The Fractal Murders Part 16

"I'm glad you came with me," she said as we pa.s.sed the last of the rowdies and entered the more fashionable end of Pearl Street.

"Most of them are harmless," I said.

"I try to be tolerant," she said, "but I don't see how they can live like that." I said nothing. Dwelling on it would only get me worried about the gene pool and the future of civilization.

We continued west. "That's mine," she said as we approached her condo. It wasn't a few blocks away; more like ten blocks. Right up against the mountains. She lived in a three-story unit with a small brook running behind it. The entrance was in the rear.

"This is nice," I said.

"I love it here," she said. "The sound of the water is so soothing. I used to see deer every morning. I don't know why they stopped coming."

"It's the Russian olives," I said. There were a couple of dozen beside the brook.

"The trees?"

"Yeah, those things are the arboreal equivalent of cancer."

"Really?"

"They're th.o.r.n.y as h.e.l.l and grow like wildfire. Sooner or later, they choke out everything else."

"I had no idea."

"They're not native to this area," I said. "Farmers used them as windbreaks during the Dust Bowl days, and they've just gotten out of hand."

"What makes you so smart?" she teased.

"I read a lot," I said. She opened her purse and searched for her keys. "Who owns that land?" I asked as I pointed toward the offending trees.

"I don't know," she said. "The owners' a.s.sociation, I suppose." She found her keys, opened the door, and switched on an overhead light. Finn was not there and I saw nothing to indicate she was sharing quarters with him or anyone else. She turned to face me. "I'm glad we ran into each other," she said. "I enjoyed talking with you, Pepper." She was no longer referring to me as Mr. Keane.

"Me too," I said. I slept well that night. I was on a first-name basis with Jayne Smyers and it felt good.

15.

MONDAY. I'D SPENT A GOOD CHUNK of the weekend immersed in the FBI file Gumby had provided. I hated to admit it, but it looked like Polk had done a thorough job of checking the phone records. In each case the service provider either did not retain records for more than one year or, due to internal glitches, was unable to locate any records. Not only had he checked all the long-distance and cell-phone providers, but he had even checked with the various colleges and universities to see if they kept hard copies of their telephone bills. In each case the answer was no.

I'd been on the case for three weeks. Despite my success in gathering information, I felt stymied. The FBI file had provided some useful background information and saved me a lot of tedious work, but it hadn't suggested any new avenues of investigation. Tobias remained my only real lead. I dialed information for Bend, Oregon, to verify that Iris Tobias still lived there. She did. If something didn't break soon, I'd have to put in a call to her and everyone else her son had ever known.

A formidable wall of clouds was forming to the west, but it was warm in Nederland. I decided to jog to the post office before the afternoon storms arrived.

There was a letter from the Colorado Supreme Court informing me I had to complete three hours of continuing legal education within ninety days in order to avoid administrative suspension. CLE is mandatory in Colorado. Attorneys must acc.u.mulate forty-five credits every three years, and my three years had evidently just expired. I made a mental note to call Matt. The library at Keane, Simms & Mercante is filled with CLE tapes. Most lawyers don't even listen to the d.a.m.n things. They're too busy. They just send in the affidavit certifying that they completed the course. You can't blame them. It's a stupid requirement. Good lawyers will always strive to expand their knowledge of the law, and bad lawyers will be bad lawyers no matter how many CLE cla.s.ses they attend.

The only other piece of mail was a large package from d.i.c.k Gilbert. True to his word, he had obtained O'Hara's file on the Underwood suicide and forwarded copies of everything to me. I tucked the eleven-by-fourteen envelope under my arm and jogged over to Wanda's.

"Mornin', Pepper," she said as she reached for my mug.

"Mornin', Wanda."

"Try a hot Danish?"

"Not today," I said. "Have to watch my figure." I didn't have any money on me because I was in my running gear, but she knows I'm good for it and told me to help myself to coffee. I put a little cream in it, gave Zeke a pat on the head, found an empty booth, and began to read.

It didn't take long to realize that the Boston cops hadn't done much in the case of Donald Underwood. They'd taken photographs, interviewed his wife, friends, and colleagues, then labeled it a case of autoerotic asphyxiation and closed the file. I can't blame them; at the time they'd investigated the incident, they'd had no reason to know of the other deaths and therefore no reason to suspect foul play.

As the news clippings had indicated, Underwood had been a thirty-seven-year-old math professor at Harvard. After they'd separated, his wife and their two sons had moved to Longmeadow, an upscale suburb of Springfield in western Ma.s.sachusetts. They'd been apart ten months at the time of his death. Sara Underwood told investigators the decision to separate had been hers. After twelve years of marriage, she felt ambivalent about the life she'd chosen and wanted time to sort things out. She returned to the area of her upbringing and accepted a position as a high school art teacher.

Though the couple had been separated nearly a year, Mrs. Underwood said they'd been talking of reconciling and her husband's spirits had been good. He'd visited their sons, ages ten and eight, nearly every weekend, and periodically the couple had enjoyed s.e.xual relations throughout their separation. She insisted he had never demonstrated any aberrant s.e.xual behavior or shared any such thoughts. Nor, she said, had he ever been treated for any form of mental illness, a claim his medical records seemed to confirm.

The file contained more photographs than I needed. Underwood had been found hanging in his s.p.a.cious walk-in closet. The nylon cord around his neck ran over a metal water pipe along the ceiling. The cord showed no wear and tear and was of a type only recently placed on the market, according to a forensic expert. Underwood wore only briefs. The coroner's report indicated he had not e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. No suicide note had been found.

I jogged home and showered. While I was in the shower, Mary Pat left a message indicating she had copies of every professional article Thomas Tobias had ever published. She sounded excited, but before driving to Boulder, there was something I wanted to do.

I couldn't get Underwood out of my mind. I wanted to do some quick research and the only place in Nederland likely to have what I needed was the High Country Clinic. The receptionist was a frumpy woman in her forties. I told her I'd like to glance at a book or two on psychiatry. She gave me a curious look, then asked me to wait while she disappeared into the rear of the suite. She returned in less than a minute with Dr. Edwards, the carrot-top, beside her. Seeing them together, I realized he was taller than I had thought. Thin, but close to six feet. He'd gotten a haircut since my last visit.

"Mr. Keane," he said as he extended his right hand over the Formica counter, "how are you doing?" I noticed my file in his other hand.

"Much better," I replied. "The antibiotics seemed to do the trick."

"Glad to hear it," he said. He didn't seem to bear a grudge. "Mrs. Sullivan tells me you have an interest in psychiatry?"

"Can we talk in private?" I asked. I nodded toward a mother and her young son seated in the waiting area.

"Certainly," he said, "let me show you my office." He gestured toward the door to my left, opened it from his side, and led me past some examining rooms to an office with a Berber carpet. It looked and smelled brand new.

"Redecorating?" I asked.

"Yes, we hope to have the entire office done by the end of the month." There was an antique rolltop desk against one wall. He sat down in an executive chair beside it and began to tap a pencil. I remained standing.

"I know you're busy," I said, "so I won't take much of your time. I don't think I mentioned this when I saw you, but I work as a private investigator." I handed him one of my cards.

"No, you didn't, but I'd heard there was a lawyer in town who did that type of work."

"I'm working on something right now and I want to learn about autoerotic asphyxiation." He seemed to want more, so I gave him a thumbnail sketch of the case.

"Now I understand," he said. He set down the pencil. "Don't take this personally, but sometimes people with mental health issues feel compelled to read up on those issues, and in the end it usually only results in increased anxiety. The history you completed indicates you take medication for depression-"

"I figured it was something like that," I said. I told him I'd been taking medication for more than a decade and still saw a psychiatrist twice a year. It hadn't stopped me from holding a top-secret clearance or obtaining a concealed-weapon permit. Satisfied that I was telling the truth, he turned toward a bookcase and handed me two large volumes.

"Kaplan and Sadock, Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry," he said. "This is the bible." He invited me to use his office while he attended to the little boy. It didn't take long to find what I wanted: Masturbatory practices have resulted in what has been called autoerotic asphyxiation. This practice involves masturbating while hanging oneself by the neck to heighten erotic sensations and the intensity of o.r.g.a.s.m. Although such persons release themselves from the noose after o.r.g.a.s.m, an estimated 500 to 1,000 persons per year unwittingly kill themselves by hanging. Most persons indulging in this practice are male; transvestism is often a.s.sociated with the habit, and the majority of deaths occur among adolescents. Such m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic practices are usually a.s.sociated with severe mental disorders, such as schizophrenia and mood disorders.

It wasn't conclusive, but it strengthened my suspicion that Underwood's death might have been staged. He wasn't an adolescent, had no history of mental illness, and no female garments had been found in his home. Moreover, if he'd been in the habit of engaging in that type of behavior, it seemed curious that the nylon cord appeared to have been recently purchased.

Mary Pat was at her mentor's desk. She wore cutoff jeans and a pale green top. The pro-choice b.u.t.ton was still there. "h.e.l.lo, Mr. Keane," she said. She was beaming, obviously proud of something.

"Hi, Mary Pat. How are you?" I sat down.

"I'm fine," she replied.

"What have you got for me?" I asked. She pa.s.sed me a stack of papers.

"Thomas Tobias wrote sixteen articles," she said. "I read them all."

"Do any of them have anything to do with fractals?" I asked.

"Nope."

"Then why are you grinning like a Cheshire cat?"

"His specialty was the history of mathematics," she said.

"And?"

"He wrote a series of ten articles for the Journal of Mathematical Thought. Historical pieces. He used a pen name for each one, and always chose the name of a mathematician from the relevant era. He'd write the piece from the point of view of the mathematician he'd chosen for that article." I saw what she was getting at. I thumbed through the articles noting names such as Leibniz, Pascal, and Wittgenstein.

"You sure you want to teach math?" I asked. "You might have a future as a detective." She smiled and did the s.e.xy head twist she had developed to keep her hair out of her eyes. "Do you think Professor Smyers would mind if I borrowed a book or two on the history of mathematics? I'll need to make a list of famous mathematicians."

"Not at all," she said. She stood, went to one of the bookcases, selected two t.i.tles she thought might be useful, handed them to me, then resumed her seat. "Do you think he's living under an a.s.sumed name?"

"Probably," I said. Forty-six states had indicated no record of issuing a driver's license to anyone named Thomas Payne Tobias. "What you've found may offer a way to reduce the number of possible aliases to a manageable level."

"Can I do anything else?" she asked.

"Work on your thesis," I said. "I'll take care of this." She seemed disappointed, but there was nothing she could do. "I'll let you know if I find anything," I promised. I placed the articles and books in my briefcase.

"I hear you ran into Jayne Sat.u.r.day night," she said.

"She ran into me."

"She said she had a nice time."

"So did I," I said. I pushed the door shut. "While we're on that topic," I added, "how serious is it between her and Finn?"

"What do you mean?"

"Their relationship, how serious is it?"

"Relationship? That's a hoot."

"I'm confused."

"You must be. Their only relationship is that she's on the tenure committee and he's obsessed with tenure."

"He sure works hard at creating the impression they're involved."

"He likes being seen with her," she said. "He follows her like a puppy-he's always inviting her to lectures and things like that-but I don't think she's interested in him. Not romantically."

"They're not an item?"

"G.o.d, no. She'd die if she knew you thought that."

"Well," I said, "let's just keep it our little secret."

Using Tobias's articles and the books Mary Pat had allowed me to borrow, it took only a half hour in my office to compile a list of thirty-four famous mathematicians. I excluded Archimedes, Euclid, Ptolemy, and anyone else traditionally known by only one name. The decision I faced now was what to do with the list. Gumby had the resources of the federal government behind him, but he'd already taken a big risk for me and there were probably only so many favors left in the Gumby Bank. I punched in Scott's number.

"McCutcheon," he said.

"Turn on your computer," I said. We had already agreed Tobias was probably using an alias, but now I had a plausible theory as to the types of names he might be using. I told him about Tobias's articles and his fondness for pseudonyms.

"Where do you want me to search?" he asked. "Some of these commercial locators charge a hundred bucks for a single name."

"Can you bust in?"

"It's. .h.i.t and miss," he said.

"Use your imagination," I said. "Start with the math and science chat rooms and message boards available through AOL and CompuServe, and see if anyone's adopted one of these names as a nickname. He might've combined the first name of one person with the last name of another. I'll fax you my list."

"What are you going to do?" he asked.

"I'm going to phone Gilbert and ask for some help on the driver's license angle, then I'm going to start calling directory a.s.sistance. I'll start in Oregon and work my way east."

16.

WE FOUND THE GUN," Gilbert said. It was Tuesday morning and I was in my office. I had called to ask him to run multistate driver's-license checks on my mathematicians, but he beat me to the punch.

"Where?"

"In the Columbia River, forty-five minutes from here. Some crazy kids decided to try to swim across the thing. Got about a hundred yards out and decided it wasn't such a good idea. The current carried them down a good ways. As they were crawling out, one of them found a thirty-eight lying in the mud."

"Any doubt it's the right gun?"

"No, the mud preserved it well. It fired the bullet that killed Fontaine."

"Serial number?"

"Filed off, but it was a five-shot-not a six-and we're trying to match it against similar weapons sold or stolen in the region."