The Camelot Gambit

by A. J. Scudiere

  Hopping into her car, she checked that she had everything she needed tucked under the seat beside her and ready in the trunk. She was grateful she had a garage in which to hide her prep work. Their cover didn't really allow her to leave her gun sitting out in the open, so it was now under the passenger seat, handy enough if she needed it, but out of sight in hopes that she wouldn’t. On the seat, she placed her purse—like a normal driver. Starting the car, she headed south.

  Eleri drove toward the small town of Be-Ah-trice, thinking the name through her head as she passed farm houses and corn fields. Most of the corn wasn’t even edible, it was for livestock, but the sheer number of farms showed the American necessity for the crop. In fact, that was why Marshall Bennett had picked this area to put his town in: open space and low land value. He’d literally carved Curie out of cornfields.

  As she hit town, she saw one-story brick buildings lining either side of the street. She passed banks and a small coffee stand. Some kind of pump marked the far end of the town. Taking the turn Kate had prescribed in her directions, Eleri swung left out the end of the small berg and was soon driving through other squares of cornfields.

  Her directions had been clear, even if the road had not. After the next turn, she wound up on gravel, and five miles later she was at a crossroads, unmarked by signs and with no homes in sight. It was exactly what she wanted.

  She slowed the car, letting it idle as she pulled over to the side of the road. Acting as though she were having car trouble—for the audience of zero people and a bird overhead—she looked at her tires and opened her hood and stood there, waiting for her “random” friendly patron to come along.

  It wasn't five minutes later that Kate showed up and pulled in behind her, acting like a helpful stranger. Nebraska Nice came to Eleri’s mind. It was a good sentiment, and she was just taking advantage of it.

  The two women looked under the hood and then around the car. They reached in toward the engine, not doing anything, though Eleri knew the small actions made it look like Kate and she were checking the car out.

  They exchanged a few words. Kate asked if she’d had trouble finding the place, and Eleri had almost laughed, but they circled to the back of the car and this time popped the trunk.

  Kate, like a true actress, looked around and eventually set her purse into the trunk, as though it was simply a convenient place to put it that didn't involve a dusty gravel road. While she postured, Eleri opened the lid of the book-sized box she’d brought to show Kate what was inside.

  "I want to track every drone,” she explained, “but that's not possible, so we’re giving you three trackers here. There are three sets of different styles of drones in Marat Rychenkov's garage. Donovan and I could do this, but it’s getting to be too much of a risk. Donovan got recognized as the new doctor in town last night. We did tag another car belonging to a town-member. But we can't do too many and we still have another one and maybe two to go.”

  Kate was nodding along, as though hearing what was wrong with the car, when Eleri got to her final question. “So, do you think you can pull off placing the trackers on the drones yourself?"

  "Depends on what's involved," Kate said, "but I'm up for anything. I want these cases solved. They’re driving Marshall crazy."

  Eleri noted that Kate called her boss by his first name and wondered if it meant anything. She didn't tell Kate, and she hadn't told Marshall Bennett why they were tagging the drones. In fact, Eleri had no idea why the drones themselves might be important, only that Marat had hidden the files. It didn't matter that they didn’t yet understand anything they’d seen. Marat had thought it was worth hiding—which made it worth tracking.

  Turning back to Kate, Eleri said, "I believe the biggest problem is, unlike with a car, you can't simply stick a tracker onto the drone."

  Kate had picked one of the devices up and turned it over in her hand. She checked it out while still acting as though they were looking in the trunk for something to help Eleri's car.

  "Well," Eleri conceded, "you could actually stick it to the outside of the drone.”

  “The problem is that it would be obvious," Kate said. "And the whole point is to have anyone checking them out not know they're being tracked. As soon as they know, it's useless."

  "Excellent. FBI 101, A-plus," Eleri said and watched as Kate smiled. "So what Donovan and I decided—and given what we saw in the videos and what we saw when we were there—is that you're going to need to open a drone from each set and place the tracker inside."

  “Which one do I pick?”

  “We have no idea which one is the lead or the most important, so it doesn’t matter. Do whichever one is easiest.”

  Kate nodded. “How do they come apart?"

  "That's just it. It wasn't something we were looking at when we were there. On the videos, the large white ones appear to be made from two halves, screwed together in several places. It looks like you can just unscrew them, but honestly, it relies on Marat not having glued them shut. The whole plan also relies on there being extra space inside the drone. You may have to get creative. I don’t know."

  "Well, most components have extra space. The motherboards are really very tiny compared to the size of the box."

  "An excellent point," Eleri said. "And my hope is that at least the white ones have that. I don't know about the small black ones."

  She hated that she had no better terms to describe the drones than just using the color and size of the individual bots. Clearly, she needed to learn more about drones: what they did, what they could do, and why Marat might've been killed for them.

  Kate nodded again as Eleri put the tracker back into its nest and closed the box. Kate took it and easily slipped the whole thing inside the large bag she'd brought, exactly as Eleri had planned. Kate always carried the large bag, perhaps for exactly these kinds of assignments.

  With the trackers now in Kate’s possession, the two headed to the front of the car, where Kate looked under the hood and acted as though she was pushing a wire back into place. Eleri continued talking.

  "What I'd like to have you do is visit the house every few days. So if you go now, people might think it's suspicious, but not so much. Everyone knows that there were two murders, that both occupants from that home were killed. And everyone knows that you and Bennett are very upset about everything that happened, so I think it's okay if you visit several times. I'm not sure how many more times Donovan and I can use the pretense of being city workers as cover, and we may have to do it again, so I'll be using you as much as possible," Eleri warned.

  "Of course," Kate told her and reached out and shook her hand.

  "So, go today, check through the house, and place the trackers into the drones as soon as you can. Check to see if anything has been moved, anything you can notice. A quick visual sweep is fine. And then, in three days, I'd like you to go back and put a For Sale sign out front. And, if we're still investigating, in three more days, go back and check on the house again."

  "Will people be visiting? Like prospective buyers?" Kate asked. "Do we need to show it? Do I need to set it up with a realtor?"

  "I would suggest that you do, though we’ll try to hold off on actual showings for a while. I hate the idea of having people walk through the house, but it's the only way to keep things looking normal."

  Kate moved to shake Eleri's hand, but Eleri leaned into the car and produced hand wipes from inside, as though they were something she always carried and not just for today when they were pretending they were getting under the hood. But once Kate had cleaned her hands, she then offered a hug. Eleri found the gesture slightly unusual until Kate whispered in her ear.

  "Will we get to have a funeral for Johanna soon?"

  "I think so," Eleri told her.

  Then, as Kate turned around and drove off, Eleri headed into Omaha to the second half of her day. She wasn’t sure if she was looking forward to it or not.

  31

  After Donovan finished his shift at
the clinic, he climbed into his car and pointed it out of town. Luckily, the shift had only been five hours and not a full eight. Even so, he felt the need to stop at the Up N Atom for a drink on the way out, going with Eleri's suggestion of a Caffeinator with a shot of “DEA certified”—a rare bean that was from Columbia but not used to mask drug shipments. He'd walked inside hoping to see people he knew, maybe make some acquaintances into friends.

  Donovan had been working, but Eleri had been networking. Perhaps Westerfield had been right in the way he assigned them their jobs, because it turned out no one spoke to the tall, partly Indian-looking physician. Though several people smiled at him as though they knew him, he didn't manage to start any conversations, and he developed a stronger appreciation for Eleri's skills. At least, he thought, the coffee was good and he’d been out and about like a normal person.

  With his Vici-sized coffee—the tallest— in hand, he headed back to the car, then drove toward Omaha. It took more than an hour to get to the FBI branch. Though he’d hit some traffic, having been all over the U.S., what he’d encountered in Lincoln was not what he would refer to as “bad.”

  He wondered, as he turned into the lot for the FBI field office, whether anyone had followed him. Did his car have a tracker on it? Had anyone in the town of Curie grown suspicious of them or of Wade? Had someone found the USB before he and Eleri had? Had they put a tracer on it? He contemplated the possibility of someone following them even as they investigated that person. Normally, he wouldn't have thought in such crazy circles, but Curie made him a little insane.

  Once he’d parked behind the building, he passed through security and headed down a hallway and into the conference room he and Eleri and Wade had booked for just this purpose. As the two stood up to greet him, he almost stepped into Wade's arms and hugged him. He’d never been so glad to see a friend. Wade still looked like Wade—glasses, white t-shirt with an open plaid shirt over it, khaki pants—and that was comforting to Donovan, too.

  But he didn’t do it. Instead, he fished the small drive out of his pocket and placed it on the table. Eleri had brought Marat's notebooks, and Donovan pointed to the pile of Marat Rychenkov’s belongings that sat in the middle of the table.

  "We need to get these scanned."

  "I've got a wand here," Wade said, and reached into the seat beside him, bringing out the device that would detect radio and satellite signals. He waved it carefully over each of the pieces. Donovan breathed easier when Wade got to the last one and the wand had made no weird hums, clicks, or buzzes.

  Leaning on the table, not yet ready to take his seat, he told the other two, "We need to have the FBI techs scan our cars also."

  "I know," Wade said. "Eleri and I already ordered it. If you want to go out and tell them where you parked, they'll get on it."

  "Of course you did," Donovan said, and Eleri's face suddenly lit up.

  Wade frowned at her, wondering until she explained, "That's what Donovan and I say about Curie residents. He must think we're awfully smart."

  Donovan felt his mouth quirk but headed down the hall again to report his car to the analyst in Office Number 30. The clerk had been assigned to their little group, and Eleri and Wade had already taken advantage. Donovan was grateful not to have to set up the scans, and he was praying to God that nothing was found. If any of their cars were tracked, they'd have to leave the tech in place and merely change where they drove the car. That would suck, but more importantly, it would mean someone was onto them and already had an idea of where they went, depending on how long the tracker had been in place. He crossed his fingers.

  This time, when he came back down the hall, he had a soda in hand and a bag of Fritos. He felt like he needed a pop of sugar, salt, and his daily dose of FD&C Red #40.

  Eleri didn't even lift an eyebrow. Wade had the notebooks open and was rifling through them, but he closed them as Donovan came in.

  "Checklist time," Eleri said, and Wade was the first who jumped in.

  "Okay." He pulled a small notebook from the pocket in his shirt and began flipping through. Donovan noticed what was in it: notes Wade had been taking all along. That meant that if anyone attacked him and stole the notebook, or if it fell out of his pocket and someone read it, Wade would be “made.” At the very least, they would think he was a PI. But it was Wade's job to protect his own notes, so Donovan didn’t comment.

  "I've been talking to the parents." Wade looked into his notebook. “I talked to Marshawn James again. He’s an inventor but a chemist by education. Emersyn—his daughter who’s in my class—is supernova bright. She’s in with the older kids, even in Curie. And I also went back to Bob and Brenda Donatti. They are the foster parents to Jeren Waits, the kid in my class. Bob is a chemical engineer and Brenda is a theoretical mathematician.” Wade paused, and then added, “I get the feeling Brenda tested into the top level and Bob made the along-for-the-ride grade.”

  Donovan raised his eyebrows at that and wondered if it made a difference. Should the focus be on her? But Wade thought only one of the students’ parents, Abrahim Das, deserved Eleri and Donovan's attention.

  “Das?” Eleri asked. “Like Jivika? They have a kid?”

  “No, he’s a stepfather to one of the kids.”

  “Okay.” Donovan felt his breath let out at the same time Eleri’s did.

  Wade continued. “He is Jivika’s ex-husband. Mechanical engineer. I pulled their divorce papers, and the split is only four years old. She cited him stealing her ideas when they were married and they didn’t fight over any physical properties, but the divorce got bitter over the intellectual ones.”

  Curie, Donovan thought, and he watched as Eleri made her notes. As they wrapped up Wade’s information, Eleri told them she also had information from Bennett. Eleri must have arranged it with their assigned analyst from down the hall, because the young man arrived at the door with a stack of papers.

  "I can't believe you guys wanted this old school tech,” was all he said as he plopped the papers at the open seat at the end of the conference table.

  Eleri grinned and shrugged, seemingly trying to lessen the sting of being sent to the printer. "Paper can't get hacked."

  He plopped a second stack on the table and asked if they needed anything more. He seemed grateful when they said they didn't.

  "What's this?" Donovan asked.

  "Bank account information. Wade and I put in requests for a handful of people we were looking at."

  They spent the next half an hour flipping through statements from a variety of banks, savings, and even a few offshore accounts. Though he’d read things like this before, he wished all the banks could create the same format of report.

  An hour later, Donovan was leaning back, his soda gone and his chip bag empty and crumpled beside him as he finished the pile. "Well, the Mazurs make more money than I expected. Johanna Schmitt and Marat Rychenkov did too, but they're the ones who are dead, and no one seems to have taken their money, so that’s not the motive."

  He wondered for the first time where their money would go. They had no children, and he didn't know about next of kin. Nothing had popped up so far. No one had shown up to take over the funerals or make an offer on the home or even try to claim the cash from selling it. So, as of yet, the estates those two left behind weren’t part of his and Eleri and Wade’s problem. No one appeared to be related to them enough to create a stink … or to have killed them. "But LeDonRic James makes about as much as I suspected he would, which is a lot."

  "He's comfortable, but not wealthy," Eleri reported from her pile just a moment later, reminding Donovan that her idea of “wealthy” was radically different from his. "Marshawn does not have as much money as I would have thought. I got the impression that he got rich selling that mop thing he invented."

  "But he's doing okay?" Donovan asked.

  "Yeah. He created the polymer compound used in a new type of sponge, then sold the rights to the composition of the sponge to some big company specifically f
or use in a mop. Then, it appears they didn't create or market the mop for three years, and the contract expired. The rights auto-reverted to him. That means he got a couple hundred grand from the original sale, and then later he got all the rights back to the mop. He spent some of the money over the years, and then spent most all of what was left creating an infomercial.” She flipped through the pages in front of her as Donovan watched. “So most of it's been spent, but the mops are selling relatively well, at least from the looks of his bank statements."

  "All right, that’s not as cut-and-dried as I thought, but it doesn’t look like motive,” Donovan said, and the two of them turned to Wade.

  Wade practically threw his hands up in the air. "Marshawn seems to have both made and lost a lot of money along the way. But he’s good now. To be fair, everyone here is living on pretty decent salaries. I'm the poorest of any of us."

  "Well, you're a teacher," Eleri said.

  "Fuck that," Wade told her. "The teachers here are actually reasonably well-paid. These people value education, but I'm only teaching one hour per day … and I still have to attend faculty meetings," he lamented.

  "At least they didn't ask you to do crosswalk duty or chaperone the cafeteria," Eleri pointed out.

  Oh, Donovan thought, remembering his own student years. He'd seen teachers in his various schools performing lunchroom duties, though it wasn't something he'd thought about before. Wade merely waved a hand at Eleri as though none of that would that have even made a difference, but then he pointed back to his stack of papers.

  "Whitlow has some debt. A couple of credit cards run up to twenty grand each."

  "How many?"

  "Five."

  "But he's in a think tank. Decent salary?"

  "Yes. Honestly, he's been paying the cards down. Looks like he had some gambling debts originally—that’s where the problems came from—but he hasn't done anything fiscally stupid in a few years. If he keeps going the way he's doing now, he'll be out in about four or five years."