Simple Genius skamm-3

by David Baldacci

  When Horatio had finished, Sean said, “What’s a whacked rose hedge got to do with Michelle’s problems?”

  “I don’t know if it has any connection.” He studied Sean over his cup of coffee. “So how’s our girl doing?”

  “Seems to be in fine form. She hit the ground running.”

  “That might not last. So talk to me about Viggie.”

  Sean did so and Horatio sat back. “This doesn’t sound like it will be easy.

  How do you want to play it? This Champ chump won’t let me on the grounds.”

  “I can bring Viggie here. Alicia will okay it. She really cares about the girl.”

  “Good. Did you tell Michelle I was coming?”

  “No, but she’ll find out soon enough. When I explain it’s for Viggie’s benefit I think it’ll be okay. She seems to have bonded really quickly with her.”

  “That could be telling in certain respects,” Horatio said, looking thoughtful. “Maybe I can work two birds with one stone.”

  When Sean returned to Babbage Town he found Michelle in the dining hall talking with Champ. Viggie hovered at one end of the long table chewing what looked like soggy Cheerios.

  When Champ spotted Sean he rose from the table. “I hope you understand why your friend couldn’t stay here.”

  “What friend?” Michelle said quickly.

  “Horatio Barnes,” Sean answered bluntly.

  When Champ noted Michelle’s astonished reaction to this he seemed taken aback. “If you’ll excuse me,” he stammered and hurried off. After Champ left, Michelle snapped, “Why the hell is Barnes here?”

  “For Viggie. We need somebody who can get through to her.”

  “And you had to call in the guy who locked me up and then walked away? I can’t believe you would do that, Sean.”

  “He didn’t lock you up. You went into the facility voluntarily. And he didn’t walk away from you.”

  “What are you talking about? He vanished.”

  “He went to Tennessee.”

  Michelle’s features became so hard that it looked like she’d been frozen. After nearly a minute of silence had passed she said quietly, “Why would he go to Tennessee?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “I don’t appreciate you of all people playing games with me.”

  “Okay. He went to Tennessee to find the place where you lived when you were six years old.”

  “I don’t believe this shit!”

  Neither of them noticed the heads of people at other tables turning toward them as their voices rose.

  “According to your brother you had an abrupt personality change that year.”

  “I was a kid!”

  “Come on, Michelle, what happened?”

  “Nothing! Do you remember when you were six years old?”

  Sean suddenly realized what he was doing. He was, in fact, screwing everything up. He was intruding on Horatio’s jurisdiction, asking Michelle incredibly personal questions in an incredibly clumsy fashion in front of strangers. “No, I don’t,” he said hastily. “I’m sorry.” His contrite tone seemed to deflate the anger in her a little. They both looked up to see Viggie eying them, her features full of uncertainty. Michelle immediately sat down beside her and put an arm around her shoulders.

  “It’s okay, Viggie, just a little disagreement, we have them all the time.” She said sharply to Sean, “Don’t we?”

  Sean nodded. “All the time.” He got up and joined them.

  Viggie was dressed in denim overalls, her hair done up in the usual pigtails. Michelle noted that the girl’s fingernails had been bitten down completely.

  Sean said, “She has to go to class. They have a school here for workers with families. It’s right down the hall in the mansion.” He lowered his voice. “I’ve arranged to have a guard sit with her. We’ll be back before class lets out.”

  “Back, back from where?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Chapter 45

  They dropped Viggie off in the schoolroom. Before they left Viggie, Michelle and Sean spoke to her teacher, a middle-aged woman.

  “A special case,” the teacher said about Viggie. “But on her good days she’s as brilliant as any student I’ve ever had.”

  “Alicia Chadwick says she can factor large numbers in her head,” Sean said.

  “Exactly. Can you imagine being able to see millions, if not billions of numbers neatly lined up in your mind’s eye?”

  Sean said, “No, I can’t. I actually have trouble remembering my own phone number.”

  They left Viggie with her teacher and guard and headed out. In the hall they ran into Alicia Chadwick.

  “She’s safe in the school,” Sean told her and then explained about Horatio. “Maybe he can help her.”

  “Get through the ordeal of her father’s death?” Alicia asked, casting him a sharp glance. “Or something else?”

  “Alicia, if she knows anything about Monk’s death we need to find that out. The sooner we find out the less important Viggie becomes to a killer.”

  Alicia said, “Okay, let’s do it.”

  As Sean and Michelle walked the grounds of the mansion, he said, “The place was built by a guy who made a fortune selling people canned food packed full of crap that probably killed as many consumers as not.”

  “I didn’t see any sign with the name Babbage Town.”

  “Funny, neither did I.” He went over the hut system with her and then gave Michelle a more detailed rundown of his conversation with Champ and the quantum computer.

  “I’ve got Joan digging on who owns this place. Say what you want about her, she’s really good at that.”

  “Most animals with claws are,” Michelle shot back.

  They eventually came to stand in front of Turing’s now empty cottage.

  “FBI Special Agent with-a-bad-attitude Michael Ventris took all the stuff but I’m having Joan run down where Monk might have traveled to.”

  “You said Alicia mentioned it was overseas?”

  “She just didn’t know where.”

  He took her to Len Rivest’s cottage next.

  “Did you check Champ’s alibi on the night Rivest was killed?” she asked.

  “Computer says he clocked in Hut Number Two at eleven-thirty and punched out at three in the morning. So whoever I saw around two in the morning, it wasn’t him.”

  “And since it looks like Rivest had been dead for at least five hours when you found him, that rules Champ out.”

  “Suspects come, suspects go,” Sean said with a sigh.

  They next walked down to the boathouse. Michelle ran an expert’s eye over the watercraft. “Nothing too exceptional, mostly recreational,” she pronounced. She motioned to a twenty-six-foot Formula Bowrider up on a boat lift in one of the slips. “One of the owners of this place must be a New Yorker.”

  Sean looked at the name stenciled on the stern transom: “The Big Apple.” He pointed across the river. “How long to row across? Not for someone like you, I mean an ordinary mortal.”

  She considered this. “Not knowing the current, I’d say at least forty-five minutes or so. It always looks closer on land. When you’re sloughing through the water, it’s a lot farther.”

  “So there and back we’re talking over two hours, considering you’d probably be rowing slower on the way back.”

  “That’s right.”

  He led her through the woods to the spot where Camp Peary could be seen. Michelle pulled a pair of binoculars from her backpack and focused them.

  The sun was glancing off the shiny fence surrounding the CIA’s property.

  “Heck of a shot at you,” she said, studying the distance and trajectory.

  “Yeah, well let’s be happy it wasn’t a helluva shot or I wouldn’t be here.”

  She pointed to her left at the break in the tree line. “Runway?”

  “Yep.”

  She looked at the large cranes farther down the river. “Navy?” Sean nodded. “Where’
d they find his body?”

  “As best I can figure out, right about there.” He pointed to a wooded spot about five hundred yards down from the runway.

  “So the thing is, if Monk went over there voluntarily and not just to kill himself, then he either went to meet someone, or to spy on the place and someone got the jump on him,” she said.

  “Right, but if he went to spy on the place the CIA had every right to shoot him. So why cover it up to make it look like suicide?”

  “Well, maybe it was suicide after all,” Michelle said.

  “But what about Rivest? He was most definitely murdered.”

  “Unconnected to Monk’s death,” she said simply.

  Sean didn’t look as confident. “Maybe.”

  As they walked back Sean abruptly said, “Look, I should’ve given you a heads-up that Horatio was coming down. I’m sorry. I was just trying to help.”

  “Forget it,” she replied. But she said it in a way that Sean knew she would never forget it.

  Chapter 46

  As soon as they climbed in Michelle’s truck, Sean rolled down the window and took a deep breath. “I recall you once cleaned out your truck for me so I could breathe without the aid of machinery.”

  “That was back when I used to like you,” she said, slipping the truck into gear. “Okay, where to now?”

  They drove along the river. Every half-mile or so they passed a ruined mansion or plantation; the only thing left standing in most of them were multiple brick chimney stacks.

  “The third little pig was right, build it out of brick and it’ll last,” Michelle commented.

  They finally stopped at one property and got out. Sean walked up the overgrown drive and Michelle followed. On the tilting stone entrance column was the name “Farleygate” written in weathered bronze script.

  Sean said, “There was a book on local history at Babbage Town that I read through. Farleygate was owned by the son of some famous inventor.”

  Michelle asked, “So what happened?”

  “Like lots of rich people who inherit money, he blew it. Most of the mansions around here, Brandonfield, Tuckergate, have fallen into ruins.”

  Michelle added, “Or been turned into secret labs where people die.”

  A chilly wind blew across the front lawn that was rapidly being consumed by the surrounding forest.

  “I bet it was beautiful when it was new,” Michelle said as she wrapped her arms around her shoulders and stared up at the manse. Unlike many of the abandoned manors around here, Farleygate’s walls were still standing though the large wooden front double doors had rotted away, most of the windows were broken out and the slate roof was full of holes. “Probably a nice place to grow up,” she said a bit wistfully.

  He looked at her in surprise. “You’ve never even owned a home. I didn’t think you were into possessions.”

  “I’ve never been married either. It doesn’t mean I can’t look,” she shot back.

  Noise filtered out from the mansion.

  “That sounds like voices,” Michelle said. She pulled her gun and headed to the house with Sean right behind. Inside, Michelle slid a flashlight out of her backpack and shone it around.

  The corridor they were on was long, the floors rotted, the walls coming down in chunks. The air was dank with mold and Sean began to cough. The noises they heard started up again, like hurried whispers. Then a tiny scream seemed to come from right next to them. They both jumped and Michelle swung both her light and pistol in that direction. A blank wall looked back at them and yet they still heard what sounded like buzzing.

  She looked at Sean searchingly. “Hornet’s nest?” she said. He looked puzzled and then stepped toward the wall and tapped on it. All noise instantly ceased.

  He looked at her and shook his head. “Human nest.” His fingers probed around the wall until they found what they were looking for: a small loop of metal. Sean pulled on it and the section of wall opened up.

  Something hit him around the legs, and something else around the chest. He fell backward, landing on his butt. Running feet echoed down the hall.

  As Sean got up he heard other sounds: screams and laughter. He looked over his shoulder. The screams were coming from a little boy, about eight years old, that Michelle had a tight hold of. The laughter was coming from Michelle and it was clearly directed at Sean.

  After Sean had dusted himself off, Michelle said in a fake stern voice to the boy, “Okay, name, rank and serial number, mister.”

  He was looking fearfully at her and Michelle noticed she still had her gun out. “Whoops, sorry.” She holstered her pistol and said, “Come on, talk. What were you doing here?”

  Sean said, “You can get hurt in a place like this, son.”

  “We come here a lot,” the boy said defiantly. “We never get hurt.”

  Sean peered inside the hidden space. “A secret room. How’d you find it?”

  “My brother, Teddy. He used to come here when he was my age with his gang. Now it’s my place. All these old places have secret rooms.”

  Sean stiffened and looked at Michelle. He pulled out his wallet and handed the boy a ten-dollar bill. “Thanks, son.”

  After the little boy ran off, they walked outside and sat on an old stone bench.

  “So we search Babbage Town for a secret room?” Michelle asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Can I ask why?”

  “It’ll give us something to do. And if there is a spy at Babbage Town…?” His voice trailed off.

  “You really think a spy will be using a secret room? What, he sneaks out at night on his traitorous rounds? Give me a freaking break.”

  “What do you know about Camp Peary?”

  “Other than what I told you, not a lot.”

  “If you research the place online, there’s nothing. Only the same few articles come up.”

  “And you’re surprised?” she said.

  “The guy who picked me up when I got off the plane, he said the Navy owned the land during World War II and trained Seabees there. Then they left but came back in the Fifties and kicked everybody out.”

  “Everybody? Everybody who?”

  “There used to be two towns over there. Magruder and another one I can’t remember the name of. Apparently the homes and everything are still there.”

  “What’s that got to do with our investigation?”

  “Nothing. I’m just killing mental time until I do think of something relevant,” he admitted.

  “Speaking of relevant, how well did Rivest know Monk Turing?” she asked.

  “According to Rivest not very well. When we were drinking together though he opened up a bit and said something interesting.”

  “What?”

  “He mentioned that he and Monk had gone fishing together one day on the York River. They were out in a little boat just drinking beer and throwing lines in the water, not expecting to catch anything.”

  “And?”

  “And Monk looked over at Camp Peary and said something like, ‘It’s really ironic them being the greatest collector of secrets in the world.’”

  “What was really ironic?” Michelle asked.

  “According to Rivest, when he asked him about it, Monk just clammed up.”

  “I don’t see how that helps us.”

  “I never met him but I don’t think Monk Turing would say something without a good reason. Come on.”

  “Where to?”

  “Remember I said there were only a few articles about Camp Peary on the Internet?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Well two of them were written by a guy named South Freeman who lives in a little town near here called Arch. He runs the local newspaper and he’s also the resident historian for the area. I figure if anyone can fill us in on Camp Peary, he can.”

  Michelle slapped her thigh as she rose off the bench. “South Freeman? Monk Turing? Champ Pollion? What the hell is it with this case and freaky names?”

  Chapter 47
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  Arch was a town of few streets, a single traffic light, a number of mom-and-pop stores, a line of abandoned railroad tracks grafted onto Main Street like ancient sutures and a one-story brick building badly in need of restoring that housed the Magruder Gazette. Another small rusted sign stated that the Magruder Historical Society was also housed in the same building.

  “If the town’s name is Arch, why isn’t it the Arch Gazette?” Michelle asked as she parked the truck and they got out.

  “I have my suspicions, but we can ask old South for the answer,” Sean replied mysteriously.

  They went inside and were met by a tall black man in his sixties with a lanky body and a cadaverous face outlined with a white-gray beard, in the center of which sat a smoldering cigarette protruding from thin, cracked lips.

  He shook hands. “South Freeman,” he said. “Got your phone call. So you want to know a little bit about the history of the area? Came to the right damn place then.”

  Sean nodded and South led them to a small room set up as an office. It was lined with gunmetal gray file cabinets and a couple of shabby desks although a shiny new computer rested on one of them. The walls held an assortment of photographs of the area including a large satellite image of what Sean recognized as Camp Peary. A sign above it read, “Hell on Earth.”

  Sean pointed to it. “I see you’re a big fan of your country’s premier intelligence service.”

  South looked at the photo and shrugged. “Government took my parents’ home and kicked us all out. How am I supposed to feel?”

  “That would be the Navy, not the CIA,” Sean corrected.

  “Navy, Army, CIA, I prefer to think of it collectively as the Evil Empire.”

  “I read your articles on Camp Peary,” he said.

  “Well, you didn’t have many to choose from now, did you?” South stubbed out his cigarette and immediately lit another. Michelle waved smoke from her face.

  Sean, glancing at Michelle, said, “So you lived in Magruder? I sort of assumed from the name of your paper.”

  Freeman nodded. “That’s right. There were two towns on the grounds of what’s now Camp Peary: Bigler’s Mill and Magruder, where I was born. They’re now on the list of places that just disappeared from the Commonwealth of Virginia’s official registry.”