Quantum

by Patricia Cornwell

  “Thankfully, no,” her voice in my ear. “Not here. At Fort Monroe. She was renting one of those upscale apartments in a building that used to be barracks during the Civil War. Living alone.”

  Tying my bootlaces in double bows, and I don’t like the sound of this, already getting an unsettled feeling as my thoughts slam back to the stolen badge complaint.

  “Fort Monroe is where an outside contractor claimed her car was parked when her badge allegedly was stolen out of the glove box yesterday afternoon,” I remind Fran.

  “It’s a big place, and a whole slew of our contractors rent houses and apartments out there.” She doesn’t want to hear about the missing badge again. “Furthermore and to my point, there’s nothing suspicious about the death so far. She even left a note.”

  “Or someone did. How’d she do it?”

  “Hanged herself with her laptop charger cord. That’s the word so far.”

  “And who found her? Since she supposedly lived alone.”

  “A wellness check,” Fran says.

  “Huh?” Makes no sense. “Why would Hampton PD pay a wellness check to her apartment? Did someone call in a concern?”

  “A coworker did. On NASA’s emergency number a little while ago, asking if we could get an officer to run by her apartment. That no one on her team had a key, and the woman hadn’t shown up at Langley today and wasn’t answering her phone. I can get the recording, some genius boy she worked with who sounded about Easton’s age. He mentioned she’d left work yesterday not feeling well, and that was part of the concern. I got a Hampton officer to run over there and check.”

  “How did he get in?”

  “The door was unlocked. I guess she was making it easy for us.”

  “Or someone was. Who’s the victim?”

  “She’s not necessarily a victim . . .”

  “If she killed herself, she’s her own victim if nothing else. The name of the woman I interviewed yesterday was Vera Young,” and I spell it. “A 54-year-old electrical engineer.”

  Silence.

  Then, “Crap. Well that’s her all right. A 54-year-old electrical engineer temporarily relocated to the area like a lot of people,” Fran passes on what little she knows so far. “Part of a team based in Houston, on contract with NASA to work on robots that will assemble shelters in space, like on the moon or something.”

  “Habitats, storm shelters, inflatable airlocks. The work going on in the Structures and Materials Research Lab,” I tell her. “And as you know, that lab happens to be in Building 1110. Which is next door to 1111 and joined to it by the Yellow Submarine tunnel.”

  00:00:00:00:0

  GETTING up from the carpet, I begin to pace, definitely not happy about anything I’m hearing.

  “I know you don’t take all this quantum stuff as seriously as I wish you would,” I say to Fran over the phone. “But after I’d finished running diagnostics down there in 1111-A yesterday, I responded to the stolen badge complaint in the very lab you’re talking about. One building away, directly next door. Structures and Materials is on the south wing of 1110’s first floor.”

  “What did Vera Young have to say when you interviewed her?” Fran says as I shake out my legs, stretching them. “I’ve not read your report yet. Was a little too tied up with the briefing and almost being suffocated in a bunghole tunnel.”

  “Her story is she went home yesterday around 11:00 a.m. with a migraine, and neglected to lock her car,” I reply, stretching my lower back, stiff from working out in the fitness center early this morning. “Late in the day she tried to return to campus, and at the main gate opened her glove box, discovering her badge had been stolen.”

  “Sounds like BS to me.”

  “Her smartcard accesses 1110,” I add, “and theoretically could get someone through the airlocks of 1111-A. Don’t you see why this bothers me, Fran?” I’ll just keep pushing my point until she acts like she cares.

  “Aside from the fact that everything bothers you. But you’d have to know the secret combination to open that secret Yellow Submarine door and enter your secret tunnel, right? And you said nobody knows it.”

  “I never said that nobody does. And I’m always concerned about people getting critical information they’re not supposed to have. Like smartcards and security codes.” I pick up the steel-toe sneakers, my hard hat and gear bag. “But yes, the submarine hatch is largely inaccessible, thankfully. And as you’ve mentioned, we canceled Vera Young’s badge the instant she reported it missing. But I don’t like that she left midmorning and didn’t attempt to return to the campus until almost 5:00 p.m.”

  “You know how some of these people are. No common sense. Not a lick.”

  “She said she headed back to Langley after her headache was better,” I continue to relay what Vera Young claimed to my face. “She told me she intended to work late. That she was behind in her projects. In summary, we have a window of around 7 hours when someone could have used her smartcard inappropriately before it was canceled.”

  “But easy enough to check if you interrogate the electronic history of everything her card might have accessed yesterday afternoon while she supposedly wasn’t on campus.” Fran’s had enough of what she views as perseverating and I consider being thorough.

  “Don’t worry, I will.” Pacing up and down the hallway, and it feels good to move. “Among other things, it bothers me that she was paranoid and defensive,” I explain. “I didn’t like her story then, and now I really don’t.”

  “In the meantime, if Butch and Scottie come back with anything of concern, we’ll head right over,” Fran says. “Or if we find out she allowed someone to borrow her smartcard.”

  “Let’s hope not. Maybe send me any info you have next time you’re stopped at a light or when you get home.” I hold my badge over the scanner outside my office door. “I’d like to see the suicide note. Which reminds me, who’s responding from the ME’s office?”

  “Joan.”

  “Good.” I’m relieved to hear it, and we end the call as I open my door.

  Joan Williams is the lead death investigator for the Tidewater District medical examiner’s office, a bloodhound, and the one I always want to show up. Plus, we’re friendly with each other, and that’s always helpful when you want information or assistance. I walk into my office, setting my gear in a chair as my landline begins to ring.

  “Now what?” Stepping around boxes and piles of stuff I’ve yet to sort through or properly store, making my way to my desk.

  Maybe someone calling in reference to the possible suicide. Or yet another disturbed person abducted by aliens. Or convinced that walking on the moon was fake news. That evolution and climate change are, and all science-loving infidels are going to hell. The list is endless and getting longer as social media, extremism and vitriol stoke the vulnerable population that Fran calls TLCs. As in “the Looney Tune Crazies.”

  No room to spare in here, and I bump past the table piled with tactical body armor, boxes of ammo and my handcuffs. Almost knocking over my level III active shooter police shield, more beaten up than it used to be after riot training in the Hampton Coliseum the other week. Reaching for my phone, noticing that caller ID is blocked, the number coming up as Unknown.

  “Captain Chase,” I answer.

  “It’s Dick,” my former commander General Melville says right off, and it enters my mind that there’s no reason for him to assume I’d be in my office right now.

  “Are you spying on me?” Kidding but not really, and completely baffled that he would reach out.

  I wouldn’t have bet on it after the way he treated me earlier, and I wonder what’s going on. Because nothing about his demeanor toward me today has felt positive or warm. I switch the call to speakerphone.

  “Very funny,�
� his unamused voice inside my office.

  “Nope, not funny considering the source. Let me guess. You used an app probably very similar to the one I have, and saw my ID number pop up in 1195C.”

  “Be careful what you give me.”

  Except it’s not quite accurate that I gave him the app in question, although I did develop the first generation of it while working under his command in Colorado Springs.

  “Just to be clear, I only helped develop the app you’re using, whatever version it is by now,” I remind him.

  “Yes, that’s literally correct, making me think of that nickname of yours that Liz came up with . . .”

  Liz is his wife, and she didn’t come up with it.

  “Concretia. And you’re the one who started calling me that, thank you very much,” I reply. “Anyway, you know how I am about not wanting to take credit I don’t deserve.”

  “Am I on speakerphone?”

  “Inside my completely empty department, all the inmates having fled the asylum, it would seem. There. I’m shutting my door just to be extra private. I hope the rest of the briefing went okay.” Stepping around a chair, squatting in front of the gun safe.

  “Yes. In fact, some of us are still talking. We’re about to wrap it up.”

  “I’m really sorry I had to rush off.” Entering the combination on the keypad. “That Fran and I did.”

  “And what did you discover if anything?” Dick’s voice pleasant but cool.

  “It’s curious. There’s no evidence of a malfunction with any of the sensors in 1111-A, but one of them definitely detected motion. Got no idea why,” I reply, and I have to wonder what I might have done to displease him. “There are other complicating factors that I find concerning, as well. Including someone who supposedly committed suicide, an outside contractor whose badge allegedly was stolen yesterday. Guess where she worked? Building 1110.”

  “That doesn’t make me happy.”

  I open the gun safe’s galvanized steel door. “I know you understand my worries, Dick, especially with that particular section of tunnel and what’s inside. You know how I feel about any utility area that’s accessible to a variety of people who don’t have top secret clearance. Or any reason to be around such technical vulnerabilities.”

  “Yes, yes, I understand the way you think since I’m partly to blame for it.” What he says couldn’t be nicer, but his demeanor doesn’t match his words.

  “Is everything okay? You seem distracted.” My way of saying he’s acting more like a stranger than the man who mentored me for years and is an old family friend.

  “There’s too much going on as usual. I was hoping you might give me a lift back to the air force base before I have to get ready for another dinner I don’t want to go to. We could catch up for a few minutes. As you may have heard me mention at your briefing, I’ve got to fly out of Newport News in the morning.”

  “I believe you said you were driving to DC,” I reply, and I have the unpleasant sense that he’s testing me for some reason, supplying erroneous details I feel compelled to correct.

  Because he knows I will.

  7

  “SORRY,” he says. “That was an earlier draft of the itinerary, some days it’s hard to keep up. But you’re right, tomorrow is DC. Listen, I really do want to hear what’s going on with you, how Houston went, as we’ve not talked since the interviews.”

  “We actually have. Once,” I remind Dick of what he’s supposedly forgotten. “Right after my week at JSC, and as we speak there’s still nothing new to report. Houston remains quiet. And I guess if it’s quiet a whole lot longer, I’m going to suspect that things didn’t go as well as I thought.”

  “And what’s happening with Carme? Is she being good karma or bad?” His usual pun, only he doesn’t say it with any humor or warmth. “What do you hear from her these days?” and I find it disconcerting that he would bring her up.

  “Not much,” I reply uncomfortably because my sister’s silences have become longer and more troubling.

  “How about anything at all? I’d settle for that. Is she doing all right?”

  “She’s been off grid,” I admit, waiting for Dick to weigh in, but he’s gathering information and not inclined to give it.

  “I don’t know where she is right now, but that’s not unusual,” I go on to say. “I assume she’s alive and well, otherwise I have no doubt you’d know.”

  I wait. But he won’t bite.

  “Because I have to believe you’d tell me if the worst happened,” I add.

  Another pause, and Dick remains silent over speakerphone. Anybody walking by would assume I’m talking to myself. Which I’m known to do on occasion.

  “You’d tell me, right?” I’m starting to feel scared that something horrible has happened to my sister.

  “Yes,” he finally says quietly, a little softer. “I would.”

  “I’ve not heard from her hardly at all since seeing her last month,” I’m relieved by what he said but not reassured as I stand in the middle of my office, uncertain what to do. “And usually I take that to mean she’s involved in something she can’t talk about. Or won’t. Because she’s not in a position to. Period.”

  Waiting for his response again.

  When there isn’t one, I continue, “Not that she’s been very communicative for a while, certainly not since she was home last. The second week of November, after our interviews and she flew out, returning to her deployment. Wherever it was. Or is.”

  Dick doesn’t indicate an answer. Not a word or a sigh. Nothing one way or another about where Carme might be deployed, and if she’s reasonably safe. He doesn’t say he knows. He doesn’t say he doesn’t.

  “I assume she’s okay,” I keep pushing. “That we’re talking good karma. Not bad,” and he won’t take the bait.

  Instead he finally says, “I’m wondering if either of you have heard from Johnson Space Center about what they’re thinking or intend.”

  “I don’t know about Carme, but I haven’t, not yet,” loading a clip into my Glock .40 cal. “It could be any day, I suppose. Depending on what happens with the government shutdown,” racking back the pistol’s slide. “If we end up furloughed and for how long,” chambering a hollow-point round, and he really can’t expect me to believe that if there was news from JSC he wouldn’t know it before my sister and I do.

  Maybe I’m idealistic, but I assume a former astronaut who heads the newest branch of the military, Space Force, would know what’s going on with NASA. Especially as it pertains to the Langley twins, as we’re now called at JSC, and maybe that’s the problem. Maybe Dick does indeed know what’s going on with the astronaut review committee, and it’s put him in an awful quandary.

  He could be sitting on information that will change my destiny forever, make or break my heart and dreams. My default is to conclude the latter based on his negative affect. No wonder he’s been distant and now wants a ride. He needs a moment alone in person to let me down easy. As gruff as he may seem today, no doubt he’s kindly motivated.

  Making sure I hear it from him, my former boss, the very person who encouraged and groomed me to be a cyber ninja of the first order, a Master of Space. He’s going to tell me I didn’t make it to the next round. That neither Carme nor I did. But then again, that’s ridiculous, my gloom and doom based on nothing more than insecurity and fear.

  I’m hypothesizing without the benefit of real data. Reaching a conclusion without doing the math.

  And I know better. And he would expect more of his protégé than that.

  Stop it.

  I warn myself to keep in mind what I’m always preaching to my sister, to Fran and pretty much anyone else who will listen. Pay attention to the details. It’s the little things that will kil
l you. I know that better than anybody and can’t afford to lose my focus or my cool. Never again. Not for any reason.

  You know better!

  Yes, I do, having learned that lesson in the hardest way, and I sound like the most reasonable person on the planet as I tell Dick it was excellent seeing him today. And I’m very pleased he thought enough of me to call. It would be my honor to give him a ride. I’ll head out ASAP and meet him at NASA Langley headquarters, Building 2101.

  “Give me 10 minutes max,” I say to him as I take slow quiet breaths, restoring order and clarity the way I always do.

  Focus. Focus. Focus.

  Being deliberate, one thing at a time. Holstering my pistol. Attaching it to my belt. Next my badge. Then my handcuffs. Before reaching inside the tall narrow safe for my HK416 assault rifle, which has a nasty habit of toppling over because it’s too big to lie flat. Propping it up in back. Gently closing the door. Making sure it’s locked. Thoughts settled now. Better. Much better.

  “Look for me in a white pickup truck at the front entrance,” I hear myself saying calmly, confidently to Dick. “All I’ve got to do is lock up swabs in the evidence refrigerator, and I’m good to go.”

  “You took swabs of something inside the tunnel?”

  I explain it as I look around my office, making sure I’m not forgetting anything before heading out. But there’s not much to forget. This facet of my career requires far fewer textbooks, journals, tools, technologies and heavy mental lifting than what I do the rest of the time when I’m not as armed and dangerous.

  Mostly what I keep in here is what one might expect of a federal special agent. Gear and weapons, and a desk with computers, facing the corner windows, angled so I can scan Langley Boulevard and its surrounds while my back is never to the door. On the credenza is the bottomless box of deactivated visitor credentials that need to be returned to the Badge and Pass Office. Plus, the in-out basket for reports awaiting my review. But I don’t bother with as much on paper as I once did.