Days of Atonement

by Walter Jon Williams

  Cipriano was unappeased. “How about I brace the car owner, jefe?”

  “Maybe we can do it together. But for now, let’s take a look at the victim. I want to know if you see what I see.”

  A resentful Cipriano followed Loren into the police entrance. The body was still lying there in its spatter of blood, Bag ’n’ Drag still standing around waiting for permission to carry it away. White plastic bags with the Rexall imprint had been fixed with rubber bands round the body’s hands and feet to preserve physical evidence. Cipriano’s brown eyes rested for a moment on the dead face.

  “Huh,” Cipriano said. “Sure looks like old Dudenhof, doesn’t it?”

  Loren felt relief trickle into his mind. He hadn’t been seeing things. “That’s what I thought,” he said. “He’s even got Copenhagen snuff in his back pocket.”

  “That ain’t unusual around here.”

  “I guess not. But it was the only thing in his pockets at all. No ID, no coins, not even a hanky.”

  He called me by name, Loren was about to say, but he was interrupted.

  “Chief.” Eloy calling from the desk.

  “Yeah?”

  “I just got a call from that Timothy Jernigan guy. He wanted to report a stolen car.”

  Loren felt a distant hum in his bones, like a dynamo rumbling up to speed from a cold start. The cover-up, he knew, was starting. He looked at Eloy.

  “What did the guy say?”

  “Said he looked out the window and his car was gone from his driveway.”

  Loren smiled, the internal humming building in volume. The guy’s story was lame. It wasn’t going to hold up; he knew that already.

  If he could get Jernigan alone, before he got his story straight, he could crush him. He knew that with absolute certainty. He pictured himself confronting the guy in some book-lined study, sweat pouring down the suspect’s face as he tried to hold his cover story together. If he got to the guy’s house, he might even be able to find evidence.

  “He said he’ll be right down as soon as he can get a ride,” Eloy said.

  Loren’s train of thought jumped the rails. “He’s coming here?” he said. “What the hell did you tell him?”

  “I told him we had his car here.”

  Loren’s voice rose to a shout. “Did you tell him anything else?” Anger tore at his throat.

  Eloy’s eyes widened. He tried to shake his head in the tall foam collar, failed, gave a nervous laugh instead. “No, Chief. Just that we had his car.”

  Loren tried to give some consideration to what was going to happen. “Okay,” he said. “That’s good.”

  Jernigan was coming here, Loren thought. That might be all right. He could get the man in his office and take his story apart there, on his own ground, while the suspect was still disoriented.

  “You didn’t tell the guy,” Loren said, “that we had a dead body, right?”

  “Nope. Just that we had the car.”

  “Good.” If Jernigan had shot the guy, Loren thought, then he wouldn’t know for sure whether Randal Dudenhof— no, not Randal, he thought insistently, John Doe— was dead. Even if he figured Doe was dead, he wouldn’t know if Doe had accused him before he died.

  All Loren had to do, he figured, was to apply pressure till Jernigan cracked.

  He turned to Cipriano. “We’re gonna break the guy,” he said.

  Cipriano was still looking moodily at the corpse. “He might come with a lawyer.”

  “Why would an innocent man show up with a lawyer?”

  “He might not. On the other hand, he might actually be innocent.”

  Loren shook his head. He started walking to the exit. “My working hypothesis is that he’s gotta be connected to this guy somehow. Maybe he didn’t pull the trigger, but any other explanation is too complicated.” He stepped out the door. “Look,” he said, “we won’t tell him the John Doe is dead. We’ll take him into the building through the main doors, not the police entrance, and that way he won’t see the body.” He looked behind him and saw that Cipriano wasn’t following, was instead staring at his own feet with a moody expression. Loren pushed back through the door. “You coming or what?” he said.

  Cipriano looked up. “Yeah. Right.”

  Loren stepped out into the night again. He had enough to do tonight without catering to Cipriano’s moods.

  For half an hour Loren waited with increasing impatience, his back throbbing as he wished he could just jump in his Fury and confront Jernigan in the man’s own house. In police work there was a principle called the 24/24 rule, which held that the most important moments during a murder investigation were the first twenty-four hours of the investigation and the last twenty-four hours of the victim’s life. Go back any further than that, stories started getting confused, witnesses’ memories unfocused; and the longer the investigation took, the colder the trail got. Loren could feel time eating away at him as he pictured the killer cleaning up evidence, getting his story straight, obscuring things, shoring up his alibi. Loren wanted things to start happening.

  He wanted not to have to think about Randal Dudenhof.

  While he waited, Buchinsky’s search of the BMW came up with a bobby pin, a few dusty coins, and another bullet. It was the same caliber as the first, and more thoroughly deformed, having gone through the door and then bouncing around the interior of the car before finally ending up under the back seat.

  Loren was examining this latest find when he heard the squawk of a radio in the ATL Blazer, then saw the driver answer. There was a brief conversation, of which Loren could only hear the incoherent white noise of the radio and the murmur of reply, and then the driver started his engine and pulled out.

  Loren felt a degree of relief. No one was second-guessing him anymore.

  And then another ATL Blazer pulled up into the same place, and two men got out. Reflex annoyance buzzed like a wasp through Loren’s brain.

  The driver was William Patience, the head of ATL’s security. He was wearing the same bulky jacket, spit-shined shoes, and gray slacks as his goons, though he allowed himself a pastel-blue shirt instead of the standard white. His cuff links and tie clip were plain steel blackened military-style.

  Patience’s face looked as if it had been shaped with an adze. His straight, graying black hair was worn long and was tied into a modest ponytail behind. Loren knew that Patience had been in some kind of under-the-table counterterrorist special forces outfit identified only by an acronym, that he lived alone in a small apartment in Vista Linda, that he climbed rocks for a hobby, that he had few material possessions and taught a yoga class at the community center.

  Prescription, Loren thought, for a tight-ass control freak jerk. Who furthermore, to judge by the samurai ponytail, had seen too many Steven Seagal movies.

  Loren smiled heartily as Patience approached. “Hi, Bill,” Loren said.

  Patience smiled back, a lizard smile: no teeth, no lips. He offered a hand and Loren shook it. “Heard you got a stiff,” he said.

  Loren scuffed a toe on the concrete while Patience shook hands with Cipriano. For some reason Patience made him want to be as folksy as the dumb country hick that Patience probably assumed he was. “Where’d you hear that, Bill?” he asked.

  “My guys could see the body through your glass front doors.”

  Loren concealed a flare of annoyance. “I guess they could, at that.”

  “I thought I’d offer some help in this situation.”

  The second man hovered nervously behind Patience, looking as if he were waiting for someone to tell him what to do. He was a couple inches taller than Loren and about fifty pounds lighter, a balding blond bean pole in black plastic-rimmed glasses and a close-trimmed beard, tweed sport coat, and tie.

  Loren smiled again. “How were you planning on offering to help, Bill?”

  “I thought I’d bring Tim Jernigan in to meet you.”

  “That’s damn thoughtful of you, Bill,” Loren said. His mind whirled, tried to make connections
, while he went on grinning, scuffling, playing the hick. He looked up at the thin man, into dark, flickering eyes obscured by thick spectacles.

  Sometimes you just knew. You knew when people were lying, you knew how things were. Like he’d known about Robbie Cisneros and the Texas twosome. Something was wrong, clearly wrong, with this setup.

  “Tim called me when he saw his car was gone,” Patience said, “and I told him to call you. Then he asked me for a ride down here.”

  “That’s nice of you.”

  “He’s got a meeting at the Hiawatha later tonight. With a colleague. So I thought I’d take him to that after you’ve talked to him.”

  “This may take a while,” Loren said quickly.

  “That’s okay. I haven’t got anything better to do.”

  “Uh-huh.” Loren looked at Jernigan, found his gaze falling once more into the shadowed, depthless obscurity of the thick spectacles. He couldn’t make eye contact with this guy.

  Jernigan shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then shifted it back.

  “I guess I’d better start by asking if that is your car over there.”

  Jernigan looked, blinked, looked again. “Yes,” he said. “It’s mine.”

  Loren stepped around Patience, moved closer to the tall man. He heard Cipriano’s footsteps behind, moving on his right shoulder. “You work for ATL?”

  “Yes.” Blinking again.

  “In what capacity?” Loren stepped closer.

  “Uh.” Blinking. “I’m a particle physicist.”

  “That’s what the plate’s about, right?” Loren stepped even closer, trying to intrude on the man’s personal space, see if he could make him nervous.

  “The what?” Jernigan stepped back. He was rolling his shoulders awkwardly, as if there were an itch between his shoulder blades.

  “The license plate.” Loren followed. “DELTA E. That’s something in physics?”

  “Oh. Right. Delta E charts change in energy.”

  Change in energy, Loren thought, okay. Whatever that meant. Maybe that was something Jerry would know about. Loren came forward till his breastbone was maybe an inch from Jernigan’s. “Let’s go to my office,” he said softly.

  Jernigan’s shadowy spectacles blinked back at him. The physicist didn’t say anything.

  “This way,” Loren said, right into the man’s face. He turned and began moving back toward the police entrance. Cipriano walked ahead of him. No point in going in the big front doors— Patience had to have told Jernigan that the John Doe was dead.

  “Loren,” said Patience. “I should point out that Tim has a top-security clearance, that some of his work is highly classified.”

  Loren gave his hick smile again. “I’m not going to ask him about his work, Bill. I wouldn’t know what to ask him, anyway.”

  “Still, I think we have a legitimate security interest here.”

  Cipriano looked over his shoulder and gave a disbelieving smile. “Come off it, Bill. We got a dead man lying in the lobby.”

  “And the security of the labs needs to be protected.”

  “Hold on,” said Loren. He paused between the big copper griffins and turned to Patience. “Let me ask you formally then. Do you have any knowledge of this crime?”

  “No.” Stiffly.

  “Do you know the identity of the victim?”

  “I haven’t seen the body, but I assume not.”

  “Do you have any knowledge that Mr. Jernigan is connected to the crime in any way?”

  Cold resentment lined Patience’s face. “No,” he said. Loren stepped closer to him, looking down at the shorter man, anger warming his nerves.

  “Then get outta my investigation, Bill!” he shouted. “There’s a murder here, and I’m gonna find the shooter. All I want from Mr. Jernigan is the answers to a few questions about where he was when he misplaced his car.”

  Patience looked up at Loren with flat, angry eyes. “I’d like to be able to participate.”

  “No. I appreciate your bringing Mr. Jernigan here, but this is my investigation and I don’t need your participation.”

  They looked at each other for a moment, then Loren climbed the stairs and walked in through the open glass door. The body, the western shirt and denim failing to conceal the utterly boneless look of the dead, lay cooling on the white tile. Loren stopped and looked down at it, then up at the two ATL men.

  “Either of you seen this man before?”

  “No,” said Patience. His voice was cold.

  Jernigan looked and blinked and shook his head.

  Loren glanced down at the body again. “Bullet hit a lung,” he said. “The man drowned. There are probably a couple gallons of blood in his lungs.”

  Loren looked up at the two ATL men once again. Patience was looking down at the body with an expression of frigid contempt on his face. Perhaps the dead man didn’t meet his expectations.

  Jernigan seemed uncomfortable. He stared down at the body as if he’d never seen one before. Loren decided to see how far he could push Jernigan, if he could make him nervous and off balance enough to let something slip. “Lot of blood in a man,” Loren said. “It gets all over the place. I’ve probably got it on me.”

  Patience looked up at him. The contempt wasn’t about to leave his face. “Let’s get moving, Loren. Tim has an appointment.”

  “This way.”

  Cipriano led the way into Loren’s office. Loren noticed his neck was growing red from scratching. Cipriano stood by the door until Loren and Jernigan entered, then pointedly closed the door on Patience. “You mind if we record this?” Loren said. Without waiting for an answer he went to the cabinet and took out a portable recorder.

  “Uh,” said Jernigan. “Guess not.”

  Loren held down the Record and Play buttons, and made sure the red LED was glowing, the one that showed the battery was charged. “This is Chief Loren Hawn,” he told the recorder, “and this is the recording of an interview with Dr. Timothy Jernigan, at––” he checked his watch—“eight thirty-four P.M.”

  He put the recorder on his desk. He sat on the desk next to the recorder, then asked Jernigan to sit on one of the straight-backed chairs in front of him— he could be close to Jernigan that way, and sitting on the desk he could loom over the taller man, be intimidating if he had to. Cipriano hovered in the background, behind Jernigan, in hopes of making him nervous. Cipriano scratched his neck again, then opened his pocket and took out his notebook.

  “Full name?” he asked.

  “Timothy Eldridge Jernigan.”

  “Age?”

  “Thirty-four.”

  And so on: occupation, education, his marriage to someone named Sondra, his two children, length of residence in New Mexico. Jernigan did not seem any more at ease during the routine questions than he had while he was staring at the body. Loren began to wonder if he was always like this, some kind of mutant scientist geek who was totally incapable of interacting in a normal way. He remembered people like that in high school.

  Hell. His brother was like that. The difference being that Jerry wasn’t holding down a job that would earn him a BMW.

  “The gray BMW sedan, license plate DELTA E, is yours?”

  Jernigan nodded.

  “Could you answer for the recorder?”

  “Oh. Sorry. Yes. The car’s mine.”

  “Could you describe your activities yesterday?”

  “Friday?” Jernigan seemed surprised that Loren would ask about the previous day.

  24/24, Loren thought. Start twenty-four hours ago.

  “Yes,” he said. “Friday.”

  Jernigan blinked. “I got up, uh, a little late, because I knew I’d be up all night. I got to the lab around ten. We were supposed to start an experiment at ten-thirty, but we had computer problems so we didn’t start till a little after noon. The experiment ran till about four in the morning. After that I took Dr. Singh to the Hiawatha, then went home and to bed.”

  “There are witnesses to
your presence at the lab?”

  Jernigan looked up and gave a twitchy smile. The first time he’d smiled at all.

  “Oh, yeah. We have to check in and out with security people at the gate. And I was with colleagues the whole time.”

  “Can you name your colleagues?”

  Jernigan scratched his beard. “There were about fifty of them, and maybe a hundred technicians. But the two project leaders, besides myself, were Joe Dielh. Joseph. He’s my project director at ATL. And—”

  “Can you spell that?”

  Jernigan obliged. “And Amardas Singh. That’s S-I-N-G-H. He’s from Caltech, but he’s currently doing work at New Mexico Tech in Socorro.”

  “What was the first name again?”

  “Amardas. A-M-A-R—ahhh.” His face fell. “D-A-S, I think. Maybe there’s an H in there somewhere, I’m not sure.”

  “What kind of name is that?” Cipriano asked in a quiet voice. He was over Jernigan’s left shoulder, and Jernigan jumped at the sound.

  “He’s from Pakistan. A Sikh. But he’s an American citizen now.”

  Loren remembered the bearded man in the turban he’d seen in the crowd around the BMW. Another anomaly explained. A visiting scientist, and not, apparently, a blood-drinking terrorist.

  “He’s the man you took to the Hiawatha?”

  “Yes. He’s staying there for the weekend.”

  Loren cleared his throat. “If it’s not gonna endanger the national security, could you give me some idea what the experiment was about?”

  “It was—” Jernigan groped for words. “Fairly routine, actually. An accelerator run.”

  “Uh-huh?” Loren tried to be slightly encouraging. Now that he was talking about something in his professional sphere, Jernigan was loosening up a bit, speaking and gesturing in a more natural manner. If he relaxed, maybe he’d make a mistake.

  “We really didn’t have to be there, the whole run could have been programmed into the computer and supervised by assistants. But Joe— Dr. Dielh— and I don’t get a chance to work with Dr. Singh very often, so we spent most of the time in the control room with the holotanks, watching recordings of past runs, and, ah, talking shop.”