The Blackbird Papers

by Ian Smith

  “What's going on with the saw blade we found in Professor Bledsoe's body?” Wiley asked.

  “It was sent to the state office to see if they could figure out the company that manufactured it and where the blades were sold,” Withcott said. “We don't have an answer yet.”

  “That blade could be the critical link between the murders,” Sterling said. “There's not much else to go on right now.”

  “There's something under the nails,” Patrick, the lab assistant, said. He held the right hand of the corpse carefully, using a magnifying glass to examine the fingers.

  Withcott took a closer look. He grabbed a pair of forceps and a small, hooked probe and carefully scraped underneath the fingernail of the woman's right index finger. He pulled back the forceps and carefully deposited the tiny debris on a sheet of white tissue paper. “Looks like skin,” he said, carefully moving around the mangled debris. “Send it to the lab for DNA.”

  A thought suddenly came to Sterling's mind. He took off his gloves and walked to the door. “Let me know if anything else shows up,” he said to Withcott. “You can reach me on my cell.”

  Sterling left without waiting for Wiley. He needed to take another look in his brother's lab, but this time with some help.

  28

  Sterling drove back to the campus and up Main Street. He took a quick detour to the Food Stop and picked up a cheesesteak with everything—except peppers. He continued to the center of campus, keeping a casual eye on the townspeople and students as they went about their business. This bucolic New England town hardly seemed like the setting for one brutal murder, much less two.

  Sterling put his cheesesteak on the passenger seat, took out his cell phone, and dialed Sean Kelton's number. He'd gotten the home number of Wilson's lead post-doctoral student from Kay.

  Sean had been expecting the call. All laboratory operations had been suspended pending the outcome of the investigation. Many of the researchers hadn't even been allowed back in to collect their personal items.

  “I was hoping you'd go with me to the lab,” Sterling said. “I want to take another look around, but I need someone who's more familiar with the layout.”

  “No problem, Mr. Bledsoe. When do you wanna go?”

  “How soon can you get over there?”

  “I live a few minutes past the golf course. I can be there in fifteen.”

  “I'll meet you outside,” Sterling said. “What will you be wearing?”

  “A bright red shirt with Big Red on it.”

  “I'll be waiting.”

  Sterling turned off Main Street and into the parking lot of the Grand Union. The area around the dumpster had been marked off with yellow police tape and orange pylons, and a crowd of curious onlookers had gathered. Several uniformed and plainclothes officers were still working the scene. Sterling recognized one of the officers who worked in the pit.

  “How's it going?” Sterling asked.

  “Trying to make sense of all this, Agent Bledsoe,” the man answered. “Two murders like this so close together. The damnedest coincidence.”

  Sterling nodded slowly. “Hasn't been a murder in this area in over fifty years. Suddenly two murders within a week. I'm not buying coincidence. Have the store employees been questioned?”

  “We've talked to everyone who was on duty when the body was found,” the officer said. “Last night's crew doesn't come on till three o'clock, so we'll have to wait a couple more hours for them to get here. But so far, no one saw or heard anything strange when they arrived to work this morning.”

  “I'm not surprised. She probably wasn't murdered here. The body was brought here and dumped.” Sterling left the officer and walked farther along the side of the building until he stood in the small area directly behind the store. He looked along the building and up at the lights attached just underneath the gutter. He walked back to the officer. “Is the manager here?”

  “Over there, in the brown shirt,” the officer said, pointing to a nervous-looking man raking his hands through what remained of his thinning hair. He was of average height and probably somewhere in his late forties. He had the disgruntled look of a chronic underachiever.

  Sterling approached. “Agent Sterling Bledsoe,” he said, extending his hand. “FBI.”

  “Miles Borwind,” the manager said, his eyes darting back and forth.

  “I was hoping to ask you a few questions,” Sterling said.

  “I've already told everything to the police. I don't know much.”

  Sterling looked away from the manager's darting eyes before they made him dizzy.

  “Yes, I understand,” Sterling said. He had plenty of practice dealing with nervous and uncooperative interviewees. Confrontation rarely worked. The trick was to make them feel at ease. “I'm sure you told them everything, but sometimes when you answer the same question a second time, it helps to jog your memory.”

  Borwind shrugged in resignation. Sterling noticed that he had a nervous tic that made him jerk his head slightly toward his right shoulder. “What time does the store close at night?”

  “Eleven o'clock Monday through Friday and nine o'clock on the weekends,” Borwind squeaked.

  “Who's the last to leave?”

  “I'm the weekday manager. I typically leave at five, then one of the assistant managers works till eleven and closes up.”

  “Who's that?”

  “Kathy Geddes, but she didn't work last night. She called in sick, so I came back to close up.”

  “Did you leave out of the front or back door?”

  “Back. I locked the front door from the inside, turned off the lights, and then left out the back.” Borwind's tic settled down. Sterling's questions were easier than he had feared.

  “When does the garbage truck come to empty the dumpster?”

  “Three times a week. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. They collect the garbage before I open up in the morning at nine.”

  Sterling continued to enter the details in his book. He was about to put it away, then asked one more question. “Did you see any other vehicles in the back of the building when you went to your car?”

  Borwind thought hard. The officers hadn't asked him that earlier. “Not really,” he said, still thinking. “There was an old truck parked at the far end of the building, but no one was in it. It probably belonged to someone in one of the houses next door. Sometimes they park in the back of our lot even though we have signs all over telling people it's customer parking only.”

  “What did the truck look like?” Sterling asked.

  “I didn't pay it much attention. One of those old pickups. It was a rusted red or brown. Nothing fancy. It had tall wood railings in the back to keep cargo from falling out.” Borwind massaged his temples. “That's about it.”

  “Thanks a lot for your time, Mr. Borwind,” Sterling said. He didn't make the mistake of extending his hand again. “I'm sure things will get back to normal soon.”

  Borwind sighed and shook his head. He glanced at the growing commotion around the dumpster before lowering his head and hurrying back into the safety of the store.

  Sterling quickly surveyed the scene, then found the crime scene photographer and pulled him to the side. “Follow me,” he instructed. The two disappeared behind the store.

  “What are we looking for?” the photographer asked. He was a short, bald man with a rim of wispy black hair that seemed to be hanging on just for the heck of it. He carried two cameras around his neck and a portable flash big enough to light an entire studio.

  “Tire tracks,” Sterling said. “A truck was parked back here last night. There's a strong possibility it's linked to all this.”

  The two searched the lot, an empty asphalt surface with a heap of used boxes and crates haphazardly piled next to the door. The area was small, not more than thirty feet wide and a hundred feet long. A row of hedges and small trees separated the Grand Union's property from the adjacent houses. But there was enough of a gap between the trees to entice n
eighbors to ignore the “no parking” signs.

  Sterling and the photographer walked shoulder to shoulder, their eyes fixed on the sandy, uneven surface. Then Sterling spotted something off in the corner where weeds and crabgrass sprouted through the cracked asphalt.

  “Hold it,” Sterling said, bending down over a faint impression. He traced tread marks, their grooves barely holding, vulnerable to even a strong wind. “Shoot this.”

  The photographer immediately went to work, snapping photos with the small camera first, then alternating with the bigger one whose long lens made it look like a menacing creature. As he snapped away, Sterling walked back in a semicircle and stopped. “This is another one,” he said, pointing to the ground. The photographer reloaded the cameras, then sent off a flurry of flashes. By the time he finished, he had four rolls ready to be developed.

  “How soon can we get these?” Sterling asked.

  “A few hours. I'm using a developing outfit over in Norwich.”

  “As soon as they're ready, call me on my cell.”

  “Do you want me to bring them back to the pit?”

  “No, just hold on to them.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I want to see if these tracks match those we found on River Road and at the medical school. I have a strong suspicion they will.”

  29

  Sterling noticed the bright red shirt from the other side of the lawn. Sean was patiently leaning against the building near the entrance.

  “Sean Kelton?” Sterling asked as he approached.

  “Mr. Bledsoe,” Sean said, straightening up quickly. “I got here as fast as I could.”

  “I had to make a little stop before coming over.”

  “My condolences, sir. I apologize for not making the memorial service, but I was out of town visiting my in-laws in California. We only see them once a year, and that was this week.”

  “Not a problem, Sean,” Sterling said. “And thanks.”

  “This is so unbelievable,” Sean said, hanging his head, a mop of burnt-orange hair piled recklessly with nowhere to go. A series of freckles started high on his cheeks and marched across his face until they met on the bridge of his nose. “Everyone liked Professor Bledsoe,” he said. “I can't imagine why anyone would kill him.”

  “Neither can I,” Sterling said. “But when I first arrived here, a woman told me something that really started me thinking. She said, ‘These mountains have secrets.' She wasn't lying.”

  Sterling and Sean rode the elevator in silence to the fifth floor. A uniformed security officer stood outside Wilson's lab, his hands clasped behind his back. All business.

  “Agent Sterling Bledsoe,” Sterling said. It was the first time he had seen this officer. Carlton must have already finished his shift.

  “No one can enter the lab without special permission,” the officer said stiffly. His face was full of pockmarks. Too much pimple popping when he was a teen. He had the rehearsed scowl of someone who had played a lot of cops-and-robbers as a kid.

  Sterling pulled out his wallet and flashed his tin. He couldn't be mad at the man for following orders.

  Awe stole over the man's sober expression. A real FBI badge. And it was shiny like those he had seen in the movies. “Sorry,” he stammered. “Go ahead in.”

  Sterling and Sean entered the lab and closed the door firmly behind them. When they were out of earshot of the officer, Sean turned to Sterling. “That was cool,” he said. “The Professor never told us that his brother worked for the FBI.”

  Sterling tossed Sean a pair of gloves. “I want you to walk me through every inch of this lab and tell me if you notice anything that seems to be out of place.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sean said. “Where should we start?”

  “Let's start at that end of the lab and work our way to Wilson's office.”

  Sean led Sterling to the far corner and began his investigation. He opened cabinets, pulled out drawers, and thumbed the books stacked underneath the windows. He even went to the storage cabinet and sifted through the shelves of test tubes, beakers, and graduated cylinders. The inspection took over an hour before they reached the door to Wilson's private office.

  “Everything looks exactly like we left it,” Sean said. “Professor always insisted on a clean and organized lab. He said the mind couldn't focus in a cluttered environment.”

  “Did you ever go into his office?”

  “Sure,” Sean said. “We usually went in to discuss our latest experiments or review the papers we were writing. Professor did most of his writing and correspondence in there.”

  Wilson's office was stuffier than Sterling remembered. He and Sean stood for a minute and looked around.

  “I really can't tell you much about the office,” Sean said. “We pretty much just sat on the couch and talked our problems out.”

  Sterling went directly to the closet and grabbed the box of tapes. He set it down on the desk and removed the lid. Like everything else in the laboratory, the tapes were neatly organized and clearly labeled. He emptied the tapes in numerical order. He stopped at tape forty-three. Tapes forty-four to forty-seven were missing. The numbers continued from forty-eight to fifty-one. The photo had shown the man carrying only three tapes. One tape was missing. It must've been the tape Sterling had found in the video camera locked away in Wilson's study.

  Sterling remembered what Mandryka had said about Wilson almost completing the case report on the blackbirds. “Was there a special place you all kept the draft copies of the papers that were sent in for publication?” he asked.

  “Professor had a very strict rule,” Sean said. “Whoever the lead researcher was for that experiment was always entitled to first authorship on the paper. But that also meant they were responsible for putting together the first draft. And Professor was very specific about how he wanted us to deliver our drafts. When we were done, we would copy a version onto a diskette and leave that on his desk along with a printed version. We'd also e-mail him a copy. Then as a final precaution, we'd go to the post office and mail him a copy.”

  Sterling's eyes widened. “I understand being cautious, but that seems a little extreme.”

  “Yeah, but he had his reasons. He told us that a few years ago, one of his research assistants had written a twenty-page review article, references and all. She had written it on her laptop, but never backed it up. Her hard drive crashed when she was writing the last paragraph. They lost everything and had to start from scratch.”

  “I guess that's happened to all of us at some time or another,” Sterling lamented. He had done the same thing as a grad student. It had cost the lab a $50,000 grant, something the director never let him forget. Sterling turned on the computer on Wilson's desk. A few seconds passed, a melody played, and the screen sprang to life. When the computer had finished booting, he moved the mouse and clicked on the icon for the computer's hard drive. The folder opened, but it was empty. “That's strange,” Sterling said. “How could there be nothing on his hard drive?”

  “That's impossible,” Sean said. “Professor downloaded all the manuscripts on this computer. He liked to edit them here because his monitor is so large.”

  Sterling clicked on the recycle bin. “There's nothing in the trash either,” Sterling said.

  “Let me take a look,” Sean said. He clicked on the various icons, searching through different directories, even restarting the computer in hopes that it would bring everything back. Nothing. No documents. No application programs. Sean shook his head. “This doesn't make sense at all. Professor saved everything on his computer, and now there's nothing.”

  “What about backup?” Sterling asked. “Is there another computer in the lab that would have a backup of his files?”

  “Never,” Sean said. “The way the computers were configured, he had access to the hard drives on our computers but not the other way around. This is really strange.”

  “Did he ever use a laptop?”

  “Professor hated lapt
ops. He always complained that the keyboard was too small for his fingers. He liked his desktop because it had the expanded keyboard and oversized monitor.”

  Sterling paced around the office. Everything would be lost if Wilson hadn't backed up his files. Sterling searched the office again. The computer diskette holder was empty. He checked all the papers that had been printed out. Still nothing.

  Then he saw that picture again—the one he and Wiley had noticed on their first inspection. Wilson and his students gathered on a lawn in front of one of the white academic buildings. Their faces were happy and free from worry. He spotted Kelton, but next to him, he saw another familiar face—Heidi Vorscht, Mrs. Potter's live-in help. Why was she in this picture? When he had told her that Wilson had been murdered on their property, she didn't even mention that they had been more familiar than just neighbors. She stood closest to Wilson in the picture, her hand lightly resting on his shoulder. There was a connection between them that didn't exist with the other students. Sterling's gut was at work again. He was certain Heidi hadn't told him everything. He slipped the picture inside his jacket.

  Sterling turned his attention to the computer monitor, then knelt on the ground and searched the hard drive tower. He found what he was looking for and pulled out his black book. He wrote down the number that had been stamped on the back: DC 1617. “This is a college-issue computer,” he said.

  “How can you tell?”

  “There's an inventory number stamped on the hard drive. Now the question is whether these computers are networked.”

  Sean thought for a minute. “I don't know, but the computer administrators would. They're over in a building called Kiewit.”

  “Where's that?”

  “On the other side of the green. Can't be more than a ten-minute walk.”

  Sterling picked up the phone and dialed the operator. She connected him to the Kiewit administration office.

  After five rings, a student's voice answered. “Kiewit Computing.”

  “What time do you close?” Sterling asked.