Critical Mass (8 page)

Perhaps it’s true, as Benjamin always said, that she is too aloof to feel the passions and griefs most people experience. Her own mother, after all, often said the same thing, only in an angrier, shorter way. If she had real human feelings, for instance, at this moment, when she is almost certainly going to her death, shouldn’t she be thinking of her child, not free space? I should write you a letter, my daughter.

Dear Käthe.

She imagines the paper, the ink, the pen.

My daughter, we have had so little time together that I hardly know you. Not just because you left for England over three years ago, but all your little girlhood I was at the Institute day and night. Your grandmother saw you take your first steps and it’s she who has cared most for your fate.

The day they got the news from the Cavendish labs that announced the discovery of the neutron, Martina was so excited she could hardly choke down a piece of cake with her afternoon coffee. Long after Professor Meyer left the Institute for the day, she and Benjamin stayed talking with some of the students, pondering the implications. Benjamin’s tidy equations covering one side of the chalkboard, her own diagrams filling the other, her student, Gertrud, crying out with excitement
that this explained the effect that Irène Joliot-Curie and Frédéric Joliot were finding in Paris. Although it didn’t speak to the odd half-life of one of the radium isotopes.

The Stephansdom clock struck eleven and Benjamin looked around with a guilty start: his wife would long since have gone to bed, his dinner would be cold and dried out by now. Not spoken: his wife’s resentment, her suspicion that more than quantum mechanics kept her husband late at the Institut für Radiumforschung.

When Martina herself reached home, she quietly stowed her bicycle in the service entrance and tiptoed up the stairs: no one in Vienna stayed up so late unless they were at the theater. And there her mother sat at the kitchen table, mouth pinched in anger.
Käthe said her first sentence today,
her mother announced:
“Oma, Käthe needing milk.”

When Martina responded,
How lovely
, her mind only vaguely absorbing the news, her mother slapped her. “That piece of pike on the sideboard has more feeling than you. You don’t deserve a bright young child like Käthe. Why did I let your papa talk me into allowing that trip to Göttingen? Your education has destroyed you as a woman.”

Was Käthe a bright young child? She always had seemed petulant, but perhaps that was my fault, not yours, my little daughter. You wanted something from me I wasn’t able to give you. I wanted you to share my excitement over the innermost secrets of nature; you wanted me to be at home with you instead of your
Oma
, or Frau Herschel’s
Kindermädchen
. On the days Martina’s mother still worked for Frau Herschel, Käthe and Frau Herschel’s granddaughter, Lotte, played in the light, bright nursery in the big apartment on the Ring, but when Martina would ask Käthe,
Did you see the rainbow of light on the nursery floor?
the child would only stare at her sullenly.

Right before the Anschluss, she had taken Käthe and Lotte on a skiing trip in Tyrol. She tried to interest Käthe in the stars, in the mystery of the explosions inside them that made those jewels twinkle and
glow in the night sky. It was Lotte whose eyes grew round with wonder, Käthe who gave the pinched scowl of disapproval she’d learned from her
Oma
, announcing it was too cold to stand outside at night.

Birgit, the
Kindermädchen
, appeared from the shadows and swept the girls away with her. Past their bedtime, too much excitement for them, anyway. And then a month later, the Anschluss, the new laws, and Birgit looking at them with contempt.
I’m not picking up after your children anymore. You do some work for a change
. Addressing even Frau Herschel with the familiar
du
, and all of them powerless to respond.

The memory is too difficult, but before she can lose herself once more in statistical mechanics, the noise around her suddenly increases; the soldiers are barking like their dogs, compressing her even more tightly against the old woman, who is still crying for Joachim. The train, staining the dawn sky black with its puffs of coal smoke, is entering the station. No whistle, no lights, just the relentless thudding of axles, so that the proper Viennese burghers, sleeping on the other side of the station, are protected from the sight of cattle cars filled with, well, whatever they’re filled with. Not citizens, because citizens wouldn’t be treated like this. And not people, because they’ve been labeled as vermin. But—it’s a conundrum—because if they’re not people, then there’s no need to protect the rest of Vienna from seeing them packed up, shoved, heels nipped by the dogs, the old woman still crying for Joachim.

If I didn’t look after my daughter when she wept, over all the unaccountable things that made Käthe weep, why should I look after you?
Martina thinks, but she nonetheless puts a gentle hand under the old woman’s elbow and helps lift her into the boxcar.

6

ARITHMETIC PROBLEMS

I
T WASN’T QUITE
four when I got back to my office. I yearned for a nap, but with only an hour left in the business day, I needed to answer calls and messages from my clients. Before I started, I put Martin Binder’s phone number and e-mail into my database and wrote him a note, explaining who I was and how distressed his grandmother was at his absence.

“If you want to get in touch, I promise that I will keep anything you say completely confidential,” I finished.

I also looked him up in the social media universe. He played some complicated math game in the Facebook world and had made a killer move in early August, right before he disappeared—that was his last update. He had one photo of himself, taken outside a tent in a snowdrift. He was wearing a T-shirt and cutoffs and was grinning at the camera, proud of standing half-dressed in the snow. Unfortunately, he had on sunglasses and a baseball cap, making it hard to see his face. I uploaded it to my own system, but for a good search I’d need a better head shot.

Martin also had a Twitter account, which showed a few tweets from the summer, mostly on music, but he was a uniquely silent member of his generation.

I logged into LifeMonitor, a subscription database that hacks into people’s financial history. Martin had told his grandmother that
something didn’t add up. Maybe he’d discovered that his mother was stealing from him. Just in case, I started a search for Martin’s bank account. After that, I turned to my real business.

Among all the client calls and complaints was a message from Doug Kossel, the Palfry County sheriff. I waited until I’d responded to my most urgent client demands before returning his call. Kossel was out in his cruiser, the Palfry dispatcher said, but I could reach him on his cell phone.

“Hey, PI V.I. Wondered if you’d make the time to talk to us downstate hicks. We got an ID on the body you found in the field. Ricky Schlafly. Name mean anything to you? No? He’s a local boy, but he lived in Chicago for about fifteen years.”

“Sorry, Sheriff, I lose track of a few of our locals every now and then.”

“Don’t get sarcastic on me. You’re in law enforcement, even if you’re private. That means you see your share of scumbags, so it’s always possible Schlafly crossed your radar. He left here before he graduated high school, figuring if he wanted big money he should go where people had money. Anyway, it was his mom’s family that owned the house, and when her mother passed two years ago, Ricky came back and took possession. Turned it into the health resort and spa it is today.”

“Was Judy Binder with him when he moved back?” I asked.

“From what people are saying, she showed up about a year ago. At least, that’s when folks in Palfry started noticing a gal around town who sounds like her. She’d be at the local coffee shop, or sometimes panhandling in front of the Buy-Smart out west of town. Even came in for a hairdo when she had extra cash. No one’s seen her since the house got shot up, so she may have landed on her feet somewhere else.”

A year ago, that was a bit after Len Binder had died. Len might have kept slipping his daughter money over Kitty’s objections, or without Kitty knowing. When he was gone, Judy would have been desperate for a place to live.

How Judy hooked up with Ricky Schlafly wasn’t important: druggies find each other by some system of smell or twitches, although for meth users the rotting gums are a giveaway. Judy and Ricky could have shared some dump in Chicago before Ricky returned to his roots.

I didn’t agree with Kitty Binder’s vehement assertion that Martin stayed away from Judy—children want to find some proof that their mothers care about them, especially mothers who abandon them when they’re babies. I could imagine Martin slipping silently out of the house, going to visit Judy without Kitty’s knowledge. He might have met Ricky Schlafly when he was still living in Chicago.

An arithmetic error, Martin had said to Kitty, something that kept him brooding in his basement for more than a week. If his mother had hacked into his bank account, he could have bicycled down to Palfry to confront her—although why wouldn’t he have driven?

“You still with me, Ms. PI?” Kossel demanded. “I got a traffic accident I’d better get to.”

“Judy Binder’s son disappeared over a week ago,” I said. I explained Martin’s situation. “Can you ask if anyone noticed him? He might have come down by bus, or hitched down. He’s a skinny kid, dark curly hair, narrow face, a bit James Dean–looking. I could probably find a photo and e-mail it to you. The basement to Schlafly’s house—it had a dirt floor.”

There was a pause at the other end. “Crap, PI. You thinking I should dig up that floor?”

“I’m thinking someone with a hazmat suit could tell if it had been dug up recently. They could also climb into the pit in the backyard. I didn’t have the gear with me yesterday to poke around in it.”

After another pause, the sheriff grunted. “The boy comes down a week ago to see if his ma has been stealing from him, Ricky shoots him, buries him, but she’s still around until two days ago? Hard to picture. Still, who knows what a woman full of meth might do. Hell, maybe she shot her own kid her own self.”

I used to represent women who sold their ten-year-old daughters to pimps for a single pipe of crack. It’s not the only reason I left the public defender’s office, but it was high on the list.

Kossel said, “If I look at the basement, there’s something you can do for me. See if you can find any of Ricky’s old pals in Chicago, see if someone up there wanted him dead. I’ve got my eye on a couple of rival dealers down here, but they all have pretty good alibis for when Ricky likely was shot.”

So that was why the sheriff had called, all cooperative with a private eye in a way the law usually isn’t. “I’ve been hoping I could get through the rest of my life without looking at another drug user,” I said.

“Told you you’d seen your share of scumbags,” he mocked.

“How about we trade? I’ll get a hazmat suit and rake through that garbage pit in Ricky’s backyard, and you come up here and start hanging out with local drug dealers.”

“Big-city gal like you can’t handle a little heat? Just wear a bulletproof vest and make sure your will is up-to-date and you’ll be fine.” The sheriff laughed heartily and cut the connection.

He called back a second later. “Ricky’s short for Derrick, not Richard.”

I drew little circles on my desk with my forefinger. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to let other people move their problems into the center of my stage. I did not care who killed Derrick Ricky Schlafly. I did not care what had become of Judy Binder. My only involvement in the Binder world was to give Kitty sixteen hours of hunting for her grandson.

I turned back to my own investigative issues. It was when I’d made my third mistake, confusing a bookstore’s problems with those of a completely unconnected yoga center, that I realized Martin Binder’s face was coming between me and my clients.

Kitty Binder had mentioned a boy who’d been Martin’s high school friend. She was one of the more unreliable narrators I’d listened to in
decades of hearing dubious stories, but if she was telling something close to a fact, I could find him.

I hadn’t made any notes when I was with Kitty, but the friend’s name had made me think of television. Not David Sarnoff or Aaron Spelling. David Susskind. Martin’s friend was something Susskind. Toby.

I found three Susskinds in the Skokie area. LifeStory, another subscription search engine, came up with a family that included a Tobias the same age as Martin. They also had a daughter three years older and another son starting high school. Jeanine Susskind was a social worker with the Cook County Department on Aging; her husband, Zachary, worked for a big accounting firm.

It was almost six now. I reached Jeanine at home, but she was not going to share any confidential information with a stranger on a phone.

“I think you’re wise, ma’am,” I said, wishing she weren’t. “Can we meet for a cup of coffee or a glass of wine this evening? Martin Binder has disappeared, and I’d like to talk to someone who knows him. Kitty Binder said your son and Martin are friends.”

I heard grease sputter: Jeanine had the phone tucked between head and neck while she stirred something into a pan. Mushrooms and broccoli, I imagined, feeling suddenly hungry.

There was a muffled conversation in the background. Jeanine came back on the phone and asked for more information, first about Martin, then about me. After another consultation, she decided I could come to their house when they’d had supper. She wasn’t enthusiastic, but who could blame her—a strange woman claiming to be a private eye, wanting to talk to her son, calling at the end of a long workday—I wouldn’t be enthusiastic, either.