Critical Mass (53 page)

“Learning who she really was explained something to me. Ada—Martina, I should say, but I knew her as Ada for fifty years—Ada knew more science than I did, with my master’s in chemistry, but she claimed she never went to college. She’d give talks on physics and astronomy over at the high school; she’d let the kids come out and look through her scope, tell them about black holes, make it all come alive for them. She used to tutor the college kids in physics, help them with their problem sets, that kind of thing.

“In my early days here, I pushed her to get a degree and try for a job at a big school, but she said she liked small-town life, she liked the slow pace, not having to be competitive or look over her shoulder. I finally let it rest.”

“I wanna see the telescope,” Lily said.

Dorothy laughed. “You can, sugarplum, it’s over at the library for you and any little girl in Tinney to look through.”

I wondered about the skeleton I’d found yesterday. If Martina hid from the FBI under a double identity, as Ada Byron, or sometimes as Gertrud Memler, was that the real Memler, buried in Edward Breen’s old basement? Who had killed her? Who had buried her?

“How did you know to let Martin into the workshop?” I asked Dorothy.

Dorothy gave a bark of a laugh. “Ada said if someone claimed to be from Martina’s family and claimed to know physics, see if they could solve a problem set. Like a prince in an old fairy tale, pulling the sword out of the rock, Martin worked the problems in the first few days after he got here.

“When I saw those problems, after the lawyer gave me all the documents Ada left behind for me, they took me a month and I still couldn’t solve them very elegantly. Ada included a couple of different answer guides and Martin worked out two problems according to what Ada called the best solution; his other three solutions were clumsier but still—he got them in three days! And he knew the Saginor family history; he knew that his grandmother was Martina’s daughter.”

“What are you doing here in the workshop?” I asked Martin. “Hoping to find information on the patent?”

“I’m trying to rebuild the BREENIAC from Martina’s notes, sticking to what she dated from before 1953. I thought if I could prove that Martina designed the first magnetic memory, Mr. Breen would have to stop threatening me. Martina used a special gauge of wire that I don’t think Edward Breen had thought of, so Martina created a more reliable current than he designed, but I can’t quite get it to work.”

It seemed ludicrous to me, completely practical yet utterly impractical, like filling a garage with dry ice to freeze a model rocket. “You need to abandon it for now,” I said. “It’s only a matter of time before Cordell Breen or Homeland Security gallop up to Dorothy’s door; we don’t want to be sitting ducks for them. Why don’t you gather up the most important of her papers and your notes; we’ll get them into safekeeping in Chicago.”

“We’ll go over to my bank in Tinney right now,” Dorothy said. “We can rent a safe-deposit box there. Better than putting them at risk by driving all over Illinois with them.”

Martin tried to protest. “I’m so close, and really, I’m safe down here. It was only Alison remembering my saying I’d use Planck’s constant instead of the fine structure that opened the secret door for you.”

I shook my head. “Metargon and Homeland Security, whoever gets here first, have such sophisticated electronic spyware, they’ll break the code in a second. Or Metargon’s goons will simply take an ax to the wall. You’d be trapped in here.”

Martin’s jaw jutted in obstinacy, when Alison appeared on the stairs. “Martin! Vic! You need to come up! There’s a story on TV about Julius Dzornen and a dead woman!”

50

MALWARE

W
HEN WE GOT
to the front room, the station had gone to commercials. We watched a woman extol the virtues of a new drinkable yogurt, followed by a man driving an SUV through the La Brea tar pits.

Beth Blacksin, one of Global Entertainment’s news anchors, finally appeared. “Today’s top story is the dramatic discovery of a skeleton that’s been buried underneath the kitchen of a Hyde Park home for at least fifty years, and perhaps longer.”

She was standing in the cellar where I’d been entombed yesterday, gesturing to the hole in the floor where police had dug up the skeleton. I wanted to be outside, breathing real air, but I forced myself to stand next to Alison and watch the screen.

“What makes this story both more tragic and more important is that this coach house was the site of Edward Breen’s original workshop,” Blacksin was saying. “Breen, whose revolutionary computer design led to the creation of the world-famous Metargon company, allowed Julius Dzornen to live here after the Breen family moved to Lake Forest.

“In a statement today, Edward Breen’s son, current Metargon CEO Cordell Breen, said he was shocked that Julius Dzornen had taken advantage of the family’s generosity by murdering a woman and burying her underneath the kitchen.”

Meg took Lily to the kitchen. “She’s only four; she doesn’t need murder and what-all in her life yet.”

The scene switched to Metargon’s headquarters. Breen spoke from his office, the Rothko painting in the background.

“This discovery is a shock to all of us in the Metargon family.” Breen’s mellow baritone was appropriately solemn. “Julius Dzornen’s father, Benjamin, collaborated closely with my own father to design America’s nuclear arsenal. When Julius and I were boys together, everyone thought he would become a scientific giant like his father. Instead, he became depressed and reclusive and dropped out of school.

“Julius often spoke of having committed a terrible crime, but I always assumed he was referring to squandering his scientific gifts. I can’t begin to fathom what made him commit such a heinous murder, but he came to see me on Tuesday night, speaking as if he wanted to confess. In the end, he didn’t reveal his horrible secret, but it was after leaving my house that he drove his car into a ravine on Sheridan Road.”

That was all Breen had to say. After Breen’s speech, Murray Ryerson appeared outside Metargon’s headquarters.

“Police currently have no clues as to the woman’s identity,” Murray said, “but a button found with the body was given to Chicago Fashion Institute historian Eva Kuhn. Kuhn says it’s from a Dior suit cut in 1952, so the dead woman was possibly murdered in ’52 or 1953. Police are anxious to talk to Chicago investigator V. I. Warshawski, who discovered the skeleton yesterday, but has since disappeared. This is Murray Ryerson, live in Northbrook.”

Murray was replaced by a couple of men waist-high in cranberries. Dorothy muted the sound.

My skin turned cold. Cordell Breen had pulled off a very neat stunt. He’d landed Julius with sole responsibility for the dead woman. There was no way to refute him, since Julius was dead. My assumption, that the Breens installed Julius in the coach house to avoid anyone finding the body, was only an assumption, after all.

Alison was jubilant. “See! My father didn’t have anything to do
with Julius Dzornen’s death. Durdon wasn’t tampering with his brakes. I shouldn’t have listened to you, Vic, you’ve been making me scared of my own father.”

“Alison, Rory Durdon tried to murder me yesterday.” I was close to screaming in frustration.

Alison’s eyes were bright, as if the effort to live in denial was making her feverish. “Dad sent him down to the coach house to see if Julius Dzornen had taken our sketch. Maybe he overreacted to seeing you there, but that doesn’t mean my father—”

“Dorothy!” It was Meg, calling from the kitchen. “An SUV just pulled up out front. I’m taking Lily over to Gracie’s, see if her mama will let us watch
Clifford
with her.”

Dorothy said to us, “Go back to the workshop and shut yourselves in. If these men mean trouble, stay in there until I give you an all-clear.”

Martin and I moved quickly back to the basement, but Alison lingered, peering at the street through a crack in the living room curtains. The switch to close the secret entrance was under the worktable. Martin had his finger on it, but waited in a sweaty silence, hoping Alison would come. At the last minute, as the men began hammering on the front door, she ran down the basement steps to join us.

Martin pressed the switch. We watched the sides of the wall slowly move. The edges came together with a series of bumps, and then a click locked them into place.

I turned to the monitor on the worktable and saw that the men on the porch were Moe and Curly. “Homeland Security,” I muttered.

“See?” Alison hissed. “My father is not tracking you!”

I was trying not to panic, but I didn’t think I could take being sealed in a basement two days in a row. “Martin, is there another way out?”

“At that far wall, under Martina’s telescope platform.”

Through the mike Martin had embedded in the front door, we heard Dorothy’s gruff voice, demanding to know the men’s business.
We watched Moe and Curly whip out their federal credentials. Dorothy said they could talk to her from the front porch, she didn’t let strange men into her house no matter how many badges they flashed at her.

“That Mustang parked out front belongs to a woman who is wanted by the Chicago police, and we have reason to believe you’re harboring another fugitive,” Moe said.

“We can open this door without any trouble,” Curly put in. “We’re giving you a chance to cooperate in an investigation that involves our national security.”

“You watch too many cop shows, young man, if you think that kind of talk impresses me.”

While they were talking, I saw another car pull up behind the SUV. We couldn’t see the driver as he got out of the car, but we watched him bend over to pull a large, oddly shaped bundle out of the backseat. As he came up the walk, I thought at first he was carrying a mannequin, but when he got closer to the house I could see he was holding a woman, a skinny scarecrow of a woman with wild graying curls, her bare legs little more than flesh-covered sticks.

“That’s my mother!” Martin was shocked. “What—how—?”

“With Durdon?” Alison whispered.

Their arrival was also a surprise to Moe and Curly, who stopped haranguing Dorothy to look at them.

“Who the hell—oh. It’s the guy from Metargon,” Curly said. “What are you doing here?”

Durdon set Judy down on the stairs, where she fell against the stair rail. “We’ve come for the kid and the documents.”

“This is a federal investigation into a matter that may involve international terrorism,” Moe said.

“Yeah, we know. It was Mr. Breen who told you we might have a rogue programmer selling defense secrets overseas,” Durdon said. “We’ve
kept an eye on your investigation. I followed you out here to bring back the proprietary secrets the Binder punk stole from Metargon.”

“Who’s the skeleton?” Moe pointed a toe in Judy’s direction.

Durdon flashed an ugly smile. “Our boy genius’s mother. We’ll let her go if he turns himself in.” He elbowed past the federal agents to face Dorothy through the screen door. “You want to go give young Binder that message? We know you’ve got him here.”

“You don’t know much, then, do you? You got what looks like a real sick lady with you. She needs to be with a doctor; we’ll call an ambulance for her.”

Durdon pulled on the screen door so hard he yanked it from its hinges. We heard a loud cry from Dorothy, and a thud, as if she’d fallen, but we lost sight of the men once they moved through the door and out of the camera’s eye. Moe ordered Curly to keep Dorothy from calling for help, but then moved out of mike range. We could hear feet pounding overhead, Durdon and a Homeland guy ripping their way through the small house.

Martin started to push the button to release the workshop entrance but I pulled his arm away. “I’ll take care of your mother. You have one chance to get yourself and Alison away; go, now, before they find this room!”

I ran to the back wall where I saw a staircase tucked into the ceiling. I tugged on a handle. The stairs came down with a great screeching. A pot filled with geraniums also came down, almost hitting my head: the stairs acted as a trapdoor up to the platform.

I thrust the Mustang keys into Martin’s hand and dragged him to the stairs. “Get out of here now! Alison Breen, show some steel. Get to your feet, get going. Martin needs your help to find his way out of Tinney. I’ll get Judy to a hospital.”

Someone began pounding on the workshop’s outer wall. A gunshot sounded and then another. The wall shook, but didn’t open.

“Just go!” I screamed.

“My machine, Martina’s designs!” Martin cried. He darted around me and scooped up an armful of journals. With his other hand, he grabbed Alison and dragged her to the ladder.

I watched them disappear through the opening, heard their feet on the wood planks. A moment later I heard shouts but couldn’t make out voices or words. I had my gun out of my holster and was on my way up after Alison and Martin when Moe’s face appeared in the trapdoor.

“We’re coming down. You stay where you are.”

“Let him down.” It was Dorothy, her voice barely recognizable. “They found Lily, they’ve got Lily.”

51

POWER DOWN

I
BACKED AWAY
from the stairs, tucking my gun into my waistband, hoping Moe hadn’t seen it. He lowered himself into the room, grunting slightly.

“Open that door!” he barked, gesturing at the far wall with his gun.

“Why?” I said. “You’re already in here.”

“You don’t have your dog, you don’t have your lawyer or your interfering neighbor to protect you, and we have the little girl and the junkie mom. I think you’ll do what we want.”

“Whose side are you on, anyway?” I demanded. “Are you freelancing for Metargon, or is terrorizing the citizenry part of your—”

He hit me across the mouth with the flat of his gun. My mouth filled with blood. When I spat it at him, one of my front teeth felt loose. I caught his arm and wrenched it down. His gun came out and skidded across the floor. I beat him to the gun, but Durdon had reached the bottom of the stairs. He was carrying Lily. The little girl was screaming. The pink ribbons had come out of her pigtails and her face was streaked with dirt.