Then she looked up. “When else did you come?”
“Just the once, two days ago,” Donovan replied, as though having the FBI rifle through your personal things without your consent was better if they’d only done it once.
“Well, then I was right.” She looked back and forth between them, her eyes wide. “Because someone has come into my home and gone through my things several times before that."
12
Eleri stared at Johanna Schmitt. "You think people were in your house several times?"
She wished she had brought a notebook. They'd come in for a casual conversation, to establish who they really were and lay out the ground rules of what Mrs. Schmitt could and couldn't share. Eleri had not been prepared for this.
"What is it they were looking for?" she asked, knowing it was likely a dumb question. But every now and then, someone knew and would actually tell them what the searcher had been after. Johanna Schmitt did no such thing.
Instead, she countered with a question of her own. "What did you look for?"
"We checked the scene of the crime," Donovan said.
"My bedroom?"
They were both forced to nod for the sake of honesty. It sucked. Eleri felt bad admitting they’d violated her privacy, but it was part of the job. "Please accept our apologies. I am aware we invaded your space. We are trying to solve your husband's murder, though."
Johanna Schmitt stiffened for a moment, and then as Eleri watched, her shoulders and her back softened. "I'm grateful that somebody understands that he was killed. And I'm grateful that someone of your caliber is trying to solve the case."
Eleri was starting to wonder how well her caliber held up in a town like Curie, where everyone was only of the highest caliber, but she didn't mention that to Mrs. Schmitt.
She let Donovan clarify, "We came in through the front door. Mr. Bennett's assistant, Kate, was left here to greet people including us," Donovan said. "She let us in, and we checked out the bedroom."
"Did you find anything?"
"Just the bungee-cord marks." Donovan looked to Eleri for a moment, and she offered a slight nod. She was still bitter. She’d touched everything and not gotten the slightest zing of information or feeling from any of it.
When he opened his mouth to ask another question, she put her hand out, motioning for Donovan to stop while she spoke to Mrs. Schmitt. "I apologize. We got a little bit out of order. We do need to make it clear that you are not to tell anyone what our real names are or what our real purpose is here."
Johanna Schmitt nodded. "Of course. I fully understand."
"We feel, and our SAC—our Special Agent in Charge—feels, that this is the best way to solve your husband's murder. We would have come in openly if we'd thought that would work better."
"I understand," she repeated, as though she were anxious to skim through the list of what she could and couldn’t say and get back to the actual solving of her husband’s murder.
"The second problem with having told you," Eleri continued, ignoring Johanna’s eagerness for information, "is that you appear to already feel better knowing that we're on the case. You can't convey that to any of your friends. I've met several of them, and they'll pick up on it."
That, at least, made Johanna nod as though she hadn't quite thought of that possibility before. "Yes. I've mentioned it to Maggie. So what you're suggesting is that in my interactions with Maggie, I need to continue to act frustrated."
Eleri nodded. "In your interactions with everyone. Your reactions need to be as similar as possible to what they were before you found out. I have no idea what your acting abilities are, but the more you try, the better it'll be. Your convincing performance will make it much easier for us to investigate, hopefully without the killer knowing who we are, or even that he or she is under suspicion."
Johanna looked aside for a moment, and then looked back at them. "I assume this means I am not a suspect."
Eleri had to go the legal route. "You have not yet been ruled out, no."
"Interesting.” Then she looked up with a shrug. “Investigate away. I’m sure you’ll rule me out soon enough."
Though Eleri didn't say it, Johanna's very willingness to deal with them made her less of a suspect than she might otherwise have been. The twist here was that this was Curie, Nebraska, and everyone was smart enough to know that telling the FBI to thoroughly investigate you was the best way to look innocent. The spouse was usually number one on the suspect list, but for whatever reason, Eleri's gut was telling her this time that Johanna Schmitt hadn’t committed murder. She was convinced that it wasn't Maggie Wells, either.
Without saying so, but acting as though the legalese had been fully gotten out of the way, Mrs. Schmitt turned back to Donovan. "So exactly what did you find in my bedroom?"
"Just the marks on the bed, and that's it. There wasn't anything else we were able to find."
"And that's part of the problem," Eleri added. "So, we believe we have a better understanding of how he was tied to the bed, but we have no understanding of what that means. That's why we needed to talk to you."
"So what happens now?"
"We ask you every question in the book, and hopefully, you answer us as honestly as you can."
Mrs. Schmitt took a moment to gather herself, but her words said something different. "If this helps find my husband's killer, and if it stops my home from getting invaded and checked, then I will give you everything I have."
Eleri tilted her head at the woman. “You don’t seem as concerned as I would expect about the fact that someone came into your home.”
Johanna just shrugged again. “If my husband was killed, I don’t think they’ll come after me. We work in entirely different fields. I’m armed, and I. . . I almost hope they come back, so I can catch them. It’s a good thing, right? The more they come back, the more evidence we get?”
Eleri couldn’t fault that line of thinking. Most people would be afraid, but everyone in Curie had to be taken with a grain of salt. Johanna appeared more logical than emotional, and though her reaction wasn’t perfectly normal, it didn’t seem too strange, in her case. Eleri nodded. Johanna wasn’t wrong.
"All right.” Donovan’s tone said they were getting down to brass tacks. “Do you have dates for when you think someone came into your home and do you have any idea what they looked at?"
Johanna smiled at them as though they were soft in the head. But her words said, "Hold on."
Eleri looked at Donovan as Mrs. Schmitt stood up, leaving her glass of water on the table and exiting the room. She had no idea what the woman was doing and decided to look around the house while they waited.
This home was designed differently than the one she and Donovan had. All of the main areas appeared to be downstairs—yet Mrs. Schmitt headed upstairs. Eleri wondered if she was going up to the bedroom, or perhaps to one of what had appeared to be his-and-hers offices during their first, cursory tour.
It took only a moment for Johanna to return. Though the couple was in their fifties, they were certainly well within their youth still. Though Mrs. Schmitt, who dressed in cardigans and skirts that appeared to be from a bygone era, was nevertheless clearly in the prime of her own health.
She nearly skipped back down the stairs and, with some fanfare, smacked a notebook onto the table. Bound with black tape along the spine, it looked like an old-style composition book—not the new back-to-school variety. Donovan blinked and said, “Lab notebook.”
“Of course.” Johanna pushed the book into the space between the two agents. Though the cover was black and white with Rorschach-style splotches, the notebook bore no markings by Mrs. Schmitt on the front of it. After a quick glance asking if she could look inside, Mrs. Schmitt nodded and motioned for Eleri to go ahead.
The book was thick and puffy, probably with added pieces or excessive highlights, Eleri thought as she flipped to the front page. On it, she saw a date, eight days ago.
"The day after your husband's murder?" El
eri asked, because the page detailed several items in the home that Mrs. Schmitt thought had been messed with.
"Yes. That was the first visit. Turn the page."
Sure enough, Johanna had printed and taped photographs to the next two pages. They matched the listed items from the page before, although Eleri didn't see anything unusual in the pictures, and she said so.
"That's the problem. Nothing looks unusual, but it is different from how I left it."
"How?" Eleri asked.
"This," Mrs. Schmitt said, pointing. "This is out of alignment. I always square up my edges. And this,” she said, tapping on another taped-in photo, “is not where I left it. I left it on the counter, I’m absolutely sure, but it was over more to the right. It was in front of the spices."
"So they looked in your kitchen, and they looked in your office?"
"On the first day. The second time,” she continued, reaching out and flipping the page to a new list, “They looked in my bedroom. . . and I think they got under the bed. My shoes were a little out of whack, too."
"Are your shoes normally perfectly aligned as well?" Eleri asked, looking at a picture of a jumble of shoes, which weren’t even really in pairs.
Mrs. Schmitt looked downward for a moment. "Unfortunately, no. The way I treat my data and the way I treat my clothing is not exactly the same."
Eleri wanted to laugh, but the gravity of the situation held her back. She turned the page again. This time, she saw pictures of Marat Rychenkov’s office.
It seemed, during the first break-in, the criminal had checked to be sure they hadn’t left anything behind. The kitchen had been examined because the intruder would want to be sure no evidence was left behind. He—or she—had likely been in there while meeting with Rychenkov before killing him. But on the second visit? Their killer had begun looking for something specific.
13
Donovan pulled out his tablet and scrolled through the pictures he'd taken. He glanced across their dinner table at Eleri then said, with a heart-felt sigh, "I really don't like pictures."
She just raised one eyebrow at him. He knew she probably hated crime-scene pictures worse than he did. The photos never caught what it was like to stand in the middle of the wreckage. He couldn’t turn his head and get a different angle, and he couldn’t carefully look under anything. Sadly, right now, all he had were pictures.
He'd been flummoxed. Mrs. Schmitt kept a lab notebook and carefully recorded all the things in her house that she thought had been moved. She did seem to fully understand that if she was wrong, the notebook would be used as evidence that she was going crazy. Despite the fact that her notebook wasn't much evidence at all, Donovan didn’t think she was wrong.
He had been surprised by her apparent nonchalance that her home was getting repeatedly invaded. But she was so damn logical that it began to make sense.
“Whoever it is has been very careful to come here when I’m not home,” she’d said. “They don’t want to hurt me, and besides, I’m armed. If they keep coming back, I can catch them.” Her words made sense, even if the emotional tone seemed a bit off. Donovan had to remind himself that everyone grieved differently.
If they allowed for her cold logic and operated under the assumption that all Mrs. Schmitt’s notes were correct, then whoever had been in her house had been inside repeatedly and had been looking at a variety of different things. Did that mean they killed Marat Rychenkov but didn’t even know what they were after?
The information from the notebook had also led Eleri to an interesting question when they’d been sitting at the table. She’d asked Johanna, “What else is in the house? What hasn't been touched? Which rooms weren’t searched?”
Seemingly happy to now have federal help in hunting her husband’s killer, Mrs. Schmitt popped up from the table. "Do you want a tour?"
They’d followed from room to room, taking notes while Donovan battled his expectations. He’d been prepared for a wary witness. Most people didn’t welcome a friendly FBI agent when he showed up on their doorstep. Most didn’t answer every question with precision and volunteer even more details.
Maybe Johanna Schmitt had thought she was going crazy. Maybe she thought all the little things that had been moved were things she’d done in her own grief. She'd even said at one point, "I considered that I so desperately wanted to believe he was murdered, that I couldn't accept the fact that nature is random and cruel. But I guess it's not. Well, nature is random and cruel, but that’s not what happened here, is it? My husband was murdered."
The woman had needed no further comforting after she heard a few facts. And they’d gotten the full tour. He'd seen the kitchen, in which Johanna said only a few things looked a little “bumped,” except perhaps the junk drawer, which she thought had been pawed through.
Eleri had pulled all the drawers open for further inspection. Johanna swore the others were untouched and, as neat as they were, it should have been easy to see. With the “junk drawer,” it was impossible to tell. Donovan couldn’t imagine what a killer might want with old-looking rubber bands, binder clips, random business cards, three deceased cell phones—one with a cracked face that would never get used again—and more.
"They were Marat's," Mrs. Schmitt said. He'd not let her throw them out when he was alive, insisting that he might need a part here or there for something, or that the old phone could be used to dial 9-1-1. Now that her husband was gone, she said, she should throw them out—but she couldn't, because now they were ties back to the man she’d lost.
Donovan understood. Of the very few things he’d carried from house to house growing up, the one he’d always made sure he had was his mother’s scarf. She’d wrapped it around his neck, telling him to stay warm the night she died. He’d carried the scarf everywhere now, including all the way to South Carolina where, as an adult, he’d finally stayed put. He didn’t fault Johanna Schmitt one bit for keeping broken cell phones.
The family had three bedrooms upstairs. The master bedroom was slightly larger (though not unnervingly so) than the other two, which she and her husband had used as offices. Both offices had been searched, she'd said, though at separate times.
She'd found that interesting. Donovan did, too. He didn't openly agree at the time, but now, sitting at the table, he said to Eleri, "Whoever is getting into her house has relatively easy access. It means they have the code key or an override or something."
Eleri sighed. “I didn’t want to mention it. But I’d be surprised if she hadn’t already figured that out. I’m guessing she’s sleeping with a baseball bat already.”
“Or a home-made taser,” Donovan countered. She’d said she was armed, and a baseball bat was way too low-tech for someone of Johanna’s skill.
"Do you think they hacked her lock system?" Eleri asked. “She has that same kind of coding system that we see on so many of the houses here.”
That was a mistake, Donovan thought, giving all the residents the same kind of system. The FBI was aware it was a problem in housing subdivisions that were getting high-tech. If everyone had the same kind of lock, it was easy to figure out how to hack your neighbor. Johanna was using her tech, and she should have picked her own lock system. He agreed with Eleri. "That was my guess too."
Eleri and Donovan had looked through both the offices in the house, trying to find information. The problem was, they’d found an overabundance of it. Just like his wife, Marat Rychenkov seemed to keep records of almost everything. They hadn't wanted to move any of it, afraid that if they did, they would alert whoever was coming into the home that Johanna Schmitt was onto them. As Mrs. Schmitt had stated, she had not done anything to let her friends or the general public know about the intruder before she had told Maggie.
She'd only told Maggie because she'd had two more instances, close together, and she was starting to get worried. Unknown to her, one invasion had turned out to be Eleri and Donovan, but another had happened the night before, which was when her office had been searched. The int
ruder had searched Marat's office first.
During the tour he and Eleri had been given, Donovan had also followed the two women into the garage, which apparently was not where one parked the car. It was where Marat Rychenkov did much of his robotics work.
Donovan had admired all the various work tables, tools, and rows of robots before he uttered, "Holy shit, Eleri."
Only after the words came out of this mouth did he realize it was an inappropriate thing to say to the widow of the murdered man. He turned toward Johanna. “I’m sorry.”
She shook her head. “I’ll take it as a compliment. Marat was brilliant. These are just his ‘toys’.”
Three oscilloscopes sat on the counter, old-school-style instruments with dials rather than touch-pad buttons, just as Mrs. Schmitt had said. Motherboards were filed in cabinets with upright slots, the kind that usually kept china plates in their proper places. Horizontal racks, which Donovan was certain were the same kind as in his junior high art classroom, were used to store what turned out to be blueprints.
Johanna had shrugged and explained, "He would fold them, but he hated rolling the blueprints. He hated having to pin them down."
Eleri nodded, and Donovan had to say he understood. It made logical sense. What he was learning of Marat Rychenkov was that the man had been nothing if not logical. Just like his wife.
Sitting up on the shelf were three rows of drones, each level was home to a different variety. Two were obviously for flying. The third, Donovan guessed, might walk, or roll? "These?" he inquired, pointing to them.
"Something else he's working on. He liked playing with the drones."
To his left, Donovan saw a row of humanoid-type robots. This time, each one was unique. Most came up to right around his knee. Three of the designs involved curved legs, one with a spider-type design, and another that looked like a stick-figure dog.
"Things he was building,” Johanna explained again, having followed Donovan’s interest. “Two of them, he bought and rewired, and the final three, as you can see, are frankenbots. At least, that's what I called them. He didn't like that term, but I didn't know what else they might be."
The Camelot Gambit Page 8