by Grilz, Jon
The chief sidled up to Lockhart. “So, that mean the case is closed?”
The fire chief said they found some fertilizer residue, evidence of a homemade bomb. Weber had done a tour in Desert Storm, where he likely picked up the know-how to make an explosive device. There were certainly plenty of excuses for him to own manure, so such a purchase wouldn’t set off any alarms.
“What do you think?” the police chief continued. “He gets scared that we are getting too close to him, so he decides to take himself and his whole family out, like one of those religious fanatics?”
Lockhart shrugged. He had no real answers, and as much as it frustrated him, none of his investigation had yielded solid results. The only evidence that pointed to a specific suspect was now worthless, since that suspect was nothing more than a chunk of charcoal. The death would probably be ruled a suicide, though suicide by bomb inside one’s house was usually reserved for warzones.
He left Agent Her in charge of the scene and went back to the bed-and-breakfast. The house was empty when he walked inside, which served Lockhart well. As much as he liked Joy and Jill, he didn’t want to feel happy. He wanted to call in his preliminary report and go home. He wanted to forget everything about the investigation, Jack the Shooter (if he ever existed), and Crayton—Crazytown—Minnesota.
Lockhart was lying down when he phoned his report in to Director Chalmers. While he heard himself spitting the report to Chalmers, Lockhart felt ridiculous. He knew that the whole thing had been a colossal waste of time.
“Well,” the director said, his tone flat and even-tempered, “what’s your next course of action?”
Lockhart was confused. “Actually, sir, I planned on catching the next flight back to D.C.”
Silence.
“Why don’t you stay there for a couple of days, Special Agent Lockhart? Take a little time off. I know it has been a while since you’ve taken a vacation.”
Time off? In Crayton? “All due respect, sir, I’d like to get back to the office.”
Another gut-tightening pause.
“Agent, you’ve had an impressive career…”
Lockhart felt a wave of ice-cold needles roll across his skin at the word “had”.
“You have been on some intense investigations over the last few years, and it is the recommendation of your therapist that you take some time off.”
“Well, sir, with all due respect to the shrink, I—”
The director cut him off. “I agreed with his assessment, Special Agent Lockhart. Take some time. Relax. Go fishing. After you’ve had a few days off, we will evaluate what the next step in your career will be. Until then, I am turning the official investigation over to Agent Her of the Bemidji office. It seems he is more than capable of finishing up the investigation for you.”
Click.
The line went dead, along with a part of Lockhart. He had been flagged during his latest evaluation, and they had cause to pull him from active duty. He was sure they’d had their suspicions all along, but clearly they had not received the report until recently, or else he never would have been assigned as the lead investigator on a homicide. It was shameful, and if anything had gone to court, even a public defender could have had a field day with him.
His higher-ups had waited to see if he would mess up and give them reason to pull him from the field. That mess-up came in the form of a report that read like bad airplane literature, with more holes in it than facts: no motive, no witnesses, no hard evidence and an agent with a theory likened to Jack the Ripper. His career in the field was over, if not his career as an FBI agent altogether.
And, to top it all off, he was in Crayton fucking Minnesota.
Chapter 28
Officially, Lockhart had three days off before returning to FBI headquarters. As if to emphasize their desire that he take some time away, he had been booked on a flight home that didn’t leave until ten at night on the third day.
On the first day of his required leave, Lockhart decided he would go out and just run. He would explore the wilderness and see what exactly it was, besides the polite conversation and hearty food, that brought people to northern Minnesota. Unfortunately, his resolve only lasted until noon. After a lunch of sloppy joe’s and homemade potato chips at the B&B, Lockhart found himself at The Pit Stop bar. There, he set a new goal: to drink enough to force Trevor to have to open a new bottle of Bushmills. Maybe even to get a new keg of Grainbelt Nordeast.
To his surprise, the people of Crayton were far more friendly and sociable than he had thought they would be toward him, especially the types who lurked around a bar at two p.m. on a Tuesday. As the hours went by, more and more people wandered through. Many bought him rounds just to get him to keep telling stories, no matter how vague, about being an FBI agent. He was sure it must have been as good as TV to them. A small part of him felt like a sideshow act, but the greater part of him was drunk, so he was fine with it.
Lockhart had never been in a position to get drunk in a town where an active investigation was going on, so he had no idea how he was really perceived by the citizens. Actually, he had always assumed people viewed the FBI with a certain level of trepidation and hostility, but he found the opposite to be true: most people actually felt better after he had showed up. Regardless of how harsh they sounded as a group or in the town meeting, the general consensus seemed to be that his presence in the town meant they were being taken care of. No one could remember a time when someone had been murdered in Crayton, so the police chief didn’t have the experience to handle an investigation, let alone the jurisdictional issues of where the body was found. The deputy was an outstanding chef and good to have in a fight, but he wasn’t levelheaded enough for analytical work; those were the assessments of the townspeople themselves.
Lockhart sat there dumbfounded by their reactions. To his surprise, it was just what he needed. He considered that maybe the Director was right, maybe he’d had been on duty for too long and in need of a break. He was out of touch with the normal, law-abiding citizens that he’d sworn to protect—people who were simply afraid and desperate for answers.
By midnight, things were starting to wind down, and Lockhart had lightened up a bit and was having a glass of water between his beers. He enjoyed his time in bars, but he also had the foresight to avoid what could—and probably would—be a hangover of epic proportions. He didn’t spend all his time in a bottle like a few agents he knew did, so he was prone to fairly strong and persistent headaches when he did drink.
As his water glass was being filled for the third time, along with a fresh scoop of ice, Lockhart got some company he hadn’t expected. Dr. Heath, Mikey’s high school science teacher, plopped down on the stool next to him in a boisterous fashion that was more akin to a child hopping onto a seat during a sugar rush. Heath had an energy about him that Lockhart found admirable, but he wondered if the man was a difficult teacher to keep up with. Just taking notes during their interview had been hard enough.
“Good evening, Special Agent,” Dr. Heath said with a certain exuberance. He was either glad to see Lockhart, or glad to be at the bar.
Lockhart’s eyes felt as though they were drooping a great deal and he tried hard to make sure to maintain his posture and speak as if he was somewhere near sober. “Hey, Dr. Heath. How’s it going?”
“Quite well, quite well. Horrible shame about the Weber’s home. Such a shame, indeed. They were a good people—not made for the sciences, but still good nonetheless. After all, with a son like Michael, they would have to have something in their genes. Such a strong analytical mind the boy had.”
Lockhart was fighting a losing battle at acting sober as he listened to Dr. Heath drone on and on. His words flowed out of him like a sports car speeding down the autobahn, and they seemed to flow without the use of a comma or period, as though his entire world was comprised of just one long run-on sentence. Still, Lockhart sat there politely and listened as Heath shared his feelings about Mikey’s death, the house fire, and
the general nature of people in northern Minnesota versus other parts of the world. For a moment, Lockhart wondered if Heath had been drinking all day. There just didn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to his thought patterns, and he ran off on so many rabbit trails and tangents that it was nearly impossible to stay aboard his train of thought. It was a wonder that anyone like that could hold a job, let alone work on classified government projects.
“Of course, living in this part of the country is so vastly superior to time that I have spent elsewhere,” Heath continued. “Take my time in universities. They expect so much in the way of research and results. The higher the level of education—though who exactly establishes what higher education entails is anyone’s guess—the less focus they actually have on the students themselves, as if they were just cogs in some machine and the professors simply needed to provide occasional maintenance and lubrication in order for the parts to keep working as they always did. I mean, at that point you just have a, a—”
Lockhart’s eyes popped open with relief and a grin when he was able to complete the man’s thought. “A government.” He was only half- joking, but it made sense to him at the time, and he wasn’t in any condition to filter his better sense.
The slap of Dr. Heath’s hand on the old oak bar bounced sharply off the walls along with a loud and boisterous laugh. “Exactly! Oh my, the stories you must have being a federal agent.”
After a long gulp of water, Lockhart responded. “Yeah, I do. I really do.” He paused as his mind drifted off for a moment to a worse and darker place. “But anyone who works for the government is bound to have their stories.”
The two men exchanged a glance. Lockhart had opened the door, albeit somewhat inadvertently, and now he wondered if Heath would walk through it and give him a little better insight into whatever research of his was so important that it meant sending Lockhart to work a homicide case alone.
Dr. Heath motioned to the bartender for the first time in the ten minutes that he had been there. He ordered a Rob Roy, claiming, “I’ve always had a fancy for them in taste and in name.” While the bartender muddled the cherry and sugar together, Dr. Heath turned back to Lockhart and leaned closer. “Actually, the stories I could tell you are very interesting, but they’re also very classified.” He pulled his head back and gave an exacting gaze. “Then again, I’m sure you already knew that, didn’t you, Special Agent?”
Lockhart shrugged and drained what was left in his water glass. The room had started to spin just enough, so instead of a beer, he pointed to the water glass to ask for a refill.
The two men sat side by side in silence for a while. Dr. Heath sipped at his Rob Roy, constantly smacking his lips with a pleased hum, and Lockhart drained two more glasses of water and excused himself to the urinal.
When Lockhart returned, Dr. Heath was putting his coat back on and thanking the bartender for the drink. He turned, nodded to Lockhart and walked out the door. Lockhart tossed his credit card on the bar, asked for his tab, and rushed out after Heath. “Dr. Heath!” Lockhart said, a bit louder due to his current state of intoxication. “Dr. Heath!”
Walter Heath turned and faced the slowly trotting Lockhart, his breath coming out in hurried puffs. “Yes?” Heath asked.
“I need to know,” Lockhart said. The world tilted, and so did he.
“What’s that?”
“Do you think anything you were working on with the government had to do with Mikey Weber’s death?”
The teacher furrowed his brow and gave the thought a great deal of consideration, before he finally answered. “No. No, Special Agent Lockhart, I do not. The things I was working on were always handled with the greatest of care. Besides, as brilliant a young mind as Mikey was, the things I worked on were well beyond his scope.” Dr. Heath paused for a moment, considering his last statement, and shook his head again. “No, the two are not connected.”
Chapter 29
The next day, Lockhart decided to stop by the chief’s office before going to The Pit Stop. He had slept in until nearly noon and thought it might be nice to chat with Joy for a while. He hadn’t been in the best of moods, particularly with a hangover that just wouldn’t go away after accomplishing his Bushmills goal from the night before, and Joy had a way of making him forget his worries.
The air was getting colder by the day, and the massive pine trees that surrounded the town swayed and bowed in the wind. It had been just over a week since he had arrived, but it seemed like the seasons had changed from fall to early winter already, even though it was only September.
Leaves performed a gentle tap dance as they blew down the sidewalk toward the law enforcement office. There was a bitter crispness in the air with each gust of wind that made Lockhart pull his jacket tighter.
The door to the house that was the law enforcement office offered not only reprieve from the cold, but also the same aroma of fresh-baked cookies that Lockhart had thought he’d smelled back at the bed-and-breakfast. The cinnamon and nutmeg in the air smelled like Christmas.
Joy cheerfully offered not only cookies, but also milk from the break-room refrigerator. Lockhart accepted happily and enjoyed the feeling of a life that was less-consumed with crimes and criminal minds.
Three cookies and two glasses of milk later, Joy pulled out a plastic baggie from her desk drawer, an evidence bag with several flash drives in it. “I almost forgot to tell you, the firemen found these in the remains of those poor Weber’s house.”
Lockhart could only come to the conclusion that Joy must not have known about his being taken off the case and put on sabbatical. The flash drives piqued his curiosity and he wondered how they survived the fire. As if to keep with the theme of reading his mind, Joy handed Lockhart the fire chief’s report on his assessment of the fire. It was his opinion that the fire had originated in the basement room that Mikey Weber had called his bedroom. The flash and burn patterns indicated that the explosion happened in the corner of the house. The flash drives were found in a fireproof safe in the back of the closet on the opposite side of the room. The closet shielded the drives from the initial blast, and the heat didn’t get to the point of melting the drives themselves.
The drives rolled around and around in Lockhart’s hand as he inspected them through the plastic of the bag. His mind wandered in ways it wasn’t supposed to. He asked Joy if the chief’s evidence kit was around, and she pointed him to the back of the building. It had been a while since he’d tried to lift any prints, and he had to be delicate, but he needed to check for evidence that someone else might have been in contact with Mikey. Lockhart pulled a thumb print off each of the three drives. He was sure the prints would turn out to be Mikey’s, but there was always a chance he’d get lucky.
With a gentle gloved hand, Lockhart took the drives out to a laptop on an unused desk in the back of the building. It was basically an antique, but it would be good enough, so he plugged each of the flash drives into the USP port. All three pulled up as the same documents, or at least they looked the same—nothing but lines of codes and equations that made no sense. Lockhart didn’t even know if the computer was reading the files correctly. What he needed was someone who knew a lot more about code than he did.
Each of the drives was returned back to the evidence bag, and the bag was slid back into Lockhart’s coat pocket. Lockhart left the law enforcement house and told Joy he would be back for dinner. He climbed into his rented Town Car and drove out to the Crayton K-12 School.
It was still before two p.m., but the school secretary informed Lockhart that Dr. Heath had taken a half-day because of a dentist appointment. “If you need help,” she said, “you’re welcome to talk to the substitute covering for Mr. Heath.” The secretary didn’t understand why Lockhart was there, but she was nice and sincere, so Lockhart thanked her for her time and went back to his car.
The problem had not been resolved. He still needed someone with a science background to look at the flash drives, as he was far from qualified to decipher
the massive amounts of equations. There had to be something important about the drives. After all, the kid had kept the drives in a locked, fireproof safe at the back of his closet, so there had to be a reason for him keeping them under lock and key. Lockhart wouldn’t have been surprised if there had been dirty pictures or videos, as teenage boys are prone to hiding such from their parents, but he did not expect to see equations. It couldn’t have been simple schoolwork, for he’d have no reason to lock that up. Whatever was on those flash drives, Mikey Weber was concerned that they might fall into the wrong hands.
The real problem was that Special Agent Lockhart was effectively just Darren Lockhart for the next two days. As such, he had no authority to go through official channels. If he turned the evidence over to Agent Her, he would officially be handing the reigns of the investigation over. No, he couldn’t give up, not when he had already come so far. The path Lockhart chose to take was one he had never entertained. However, his status with the Bureau was on unstable ground anyway, and he’d spent the last two years dealing with more unsolved crimes than he had in the eighteen years that preceded them. If those flash drives were the key to solving one last homicide before his retirement—or perhaps his humiliating dismissal—then so be it.
With a flick of his thumb, Lockhart scrolled through his smart phone and pulled up the contact information for Professor Hubert Mendez in the Physics Department at the University of Minnesota-Duluth. According to the schedule provided to him by the professor, he thought he might just be able to get to Duluth in time to get some answers.
So Lockhart called Professor Mendez and dangled the carrot of some unknown flash drives containing complex equations in front of him, to which the professor responded, “I’ll be here in my office, waiting for you to arrive.”
Within the first few minutes of Lockhart’s arrival, the professor asked, “Why are you letting me look at this instead of running it by your agency offices?”