spots and create thermal equilibrium throughout the universe.” He paused. “I get the feeling I’m l
osing you.”

  “I think I get the gist. Just don’t start talking in differential equations.”

  Swede smiled. A real smile this time. “That part doesn’t really matter, anyhow. That’s just the background. Suffice it to say, it’s a controversial theory. He’s been heavily criticized for positing it as a better theory than the ones that square with Einstein’s views.”

  “Okay. And all this is dangerous why?”

  Swede hunched his shoulders and leaned into the chair. “Magueijo wrote a book called Faster Than the Speed of Light. In it, he mentions that the research he was doing might end up being used to create a more powerful weapon than the H-bomb but dismissed this concern in a footnote. Under his theory of VSL--that’s variable speed of light--an accelerator used to produce Planck mass particles would create a bomb with half the power of an H-bomb. However . . . .”

  Alexis waited. Her life felt worse than a Hitchcock movie.

  “Magueijo had a footnote to this in his book. It said that this outcome was based on a certain factor in his equations being positive. But if he was wrong and that factor was negative . . . it would actually create a bomb twice as powerful. At least, in theory.”

  Alexis drew in a breath. “So you’ve proved this theory? The one that could lead to . . . oh, my God.”

  Swede’s head drooped. “Not conclusively, but our research led us to believe Magueijo’s worst-case scenario could be true.” He looked up at Alexis. “And I don’t think Daniel’s death was an accident.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Alexis

  “Wait a minute, wait.” Alexis held up one hand like a crossing guard. “Why would they, whoever they are, want to kill Daniel?”

  Swede heaved a sigh and rubbed his forehead. He resumed his watch out the window.

  “I’m assuming you meant he was murdered,” Alexis said. “Crashing your own car down a steep slope seems like an odd way to commit suicide.”

  Swede squeezed his eyes shut and his brow furrowed as if conjuring a response took great effort. “We were approached.”

  “Approached?”

  “Three people who claimed to be with the government. They said they’d gotten wind of our research and wanted to know our findings. Daniel and I were suspicious right away, since we’d told no one exactly what we were working on. We asked them where they got their information, but they refused to tell us.”

  “Could they have checked your records at Stanford and figured it out?”

  Swede shook his head. “Stanford makes you fill out a ream of forms before you can use their particle accelerator. They collect lots of information and make sure you’re trained . . . .”

  “And not a terrorist?”

  “Right. I’m sure they’ve checked our backgrounds. But they don’t ask exactly what we’re doing.” Another vehicle cruised by and a phantom light striped Swede’s pale face then faded. “These people had to get the information from another source.”

  “What about your adviser? You told him, right?”

  “Only the bare essentials. That we were testing out Magueijo’s VSL theories. We never told him what we found out about the Planck factor. We were afraid.” Swede lowered his head into his hands, holding it like a basketball. “I guess we were right to be. I guess we were stupid to keep it a secret.”

  Alexis tried to wrap her mind around Swede’s words, but something wasn’t adding up. “How can you be so sure Daniel was killed over this? If they wanted your research, what would they gain from killing him?”

  “To get to me. To force me to give it to them.”

  Alexis shook her head. “I find that hard to believe. Maybe these people were with the government. They showed you their IDs, right?”

  Swede shrugged. “So what if they did? You think these things can’t be forged?”

  Alexis peered at Swede. Could there really be something to what he said? Or had all the secrecy around his work with Daniel made him paranoid? Or worse?

  Maybe coming with Swede had been a bad idea. She should just play along. At least until she could think of a way to get clear of him.

  Swede was shaking his head. “It’s all my fault. It was my idea to keep it secret. Daniel agreed, but it was my idea.”

  “You can’t blame yourself,” Alexis said, in a voice that sounded dull and unconvincing even to her. Don’t quit your day job for the theatre. “You did what you thought was right at the time.”

  Neither spoke for a moment. The cop movie on TV was gearing up for what looked like a big finish. A battalion in SWAT gear huddled outside a brick building, while inside a man and woman did step-turn maneuvers around corners, their arms outstretched with handguns aimed, like Disneyland robots. It’s a Small World--and Very Violent--After All.

  Alexis rubbed her face. Swede’s paranoia was exhausting. “So where are we going, anyway?”

  “I’ve been trying to figure that out. Perhaps a big city. Somewhere where we could get lost in the crowd.”

  Alexis’ first thought was Seattle, but was that far enough? Swede stiffened and stared out the window. “Uh oh,” he said.

  “What is it?” Alexis whispered, although she couldn’t imagine why she should do that.

  “I’m not sure, but I think . . . .”

  JESSICA

  “Jessica!”

  I lurched and my hands jumped from the keyboard. Gasping, I looked up to see Cynthia Dalrymple. One of Fred’s friends.

  “Cyn. God. You startled me.”

  “I’m sorry, Jess.” Cyn floated over and eased into the chair across from me, tossing a red silk scarf over one shoulder like Isadora Duncan. Recalling the famous dancer’s horrible death by strangulation when her scarf got caught in her car’s rear wheel, I caught myself checking behind Cyn for rotating mechanical devices.

  Cyn giggled. A bubbly champagne sound. “I forget how wrapped up you get in your writing. What’re you working on?”

  “Just a story.”

  Cyn’s eyes widened. “Is this the novel? Oh, how cool! How’s it coming?”

  “Okay, I guess.” It’s for shit, but it’s going just swell.

  “Oh, I so envy you.” Cyn’s expression combined rapture and anguish. “I wish I could write. I would so love to be creative like you.”

  “Not if you want to stay sane,” I muttered.

  “Pardon?”

  “I said, sometimes it overtaxes my brain.”

  Cyn giggled again. “Overtax your brain? Oh, c’mon now. You’re a genius.” She wrinkled her nose and scrunched her eyelids. “You’re such a kidder.”

  I smiled. “That’s me. Jessica the Joker.”

  “Have you seen Fred?”

  It seemed like an odd change of subject. “I’ve been trying to reach him. I keep getting his voice mail.”

  “Me, too. Strange.” She appeared put out. “Fred was supposed to come to Sherry’s party this past weekend?” Cyn had this way of making statements into questions. Drove me nuts. “He didn’t show. Not like him. Fred’s so social? So I called him and emailed. He hasn’t answered.” She pouted. “What’s up with that?”

  “I dunno, Cyn. I don’t handle his social calendar.” I glanced at my watch, closed out the word processing program, and prepared to leave. Time to move on.

  Cyn recoiled. “No need to get bitchy, okay? Just asking . . . .”

  I paused before saying anything more. After counting to five (ten would have taken too long), I said, “I didn’t mean to snap at you, Cyn. But, really. I don’t know what’s going on with Fred.”

  “Of course.” She nodded, looking contrite.

  “Frankly, I’m a bit worried.”

  Cyn nodded again. “Yes.” She looked up at me. “He has been acting . . . strange?”

  I peered at her. “So you’ve noticed a difference in his behavior, too?”

  “He seems depressed, withdrawn. When was the last time you spoke to him?”

  I thought back. “I guess it’s been two or three weeks.”

  Cyn’s bro
w furrowed. “That’s when I noticed the change in him, too.”

  “Do you have any clue what it might be?”

  Cyn opened and shut her mouth, then spoke. “I can’t be sure, but I think it has something to do with you.”

  “Me?” What the fuck?

  Cyn stared me in the eyes. “You need to talk to him, Jess. I think you need to get the story straight from him.” She tossed her scarf over her shoulder again.

  I exchanged the bare minimum of chitchat with Cyn, before I made my farewells. I then gathered my things and bundled them into the car. From there, I dialed Fred on my cell phone. Got his voice mail again. Instead of leaving a message, I headed straight for his place, which wasn’t far from school. Time to face whatever was going on with the guy.

  On the way, I tried to picture what could be wrong. We hadn’t argued or had any kind of disagreement. If anything, Fred had bent over backward to help me get inside information that was proving useful in writing the book. He had lots of friends and connections—people who knew about political dissident groups and various anti-government crazies who might want to use Daniel’s research for nefarious reasons. The kind of information you can’t pick up at the library or even in a Google search.

  My car chugged up the hill in the old tree-lined neighborhood, and I eased it up to the curb by Fred’s apartment building. From the street, I could see his beat-up green Volvo in the lot. I called his number again. Voice mail. Don’t know why I even tried.

  I set the handbrake and turned the wheels toward the curb, a habit I picked up while learning to drive in the mountainous sections of Colorado. I got out and approached the white stucco building. The wind blew, and the fan-shaped leaves in the aspen trees trembled and whispered.

  I stepped into the foyer and climbed the steps to the third floor, pausing before knocking. Could Fred be really depressed? Could he have become dangerously unhinged? I stood there, spinning out all sorts of nightmare scenarios. The product of too much TV (and, of course, reading too many suspense novels). Suddenly, I felt stupid. Fred wouldn’t hurt me. Maybe the guy needs help. I owe him that much after all he’s done for me.