The Transmuter's Daughter

by Laurence Dahners

  Grimly, Morgan said, “We’ll get you through college somehow. Try not to worry about that one.”

  She got up and picked up her second piece of toast. “Let me show you where the files are. I’ll eat this as we go.”

  Morgan’s initial reaction was that she’d be dropping crumbs all around the house. He decided that was the least of their problems. He got up too.

  Daryn’s file cabinet proved to be quite small and Morgan worried because there wasn't a lot in it. Pulling out a file folder labeled “important documents” he saw it had their Social Security cards, Daryn’s marriage certificate, his wife’s death certificate, and the kids’ birth certificates.

  Morgan’s heart stumbled when he glanced at one of the birth certificates and saw, “Morgan Lindl Djai,” written on it. At first he wondered why his name was on the certificate.

  Then he realized that his brother had named his first child after him. The kid went by his middle name, not his first. Morgan burst into tears and just sat huddled in the chair, rocking back and forth. I guess he forgave me long before I forgave him, Morgan thought, bitterly angry at himself.

  When he had his emotions under control, he finished looking through the paper files, continuing to worry because there were so few. He realized why as soon as he’d gotten on Daryn’s computer using the password Kiri provided. Apparently, Daryn scanned all their important papers and stored them as PDFs, most of them without keeping the paper originals. That proved quite a boon since Morgan could use the computer to search for documents he wanted.

  He’d just found a folder labeled “Financial” when he got a phone call from Officer Lincoln. He answered, “Hello, Officer. I was planning to call you pretty soon anyway. Have they learned anything more about my brother’s death?”

  “Um, that’s kind of what I’m calling about. The autopsy’s been completed, but the results aren’t back yet. They haven’t released your brother’s body yet, but they’ve asked me to find out who you want it released to when the time comes. Also, they’re releasing his personal effects if you want to pick them up.”

  “I’ll have to research funeral homes before I can answer the first question, but I would like to pick up his effects. His credit cards would be really helpful as I try to straighten out his financial affairs.” Morgan paused, then said, “Is there anything else you can tell us? Have they found the men that killed him yet? Determined a motive or anything?”

  “I’m sorry sir,” Lincoln said, “Detective Chatfield hasn’t released any of that kind of information yet.”

  “Do you know when he will?”

  “I’m afraid that depends on the progress of the case. Sorry.”

  “Okay,” Morgan said, resignedly, “where do I go to pick up his effects?”

  Morgan headed up the stairs to tell the young people where he was going. He could still hear the melancholy acoustic guitar music. It’d also been playing when he’d been upstairs looking in the file cabinet earlier. He felt a little surprised that someone had so much sad instrumental guitar music, all of a similar style. He worried it was Kiri’s, but the music was actually coming from Lindl’s room. The door was open so he didn’t have to knock. When he looked into the room he saw Adam and Kiri sprawled on one bed. Lindl was sprawled on the other, playing an acoustic guitar. It’s not a recording! Morgan thought with surprise. He’d thought the sounded quite professional.

  I guess this explains why there’s so much of it, he thought.

  Apparently deep in their own thoughts, none of the young people looked up at him. He just stood there, at first because he didn’t want to interrupt. After he’d been standing there for a while, he realized there was something hypnotically soothing about the music. He stepped quietly into the room and sat on the chair at the desk, feeling calmed.

  Eventually, Lindl’s fingers slowed and the piece gently came to an end. Lindl looked at Morgan, “Can I help you with anything? I’ve just been kind of selfishly sitting up here playing music because it makes me feel better.”

  Morgan gave him a nod, “It makes me feel better too. Thanks.” He was about to ask for some more music when he remembered he had a lot to do. “Actually, I came up here to let you guys know I’m going into town to pick up Daryn’s personal effects. They’ve released them and having his credit cards will help me figure out your financial situation. I’ll get groceries while I’m out.”

  Adam got up, saying, “I’ll drive.”

  Thinking that it wouldn’t be good to leave Lindl and Kiri there alone, Morgan was about to say something about how Adam should stay, but then Lindl and Kiri both got up. They said they’d like to go as well. Morgan decided they just wanted to get out of the house.

  ***

  The man that gave them Daryn’s effects frowned a little when he picked up the box. When he set it down on the counter in front of them Morgan was surprised by the solid thump it made. The box contained a wallet, a key fob with a Ram symbol that probably went with Daryn’s Dodge truck, a Samsung cell phone, a Swiss army knife and a half package of Rolaids.

  And, an odd-looking silvery white lump of metal. Morgan estimated it at about 3 x 3 x 1 centimeters. Well, it might be more like 15 mm thick, he thought. He wondered what the hell it was. Curiously, he picked it up to see if it had some shape to the bottom side of it that’d make it more useful than the little brick it appeared to be.

  Or, he tried to pick it up. His fingers slipped off. He grabbed it again, this time more firmly.

  His fingers had slipped off because it was heavy. He almost asked the man who’d handed him Daryn’s effects what the little metallic brick was. Then he thought better of it since he couldn’t imagine why the man would know. Slipping the chunk of metal into his pocket, he asked the man if they had a little bag he could put the effects in.

  The guy shrugged, “There’s a lid for the box. It’s underneath.”

  Morgan realized that the box was sitting in its inverted lid. He separated the two and closed it. “Do I need to sign something?”

  The man held out an electronic terminal and Morgan signed.

  As they left, Morgan looked at Kiri and Lindl. They’d been talking to Adam and didn’t seem to have noticed the chunk of metal. He said, “Hey, Adam, you feel up to buying everyone lunch? I’m hungry and we still have to buy groceries before we go home. I think it’d be nice to take a little break away from the house.”

  Adam shrugged, “Sure, I’d like that too. He turned to Kiri and Lindl, “You guys have any suggestions as to where we should go?”

  Enthusiastically, Lindl said, “12 Bones! It’s an awesome barbecue place. It’s only open for lunch and only during the week so Kiri and I hardly ever get to go.”

  12 Bones proved to be an unpretentious place, but it had a line waiting out the door. The smell of the barbecue was mouthwatering. Adam elbowed Lindl, “How many racks of ribs am I gonna have to buy for you?”

  Lindl grinned at him, “They have four flavors of ribs. One rack of each oughta do me.”

  Adam gave him a wide-eyed look, “My poor little debit card’s gonna melt!”

  When they actually got up to the cashier, they each ordered a half rack except Lindl who ordered two half racks, one each of two different flavors. With side dishes, it seemed like a lot of food, but Morgan figured they could take some home and eat them as leftovers.

  They sat outside, drinking tea and waiting for their food. The weather was beautiful. Some question got Adam talking about his robotics club. Kiri found the idea of building a fighting robot fascinating and started asking him questions. Even Lindl seemed a little interested, making a few perceptive comments.

  Morgan just sat, avoiding the temptation to interject his own comments so he could just listen to the cousins getting along. He decided what he was feeling was a peaceful sadness. The peace came from finally being reunited with his family, the sadness from losing his brother before it’d happened.

  The ribs proved to be just as good as Lindl had promised. Lindl ate his
two half racks and three of the ribs in Kiri’s half rack. Adam finished off his half rack.

  Morgan was the only one who had any ribs left over to take home.

  Friday afternoon

  Arriving back home, they put away groceries. Lindl said he was going up to the mine to see whether the police were still there. Kiri gave him a surprised look, “Why would they still be there?”

  Lindl scratched his head, “They were still there this morning. Said they still hadn’t found the two guys that were in the mine.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  Lindl slowly shook his head, “I think those guys might be lost in there.”

  Without much expression, Kiri said, “Serve ‘em right if they are. I’ll go with you.”

  Adam turned to Morgan, “I’m gonna go too, okay?”

  Morgan nodded, wanting to go, but feeling like he had too many things to work out.

  Once they’d gone, he got the lump of metal out of his pocket. Its weight, dragging on his pocket and waistband, had been annoying him. He scratched at it with a fingernail and hefted it, wondering how he could determine what it was. It certainly didn’t look like a tool, and as heavy as it was, he didn’t think it could possibly be hollow. It just doesn’t seem like Daryn to be carrying around a useless chunk of metal. Maybe I should take it somewhere and have it assayed to determine what it’s made of?

  Deciding that had to be low on his list of priorities at present, he took it upstairs and put it in the desk drawer in the spare room. Back downstairs, he picked out a funeral home and called that in to Officer Lincoln.

  Then he started trying to learn what the issues would be if he had to take some money out of his retirement account. A 10% penalty, plus I have to pay taxes on what I take out. He decided it was a plausible solution, but it’d be his last resort.

  Morgan went back to the financial folder on Daryn’s computer. He’d just begun to understand how Daryn had organized things when he realized the kids had been gone what seemed a surprisingly long time. At first he thought they were probably fine. Just not thinking about my concerns, like typical teenagers. Then he thought about how Kiri had gone through a similar thought process when Daryn hadn’t shown up on time yesterday. With a sigh, he got up and left the house.

  When Morgan arrived at the mine entrance, the kids were nowhere to be seen. The policeman who’d been guarding the entrance that morning was still there. Morgan said, “Have you seen the young people who came up here with me this morning?”

  He nodded, “The detective’s got the girl inside, explaining her story about what she says went down. She didn’t want to go with the detective by herself, so the two boys went with her.”

  Something about the situation made Morgan uncomfortable. “Now that her dad’s dead, I’m her guardian. I’d like to be with her too.”

  The policeman looked uncertain. Getting out his phone, he said, “I’ll see what the detective says.” He spoke briefly then hung up. Turning to Morgan, he said, “They’re on their way out.”

  Morgan found this irritating. He thought he should be allowed to go in and check on his niece and nephew. However, he decided not to raise a ruckus.

  The minutes dragged by. He had no idea how deep in the mine the detective and the kids were, but it seemed like it was taking a long time for them to come out, at least if they’d actually started on their way out when the detective had said. Morgan was just about to say something to the policeman again when the door at the entrance of the mine opened.

  The three teenagers did not look happy. The detective looked frazzled. He immediately walked far enough from the entrance to get out into the sunshine. He turned back to the Djai’s after taking a couple of deep breaths and moving his shoulders about as if he were stretching. He fixed them with an intense gaze and said, “Okay, you can go. But don’t go too far.” He turned and went back in the mine.

  Morgan turned to the policeman, “What did he mean by that?”

  The policeman shrugged, “I don’t know.”

  Adam tugged on Morgan’s shirt. When he turned around, Kiri and Lindl were already on their way down the road to the house. “What’s been going on?” Morgan asked Adam, but allowed himself to be led away.

  “The detective’s been asking Kiri lots of questions. Where she was. Where her dad was. Where the guy was when he grabbed her. How the guy was holding her—”

  Morgan interrupted, “One of those guys grabbed Kiri? I hadn’t heard about that!”

  “Yeah, well, we hadn’t heard much, had we? Now I’ve heard a lot, but it’s all pretty confusing.” Adam glanced at Morgan, “And somewhat disturbing. Apparently, she called 9-1-1 because she saw two guys in the mine on security camera recordings. Once emergency services said the police were on the way, she went into the mine herself before the cops actually got here.”

  “She did?” Morgan said, astonished.

  Adam nodded, “They told her to wait, but she said she would’ve hated herself forever if something bad had happened to her dad before she got there, so she went in by herself.”

  “And one of the guys grabbed her?”

  “Yeah, apparently her dad’d been hiding. But once the guy got ahold of Kiri, he used her to force her dad to come out. Then the guy shot her dad. Kiri says she didn’t know the guy had a gun, but it went off when she hit him in the nuts trying to escape.” Adam looked at his dad, “I think she blames herself for getting her dad killed.”

  “She didn’t shoot him!”

  “No, but if she hadn’t been captured, and if she hadn’t hit the guy in the nuts…”

  “Oh…”

  “Dad?”

  Morgan nodded.

  “That detective was asking her some really… pointed questions. Like he might think she shot her dad.”

  “What?!”

  “He kept going on about how they couldn’t find any ‘alleged perps’ and that there wasn’t any evidence that there’d actually been any men in the mine.” Adam turned to look at Morgan, “He says there was gunpowder residue on Kiri’s right hand but not her left. Whatever that means.”

  “Wait. I thought the security cameras recorded video of two guys in the mine?”

  “Yeah, I think that’s where Kiri and Lindl are going. To try to download the video so they can show the detective. He said he needed to see it.”

  When Morgan and Adam arrived at the house, they found Kiri and Lindl on what Morgan thought of as the house computer. It was a desktop model in a nook just off the kitchen. The two teenagers looked distraught. “Is there a problem with the video?” Morgan asked.

  Kiri sobbed. Lindl looked up bleakly. “To save disk space it only keeps twenty-four hours of video. Then it starts recording over it. It’s been more than twenty-four hours.”

  “Wait!” Morgan said, “Kiri! Let me sit down.”

  She looked up at him like he wasn’t making any sense. She blinked, “What?”

  “Let me sit down! Maybe I can save the video.” He leaned over her to grab the mouse, “Where’s the video recording program?!”

  Getting up slowly, Kiri said, “It’s already been recorded over. There’s no point—”

  Frustrated, Morgan said, “Kiri! This’s what I do. Computer stuff’s my life. The video files have probably only been marked so they can be recorded over. They may not’ve actually been recorded over. But they might be getting recorded over right this moment, so please point out the program that records the video.”

  Kiri reached out and touched an icon on the desktop. Morgan absently noticed her fingernail was painted neon pink. The other nine were black. Why am I noticing that now, he wondered, thinking that there were so many other important things he should be paying attention to.

  He clicked the icon and the program immediately opened, suggesting it was active. Once it was open he could see a glowing red dot suggesting it was still recording video. A policeman went by inside the mine tunnel while Morgan was trying to figure out how to shut off the recording function.
>
  He realized that the red dot was also the on/off and clicked it.

  He called up Task Manager and looked for any other active programs that might also be recording to the hard drive. He shut down any that were even questionable, then relaxed back into the seat. “Okay, nothing’s recording to the hard drive now, so if the video file hasn’t already been recorded over, I might be able to find it.”

  Morgan pondered the options. He didn’t want to install any software on the computer to help him search for the files that had been marked to be over-written. If he did that the new software itself might be recorded over the video he was looking for. “Adam,” he said looking around.

  Adam wasn’t there, but Kiri was right behind him. She said, “Can I help?”

  “No,” Morgan said, getting up, “I need to get an external hard drive out of my suitcase.” He trotted up the stairs and got the four terabyte drive he’d recorded his home computer onto. When he plugged it into the house computer it proved to have plenty of room left to record the entire 500 gigabytes of the hard drive on the house computer. It would hold that in addition to the backup of the hard drive from his computer back home. Presuming that Kiri was curious about what he was doing, he spoke back over his shoulder toward her, “I’m going to back up the house computer’s entire drive onto this external drive. By the entire drive, I mean not just the files. I’ve got a little piece of software that’ll make it record every byte on the disk, even the deleted files that haven’t been overwritten. That way, I can’t accidentally record over the security camera videos while installing software on the house computer. I’ll be able to search the copy of the house computer’s hard drive on the external drive using my laptop. I’ll install special data recovery software on my laptop and search this external drive with the laptop.”