The Shaman Sings (Charlie Moon Mysteries)

by James D. Doss

  The riddle had nagged at him, robbed him of sleep, ruined his normally hearty appetite. It was like the war days, when he had been so close to a solution but unable to see it. He bowed his head in frustration. “I’m a fool.… It was a bloody mistake to get involved in this nonsense. If only I could put my finger on it.…” He paused and looked at his hands. Mistake … finger on it. He remembered a seemingly unimportant entry from her high school transcript. Priscilla Song had taken two semesters of typing. The victim was a touch-typist. A touch-typist didn’t look at the keyboard like a hunt-and-peck typist. Hunt-and-peckers might get a letter wrong here or there, but an expert touch-typist would generate several words of total garble before she realized her fingertips were misplaced on the keyboard. Potter-Evans’s mouth dropped open and he cried out, “Oh surely not … how could I have overlooked something so simple!” What if it was never a code? … What if it was a damned bloody mistake!

  The old man hurried to his workbench. He purposely misplaced his hands one row high on the keyboard of the antique typewriter, closed his eyes, and typed “z f r c y r t” as if his fingers were in the correct position. This produced a meaningless garble of letters, as did the second, third, and fourth trial positions. On the fifth trial, he started in the canonical position, then misplaced his fingers one position to the right; the z became an x. More garble. On the next trial, he offset his position one key to the left. This would “decode” the mysterious message if the victim had, whether by accident or design, misplaced her fingers one position to the right. He typed “z f r c y r t.” The z was replaced by pressure on the shift key. Of course—to capitalize the first letter of a proper name! It would be a reflex action for a touch-typist, even if she were under great stress. Instead of the seven letters of the “coded message,” only six letters appeared. A name. No need to check the long list; this was a very familiar name.

  “Aha … Aha! Great Jupiter!” the old man roared as he danced on the plank flooring. The sounds of his exultation echoed through the forest. “I’ve done it! I’ve jolly well done it!”

  * * *

  They arrived in Granite Creek at sundown. Anne’s ivory skin was more pale than usual, but aside from a general weakness of limb and shortness of breath, her recovery was remarkable. She had Parris stop at the supermarket, where she selected a pair of New York-cut steaks, Idaho potatoes, and a copy of her employer’s newspaper. They were in her kitchen, the steaks were in the oven, and Parris had just switched the oven to broil when Anne began to scan the newspaper. At the bottom of the editorial page, she spotted the brief announcement. “Scotty,” she said, “look at this!”

  Parris felt a tingling sensation on the back of his neck as he read the single paragraph:

  RUMOR HAS IT …

  While the Adviser hesitates to publish unsubstantiated stories, we have decided to report a rumor that is already common knowledge on the campus of Rocky Mountain Polytechnic. According to our sources, a member of the Physics Department has made a major scientific discovery. While the exact nature of the breakthrough is a closely held secret, we are told that the excitement revolves around an important new development in superconductivity. Stay tuned!

  Parris closed his eyes and concentrated. “Something sounds awfully familiar. Wait a minute! In that box of stuff from her apartment—I remember now. She was listed as an author on some technical publications, before she came to RMP. There was something about magnetism … and superconductors.”

  Wheels were turning in Anne’s head. “Could be,” she said, “Thomson’s early visit to Washington wasn’t about drugs, after all.”

  “You figure,” he said, “the Song girl made some kind of breakthrough … then Thomson took the opportunity, after Pacheco murdered the girl, to steal her superconductor discovery?” It sounded awfully thin.

  Anne was nervously twisting the rose-quartz pendant. “I assumed Thomson visited Zimmelhauf Enterprises to have a drug formulation analyzed, but what if that scoundrel was there with a superconductor sample?” She slapped herself on the forehead. “I wondered about the visit to the law firm. When I called, the man said they specialized in intellectual property.”

  Parris was a little behind the curve. “Intellectual property…?”

  “He intends to file a patent application. That scum! He’s going to patent the dead girl’s superconductor discovery as his own.”

  “Well,” he began uneasily as he noticed the hard glint in her eyes, “we don’t know that Thomson is going to claim anything that isn’t his own property. Maybe he discovered this superwhatsit all by himself!”

  Anne removed a fat wallet from her purse and withdrew a crisp twenty-dollar bill from its innards. She held the bill daintily between two scarlet fingernails, waved it before his face, then dropped the bank note on the table. “I’ll wager my Mr. Jackson against your Mr. Hamilton that Professor Thomson announces a superconductor discovery and that he’s in court within, let’s say, twelve months, trying to prove that he didn’t steal the research from the murdered girl. Put up or shut up.”

  Parris grinned and pushed the bill away. “A sworn officer of the law can’t indulge in this sort of vice.”

  Something else was gnawing at his insides. The case against Pacheco was so sweet, so solid. What could a clever attorney for the defense accomplish by suggesting that Thomson was profiting from the Song girl’s death? He still hadn’t established a motive for Pacheco; a sexual crime had seemed plausible, but Simpson’s final report specified that the girl had not been raped. A drug deal gone sour was a possibility, but their best efforts to tie Pacheco or Priscilla to the drug scene had come up empty. All it might take to queer the prosecution of the drug pusher was an unexpected twist. A greedy university professor who saw the untimely death as an opportunity for theft would do just fine. Parris closed his eyes and dropped his face into his hands. Why couldn’t something, just for once, be simple? Anne was at his side, stroking her long fingers through his hair. “What is it?”

  “Heartburn.”

  TWENTY

  Scott Parris was sipping a steaming cup of acidic coffee as he gazed through the plate-glass window at the pine-studded canyon between the Los Alamos town site and the National Laboratory territory. The laboratory cafeteria was quiet at midmorning; the policeman was certain that he was completely alone when the tall man materialized at his side and tapped his shoulder.

  The policeman lurched involuntarily, spilling scalding coffee on his hand.

  “You,” the owner of the finger said, “must be our visitor.”

  “Jeepers,” Parris muttered as he wiped at his wrist with a paper napkin, “where did you come from?”

  The man made an undulating manta-ray motion with his hand. “Just tunneled in through the quantum fuzz,” he chirped gleefully. When he saw Parris’s puzzled expression, he was mildly apologetic. “Sorry. That’s kind of an inside joke.”

  The policeman studied the tall, gaunt figure in wrinkled khaki shorts that, unfortunately, came just short of hiding a bulbous set of knees. His black T-shirt was emblazoned in luminescent orange with the announcement DANCING IS MY LIFE. The scientist was looming over him expectantly, peering at Parris as though the policeman was an interesting specimen.

  “I’m Scott Parris. You are…?”

  “Otto D. Proctor. Had a call about you, from Protocol. Understand you have some questions about something or other.” The physicist put a plastic tray on the table, then offered a hand, which Parris accepted. The tray held a peculiar assortment of items that, given the hour, Parris assumed must be the man’s breakfast.

  “I’m chief of police at Granite Creek in Colorado. Rocky Mountain town, a bit of silver mining, some tourism. Biggest industry is Rocky Mountain Polytechnic.”

  Proctor sat down, spread hot Mexican salsa on a bagel, and nodded. “I’ve been there a couple of times. Nice little town.”

  The policeman touched his fingertips together in a prayerful manner and studied Proctor as he spoke. “What I wan
t to discuss is … sensitive. I assume you’ll be willing to keep mum about our conversation?”

  Proctor swallowed a mouthful of diet cola. “Don’t fret; discretion is my middle name.”

  “Did you hear about the murder we had a couple of weeks ago?”

  The scientist popped a pimiento-stuffed olive into his mouth. “Can’t say I did.” He chewed the olive, then gulped it down. “Don’t read the papers all that often; never watch TV. Who was murdered?”

  Parris gave him a thumbnail sketch of the Song homicide, including the cardinal fact that Julio Pacheco’s prints were on the Phillips screwdriver. The physicist spread a spoon of green chili on a bagel. “Sounds like you’ve got it locked up. What brings you to Los Alamos?”

  “Need some background information. The victim may have been working on superconductivity. I need to learn a few things.”

  “Ah, superconductivity. That explains why Protocol asked me to chat with you. It’s my specialty.”

  “Tell me,” Parris said, “about superconductors. What’s so special?”

  “There are only a few fundamental things you need to know.” Proctor clearly enjoyed his role as teacher. “First, several ordinary electrical conductors, like lead or mercury, are also superconductors. But only when you cool them to extraordinarily low temperatures. Near absolute zero, the free electrons in the metal organize themselves into pairs. These electron pairs dance through the material without impediment.” He closed his eyes and swayed as if waltzing with an invisible partner. “Under these conditions, the material has no electrical resistance.”

  “And that’s important?”

  “Important?” Proctor’s tone betrayed his astonishment at this question. “Damn right. Remove the resistance from electrical circuits and remarkable things happen. Computer and communications circuits run faster; energy savings are enormous. But that’s not all. Magnetic fields can’t penetrate a superconductor; my chums call this the Meissner effect. Place a small magnet over a superconductor, the superconductor repels the magnetic field and—guess what?—the magnet floats in midair!”

  “And this is useful for…”

  “In principle at least, for all kinds of stuff. For making super-railroads,” Proctor said, “where the train literally floats above the tracks. No noise, no friction, and whoosh, the locomotive barrels along at three hundred miles an hour. Problem is, it’s awfully expensive to cool the superconductors, so levitating a train costs piles of megabucks.” The scientist wiped something off his chin with a napkin. “What does the young lady’s superconductor research have to do with her murder?”

  “Probably nothing, but there’s a rumor that someone in the RMP Physics Department is about to announce a major breakthrough in superconductivity.”

  “RMP has a moderately good physics department for a small university,” Proctor said with slightly raised eyebrows, “but I wasn’t aware that anyone there was even working on superconductivity.”

  “As far as we can find out, Priscilla Song was the only person at RMP who ever did any research on superconductivity. Odd coincidence, this rumor, so soon after her death.”

  “Coincidences,” Proctor said, “are nature’s way of saying, ‘Pay attention!’”

  “If someone took advantage of the homicide to pilfer her research, our DA could have a big problem prosecuting the guy whose prints are on the murder weapon. For one thing, we haven’t established a motive for Mr. Pacheco. The defense will insist that whoever stole the research results also murdered the student.”

  Proctor shook his head at this notion. “That’s utter nonsense. No sane person would commit murder to steal superconductivity research results … unless…” He blushed slightly. “No, never mind, that’s sheer fantasy.”

  “What’s a fantasy?”

  Proctor waved the question away. “Forget I mentioned it.”

  “Look,” Parris said forcefully, “I drove over two hundred miles to pick your brains, so don’t hold out on me.”

  The scientist forgot about his bagel. “There’s only one superconductor discovery that would be worth killing for. We’re talking about a major impact on virtually every application of electricity—a new world. The inventor would become wealthy beyond all dreams of avarice. The nation that controlled the basic patents would be in the driver’s seat, both technologically and economically. Whole national economies would be shaken.”

  “Sounds like science fiction,” Parris said doubtfully.

  “That’s because it is science fiction … until someone discovers, perhaps stumbles over … the Holy Grail.”

  Parris was leaning over the table. “Precisely what sort of superconductor discovery are we talking about?”

  “A material,” Proctor said with a faraway look in his eye, “that superconducts at ordinary everyday temperatures. If we didn’t need expensive cryogens to make them work, superconductors would be used in practically every electrical circuit in the world. The technological and social implications are absolutely staggering.”

  “And,” Parris said thoughtfully, “a repairman like Pacheco wouldn’t understand this sort of breakthrough. But a physicist certainly would.”

  “Right,” Proctor added, “or a chemist, or an electrical engineer, or…”

  “What are the chances that Priscilla Song or another scientist at RMP has already made a discovery like that?”

  Proctor grinned; he made an O with his thumb and finger and peeked through the circle at Parris. “Right at absolute zero,” he said.

  * * *

  Parris was far down the road, but Proctor’s phrase kept echoing through his mind like a commercial jingle that couldn’t be dismissed. “A superconductor discovery … worth killing for!” Could Thomson be something worse than a thief? The rational part of his mind, that part that measured and weighed, answered “no.” Pacheco’s prints were on the screwdriver, so Pacheco was guilty as sin. But what if someone had hired the Mexican to do this messy job?

  * * *

  Claude Potter-Evans winked at the middle-aged woman standing in front of him; she was at the police station to pay a parking ticket. “Ah now, young lassie. Got ourselves crosswise of the law, did we?” He was rewarded with a slight blush, which made his day a success. His flirtation was interrupted when the woman left and Piggy bellowed, “Next!” The fat policeman managed a grimace that passed for an official smile as Potter-Evans moved to the front of the line. “What can I do for you?”

  “Potter-Evans calling. I wish to see the chief constable. I have some significant news for your superior.”

  Piggy Slocum squinted his porcine eyes at the old man. “You talkin’ about the boss … you mean Chief Parris?”

  “Indeed. The very same person. Now will you kindly summon him for me?”

  “Sorry buddy, no can do. Main honcho’s outta town today. Down in New Mexico. Whatcha want—somethin’ I can do?”

  Potter-Evans sighed with exasperation. “Afraid not. Tell him I was here. And tell him,” he leaned over and fairly snarled, “that he jolly well better be here the next time I call or I will put a curse on him and all his descendants even unto the seventh generation!”

  Piggy, missing the intended humor, scowled suspiciously and scooted an inch backward.

  “Also inform him I have solved his little riddle; I have unraveled the murder victim’s last message and have a name for your chief. I must go now. I have fine wines to taste, supple young women to delight, savory rabbit stew to brew in my iron pot! But not necessarily,” he added slyly, “in that order.”

  Piggy found a pad and a ballpoint. “Gimme a phone number.” But the odd visitor had left. Slocum made a note of the time, then scribbled a few barely legible words on his log:

  Parris. Old geezer. Pottie-something.

  Wants to see chief about rabbit stew, booze, women.

  Piggy turned his attention to the tall, extremely thin man waiting for service. “And what can I do for you?”

  “Stopped by to pay a parking ticket.
Couldn’t help but overhear that fellow who just left. Is he actually helping with the Song homicide investigation?”

  “Him and half the county, bub. Bein’ a civilian, you’d be surprised how many folks with a screw loose drive us buggy after a major crime.” Piggy tapped his finger on his temple. “Some of ’em think they can read tea leaves and tell us who did it. Even Clara’s Aunt Daisy is gettin’ in on the act. We all know it’s that Mexican what did it, so why do they bother us?”

  The man appeared to be impressed. “Clara’s Aunt Daisy?”

  Piggy motioned with his thumb toward Clara’s glass-walled enclosure. “Clara Tavishuts, our dispatcher. She’s one of them Utes. Moved off the rez. Now her Aunt Daisy, they say she’s some kind of palm reader, came up here with some witch doctor tale for the boss. I hope,” he added, “the chief don’t believe none of that Injun hocus-pocus.”

  “No,” the thin man said with genuine concern, “I would certainly hope not.”

  “Well, let’s see then,” Piggy muttered as he looked at the man’s ticket. “You hadda little parkin’ violation; fine is thirty-two dollars, unless you want to talk to the judge.”

  The professor pushed a personal check across the counter.

  Piggy squinted at the name printed on the check. “Well, I’ll be.” He glanced at the visitor with renewed interest. “You any kin to the King?”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “Elvis. I hear they saw him up in Aspen last month drivin’ a Mayflower van. He was a truck driver, you know, before he got famous. Thought maybe you an’ him was cousins or somethin’.”

  “I doubt it.” The man sniffed. “My relatives all have forty-six chromosomes.”

  “Ain’t that somethin’!” Piggy leaned forward and lowered his voice to a raspy whisper. “They say my great-grandaddy Lloyd Slocum had seven toes. On both feet! Extra toes had little webs o’ skin between ’em.” He splayed his stubby fingers to demonstrate. “How do you figger things like that happen?”