Interference

by Brad Parks

  Webster and the pear-shaped man had followed her in.

  The pear-shaped man started with, “Now, how can you—”

  “She’s not wrong,” the woman with the strawberry-blonde hair said. “Okay, I don’t know about the peeing-off-the-back-porch part. But those potato chip bags we found? There are few things better for matching fingerprints. It’s a shiny surface. And anyone eating chips gets a ton of grease on their hands to supplement the oil they have already. I just lifted a print off one of the bags that was a fourteen-point match for Bronik. There’s no question he was here. Or at least his fingers were.”

  This brought a hot silence to the room.

  Then:

  “Wow,” Webster said.

  “Oh, Christ,” the pear-shaped man said for a third time, but it was very different.

  Like he believed.

  “I should be a little more explicit: it’s not really him I feel,” Sheena said. “I was thinking about this while we were waiting in the car. It’s not him; it’s the virus itself. Like any virus, it can live outside a host for a certain duration. And there are traces of it all over this house. I feel it stronger in the other room. That’s where he must have slept, by the fire. He was there all night, doing a lot of breathing. Does he snore?”

  The question was directed at me.

  “Uh, no. I mean, when he’s sick, yes. But otherwise—”

  “Well, whatever he was doing, he expelled a fair amount of the virus by the fireplace. This room, less so. My guess is he just came in here to eat. It’s not nearly as strong in here. And that’s why I don’t think he went into the rest of the kitchen or down that hallway at all. I get no feeling from there whatsoever.”

  “So he was here,” Webster said.

  “Of course he was here,” Sheena said. “I keep telling you that.”

  “And, again, she’s not wrong,” the strawberry-blonde woman said.

  More silence. The pear-shaped man tugged at his beard. None of the officers were absorbing this new information fast enough. And they certainly weren’t moving on to the next logical questions.

  So I did it for them.

  “Okay, we know he was here,” I said. “But where is he now? And why did he leave right at the moment we were closing in?”

  Beppe chimed in. “I’ve been wondering that myself. We’re in an abandoned cabin in a remote area. Unless the owners came back—and it doesn’t look like they’re planning to—your chances of being tripped on out here are practically nil, at least until blackfly season ends and summer people start arriving. They could have stayed holed up here for a while. And yet judging by the freshness of the tracks in the driveway, they took off just before we got here. How is that possible? Was it just luck?”

  Everyone was looking at Sheena, who had established herself as the only person offering answers.

  “Yeah, about that,” she said; then she turned to me. “You might not like it.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “There’s only one person who could have possibly known we were coming,” Sheena said. “And it’s Matt.”

  Even in that chilly kitchen, the heat quickly rose to my head. Now I was the one who couldn’t process information fast enough.

  Sheena continued, “It only stands to reason that if I can feel Matt—or at least the virus he’s carrying—don’t you think he can feel the virus in me?”

  I had been so focused on our journey toward him, I hadn’t thought about that possibility. I started to stammer, “So . . . wait . . .”

  “He knew we were getting closer and he decided it was time to leave. That’s why I started getting that split feeling as we were coming here. I was still feeling the virus he left behind in this house. But the virus inside him had started to move.”

  “Why would he do that?” I asked, feeling stupid and desperate.

  “I’m sorry, Brigid,” Sheena said quietly. “I’m not saying this makes sense. And I couldn’t even guess why this might be. But you have to start being open to the possibility that Matt doesn’t want to be found.”

  CHAPTER 34

  The timer on the phone would have reached fifty-three minutes—but only if Plottner hadn’t shut it off in sheer frustration after twelve.

  He spent some of that time ranting at Theresa, who took in her boss’s tirade calmly. Tolerating his mania was just part of the job.

  That mental sixth gear of his, the one that had made him so unfathomably wealthy, was clearly engaged. The only difference here was that whereas normally people leaped at the possibility of having some of the Plottner fortune tossed their way—and therefore accommodated his sudden and crushing interest in them—O’Day seemed indifferent.

  Really, where had he gone? Hadn’t he agreed to the five-minute deadline? Was he merely off faking a photograph, or was this it, and Plottner would never hear from the guy again?

  Plottner continued pacing and grumbling until, finally, Friendly Facebook Bot informed him Tom O’Day was back, this time checking in from Tempe, Arizona.

  Plottner didn’t bother waiting.

  “Where have you been?” he typed, his fingers pummeling the keyboard. “I told you five minutes.”

  Tom O’Day’s response: “Complicated.”

  What did that even mean? How complicated was it to take a photo?

  “Do you have the photo or not?”

  O’Day: “I have it.”

  The dots began moving.

  But nothing new appeared.

  Plottner felt like he could have stared through the other side of the screen. How long did it take to upload a photo? What internet speed was this guy using? Dial up?

  Then the image appeared.

  It was small. Plottner enlarged it so he could get a better look.

  And, yes.

  No question.

  It was Matt Bronik.

  The professor was staring straight at the camera with contempt. He had Band-Aids on his forehead, wore a dirty white V-neck T-shirt, and was sitting against a plain wall painted in a neutral color.

  And he was sticking out his tongue.

  Just like Plottner asked.

  Still, Plottner had wanted the picture delivered forty-eight minutes earlier. Had fifty-three minutes been sufficient time for Tom O’Day—who obviously knew his way around a computer—to work some kind of magic with an airbrush?

  He couldn’t take this to the state police and claim he had made contact with the kidnappers until he was absolutely sure he wasn’t being played. Plottner squinted at the blown-up picture, looking for telltale signs of manipulation, little places where lines weren’t quite straight or the shadows suddenly changed hue.

  He didn’t see anything that aroused suspicion. It might have been the real thing.

  Or it might have been an outstanding counterfeit.

  And Plottner had an idea how he could find out.

  “You took too long with this,” Plottner typed. “This could be fake.”

  O’Day: “It not fake.”

  Plottner: “Convince me. Let’s see another photo. I want him sticking his thumb up this time.”

  O’Day: “No. No more photo. It too difficult.”

  Difficult? What did that even mean? What could be so difficult about taking a picture of a guy you were holding captive?

  Plottner typed, “If you can’t even get me a photo, how am I supposed to have any confidence you can get me Bronik?”

  He leaned back, waiting for the dots.

  They never appeared.

  Seconds became minutes. Minutes started adding up. Once again, neither Plottner’s frustration nor his money seemed to matter.

  Tom O’Day was gone again.

  CHAPTER 35

  They were all just standing there, hands shoved in their pockets, none of them sure what to do with this wild idea that their abduction victim wasn’t really a victim.

  Then Emmett’s phone rang.

  He excused himself from the kitchen and walked into the living room to tak
e the call.

  “Webster here.”

  “Pretending to hear someone call for help?” the terse, Masshole-ish voice of Captain Angus Carpenter said.

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “Don’t play dumb, Detective. The patrol officer reported it to the patrol supervisor, who reported it to the patrol captain, who reported it to the colonel, who just chewed my ass.”

  Emmett never lied. Lying was wrong.

  Except when it fit into a certain moral space. Wanda, borrowing from some fancy philosopher, used to put it like this: If a madman who wanted to murder your wife came to the door and asked if she was there, wouldn’t you say no?

  We’re all liars sometimes.

  “I wasn’t pretending, Captain,” Emmett said.

  “Look, I don’t go for this cowboy crap,” Carpenter said. “Maybe that’s how the New Hampshire State Police used to operate, but it’s not anymore. You either have probable cause or you don’t. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So that’s issue number one. Issue number two is: Why are you wasting perfectly good officers’ time with this . . . this crackpot who says she can sense where our vic is? I will not have you making a mockery of this unit, of this organization with this—”

  “Sir, you—”

  “—ridiculous fantasy. We are in the real world here. And we are real police who follow real leads based on real evidence. I can’t believe I’m even having to—”

  “Sir, with all due—”

  “I’m not done talking,” Carpenter snapped. “You’ll know I’m done talking when no more sound is coming out of my mouth. Now shut up and listen, Detective. Because I’m going to give two choices. Either you take whatever vacation time you have accrued—and I mean all of it—and disappear somewhere in that RV you stare at until I’m done being pissed at you, or I haul your ass in front of the disciplinary committee for inventing probable cause and, if I can find it anywhere in the regulations, for following the delusions of a crackpot. Which is it going to be?”

  Emmett didn’t hesitate. “Neither, sir. Not until this case is over.”

  “You’re done with this case. Hasn’t O’Reilly gotten there yet?”

  Emmett looked toward the kitchen, where Connor O’Reilly, the red-bearded Major Crime detective, had probably blasphemed a few more times.

  “He’s here, sir, but we’re not handing off this case.”

  “The hell we’re not.”

  And then, in his very dry, matter-of-fact Yankee way—without sounding like he was gloating—Emmett told him about the still-burning fire, the fresh tire tracks, and the fingerprint match Haver Markham had discovered.

  “You told me that if we found evidence Bronik was still alive, we could keep the case,” Emmett said. “Well, Captain, there’s your evidence.”

  The other end of the line was suddenly very quiet.

  “Hello, sir?” Emmett said. “You still there?”

  “I’m here, I just . . . you really got a print?”

  “Would you like me to put you on the line with Haver Markham?”

  “No, no. I . . .”

  His voice trailed off again. But when it came back, it did so in a different tone. Less Masshole. More actual human being. “This woman, she was really able to lead you . . . like some kind of human bloodhound?”

  “Sir, I honestly don’t know what’s going on. I can only tell you what I’ve seen. And, yes, she was able to guide us through the wilderness, down roads I presume she’s never seen before, straight to the abandoned house where Matt Bronik was, perhaps as little as an hour ago.”

  “Okay, then,” Carpenter said. “I’ll call the colonel and let him know what’s going on. In the meantime, if this woman really is a bloodhound, let’s get her back on the trail. She almost found our vic once. Do you think she can track him down again?”

  Ten minutes later, Emmett was back in his car with Sheena next to him.

  Brigid and Beppe were in the back seat.

  Jenkins and O’Reilly were trailing in their own vehicles.

  Emmett led them and the crime scene truck up the driveway to the top of the clearing so they could turn around. Then he got himself aimed back down the hill so this caravan—minus the crime scene truck, which was staying behind to look for more evidence—could follow him.

  The snow had stopped, the clipper having passed through. The sky behind it was clearing. Bright sun was already starting to poke through the clouds, which were being carried away by a stiffening breeze.

  Sheena was shifting her weight. She couldn’t seem to get comfortable.

  “You ready to do this?” Emmett asked.

  “I guess,” she said.

  Then she added, “I still don’t know if he wants to be found.”

  “It could have just been a coincidence, them leaving like that. Maybe the kidnappers’ plan all along was to stay on the move, and we just happened to barely miss them. We won’t know until we try again.”

  “Okay,” she said, like she wasn’t convinced. “I’ll do my best. It’s just . . .”

  “What?”

  “The feeling is all mixed up right now. There’s here. Then there’s wherever he is right now. And it’s getting weaker all the time. It’s like I’m losing signal strength.”

  “You still feel it some, though?”

  “Some, yes. I just can’t explain how strange everything feels right now. Even time itself is getting weird. It shouldn’t be today anymore, but somehow it still is. It’s like I’m being sucked into a black hole or something.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  From the back seat, Beppe volunteered: “There’s a classic thought experiment proposed by Einstein in which he imagined what it would be like to get dragged into a black hole. His prediction was that as you got closer, the immense gravitational pull of the black hole would accelerate you closer and closer to the speed of light, such that time would actually start to move much slower for you—and, therefore, relatively speaking, much faster everywhere else. Galaxies would start spinning around you like pinwheels, which would mean thousands of Earth years were passing by. But to you, it would still seem like a fraction of a second.”

  “Uh-huh,” Emmett said.

  Which was about how much sense this made to him.

  “Well, let’s just give this another try,” he said. “At this point we have nothing to lose.”

  “Okay,” Sheena said.

  He looked in his rearview mirror and saw the other cars, lined up behind him. He released the brake and got rolling down the driveway, gripping the wheel tightly as his car jounced over the ruts and potholes.

  At the bottom of the driveway, Sheena said, “Left.”

  She was leaning forward in her seat again. Her jaw had a determined set to it.

  He turned with purpose. It felt different this time. This wasn’t a wild-goose chase anymore.

  It was a hunt.

  There was a chance the kidnappers—and that’s how Emmett was still thinking of them, no matter what Sheena said—were hurtling along a highway at sixty-five miles an hour, making it difficult to catch up.

  But Emmett didn’t think so. If these Chinese men were bounding from one abandoned house to the next, they would stay close.

  There were a lot of places like that around here.

  Riddle Hill Road meandered to the right, though it remained a small track, wide enough for one car and no more. After a half mile or so, they came to a T.

  Emmett stopped and turned toward Sheena, who had her eyes closed again. Her face was squeezed with concentration.

  “That way,” she said, pointing left.

  This new road was wider. It took a sharp bend to the right, then straightened. They continued straight through an intersection. Sheena didn’t even glance at it.

  Emmett had a rough sense that they were tracking toward a small town called Grafton Center. And not that it was the center of much, but if the Chinese men
were really looking for another abandoned cabin, it wasn’t the way to go.

  Except before they could get there, Sheena pointed to the right.

  “Go that way,” she said, sending them down something called Williams Hill Road.

  They weren’t on it for long.

  “Take this road,” she said.

  It was another right. Livingston Hill Road.

  “You got it,” Emmett said.

  They were pointed back toward the boonies now. Behind them, Jenkins and O’Reilly—probably already wondering when and where this was going to end—were having no problem keeping up.

  On the right, they passed marshland, frozen solid, with big dead trees sticking out of the white earth. On the left were more houses, all of them visible from the road, making them unsuitable for the Chinese men.

  Emmett slowed for another T, having reached Kinsman Highway, a dirt road that was no kind of highway at all.

  “Right, please,” Sheena said.

  The back seat remained quiet, though Emmett could practically feel the tension rolling off Brigid. This had to be excruciating for her, not knowing whether she was being led to her husband or just to another empty house.

  They had taken such a strange series of lefts and rights Emmett’s sense of direction was momentarily confused. He felt like he couldn’t get his bearings.

  He peeked over toward Sheena, who was staring straight ahead with intensity. In relatively short order, Kinsman Highway had two turnoffs to the right, neither of which she even seemed to notice.

  The road went straight for a while. But as it continued, Emmett was getting reoriented, and it was giving him a bad feeling. They were definitely in the kind of country that would have a quiet hideaway, but . . .

  Sure enough, they had arrived at a familiar place. They were just coming at it from a different direction. He stopped the car.

  “What’s wrong?” Brigid asked, her first words of the journey.

  “That’s Riddle Hill Road,” Emmett said. “We’ve just gone in a big circle.”

  In the passenger seat, Sheena sagged.