Gray Matter (8 page)

Always glad to beat someone about the head and shoulders. Now then, down to business. How’s business?

I suppose you mean my actual work. That could be the bright spot in this whole mess. I really feel like I could make a contribution. You know, do something in the public interest.

Well, la-de-da!

Don’t be such a cynic. If I can do my part to make the world a little safer, that’s something. Maybe a lot better something than working with consumer studies.

I always knew you were a knightess in shining armor.

You’re just jealous. You’ve never done a worthwhile thing in your life.

Yes I have. I met you.

That made PJ pause. Merlin rarely expressed himself so openly.

You’re sweet to say so. But I have another motive for talking with you tonight besides airing my gripes.

The truth comes out at last. You only want my body, not my mind.

Quiet, you exasperating phantom of cyberspace! Besides, you should be so lucky. What I really want is a connection. I want to know who in this town is working with VR and would maybe, if I beg really hard, lend me an HMD.

I take it your new employer doesn’t provide niceties like Head-Mounted Displays.

Let’s just say I went out today and bought my own surge protector and box of diskettes. I doubt that money for an HMD is suddenly going to appear in my budget.

I think you’ve assessed the situation accurately. Let’s see, I think there’s a group at Wash U. I’ll poke around and let you know.

That was just what PJ wanted to hear. Washington University would be a great place to make contacts in her new community. Merlin seemed to know someone, or someone who knew someone, just about everyplace. She wondered how many others like herself were strung out across the world, orbiting Merlin like the numerous satellites of Jupiter. Merlin always seemed available to her. It had never occurred to her before that he might be carrying on conversations with others, that someone from Tallahassee or Spokane might be sharing a triumph or commiserating about a failure tonight.

For the first time, it occurred to PJ that Merlin might be a computer program, not a real person.

As soon as the idea blossomed in her head, she rejected it. Merlin was far too sophisticated, warm, and just plain human to be a collection of coded routines.

Thanks, Merlin. Goodnight.

Anything for you. Keypunch. Sleep well.

As PJ was signing off from the session, there was a knock at the door. She folded the PowerBook shut and glanced at the bathroom door. The door was ajar; one of them had accidentally left it open. She let the technician in, and then knelt down to fetch the cat out from under her bed.

I
N THE MORNING, PJ
registered Thomas for school, using the address of the rental house to establish residency in the St. Louis City school district. Both of them had been up late the night before. The evidence technician hadn’t arrived until nearly midnight to take a sample of the blood from under the cat’s claws, and then there was the ordeal of bathing the smelly creature. Thomas went through the whole morning routine without saying a word. She knew why. He was not eager to go to school when summer vacation started in a little over two weeks. He did not want to be thrust into a situation where everyone else had established friends and routines and he was an outsider, only to break up for summer a short time later.

She knew that Thomas thought she had absolutely no understanding of the difficulty he faced. That wasn’t true, but of course there was no use telling a twelve-year-old that she had once been that age, and that her self-esteem had risen and fallen according to the whims of her peers, that she had endured her share of tearful rushes to her room, slammed doors, and crushed feelings, and thoughts that she was the only one in the world who ever got a zit.

She was hoping that he would be able to break into the social structure and form at least one friendship that would have a chance to develop over the summer. Then when school started in the fall, he would have a connection—he wouldn’t be the odd guy out. So, wondering if she was doing the right thing, she left a message for Schultz that she would be in a little late, and then dragged Thomas to registration. Much to his dismay, the school secretary offered to have him start that very day. As he was led away, he shot her a black look that could have withered a sturdy oak. As her former confident married self, it wouldn’t have bothered her. As a newly-divorced single parent, she found herself questioning all of her parenting decisions.

When she finally got to work, lugging in a large box, it felt as though it should be quitting time. She dropped the box off in her office and went looking for Schultz. Unable to find him, she touched base with her boss Howard Wall, and immediately regretted it. She had a brief but intense conversation in his office. He was under pressure to show something, anything, from the CHIP project, and he was perfectly willing to pass along the pressure. He was like a hydraulic pipeline that narrowed and propelled its noncompressible contents faster and faster. Those further down the pipeline got blasted. Well, there was someone down the pipeline from PJ, and he wasn’t there to defend himself. On the way back to her office, she left a cryptic note on Schultz’s desk: See me ASAP.

She surveyed her office with a critical eye. The box, which was the same one she had used to take the cat home from Burton’s apartment, was full of her personal office items. Her first tasks were to straighten the place up and install the fan and halogen desk lamp she had brought with her. Flipping the chair over, she adjusted the seat down to a more comfortable height. Then she turned off the humming fluorescent overhead fight and closed the door, blocking out most of the traffic and bathroom noise. Immediately the room felt better. The fan was a cheerful white with blue plastic blades, very quiet while running, and powerful enough to keep the air in the tiny office in constant motion. She tilted it up toward the ceiling so that it wouldn’t disturb papers on her desk. Not that there were any papers currently on her desk, but she felt that situation would change rapidly. The lamp cast a wide circle of bright light over the desktop, and she angled it away from the monitor so there wouldn’t be any glare. For a moment she simply basked in the breeze, her feet resting comfortably on the floor, and studied the shadows around the edge of the room. Then she emptied the rest of the box, setting out a picture of Thomas, a Mickey Mouse clock, and a pencil cup containing her prized Space Pen she had bought at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Tomorrow, if she had time, she would bring in some prints for the walls. PJ had a collection of wildlife prints, mostly big cats. Most of them would overwhelm this office, but she could think of two or three that might work. Then maybe she could paint the walls some weekend, surely they wouldn’t mind.

Suddenly the door flew open hard enough to smash the doorknob into the wall. Schultz filled the doorway. There was a momentary look of confusion on his face, quickly replaced by a sheepish grin.

“Didn’t your mama ever teach you to knock?” PJ said.

“Sorry. Nobody ever closed this door before. I didn’t think you were inside. It gets God awful hot with the door closed.” Realizing he was rambling, Schultz closed his mouth. Then he took in the improvements. “Say, this place looks better already. I could get jealous.”

Schultz didn’t look like a man who had gotten an intimidating note from the boss. In fact, PJ thought he looked downright buoyant, like a hangman with a new rope. She decided to act neutral. “Sit down, Leo. What can I do for you?”

Schultz gave her an exaggerated leer. “Any number of things, Doc.”

“Really, Detective, you are in a strange and ornery mood today.”

“Strange and horny might be more like it, Doc, but the more you’re around me, you’ll find that’s not unusual.”

She gestured at a chair and he lowered himself into it. She noticed that he seemed to flex his knees with care as he sat down.

“I guess you’re wondering about my note,” she said, channeling the conversation back to the subject she had in mind. She was trying to figure out how to tell Schultz that she wanted him to do a lot of what she considered gruntwork while she sat in her office preparing a demo for Wall.

“Note? Did you leave something at my desk? I came here straight from the crapper. Washed my hands, first, though. You should feel honored. I don’t always do that, especially if I’m heading for the lieutenant’s office.”

PJ let her annoyance show. Somehow her conversations with Schultz never went as planned. “Anything new on the case?” she asked.

“Turns out that stuff under the cat’s claws was the bonafide shit. You mind that kind of language, you let me know, OK? I can be real genteel when I need to, just got to work at it, that’s all. Anyway, it was human blood, and it didn’t belong to Burton. The creep didn’t leave any fingerprints, but he left something even better. Considerate bastard, just handed me the knife to cut his balls off with.”

“I assume you’re referring to DNA matching. Aren’t you forgetting a few things?”

“Such as?”

“You have to have a suspect before you can match the DNA to the sample from the cat’s claws. The last I heard, a comprehensive DNA database like the FBI’s fingerprint file didn’t exist yet, so there’s nothing to search through. Secondly, I thought you were the one who was skeptical about whether the blood belongs to the murderer. Even if it turns out to be from the murderer, how could you ever prove that the cat scratched the suspect during the murder and not out on the street someplace?”

Schultz waved his hand dismissively.

“You have a suspect?” PJ said.

“Nope.”

“Then why are you so cheerful this morning?”

“Gut instinct, Doc. Instinct says we’re going to get this guy, and now we’ve got something to nail his ass with when we catch up to him.”

PJ sighed. Schultz was assuming that the cat scratched the killer while he was in Burton’s apartment. Personally she thought that was highly probable, just about a certainty, but there was room for doubt. Not only that, Schultz himself had pointed out that the chain of custody for the blood sample was compromised. The cat had been taken from the scene and the evidence that it was carrying under its claws had left police custody. Objectively, they both knew that made the blood sample legally worthless. But she understood Schultz’s desire to view it as solid evidence: it was a link to the killer, a blood trail, and Schultz was a bloodhound baying at the scent.

It was time to let the bloodhound off the leash.

She thought she knew just how to approach the situation. She tried to put some silkiness into her voice, but found herself out of practice.

“I’d like to get your input on something,” she said. “I’m trying to decide what would be the best use of my time on this investigation. I could come with you while you do in-depth interviews with Burton’s friends and neighbors. My psychology training would add some insights. On the other hand, the computer aspect of CHIP should be up and running as soon as possible, since this is a pilot program. That means I should stay in my office and work on the computer for the next, oh, three or four days. Do you think you could handle the field interviews by yourself?”

PJ was surprised to see a flash of anger on Schultz’s face.

“Doc, I’m not as dumb as you think I am, or even as dumb as I look,” he said. “I know who’s boss here because Wall whipped my ass about it. I don’t need any fine speech or shrink mumbo-jumbo, and I don’t want to be patronized. We’re going to work together, we’ve got to talk straight to each other. Don’t give me any of this phony ‘get my input’ crap.”

PJ folded her hands on her desk. She realized that she had been deliberately manipulative. It wasn’t like her. Her morning with Thomas had been stressful, then Wall had pounced. The temptation to spread her bad attitude around had been irresistible, and Schultz was paying the price. There was only one thing to do: apologize.

“Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“All right then, where do we go from here?”

“In plain English, Howard is bugging me for a dog and pony show on the computer by Friday. The only way I can have anything is for you to carry the entire field investigation by yourself until then.”

Schultz grinned. PJ thought he looked a little like a maniacal elf when he did that. It must have been the way his cheeks rounded up and reddened.

“Now that I can understand,” he said. “You just plant your butt here and tap your keys or flap your floppies or whatever it is that you do, and I’ll go track down who saw what at Burton’s place. Suits me just fine. Besides, I’ve got help coming on board, two officers who are studying for their exams to make detective. That looks like it’s going to be it: the two of us and the two of them. I guess Lieutenant Wall figures the computer means we can put fewer warm bodies on this job, and less experienced ones, too.”

“I know about that. Howard told me this morning, in between making it clear that I won’t get any computer analysts anytime soon, and that I’d better have something to show by Friday all by my lonesome. I’ll be able to help out more as soon as I make some progress on this computer stuff. I’m not abandoning you.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m a big boy. You don’t have to aim my dick so I can piss.”

“How…colorful. I can assure you, Detective, that if I were to aim a man’s dick, it wouldn’t be so that he could urinate.”

“Why, Doc,” Schultz said with a feigned look of shock on his face, “I didn’t know you cared.”

Schultz left the office feeling good. Without any maneuvering on his part, it looked like he was going to get exactly what he wanted. The shrink and the computer were going their way, and he was going his. He had been rehearsing various scenarios leading to that end, and now it was dumped in his lap, at least for the rest of the week. With any luck, that could be all the time he needed.

When Schultz held the report of the blood analysis in his hands, he had a feeling he couldn’t explain—wouldn’t even try—to anyone else. It was as though a thin shining thread ran from his hands out into the darkness, a shimmering cord that connected him to the killer. He would feel his way along the thread and at the other end he would confront a monster. He had gotten the same feeling once before, the only other time in his life he had worked a series of murders. That time, it had been a psychopath who burned the sex organs from young boys with a welding torch before crucifying them. Schultz had been on the case from the beginning, and he was there when the creep was hauled off and when the judge banged the gavel after reading the death sentence.