Case of Lies

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  Her face contorted. She reached over and put her arms around him. “Maybe you’re right… maybe if he stays with me… he won’t be able to go through with it,” she said into his shoulder. He held her tight and pretended she was crying over him.

  Finally, when she let go and wiped her face with her sleeve, he said, “I’ll never get married.” Then he added shyly, “I managed to find a function that seems to predict the primes. It implies an easy way to factor large numbers, too.”

  Silke became all business. “Are you sleeping?”

  “Brother John, Brother John,” Elliott sang. “Not another breakdown, not another breakdown-”

  “Ding dang dong. Stop singing. Tell me.”

  “There are some flaws. But-”

  She gave him a long look. She had sat down on the rock opposite, one knee pulled up in what Elliott remembered was called the Royal Pose in Asia. She looked like a small and perfect statue, her face immobile, a wet streak still evident on one cheek, like a stone goddess who has been left out in the rain. The windless air and shadows where they sat seemed to calm her.

  “You found it through your work on the Riemann Hypothesis?” she said.

  “No. I’m following up on some work by Connes and Berry in physics. I went back to the li line and started over, where Riemann started. Before he went down his blind alley. It’s a correction to the Prime Number Theorem.”

  “You can prove it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You confuse me,” Silke said. “Do you have a proof or not?”

  “Not yet. But give me any number up to three hundred digits and I think I can tell you if it’s a prime in about fifteen minutes. If it’s a composite number up to about five hundred digits, I can factor it with my Mac G5 in about twenty minutes. The point is, it seems to work case by case. Now I need to figure out why.”

  “That’s-those are huge numbers. Colossal.”

  “I may be able to go bigger. It’s just that my computer doesn’t have the capability.”

  “Let’s say I believe you. Show me.”

  “I can’t. I’m not ready. Even for you.”

  “I might find an error and save you some work.”

  “I gave Professor Braun some of my results. He’ll review them.”

  “Who else knows?”

  “I told Carleen. She called on my cell phone to see how we were doing.”

  “Idiot,” Silke said. The way she said it, it sounded like “idyote.” “Then the whole world knows. You know where Carleen works?”

  “No.”

  “For an encryption company in Web security.”

  “I knew it was some kind of security software. So what?”

  “They’ll want to buy it.”

  “Why?”

  “To suppress it. Public-key encryption is built around not being able to factor large numbers, Wakefield. The Web depends on this encryption. Banks, government, big corporations, they depend on it. Where have you been living?”

  “In a zeta landscape,” Elliott said. “I wouldn’t let it be suppressed. It needs to be written up and published.”

  Silke put her hand to her mouth and smiled, her eyes widening. “You’ll win the Clay prize! A million dollars! And they will call it the Wakefield Theorem! You will be immortal!”

  “But first I have to finish the proof, and I have a long way to go. I probably need a couple more years.”

  “You know, Wakefield, my darling, I think I believe you.” She looked at him with a sort of awe, which stirred him deeply. He had dreamed of receiving a look from her for so long, but this look wasn’t mixed with the desire for possession she felt for Raj.

  It’s hopeless, he thought. But he knew that.

  “Anyway. What are you going to do?” he asked her, and let her talk. Let her cry some more. Let her threaten Raj, then let her hold him and say what a good friend he was.

  He had just offered her all he had, emptied out his life, his work, for her, but he could not awaken in her a desire for him. He would continue approaching her forever, never reaching her. It was another aspect of his destiny. He would be solitary. How odd to know such a thing at his age.

  17

  WISH CALLED ON SUNDAY MORNING. “ELLIOTT Wakefield,” he said. “I found him, Nina. He lives on an island about fifteen minutes by ferry from Seattle. He owns a home there.”

  “Wonderful!” Nina said, yawning.

  “His father just transferred title to him.”

  “Are we sure it’s Elliott Wakefield the math guy?”

  “The Vashon Island newspaper has a small article about his graduation with a B.S. in mathematics from MIT. I also finally located a paper he wrote while he was still enrolled there. I think it’s his senior thesis.”

  “What’s the topic?”

  “‘Conformal Mapping on Riemann Surfaces.’ ” The Riemann word again. “He’s ours,” Wish went on. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Give me the home address.” She wrote it down. “Wish, can you drop off a copy of that thesis at the community college tomorrow? Professor Mick McGregor in the math department. I’ll call and tell him it’s coming.”

  “Ten-four. I have Silke Kilmer’s resume, too. I’ll drop it off at the office.”

  “How’d you get that?”

  “She posted it on the Web. She’s looking for a position for next summer. She’s an expert on something called Hermitian matrices.”

  “Ugh. I hope I don’t have to learn about this stuff,” Nina said. “But I really want to try to get to know these witnesses.”

  “They sound like they’re from another planet.”

  “I’ve heard that theory.”

  “Do you like math, Nina?”

  “No,” Nina said. “I have to say, one reason I went to law school was because I’d never have to see an equation again. That’s why this is so unfair. I have a book right here on prime numbers. Somehow this Riemann guy is mixed up with them.”

  “Have fun. See you tomorrow.”

  It was still morning out on the deck. Bob had bicycled over to Taylor ’s house. Nina had already devoured the Tahoe paper.

  The prime-numbers book turned out to have medicinal properties. She was asleep in the pale sun within five minutes of opening it.

  Even on a Sunday afternoon, the police are all business, including the naturally mellow ones, like Sergeant Cheney of the South Lake Tahoe Police Department. He came to the counter and escorted Nina down the claustrophobic hall to his office without much greeting.

  Paul and Cheney had gotten along well. Perhaps that explained Cheney’s slightly unfriendly attitude. If so, he would have to get used to the new regime, Nina thought.

  Or perhaps she was the one thinking about Paul, and that disturbed her, making her attribute emotions to Cheney that didn’t exist. She could try to psych out the large middle-aged African American police officer sitting across from her with his hands folded across his belly forever, or she could get down to it.

  “I have something on the Sarah Hanna case,” she said without preamble.

  “I’m listening.”

  “You’re the officer assigned to the case?”

  “I am.”

  “You remember the three witnesses?”

  “I sure do.”

  “I found two of them.” She ran it down concisely for him. The sergeant’s eyes never left hers.

  “Let’s have the tape you made,” he said when she had finished. She pulled it out of her briefcase and he took it, handling it gingerly, as though it were a bird’s nest, or a forged check.

  “Now we’ll tape you on a separate tape, and this time I’ll ask questions,” he said. She nodded and they started again. When she had repeated what she knew about Raj Das and Silke Kilmer, he switched it off.

  “You want me to bring them back here,” he said. “You can’t bring them back yourself.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I will be talking to them, but I can’t promise how that’s going to happen. I
might have to go to Boston.”

  “That wouldn’t work for me. I need to get them to California or the civil case goes bye-bye.”

  Cheney spread his hands. Nina said, “Do what you can.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  “You’ll let me know how it goes?”

  “You’ll be the first to know.”

  He opened the door to the reception area for her. “Thanks for the break,” he said. “I appreciate it. How’s my friend Paul?”

  “Fine. He has plenty of business down in Carmel.”

  “Give him my best.”

  It was three-thirty when Nina left the police station on Johnson Boulevard. She would remember that later, that and everything else, with the same crisp clarity the day displayed as she drove down the boulevard. The deep blue of high altitude reflecting off the enormous hidden body of water close by shaded the mountains. Few people were about. They were watching football, hiking, gambling, picnicking by the water, anything except driving through town.

  The trees that stood everywhere, even right here in the heart of town, seemed to float in this blue air, scented with resin.

  She would remember the trees, too.

  Chelsi’s tiny studio, sandwiched between a closed watch-repair store and a beauty parlor called Hair ’n Now in the strip mall just before Al Tahoe Boulevard, had an open door with a sign that read Therapeutic Massage Only above it. Nina knocked at the entry and entered the front room with its enthusiastic ferns and posters of acupuncture points and scoliotic backs.

  “Hey, Nina.” Chelsi wore red running shorts and running shoes. She was in amazing shape. She had a rolltop desk tucked in the corner, where she was writing out bills. Her fine blond hair had been pulled into one of those negligent buns that manage to look both efficient and chic on the right person.

  “Hi.”

  “I’m not going to talk about Aunt Sarah today, I just wanted you to know that, because this is your time, you know? Except, I just wanted to say, sorry about Uncle Dave and my dad. They get into it sometimes. I hope you got the information you needed.”

  “No worries,” Nina said. “We are making progress. I’ll be updating your uncle in a day or two.” She went into the massage room and took off her clothes and lay down on the table with her towel.

  “Ready?” Chelsi called from the other room. She came in and the soft music began drifting through the room as she rubbed oil onto her hands. “I’m generating energy,” she said. “Have you had more headaches?”

  “A couple.” The hands began making long movements up and down her back.

  “What were you doing just before it started?” She had asked that question before.

  “I’ve been thinking about that. One of the headaches was definitely caused by fatigue and stress. The other one-you know, they often come right when I’m ready to go to sleep. You know what I do before I sleep?”

  “Make love?” Chelsi giggled.

  “I read.”

  “We’re zeroing in on it now,” Chelsi said. “You mentioned reading a few times. I’m ready to make my diagnosis now. This move here, you might hear or feel some cracking. Just ride with it.”

  Deep within the skeleton, some ancient sorrow protested, then disentangled itself reluctantly from Nina’s spine and dissolved forever. “You haven’t been swimming this week,” Chelsi said.

  “Is that the reason for my headaches?”

  “No. But if you don’t swim, your back will start going out from all the sitting.”

  “I’ll swim. But what’s the diagnosis?”

  “Maybe you need glasses.”

  “Hmm. But my vision is perfect.”

  “Maybe just reading glasses.”

  “I have those.”

  “But you said your vision is perfect.”

  “You know. Reading glasses don’t count.”

  “Maybe you need stronger ones. Don’t buy them from the drugstore.”

  “Those are for old people, not me!” Nina wailed.

  “That’s what they all say.” Chelsi giggled once more.

  “Okay. I’ll get my eyes checked out. There’s someone I’d like to introduce you to, Chelsi. That feels really good, right there.”

  Chelsi didn’t have any difficulty following this massage-table train of thought. “Like who?”

  “A young man. My investigator. His name is Wish.”

  “You mean, like a blind date? Because I don’t do things like that. This muscle between your shoulder and neck is called the trapezius.”

  “He’s such a nice guy,” Nina said. “I know you’d have fun. I just-I see the two of you meeting.”

  “Yeah, you’re an old lady of thirty-six, better start matchmaking for other people,” Chelsi said. “What about you?”

  “I’m open,” Nina said. “Even in my advanced state of decrepitude.”

  “Interesting that you should talk about this Wish boy. I’ve been thinking about guys I know, wondering who I could fix you up with.”

  “No need. I’m doing fine through the Internet,” Nina said, and they both laughed. Chelsi massaged her legs thoroughly, using the light oil that she had warmed as she rubbed her hands. Nina turned over and Chelsi began on her jaw, which did not want to unclench. Eventually the jaw fell open obediently, though, and hung down toward her chest, doofus-style. The eye muscles said thank you and surrendered. Nina reached the Zen zone.

  “That darn buzzer,” Chelsi said. She gave Nina a final set of kneading strokes on her shoulders and polished them off with a pat on the hand. “See you outside,” she said.

  Nina didn’t get up right away. She let herself float in this state of well-being, not thinking, not planning, not even feeling guilty about doing nothing.

  Finally she opened her eyes to that peculiar luminousness coming through the open window, got off the table, and went to the hook where her jeans and polo shirt hung. Her underwear was on the chair and she stepped into her underpants, noting how supple she felt, how easily her back bent, swearing to herself to exercise more and maybe take up yoga.

  She remembered later that she saw a movement from the corner of her eye. Her senses were very acute at that moment, and she noted that the movement came from the screened open window. With an intuition born of this unusual acuity she dove under the massage table, hearing the two knocks at the door that announced Chelsi was coming in at the same time.

  A movement. Under the table. Knock knock. It went like that.

  Chelsi opened the inner door and came in in her red shorts. Nina was facing her, wearing nothing but lace panties from Victoria ’s Secret, crouched on the linoleum floor under the table like some half-naked precursor of a human, and their eyes locked. Chelsi’s eyebrows began to draw together in puzzlement and her lips parted.

  There was a bang, sharp, enormous. A large red hole appeared in Chelsi’s right cheek and her expression began to turn from bewilderment to agony. Another bang. Chelsi fell backward against the door, a red stain on her blue shirt, her eyes still open and still puzzled. She looked down at her shirt, tried to raise her hand to her face, but the hand lifted only briefly.

  She slid to the ground.

  Nina let out a shriek of horror and pain. It echoed around her brain and she thought, Now he’ll come in and finish me off too. She saw Chelsi on the floor a few feet away, watching her, her eyes so surprised, so disbelieving, shaking her head slightly even as the blood ran down her face, down her shirt.

  Nothing happened during the ensuing longest minute of Nina’s life. Just maybe, she heard some slight noise in the parking lot that she translated as the shooter leaving.

  Nina crawled the few feet across the floor and grabbed Chelsi by the arm. She dragged her under the table. One eye open now, not two. Chelsi wasn’t conscious anymore. She was gasping, leaking blood too fast to survive.

  Nina weighed her chances. It seemed to her that if the shooter wanted her enough, he’d come and get her and there was little she could do.

  Or he was already
gone. Meantime, Chelsi fluttered one eyelid and lay on the floor, legs akimbo.

  Nina scooted through the door, duckwalking. Slammed it, leaving poor Chelsi in there. Ran to the front door, slammed it shut, locked it. Ran to the phone. 9-1-1. She had hoped never to dial this number again. She was crying, blubbering, looking around frantically as the dispatcher asked the questions.

  She would always remember the tears sending scalding trails down her cheeks, her jaw clenched tight again, where she would always keep it from now on.

  18

  CHELSI’S FUNERAL WAS HELD AT THE Bible Baptist Church just outside Placerville on Mother Lode Drive three days later, in the morning.

  The death of a young person defeats some important plan. Babies are thrown into the world with every possibility ahead of them, and gradually their world narrows as they grow and experience and begin to express and produce. Someone very old may die, and it is sad, but the thought comes, They had their time. They had their chance. We saw, they saw, what they became.

  But for a young girl to die shockingly, without her chance, without anyone knowing what she might have become, is an injustice as well as a tragedy.

  Nina was still fresh and hurting from the assault at Chelsi’s office. Throughout the long police questioning that had followed, the reporters’ questions, the phone constantly ringing at the house, and the awful talk with Chelsi’s father, she kept a grim calm. She accepted Wish’s offer to move in for a few days and sleep on the couch at the cabin. He and Bob talked in undertones while she made sandwiches, lay down on her bed, sat on the deck in the backyard, and watched the trees.

  Half the town came to Chelsi’s funeral. She had been popular in high school, a basketball player, a star in her drama classes. Many of her friends spoke about her life. Her mother came from Arizona and stood with her father, looking so much like her that Nina could hardly talk to her. Dave Hanna came, sober, shaved, head hanging.

  Sergeant Cheney said, “There’s some thinking around here that you might have been the intended victim. Placerville PD isn’t turning up a scintilla of a motive to kill the young lady. She was very well-liked. Not even a boyfriend for us to take apart.”