Quantum

by Patricia Cornwell

  “Get behind me, devil,” as I do the math and my stomach rumbles like a thunderhead.

  Six doughnuts x approximately 100 calories = my having to sprint or run hills for at least 30 minutes.

  00:00:00:00:0

  I CAN just make out the 7-Eleven through the fog, about the only place open I’ve seen so far. Driving like a snail so I don’t overrun my headlights, and several times I’ve felt my tires slip on slicks of black ice.

  The convenience store is lit up green and red some 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) up ahead, and it will always be Zooms to us. That was the name of the cozy white-brick market when Carme and I were coming along, our family ritual on Saturdays to have lunch where the fishermen hung out. Hot food like burgers, pizza, not much could be more welcoming after long hours out in their trawlers and crabbers, and when I envision my sister from those early years, I’m not surprised she faced future trouble that I didn’t see coming.

  Kids feel hurt but don’t understand serious damage, and my parents didn’t discuss in front of us what that ride home from the swimming pool might have done. I heard nothing about the delayed and long-term effects of trauma on someone supposedly identical to me. But then again, Carme never really was. Not identical in the true meaning of the word, and I guess it all boils down to the old cliché that you can’t tell a book by its cover.

  The two of us may look and sound the same but we couldn’t be more opposite in the way we spin. Until last spring, I’d place her on the low end of the spectrum when it comes to subjectivity and emotionality, which probably is a good thing when flying helicopters tricked out with missiles and mini-Gatling guns. In Carme’s world, there’s no option for error. But in mine it’s inevitable when the focus is aviation risk-threat analysis combined with the chaotic human factor.

  It was no surprise our freshman year at Rice University that she latched on to information systems and algorithms, with segues into military science, game programming, cybercrime and other weapons necessary to fight fire with fire. While I set my heading bug on aerospace engineering and quantum mechanics, taking time out to explore the exoplanets of literature, music, religion, criminal justice and philosophy.

  Along with extended stays in the computer security lab, where I steeped myself in the dirtiest data-tampering tricks of the trade and the people who try them. Gearing up to slingshot through the ether on a tether of extreme technology, like a nerdy Spider-Man or ninja, as my sister likes to say. Except I’m not her, not the superhero type.

  But more a quiet fixer obsessed with how things work or fail, and who we are and what anything means. More EQ than IQ, I suppose. Shy. Unhappy in crowds. Uncool. Too much in my head. Possibly all of the above. Unlike Carme, who doesn’t meet a stranger. Or feel all that sorry for much. Or take no for an answer. Or doubt herself. Or ever give up.

  I know who my sister is. That added to what Dick told me, and I almost can connect the dots that might account for her recent behavior. The operative word being almost. As in not exactly and maybe not at all. It wasn’t that long ago that Carme was in control. Doing fine, not unkind, cold blooded or violent. I have to ask how things could go so wrong so fast, and my unsettled mood is ringing like those harmonic signals lighting up when Fran keyed her radio.

  “. . . How are you doing besides stressed and exhausted?” Mom’s soothing voice that I love so much as I remember heading out to Zooms at high noon, didn’t matter the time of year or the weather.

  Unless it’s a nor’easter, the watermen go out and come in, and I can see Dad, Carme and me sitting on those wooden benches as hard as church pews, eating submarine sandwiches and talking to all the Bubbas, as we called everyone, including ourselves. Carme especially would go to town. That Bubba did this, and the other Bubba did that while the Bubbas over there did the other thing, and she never did know when to quit.

  She’d go on and on until I was laughing so hard I’d spit out my drink, and my belly would ache. Once I almost choked, thought I was going to need the Heimlich maneuver. Especially when we’d get to “tawkin’ reeel south’rn,” and I’ve never denied being a little bit redneck. Maybe more than a little bit.

  “. . . You must be starving,” Mom worries about me as if I’m 10. “And I won’t ask what the case is beyond what’s in the news.”

  A stock line in my house from my years of interning with the police. My parents never pried for what they didn’t need to know. Only Carme would. Always having to find out everything, her business or not, and if the information isn’t offered, that’s never stopped her. Whether it’s unearthing personal details about someone or figuring out a password.

  “. . . A suicide, it seems,” Mom’s voice, “and not that it’s ever a good time, but this close to the holidays, my Lord . . . I just hate that bad things ever happen . . .” A slow, quiet sigh fills the cab of my truck, and she sounds weighed down, weary. “I just hate things being sad,” she adds, and I detect pain in her tone like a distant beacon.

  It was this time of year when she was diagnosed and I resigned from the air force, left Dick and my post in Colorado, returning home to help her die or live, either one. For a while it was touch and go. She would pull through and she absolutely wouldn’t in a true quantum conundrum. Both things true at the same time. Until they’re not.

  “I’m fine, and yes, it’s a sad case, but suffice it to say that things aren’t always as they appear,” and I envision Vera Young’s decomposing body hanging from her closet door like a work of monstrous art. “But lest there was any doubt, just because you work for NASA doesn’t mean you’re not a redneck.”

  “Well hon, I could have told you that.”

  “Here I am driving a tricked-out pickup truck with run-flat tires, and wearing a pistol on my hip that I just had on in the shower,” trying to make my mom lighten up. “And if wearing a gun in the shower doesn’t make me a redneck, I’m not sure what does.”

  “I’m not sure what it makes you or why you’d do that.” She can handle a gun like nobody’s business but isn’t what I’d call a fan.

  She’s also not laughing, not so much as a smile in her voice, and I don’t believe it’s because of the so-called suicide she really doesn’t want to hear about. My mother is a sensitive, fearless force of nature. We rarely discuss police work, cybercrimes, politics or much that’s negative and depressing, and whatever’s bothering her at the moment has nothing to do with any of that. I can tell.

  Reminding me of what she often says. That the most powerful word is the one left unsaid, and there’s something she’s not saying. I know this for a fact because I know her. Maybe better than anyone.

  “I guess wearing a gun in the shower makes sense if it’s a Psycho thing and you’re worried someone might murder you while you’re minding your own business naked, trying to clean up . . . ? What shower are we talking about?” Mom sounds completely distracted, trying to figure it out.

  “I wasn’t naked, and it wasn’t that kind of shower. Think of cold water blasting down like Niagara Falls while I was in the chemical suit I still have on. We had to rinse off inside the hazmat trailer before leaving the scene.”

  “Sounds like a good way to get pneumonia in weather like this.”

  “It’s really just the clothes I have on underneath that are soaked, and that’s mostly from sweating. No pneumonia but I feel like I’ve been slimed. Anyway, it’s been a night, and I’m sorry I’m getting in so late and may not have time to drop by the house before I’ve got to head back to Langley. No matter what, the EVA will happen as scheduled, and I have to head to Mission Control in a couple hours.”

  “Chase Place is always open with the lights on, and I’m warming up supper anyway. And I understand Dick is in town,” she adds with no warning.

  25

  I’VE not said a word to my parents about him being here.

  I
didn’t know anything about Dick’s unscheduled visit to Langley until last night, and my instructions were very clear that I wasn’t to discuss the matter with anyone. That includes family. Sensitive and classified information isn’t the business of best friends or next of kin, and I’m accustomed to sitting at the dinner table with a head full of information, not a word of it spoken.

  “Where did you hear anything about him?” I inquire cagily as I roar along slowly in my truck, watching for ice, not addressing what Mom said about Dick one way or another.

  I won’t inform her of anything about his visit here. I’m not going to mention that I briefed him. Or gave him a ride to the air force base while he divulged distressing information about Carme. It won’t help matters for Mom to be told, and she might just lose it if she knew what I do.

  “The Mason Dixon Line,” her voice inside my loud truck telling me the source of her intel about the commander of Space Force, my former boss, who I thought was a friend.

  And I almost swear again, “Darn that pushy piece of sh . . . !”

  I don’t mean Dick. I mean Mason and his show, The Mason Dixon Lyin’ as the joke goes. I know my mother listens to it, watching him on streaming video, and when I say she watches him, I mean precisely that. It’s embarrassing the way she drools over some local celebrity who’s the same age as her unmarried twin daughters.

  “What did he say?” I’m working hard to sound calm, creeping along, the 7-Eleven glowing like a lighthouse half a mile ahead.

  “That it’s a mystery. Mason must have used that word 10 times if he used it once. The rumor on the street is that the commander of Space Force made a surprise visit to Langley. He went on and on, speculating about what Dick’s doing at NASA.”

  “Seriously?” Tucking in my alarm so it doesn’t show. “Where the hell-o did Mason get any of this to begin with? Not from me. Not from anyone who would know. We’ve kept Dick’s visit confidential and didn’t even know about it until the last minute.”

  “Interesting. I assumed Mason heard it from you,” Mom ponders through the speakers in the dash. “I assumed you talked to him directly. I was going to ask you what he’s like in person, not stuck on himself, I hope . . .”

  “He left me a voice mail. I’ve not called him back. And don’t forget who his uncle is. I guess it’s possible the governor might have known Dick was coming here. Beyond that, I don’t know,” I reply before changing the subject. “What’s Dad up to?”

  “Well, he’s actually not home,” she stops me in my mental tracks because it’s simply not like him to be out at night, certainly not at this hour.

  “He’s still at work?” as my tires find a patch of ice, fishtailing a little.

  “Came home and then went back out again.”

  Dad’s not agoraphobic, and it would be easy to confuse his introversion for misanthropy. But it’s complicated. He’s complicated, and even as this is running in a subroutine beneath my thoughts, I’m reminded of how similar to Fran he’s become. Or better stated, she’s gotten more like him ever since her own phobias kicked in her doors and stormed her castle.

  “Oh boy,” under my breath and not meant to be heard.

  “What is it, Calli?”

  “Never mind. I was just thinking.”

  “You always are.”

  “Sometimes I get ambushed by insight,” I reply. “You know, having clarity about why people get under your skin, and who they remind you of or what. And Fran’s been quite the pill today, making me insane, starting when we had to check out a motion sensor alarm in a steam tunnel.”

  “Oh dear, oh dear. Fran and tunnels. And how did she do?”

  “Exactly how you’d expect. Anyway, sometimes I can be slow picking up on things,” and what I’m really saying is that Fran’s phobias are all the harder for me because they remind me of what I’ve lived with at home.

  My unassuming, painfully shy Dad. Who I haven’t always forgiven for not showing up. For getting others to take care of what he can’t. Others like Dick Melville, who was in the Air Force Academy with my father when he resigned for the same reason I did. A family emergency. His father was killed in a car accident, and there was no one to take care of his mother.

  Like me, he came home to the cove and went to work for NASA. But I don’t let people down the way he has.

  “Where did Dad go?” I get back to that, and the 7-Eleven is just ahead, a bearded man emerging from the glass front door.

  “All I know is something came up, don’t ask me what.”

  “Because of the shutdown?” I ask dubiously.

  My father may be as eccentric as they come, but he’s not the sort to hide out in his office trying to button up various research projects before he’s locked out of his building.

  “I suppose everything’s related to everything,” Mom’s voice inside my truck as I keep my eye on the bearded man.

  Big and bulky, someone who is far more fit and powerful than he looks in his baggy clothes. Carrying his steaming coffee to the 7-Eleven gas pumps, where his black Ford F-150 is parked, a woman with long hair in the passenger’s seat. A cross between a lumberjack and ZZ Top with no other customers in sight, and the bearded man has snagged my attention for a reason.

  “Is he planning on staying out all night or did he say?” I ask Mom about Dad as I take in the antennas on the Ford pickup, the covered bed, the signal jammer dome, and the backpack the bearded man has slung over his shoulder.

  The way he’s dressed sends my flag up a notch. His coat unzipped, no gloves, nothing binding in this deep freeze, and it doesn’t escape my notice that he handles the knapsack carefully. Seems mindful of jostling it, and I have to ask why it’s with him to begin with.

  Paying for gas didn’t require a dark-green backpack carried inside the 7-Eleven, a backpack that easily could be tactical, by the way. Why not just carry cash or your wallet? And if nothing unusual is inside this backpack, why not leave it in the truck with his wife or girlfriend, whoever the woman is?

  But I know the answer. I’m all but sure I do, almost willing to place a large bet on what he’s hauling around. Magic wands and sticks to poke things with, and no doubt he has additional transmitters, receivers and weapons on his person. Accoutrements, shall we say, that people like us don’t let out of our sight or safekeeping.

  “I don’t know what the plan is,” Mom says while the bearded man stares at my NASA truck going past, stares hard in a way that holds my interest.

  I can’t begin to figure out what the Secret Service is doing undercover out here in the middle of an Arctic blast that’s feeling as empty and forbidding as outer space about now. But if I’m right and this is the second time I’ve spotted agents and their tricked-out stealth wagons in the past few hours, then I have to wonder why. And believe me, it goes light-years beyond mere curiosity.

  I’m not assuming it’s a fact that the bearded man showing up in my neck of the woods is related to Dick’s visit to Hampton. But I can’t help but feel pretty convinced there’s a connection. What exactly I don’t know, and each time I replay what I was told about Carme, I feel upset again.

  00:00:00:00:0

  I CAN THINK of a lot of things I don’t want right about now, and being tailed is one of them.

  I watch the black pickup truck in my mirrors until I can’t see it anymore, troubled by the bearded man walking out of the 7-Eleven at just the right moment, rendezvousing with me like a robotic arm grabbing a cargo capsule hurling past. It’s not hard to notice or figure out how such an intersection of orbits might occur. It’s just math. Simple geometry, using points, distance to triangulate. He saw me coming or more likely his divining rod, his fish finder, did. Imagining his green backpack and what he might have in it, possibly equipment similar to mine, cruising the empty frozen night, fishing. Following what
’s biting.

  I don’t consider him or his truck random because I don’t think anything is, and I’m about to decide I’m not the one running into the Secret Service agents. But rather they’re running into me. Deliberately. Because trust me when I say if they don’t want me to know they’re around, I won’t.

  Not under any circumstances, certainly not considering who and what they’re up against, meaning I’m not naive and they aren’t either. I’m on their Electronic Crimes Task Force and not exactly an unknown quantity, which is why I was invited to work with the Secret Service to begin with. As a cyber investigator, I’m well versed in a lot of their same stuff.

  Therefore, if I’m being monitored for some reason, agents in such a detail will have been briefed that I’m a birdwatcher when it comes to antennas, jammers and similar devices. I don’t believe there’s one I haven’t met. So, a bearded dude with a backpack strolling to the gas pumps didn’t fool me, and I have no doubt he didn’t try. Quite the opposite as I recall the way he stared at my police truck.

  But what’s palpable to me this very moment, as I drive in my wretched state of hot wet messiness, is my mundane and self-indulgent appetites. I crave his big coffee with thick white steam billowing up. I sure could use one of those and a pit stop for about every reason imaginable. Hungry, tired, on the way to dehydrated with a fierce thirst, and I’ve had no access to a toilet since I barreled out of headquarters to pick up Dick many hours earlier.

  There’s no bathroom in the hazmat trailer, and it’s not my idea of a good time to have a full bladder while deconning in a cold shower that feels like a fire hose, scrubbing myself from head to toe with dishwashing detergent and a stiff-bristled brush. Especially with everything on . . . street clothes, chemical suit, ballistic vest, weapon belt with its holstered Glock, loaded, a round ready in the chamber . . .