by Brad Parks
Webster moved on to his next item of business. He had received a scan of the driver’s license that had been used to rent the ambulance. The man with the sickle-shaped eyebrows was using the name Yiren Jiang.
The license, however, was a fake. Yiren Jiang didn’t exist in the DMV database. And police had confirmed the address he used in Nashua didn’t exist.
Webster asked whether Matt’s research had anything to do with China, which prompted a lecture from Beppe about the quantum space race. He concluded by talking about a hundred-million-dollar satellite called Micius, which was allowing the Chinese to smash records when it came to demonstrating quantum entanglement.
Matt had often talked about entanglement, which to me was perhaps the most mind-boggling bit of quantum sorcery out there. Once a pair of particles have been entangled, they can be separated by any distance—a thousand miles, a thousand solar systems, it doesn’t matter—and yet they still somehow remain coordinated with each other. Smack a particle in one place, and its partner immediately says “Ouch.”
“So if the Chinese are already doing so well with this satellite and whatnot, why would they need to kidnap Dr. Bronik?” Webster asked.
“Anything I said would be speculation,” Beppe said. “But I will say that lately it seems like they’re stuck.”
“Stuck how?”
“Normally, when you’ve got a technological edge like the Chinese do right now, you keep putting out papers and filing patents, just to remind everyone you’re still top dog,” Beppe said. “Instead, they’ve gone very quiet. Now, it’s possible that means they’re about to come out with something really big—or they’ve already gotten there, and they’ve decided not to tell us. But it’s also possible they’ve hit some kind of dead end. I was Skyping with a colleague from Australia about this the other day. The line he used was ‘The silence from the Chinese has been rather deafening, don’t you think?’ And I agreed. Maybe they’ve stalled, and they think something Matt knows will get them unstalled?”
I jumped in with, “And let’s not forget they also took Sheena. Maybe it was actually her work and they felt like they also needed her adviser.”
“Just slow down a moment,” Webster said, holding up his hands like a traffic cop. “Are we sure Ms. Aiyagari is missing and not just away from her phone? I realize she didn’t come home last night, but I don’t want us to hit the panic button just yet. She’s a young single woman. Maybe she just spent the night at her boyfriend’s place?”
Beppe was shaking his head. “There’s no boyfriend. Sheena has a fiancé who lives in India.”
“What about a friend’s couch? I don’t want to sound the alarm over someone simply because she’s not answering her phone.”
“I understand,” Beppe said. “But Sheena is a very reliable young woman, not the type of person who just disappears. I’ve been reaching out to everyone in the department. She shares an office with two other postdocs. Late yesterday afternoon, she told them she was going to the library for a while. That’s the last communication anyone has had with her as far as I know.”
“I talked with her, too, but it was before then,” I said. “She answered Matt’s phone when I called it. But at that point, I still thought the whole thing was some kind of mix-up with the hospital. Sheena didn’t know anything, of course.”
The unknowns were starting to form overlapping layers.
Was this, in fact, a double tragedy? I wondered how they had abducted Sheena. Had they drugged her too? Just grabbed her off the street? Had Sheena and Matt shared that ambulance at some point? Were they now being held in the same place?
So many questions.
Including one that was now coming back to the forefront of my mind.
“Beppe, can I ask you something about Sheena?” I asked. “When we were at your house earlier, and I suggested we go knock on her door, David shot you this look that I could only describe as alarmed. What was that about?”
“That’s a long story,” he said, sighing heavily.
The physics department chair ran his hand through what remained of his thinning hair. I waited for him to continue.
“I don’t even know if I should be telling you this, or if it’s relevant,” Beppe said. “I’d ask you to treat this with . . . a certain degree of discretion.”
“Of course,” I said.
“About a month ago,” Beppe said heavily, “Sheena accused David Dafashy of sexual harassment.”
CHAPTER 23
Sean Plottner was back aboveground, sitting in his office, staring out the window but not seeing the view.
Theresa appeared behind him.
“Sir,” she said.
He turned. She was holding the phone.
“It’s Sam Ellis,” she announced. “He says you’ll want to talk to him.”
Sam Ellis was Plottner Investments’ social media guru, a millennial with a smart mouth and fast fingers who annoyed Plottner with talk about “touch points” and the need to be “buzzy” on his “socials.” Ellis’s life was a seemingly endless series of selfies. He knew nothing of personal privacy, spoke of algorithms in reverential tones, and placed in Instagram influencers the kind of faith once reserved for biblical prophets.
Plottner accepted the phone and said, “Yes?”
“Hey, it’s Sam,” he said. “Love the video. Have you looked at your numbers? The views are going up so fast it’s like watching a national debt counter.”
“Great,” Plottner said flatly.
The moment Facebook views had dollar figures attached to them, he would start taking them seriously. Otherwise, he didn’t understand the fascination. If people needed attention so badly, why didn’t they just get a dog?
“The comments are the usual mix of morons and trolls,” Ellis said. “Most of it is useless. I’ve been sifting through it anyway. I sent a few people on to the New Hampshire State Police, but there’s one guy who refuses to deal with the cops. He swears he knows where Bronik is, and he says he’ll only talk to you directly.”
“Oh?” Plottner said, his interest piqued.
“The guy’s name is supposedly Tom O’Day. It’s pretty obviously a fake account. It was just opened. There’s no sign of any friends or public posts. I did a reverse image search, and the profile photo was ripped off from the Facebook account for another Tom O’Day, a retired federal lobbyist from Fredericksburg, Virginia. I contacted that Tom O’Day just to make sure, and we chatted. Nice guy. Likes mystery novels. He reminds me of my grandpa. Anyhow, I then messaged the fake Tom O’Day and told him I knew he was a fraud, and he admitted Tom O’Day was not his real name.”
“Nice work,” Plottner said.
“Thanks. He said his info was legit even if his account wasn’t.”
“Okay, so let’s assume for a moment he’s not completely full of it. What does he claim to know?”
“I’m not sure. I tried five different ways to get more out of him, told him your time was valuable, told him I couldn’t get access to you unless I knew what it was about, and so on. None of it worked. He’s adamant it’s you or nothing.”
“Okay, then it’s me he gets,” Plottner said.
“Are you sure? It’s probably another troll. Or it’s some joker who thinks he can scam you out of an easy million dollars.”
“I’ll take that chance,” Plottner said. “In the meantime, I want you to document your entire interaction with this Tom O’Day. Take screenshots. Note dates and times. Then type it up and send it to the lawyers. Got it?”
“You’re the boss.”
“Thank you again,” Plottner said. “Good work.”
He hung up, then turned to his laptop and opened Facebook. He clicked on the message chain between the Plottner Investments Facebook account and the fake Tom O’Day.
Plottner reviewed what had been written so far, then started typing.
“This is Sean Plottner,” he wrote. “I understand you wanted to work directly with me. I’m here. What can you tell me about Profess
or Bronik?”
Plottner hit send. Almost immediately, he saw little periods jumping around, telling him someone on the other end was typing.
“How I know you are true Sean Plottner?”
“Because I’m telling you I am. Why would I lie?”
“Prove it. Go live and now record new message. Show me this is true you. Show me you is serious.”
Plottner’s brow wrinkled. He didn’t like being told what to do by anyone, especially someone with atrocious grammar.
But on the off chance Tom O’Day really knew something . . .
He clicked the “Live” button and waited for the countdown before he began speaking.
“This is Sean Plottner. There have been some questions about whether I’m serious about this reward. Let this be confirmation that yes, I’m very serious.”
He clicked it off, then returned to the message screen just as a handful of the idiots who had been watching him live started up a new round of inane comments.
“Satisfied?” Plottner wrote.
The dots danced, then spit out: “Yes. Thank you.”
“So let’s get down to it. Where is Matt Bronik?”
“You are too fast.”
Plottner rolled his eyes.
Tom O’Day was typing, and soon Plottner received his next missive.
Which was: “I am yet not telling you.”
“And why not?” Plottner immediately replied.
“I am need more than 1 million. You have more than 1 million. You give it to me.”
“Why? A million dollars for what you know is more than fair. And it’s a lot more than what anyone else will offer you.”
The periods moved.
“I have expensive,” Tom O’Day wrote.
Did he mean he was expensive? Or he had expenses? English clearly wasn’t this guy’s native tongue. He only seemed to be fluent in wanting more money—perhaps the most international language of all.
“How much this is worth to you?” Tom O’Day wanted to know.
Plottner almost smiled. He loved a good negotiation. And, therefore, he knew never to be the first to name a number.
“That depends,” Plottner wrote. “What kind of condition is Professor Bronik in?”
Plottner waited for the dots.
They were still.
“Has Professor Bronik been hurt in any way?” he typed.
The screen remained static.
“Do you know exactly where he is or are you just guessing?”
Still nothing.
Then, finally, the dots started waving at him.
“I am go,” Tom O’Day wrote. “I am contacting you at a later time. I am need more than 1 million. Goodbye.”
Plottner narrowed his eyes. He didn’t like this negotiating ploy, but he also couldn’t help but respect it.
It’s exactly what he would have done.
CHAPTER 24
I felt the words sexual harassment like a shock wave.
My thoughts went to Mariangela; to their daughter, a little girl who was deep into Disney princesses; to the fears so many faculty spouses felt about the youthful temptations that surrounded their partners.
Detective Webster, meanwhile, had actually leaned forward, eager to explore this new piece of information.
“What, exactly, did she allege?” Webster asked.
“That he constantly made advances and wouldn’t take the hint she wasn’t interested,” Beppe said. “David never actually touched her. But according to her, he made it very, very clear he wanted to. She said it started pretty much the moment she arrived here. He would wait until no one else was around and then give her compliments. But they were always very calculated.”
“What do you mean?”
“He wouldn’t just come out and say ‘I like your lips.’ He would say ‘That lipstick is a really good shade for you.’ Or he would say ‘That blouse really complements your figure.’ You get the idea.”
I was already shaking my head.
“So that if Sheena ever said anything to anyone, David could claim he was just making idle talk about women’s fashion,” I said. “I had no idea he was that kind of slimebucket.”
“Sheena said she found it inappropriate but harmless. Except it escalated,” Beppe said. “He started making inquiries about her fiancé, asking why he was still in India, why they weren’t married yet. He’d make comments like, ‘If I was your fiancé, I would want to be with you every night.’ Again, he was very clever about it, always careful to make sure he put things in the hypothetical. But Sheena said there was no mistaking the sexualized undertone.”
“Did he ever put any of this in writing?” Webster asked. “Emails? Texts?”
“Nothing. It was always in person. She said he would sometimes lurk around her office but only come in if she was alone.”
“Obviously, after Mariangela, he knew he had to be careful,” I said.
When Webster asked what I meant by that, I told him about Dafashy’s romantic history.
Beppe continued with Sheena’s story: “She says she was mostly just resigned to putting up with it. But then there was this conference on quantum sensing in Montreal he was trying to get her to attend—with him, of course. He said it could come out of his budget. He talked some about all the people he could introduce her to and how it could do wonders for her career. But then he would also slip in what restaurants they would go to and what drinks they would order there and whatnot. She said she felt like he was building it up in his mind as some kind of romantic getaway. She told him she didn’t like his constant innuendo, that she wasn’t interested in him as anything other than a colleague, and to please stop coming into her office.”
“Which I’m guessing he didn’t,” I said.
“No. According to her, he just ramped up with how Montreal could really help her career and how she needed to think about what would happen when her postdoc was over. That’s when she finally came to me.”
“How long ago was this?” Webster asked.
“Probably about six weeks ago?” Beppe guessed. “I’d have to look at my calendar to know for sure.”
“Okay, and what did you do at that point?”
“At her request, I spoke to David. She thought that would be the jolt he needed to make him realize she was serious. I was expecting he would say she was misconstruing basic friendliness and he would immediately back off. Instead?”
Beppe moved his head side to side. “He denied everything. Absolutely everything. He said it was absurd to suggest he would notice or comment on a woman’s lipstick. He admitted he was registered to go to the conference in Montreal. But he said he never mentioned it to Sheena. He insisted that everything she alleged was fabricated.”
The room fell silent for a few seconds.
“Wow,” I said at last. “That’s ballsy. Detestable, but ballsy.”
Aimee, who had taken a seat at the table next to me, said, “He must have known that with his history no one would give him the benefit of the doubt. He had to hope she couldn’t prove anything.”
“Or she’s making it up,” Webster said. “I’m not saying she is, or that it’s even likely, but it is possible. Until there’s evidence one way or the other, we can’t make assumptions.”
“Why would she invent something like that?” Aimee asked.
“Because she’s mentally ill? Because she has a grudge against Dafashy for some reason we’re unaware of and she knows he’s made himself an easy target in this particular area? Please don’t misunderstand me: I’m not trying to be the man sticking up for another man. If the allegations are true, it’s reprehensible behavior. But that’s still an if. Until we have corroborating evidence, we don’t know for sure.”
“See?” I said. “That’s how slimebuckets like David Dafashy sow doubt.”
Webster pointed his next question at Beppe: “If it came down to his word versus hers, who would you trust?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Beppe said. “I’ve known David a
long time. When Sheena first came to me, there was part of me that thought, ‘Well, that’s David being David.’ He’s always fancied himself a ladies’ man. At the same time, he’s never lied to me. At least not that I’m aware of. But I don’t think Sheena is lying either. As a scientist, I’m fascinated by the number of times that humanity has posed an either-or question only to learn the answer is really ‘both’—for example, nature versus nurture. Maybe there’s a way they’re both telling the truth? But I also don’t see how that’s possible. The whole situation is very difficult.”
“So what did you do after you talked to David?” Webster asked.
“I went back to Sheena and told her that he denied everything. At that point, she said she felt like she didn’t have a choice, that she had to make a formal accusation of harassment. I then referred the matter to the dean of faculty’s office.”
“That’s who handles the investigation?”
“Correct,” Beppe said.
“At risk of stating the obvious, I assume David had a lot riding on this,” Webster said. “He could have lost his job over this, yes?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Beppe said. “The dean of faculty would make a recommendation to a committee that would then have final say. But the college policy is now zero tolerance. He would have his tenure revoked immediately.”
“Do you have any idea how the investigation was going?”
“A little. I didn’t get all the details. But as David and Sheena’s supervisor, I was kept in the loop to a certain extent,” Beppe said. “There was supposed to be a hearing this Friday.”
“Friday,” Webster repeated. “And I assume each of them was going to have a chance to speak?”
“That’s right. They were also going to be allowed to submit questions in writing for the other.”
“And was anyone else going to testify?”
“Well, yes—”
And then, midbreath, he stopped himself.
“Oh my goodness,” he said.
He was blinking rapidly now, almost like something had hit him in the head. I had never seen him looking so bewildered.