“Okay,” Lindl said, turning and heading for the nook with the computer.
Adam said, “You’re going to call the defense attorney?”
Morgan took a deep breath, “If I can. Remember, it’s the weekend. There might not be any way to reach her.”
“If not, you’ll just call somebody else, right?” Adam said, as if he were worried that Morgan might not have thought of that possibility.
Morgan shrugged, “Maybe? Maybe I’ll see if I can ask Vic about it. I’m a little worried that a lawyer who’s taking cold calls for cases on holiday weekends might be young, inexperienced, and digging for business.”
Adam said, “Okay. What should I be doing?”
Morgan glanced over toward the nook with the computer in it and spoke quietly so Lindl wouldn’t hear. “One of the things I’d really like to do is get a better handle on why those guys might have attacked Daryn in the first place. We’ve said that Kiri didn’t have a motive, but we don’t know what their motive might have been either.” He shrugged, “The video shows they were in the mine, so they had opportunity…” Morgan paused, transfixed, “I’ve got to ask Lindl to watch the video with an eye to seeing if one of those guys had a weapon—so we can confirm they had the means.” He looked back at Adam, “But we need to establish that they had a motive.”
Adam frowned, “How am I going to find a motive?”
“I think it must have something to do with that chunk of metal. If it’s really worth more than $10,000, and if Daryn had more than just the one, that could be the motive.”
“And… You’re thinking I can do what, exactly?”
“Figure out how we tell for sure what it is. I’ve already ordered a more accurate digital scale from Amazon. When it comes in we can determine the density with better accuracy. If it’s a pure sample of something, that’d tell us what it is. However, if it’s a mixture of something with a higher density and something with a lower density, we wouldn’t be able to tell. I’m hoping you can find a lab that can do an assay or something to tell us for sure.”
“Okaay,” Adam said stretching the word, obviously uncertain.
“I know you don’t know how to do it, neither do I. But see if you can figure it out.”
“That reminds me,” Adam said, “you asked me to find out how to climb down that mineshaft and see if there was someone in it.”
Morgan nodded, “What’d you learn?”
Adam explained it in some detail, finishing up with, “Everything pretty much says it’s a job for experienced professionals. Do you want me to try to find someone who can do that kind of stuff?”
“If you can find time,” Morgan said, feeling like they were making some headway.
Morgan talked to Lindl about watching for a weapon, then looked up Tilly Arvind. She had a website. Scanning over it, Morgan got the feeling that, though she defended anyone, she specialized in defending women. Morgan wondered about the business model because it was his impression that most offenders were male. Her website’s slant toward women seemed like it could cause her to lose out on the biggest share of the business. Of course, my understanding of this business is pretty limited, he thought.
The website gave a phone number “for emergencies” and he called it. An automated service connected him to a line where he could leave a message. It promised someone would return his call as soon as possible. Glumly he thought that probably meant Tuesday morning.
Feeling a little depressed about his failure to engage her on Friday, he started looking at websites for other defense attorneys. There were quite a few but he was having trouble telling whether any of them were available on the weekend. He was about to dial Vic again when his phone rang. He answered, “Hello?”
“Hello, this’s Tilly Arvind returning a call from Morgan Djai?”
The breath exploded out of Morgan, “Yes. Yes, this’s Morgan Djai. Thank you so much for taking my call on the weekend.”
“How can I help? My friend, Vic Naylor, said you might call. He told me your niece might be arrested?”
Morgan felt a sudden burst of gratitude towards Vic. “Yes, Detective Chatfield and a couple of uniformed policemen just arrested her about twenty minutes ago. Would you be able to help us?”
“I’ll do what I can,” Arvind said in a reassuring tone. “Of course, the outcome will depend to some extent on the nature of the offense. Can you tell me what she’s purported to have done?”
“Kiri’s a victim…” Morgan began, somewhat heatedly. Then realized that Kiri would probably be better served by a dispassionate description of the facts. He took a breath, then proceeded to lay out his knowledge of the events as logically as he could.
When Morgan ran down, Arvind asked some perceptive clarifying questions. She sighed, “Well, our detective Chatfield’s known for his quick appraisal of the facts and his decisive responses to them. However, this wouldn’t be the first time one of his snap judgments turned out to be wrong.”
“So, what should we be doing? He told me I should turn the video evidence over to the district attorney, but I don’t even know how to go about doing that.”
“Why don’t we meet down at,” she paused, “do you know where they’re keeping her? The Juvenile Assessment Center I assume?”
“That’s what the policemen told me. We’re planning to go down there to visit her. We’d like to offer our emotional support if they’ll let us.”
“Okay, I’ll see you there in about an hour. Bring the video recording and any other evidence you might have to support her claim of innocence.”
Morgan went in to check on Lindl. His nephew was copying the video files onto four jump drives, one for the DA, one for Tilly Arvind, a spare, and, he said, “One for us to hide somewhere around here as a safety back up.” It sounded to Morgan as if Lindl thought someone might break into the house and steal or damage the computer, but Morgan didn’t ask him exactly what he was worried about. Lindl also had a document in which he’d annotated the exact times of the arrival of the two men and the capture of his father. He’d also noted the coming and goings of his sister, the ambulance crew, and the police. He looked up at Morgan with red rimmed eyes, “I’ve been skimming through it at 16X but I’m confident I haven’t missed anything. All I have left to go through’s the video from last night. It shouldn’t take much longer.” His voice sounded rough.
Morgan put a hand on his shoulder and said, “It’s been pretty bad to watch, huh?”
Lindl nodded, “But I’m glad I did. Now I know who to hate.”
Morgan wanted to say something about not giving in to hate, but decided not to. He told Lindl about the impending trip to visit Kiri. They decided they shouldn’t leave until Lindl had finished watching the video from last night. They wanted to have all the annotations and the video with them.
Morgan went upstairs to see how Adam was coming along.
Adam said that he’d found places that did assays on precious metals, but they were all closed on the weekends so he hadn’t been able to find out what kind of specimen he’d need to send to them or how long it’d take to get an answer. Nor, how much it’d cost.
Adam also told Morgan he’d found a website for a guy in Virginia who taught caving. The guy’s website mentioned that he’d gone down in a few mines as well. Unfortunately, he couldn’t be contacted on the weekend either.
Morgan said, “I got ahold of Tilly Arvind. We’re going to go visit Kiri in a little bit. I’m assuming you’d like to come along?”
Adam nodded eagerly.
“I’m going to change my clothes. I have the feeling that we’ll get a lot more respect at the jail if we’re dressed nicely. I can’t find much about visiting, but what I do find suggests that parents and guardians can visit but that others require approval. You might want to shave and change your clothes in hopes that if you look sharp they’ll approve you too.”
“I don’t have a suit or anything,” Adam said, looking a little bit distressed.
“Yeah, I wasn’
t thinking a suit, but not shorts and a T-shirt either. Just, the nicest of whatever you brought.”
“Should we stop somewhere so I can buy a button-down shirt and some dress pants?”
Morgan restrained a smile at the transparency of Adam’s desire to see Kiri. He said, “We’ll see if we have time. I don’t want to be late to meet the attorney.”
When Morgan went downstairs, Lindl looked up angrily, “That big bastard left the mine last night.”
Morgan’s first thought was, If the cops had at least kept a guard on the mine, they’d have him. Then he wondered whether he should’ve guarded the mine entrance himself. He decided that, in view of the way the big guy’d manhandled Daryn, it’d have been crazy to try to capture him. To Lindl, he said, “What about the smaller guy?”
Lindl shook his head, “I guess he’s still in there. Probably down the shaft like Kiri thought.”
***
Kiri was in the Buncombe County Juvenile Crisis and Assessment Center. It was a small facility, only intended to hold juveniles until their day in court. The lady guard who’d checked her in had been polite and thoughtful, not some kind of monster like you might expect from seeing jailers on TV.
Nonetheless, the lady said she wasn’t allowed access to any of the stuff she’d packed in her backpack. Apparently, she might be allowed access to it at some point, but it wouldn’t happen right away.
Kiri was bored.
When she didn’t have something to occupy her thoughts, they kept turning to her feelings of guilt. She kept thinking about how, if she hadn’t run into the mine against the 9-1-1 operator’s advice, her dad’d still be alive. Or, if she hadn’t hit that guy in the balls, making him jerk the trigger.
Logically, she told herself that she couldn’t be sure something bad wouldn’t have happened to her dad even if she hadn’t gone in there. Also, that her dad getting shot at such a distance with a handgun that wasn’t really aimed at him had to be a bizarre fluke.
Logic, unfortunately, didn’t make her feel any better.
In an effort to get her mind out of its unproductive rut, she started thinking about her Uncle Morgan. When Kiri’d been younger, she’d realized that most of her classmates had extended families. When she’d gone to a friend’s birthday party that’d been populated with large numbers of cousins, Kiri’d come home and asked her dad why she hadn’t ever met any of her own relatives.
He told her that her mom had been an only child whose mother had died and whose father was distant. On his side of the family, her grandmother and grandfather had both died in a car wreck. They’d only had two children, himself, and her Uncle Morgan.
She’d been shocked. “I have an Uncle Morgan?” she’d asked excitedly.
He’d nodded slowly. At the time, she hadn’t recognized his reluctance.
Realizing that her uncle’s kids would be cousins to her, she’d excitedly asked how many cousins she had. Her dad had said slowly, “I don’t know…”
Astonished by this admission, Kiri had pestered him with questions about why he didn’t know and why they didn’t call to find out right that moment. She’d proclaimed her desire to go visit her uncle and whatever cousins he might provide.
Over time, the tale of the estrangement of her father and his brother had been filled in a little, though reluctantly. She’d gradually built up an internal picture of her uncle as a horrible person. As she thought back on it now, she realized her dislike of her uncle couldn’t be based on much in the way of facts—her dad simply hadn’t provided much information.
So why do I keep thinking the worst of Uncle Morgan? she wondered. And treating him like crap. She’d resolved on several occasions now to give him a chance, but kept finding herself interpreting everything he said in the worst possible light.
One problem with her image of her uncle was the way she’d always pictured him as such a bastard. A dashing bastard. Someone who lived a large life of adventure. Someone who’d pissed off her dad because of his reckless joi de vivre. Someone exciting, even though unsavory. Learning that he was an unemployed software developer had been a huge disappointment. She could have respected the kind of person who made software sing. But since programmers were always in demand; if he hadn’t been able to get a job after he got laid off, she didn’t think he could be much good.
Although, he did say that he’d rescued the videos that were supposed to have been deleted. She thought for another moment, But I haven’t seen them to know he really succeeded. Apparently, whatever he recovered wasn’t good enough to convince the detective. Also, she wasn’t sure that knowing deleted files could be rescued and therefore downloading software that would do it was all that impressive.
Still, she thought, he’s my uncle and he seems to be trying to do his best for us. I’ve got to stop sniping at him.
Having resolved that issue, she began thinking about how to prove her innocence. Unfortunately, she found her mind kept turning back to her own mistakes. The ones that had led to her father’s death.
Her guilt.
I’ve got to get my mind out of this rut! she thought, forcefully instead, turning her thoughts to the de Broglie-Bohm theory. The equations governing the theory were complex and, holding them in her head, not on a computer, while trying to consider their ramifications, was difficult enough to keep her brain from taking off on tangents. The theory’s got to be important for something else besides transmutation…
There was a knock on her door. Kiri said, “Yes?”
She heard the voice of the guard who’d processed her in, “You’ve got visitors.”
“Who?” she asked, dreading the possibility that it was Detective Chatfield coming by to ask more questions.
“Your attorney and your guardian.”
Since she didn’t have an attorney and thought of Morgan as her uncle, not her guardian, Kiri almost said, “Who?” She remembered in time that Morgan was her guardian and might’ve hired an attorney. “Okay,” she said, “are they coming here, or do I go wherever they are?”
“I’m supposed to take you to meet them in the conference room.” The guard paused for a second, then continued, “I don’t have to ask your permission to open your door, but unless there’s a reason not to, I think it’s only polite. May I open your door?”
“Sure,” Kiri said, her thoughts brightening at the thought of getting out of the little room she was being held in. It was much nicer than the prototypical jail cell. Nonetheless, it was lonely and boring. By the time she’d gotten up and walked to the door, the guard was pulling it open.
Kiri was led to a room with a table big enough to seat ten people, but only her uncle and a striking, dark-haired, olive skinned woman in a navy-blue suit were present. She said, “Um, did Lindl and…?” then ran down as she decided it sounded childish to be worrying about whether her brother and her cousin had come to visit her.
Uncle Morgan didn’t seem to notice her abortive query. He said “Hi Kiri. I’m really sorry you’re stuck in here. We’re going to do everything we can to get you out as soon as possible.” He waved to the lady, “This’s Tilly Arvind, the defense attorney Vic Naylor recommended to us. She’s been kind enough to come in on the weekend…” he glanced at Arvind, “which we really appreciate.”
Arvind’s perfect hair, crisp clothing, and subtle, yet elegant makeup suggested she spent a lot of time on her appearance. Kiri was embarrassed to find herself worrying that a woman like that might not be good at her job. Men are supposed to think stupid things like that, she told herself. She said, “Hi Ms. Arvind. I do appreciate you coming in on the weekend. Do you think you’ll be able to get me out of here?”
“Well, I don’t know all that much about your case yet. Your uncle’s laid out his understanding of the events for me. It’s really important I hear your own recollections of what happened though. Then I think we should all watch the security camera videos together.”
“You haven’t seen them yet?” Kiri immediately regretted the question for its im
plication that Arvind hadn’t been diligent.
Morgan said, “Lindl just got the video files all annotated and copied before we left the house. Even I haven’t seen most of them. We wanted to get down here to you as soon as we could so you wouldn’t feel… deserted.”
“Don’t worry,” Arvind said, “the time limit on this visit’s three hours, so we should have plenty of time to watch the videos with you. I think getting any input you can give us on the videos’ll be helpful.”
With Arvind recording audio, Kiri went through everything that’d happened on Thursday and her encounters with Detective Chatfield on Friday. She actually went through it all twice, the second time Arvind asked her a lot of questions to clarify what she was saying.
“So,” Arvind said, “if I put myself in the place of the detective. I’ve got a story about a shooting in which the participants we’re sure of were a father and his daughter. The daughter claims some mysterious other man or men carried out the shooting. The detective carries out an extensive and thorough search of the mine without finding anyone. He then concludes that those two men were imaginary. Is that how you guys think his reasoning went?”
Kiri felt betrayed by the way Arvind had seen the detective’s viewpoint as reasonable. Morgan however, just nodded. Kiri found herself saying, “Okay, but that summary ignores the fact that Chatfield’s such a jerk.”
Arvind looked like she was trying to keep a straight face, but she finally broke into a little grin. “It might be that there are some other people who think that.” She shook her head, “He’s also got a reputation for making quick decisions. Some people think too quick. But,” she shrugged her shoulders, “those quick decisions prove to be correct in a great majority of the situations, so the DA isn’t too critical of him when he makes another one of his impetuous judgments.” She leaned back, tapping a fingernail on the table thoughtfully for a few moments. She said, “Shall we watch the video?”
The Transmuter's Daughter Page 15
