“Oliver. Oliver!” Tabitha shook him by the shoulder, drawing his attention away from the scribbled notes that Michael Wei somehow, impossibly, seemed to have written personally to him. He looked up, eyes still not quite focusing on her. “I need to ask you something,” she said, voice solemn. “Were you working with him? Did you help him get the gun?”
That
jolted Oliver back. “No! Before this afternoon I never even heard of the
guy! I don’t know how he knew I’d be here, or where I live, but I
sure as hell didn’t tell him!”
“I
believe him,” Seamus said quietly. “This is some messed up shit, but Oliver
isn’t part of it.”
Tabitha
nodded – she believed him, too. “I need to report this,” she said, tapping keys
on her phone, sending another emergency flare up to their handler. “Oliver –
can you wipe his hard drive or something?”
“I
could, but it would be obvious to anyone who was looking at it. I don’t think
we need to be that drastic. The only evidence on his computer are the emails to
his uncle, and the one to mathgeeks. I can just get rid of those, make sure
there’s no trace of them.” He started working at the keyboard.
Tabitha’s
phone chirped. “Are there more?” Agent Jennifer barked as soon as she
connected.
“Uh,
no,” Tabitha said, “but we’ve got other developments. First, there’s a news guy
from Channel 4 in New Jersey. He knows my name, and is making up all kinds of
wild stories.”
“Yeah,
I saw you on the 10 o’clock news,” Jennifer sighed.
“Well
can you shut him up?” Tabitha snapped. “Tell his station to stop running the
story, or at least stop using my name? Put pressure on them to bury this?”
“Are
you kidding?” Jennifer snorted. “That would just throw gasoline on the fire.
They’d start screaming about first amendment violations and the story would
stop being about the murders and become one about a government cover-up. No, we
need this story to go away. You’ll just have to suck it up and stay away from
the media. Is that it?”
“No,
there’s something else. We found a note, mixed in with Wei’s notes on the
equation. It’s addressed to Oliver, personally. Wei seemed to know he would be
here, know where he lives. What does that mean?”
There
was nothing but the hiss of empty air on the line for some time. When Agent
Jennifer finally answered, her voice was subdued. “It’s the equation. That’s
what it does. It knows things. It bends reality into what it wants it to
be. And then it reveals that twisted reality to anyone who understands it, and
warps their reality, too. You need to destroy that book, destroy those notes,
and make sure no one else gets infected.” The line went dead.
Tabitha
stared at the phone in her hand. “OK, computer’s clean,” Oliver called,
snapping her out of her thoughts. “Are we done?”
Tabitha
shook her head, trying to clear it. She needed to focus. “Umm … we need to give
Wei a plausible reason for killing those people. Something so they won’t keep
digging.”
“Can
we make it look like he was visiting terrorist websites?” Carlos offered. "Like
he’d been radicalized?”
“I
don’t think that’s a good idea,” Tabitha countered. “If the FBI thought there
were any terrorist connections, they’d expand the investigation – look for
other members of his cell, try to figure out what larger group he was part of.
We need them to just shut it down.”
“Well,
we need to make it look like he had some kind of connection to the Ridgeways
then,” Carlos said, starting to pace. “Maybe Mr. Ridgeway was cooking the books
for his uncle, and the uncle caught on and the kid took revenge.”
Tabitha
was shaking her head. “No – still too many loose threads they’d want to tie
off. It needs to be something simple and untraceable.”
“Well
that pretty much just leaves sex.” All heads turned to look at Oliver. “I mean,
not that he had sex with one of them, but that he wanted to, that
he was obsessed with them.”
Carlos
was nodding. “Sure. We could pull pictures off social media, make it look like
Wei was stalking them. Maybe one of the girls?”
“No!”
Tabitha said emphatically. “I will not let some pre-teen girl be seen as the
subject of some pervert’s sick fantasies.”
“OK.
The mom then.” Carlos pushed Oliver out of the chair and started tapping on the
keyboard. “Yeah – she’s got a Facebook page. Lots of family pictures. And she’s
tagged in some pictures from the school’s PTA site.” Over the next hour, he and
Oliver built a digital shrine to Dinah Ridgeway on Michael Wei’s computer, with
Oliver back-dating the browser history and file timestamps to make it look like
the obsession had gone on for months.
When
they finished, Seamus tucked the photocopied Book of Many Wonders and Michael’s
notes into the waistband of his pants, under his FBI windbreaker, and they left
the room. Sandy Beema was waiting patiently for them, smile still intact. “Find
everything you needed?” she asked helpfully.
“We’d
like to look at the lab,” Seamus said, ignoring her question. “See if he left
anything there.”
“Of
course!” she replied, as if he’d just made her day. She led them down to the
basement of John Jay Hall, and she swiped a keycard to unlock the door to the
Fu Foundation Lab. Inside was a large open space that seemed to be equally
devoted to electronics HW design and SW workstations. There were a handful of
students still working at this late hour; when asked, they explained that there
were no assigned workstations – each person had an account they could access
from any of the Lab’s workstations (but not from outside the Lab’s private
network). Sandy made some calls to Columbia’s IT department, and soon had
Michael Wei’s login and password. Olver sat down and logged in, and started
poking around. After several minutes, he looked up with an expression of
relief. “All I can find are his Mersenne algorithms. Nothing else. And this
account hasn’t been accessed in the last three days. Certainly not since …
well, since this started.”
They
thanked Sandy for her help, and prepared to leave Columbia. “I should report in
to Agent Canor,” Tabitha said reluctantly. “Tell him what we ‘found’.” She was
convinced that Canor was the one who’d given her name to the media, but she
knew she had to report up through channels.
Canor
answered on the first ring. “This is Agent Suta,” Tabitha said. “I assume
you’re aware that we’ve been searching Michael Wei’s room at Columbia?”
“Billy
told me you’d offered to cover the City for us. I appreciate it. Did you find
anything?”
Tabitha
took a deep breath. “I’m afraid we did. Wei’s computer had dozens of photos of
Dinah Ridgeway. We can’t tell how he became aware of her, but he seems to have
been obsessed.”
Canor
was shocked. “Are you kidding me? Oh my god! I don’t know what I expected, but
it wasn’t this! Did you take the computer?”
“No
– the policeman is still guarding the room. We left it there for your people to
collect.”
“Perfect.
I’ll send our evidence techs over first thing in the morning. This is great
work, Suta. Now if we can just figure out how he got the gun, we’ll have it all
tied up.”
“We’re
hitting the 24th Precinct first thing tomorrow, as soon as the day
shift comes back on.”
With
that, she signed off, feeling relieved that the case was headed in the right
direction. That sense of relief lasted all of 30 seconds. As soon as they
exited John Jay Hall they were bathed in bright camera lights. Enrico Savé
thrust a microphone into her face. “Agent Suta! Enrico Savé, Channel 4
Eyewitness News. Can you confirm that the River Vale Massacre was the work of a
Chinese national? Was Michael Wei acting on behalf of the Chinese government?
Was this an act of state-sponsored terrorism?”
Tabitha’s
face was grim. “You’ll need to direct all enquiries to Special Agent Canor, who
is in charge of this investigation. But you’re blowing this all out of
proportion with these wild accusations.”
“Does
that mean the FBI has new information about this case?” Savé asked, following
her to the car. “Can you tell us what you found in Michael Wei’s room? Have you
determined a motive for these brutal murders?” Tabitha slammed the car door,
threw the car into gear, and burned rubber. “Goddamn it!” she muttered.
It
was close to midnight, but they had one more stop to make. Tia Markell was one
of the people on the mathgeeks@listbrain.com mailing list, and she lived in
Greenwich Village. The team made their way south, and took advantage of the
government tags on their SUV to double-park in front of her building. They
buzzed at her door several times before a cautious voice from inside asked “Who
is it?”
“FBI”
Tabitha responded, and they all held up their badges for inspection through the
door’s peephole. They heard locks and security chains rattle, and the door was
opened by an extremely attractive young woman with long, slightly mussed black
hair. She wore a short silk kimono robe over a T-shirt, and Seamus made it his
business to conduct a thorough visual search to ensure she wasn’t carrying any
concealed weapons.
Tabitha
pushed in without being invited and the others followed. “We understand you
subscribe to a mailing list called mathgeeks?” she asked.
Ms.
Markell nodded. “Yes. Is that a problem?”
“Have
you checked it recently?” Carlos asked, trying to sound friendly. “We’re afraid
one of the recent messages was infected with a nasty virus.”
“Wow.
No, I haven’t looked at it in days. I have those messages sent to a separate
folder, and only look at it every so often. Wait … is the FBI doing anti-virus
now?”
“Well,
um … it’s being used by terrorists to take over innocent people’s computers.
We’re trying to trace it back. Do you mind if we take a look?”
She
led them to a laptop on the couch, and booted it up. Seamus was taking in the
apartment – there were numerous headshots of Ms. Markell, and the books on the
shelves were an odd assortment: books on method acting next to “Killer Sudoku”
and “Cryto Collection” puzzle books and statistics texts. “Are you a
mathematician?” he asked.
She
laughed. “No, much to my dad’s disappointment. He wanted me to be an actuary -
that’s what I majored in in college. But I loved drama – was in lots of plays
at school – and I decided to try becoming an actress here in New York.”
Seamus
was leaning in to get more information on just what plays she was appearing in
when Oliver interrupted. “Got it! It’s still unread, thank god. I’m going to
delete the whole folder, just to be safe.” He clicked a few times. “I’m going
to unsubscribe you from the mailing list, too. Just in case the virus infects
some of the others and starts sending out more copies of itself.” He finished,
and they thanked Tia Markell for her cooperation, grateful they hadn’t had to
take any more drastic action.
The
group agreed to meet at the 24th Precinct House in the morning with
all their gear packed. They’d talk to the NYPD, figure out how Michael Wei had
gotten a police shotgun, and then drive to Keene to interview Francis Wei. They
dropped Tabitha off at the Federal Building; she let herself in, went upstairs
to her offices, and fed the Book of Many Wonders into a government shredder.
They
met in front of the 24th Precinct shortly after 8 the next morning.
Each carried a heavy bag that they loaded into the back of the SUV before
entering the building. Tabitha marched straight up to the front desk, FBI badge
prominently displayed. “We need to talk to one of the detectives,” she
demanded.
The
NYPD was considerably less in awe of the FBI than the River Vale PD had been.
The desk sergeant barely looked up. “Sure thing. What kind? Robbery? Auto
Theft? Narcotics?”
“I
need to talk to someone about a gun from this Precinct that was used in a
multiple homicide yesterday.” Tabitha seemed to be a little miffed that she
wasn’t getting the treatment she felt the FBI deserved.
“Hang
on,” the cop replied wearily, and made a phone call. Ten minutes later a
heavyset man in a rumpled suit appeared. “Detective Marley, Homicide. What can
I do for youse?”
“We
need to talk somewhere private,” Tabitha said testily. “About a major Federal case.”
Marley didn’t seem impressed, but led them up three flights of stairs to a
large bullpen of desks. He led them down a side corridor lined with interview
rooms, motioned them into one and closed the door.
“I
assume you heard about the mass shooting in New Jersey yesterday?” Tabitha
asked. Marley nodded. “Those people were killed with a shotgun that is
registered to this Precinct. We need to know who gave the gun to the killer.
Someone here is an accomplice to murder.”
“Bullshit!”
Marley exclaimed in shock. “That’s not possible!”
“It’s
more than possible,” Tabitha asserted. “it’s fact. The FBI traced the serial
number right back here.”
Marley
seemed flustered. “Look, I don’t know why you’re talking to me – this isn’t a
Homicide matter. I needs to take this up to the Captain. You folks wait right
here and I’ll go talk to him.” He reached for the doorknob.
“I’ll
come with you,” Tabitha demanded, rising from her seat.
“No,
you just wait right here. It’ll only take a minute.”
“No,
I’m coming with you. Once you leave this room, there’s no telling what you’ll
do, or who you’ll call. You could be in on it, or warn the person who is. I’m
coming with you to talk to your Captain myself, to make sure you don’t try to
cover anything up.”
Marley
exploded. “Like hell you are! I am not dragging some fucking Fed into Captain
Rawlins’ office who’s accusing us of being involved in some Jersey murder!
You’re going to sit you butt right here until the Captain decides what to do.”
The
argument escalated. The more Tabitha implied that she didn’t trust the officers
of the 24th Precinct, the angrier and more stubborn Marley became.
Seamus eyed the ‘NO SMOKING’ sign on the wall, leaned back, and lit up a
cigarette. ‘I sure am glad we have
someone who knows how to work with law enforcement,’ he thought as he took
a deep drag.
At
last Marley let Tabitha accompany him as he called the Precinct Captain on the
phone. When she returned to the interview room, she did not look happy. The
others maintained an uncomfortable silence as she took out her phone and
dialed. “Agent Canor? It’s Agent Suta … Well, no, we’ve hit a bit of a snag …
No … No they’re being totally uncooperative … I told them that … Well, they
agreed, but they’re going to require a warrant.” The others looked down as
angry shouting crackled from the phone’s speaker. “I understand … Yes … Yes,
we’ll wait here.” Tabitha hung up and looked at the others. “This may take a
while.”
It
took nearly four hours. They sat on the hard chairs of the interview room. No
one offered them coffee. Seamus smoked four more cigarettes. Finally, sometime
after 12:30, the door opened and Billy Gant stuck his head in. He did not look
happy, either. “I’ve got your warrant,” was all he said.
They
made their way up several more flights of stairs, and into the office of
Captain John Rawlins, 24th Precinct Commander. He was a
broad-shouldered Black man with gray at the temples. “I assume you’re the agent
who’s accusing my men of stealing weapons?” he glared at Tabitha. Gant handed
him the warrant and he made a show of reading it carefully. Finally he looked
up at Gant. “Why do you think the weapon came from my House?”
“We
traced the serial number, Captain,” Gant replied respectfully. “It definitely
came from here. We have no idea how, and we were hoping you could help us
figure that out. We have no interest in embarrassing you or the Force – we just
want to close our case.”
Rawlins
nodded. “If what you’re saying is true, this is very serious. We’ll need to
talk to my armorer.” He picked up the phone and punched some digits. “Masters.
I’m coming down to your office – be there.”
The
group descended all the stairs they’d climbed earlier (‘Surely this place has an elevator?’ Carlos thought but did not say
aloud). Then they descended some more, into the basement, to an area enclosed
in heavy chain link, filled with a variety of weapons racks. A man in uniform
was waiting for them. “This is Sgt. Masters,” Rawlins said, and explained the
situation to him.
“Can’t
be, Cap,” Masters said with certainty. “We haven’t had any reports of missing
weapons, and our last inventory was just three weeks ago. Let me check.” He
typed on a computer. “That serial number is one of ours, all right, but no
one’s even signed it out in almost six years. Hang on.” His expression became
less certain. “This was one of the weapons that was moved yesterday.” He typed
some more, then turned and unlocked the gate behind him. He led them into the
armory, to a stack of wooden crates against one wall. “We had a leaking pipe
that was being fixed yesterday. Obviously, we couldn’t have civilian plumbers
in here with all these weapons, so we took them out until they were finished.”
He began moving crates, checking the number stenciled on their tops until he
found the one he was looking for. He took a short pry bar and popped the nails
holding the lid shut. Inside were slots to hold five shotguns. There were four
shotguns and one empty space.
Every
stared at the crate in silence for a moment, then Rawlins raised his face to
Masters, expression grim. “Who …” he began, but Masters anticipated his
question. “We pulled Herrera out of Evidence Lockup to babysit. I’ll get him.”
He disappeared down the hall and returned a few minutes later with a
middle-aged Hispanic officer. He’d obviously already told Officer Herrera the
situation because the man immediately launched his defense.
“Look,
I never let those weapons out of my sight. Nobody touched them, I swear. You
don’t need to take my word – it’s all on video. Go watch the video, you’ll
see.”
And
so, five minutes later they were all in the building’s security center. As the
tech pulled up the right recordings, Masters explained. “We moved the guns out
into the back parking lot, right by the rear entrance. Herrera was supposed to
be sitting on them all day.” The screen in front of them filled with static,
then an image appeared. There were four views of the rear of the Precinct
House, each filling a quadrant of the screen. One was from right above the back
door, showing most of the parking lot full of squad cars and the wall of the
building behind it. Another showed the opposite view, with the back door of the
building in its center. On either side of the parking lot was an exit to the
street, and two other cameras showed each of those.
At
8:23 AM officers began carrying boxes of weapons out the back door and stacking
them against the back of the building. As they worked, Officer Herrera appeared
with a folding chair, which he set up next to the boxes. The images zipped by,
speeded up. Officers changing shifts came in and out of the building, many
chatting briefly with Herrera, cars zipping in and out of the lot.
At
9:13:27 AM a figure appeared in the image showing the right-hand exit. He was
on the opposite side of the street and wore a hooded sweatshirt; he carried a
dark duffel bag that appeared to be empty. He stopped directly across from the
exit, and stood staring across the street, frequently checking his watch. He
might have been waiting for a bus – but they knew he wasn’t. They slowed the
video down to normal speed. “Is that Wei?” Gant whispered, but the video was
too grainy to make out the man’s features.
At
precisely 9:21:00 the man in the hoodie stepped off the curb and began to cross
the street. At the same time, a figure appeared in the video of the opposite
exit. It was a woman walking her dog, a small terrier. The dog spotted a rat in
the gutter and dashed after it, yanking its leash out of the woman’s hand. It
ran after the rat, and right under the wheels of a squad car just exiting the
lot. They saw the woman’s mouth open in a silent scream, and Officer Herrera’s
head jerked to the left, just as the figure in the hoodie stepped up onto the
curb.
Herrera
snuffed out his cigarette and left his seat. He disappeared out of the center
frame and appeared in the frame with the woman, where he knelt to check on the
dog. The officers in the squad car had exited their vehicle and were trying to
comfort the crying woman. The man in the hoodie appeared in the central frame.
He approached the stack of weapon crates, and drew a claw hammer out of the
duffel bag. He pried the lid off a crate, took out a shotgun, slipped it into
the duffel, and tapped the lid back into place with his hammer. Then he picked
up the duffel, turned and retraced his steps. He disappeared around the corner
of the Precinct House just as Officer Herrera turned and walked back to his
post. The time on the video read 9:24:34.
Billy
Gant turned to Captain Rawlins. “Well, now we know how he got the gun. We’ll
need a copy of that video, but we don’t see any need to press charges on this,
or even to mention it to the press. We’ll leave it to NYPD to decide whether
any disciplinary action is necessary.” Officer Herrera’s face had gone white.
As they left the room, they could hear him saying over and over, “How did he know?
How could he even have known?”
By
the time they finished with Rawlins and Gant, it was after 1:00. They started
the long drive north to Keene in silence. Carlos finally broke it. “Did you see
the time?” he asked shakily. Seamus and Oliver responded with confused shrugs,
but Tabitha nodded, her shoulders tight. “The time on the video - when the kid
went after the gun? It was 9:21. Remember? His notes? One of the circled
numbers was ‘921’. He knew. The equation knew.”
The
sun had set by the time they reached Keene, and they drove through the little
town in the dark. Highway 73 served as the town’s Main Street, with several
side streets branching off of it. Church St. was one of those, and they turned
onto it. They passed a city park, with an empty ballfield, and then drove slowly
past 36 Church St., Francis Wei’s home. There was a driveway with a detached
garage, no car evident. Despite the hour, there were no lights on in the house.
There were several neighbor houses nearby however, all showing lights. All
within earshot.
Tabitha
pulled the SUV over to the side of the road a few hundred yards away, and
Oliver and Carlos slipped out. They kept their flashlights pointed down to the
ground as they made their way back to scout the house. They were following the
bank of the Ausable River; Francis Wei’s house backed up to the river, and
there weren’t any other houses between his and where they’d left the car, but
they still didn’t want to risk people across the street spotting their lights.
Wei’s house had a small patio on the north side, and the east, which faced the
river, seemed to be mostly glass, but they didn’t attempt to get close enough
to peek inside. They did risk a look through the garage window; a gray Volvo
was parked inside. “Looks like his car’s here,” Oliver whispered. “Think that
means he’s home?” Carlos just shrugged, and they made their way back to the car
to report.
“Let’s
try something else,” Carlos said, taking out his phone. He tried calling the
numbers Michael Wei had listed for his uncle, first his landline then his
mobile. Both went to voicemail. “I guess we’ll just have to go check
it out in person.”
Tabitha
turned around, and they drove back. She killed the headlights before they
turned into his driveway, and parked at an angle, blocking the drive in case
someone should try to escape in Wei’s car. The house’s front door was actually
on its side, facing the driveway, which was to their advantage, but of course
it was locked. Oliver took out his lockpicks and worked on the lock for a bit,
but had no luck. “Here – let me try,” Tabitha whispered. She slipped the picks
into the cylinder, worked for a moment, and then the tension bar rotated. “We’re
in!” Everyone’s guns were out.
They
opened the door, but didn’t reach for the light switch. The house had the musty
smell a house has when you return from vacation. Their flashlights swept around
the room. They were looking into a great room that filled most of the house.
The walls were decorated with pictures of birds, both exotic and domestic,
mostly photographs but some oils and watercolors. There was little furniture,
but what there was was very modern and tasteful. In the center of the room as a
chrome and leather couch, looking out towards the glass wall that would have
given an excellent view of the river during the daytime. Behind the couch was a
dead body.
“Clear
the building!” Seamus hissed, and moved in and to the left. “Kitchen, clear!” he
whispered. Carlos moved right. “Um … bedroom, clear.” He felt more than a
little awkward saying that, but that’s what they did in the movies.
Tabitha
went straight for the body. It was an Asian man in his sixties. He was wearing
a tan canvas coat and hiking boots; the coat was still zipped as if he were
outdoors on a chilly day. He had distinct purple bruises around his throat, and
his left pant leg was caked with dried blood. “Looks like he was strangled,”
Tabitha said, noting the finger-shaped bruises. “Blood on his leg, but I don’t
see any blood on the floor.”
Seamus
was still scanning the room. A set of stairs led up to a loft that overlooked
the great room from above, and he was worried about someone getting the drop on
them from the high ground. As he crossed to the stairs, he noticed an SLR
camera with a large telephoto lens on the dining table. Remembering how Oliver
had manipulated the camera at the crime scene, he called to him. “Oliver –
camera!” then moved to take up a covering position at the foot of the stairs.
Oliver
moved to the table and turned the camera on, then began to look through the
photos on its display. They seemed to all be pictures of birds in trees. “Uncle Francis must have been a bird watcher,”
he thought to himself. He flipped through a succession of shots of various
species of birds, but then he noticed a pale object near the ground in one of
the photos, somewhat out of focus. The next image zoomed in on that object; it
looked like the bare back of a person crouched on the ground. In the next
image, the figure’s head was slightly raised, a mat of dark hair. Francis
seemed to be taking rapid-fire photos now; the images showed the head turning,
revealing a profile partially obscured by hair, and then a face, staring
directly at the photographer. The face was pale, eyes milky and clouded, skin
torn. It was a face he had seen before. It was the face of Marlene Baughman.
Seamus
leaped into action. He dashed across the room, then went into a slide, his boot
striking Francis Wei in the forehead. Wei’s head snapped back, but he didn’t
let go of Tabitha. Instead he jerked her close, and sank his teeth into her
throat. She tried to scream, but no air would emerge, and she felt hot blood
gushing down her chest. She kept pulling her trigger. Oliver appeared, standing
over them, pistol outstretched. He considered flipping the ‘fun switch’ on his
Glock 18, to convert it to full auto, but he remembered his poor performance on
the shooting range. Tabitha and Seamus were so intertwined with his target that
he was sure he would hit them with his spray of bullets, so he fired single
shots. All he managed to do was splinter the hardwood floor.
Carlos
was watching all this from somewhere far away. His eyes told him that the dead
body on the floor had come to life and was trying to tear Tabitha’s throat out.
His ears told him there was an intense gun battle underway. His nose told him
he had soiled himself. But his mind denied all of this. This could not be real,
it must not be real. So he simply stopped seeing, and hearing, and
smelling. His senses shut down, and he slumped to the floor, hands around his
knees, rocking gently back and forth.
Seamus
saw Francis Wei’s teeth ripping at Tabitha’s neck, blood spurting, and knew that
whatever this thing was, it had the power to rip her head off her body. He
pressed the barrel of his gun into Francis’s ear and fired. Wei’s skull
exploded, fragments of bloody scalp and brains painting the stylish sofa. The
body rolled limply off of Tabitha, and Oliver stood over it, firing down until
his clip was empty. The orgy of gunfire
stopped, and their ears rang in the silence.
“We’ve
got to get out of here!” Seamus barked after a few seconds. He bent and grabbed
Francis Wei’s shoulders. “You grab his feet!” he commanded Oliver. “We’ll haul
him out to the car and get the hell out of here!”
“No!”
Tabitha croaked. She was woozy from loss of blood and her head was spinning,
but she was trying to think. “No … we have to … find book.” She could barely
speak through her damaged throat. “Hurry!”
Seamus
hesitated. Every instinct told him they needed to get away from there, fast,
and take as much evidence with them as they could. But the Marines had taught
him that an order was an order, smart or stupid. He let Francis’ corpse drop
limply to the floor, and dashed up the stairs. Oliver followed, figuring he was
safer the closer he was to Seamus.
Upstairs
there was no shortage of books – the loft was full of bookshelves, with
hundreds of volumes. Seamus began ripping titles off the shelves; almost all
were books on ornithology. None were 16th century Latin texts.
Oliver went to Wei’s computer. He found the emails Francis had sent to Michael,
and deleted them. He found nothing else. Then his head snapped up. “Shit! You
hear that?”
Seamus’s
ears were still ringing from the gunfire – he heard nothing. “Sirens!” Oliver
hissed, dashing for the stairs. “We’ve got to go!”
They
grabbed Carlos by the arm as they passed; he followed meekly. As Seamus passed
the kitchen, he slid to a stop. His senses were on high alert, and something
had triggered an alarm. He scanned the room, and immediately spotted it. The
kitchen wastebasket was empty, save for one item: a large DHL envelope, torn
open. He grabbed it and followed Oliver.
Tabitha
was leaning against the wall by the door, a bloody smear behind her. She was
trying to will her brain to work, but all she could see was Francis Wei’s face,
teeth bared. “I said, do we take the body or leave it?” Seamus shouted,
apparently not for the first time. She looked back at Francis Wei, sprawled on
the floor. She didn’t want him in the car with her. “Leave it,” she wheezed.
Seamus grabbed her arm and practically carried her to the car; Oliver already
had it running, Carlos slumped in the back seat. “Go! Go! Go!” Seamus commanded
as he jumped in, and Oliver peeled out. “No! Slow down!” Seamus ordered, and
Oliver hit the brake, slowing to the speed limit. Seconds later, a Sheriff’s
car roared past them, lights flashing and siren blaring. Oliver did a U-turn as
soon as it was out of sight, and drove back past the Wei house, with the car
now parked in its driveway. They took a circuitous route, zig-zagging back and
forth on small state highways, staying off the main roads. “Don’t go into the
woods,” Carlos whimpered from the back. “Please – don’t go into the woods.” They
were the only words he spoke on the ride back to New York.
They
stopped at a gas station, parking out back out of sight while Seamus went in to
buy first aid supplies, and patched up Tabitha’s neck as best he could. Then,
under the station’s lights, he examined the DHL envelope he’d recovered from
the kitchen. “There’s no return address,” he said, “but it says the shipment
originated in Brussels. It was sent on September 18.”
“That’s
over a month ago,” Oliver nodded. “About right for it to have arrived here
about when Francis sent the Book of Many Wonders to Michael. He must have
gotten someone in Belgium to send him a copy of the book, and he sent it on to
Michael. But who? And why? And …” his voice trailed off. There were just too
many unanswered questions.
Epilogue
We
see a television set showing CNN. There is no sound, but the graphic at the
bottom reads “16 Dead in German Church Shooting”. The video shows a gothic
church tower, with “Wiesbaden Germany” superimposed. Atop the tower, a man is
trying to unfurl what looks like a bedsheet with writing on it, but the wind
keeps blowing it up, making the writing unreadable. A group of SWAT-team
equipped police rush the man. As they reach him, he turns, grabs a policeman,
and leaps backwards off the tower. The policeman grasps frantically for
anything to hold onto, and catches the sheet, but it is no support, and both
men hurtle to the ground. The sheet flutters after them; the numbers ‘333’ are
visible at the end of the writing.
The
camera pulls back, to show a coffee table in front of the TV. It is littered
with pages from a yellow legal pad, covered with mathematical scribbling. The
camera pans: the interior of a typical middle-class home. It moves in on an
open laptop computer on the dining room table. Michael Wei’s final email is in
an open window. The camera slowly keeps panning. Next to the laptop is an open
book, possibly a high school yearbook, but the pages have been cut up; a pair
of scissors lies across the book, blades covered with blood. Next to the book
is an open, mostly empty box of shotgun shells. Next to the box of shells are a
series of photographs, neatly clipped from the yearbook and arranged in an
irregular column: two at the top, one below it, then two more and then three
rows of three – fourteen in all. On the floor beside the table we can see a
man’s hand, outstretched in a pool of blood.
The
scene changes. A woman is walking in slow motion across a parking lot. She
wears a knee-length skirt and wool coat, hair pulled back in a loose bun. She
is carrying a large black duffel bag. Teenagers smile and greet her as they
pass; she smiles and nods back. She passes a flagpole, flag snapping in the
breeze. The brick pedestal at the base bears a sign: Skyview High School,
Billings Montana.
Two
men in overalls are raking leaves beside the sidewalk ahead. They see the woman
and drop their rakes. They step onto the sidewalk, blocking her path. Each has
one hand upraised in a ‘Stop’ motion while the other displays a badge. The
woman shifts her duffel bag from her right hand to the left, as if to put it
down. But the back half of the duffel is unzipped, and her right hand goes into
it. Both men reach into the pockets of their overalls, but the end of the
duffel explodes in a cone of smoke and flame, and one man is thrown backwards
by the shotgun blast. She struggles to extract the shotgun from the bag, but
the other man has his gun out. He raises it in a two-handed grip and begins to
fire. In slow motion we see the muzzle spit flame over and over as spent
cartridges spin out of the ejector. The woman staggers backwards as red circles
appear on her chest.
The
scene changes again. We are flying over a forest of vibrant autumn reds and
oranges. A small parking lot below, possibly a trailhead, is crowded with
police cars, lights flashing. Our view continues forward and down, descending
to treetop level and then zipping through the leaves and branches, until we see
a group of uniformed people clustered in a clearing. A pair newcomers join the
group, one man and one woman, both in plainclothes and each pulling on rubber
gloves as they approach.
“Hello
detectives,” says a man in a Sheriff’s uniform.
“What’ve
we got?” asks the woman.
“Leaf
peepers found a body,” the Sheriff responds. “Female, although animals have
scavenged the body pretty good. Looks to be naked, but hard to tell. Won’t be
able to guess at age until the coroner gets a look at her.”
“Any
obvious cause of death?”
The
sheriff gives her a wry look. “You mean besides the multiple bullet holes?”
As
the detectives kneel to examine the body, one of the park rangers standing near
the perimeter slips away from the group. When he is out of earshot, he pulls
out a cellphone and dials a number. He listens for a moment, then speaks. “The
Host is empty. Repeat, the Host is empty and the target is on the move.”