Wise Guys (2/4)
Wise Guys
Part 2
Don looked up at the tap on his door just as Liz let herself into his office. She dropped a stack of papers onto his desk then dropped herself into the other chair. “Here you go boss. Annual reviews of everyone and everything that has ever set foot on the fifth floor.”
“Thank you Agent Warner.” Don eyed them up and knew he’d really just end up skim reading them. If there was any major problem with his old team Liz would have brought it to his attention ages ago.
“Seriously, how did you find time to do these things every year?”
“I didn’t. I did them in full maybe twice while I was running violent crimes.”
“Now you tell me.”
Don grinned. “Do as I say, not as I did.”
“Sure. By the way, do you know if your brother is pissed at me or something?”
“No.” Don was quite startled by the question. As far as he knew Liz and Charlie got on great. Charlie’s success rate had even gone up a bit under Liz’s rein. “Why?”
“He’s just been ducking my calls the last few days. Amita said he’d got something big he’s working on, and that’s cool, but usually he just says ‘I’m working on something’ instead of just avoiding me.”
“Do you need something for an active case, ‘cause I’ll talk to him…”
“No, was just looking at some cold cases that I thought could you maybe do with a little math.”
“Okay.” Don knew what Charlie’s big thing was. The same big thing he’d been working on for almost a week. “He’s working a case for another office and it’s kinda eating his brain.”
“Define eating? Like P v NP eating, or there is a chance he can solve it and we should just back up and let him work?”
“How do you know about P:NP?”
“I make it a point to know about my major consultants.”
“More like Posdner.”
Liz straightened up a bit. “Another stealth predator?”
“Yeah, and kids are involved this time.”
“Shit. I’ll give him some space then.”
“Actually, he could probably use a bit of cheerleading. He got handed the case unofficially and under the table and the whole Bureau hasn’t learned to speak Charlie yet.”
Liz quirked her lips into a half smile. “Does anyone really know how to speak Charlie?”
“Okay, they haven’t learned to smile and nod and have a little faith that Charlie might know what he’s doing. Of course there was a stint where even I didn’t know how to do that.”
“I’m sure you learned quick.”
“You weren’t here the first time I let Charlie onto a case. Spent the whole time sure I was out of my mind and about to tank my career but I was fucking desperate.”
“And now someone else is fucking desperate.”
“Yeah.” Don didn’t want to think about how many felonies the person who was desperate was suspected of. “Tell you what, I was going to swing by his place anyway. I’ll put a bug in his ear about at least picking up your calls.”
“Thanks, and if he needs to borrow a room or something, we’re all one big happy Bureau.”
“I’ll be sure to pass that along.”
~
Don walked up the driveway to the craftsmen just as Tommy Rossi was walking down it towards a rental car. He gave a nod to Don. “Flying out in a few hours.” He said. “Thought I’d drop by, see how Charlie was doing.”
“I’m doing the same.” Tommy just gave another nod. “For what it’s worth Charlie’s got an obsessive streak a mile wide.”
“I know. I watched Mini Teach take his driving test eleven times at four different DMVs. Most people would have just given up or slipped someone a bribe.”
“You know he got his licensed yanked for speeding a while back. He tried to argue in court that the math used to calibrate speed guns was flawed.”
“How fast was he going?”
“About a hundred and three on the freeway.”
Tommy chuckled. “Good for him. I’ll see you around Eppes.” Don watched as Tommy got into his generic rental and drove off before heading into the house himself.
It was quiet but the garage door was open. Don could just make out the tap of chalk on a board. Inside, the garage had been transformed yet again. Plastered around the garage were star charts, moon charts, and graphs of plants. It looked more like a project for the astronomy department than a homicide investigation.
“Hey buddy. Saw your friend outside.”
“Yeah. I was hoping I’d have something more concrete to give him before he left.”
“I’m sure you’re giving it everything.” Charlie didn’t answer. “So… Star charts?”
Charlie waved his arm towards a board with a scatter chart of dates. “I’m trying to work out a timeline to the killings. They come in clumps, slightly seasonal, but different every year and they’re not in any kind of easily identifiable pattern. Many serial killers work on some sort of lunar or seasonal cycle but this guy won’t be that easy. I’m thinking maybe some complicated astronomical thing, and I know it’s not completely vital but…”
“But if you figure it out you might get inside his head a bit.”
Charlie dropped down onto the couch. “I’ve spent the last five days on the phone with every detective for every case. Not a single one of them had overlapping suspects. Plenty of theories. Gang or drug related mostly. A few of them suspected unhinged ex’s of partners. There was even a few arrests made but nothing that could stick. A few times the weapons would show up dumped somewhere but never with forensic evidence. In a few cases the bullets were matched up with ones from other unsolved crimes but it was always crimes where the gun was probably just sold off to the next thug, then the next.”
“Did you tell the detectives what you were working on?”
“A few of the more intelligent sounding ones. I kept Tommy’s name and the FBI’s out of it. No need to get anything stirred up yet but I’ve got a few that are going back through old case notes and statements for me. If I could get just one tiny hint of a suspect…”
“You’ll get one.” Charlie flopped an arm over his eyes. Don noticed a couple of grays in Charlie’s hair. He’d been in the grocery store just the other day and had been contemplating a box of men’s hair dye for himself. He didn’t feel old enough to have gray hairs and his baby brother having grays was just wrong. “Did you really take your driver’s test eleven times?”
“Yes.”
“Which part did you fail?”
“All of it. I could drive fine with mom, or Larry. Drove great with Tommy or Little Mike, but once the exam guy got in next to me I’d just stress out, start over thinking everything. Babbling.”
“You’d go driving with Tommy?”
Charlie rolled his head to look at Don. “Tommy taught me how to shave, okay? You weren’t around. Dad wasn’t around. Larry was Larry. Tommy had a Firebird and he let me drive it some days. He taught me to shave. Little Mike explained how to unhook a bra one handed. Big Jimmy showed me the trick to making Jell-o shots set. Robbie…”
“I get the picture. You didn’t have any strong male role models so you took what you could get.”
“It wasn’t about role models it was…” Charlie shook his head. “They liked me and I like them. They were friends. And it was also about safety. Everyone knew who they were and as long as I hung out with them I was safe. First time in my life I could say that.”
A ball of leftover, childhood, guilt worked its way up Don’s spine. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. But you know what you can be sorry for on some level?” Charlie hopped up and picked up a glass of water from the edge of the pool table and held it out to Don.
Don peered in. At the bottom of the glass was a bug and not the six legged type. “I found it five days ago. I left it in place until right after Tommy left so I couldn’t be accused of hiding anything.”
“Then you dropped it in a glass of water?”
“Then I read it the riot act, then dropped it in a glass of water. Now, would you be so kind as to take it to your wife and ask her to find out exactly who requested and granted a warrant to bug the house of the man who works on top secret projects for just about every branch of the federal government? I want to know exactly whose career I get to nuke from orbit when I report it. Which I’d have to even if I didn’t want to, but you know what? I really want to.”
Don’s knee jerk reaction was to defend the FBI but Charlie was right. He worked on all kinds of secret shit that Don knew he’d never get anywhere near and the NSA or CIA or whomever probably wouldn’t want some field level FBI agent in a van finding out whatever secrets they were entrusting to Charlie. “I’ll see what I can do. How’d you even find it?”
“I’ve been sweeping for bugs every week since Colby and the Janus List thing. He swore he never bugged this place but it did make me realize someone else may have. Colby even comes by every so often to do a really through check.”
“Have you ever found any?”
“Just that one. And whoever place it should get sent back to Quantico. I hardly had to look.”
Don fished the bug out of the glass. “I’m sorry. And I’ll try to get you a name.”
“Is McGowan still around? Because you can’t tell me he wouldn’t be skipping with glee…”
“He retired last year.”
“Any chance he left apprentices?”
“I’ll check, and I’ll be sure to get you a name. You just keep working on this.”
Charlie looked up at the star charts then back at the boards. “Yeah, I’ll just keep working.”
“Oh, and give Liz a call. She thinks you’re avoiding her.”
“Does she have an active case?”
“No. Just some cold ones. But call her and tell her you’re not pissed at her about something.”
“Like I could ever get pissed at Liz.”
Don chuckled. He knew Charlie and Liz had nearly come to blows about a month after she took over the job. They had both sulked in their corners until Don and Amita worked out that it had all been a big miss communication and they really had no reason to be mad at each other. It had still taken three days to get them into a room because neither was going to apologize first.
~
Don waited until after dinner to show Robin the bug and explain the situation. She just stared at it.
“Oh, please tell me you weren’t the one involved in this. He had the director chew the ear off one of the organized crime guys already.”
“No. I did put my ear to the tracks thought and it looks like someone is moving stuff into place to make a real run at the Rossi family. They’re still involved in a lot of money laundering, protection rackets, shady union deals…”
“The standard mob stuff.”
“Yeah.”
“Any chance Charlie will get caught up in this?”
Robin picked up the bug and turned it around in her fingers. “I don’t know. I guess it’ll depend what they overheard.”
“I don’t think Charlie talked about anything but the case but I can guarantee he’s already been on the phone with NSA, CIA, CDC, DHS and just about everyone else who’s ever cut him a check. He wants a name so he can nuke someone’s career from orbit. And that’s a direct quote.”
Robin put the bug back into the little evidence bag Don had put it in. “Not to criticize your brother but do you ever get the feeling there’s something… cold inside his head?”
Don let out a breath. He thought he was the only one who ever noticed. “All the time. Ever since we were kids. 99% of the time he wore his heart on his sleeve then I’d catch these looks. He’d stare at some jock in gym class like he was calculating the most efficient way of dissecting the body. I don’t know, maybe he got shoved in one locker too many, but I’ve got to say, especially lately, I have never been so glad he’s working for us.”
~
Don knocked on Charlie’s office door before letting himself in. He only got a few feet. This time it had been Larry who called him with concerns. During Charlie’s year in England Don had slowly trained Larry to be a little more direct when he communicated, at least with Don. So it was Larry’s five minutes of rambling that had Don worried. That and hearing second hand that Amita and Charlie were fighting.
The aftershocks of Charlie’s temper tantrum over the bug were still being felt radiating down through every federal agency. Neither Don nor the government needed Charlie to get upset again.
Charlie’s office was covered in different color strings, running floor to ceiling and wall to wall. Most of the furniture was missing and it looked like a giant spider on hard drugs had gotten sick then wandered off. At the intersection of each string there was the face of a child or a blank piece of paper with a large question mark on it. Charlie was standing in the middle of it all, his eyes closed, his head bowed, and his laptop at his feet was playing Uranus from Holst’s The Planets.
Don waited until the end of the piece to say anything. “Charlie?”
“Yes.”
“How’s it going?”
“I am trying to find the elegant in chaos. My very first case for you I went looking for the mathematically elegant solution. But when you are dealing with humans elegant seldom if ever applies, so at the end of the day one must redefine what actually constitutes elegant.”
“Okay. What’s with the question marks?”
“They’re missing people.”
“He’s kidnapping as well?”
Charlie’s head snapped up. “No. Or, I don’t think so. I’m not… When Dmitri Mendeleev was developing the periodic table of elements he wrote down all known elements on cards and would play chemical solitaire on train trips. Other chemists had tried before but their big problem was that many elements had simply not been discovered yet. When Mendeleev finally put together his table he left empty spaces and said ‘an unknown element will go here and it will probably look like this’. It was an incredibly bold statement. Those question marks are unknown people that the killer is interacting with in some way and I believe those unknown elements are somehow linking the children together.”
“Ah.” Don touched one of the strings as he tried to climb over it. They were all pulled tight and it sent all the pictures and question marks fluttering. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“No.”
“Any luck with the timing?”
“No, I think his patterning is random.”
That was a bold statement coming from Charlie. Don ducked under another couple of strings getting closer to Charlie. “I thought you said nothing people do is random.”
Charlie pointed to one blackboard with a very complicated looking formula on it. “That is the equation I get when I try to reverse engineer his pattern. It’s similar to the algorithm in ipods that randomizes your playlist.”
“He’s using an ipod to decide when to kill?”
“No. It’s more random than that. It approaches true randomness.”
“So you don’t know when the next killing is going to be?”
“No. Was there something particular you wanted from me?”
“Larry’s believes you’re obsessed with the case and is worried you might be melting down a bit.”
“Yes I am and no I’m not.
Don wiggled himself between a few more strings until he got to the small clear area where Charlie stood. He realized Charlie must have built this model from the outside in, basically paining himself into the middle of the room.
Don spun around. From the center things looked very different. Still random but at the same time constructed. More like the spider had dropped acid instead of just getting sick. “Do you see anything Don?”
“I don’t know.”
“This is what has been constructed from the killer’s mind. This is where he would stand.”
Don reached out, plucked a string, and watched how the surrounding bits of paper fluttered about. He plucked another and watched the waves go down a different set of strings. “Ripples.” Don whispered to himself, a haze of a thought starting to form. He reached out into the web and plucked a string attached a question mark and watched other bits of paper bounce around.
“What are you seeing Don?”
Don was seeing a lot of things. Stones in ponds, the plucking of piano strings. He plucked a string attached to a child next and his mind flashed of the feel of a baseball bat vibrating in his hand after catching a piece of a fastball.
“Vibrations. You hit a curve ball you feel it come down the bat. You hit a 95 fastball you feel it in your hands for the rest of the game. Pull a string next to a question mark a few other strings wiggle. Pull a string next to a kid and half the room shakes.”
“Of course! You’re brilliant. If you want to go for maximum effect, really rattle a family or community you kill a child. Oh, this guy is sick.”
Don spun around again tracing the strings with his eyes as quickly as possible. He reached out and plucked two strings. One connected to a child one to a question mark. There was less movement. “Interesting. Still doesn’t tell us who the question marks are and how the killer finds them.”
Charlie dropped cross legged and hunched over his laptop. “Assuming the question marks are other deaths whose death doesn’t create ripples.”
“All kinds.” Don had learned that early on in his career. There were certain people whose murders got very little notice. “Gang members, drug users, prostitutes, shut ins, people already in jail. It’s a long list.”
“So a junkie gets stabbed in an alley and this guy kills a kid?”
“I’ve heard weirder reasons. Have you tried looking at micro cluster things?”
Charlie had begun to type. “No. I dismissed that theory early on. Maybe I shouldn’t have.”
“While we’re talking about Posdner, any chance you can’t find a good victim zero because this guy has moved?”
Charlie’s hands froze for a second. “Yes. I’m running searches for all unsolved shooting deaths of children age ten, in any major urban area, but it’s taking a while because these all count as local crimes so they’re not all in the same databases.”
Don reached out and plucked another two strings. Both connected to children. Half the room shook. “Tell me when you’re going to Jersey.”
“What makes you think I’m going to Jersey?”
“Come on, you’re not going to solve this from all the way over here. Tell me when you decide to go to Jersey so I can go with you. I’ll be your math translator.”
“You’re going to translate my math?”
“Someone’s got to. Besides, I want to make sure you don’t fall in with hardened criminals again. Someone has got to keep you on the straight and narrow.”
Charlie paused in his typing just long enough give Don the finger. Don laughed then tried to figure out the best way out of the office.
~
It was three days and rumors of another fight when Charlie walked into Don’s office, shut the door, and crashed into the empty chair. His eyes were ringed in black and his stubble was headed more towards a full beard. “Do you know how many ten year old children are gunned down in this country every year?” Charlie asked quietly.
“Too many?”
“Yeah. And a surprising number at ten years and three days.”
“But you found clusters didn’t you?”
Charlie nodded. “Going back 18 years. Baltimore County and Wayne County, Michigan.”
“Both high on crime levels.”
“Easy for… I don’t know.”
“What about micro clusters?”
“Nothing. Not even blips but I’m sure those question marks are other killings. It’s just…” Charlie rubbed at his eye then took a deep breath. “Pack your bags, warn who you need to warn. I’m going to Jersey.”
“Do you have a suspect yet?”
“Not even close but there’s no way I’m going to get one here.”
~
Don adjusted his tie. He’d gone back to wearing one every day for about the first month of his promotion before just giving up. After that he kept a couple of ties and a clean shirt folded in his desk in case he suddenly needed to play dress up. But for visiting a another office, with the roadshow that was Charlie, he decided it would be best to look professional as possible. Especially once he started helping Charlie explain why even wasn’t the same as random.
So far they had been greeted politely and treated well with implicating that someone much higher up the food chain and told them to. They’d gotten hairy eyeballs from the organized crime guys but the violent crime squad seemed pretty relaxed, showing them to the war room. They had a couple of active cases on but they gave Charlie one of the meeting rooms to set up in.
An agent approached Don with long strides. He was in jeans and a t-shirt and he instantly reminded Don of himself ten years earlier.
“Agent Eppes?” he held out his hand.
“Yes indeed.”
“Mark Cromwell. I run violent crimes.”
“Pleasure to meet you. Sorry we’re jumping on your turf here.”
“No apology necessary. And I’d just like to state for the record I never heard anything about a serial killer from any other agent or cop.”
“From what I gather certain things were shortstopped before they got too high up.”
“So someone had to go out to California to get our attention?”
Don just shook his head. “It’s complicated.” Don peeked through the glass walls into the conference room to see how Charlie was doing. He’d commandeered Don’s carry-on luggage allotment to bring as many maps and files as possible.
“So… That’s the LA math guy.”
“Yep.”
“Your brother?”
“Yep.”
“I heard he was some kind of idiot savant they kept locked in the basement.”
“Well, his spelling can get kinda bad, but I hear that’s pretty common for mathematicians. And he does have a habit of locking himself in the garage when he gets his head really into a problem.”
“The garage?”
“He has it filled with chalkboards.”
“As you do.” Agent Cromwell watched as Charlie started putting an equation up on a white board. “Look, I’ve got two dead postal workers, a couple of bank jobs, and a corpse found in about fifty pieces on some federal park land. I can bring in my whole team for you to brief but until you can give me a solid lead I can’t give full man power. I got the memo saying you guys get the red carpet but…”
“I ran violent crimes out in LA for six years. I get it. If you’ve got someone kicking around who has a math or science degree, or is willing go way outside the box we’ll take them. Well, I’ll take them and I’ll tell Charlie to deal.”
“How about we’ll let your brother brief and we’ll see who takes to it.”
“Sure. And for what it’s worth Charlie’s got some pretty neat tricks for analyzing bank jobs.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Come on. I’ll introduce you.” Charlie had started fiddling around with some cables trying to get his laptop connected to a TV. “Charlie.” Charlie looked up. “This is Agent Mark Cromwell, he heads up violent crimes here. Agent Cromwell, Doctor Charles Eppes of the California Institute of Science and Technology.” Don figured it was probably best to introduce Charlie by his full title, or at least as full as Don could remember. He was pretty sure Charlie had a few extra letters he got to put after his name on special occasions.
“Nice to meet you Agent Cromwell. I’m really sorry about this, we don’t have any intention of trying to step on your turf but in the end there was only so much analysis I could do from California. I mean I’ve still got out super computer doing some sorting for me but…”
“It’s fine. Really.” Agent Cromwell leaned back a bit from the first on slot of Charlie babble. “I was telling your brother here that we’ve got a couple of cases running hot right now so I won’t be able to get you a whole team until you have a stronger suspect list but I’ll let you brief everyone and see who take it as it were.”
Charlie opened his mouth and Don recognized the look on Charlie’s face. It was his breath away from launching into a full blown argument face. Don gave him a hard look and Charlie forced on a smile. “Whatever we can get we’ll take. Though if you’ve got an IT person running around here that would also be good.”
Agent Cromwell nodded. “I’ll send Mary your way. Think you can brief in ten?”
“Not a problem.”
Mary it turned out was a twelve year old computer whisper. Okay, she was probably in her twenties, but her blond hair in two long braids, she was a little shorter than Charlie, and was dressed in pink. She looked twelve. She also looked horribly disappointed when she noticed the wedding band on Charlie’s finger.
She got Charlie’s system hooked up to the TV just as everyone started shuffling in. Don looked over the agents. They all looked reasonably young but no one looked too green. It was a bit of a balance with violent crime divisions. You had to be young and fit enough to go through doors with SWAT teams but you needed to have enough experience to not get killed doing it. They were all eyeing up Charlie and his equation. A few whispered to each other.
“Okay, everyone.” Agent Cromwell piped up. “This is Doctor Charles Eppes, and Special Agent Don Eppes out of LA. They are here to tell us about a serial killer we didn’t know we had. And yes this is the LA math guy that keeps their solve rates five percentage points better than anyone else’s so let’s all listen up.”
Charlie cleared his throat and pressed a button on his computer. A map of Essex County came up on the large TV screen. A second later it was overlaid with the faces of children. “Yes. Hello. First thank you for the welcome. And we’ll just jump right into it. You have a serial killer. Each of these children here were victims of random gun violence over the last five years, except it wasn’t random. It has only been made to look that way by a very sick mind. Each one of these children was ten years and three days old. Exactly ten years and three days old. Not ten and two day, not ten and four, ten years, three days.”
“Wait,” a slightly older agent put up his hand. “I’ve been here four years and I haven’t heard anything about a bunch of dead kids.”
“Yes, well there are many factors surrounding that. The big one being is that no shootings happened within the same city, town, or township, twice in a row. As you can see by this time laps animation.” Charlie pressed another button. “The killer crisscrossed the county and since they are tragic but random shooting deaths they were all handled by local authorities. No solid suspects are identified, cases go cold. It should also be noted that on paperwork when people note the age of a victim they just go by year. It makes it difficult to notice a pattern of ten years and three days.”
All the agents were giving Charlie hard looks.
“For what it’s worth California had a stealth killer that went for 20 years in three cities. He changed his MO with every killing so it made him tricky to pin down.”
“But someone noticed.”
Charlie tilted his head towards Don. “He got stabbed and I over compensated by looking at every unsolved murder in LA county.” The agents blinked at him. “We all cope with stress in our own ways. But on that note.” Charlie brought up two more maps and two more timeline animations. “Baltimore County, Maryland and Wayne County, Michigan. Starting 18 years ago and ending 12 years ago Baltimore county had a cluster of child shootings all ten years and three days. Between 11 and 6 years ago it was Wayne County, Michigan. And starting five years ago, Essex County.”
“So there has been someone shooting ten year old kids for 18 years?” The agents all took in the collage of young faces on the screen.
“Yes.”
“Do you have a suspect?”
Charlie shifted a bit. “I’m narrowing down a list So far we know it is someone who lived in Baltimore County, Wayne County and Essex County over the last 18 years.” The agents all just stared at Charlie. “I have a super computer going through census records and tax returns right now. It’s throwing a lot of names but not a completely unmanageable number.”
“So, what 30, 40?” A younger woman asked.
Charlie checked something on his laptop. “Currently 5,008.” Again the agents stared at Charlie. “But, we can take out anyone under the age of 30. I’m willing to remove women for the time being. Individual with certain physical handicaps. I have talked with the detectives for every single killing and each have given me a list of suspects. We can cross reference those names. The person responsible for the killings is probably getting access to county birth certificates from somewhere so when we get closer there maybe be records of access.”
The agents were all still staring at Charlie, their minds obviously still stuck on the number 5,008.
“Okay.” Don stepped forward. “I know that looks like a huge number but it’s really not once you start scooping out the people it can’t be. Believe me I’ve seen suspect lists go from ten thousand to twenty. But math can only go so far. We are on a time limit before the next killing so the more hands we can get going through old reports the better. If we can find a pattern in the type of car used. Or if two witnesses described a similar looking person ten years apart.”
“How much time have we got?” Cromwell asked.
Don turned to Charlie.
“We don’t know.” Charlie brought up the timeline. “I have studied the timing patterns of every serial killer I could get records on. Many are on lunar cycles or there is a set amount of time it takes the compulsion to ramp back up. Some are seasonal. But this one is about as close to mathematically random as you can get.” Charlie brought up an equation. “This is what I got when I tried to devise an algorithm to work out when the next killing might be.” The agents looked at each other as if to see if one of them might actually understand what was on the screen. Charlie put up another two equations that looked similar. “The first one her is the algorithm that card shuffling machines in Vegas use to randomize deck stacks. The other is the one used to randomize the play list on your ipod.”
“He’s using an ipod to decide when to kill?” A young agent asked sounding horrified. Don tried not to smile.
“No. His trigger, I believe, has something to do with this.” Charlie hit a few keys and the screen suddenly filed with a computerized version of Charlie’s string covered office. The question marks light up. “I believe these question marks are the triggers and I believe they are deaths that occurred sometime around the death of the child but I have found no recurring pattern of killings running in parallel to the killings we are already aware of.”
“And how did you come to this conclusion?” Cromwell asked.
Charlie picked up a whiteboard marker and began to write. The equation took three lines of reasonably small handwriting that went from one end of the board to another. Charlie ended the third line with =0. “That’s how.”
“Any way you can explain that to us. Clever analogy?” Don asked.
“It’s a piece of math similar to the one used by astronomers to detect patches of dark matter by analyzing the slight variations in light refraction from known stars do to the gravitational pull exerted by particularly dense dark matter. Of course this is an abridged version of the equation. I don’t have enough board space for the whole thing.”
“Any way you can dumb that down a little more?” One of the agents asked.
Charlie shook his head. “Usually, yes. I can explain some very complex mathematical principals invoking penguins and raindrops but this.” Charlie waved his hand towards the board. “This even stretches my brain a little. I know it’s a lot to say trust me because you don’t know me but those question marks are dark matter. They are exerting some kind of force towards the killer, bending him in one direction or the other. This is my box.” Charlie waved at the equation again. “I need help thinking outside it. Someone is killing children in every corner of the county, indiscriminate of all factors except for age. A very particular age. Any ideas?”
There was dead silence in the room. The agents all had their eyes glued to the equation as if it were a particularly bloody crime scene photo.
An agent in the back of the room put his hand up. He looked a bit like Colby but rougher around the edges. “I’ve got a question?” He had a smirk on his face Don didn’t like. “Where did you get this case from? I mean none of us have heard about it.” The agent asked the question like he already knew the answer and wanted to see Charlie squirm. Don knew that wasn’t going to work.
“The father of one of the victims.” Charlie answered primly.
“Which one?”
Charlie clicked his mouse a few times and a picture of Angelica Rossi came up on the screen. It was a school photo. She had a bright smile and a mess of dark curls. “Angelica Rossi. Ten years, three days old. She was riding her new bike. Blue. She hated pink. I was her father’s math tutor and it seems some of my lectures on probabilities and patterns actually sunk in. He flew out to California and brought the issue to my attention.” Charlie’s voice was cool and strong and the agent in the back shifted uncomfortably.
A young woman who was sitting up front, and looked a bit like the dead little girl, raised her hand. “I’m not getting any forensics back on these bank jobs for at least a day. I’m not one for math but I’ll help you go through witness statements and stuff.”
Charlie smiled. “Thank you.”
Cromwell gave a nod. “Anyone else want to try to wrap their heads around this?” The rest of the agents shook their heads still eyeballing the equation. “Okay, well stick it in the back and with any luck the professor here will get a lead that will let us jump on this sicko quick. Until then, everyone back to work.”
There were some nods and the other agents shuffled out. The young woman stood and held out her hand. “Agent Susi Marino.”
Charlie took her hand. “Charlie. And thanks for volunteering.”
“No problem. My granddad worked for the Rossi’s. He wasn’t made or anything but I’m a little more comfortable dealing with them than the other guys.”
“I’ve got a picture of Tommy and half his… oh god, lieutenants I guess, wearing t-shirts that read I Like Pi. Spelled P I for extra credit.”
Agent Marino laughed. “I would love to see that.”
“Well, he’s got pictures of me at age fifteen trying to grow a mustache. It’s sort of a game of blackmail Chicken neither of us want to lose.”
“I can understand that. So.” She clapped her hands together. “Let’s get this started.”
Charlie pushed a stack of files over to her and another stack over to Don. “These are for you two, and I’m going to hunt dark matter.”
~
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