Jason nodded. “Got it.” He glanced behind him. Melissa seemed okay, but she was still keeping her distance. “Anything else?” he asked.
“Clues,” Melissa said.
Jason returned his attention to the woman. “Is there evidence on the scene? Any fingerprints, stuff like that?”
The detective shook her head dreamily. “Not a thing. Looks like the room was tossed, but we have no way of knowing whether that’s just a smokescreen. Any fingerprints we find will probably belong to people who would have been in Carlisle’s office anyway.”
Jason frowned and looked back at Lea for confirmation.
No evidence?
Lea shrugged.
Jason cleared his throat. “But if you did find a new set of prints, someone new…”
“It would kick off all kinds of alarms,” the woman said. “But trust me, that’s not likely to happen. People watch too many crime shows on television. Fingerprints don’t just turn up like little Easter eggs. They get smudged, stepped on, messed up. Carlisle’s office is a wreck. We’ll be lucky to get three clean prints out of that place, and all of them will probably be the janitor’s.”
Jason looked behind him, and Melissa made a flicking motion with her hand.
That’s enough. Let the lady go.
Jason gave Garrett another poke. “Thanks so much for your help, Detective Perth. Good luck with the rest of your investigation.”
The woman smiled and nodded without even glancing at him. Garrett began walking away, leading her back to the blue crowd-barriers. Several uniformed and plain-clothes cops were waiting there, giving Garrett strange looks.
With Garrett now farther away, Melissa took a deep breath of relief. Her stomach finally began settling down. Almost without being aware of it, she found herself staring after Garrett.
I don’t care if it’s the smell, she thought. He’s nice to look at.
It took a few minutes for Garrett to extricate himself from the group of policemen. A number of them – mostly the women – seemed eager to chat. The head detective, in particular, looked very disappointed that he was leaving. By the time he came back, Melissa discovered he was bearable once again.
Garrett shook his head in disappointment. “It sounds like they don’t have much to work with.”
“That’s not exactly true,” said Jason. “Time of death, three viable suspects and plausible motives, including retribution for academic injustice, professional competition – ”
“Okay, Big-brain,” Garrett said quickly, cutting him off. “Enough with the memory demonstration.”
Jason grinned. He looked very pleased with himself.
“I don’t think it’s so hopeless,” said Melissa.
“They couldn’t arrest anyone even if they wanted to,” said Garrett. “There’s no murder weapon. No prints.”
“We don’t need those things,” Melissa said.
“We?” Garrett laughed. “We can’t arrest anyone at all, evidence or not. I think I left my badge in my other pair of jeans. Anyway, that detective didn’t seem too optimistic about their chances.”
Melissa shrugged. “Who cares about arrests? I’m not interested in taking over the legal system. We just need to find that antenna, remember? And based on this first test-run, I’d say we have the potential to be pretty effective in our own investigation.” She turned to Jason. “You got it all, right? You won’t forget?”
Jason shook his head and grinned. “Not likely.”
“And we know the detective didn’t mislead us, or leave anything out.” She glanced at Lea.
“Correct.”
“I think we’re ready. You can keep up the charm, right Mr. Love?”
Garrett sighed and rubbed his temple. “Sure. If my head doesn’t crack open first.”
Melissa looked at him with concern. “The headaches are getting bad?”
“Nothing compared to a few days ago. But I’ll be useless before too long.” He made a face, and Lea saw it all in his expression. “If I lose my focus,” he added, “I’m going to lose it all the way. I made a fool of myself a few days ago. Little run-in with the swim team. Not pretty.”
Melissa nodded. “So let’s get going.” She turned to Jason. “Who’s first on the list?”
The hockey player’s eyes moved briefly, as if he were reading. “Hershel, Chris. Failed Carlisle’s psych class last year.”
Melissa smiled. “Oh, yes. The ‘bitter student’ angle. Let’s go have a talk with Mr. Hershel.” The four of them headed back towards the main campus, with Melissa leading the way.
Grim Research
1
The reporter covering the story had all his facts together, and he was ready to write. The only problem was the overflow factor: too much blood, too many severed limbs. And the nail gun, which was such a tangible, almost obscene detail, and what about –
He couldn’t decide where to begin.
The Boston Globe seldom covered events in Concord, NH, but this one was a no-brainer. His editor had signed on after a five-second pitch.
“Go,” the editor said, pointing at the door. “Get it. Move.”
The reporter moved. The last story he had covered in New Hampshire had been a gopher assignment – just a blurb about an orderly who got roughed up by a mental patient – but that had been over a year ago. He hadn’t really known what he was doing.
Now he knew. He knew to ask about the little things. The details.
Two victims, names withheld. Brothers. Both in their mid-thirties, neither one married. Nothing much on the social scene, but he wouldn’t be looking into that. Their jobs were more interesting than their nighttime habits, anyway. They were prototypers.
And what was a prototyper?
Someone who builds prototypes, naturally. Because when some nutty farmer or a college professor got an idea for a new machine, you needed someone to build the first model. He had looked up some of the stuff the victims had built, just in case his editor wanted extra background. A lot of it was pretty technical: they put together special electrical equipment, customized motors, and a few devices using large electromagnets. Their claim to fame was the Segway, that upright, overpriced scooter toy that had been big news for a while. Apparently they had built the original testing model. It was weird science stuff, mostly. Toys for nerds.
Anyway, the cops told him that one man – or woman – had probably killed them both. It looked like the murderer had just walked in during business hours and started cutting. No one had heard anything, because these guys worked in an old warehouse just off I-89. Land wasn’t worth a dime. Plenty of room to work.
Plenty of room to have your arms and legs sawed off.
The reporter had searched for personal tidbits, but both victims were pretty boring. They kept to themselves, watched TV, paid their taxes, and stayed clear of the law. Not even a DUI, which was remarkable. Getting pulled over for drunk driving in New Hampshire was almost a rite of passage in the state, but these brothers were clean. Boring clean.
Their family was no better. You had the grieving father and the tearful younger sister, but nothing to make you really care. No one with cancer. No wives or children left behind, sobbing inconsolably. The human-interest angle was a dud.
The real story was the murder itself. The way they had died was terrific.
And horrible, the reporter thought quickly, chastising himself. Horrible and bad. Tragic.
But no. For the purposes of the story, it was terrific. He couldn’t wait to see his by-line on this one.
The first guy had been found sprawled out on the warehouse floor, blood pooled around his head. There were thirty nails embedded in his skull. Fifteen per ear. The reporter shook his head in disbelief every time he thought of it. Thirty nails, not twenty-nine. Such precision.
Apparently the nails weren’t the cause of death, however. His source at the precinct had told him that. It didn’t make any sense, and the reporter said so.
“It was the knock on the head,” said t
he source. “That’s what killed him.”
But how could that be right?
The 2-inch-long roofing nails had been driven deep – all the way in – so that the flat heads were flush with the victim’s skull. Close-up photographs showed a neat cluster of dark gray circles completely obscuring both of the man’s ears, as if he had been trying to put on a pair of steel earmuffs.
Or trying to prevent himself from hearing anything ever again.
“Yeah, but the doctor said they barely caused any bleeding,” the precinct source explained over the phone. “Plugged him right up.”
“You’re trying to tell me they didn’t hurt him?”
“Well, doc says they would have destroyed the guy’s balance, but that’s it.”
Balance? Who gives a fuck? “I’ve been drunk before…” the reporter began.
“No,” said the source. “Not like that, not just wobbly. We’re talking no balance. Doc said this guy couldn’t have told you which way was up. His vestibular something-or-other was completely destroyed.”
“Okay, but the nails eventually – ”
“Yeah, they would have killed him. Thirty roofers in your skull won’t help a man. But they didn’t do the job. The fall took care of that. He fell hard. Someone must have pushed him, the doc said. Cracked his head wide open on that concrete floor. Bled to death. Like I told you, the knock on the head.”
Thirty roofers won’t help a man, the reporter thought, jotting down the phrase. He wondered if he could work that into the story somehow.
The second victim had not been shot with nails, and the cause of death in his case was much easier to determine: his limbs had been cut off. All four of them. They had been cut off high, tight with the body. The police found what looked like a giant pair of tree-pruning sheers next to his corpse, and there were fingerprints all over the handles.
Good fingerprints.
The reporter managed to contact one of the medical examiners, who told him that the man’s arms were probably the first to go, based on the higher “blood exit volume,” whatever that meant. The murderer had taken them off at the shoulder, leaving only the ragged ends of cartilage and tendons. “Like he was ripping out a lobster’s claw for dinner,” said the examiner, who sounded a little bit loopy over the phone. “With a big set of those nut-cracker-looking things, you know? Same principal.”
The victim’s legs had been removed the same way, just below the pelvis. With this done, the man had been reduced to nothing but a torso. A torso that had done a lot of screaming, the reporter guessed. The man’s limbs were found lined up in front of him, just a few inches away from his immobilized head.
“What for?” the reporter asked. “Any ideas?”
“Who knows?” said the precinct source, who was beginning to sound annoyed. “Murderer might have been putting them on display for the guy. To taunt him or something. Doc over here said the victim might have been conscious. He’d have died pretty quick, but not before he saw his own stuff laid out in front of him. Like he was shopping for some new parts, you know? At the arm-and-leg trade show.”
“Nice. Can I quote you?”
“Suit yourself. Just don’t use my name.”
“Got it.”
He hung up the phone and smiled. It was such a great story. Now, if he could just figure out where to start writing.
Something about the roofer nails. Or maybe the arm-and-leg trade show. He liked the sound of that.
2
Officer Jim Watts was a new Dartmouth employee. He had moved to New Hampshire just last year, all the way up from New York City. It was a sort of retirement for him, though not in the working sense. He needed to get out of Manhattan, was all. He couldn’t afford it.
Living up here in Hanover was a good thing, but getting information was difficult. He didn’t have access codes to any of the police databases, nor could he request information from precincts. He did, however, have public access to the Dartmouth computer center in Kiewit Hall. There he could get the basic college administration files, and, of course, he could get on the internet.
The internet was much, much better than nothing.
The best thing about the web, in Officer Watts’ opinion, was the association game. You typed a name into Google, and the links that came back gave you the beginnings of a network. A network, in this case, of people who were associated with the name you had entered.
For instance: the name Frederick Carlisle.
When Officer Watts put in that name, Google came back with dozens of hits on scholarly papers published under the professor’s by-line. That much Watts had expected. More interesting, however, was the second name. The one right next to Carlisle’s at the top of almost every paper.
The name was Dr. Nathan Kline.
So here was the missing partner the nurse had told him about. But where was Dr. Kline now?
Another Google search gave him the answer.
Kline’s name came back with links to plenty of research papers of his own, but most of those were near the bottom. They were less “relevant” matches, at least in the opinion of the Google search algorithms. Translation: fewer people were looking at those links. The popular matches were at the top, and the very top link with Dr. Kline’s name was part of a court case. Same with the number-two link. And number three, four, five, six… all for the same legal proceeding.
It was a hot case, evidently. And Kline had been the defendant.
“Convicted of manslaughter” was the summary description Watts found when he clicked on the document. Skimming over the details, it looked as though the case had concluded with an alternate sentencing protocol.
Kline hadn’t gone to prison.
Instead, he had gone to the loony bin. And the center where they sent him was right here in New Hampshire. Watts licked his lips.
He looked up the number for the institution, and then stepped out of Kiewit with his cell phone. In less than a minute, he had the state ward’s main operator on the line.
“New Hampshire Corrections.”
“Yes,” Watts said, unsure of how to begin. “I’m trying to locate a patient. Nathan Kline.”
“Transfers, please hold.”
“No,” Watts said quickly. “I just want to know if – ”
But she was already gone. Hold music began playing through the phone. In another minute, a new voice came on. Another woman’s voice.
“Yes?”
“I think I may have been put through in error…” Watts began.
“Patient name?” the woman said briskly.
“Nathan Kline.”
There was a brief silence. Then: “Kline, Nathan. Transferred fourteen months ago. Clancy Hall, Massachusetts.”
“Wonderful. Is there a number for Clancy Hall?”
Another pause. “No.”
“Do you think that you could – ”
Watts heard a click. That was all the help he was getting from the people in Concord.
It took him only two more minutes on the computer to locate a number for Clancy Hall. He went back outside and made the call.
“Clancy, hello.”
“I’m trying to locate a patient,” Watts said for the third time in ten minutes.
“Name?”
“Nathan Kline.”
There was a long, long silence on the line.
“Are you a family member, sir?”
“No, but I need to know whether – ”
“We have spoken with every press organization already,” said the man on the other end, sounding testy. “And Dr. Levoir has no more time for any of you people. In fact, he’s away on vacation right now. The answer is no comment.”
Watts took a moment to collect his thoughts.
Press organizations?
“I’m not a reporter,” he began.
“Sure,” said the man, sounding utterly unconvinced. “And I suppose this has nothing to do with the events in Concord last week.”
Not a minute ago, no, Watts thought. But it
does now. “Yes, the events in Concord,” he said slowly, “but I just need to know if – ”
Another click. Watts stared at the receiver. That was the second time he had been hung up on in ten minutes. He went back inside and sat down at his computer. Something was happening – or had already happened – in Concord. Something with Carlisle’s old partner, Dr. Nathan Kline. He ran another search, using the words ‘Concord,’ ‘New Hampshire,’ and ‘Kline.’ Then he thought for a moment. Something in the voice of the man at Clancy Hall… Watts started typing again. Next to the first three search terms, he added another word.
Murder.
He hit the ‘enter’ key. The Google results came back, and Watts’ mouth hung open.
“The arm and leg trade show…?”
He stayed in Kiewit, pouring over the article in the Boston Globe, for a very long time.
3
“I appreciate the lift,” Dr. Kline said, as the Cadillac began picking up speed on the highway. “I’ll pay for your gas, how’s that?”
“Sounds just right.” Martin signaled and moved into the passing lane, leaving a lone truck in their wake. Before long they were cruising along at 80 MPH, and the big car wasn’t having any difficulty maintaining its speed. Both men stared out the front windshield, thinking of the people they needed to see. Of the things they needed to do. They drove for a while in silence, and Kline found himself thinking of Alexandra again. It was a pleasant exercise. His daughter usually came to him only when he was dreaming, but sleep had not been easy lately. He wondered where she might be at that moment. Nowhere near New Hampshire, that much he knew. Joanne had moved away, taking Alexandra with her.
Far away, if he knew his wife at all.
“I miss her,” he said suddenly, out loud.
The man behind the wheel glanced at him. “You say something?”
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