by Brad Parks
But with one final look at Lee, then a glance at his watch, Parsons said, “Fine. Be quick.”
Plottner set down the computer and opened the lid. The video was cued up, so an image of a bandaged Matt Bronik had already appeared on the screen.
The lawyers either craned their necks to see the monitor or were now scrambling for a view.
Once he felt people were properly in place, Plottner turned the sound up all the way, then pressed play.
Bronik’s voice soon filled the room.
“This is Matt Bronik,” he read from a piece of paper. “I am being held against my will. My captor wants five million dollars in cash to ensure my safe return and he wants it by noon tomorrow, or I will be killed.”
There was a catch in his throat as he said the word. Then he continued: “Further instructions will be forthcoming. I ask you to take this request very seriously, as I have no doubt—”
And then he lifted his eyes from the paper and, clearly off script, blurted: “I love you, Brigid, I love you, Mor—”
But before he could say anything else, the screen went dark.
Plottner, who had already seen the video a dozen times, had been watching the reactions of the people in the room.
A car bomb could scarcely have left them more shell shocked.
The first sound was a barely stifled sob from a middle-aged woman in a dress on the far side of the conference table. It wasn’t difficult for Plottner to guess this was Bronik’s wife.
A young dark-skinned woman—this must have been Sheena Aiyagari, the postdoc with the paranormal abilities—placed her hand on the wife’s back in an attempt to comfort her.
The lawyers who had needed to get up to see the video were now returning to their seats.
“How did you acquire this?” the judge asked.
Briefly, Plottner told the judge about the reward, then described the interactions that led to the video—first with Tom O’Day, then with Michael Dillman.
“It’s all documented in the amicus curiae,” Plottner finished. “I also had my social media person sign an affidavit, which I’ve attached.”
“And are the state police trying to trace where this video came from?” Parsons asked.
“I’m afraid they won’t be able to,” Plottner said. “I’ve been in touch with a network engineer at Facebook. Both Tom O’Day and Michael Dillman have been accessing internet via a virtual private network. Facebook is essentially blindfolded as to where they’re coming from.”
“Well,” Parsons said, “this certainly changes things.”
Plottner didn’t know what, exactly, the judge was referring to. But the man had already turned to Aiyagari. “If I were to let you into the lab, is it possible this feeling would return before noon tomorrow?”
“I believe so,” she said. “That’s my theory of how this would work. But until I have a chance to try, I won’t know for sure.”
Parsons frowned for a moment, then looked at the lawyer to his left.
“Mr. Tufaro, I certainly understand the government’s concerns about the sensitivity of Professor Bronik’s work. But as you can see, the threat to Dr. Bronik is no longer theoretical. It’s very real.”
The judge gave one final pause. But, having seemingly wrestled his doubts to the ground, he said, “I’m granting the plaintiff’s injunction.”
Tufaro’s expression soured.
“Can the DOD remain on premises to provide security?” he asked.
“I don’t know how that would work,” the judge said. “What this injunction essentially says is that this lab belongs to the plaintiff again. It’s their lab, so it’s their call. I would hope the plaintiff has given some thought to how it will keep the lab secure?”
He said the last part with a hopeful lift of the eyebrows.
“Dartmouth has already told me they have a plan in place for that,” Sopko said. “The head of their safety and security office is a former marine.”
“Okay, Ms. Aiyagari,” Parsons said. “The clock is ticking. Get to work.”
CHAPTER 41
Emmett didn’t really have time to stop and eat.
But he was starving.
The banana bread made by Brigid’s sister—delicious as it was—had ceased fortifying him several hours earlier, and he hadn’t had the chance to do anything about it through the late afternoon.
Almost immediately after hanging up with Leonie Descheun, Emmett had heard from Angus Carpenter, who sent Emmett the video of Matt Bronik and transcripts of Facebook exchanges between Sean Plottner and people who went by the names Tom O’Day and Michael Dillman.
The captain then asked for a sworn statement from Emmett, something that was needed to help get the lab back open.
Writing was never Emmett’s strength, and ordinarily it might have taken him even longer to sputter through the narrative of what he had experienced earlier in the day. But, mindful that Matt Bronik was running out of time, he choked it out as quickly as he could.
And now, because he felt like he was going to fall over if he didn’t eat something soon, he was at a burrito joint on Main Street in Hanover.
It was around five. He was three bites in when his phone rang.
“Webster here.”
“It’s Carpenter,” he heard.
“Did you get the statement?”
“I did. Thanks. But that’s not why I’m calling. You’re needed out near Canaan.”
“What’s out near Canaan?”
“I don’t know yet. I just got the message that O’Reilly asked for you. He said you need to hurry.”
“Okay,” Emmett said. “Where am I going?”
Carpenter gave him the address. Emmett was out the door moments later, walking toward his car as he took bites from his burrito.
More than a little of it fell on the sidewalk. The New Hampshire State Police Diet Plan.
It took the better part of a half hour to reach the destination Carpenter had given him on Fernwood Farm Road, which was near Canaan Street Lake.
The dirt road was, by rural New Hampshire standards, well populated—one house every tenth of a mile or so. Most of what was in between had once been farmland but had now grown back over.
Emmett was nearing his destination when he had to slow down. A state trooper was blocking the road, which told Emmett he had found the right place.
The trooper directed him to pull his car off to the side. Emmett went the rest of the way on foot. The sun was lowering. The wind had picked up. The temperature had dropped at least ten degrees.
Emmett walked until he saw the Crime Scene Unit truck, occupying the middle of the small road. With all the flashing police lights, and the general confusion lent by too many people in uniform with no actual purpose, Emmett couldn’t tell what was going on.
“Emmett,” he heard.
He turned to see Connor O’Reilly, whose bulk was wrapped in a jacket that went midway down his thighs. His red beard always reminded Emmett of a leprechaun’s.
“Detective,” Emmett said.
“Hey, just to get this out of the way: Sorry about earlier. You were right, I was wrong. My bad.”
They had been arguing about what had happened in that abandoned house on Riddle Hill Road before Haver Markham came along and settled the argument. Emmett was already over it. After a certain age—was it forty? fifty? or was it after your wife died?—taking everything personally required too much energy.
“No problem,” Emmett said.
“Thanks. And thanks for coming out. Anyhow, here’s what I got: A lady is out walking her dog when Rover starts going nuts and runs into the forest. She goes into the woods to see what Rover is all fired up about—we’ve already identified which footprints are hers, by the way—and she sees what I’m about to show you. She freaks out, calls 911, and here we are. The scene isn’t too contaminated. Markham got out here about thirty minutes ago, and she’s been staring daggers at anyone who gets too close. You want to follow me? We’re going around it and appr
oaching it from the side.”
Emmett said, “Sure.”
O’Reilly plunged into the brush, crunching along in shin-deep snow. There was a dense stand of dead, dried thicket by the side of the road. But once they cleared it, getting into the forest proper, the walking was easier.
The ground sloped upward. They covered about thirty yards until O’Reilly slowed and walked, more hesitantly now, to his right. Emmett matched his pace. He could hear and see the younger man’s breath.
Finally, in the gloaming, Emmett could make out two human shapes in the snow.
O’Reilly reached into his jacket and brought out a MagLite. He clicked the flashlight on and aimed it at one dead man, then another.
Emmett recognized them immediately.
The man with the dragon tattoo on his throat.
And the man with the sickle-shaped eyebrows.
“Not a lot of Chinese people out this way,” O’Reilly said. “I was wondering if maybe these were two of your suspects from the Bronik thing.”
“Yeah,” Emmett said. “That’s them.”
Emmett worked through this new revelation methodically.
There had been three men involved in the abduction.
Two of them were now dead.
It was possible that was the plan all along. You need three men to pretend to be a team of EMTs. Then you need three men to carry out the next phase—two to grab Sheena Aiyagari, the other to stay with Bronik.
But then at some point three becomes superfluous. A liability even—too many moving parts. Especially if you’ve decided Sheena is either no longer a priority, or no longer possible to abduct now that she’s alerted to the threat.
You only need one man to hold someone hostage, assuming the hostage is tied up, making the other two expendable.
Were these the two who had failed with Sheena? Was her dose of pepper spray only the beginning of their punishment? Had someone decided to dispose of them when they weren’t needed anymore?
Possibly.
But then why dump the bodies here? Fernwood Farm Road was more populated than the Riddle Hill Road area. This was New Hampshire, for goodness’ sake. If you couldn’t find a place more than thirty yards from a road where people walked their dogs, you weren’t trying very hard. It would be almost inevitable bodies would be discovered.
It made it seem like this hadn’t been someone’s original plan. This was a plan gone wrong. This was improvisation, perhaps born of desperation.
“Shine your light on that one, if you don’t mind,” Emmett said amiably, like he was studying fauna on a nature walk.
O’Reilly pointed the beam at the first man. He still had on the blue EMT pants but had ditched the top part of the uniform—the part that would have made him look like an EMT, which law enforcement might have been looking for. He was wearing a tight black sweater with a black T-shirt underneath.
Just above the collar of the T-shirt, roughly where the dragon’s snout was, his throat had been slit. The line across was straight. The cut was deep enough and wide enough it appeared to have severed both carotid arteries.
The murder weapon would be a serious knife—a butcher knife, a hunting knife, even a machete—not some piddly switchblade someone had kept in their pocket.
“It didn’t happen here,” Emmett said. “There would be more blood. A lot more.”
“Markham says the guys were dragged up here from the road,” O’Reilly said. “There’s a pretty obvious path. No blood, so they must have been dead for a while. The drag marks obscured some of the boot prints, but not all of them. She’s working on them over that way.”
O’Reilly pointed downhill, where Haver Markham and another crime scene tech were bent over one particular spot in the snow.
“Show me the other guy,” Emmett said.
O’Reilly shifted his beam to the man with the sickle-shaped eyebrows. Just above those eyebrows were two round holes, leaving little doubt as to how he met his end.
The entry wounds were small and neat. Nine millimeter, Emmett guessed. The murder weapon was probably a pistol with a short barrel, something that could have been carried concealed.
It wasn’t difficult to guess the order of operations: The one with the slit throat had been the first victim, when the perpetrator needed to be quiet. The gunshot victim came when noise no longer mattered.
“I’m sure it’s making Markham nervous, having us this close,” O’Reilly said. “You seen enough yet?”
“Yeah, for now,” Emmett said.
They began crunching back down the hill. Emmett was still working through things. This was now a ransom case, but it hadn’t started out as one. If it was, they would have heard a demand from the kidnappers sooner—not roughly twenty-six hours after the initial abduction.
Plus, Matt Bronik was not especially wealthy. His research may have been worth a lot of money, but he was not. If it was treasure these Chinese men were after, wouldn’t they have snatched someone whose family actually had it?
No, this only became about money once Sean Plottner entered the picture and offered a million dollars for Bronik’s return. That was what had triggered the initial contact from Tom O’Day.
Except now Tom O’Day was more than likely one of the men lying in the snow by Fernwood Farm Road. That was why the Facebook account had changed from Tom O’Day to Michael Dillman.
Because Tom O’Day was dead.
Which meant Michael Dillman was likely the third man, the one with the Neanderthal forehead—or someone else altogether, someone Emmett didn’t know about yet.
Then again.
Maybe it was someone he did know.
Emmett was back on the road now, though he was barely even seeing it. He was picturing a small section of that Facebook transcript Carpenter had sent.
Plottner: Who are you?
Dillman: That’s incidental.
Incidental.
Dartmouth professors and their fancy words.
Was Michael Dillman actually David Dafashy?
Emmett was now trying on a new theory. Dafashy hired three Chinese men to abduct Bronik and Aiyagari. Dafashy had paid his mercenaries well . . .
But not that well. Not a million dollars.
Once word of Plottner’s offer got out, one of the Chinese men, alias Tom O’Day, realized he could greatly improve his payday. So he reached out to Plottner, eager to cash in.
Somehow, Dafashy discovered that one of his mercenaries—or maybe two of them?—had betrayed him. With things about to spiral badly out of control, Dafashy acted. He killed Tom O’Day and his accomplice.
Then Dafashy, as “Michael Dillman,” messaged Plottner and made a demand for five million dollars. Not because he had any intention of returning Bronik or collecting any reward. But because it was more distraction, more confusion, more plausible deniability for Dafashy, who could point to the escalating ransom demands as evidence this had nothing to do with him.
The whole thing was misdirection, leading a detective—or a dean of faculty investigation, or a jury—away from the sexual harassment angle.
But Bronik would never be allowed to return and testify. That much was certain.
So while parts of this were improvisation, none of it was desperation. This was the calculated brilliance of a man who realized he had stumbled into a second red herring, that of the ransom demand. The quantum space race—the notion that the Chinese were stealing Bronik and his research—was still the first.
That’s why the bodies had been so easy to find. It was exactly what Dafashy wanted.
Emmett was now flashing back to his last interaction with Dafashy.
We don’t know they’re Chinese, he had said. They might be US citizens who just happen to have Chinese ancestry.
Dafashy had fired back: So you need to have incontrovertible proof they’re Chinese before you start exploring the most obvious explanation?
Emmett started working his way back up the hill, toward Haver, watching for stray footprints, being caref
ul not to disturb any of the drag marks.
“Haver,” he called out, when he was close. “Do you have a moment?”
She turned, said something to her crime scene tech, then approached Emmett.
“What’s up?” she asked. She had obviously been outside for a while. Her cheeks were flushed red from the cold.
“O’Reilly said you got close to the victims.”
“Yeah, what about them?” she said. Not rudely. Just impatiently. She had work to do.
“You check their pockets by any chance?”
“I did. But if you’re hoping the killer was thoughtful enough to leave their wallets and IDs on them, you’re going to be a little disappointed.”
“Did you find anything at all?”
“One of them had what looked like some kind of coupon on him. The other had a scrap of thermal paper with printing on it—possibly a receipt. I bagged them. They’re in the truck now. But good luck getting anything from them.”
“Why?”
“It’s all in Chinese.”
Of course it was.
This was Dafashy at work.
Giving incontrovertible proof.
CHAPTER 42
Even as I stood up, even as my legs started moving, even as I managed to propel myself out of the conference room without falling over, I had the feeling I wasn’t entirely in control of my body.
I was under the influence of . . . what, exactly? An excess of cortisol. A dearth of oxygen. The chemical cocktail the body created when it was confronted by absolute terror.
It had seized me the moment that video clicked on.
And it wasn’t letting go now that it was over.
Fearful I might pass out—and not wanting to make a scene—I asked for directions to the ladies’ room. One of the clerks led me to a private bathroom used by the judge and his staff.
There, I sat on the lid of the toilet, trying to collect myself.
I knew Matt must have been afraid, of course. But to actually see him looking that scared, to hear his voice sounding so strained, to read his body language as it screamed out in panic.