Interference

by Brad Parks

  “I knew it,” Dafashy said, growing very excited. “Don’t you see? It all points to what I was telling Brigid this morning. When it comes to quantum mechanics, we’re in a space race against the Chinese. They’re hell bent on winning. And they’ll do anything. Anything. Sheena is Matt’s postdoc. She shares a lab with him. She would know more about his research than anyone. Doesn’t it stand to reason that the Chinese would want both Matt and his assistant? You have to see that’s what’s really going on here. The Chinese are behind everything.”

  Or, Emmett thought, that’s what you want people to think.

  “That’s certainly a theory to pursue,” Emmett said guardedly.

  “A theory to pursue! Is that all? She saw the men who did this and yet you’re bothering with me? You should be getting her with a sketch artist. You should be focused on the Chinese.”

  “We don’t know they’re Chinese,” Emmett said. “They might be US citizens who just happen to have Chinese ancestry.”

  “So you need to have incontrovertible proof they’re Chinese before you start exploring the most obvious explanation? That’s patently inane.”

  Emmett wasn’t sure how he had allowed himself to be maneuvered into discussing investigation strategy with a suspect, but it was a corner he needed to get out of.

  “I’m not saying that,” he offered lamely.

  “No, what you’re saying is it’s easier to pin this on me. Horny Professor Dafashy, who had one momentary lapse in judgment years ago when he got his TA pregnant. Yes, he must be the one who did it.”

  “I’m just asking questions here, Professor.”

  “Well, if you have any more of them, you can ask my lawyer.”

  “You have a lawyer?”

  “Not yet. But I’ll be getting one,” he said. “You can have your witch hunt, but I’m not going to play the role of the lady with the pointed hat.”

  Dafashy stood. So did Emmett. The suspect had invoked his right to counsel. There was no law that dictated Emmett needed to stop asking questions because of it, and with someone less sophisticated, Emmett might have tried to do just that.

  But that wasn’t going to work here. Dafashy was too smart.

  So Emmett simply handed the man a business card, then left, all the while replaying what had been a rather remarkable performance.

  It was, by turns, friendly and combative. Dafashy had attempted to be persuasive, and when that failed, he turned belligerent. He had hopped on the China angle with fervor, and when that suggestion wasn’t met with unbridled enthusiasm, he took a turn toward paranoia, then lawyered up.

  In other words, he had acted like the hundreds of guilty suspects Emmett had interviewed before him.

  Was there truth in anything he had said? Emmett had always felt that people who dismissed harassment claims as being he-said-she-said—and therefore impossible to untangle—were just being lazy. At the very least, you could learn more about the truthfulness of the he and she involved.

  Emmett believed in the legal concept of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus—the Latin phrase that translated as “false in one thing, false in everything.” And there was at least one part of Dafashy’s story that would be relatively easy to check.

  Emmett took out his phone and dialed Beppe Valentino.

  After a brief exchange, Emmett got down to the reason for his call:

  “Do you have contact information for Leonie Descheun?”

  It was three thirty East Coast time, nine thirty Paris time. Which made it late to call the cell phone number that Beppe had been able to dig up.

  But not too late.

  Emmett needed three tries to get the number right—a New Hampshire State Police detective didn’t exactly make a lot of international calls, so he forgot the 011 prefix—but finally he heard the flat double beep of the European ringtone.

  After three rings, a woman answered.

  “Hello?”

  She sounded French, so it came out more like “’ello”—with a silent h.

  “Leonie, this is Emmett Webster, I’m a detective for the New Hampshire State Police. Beppe Valentino from Dartmouth gave me your number. Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

  “Yes, of course, how can I help you?”

  “I’m just doing a background check and wanted to ask you a few questions about David Dafashy.”

  Leonie’s reaction was not one Emmett expected.

  She said, “Okay,” then added a giggle.

  “What’s so funny?” Emmett asked.

  “Nothing. I’m sorry. Go ahead.”

  Emmett didn’t know what to make of that. So he started with, “You know Dr. Dafashy?”

  “Yes, of course. He was a professor at Dartmouth, where I was doing a postdoctoral study.”

  “Was he your adviser?”

  “No, emm, not directly. That was more Beppe. I am a theorist, like Beppe. But David was interested in my area of study.”

  “So you interacted with him a fair amount?”

  “Some, yes.”

  “How would you describe those interactions?”

  “Oh, he was very friendly. He is a very nice man. He was interested in being a mentor to me, wanting to help my career.”

  “How so?”

  “He knows a lot of people at different places. Physics is very small, but within physics, the name David Dafashy is a little famous, you know?”

  Emmett had been doing this long enough to know when someone was holding back. And he was getting that feeling now.

  “Did you ever get the sense his interest in you was more than just professional?” he asked.

  And there it was again. That giggle.

  “You’re laughing,” he said. “Does the question make you uncomfortable?”

  “No, no. This is . . . I don’t want to sound like I am bragging. But, yes, I think maybe he likes me? He was very sweet. He was always telling me I am beautiful and asking why do I not have a boyfriend.”

  “And how did you respond to that?”

  “When a man tells me I’m beautiful? I say, ‘Thank you.’ What should I say?”

  “But were you threatened by his behavior at all? Did you ever think about reporting him?”

  “Oh, nooo. This is nothing. In France, we are used to men like this. This is why when #MeToo happens in America, Brigitte Bardot, she comes out and says, ‘I found it charming when men said I had a nice backside.’ It is different with men and women here. At François Mitterrand’s funeral, his wife and his mistress were treated with equal respect. I am not saying this is right. Cheating is wrong. I am just saying it happens a lot.”

  “Do you think Professor Dafashy wanted you to be his mistress?”

  Another giggle.

  “This is hard to answer,” she said. “It is not like he comes out and says, ‘Leonie, I want to have an affair with you.’”

  “So what did he say?”

  “Well, there is this conference he goes to. It is in Montreal, which is a very romantic city, you know? And he says, ‘Leonie, you should come with me to Montreal. Leonie, you should have dinner with me. Leonie, we will drink wine together.’ And even though he is not saying it, I am knowing what he means, what he wants.”

  “And how did you respond?”

  “Ohh, I know he has a wife and a little girl. I am not a, a what-you-call-it, a home-wrecker. But I want to be kind to him. So I say, ‘I’m sorry, I am busy, I cannot go to this conference with you.’”

  “By any chance did he mention the name of the restaurant he wanted to take you to?”

  “Oh, yes. It is called Les Jardins. He thinks maybe because I am French, I will like this, yes?”

  Les Jardins. Just like it had been with Mariangela and Sheena. And yet somehow Emmett was supposed to believe he had no feelings for Leonie? Or that he hadn’t harassed Sheena?

  Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus.

  “Yes,” Emmett said. “I’m sure that’s exactly what he thought.”

  “Is everything okay? Has som
ething happened to him?”

  “No, he’s just fine. Thank you for answering my questions.”

  “I am not sure what I have even told you,” she said. “This is not so helpful, I think?”

  “No, no, it’s very helpful,” Emmett assured her before ending the call. “You told me everything I needed to know.”

  CHAPTER 38

  Tom O’Day had vanished again.

  It had been hours now, and Sean Plottner had heard nothing from him.

  Friendly Facebook Bot had alerted him to one log-in, from Germany. But O’Day had not seen fit to write a message.

  Plottner had Facebook open and was checking it every few minutes. Where was goddamn Tom O’Day? What was taking him so long? Didn’t he want a payday?

  Plottner was starting to think he might never get an answer. Then, during one of his many Facebook checks, he saw he had a new message.

  Not from Tom O’Day.

  From someone called Michael Dillman.

  And the contents made Plottner freeze.

  “You’re not working with Tom O’Day anymore,” it read. “You’re working with me now.”

  Whoever this was, his English was certainly improved. Plottner leaned close to the screen and inspected the thumbnail-size profile photo. It was a picture of an aging white man whose face was consumed by a bushy mustache.

  Another stolen picture? Another fake account? Logging in from a VPN, just like O’Day?

  “Theresa!” Plottner yelled. “Get that Facebook engineer on the phone. Get him now. Better yet, get him five minutes ago.”

  Plottner was still staring at the screen, letting all these thoughts rumble through his mind, when the dots started moving.

  Michael Dillman was typing.

  The message came in: “If you want to see Matt Bronik again, you’ll answer me now.”

  “Who are you?” Plottner hastily typed.

  “That’s incidental. What matters is we each have something the other wants. You want Matt Bronik. I want money. We can make a deal.”

  Yes. A deal.

  Plottner loved making deals.

  Was this actually Tom O’Day, switching accounts, trying to gain leverage in negotiations by pretending to be someone else? No. How would that help him? Having two entities who both claimed to have abducted Bronik would actually weaken each negotiator’s position—if not obliterate it altogether, if it muddled the question of possession.

  This Michael Dillman was a new actor.

  “What happened to Tom O’Day?” Plottner typed.

  He didn’t really care, of course. He just wanted to see what Dillman was willing to reveal.

  “He is no longer your concern,” Dillman replied.

  “How do I know you have Matt?”

  Much more quickly than last time—no more dial up, apparently—a photo appeared. It was Matt Bronik, with the same Band-Aids, the same plain wall, the same dingy lighting.

  But the T-shirt was different.

  It had a brown-red stain across the chest, dots that arced from left to right in a crescent-moon shape, growing slightly smaller toward the tail.

  Like a blood spatter.

  The other striking thing about the photo was that he was sticking up his thumb.

  Michael Dillman had clearly been in contact with Tom O’Day somehow. Because that was the photo Plottner had last asked for. Otherwise, how would Dillman know?

  Except Plottner was already shaking his head as he messaged: “This is no good. I asked for this picture hours ago. My eight-year-old niece could have faked a photo in that amount of time.”

  “Okay. How can I convince you?”

  “I want a video. Not tomorrow. Not in five hours. I want it in five minutes. And whatever your monetary demand is, I want Matt to say it on the video.”

  The reply was immediate: “Okay.”

  Plottner was pleased with his cleverness. Not only would he get the proof of life he needed, but he had subtly claimed a leg up in the negotiation by making Michael Dillman name his number first.

  Theresa appeared. “I’ve got the Facebook engineer,” she said.

  With his eyes on the screen the whole time, Plottner confirmed with the engineer that Michael Dillman had entered Facebook via a VPN. So there was no tracking him.

  Plottner hung up. It had been three minutes already.

  Then a video arrived.

  Bronik’s face was squared in the middle of the frame, but he was not looking at the camera. His eyes were cast down, at something he appeared to be holding.

  Plottner hastily hit the triangular-shaped play button and unmuted the sound. He was soon hearing Bronik’s unmistakable North Carolina twang, reading from a piece of paper.

  And there was no question in Plottner’s mind:

  This was the real thing.

  This was the convincing evidence he had been waiting for.

  This was something he could take to the state police with total confidence.

  CHAPTER 39

  For someone accustomed to the deliberative pace of a university—where there’s always tomorrow, and the next day, and the month after that—I could scarcely believe the speed at which the legal system was moving.

  It turned out that when Beppe called them, the college’s lawyers, working in conjunction with a law firm in Concord, had been moments away from filing a claim challenging the Department of Defense’s use of eminent domain—which included a request for an emergency injunction that would, in effect, reopen the top two floors of Wilder Hall.

  As soon as the lawyers heard about Sheena, they enthusiastically included her claims in their brief, then made me a plaintiff.

  When you’re throwing legal spaghetti against the wall in the hopes that something sticks, it always helps to have more noodles.

  They filed Dartmouth College and Brigid Bronik v. Department of Defense, et al. with the US District Court of New Hampshire in Concord. And then they waited for a response.

  But not for long.

  The case was assigned to the Honorable Benjamin Stuart Parsons, which may or may not have been a stroke of luck. According to the outside counsel, Parsons had been on the bench for twenty-five years, long enough that he had stopped caring what anyone, including the Department of Defense, thought of him. He was notoriously impatient and raged against the torpidity of the federal judiciary, hearing more cases in most years than any two of his colleagues, believing in the adage that justice delayed was justice denied.

  He was also fiercely independent and wildly unpredictable, considered just as likely to tell the Department of Defense to pack up its bags and go home as he was to tell the elite private college to stop its whining and let the army do its job.

  Literally, anything could happen.

  But whatever was the case, it would happen quickly. Judge Parsons called us to his chambers for a conference, scheduling it for five o’clock, regular business hours be damned.

  We, the plaintiffs, had said this was an emergency; to Parsons, everything was an emergency.

  It was not, according to the lawyers, a formal hearing. That would come later. But there would be a court stenographer present. We would be on the record, under oath. We would be given a chance to present as much of our case as the judge would let us.

  And would it help to have the wife of the missing professor there? And the postdoc who might be able to find him if she could get back into the lab?

  Yes, it absolutely would.

  Which meant we had to hurry. I barely had time to put on a dress appropriate for a meeting with a judge. Sheena was resigned to the clothes she had on, because the trip back to her apartment would have made us late.

  We just hopped in my CRV and took off. I explained to Sheena I didn’t talk and drive at the same time—it required me taking my eyes off the road for too long—so we rode in silence.

  As soon we hit the highway, Sheena fell asleep again.

  I could feel my body slowing down as well. The lack of sleep from the night before was
finally bearing down on me. To stave off exhaustion, I sipped a diet soda, letting the much-needed caffeine percolate into my bloodstream.

  All the while, my mind continued racing. How quickly would renewed contact with the virus strengthen her feeling for Matt? Would she need to have another fit before it triggered?

  Or would it not work at all? Was it possible that, without Matt also renewing his infection, the connection between them would slowly dissipate, like ripples in a pond, until it was so flat as to be indistinguishable?

  Then there was the other vexing issue that refused to leave my thoughts: Even if Sheena’s spooky feelings did return, would Matt allow himself to be found? Would we simply chase him from one hiding spot to the next, barely missing him every time?

  And if that was the case, what did I do then? Just wait for him to come in from the cold?

  The whole thing was like one of the tandem trucks in the lane next to me, rumbling down the side of the White Mountains. And there I was next to them, in my little Honda CRV, merely hoping not to get run over.

  It was seven minutes to five when we arrived at the Warren B. Rudman US Courthouse, an imposing building whose facade was done in 100 percent cheerless gray New Hampshire granite.

  We passed under an arched glass entryway, then through a metal detector, after which we were directed to the fifth-floor office suite of Judge Parsons.

  A law clerk escorted Sheena and me into a room with narrow rectangular windows and a long conference table. There were ten chairs, only one of which was occupied. As the clerk departed, a woman in a blue skirt suit, with long blonde hair and empathetic blue eyes, stood up.

  “Mrs. Bronik, Ms. Aiyagari?” she said in a melodious voice. Even with the digital flatness of my hearing aids, I could tell she was a singer.

  “That’s us,” I said.

  “I’m Jen Sopko. I’m with the law firm of Farley, Gibson & Wrobel here in Concord. I’ll be arguing this case on Dartmouth’s behalf—and on your behalf, since you’re now a plaintiff too. It’s nice to meet you.”

  We exchanged handshakes.

  “Is anyone from Dartmouth coming?” Sheena asked.