The Fractal Murders Part 3

"Anything's possible," he admitted, "but at this point we've got no motive for anyone to do that and no reason to think that's what happened." Time to ask for the records.

"Maybe there's nothing there," I said, "but I'd like to review your file. My client's paying me good money and that's the logical place to start." He thought for a moment.

"You contact the other two departments?"

"Yeah, they're sending me what they've got." He thought for another moment.

"I'd like to help you," he finally said, "but I'll bet we get three or four of these autoerotic deaths every year." I didn't say a word. "The department keeps these files locked up tight; you know, outta respect for the family." I said I understood and thanked him for his time.

So, Underwood hadn't committed suicide. He had unintentionally strangled himself while engaging in autoerotic asphyxia. As a Marine Corps lawyer it had been my sad duty to deal with that sort of thing on a fairly regular basis. Write a report, collect the deceased's belongings, help make arrangements and all that. I had practiced law long enough to know there were plenty of apparently normal people out there who had their own secrets and demons. Or, as one of my former law partners, "Big" Matt Simms, used to say whenever we walked into a restaurant for lunch, "I'll bet half the f.u.c.kers in here have bodies in their bas.e.m.e.nts."

I closed my eyes and considered the implications. If Underwood's death had been an accident, then, by definition, it was unrelated to the other deaths. While the killing of even two specialists in fractal geometry still seemed highly coincidental, the belief that Underwood's death was somehow related had given the whole thing a sort of critical ma.s.s.

Okay, a.s.sume Underwood purposely took his own life. Why make it look like an autoerotic death? That didn't make sense, so the only other possibility was that a person or persons unknown had killed him. Where did that leave me? Each of the victims had been an expert in fractal geometry. Each had also attended or taught at Harvard, but that was probably a coincidence. The three victims had not been America's only experts on fractals, but they were the only ones who were dead. Why them? I punched in my client's number. She picked up on the second ring.

"Jayne Smyers."

"h.e.l.lo, Professor, this is Pepper Keane."

"Oh, how are you? I didn't expect to hear from you so soon." She sounded more relaxed. "Do you have me on a speakerphone?" I like the speakerphone because it leaves my hands free to find doc.u.ments or take notes, but I could tell it bothered her, so I picked up the receiver.

"I'm fine, but I have a favor to ask."

"Sure."

"Would it be possible for me to get copies of all the published papers of the three victims?"

"Wow," she said, "you don't waste any time, do you?"

"I'm obsessive-compulsive."

"Most people who achieve anything in life are."

I wondered what I had achieved in life. Aside from being preapproved for a plethora of gold cards. "I'd like to see if I can find any pattern in their writings."

"That makes sense. I'll ask Mary Pat to make copies right away."

"That's your graduate a.s.sistant?"

"Oh, that's right. Well, if you don't want her to know what you're working on, I could do it, but it would take a few days. I'd have to do a computer search and scoot over to the library to pull them myself." I hadn't heard anyone other than Keith Jackson use the verb "scoot" in a long time. Keith covers college football for ABC. He likes to say things like, "I tell you, folks, this soph.o.m.ore can really scoot."

"That's okay," I said, "go ahead and have her do it."

"I could tell her they're for me."

"She'd know what you were up to. Just tell her the truth and emphasize that she's not to mention it to anyone."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

"All right, I'll ask her to get right on it. They should be ready in a day or two."

I thanked her and said good-bye. Jesus, it was almost two o'clock. I let the dogs out for a few minutes, then fired up my truck and headed for Denver. I popped in a tape of old Sam Cooke tunes and made it down the mountain in twenty-two minutes. I love old rock 'n' roll and old country. Besides, radio reception in the canyon is virtually nil; the only signal you can get is an AM station with a fundamentalist Christian orientation. I'm hoping that's just a coincidence.

My brother and his family live just south of Denver, in Highlands Ranch, a wealthy suburb that didn't even exist twenty-five years ago. It is sixty-six miles door-to-door, but the first leg is mountain driving, so it's hard to do in less than an hour. His gym isn't quite so far. I can make it in forty-five minutes if I don't hit Denver's notorious rush hour.

Troy Keane's Gym is a mecca for serious bodybuilders along Colorado's Front Range. There are no chrome-plated machines like you see in the spas. He doesn't sell memberships; everyone pays by the month. He's done pretty well for a guy who never finished high school. He was giving a tour to two future Schwarzeneggers when I came in, so I waited until I caught his eye, then claimed my permanent locker, changed into my workout clothes, weighed myself, and walked to the back room. The room has no official name, but a weathered black-and-white photo of Ingemar Johansson sits atop the entrance. Ingemar, for those who don't know, was the last white heavyweight champion. And probably always will be.

I worked the speed bag for three two-minute sessions, then switched to the heavy bag. I hadn't thought about Mike Polk in a while and visualizing him helped me hit the bag with a little extra vigor. A former basketball star at one of the PAC-10 schools, he's tall and left-handed, so I worked combinations I thought would be effective against a big southpaw.

A successful amateur boxer, I had flirted with the notion of fighting professionally, but it's hard to succeed as a heavyweight when you're only five-ten. Joe Frazier had done it, but he'd usually had to take tremendous abuse from much bigger men and hope he could weather the storm until his left hook floored his opponent. I thought practicing law would be a more enjoyable way to earn a living, though I later learned you take plenty of abuse in that profession.

A few gangly teenagers gathered around when I really started moving the bag. "The secret's in the hips," I explained. I stepped back to rest and felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Troy.

"I'm sorry," he said, "I thought you were Mike Tyson."

"An understandable mistake," I said as I struggled to control my breathing. "We look exactly alike, except he's black and doesn't have a big f.u.c.king streak of white hair sticking out of his head." My hair is straight and black, but I've always had a small tuft of white just above my right temple. It's a genetic fluke known as mosaicism. Some people call it a witch's stripe. I'm told it can be indicative of something called Waardenburg's syndrome, but in my case it's just a fluke.

"You look good," he said. We gave each other a bear hug.

"I've been running."

"What do you weigh?"

"According to your scale, about two-fourteen."

"That scale's a piece of c.r.a.p," he joked. "The owner's too cheap to replace it."

"How about you?"

"Two-nineteen," he said.

"You're a stick figure," I said, "you ought to be in the NBA."

"Yeah, I might not be able to slam dunk, but when I foul you, you'll d.a.m.n well know you've been fouled." We were poking fun at our genetic makeup. The men in our family are short and powerfully built-thick bones and limbs. At five-ten, I'm the tallest living Keane.

We took turns on the heavy bag, then laced up the gloves and did some light sparring in the ring at the back of the room. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a tall woman enter the room. She had dark hair and a bright future in toothpaste commercials. For a split second I thought it was Jayne Smyers, and in that split second my brother tagged me with a straight left. "Her name's Pam," he said as we continued circling.

"Cute." She wore a scarlet leotard and shiny silver leggings, but on closer inspection I could see she was only a few years out of high school.

"You want to meet her?"

"No, not my type."

"What is your type?"

"I don't know." It was a question I'd often asked myself, but one for which I'd never been able to articulate a satisfactory answer.

"She wants to be a stewardess," he said. "Thinks serving b.l.o.o.d.y Marys to h.o.r.n.y old men at thirty thousand feet is glamorous."

"They're called flight attendants now," I said. "And don't knock it-most of them take home more than I do." Though I'd earned enough practicing law to ensure my financial security for life, in two years as a private investigator I'd averaged less than twenty-five thousand dollars annually. Jayne Smyers was the first legitimate client in six weeks to seek my services.

"You can always go back to representing killers and crack dealers," he said.

"Not in this lifetime," I said.

We took off the gloves, finished with a quick weight workout, then hit the showers. As a result of listening to Sam Cooke on the drive down, I caught myself singing, "'Don't know much about algebra . . .'"

"Why are you so happy?" my brother shouted.

"I don't know," I said, "I guess it just feels good to be working again."

3.

WEDNESDAY BROUGHT LIGHT RAIN. Mountain thunderstorms are usually brief, but steady drizzle had been falling since mid-morning and showed no sign of letting up. Buck and I had just returned from a noontime run around the lake when the phone rang. I reached for the cordless unit in my kitchen as I watched a pair of blue jays zoom in and out of the pines behind my log home.

"Mr. Keane?"

"Yes."

"My name is Mary Pat McCormick. I'm Professor Smyers's graduate a.s.sistant. She asked me to photocopy some papers for you, and I wanted to let you know you can pick them up whenever you like." Her voice had a slight throaty quality, like a young Kathleen Turner.

"Will you be there in an hour?"

"One of us will."

"Great, I'll come right down." I returned the phone to its cradle and watched the blue jays take off. They didn't say where they were going. Maybe Toronto.

Preferring fountain drinks to canned pop, I stopped at the B&F Market-Nederland's only grocery store-for a forty-four-ounce diet c.o.ke, then headed down the mountain. The visitors' lots were again full, so I parked where I'd parked before. In the exact same spot. I was beginning to think of it as my spot.

My client wasn't in, but the door to her office was open. In surveying it I noticed a five-by-seven photograph of an older couple outside an expensive adobe home. A second photo showed my client and some other women on a rafting trip. A small plaque on the wall to my right thanked her for five years of dedicated service to a local women's shelter. The "Fish Without a Bicycle" poster was still there, but so far she hadn't struck me as a militant feminist. Lipstick and nail polish were usually a good sign in that regard.

"Mr. Keane?" I turned around. The Kathleen Turner comparison continued to work because she was about five-eight and had more curves than Jessica Rabbit. The kind of body my former partner Matt Simms loves-like the buxom movie stars of the 1940s. She was in her early twenties. She had intentionally frizzed her long auburn hair, but on her it looked good. Full lips, green eyes, no makeup. She wore tan hiking shorts, a man's blue oxford-cloth with the sleeves rolled up, and leather sandals. Her wide smile oozed optimism and her erect posture projected confidence.

"You must be Mary Pat?"

"Mary Pat McCormick," she said as she extended her hand. Above her shirt pocket was a b.u.t.ton urging others to keep abortion safe and legal. Another Catholic girl gone bad.

"Pepper Keane." Her handshake was enthusiastic, like that of a young woman concluding an interview for her first real job.

"Professor Smyers is still in cla.s.s, but I have the articles right here." She retrieved a stack of papers from my client's desk and handed it to me. Held together by a large binder clip, it was a good two inches thick. "That's every paper they ever published."

"Fantastic," I said. "How'd you get them so quickly?"

"Just plugged their names into MathSciNet," she said, smiling. "Works every time."

"MathSciNet?"

"It's the standard search engine for mathematical works."

"Oh."

"Sorry. I forgot I was talking with"-she made quotation marks with her fingers-"an outsider."

"Don't worry about it," I said. "I'm grateful for your help. I'm sure you had better things to do."

"Not really. Jayne told me what you're doing. I know how important this is to her."

"Let's talk about that," I said. "Why is this so important to her?" I sat down on one of the wooden chairs in front of my client's desk. Mary Pat took the cue and sat down beside me, then stared at the floor for a moment as she considered my question.

"She doesn't like losing, that's for sure. She wants to prove these three murders were not a coincidence."

"Two murders and one apparent suicide," I said. She forced a polite smile, but she was as certain as her boss that Underwood's death was related to the others.

"I've never seen her as mad as she was when those agents strolled in here and told her they were closing the case. She really read them the riot act." I pictured Jayne Smyers confronting Gumby and Pokey. She's an inch taller than Gombold and I suspected she'd had enough a.s.sertiveness training to hold her own with Polk.

"How did they react to that?" I asked.

"One guy took it in stride, but the other was a real jerk."

"The big guy?"

Her eyes widened. "You know him?"

"I've known Polk since law school. We were in the same cla.s.s."

"Talk about arrogance," she said, "I just wanted to smack him."

"He has that effect on people." I'd wanted to smack him ever since law school, but the closest I'd come was a payback tackle in what was supposed to have been a flag football game. Scott McCutcheon called it the greatest flag football tackle he'd ever seen.

"The other thing is," Mary Pat continued, "and I'm just speculating, but I think Professor Smyers has a thing about justice. Her parents were killed when that airplane exploded over Scotland."

"Over Lockerbie?"

"Yes."

"I didn't know," I said. "Thanks for telling me." We were silent a moment.

"Mr. Keane," she finally asked, "is Professor Smyers in danger?" It was a question I'd already considered from a number of angles.

"I don't think so," I said. "If someone wanted her dead, she'd be dead."