“That concerns me as well,” said Swift. “Do you now have some thoughts on how we might be able to find him?”
“Not specifically, but I’ve been thinking that Peter’s mention of ‘the three’ may indicate he knew something about Pierce’s plans, or his interaction in this plot against the science community.”
“Yes, Father Ryan told me of Dr. Newbury’s last words, but we have not been able to connect them to his murder. Where else can we look for information that has not already been examined by my team?”
“Peter’s lake house,” said Oliver. “He often went there to have a quiet place to think. I’d like to ask Alice and Elizabeth to accompany us to the house and help us go over any notes that he might’ve made there in the last month.”
“Where is it located?” asked Swift.
“It’s in Michigan in an area called Long Beach, just above the Indiana border. I’ve been there a few times in the past but would not be able to locate it without Alice’s help.”
“I’m all for it,” said Robert Swift, “especially if it leads us to Pierce. He’s a murder suspect and I consider him to be a danger as long as he’s at large. I’ll talk to Director Clark and let him know what we are planning. Maybe he has additional input to help us with our search.”
The following morning Maxine phoned Oliver and announced she would be joining the search for Pierce. “Director Clark’s in favor of the trip to the lake house but felt there should be a second armed agent along on the hunt in case you encountered Forrest.”
Later that day Oliver and Swift met Maxine when she arrived at O’Hare.
“I’m glad to meet you, Agent Phillips,” said Swift, “your research has been invaluable in our search for Mr. Pierce and Dr. Spencer. I’m hopeful this trip can bring my investigation to a positive conclusion.”
“Thanks,” replied Maxine, “I’m happy to assist in any way I can.”
Oliver had called Elizabeth the night before to fill her in on their plans to visit Peter’s lake house and to look for evidence of Peter’s work and possibly some leads to where Forrest Pierce might be hiding. Elizabeth agreed that she and Alice would meet them at the airport arrival ramp; Oliver could then follow them through Chicago and up the east side of the lake to the home. She indicated there was probably no food there and that she and Alice might have to stop in the nearby town of Michigan City to shop for groceries if they decided to spend more than part of a day there.
Oliver left Maxine and Robert Swift at the curb of the arrival ramp as he went to get his car. Driving back to their location he noticed that Elizabeth and Alice had arrived and stopped at the curb in front of Max and Robert Swift. The four were greeting one another, and Max was now meeting Elizabeth and Alice for the first time. Oliver was pleased that Max and Alice, upon first meeting, seemed to have much to talk about and were immediately enjoying one another’s company.
The five divided themselves between Elizabeth’s and Oliver’s automobiles, and set off for Lake Michigan, the men in one car and the three women in the other. The drive through Chicago and up the south east shore of Lake Michigan was somewhat less congested than usual since it was on the interstate highway at a time of day when traffic was light.
During the drive, Robert Swift turned to Oliver and said, “Oliver, you’re lucky to have Miss Phillips as a partner. She is an excellent field agent, and she’s very fond of you.”
“I guess you are right, Robert, we’ve made an effective team this week, and she’s stopped giving me grief about having to do research.”
“I’m serious, Oliver. I noticed how she looked at you while she was talking to Alice.”
Oliver did not reply as he continued the drive.
They exited I-94 at Michigan City and stopped at a small grocery store to pick up sliced meat, cheese, and bread for lunch. Oliver and Robert waited in their car at the bottom of the street while Alice, Elizabeth, and Maxine picked up the few needed groceries. The street was lined with small shops, and from their vantage point the two men could admire the sail boats of various sizes moored in the harbor.
As the three women were leaving the store, they were being watched by a man in tattered clothes, and an unshaven face, standing next to a doorway across the street from the store. Elizabeth, Alice, and Max drove back down Lake Shore Avenue, followed at some distance by Oliver and Robert. The man followed on foot, knowing he could not keep up but now could recognize the women’s car.
While parts of Spencer’s destructive plans had been playing out around the world, back in Michigan City Forrest Pierce had been desperately searching for the letter. With some of his mother’s cash he’d brought with him after leaving Waxahachie, Forrest had rented a small ground-floor room on the main intersection in Michigan City. He had chosen a room that allowed him to view the entrance to the small grocery store across the street. Most all of the local lakeside cottage owners shopped for food there. It was here he hoped eventually to see Dr. Newbury’s daughter, Alice, or one of the Fermilab team members if they visited the Newbury cottage looking for more of his records or perhaps for the letter.
He suspected the local authorities had been given his description and that he was a hunted man; so he spent some time in his hotel room attempting to change his appearance in some way. He realized there was little he could do other than ruffle his hair to look disheveled, but then feared he might be picked up as a vagrant. Nevertheless, since he had seen a few homeless men and women in parts of the downtown, he finally decided his best chance of hiding his identity was to grow a beard and wear clothes that looked like he had slept in them.
Since this altering of his appearance would take days, he made his short trips into the neighborhood of cottages at dusk, when he could hide his face. Forrest knew one of these cottages belonged to Peter Newbury, but he had never visited it. Some of the owners had placed their names on decorative plaques on their mailbox posts, and he hoped he might find the cottage this way.
He walked for miles through the neighborhood and out to the highway to a truck stop away from town to buy his food. As the days went by, he became more fatigued and frustrated at not finding the cottage (in fact he had passed it three times without stopping, because it had no name sign).
Forrest’s nights began to be filled with frightening dreams as his stress and paranoia started to diminish his mental stability. On one evening in particular, he sat for hours at his hotel room window watching the store across the street, as he had done night after night since his arrival. As the evening darkness fell over the surrounding town, Forrest became more and more fearful of any lurking figure he imagined he saw from his window. Finally, fatigue overtook him and he fell asleep in the chair.
In his dreams he saw the form of his mother pleading with him to stay away from the Reverend. She was holding the letter in her hand. As he reached for it, her face and form became that of Peter Newbury! Dr. Newbury clutched the letter tightly and ran away across a field and into dark woods. As Forrest chased him, in his dream, through the clinging vines and brambles, he felt his body changing. He was now chasing Dr. Newbury on all fours. He had become some kind of beast, his arms and legs covered with thick fur, his hands claws, and his feet hooves. When he finally reached Dr. Newbury, he was standing next to a freshly dug grave, the letter still clasped in his hand. As Forrest lunged to grab the letter, the man turned and was no longer Dr. Newbury, but now was Reverend Spencer.
The Reverend fixed Forrest with glowing red eyes and thrust out his free hand. Grabbing Forrest by the neck, he hurled him into the open grave. Forrest was falling down and down into a bottomless pit surrounded by the demonic laughter of the Reverend!
He awoke gasping and dripping with sweat. The sense that he was still living this nightmare would persist in his frail psyche in the coming days. He would often revisit this grave in his dreams. A feeling of altered reality was sweeping over him, and he was overcome with anxiety. If he could just find that letter, this living nightmare would stop.
&nb
sp; His paranoia grew, and Forrest began to see demons and agents of Satan in the faces of people, and even dogs, that he encountered on his treks through the streets of the town. On one trip to the truck stop for food he purchased a small hunting knife. He carried it in his pocket continually in order to feel less vulnerable. More and more he watched the grocery store from his hotel room.
This compulsion to find the Newbury cottage and the letter carried Forrest closer and closer to a complete breakdown of his sanity. As the days passed, he lost weight from inadequate meals and lack of sleep. He was slowly slipping out of touch with reality and could think of nothing but the letter. Forrest’s nightmares continued and always ended with Benton Spencer hurling him into that open grave. Forrest had become almost unrecognizable.
During the past few days his mind and body had continued to deteriorate from stress and neglect. He knew Peter Newbury had a cabin somewhere in this vicinity and that his attempt to destroy all of Peter’s records was not complete until he found the letter. It was not in Peter’s home, which he had carefully searched at a time when both Peter and Alice had been away at this lake cottage. It was not at his office either, and he had failed to find it at Dr. Saxon’s apartment. It must be in the cottage.
He had carefully staked out this grocery store in hopes of spotting Alice as she picked up food and tracking her to the cottage’s location. At last she had appeared. He had seen that Alice was with Elizabeth Ward and another woman whom he didn’t recognize. He was sure he could overpower them if need be in order to find the letter.
A few months back, Dr. Newbury had told Forrest that his mother had written to him out of concern for Forrest’s association with a bad element near his home in Texas. He knew then he had to find and destroy the letter. He suspected the letter contained enough information to expose everyone involved in this noble fight against Satan.
Forrest Pierce followed the three women into the subdivision of lake cottages. Although he had lost sight of them, he knew he could now identify the correct cottage. He was unaware the three women were being followed by another car containing Oliver and Robert Swift. They had been driving behind the women, but were far enough ahead of Forrest that he could not see that they were together. The men had parked across the road from where Alice pulled into the driveway of the cottage.
When Forrest finally spied the car parked in the driveway, he stopped and moved into the wooded area that ran down the slope to a creek behind this row of cottages. He would stay hidden, but attempt to find a way to enter the house at night.
The lakeside cottage was not actually located on the lake shore, but was nestled in among a collection of comfortable one and two-story cottages within walking distance of the high dune line. This line of high dunes separated the houses from Lake Michigan and protected them from its winter fury.
The Newbury cottage had an ample living room, kitchen, and study downstairs and bedrooms upstairs. As the three women turned on the power to the water heater and placed the groceries in the pantry and refrigerator, Oliver and Robert went into the study at the back of the house.
“Holy cow!” exclaimed Oliver, “Elizabeth wasn’t kidding when she said Peter was working on a toy model!”
There before them were four Chinese Checker boards laid out on a large table, each filled with a different equilateral triangle of colored marbles. Nearby on another table were triangular magnetic tiles of different colors arranged into three different types of polyhedrons.
“I don’t want to touch anything until Elizabeth can have a look at this and perhaps tell us what it means.”
“I agree, but I don’t see how this can lead us to Pierce. Perhaps there are some notes in this desk, here by the window,” said Robert, as he opened the window to let the lake breeze clear the stuffiness from the study.
Just then the three women approached the study, hearing Oliver and Robert’s voices. As she entered the study, Elizabeth was even more surprised and excited than Oliver.
She exclaimed, “So these are Peter’s pixels and prions!”
She examined them closely, photographing them with her cell phone, and commenting to herself as she went. “Red, green, blue pixels and cyan, magenta, yellow anti-pixels. Fifty-five of these form planar triangles that have one of these colors at each corner, and the triangles with thirty-six pixels have the three different colors or anti-colors at each corner. These equilateral triangles must be his prions.”
Over at the table containing the magnetiles she said, mostly to herself, “These magnetiles are also red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, and yellow, but now include the balanced RGB prions and CMY prions, represented here by white and black respectively.”
Then she examined the three different forms of magnetile polyhedrons, one with four tiles, one with six tiles, and one with twelve tiles, then exclaimed, “And here are his three families of matter!”
“But only one of these is a Platonic solid; the other two don’t fit the pattern. They’re not convex,” said Oliver, who had remembered playing with these same toys years before as he discussed ideas of geometry with Peter in their undergraduate days at Princeton. “But look. Here he has placed together pairs of tiles on top of anti-tiles. We once discussed how this configuration was actually a form of Platonic solid.”
“Those pairs may be photons and gluons,” said Elizabeth.
“But why are two of these solids just sets of two and four open tetrahedrons stuck together to form six and twelve-sided objects?”
“Here, take these loose tiles and build each polyhedron, Platonic or not. Then test each one to see how strong it is.”
Oliver quickly went about forming the three, sitting before him on the table, and immediately discovered that the only one that was truly rigid and difficult to separate was the four-sided tetrahedron. The more tiles, the less stable. He also found that the six-sided polyhedron was stronger than the eight-sided Platonic solid, and he was unable to create the icosahedron without Elizabeth helping to hold it together. It fell apart under its own weight as soon as it was placed on the table.
“Wow, do you think Peter found the key to a theory of everything?” he asked Elizabeth.
“It’s obviously still a toy model at this point, but it has possibilities. Our group can now begin to work on the mathematical theory underlying all of this and hopefully replicate the work that had been erased from Peter’s computer.”
Tears welled up in Alice’s eyes as she said, “Dad used to show me the various shapes that could be made by gluing together toothpicks and building towers and bridges. Playing these construction games with me, Dad helped me learn for myself which configuration of toothpick struts made the strongest form. My discovery of the equilateral triangle, and how its strength is used in the building of trusses and joists, eventually led me to my chosen field of architecture. Each time I design a structure I think of those teaching moments with him.
Elizabeth replied, “Peter was the same fatherly mentor to all of us on his team. He could always inspire us to reach beyond the obvious and discover new insight.”
At this point Robert Swift spoke up. “This is telling us all much about Dr. Newbury’s final work, and I’m glad some of his final work has been recovered, but I am concerned that we must still find Forrest before anyone else is harmed. In the event Dr. Newbury left some notes that could help us, Alice would you mind examining what is here of his personal papers?”
Alice opened each desk drawer one at a time and extracted papers, most of which were reprints of published works about the standard model of particle physics; but many had to do with information content on the horizon of black holes, and something called “the holographic theory.”
In the bottom of the last drawer she found an envelope containing a letter. It was addressed to Peter Newbury at his Fermilab address and was postmarked from Waxahachie, Texas. It had been mailed on Friday, April 4, of this year.
Alice extracted the letter, but then handed it to Oliver. “Would you please read it
, Uncle Oliver? I’m not sure I can.”
He unfolded the letter, written in ink by a shaky hand, and began to read.
“Dear Dr. Newbury,
I am writing you to warn you that you may be in danger. Some years ago I joined with a group that promised to help me get my land back from the government. The Reverend told me that if I put some of my money into his holy project that my land and my soul would both be saved. I agreed and encouraged my son to join in this effort as well. But last week I overheard the Reverend say that he, along with two other men, one from Israel and the other from Iran, would wipe out the Satan worshipers like Peter Newbury at all their places of worship around the world. I told the Reverend this was not what I had wanted when I joined his effort and that I would give him and these two men no more of my money. Please tell my son Forrest to keep away from those three dangerous men; he just won’t listen to me.
Sincerely,
Mary Pierce.”
Oliver had been standing next to the window that had earlier been opened by Robert Swift. From the woods behind the house, Forrest had noticed the window was open and had moved close to the house to hear what was being said inside. When he finally was able to crawl close to the window, he heard Oliver’s voice reading a letter. To his horror, he realized it was his mother’s letter when he heard her name at the end.
Holding the fishing knife he had earlier purchased at the truck stop, he bolted through the open window, and grabbed Oliver tightly, holding the knife to his throat. Forrest’s crazed eyes were fixed on Oliver’s right hand holding the letter. “I should’ve killed you at your apartment; now you’ve read my mother’s letter!” he shouted in a voice shrill and unstable with anxiety.
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