The Camelot Gambit

by A. J. Scudiere

  "Shit," Donovan said. "Why isn't anybody obviously upside down and in need of money?"

  "That would be too easy," Wade told him.

  They turned their attention from the useless bank statements to Rychenkov’s notebooks then and began trying to crack the code.

  Thirty minutes later, Eleri slammed her notebook shut.

  32

  Donovan closed the notebook he'd been looking at, frustrated. He’d thought today would be a good day, that he'd get to meet up with Wade again and solve something. He’d thought he and Eleri and Wade would sit around a table and make great strides in the case. But it hadn't happened that way.

  They'd ruled a lot of things out, but Marat Rychenkov’s notebooks weren't yielding anything. Not anything. He’d even asked Eleri again if she’d managed to get any images or sensations from touching them. She’d snapped at him, “No, I’m not getting anything!”

  Understanding it was just frustration, Donovan let it slide. But he was as perplexed as she was irritated that she wasn’t picking up any kind of supernatural vibe that might help them. Something that happened in New Orleans seemed to have shut her down. They were going to have to do this one with good old legwork.

  It was important that they get together today and look at the text in person. Donovan knew that—while they had sent pictures to Wade and to GJ—it was plausible the code wasn't even in the numbering and lettering that was inside. Maybe it was in the way the “words” were written. Maybe it was in the numbers of letters in the code breaks. Maybe it was indentations in the paper, or something written and erased, and written over, so it was necessary to have the physical notebooks in front of them to find it. But he'd found jack shit, and from the looks on Eleri’s and Wade's faces, they'd found the same.

  His page looked like a purely random scramble of letters and numbers, and he wasn't able to untangle it in any way. Normally, he was decent at code-cracking. He'd passed the FBI course. Not with flying colors, but well enough. Eleri had done fantastic at it when she was at Quantico, but even she didn't see what was going on in the damn notebooks. Though Wade didn't seem to get as frustrated as they did, when Donovan and Eleri slammed their notebooks shut, Wade seemed to catch on, and closed his more gently.

  "Anything?" Donovan asked.

  But Wade shook his head, making the whole thing a bust. They consoled themselves by ordering a pizza, not wanting to leave and waste time eating. There were only so many hours the three of them could get their heads together, and if they were out at a restaurant where they couldn't speak freely, they wouldn't make the best use of it. Even though they were in Omaha, it still wasn’t safe to talk about the case or bring out the papers associated with it in public.

  With the pizza ordered, they used their wait time to hit their next task: checking through the documents that Bennett had sent. He'd finished double-checking all the applications of the current Curie residents. Though he had been sending batches as he had them sorted, the mayor had finally finished the whole task. It was a huge job, and Bennett said he did the best he could.

  There were just over thirty thousand people in Curie, Nebraska, and by the time Bennett was done, there were six thousand in his pile.

  "So, one fifth of the town," Donovan said.

  "Actually," Eleri said, "I think it's a slightly larger fraction of the applicants." She flipped through them and said, "Remember, there were no children who were the primaries on the applications. They were never considered ‘applicants’ the way the adults were."

  "Didn't the children have to go through all the paperwork and testing?" Donovan said.

  "No, not really. They were secondary to the parents, so when Marshall Bennett admitted—or didn't admit—someone, that decision was based on the parents themselves. So the children weren't included in any of his searches or any of these original files that he remembers or doesn’t."

  "You’re saying he didn't search the whole thirty thousand?"

  "No. Only the adults," Eleri told them.

  "How many did he search?"

  Eleri told him, “Only twenty-two thousand.”

  Donovan stopped and thought about it. It fit with what he knew of population dynamics. Children made up anywhere from twenty to thirty percent of a normal, healthy township. The eight-thousand Bennett hadn’t looked at fit right in that gap, and Donovan wondered if he’d favored families with kids as a way of keeping the town going in future generations. Emersyn and Madisyn James and the Mazur twins certainly seemed like a bold step in that direction.

  Then Donovan frowned at Eleri. "You know what I don't see too much of here? Older people."

  Eleri nodded. "But that makes sense. To be in hospice care or even solidly into retirement, they would have had to move here and work and then retire. Who would apply to this town and then move everything for end-of-life care? The vast majority stay close to home.” She looked to both of them, and neither he nor Wade found a flaw in her logic. “There are also virtually no family chains, either. Most small towns will have families representing cousins, siblings, or children who stay in town and raise their own children there. Grandparents are common in small towns, sometimes even four generations and two or three cousins over. When I was in college, taking genetics classes, we discussed that dynamic when we talked about alleles being identical by descent."

  Donovan had nodded, understanding the term meant a person had a bit of genetic code in which both the maternal and paternal pieces were identical. In “identical by descent” cases, it came through both parents from a common ancestor they shared and was associated with inbreeding.

  "Well, our genetics teacher asked," Eleri continued, "if any of us came from small towns, and if any of our families have been in those small towns for four or more generations. There were actually a reasonable number of students who had. The teacher then told them that they probably had some alleles that were identical by decent."

  Donovan felt his lip curl. He did not remember learning that in medical school, despite numerous genetics courses.

  "There are a couple of situations in Curie," Eleri said, "where one person came in, and a sibling, or a parent, or a child followed."

  "Like the James brothers," Donovan said.

  "Exactly. And Marshawn James brought his children."

  "But that makes sense," Wade said. "Intelligence tends to run in families. There's a huge genetic component to IQ."

  "Absolutely," Eleri agreed. "Still, there aren’t many family chains, not yet, because the town is so new.” She pointed, “This is our stack of unknowns, and it's limited to adults.”

  They each pulled out their own notes and searched the pile for anyone who had come in contact with Marat or Johanna, or whose name the FBI had found among those Marat and Johanna had dialed. Those were the first ones to tackle—the most likely to yield something of value in this crazy hunt.

  Donovan looked down at the papers in front of him as another key piece of information came to him, and he began swearing. As Eleri and Wade looked up at him, the analyst arrived with their pizzas and interrupted. Whoever this delivery person was, he was a younger man who had graduated college, gone through FBI training, and come in as an analyst—although he must not have been very high on the Bureau totem pole, as he was fetching their pizza.

  They still needed to buy their own drinks, and though the aroma was turning Donovan’s stomach inside out, the three of them headed down the hall. Luckily, inside the Bureau walls, they could speak freely. Donovan explained his swearing.

  "We actually need as much information as we can get about workers in Curie, too., he said. “We’ve been going after this as though our killer is an inside person, someone who passed all of Bennett’s initial tests. But what if it isn’t?"

  "But the workers aren't as intelligent,” Eleri complained. “Do you think they could pull this off? I mean, we still don't even know what the murder method is."

  "But that's the problem," Donovan replied. "We're looking at it and assuming it's a high
ly complex method. What if it's not? What if it just isn't obvious? And, just because they're workers, just because they didn't get into Curie, that doesn't mean they aren't highly intelligent. Bennett turned away a handful of people with very high IQs that he simply didn't like, for whatever reason. And he picked that intelligence test. We can see that it works in the basic sense, but we don’t know how accurate it is. The whole method is really dictatorial, when you think about it," Donovan said. "And you know what happens to dictators?"

  "Coups!" Eleri and Wade said in unison as Wade plopped quarters into the machine.

  Though the machine had a card reader, Donovan enjoyed the old fashioned clink of quarters, his sensitive ears detecting a variety of tones and even following the location of each quarter as it tumbled through the machine. Though he was frustrated with the case, he would enjoy the little things as he purchased his own drink.

  "What you're saying," Eleri picked up, "is that it's possible someone who is highly intelligent is running these murders, and they're in town during the day, but not a resident. Well, that's a bitch," she said.

  Obviously, it made sense or it wouldn't have been a bitch. Donovan filled in the obvious. “So we need to look at a lot more people."

  "The day-trippers live nearby," Wade said. "So we need to see who Bennett tested and rejected."

  "Absolutely," Eleri said, "but we also need huge numbers of people who didn't test. What if they're really intelligent and they just don't like Bennett's methods?"

  "What if they're really intelligent," Donovan offered, "and they just don't test well, so they didn’t even try?"

  They were walking back down the hall with their drinks in their hands, and while it was interesting bouncing ideas off each other, every idea widened the scope of their search, and Donovan didn't like that at all.

  After settling in to eat the pizza, they didn’t take an actual break, but worked through the meal. With a slice in his hand, Donovan flipped through the paper files, trying not to get red sauce stains on his work.

  For the first round, all they did was throw files into the middle of the table, pulling out papers for the people who'd been associated with Rychenkov and Schmitt. That pile at least was small, and it included Keyoor Vergheese, Jivika Das, and Marshawn James.

  When they were done, there were more than a hundred names in their pile. Donovan was certain that they’d not only failed to crack the case, but they’d just made it worse.

  33

  Eleri's head hurt. It wasn't a headache she could treat with medication or caffeine, but the kind of ache when she had too many pieces of a puzzle bouncing around inside her skull. The pressure of the case made it feel as though rocks were tumbling in her head, and she could only hope that they were getting smooth and shiny, and would look great when they came out. But right now, she needed something to fight the feeling.

  She and Donovan and Wade had all stayed at the branch office late into the night. Eventually, they’d given up and headed home, though they had to leave in shifts.

  Eleri had stayed the latest, as Donovan was going to go in and work a full morning again at the clinic. They'd agreed Wade would be responsible for getting a tracker on Greg Whitlow's car. Though Eleri hated waiting, and could have done it faster herself, the fact that they'd been putting trackers on things in short order could've raised a flag if anyone was watching what they were doing. Besides, what if someone realized she was spotted beside two cars? The problem was the people around here would put two and two together and get “murder investigation.”

  Though Eleri had spent plenty of her life and her career paranoid about things she couldn’t control, she didn't remember it ever being quite as bad as this. She was a firm believer in the phrasing, "It wasn't paranoia if they were really watching you." The problem now was—while she didn't know that anybody was following her—she couldn't prove that anybody wasn't. Though she’d been in fishbowls before, this was the first time all the other fish were more than capable of figuring her out.

  She no longer felt like one of the sharpest tools in her shed. In fact, she was pretty certain she was old and rusty, if she even qualified to be in the same shed with these people. She was also forced to protect the second biggest secret in town. The only person here with a bigger secret than the one she, Donovan, and Wade carried was the killer himself—or herself. Eleri was forced to admit that they had male DNA on Johanna Schmitt, but they also had two people responsible for the break-ins at the empty house. No one in town could be ruled out for being incapable of committing the murders.

  Hell, even the high school kids had easily fixed Donovan's oven “problem” and knitted sweaters with Winnie The Pooh coded in binary. According to Wade, Madisyn James was building an interactive robot complete with AI and asking him questions about the physics of it, what kind of weight it needed, and how much joint strength it would require to walk or eventually run.

  As a child, Eleri had defined herself by her family and her sister, until her sister had gone missing at age eight. Eleri had only been ten, but they'd been ten good, solid, formative years. Then everything changed. After Emmaline’s disappearance, Eleri wanted to become an FBI agent. She wanted to find her sister, and she defined herself as being smart and hard-working.

  But here in Curie, Nebraska? This was the first place where she'd felt downright stupid sometimes. She felt as though she had missed key pieces of this puzzle. If she could ask any of the townspeople, she believed, they would solve the murders in a flash.

  But she and Donovan and Wade had to maintain their cover. The three agreed to wait to put the tracker on Greg Whitlow’s car. To make it easier, and less obvious, Wade and Greg would have a parent meeting.

  Wade had assured the two of them the night before that he could easily get under the car and place the tracker without Whitlow noticing. "Don’t worry. I'll drop my coffee cup and roll it under the car. I'll get the tracker in there good." Though Eleri didn't doubt his ability, she still hadn’t seen the requisite message on her secure system, letting them know it was done. She wouldn’t see it until Wade was back at home on his FBI protected computer.

  While Donovan had gotten up early, she’d managed to sleep in a little. It left her in the house alone. She was sick of cereal, though Donovan never seemed to tire of it, and she also needed to watch footage from the Rychenkov-Schmitt home—again. The cameras had been producing for over twenty-four hours. And though the agents were spot checking them regularly and hadn’t caught any crimes in the act, all the hours in between also needed to be monitored.

  She showered, dressed, and packed up to head out to the Up N Atom. She'd gone with Maggie the morning before, but it hadn't been a great friend-fest. Maggie had been sad, bordering on depressed, though it was fully understandable. It was hard to lose a friend suddenly, harder when murder was involved. Eleri had done her best to comfort the other woman, and they'd eaten and drunk coffee. Sitting in the corner, Maggie had talked about Johanna.

  Though it was good hearing stories, Eleri didn’t hear much that she thought she could use for the case. Maggie told her about Johanna’s commentary on growing up as she had. That she'd been expected to become a wife and mother and had wound up doing most of what had been planned for her. Her first degree was in Home Economics, and she'd married as soon as she graduated. Apparently, she and her first husband had divorced relatively quickly, because he wanted children and she wanted another degree in something interesting.

  She'd met Marat a little later in life, and the two had hit it off, but children had not been part of their equation. Maggie lamented that now there was nobody left to carry on the wonderfulness of who Marat and Johanna were.

  It was Eleri who said, "But there are plenty of you carrying on after them. You do, and I've met the kids: Emersyn, Madisyn, Cage, Joule. They've all got a little bit of those two inside, so it's not as though their work and their … legacy won’t go forward."

  It must've been the wrong thing to say. Maggie had nodded, cried hard
er, apologized, hugged Eleri, and then headed out the door.

  With Maggie as upset as she was, Eleri hadn’t had much chance to steer the conversation toward the things she wanted and needed to know. At least she'd gotten coffee, and made more of a friend out of Maggie—she hoped. But that was yesterday, and today she was looking for a more positive outcome. At least she had control of the video and could check that box off their to-do list, even if she didn’t see anyone else.

  Finally, in the shop and glad she’d decided to come, Eleri stood in line without recognizing anyone except for the quirky barista—the one who still insisted on saying Vini, Vidi, and Vici with a hard V. This time, being adventurous, Eleri ordered the E=MCsquared, an Up N Atom special. She didn’t doctor the drink at all, waiting to see what this concoction might be in its originally intended form. She added an egg pastry to her order, given that she'd skipped the cereal this morning.

  Setting up shop in the corner as usual, Eleri cataloged the patrons’ coming and going as she watched the video feed on her laptop screen. The Rychenkov-Schmitt home was her new binge. As usual, she watched it on a four-way split screen in fast forward, and was beginning to think she must have missed something.

  No one had come into the home, not since she and Donovan had found Marat’s USB. Eleri frowned at her screen, rewound, pulled footage from other cameras, and watched it all again.

  Yesterday's footage, overnight footage, this morning—it all yielded nothing. It had been several days since the house last had a visitor. Their perp had been searching the home relatively regularly and—

  "That's quite the frown you have."

  Eleri jerked her gaze up and first noticed the paper cup that plunked on the other side of the table. Following the short, trim cut nails up an arm, she spotted Kaya Mazur at the end of that steaming coffee.