“It’s not an excuse. My mom’s heavily invested in my performance.”
“Are you invested in your performance?”
“No.” She sighed. “But since I’m practically an only child, what do I know? And you know Asian mothers—”
“I already apologized for that crack.” Ben sat down. “I’m a good guy. Don’t be a brat.”
“I’m not a brat. Well, maybe a little bit of a brat.” She waved her hand in the air. “As long as you’re here, maybe you can make yourself useful.” She showed him a problem. “I have to find the area underneath the curve as it expands at the rate of the function of time.”
“Just integrate.”
“I’m not allowed to integrate. I have to do it with simple geometry at any given point.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.”
Ben smiled. She had fight in her and that was good. He picked up the pencil and started dividing the figure into workable polygons. It took sixteen divisions. “This should do it.”
She looked at the work. “Maybe you should enter the contest instead of me.”
“Maybe you should just tell your mom you don’t want to do it.”
“Maybe you should just leave me alone.” She was muttering under her breath but loud enough so he could hear it. “Can’t a girl get a little solitude?”
“Lilly, I know my sister and Griff are wrapped up in one another and she’s probably being a little inconsiderate. But she isn’t going anywhere and neither is your friendship.”
Lilly shrugged. “I don’t care, Ben. And what’s wrong with being alone, Mr. Asocial extraordinaire? Or should I call you Mr. Popular now?”
“That’s a very interesting point. Because now that I’m with the in-crowd, I’m still a fish with a bicycle. It’s weird sitting with Ro now that she’s back with JD.”
“So just get back with Ro,” she blurted out. “You obviously still love her. She obviously still loves you. You should try a little forgiveness.”
“This is none of your business, but I’m gonna tell you anyway.” Ben waited until he got her attention. She finally put her pencil down. “Ro and I are magnets. If the proper poles are aligned, it’s instant attraction. But if you align them the wrong way, the poles repel and no amount of forcing them together will change the physics.” He erased his sectioning of the math problem and pointed to the smudged paper. “Let me see you solve this without integration.”
Her dark eyes shifted from Ben’s to the paper in front of her. She stared at the figure in front of her, at first copying his erased lines and arcs, but then she slowly started improving on the solution, her brainpower clicking in as she chewed on the eraser of the pencil, her hair once again hiding her face. Gently, he tucked an errant tress behind her ear. It was an intimate gesture for a guy to do to a fourteen—well, almost fifteen-year-old girl. She looked up and blushed.
He pointed to the paper. “Go on.”
She straightened up and cleared her throat. She was a beautiful girl and would be an even more beautiful woman. She glowed, especially when she did something that engaged her. Looking at her was like seeing a memory of his lost innocence.
When Ben was thirteen, he vaguely remembered “liking” Lisa Holloway. And she “liked him back.” And that’s what it was for the better part of a year: shy smiles and awkward conversations. And he had some kind of recollection of planning a movie date with her. But then Ellen went missing and around the same time Lisa’s parents got divorced. The date never materialized, and shortly afterward, Lisa became enamored of the dark side of everything. She went through a slew of older boyfriends, became truant, and was almost kicked out of high school. But then some unseen force reeled her back in during their senior year, although she still dressed in silly costumes. Ben wondered how it would have been if they had gotten together. Would she have cheated on him like Ro did?
Possibly . . . probably. Once bitten, twice shy.
Ben looked over Lilly’s shoulder. She had produced an elegant solution. “Very good. Way better than mine.”
“You started me off in the right direction.”
“Then I’ll take the credit.” He stood up. “I’m going back to Albuquerque. You have my e-mail. If you need any more help, don’t be afraid to use it.”
“Thanks.” This time her smile was real. “I’m not mad at you, Ben. I could never be mad at you.”
“How about Haley?”
“I love Haley. She’s my sister and best friend all rolled into one. It’s my problem, not anything she and Griff are doing . . . other than being in love. I’ll deal.” She shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t mind the solitude. I do need to study for state finals. I have a fighting chance of winning, but I’ll get wiped out in regionals. I can’t compete against all those Texas private schools. My mom will be disappointed but she’ll get over it. She’s working on other things besides math competitions to get me into the Ivies.”
“You know you’re a lock for the Ivies. You’re half Indian and I found out from Ro that it means that you have underrepresented minority status. Plus, you come from a state that’s underrepresented in the Ivies. And you are a master silversmith, judging from my recent Christmas gift. And as an aside, you happen to be brilliant.”
Her face was filled with electricity. She closed her workbook, got up, stuffed her pages into her backpack, and slung it over her shoulder. “Maybe I’ll go say hi to Haley.”
“Maybe you should.”
She smiled and left, skipping down the hallway.
Chapter 4
As the time approached, he was getting nervous. Not nervous excitement, but actually nervous, and that gave him pause. He had a wife. He had a child. He had a life beyond this and he certainly wasn’t getting any younger. Maybe . . . just maybe it was time to quit.
Each time he had done something, he’d sworn it was the last time. If he kept going, he’d eventually get caught. Something would trip him up and he knew the police had his DNA. If he kept his nose clean, he’d be fine, and that wasn’t a hard thing to do because when he wasn’t abducting, raping, and murdering girls, he was living a fairly conventional life. When he didn’t travel, he worked regular hours. Kara wasn’t a churchgoer, but she was civic-minded. She was involved with the school, volunteered at the library, and ran its book club. She did Pilates with her friends. She spent too much on ridiculous things: designer clothes and handbags, tennis lessons, and absurdly expensive shoes for their son. Not to mention the cost of private school tuition. It seemed that the school was raising its fees every six months. And if he even mentioned putting Ivan in public school, she’d chew his head off. No wonder he was tense.
No wonder he took out his frustration on others.
He hated to admit it but he was more like his dad than he thought. And Kara was more like his mother than he wanted to believe. Not that his parents had been abusive, but his mother was demanding.
Dad had been an engineer. He provided for the family and never raised his voice in anger. As far as he knew, Dad had never been unfaithful because Dad never had a friend. Nor did he seem to care about having friends. He also never cared about material possessions. He drove an old Buick and dressed every day in short-sleeved white shirts, black slacks, and a clip-on tie. Dad had lived life as a loner, sequestering himself behind a locked door whenever his wife started to nag. But even when he was physically around, it was as if he wasn’t there. He read a lot—biographies and nonfiction. If they talked at all, it was always about a book. So maybe Dad did teach him something—the importance of being well read and well educated.
School had been his solace. It wasn’t the best school, but he was the best. It afforded him the luxury of going to a top university on someone else’s dime. But at least his education hadn’t gone to waste. He used it, he plied it, he availed himself of all the perks it gave him.
And there were perks. Free travel, free rentals, and lots of open roads. He had always loved to drive. It calmed him down, it gave him perspect
ive, and in the end, it gave him the greatest thing of all—not freedom, although that was important.
What the open road gave him was access to prey.
June answered the door. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, yanking on her temples, giving her a temporary facelift. Not that she needed it. Her skin was smooth, with high cheekbones and dark eyes that always looked suspicious and a bit angry. “Yes?”
She wasn’t even bothering with the bare minimum of civility. It wasn’t her fault. Math heads were different. Ben said, “Hi, June, I was wondering if George was around.”
“Why do you want to see George?”
“I’ve got a couple of questions for him.” He zipped up his parka.
June realized it was cold outside. “Come in.”
“Thank you.”
June closed the door. “You want some tea, Ben? You look cold.”
“No, I’m fine, thank you.”
“Suit yourself.” She disappeared and the house went silent. Ben suspected that Lilly was in her room and didn’t feel like talking. Okay by him. He didn’t feel like facing another emotional female. June could be very cool, but it wasn’t because she was mean. She was a controlled person and probably somewhat controlling. She didn’t come across as a tiger mom, but from Lilly, he knew that she had expectations. And that wasn’t a bad thing. Without pressure, a tire went flat.
He thought about Haley, slipping into adolescence, replete with boyfriend and social status. Lilly was becoming more and more withdrawn, and he was helpless to stop it. But she would blossom eventually. Lilly had always had an inner strength.
George came out. “Hey, Ben.”
“Feel like having some pie?” Ben asked.
June made a face. “Pie? What pie? You already ate.”
“There’s always room for pie,” George said.
“You had two pieces of cake, George. If you eat any more desserts, you’ll go into a diabetic coma.”
“My insulin is fine, thank you very much, and don’t look at me like that. You made the cake.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to eat it all.” June hit his belly. “You’re getting fat.”
Instead of being angry, George just laughed. “You need me to pick up anything while I’m out, June?”
“I can’t believe you’re really going out for pie.”
“Yes, I am really going out for pie.”
“Then pick me up a piece of anything sugarless.” Again she patted his stomach. “Some of us have self-control. Others just succumb.” She shook her head and disappeared from view.
George was still smiling. “I take it you want to drive?”
“Absolutely.”
They were three blocks away from George’s house when he spoke. “What is it?”
Ben pulled over to the curb and liberated the ten images he’d found through Google from his backpack. “Do you know any of these people?”
George shuffled the faces. “Who are they?”
“They might be associated with the labs.”
He continued to study the images. “Vicksburg, just what did you hack into?”
“I didn’t hack into anything.” George gave him a sour look. Ben said, “Honest. You can check the hard drive of my computer.”
“Hard drives come and hard drives go. How’d you get these names?”
“That’s a complicated question.”
The old man rubbed his eyes and returned half the stack. “I don’t know these.” He had handed Ben back images of four scientists and Jason Fillmore, the security analyst. “They may be associated with the labs, but I’ve never had any dealings with them.”
“And the others?”
“I’ve worked with Percy Sellers, Robert Yin, Kim Dok Park, and Stu Greenberg. I’ve known Yin and Greenberg for years. They’re plasma physicists. Yin is from Fermi, Stu is from Lawrence Livermore.”
Ben sat up. “What do you know about Stu Greenberg?”
“He’s around sixty. A senior scientist and a brilliant, brilliant guy. June and I had dinner with his wife and him about a year ago when we were in the Bay Area. They’re lovely people.” He laughed. “I guarantee he isn’t who you’re looking for.”
“You never know what’s inside a person’s head.”
“Stu’s head is stuffed with remarkable and ingenious ideas. There’s no room for anything else. He also has osteoarthritis and has had several surgeries. I believe he walks with a cane.”
Rule him out. Ben said, “What about the others?”
“Dr. Park is a biochemist, Sellers’s specialty is medical radiology.” He pointed to Kevin Barnes. “This guy. He’s not a scientist, he’s a lawyer.”
“I know that.” Ben’s heart took off and he forced himself to speak slowly. “What kind of a lawyer is he?”
“Immigration. I’ve dealt with him a few times because he needed character references from some of the scientists in the labs for visa extensions or permanent residence.” George handed him back the remaining stack. “How’d you get these names, Ben?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“I know you did something illegal. It’s going to come back to bite you on the butt. Get rid of your hard drive.”
“I didn’t do anything illegal, but I can switch drives if you think I should.”
“Do it. Now tell me what’s going on. Why are you narrowing down your searches to the faces you showed me?”
Ben was prepared for the question and for his answer. “I got these names by looking at scientists who go to a lot of conventions.”
“All scientists travel a lot. We present our research. We’re always exchanging information with one another. There are hundreds of scientists. How did you narrow it down to these men? And why the lawyer? And stop bullshitting me. It’s pissing me off.”
Ben cleared his throat. “These particular men have traveled more than once to Los Alamos and over extended periods of time. They’ve also traveled between the other labs.”
“How’d you find that out? I know you don’t have the skills to hack into a national laboratory. So you did it in some other way. Are you hacking into the airlines?”
That would have been a good idea, Ben thought. He said, “I can’t tell you, George.”
“Ben, you have to stop what you’re doing right now! I know you didn’t get this information from a Google search.”
“That is true. But that doesn’t mean the feds are coming after me.”
George sized him up. “Why the lawyer?”
“He’s been to Los Alamos at least six times in the last four years.”
“How do you know that?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“But you didn’t do anything illegal.” A pause. “Did you pay someone to do something illegal?”
“No, I did not.”
George shook his head. “Let’s go get some pie.”
Ben restarted the motor and put the car into gear. “Tell me about the immigration lawyer, Kevin Barnes. There’s not much on him in the search engines. He doesn’t have a Facebook or LinkedIn page. He’s kind of a cipher.”
“Not all of us waste our time being social on the Internet.”
“You’d think he’d want some kind of professional page just for business.”
“Maybe he has enough clients without going digital.”
“Is he a government employee?”
“He works for the labs, but I don’t know if he’s on the government payroll or he’s someone Uncle Sam has outsourced.”
“If he works for the government, it would make sense that he wouldn’t advertise anything.” George didn’t comment. “Do you know him?”
“I mind my own business, Ben. I focus on my own work and that’s why the lab keeps old guys like me around.”
“What are you? Like fifty?”
“None of your damn business.” George thought a moment. “Barnes must be doing a good job. He’s been around for a while.”
“How old is he?”
“In his forties.”
“Any personal impressions of the guy?”
George was silent, but he was thinking about the question. “He’s weird.”
Ben opened and closed his mouth. “He’s weird?”
“Scientists are not the most social people in the world. We like what we do and what we do requires solitude. I’m always thinking in numbers. So is June. But you don’t expect odd behavior from a lawyer. Most of the other lawyers I’ve met are slick.”
“I see you’ve never met my dad or grandpa.” George laughed and then Ben said, “What kind of weird are we talking about?”
“Let me backtrack. If Barnes was a mathematician, I wouldn’t have used the adjective ‘weird.’ It’s just you think of a lawyer as being aggressive or forward. From the very few dealings I’ve had with him, he didn’t seem like a lawyerly type. He certainly didn’t dress like a lawyer, but that could be because he works around scientists so much he’s adopted the dress.”
Ben was silent.
George said, “Like I said, he must be competent, otherwise he wouldn’t have lasted this long.”
“You’re defending him.”
“I can see you’re jumping to conclusions and it’s my fault. I stoked the fires. Do me a favor and I won’t rat you out to Shanks.”
Ben was stunned. If he hadn’t been driving, he would have gotten out of the car and slammed the door. “You’re thinking of ratting me out?”
“It’s my only weapon to get you to stop doing stupid things.”
“I trusted you.”
“Actually, Ben, it had nothing to do with trust. You came to me for information, and assumed I wouldn’t say anything. And I haven’t. But that will change if you keep hacking into systems.”
“I haven’t hacked into anything.” Ben was furious, but George seemed oblivious to his anger. He was in his own world.
Finally, he said, “Let me poke around . . . see what I can dig up.” He turned to Ben. “Stop doing what you’re doing.”
“I’m not doing anything illegal.” Ben pulled into a parking space at the Pie House.
“Well, you didn’t get these names by picking them out of a hat.” George patted his stomach. “All this talking to you isn’t good for my waistline. June is right. I’m getting pudgy. Let’s go see if we can find something sugarless.”
Killing Season Page 42