"What the fuck're you getting at?" Billings snapped.
"Karen," Montrose said, pulling off his designer glasses and rubbing his eyes.
She ignored her boss. "You think they took our drug and decided to kill themselves? You think we're to blame for that? This drug--"
"This drug that a couple of people popped--maybe four people--and then killed themselves. Whatta we say about that from a statistical point of view?" LaTour turned to Tal.
"Well within the percentile of probability for establishing a causal relationship between the two events."
"There you go. Science has spoken."
Tal wondered if they were playing the good-cop/bad-cop routine you see in movies. He tried again. "Could an overdose of Luminux have impaired their judgment?"
"Not enough so that they'd decide to kill themselves," she said firmly. Montrose said nothing.
"That your opinion, too?" LaTour muttered to him.
The president finally said, "Yes, it is."
Tal persisted, "How about making them susceptible?"
Billings leapt in with, "I don't know what you mean...This is all crazy."
Tal ignored her and said levelly to Montrose, "Could somebody persuade a person taking an overdose of Luminux to kill themselves?"
Silence filled the office.
Billings said, "I strongly doubt it."
"But you ain't saying no," LaTour grumbled.
A glance between Billings and Montrose. Finally he pulled his wire-rims back on, looked away and said, "We're not saying no."
+ [?] < = > /
THE NEXT MORNING they arrived at the station house at the same time, and the odd couple walked together through the Detective Division pen into Tal's office.
Tal and LaTour had looked over the case so far and found no firm leads.
"Still no who," LaTour grumbled. "Still no why."
"But we've got a how," Tal pointed out. Meaning the concession about Luminux making one suggestible.
"Fuck how. I want who."
At just that moment they received a possible answer.
Shellee stepped into Tal's office. Pointedly ignoring the homicide cop, she said, "You're back. Good. Got a call from the PII team in Greeley. They said a neighbor saw a woman in a small, dark car arrive at the Bensons' house about an hour before they died. She was wearing sunglasses and a tan or beige baseball cap. The neighbor didn't recognize her."
"Car?" LaTour snapped.
It's hard to ignore an armed, 250-pound goateed man named Bear but Shellee did it easily.
Continuing to speak to her boss, she said, "They weren't sure what time she got there but it was before lunch. She stayed maybe forty minutes then left. That'd be an hour or so before they killed themselves." A pause. "The car was a small sedan. The witness didn't remember the color."
"Did you ask about the--" LaTour began.
"They didn't see the tag number," she told Tal. "Now, that's not all. DMV finally calls back and tells me that Sandra Whitley drives a blue BMW 325."
"Small wheelbase," Tal said.
"And getting better 'n' better, boss. Guess who's leaving town before her parents' memorial service?"
"Sandra?"
"How the hell you'd find that out?" LaTour asked.
She turned coldly to him. "Detective Simms asked me to organize all the evidence from the Whitley crime scene. Because, like he says, having facts and files out of order is as bad as not having them at all. I found a note in the Whitley evidence file with an airline locator number. It was for a flight from Newark today to San Francisco, continuing on to Hawaii. I called and they told me it was a confirmed ticket for Sandra Whitley. Return is open."
"Meaning the bitch might not be coming back at all," LaTour said. "Going on vacation without saying good-bye to the folks? That's fucking harsh."
"Good job," Tal told Shellee.
Eyes down, a faint smile of acknowledgment.
LaTour dropped into one of Tal's chairs, belched softly and said, "You're doing such a good job, Sherry, here, look up whatever you can about this shit." He offered her the notes on Luminux.
"It's Shellee," she snapped and glanced at Tal, who mouthed, "Please."
She snatched them from LaTour's hand and clattered down the hall on her dangerous heels.
LaTour looked over the handwritten notes she'd given them and growled, "So what about the why? A motive?"
Tal spread the files out on his desk--all the crime scene information, the photos, the notes he'd taken.
What were the common denominators? The deaths of two couples. Extremely wealthy. The husbands ill, yes, but not hopelessly so. Drugs that make you suggestible.
A giddy lunch then suicide. A drink beside a romantic fire then suicide...
Romantic...
"Hmm," Tal mused, thinking back to the Whitleys.
"What hmm?"
"Let's think about the wills again."
"We tried that," LaTour said.
"But what if they were about to be changed?"
"Whatta you mean?"
"Try this for an assumption: Say the Whitleys and their daughter had some big fight in the past week. They were going to change their will again--this time to cut her out completely."
"Yeah, but their lawyer'd know that."
"Not if she killed them before they talked to him. I remember smelling smoke from the fire when I walked into the Whitley house. I thought they'd built this romantic fire just before they killed themselves. But maybe they hadn't. Maybe Sandra burned some evidence--something about changing the will, memos to the lawyer, estate planning stuff. Remember, she snatched the mail at the house. One was to the lawyer. Maybe that was why she came back--to make sure there was no evidence left. Hell, wished I'd searched her purse. I just didn't think about it."
"Yeah, but offing her own parents?" LaTour asked skeptically.
"Seventeen point two percent of murderers are related to their victims." Tal added pointedly, "I know that because of my questionnaires, by the way."
LaTour rolled his eyes. "What about the Bensons?"
"Maybe they met in some cardiac support group, maybe they were in the same country club. Whitley might've mentioned something about the will to him. Sandra found out and had to take them out, too."
"Sounds crazy."
"It's a theorem, I keep saying. Let's go prove it or disprove it. See if she's got an alibi. And we'll have forensics go through the fireplace."
"If the ash is intact," LaTour said, "they can image the printing on the sheet. Those techs're fucking geniuses."
Tal called Crime Scene again and arranged to have a team return to the Whitleys' house. Then he said, "Okay, let's go visit our suspect."
+ [?] < = > /
"HOLD ON THERE."
When Greg LaTour charged up to you, muttering the way he'd just done, you held on there.
Even tough Sandra Whitley.
She'd been about to climb into the BMW sitting outside her luxurious house. Suitcases sat next to her.
"Step away from the car," LaTour said, flashing his badge.
Tal said, "We'd like to ask you a few questions, ma'am."
"You again! What the hell're you talking about?" Her voice was angry but she did as she was told.
"You're on your way out of town?" LaTour took her purse off her shoulder. "Just keep your hands at your sides."
"I've got a meeting I can't miss."
"In Hawaii?"
Sandra was regaining the initiative. "I'm an attorney, like I told you. I will find out how you got that information and for your sake there better've been a warrant involved."
Did they need a warrant? Tal wondered.
"Meeting in Hawaii?" LaTour repeated. "With an open return?"
"What're you implying?"
"It's a little odd, don't you think? Flying off to the South Seas a few days after your parents die? Not going to the funeral?"
"Funerals're for the survivors. I've made peace with my parents and their death
s. They wouldn't've wanted me to blow off an important meeting. Dad was as much a businessman as a father. I'm as much a businesswoman as a daughter." Her eyes slipped to Tal. "Okay, you got me, Simms." Emphasizing the name was presumably to remind him again that his name would be spelled correctly in the court documents she filed. She nodded to the purse. "It's all in there. The evidence about me escaping the country after--what?--stealing my parents' money? What exactly do you think I've done?"
"We're not accusing you of anything. We just want to--"
"Ask you a few questions."
"So ask, goddamn it."
LaTour was reading a lengthy document he'd found in her purse. He frowned and handed it to Tal, then asked her, "Can you tell me where you were the night your parents died?"
"Why?"
"Look, lady, you can cooperate or you can clam up and we'll--"
"Go downtown. Yadda, yadda, yadda. I've heard this before."
LaTour frowned at Tal and mouthed, "What's downtown?" Tal shrugged and returned to the document. It was a business plan for a company that was setting up an energy joint venture in Hawaii. Her law firm was representing them. The preliminary meeting seemed to be scheduled for two days from now in Hawaii. There was a memo saying that the meetings could go on for weeks and recommended that the participants get open-return tickets.
Oh.
"Since I have to get to the airport now," she snapped, "and I don't have time for any bullshit. Okay, I'll tell you where I was on the night of the quote crime. On an airplane. I flew back on United Airlines from San Francisco, the flight that got in about eleven p.m. My boarding pass is probably in there"--a contemptuous nod at the purse LaTour held--"and if it isn't, I'm sure there's a record of the flight at the airline. With security being what it is nowadays, picture IDs and everything, that's probably a pretty solid alibi, don't you think?"
Did seem to be, Tal agreed silently. And it got even better when LaTour found the boarding pass and ticket receipt in her purse. Tal's phone began ringing and he was happy for the chance to escape from Sandra's searing fury. He heard Shellee speak from the receiver. "Hey, boss, 's'me."
"What's up?"
"Crime Scene called. They went through all the ash in the Whitleys' fireplace, looking for a letter or something about changing the will. They didn't find anything about that at all. Something had been burned but it was all just a bunch of information on companies--computer and biotech companies. The Crime Scene guy was thinking Mr. Whitley might've just used some old junk mail or something to start the fire."
Oh.
Damn.
"Thanks."
He nodded LaTour aside and told him what Crime Scene had reported.
"Shit on the street," he whispered. "Jumped a little fast here...Okay, let's go kiss some ass. Brother."
The groveling time was quite limited--Sandra was adamant about catching her plane.
She sped out of the driveway, leaving behind a blue cloud of tire smoke.
"Aw, she'll forget about it," LaTour said.
"You think?" Tal asked.
A pause. "Nope. We're way fucked."
As they walked back to the car LaTour said, "We still gotta find the mysterious babe in the sunglasses and hat."
Tal wondered if Mac McCaffrey might've seen someone like that around the Whitleys' place. Besides, it'd be a good excuse to see her again. Tal said, "I'll look into that one."
"You?" LaTour laughed.
"Yeah. Me. What's so funny about that?"
"I don't know. Just you never investigated a case before."
"So? You think I can't talk to witnesses on my own? You think I should just go back home and hump my calculator?"
Silence.
"You heard that?" LaTour finally asked, no longer laughing.
"I heard."
"Hey, I didn't mean it, you know."
"Didn't mean it?" Tal asked, giving an exaggerated squint. "As in you didn't mean for me to hear you? Or as in you don't actually believe I have sex with adding machines?"
"I'm sorry, okay?...I bust people's chops sometimes. It's the way I am. I do it to everybody. Fuck, people do it to me. They call me Bear 'causa my gut. They call you Einstein 'cause you're smart."
"Not to my face."
LaTour hesitated. "You're right. Not to your face...You know, you're too polite, Tal. You can give me a lot more shit. I wouldn't mind. You're too uptight. Loosen up."
"So it's my fault that I'm pissed 'cause you insult me?"
"It was..." he began defensively but then he stopped. "Okay, I'm sorry. I am...Hey, I don't apologize a lot, you know. I'm not very good at it."
"That's an apology?"
"I'm doing the best I can...Whatta you want?"
Silence.
"All right," Tal said finally.
LaTour sped the car around a corner and wove frighteningly through the heavy traffic. Finally he said, "It's okay, though, you know."
"What's okay?"
"If you want to."
"Want to what?" Tal asked.
"You know, you and your calculator...Lot safer than some of the weird shit you see nowadays."
"LaTour," Tal said, "you can--"
"You just seemed defensive about it, you know. Figure I probably hit close to home, you know what I'm saying?"
"You can go straight to hell."
The huge cop was laughing hard. "Shit, don'tcha feel like we're finally breaking the ice here? I think we are. Now, I'll drop you off back at your car, Einstein, and you can go on this secret mission all by your lonesome."
+ [?] < = > /
HIS STATED PURPOSE was to ask her if she'd ever seen the mysterious woman in the baseball cap and sunglasses, driving a small car, at the Whitleys' house.
Lame, Tal thought.
Lame and transparent--since he could've asked her that on the phone. He was sure the true mission here was so obvious that it was laughable: to get a feel for what would happen if he asked Mac McCaffrey out to dinner. Not to actually invite her out at this point, of course. She was, after all, a potential witness. No, just to test the waters.
Tal parked along Elm Street and climbed out of the car, enjoying the complicated smells of the April air, the skin-temperature breeze, the golden snowflakes of fallen forsythia petals covering the lawn.
Walking toward the park where he'd arranged to meet her, Tal reflected on his recent romantic life.
Fine, he concluded. It was fine.
He dated 2.66 women a month. The mean age of his dates in the past 12 months was approximately 31 (a number skewed somewhat by the embarrassing--but highly memorable--outlier of a Columbia University senior). And the mean IQ of the women was around 140 or up--and that latter statistic was a very sharp bell curve with a very narrow standard deviation; Talbot Simms went for intellect before anything else.
It was this latter criteria, though, he'd come to believe lately, that led to the conclusion that his love life was the tepid "fine."
Yes, he'd had many interesting evenings with his 22/3 dates every month. He'd discussed with them Cartesian hyperbolic doubt. He'd argue about the validity of analyzing objects in terms of their primary qualities ("No! I'm suspicious of secondary qualities, too. I mean, how 'bout that?"). They'd draft mathematical formulae in crayon on the paper table coverings at the Crab House. They'd discuss Fermat's Last Theorem until 2 or 3 a.m. (These were not wholly academic encounters, of course; Tal Simms happened to have a full-sized chalkboard in his bedroom.)
He was intellectually stimulated by most of these women. He even learned things from them.
But he didn't really have a lot of fun.
Mac McCaffrey, he believed, would be fun.
She'd sounded surprised when he'd called. Cautious, too, at first. But after a minute or two she'd relaxed and had seemed pleased at the idea that he wanted to meet with her.
He now spotted her in the park next to the Knickerbocker Home, which appeared to be a nursing facility.
"Hey," he said.
&nb
sp; "Hi there. Hope you don't mind meeting outside. I hate to be cooped up."
He recalled the Sierra Club posters in her office. "No, it's beautiful here."
Her sharp green eyes, set in her freckled face, looked away and took in the sights of the park. Tal sat down and they made small talk for five minutes or so. Finally she asked, "You started to tell me that you're, what, a mathematician?"
"That's right."
She smiled. There was a crookedness to her mouth, an asymmetry, which he found charming. "That's way pretty cool. You could be on a TV series. Like CSI or Law and Order, you know. Call it Math Cop."
They laughed. He glanced down at her shoes, old black Reeboks, and saw they were nearly worn out. He noticed, too, a worn spot on the knee of her jeans. It'd been rewoven. He thought of cardiologist Anthony Sheldon's designer wardrobe and huge office; he reflected that Mac worked in an entirely different part of the health care universe.
"So I was wondering," she asked. "Why this interest in the Whitleys' deaths?"
"Like I said. They were out of the ordinary."
"I guess I mean, why are you interested? Did you lose somebody? To suicide, I mean."
"Oh, no. My father's alive. My mother passed away a while ago. A stroke."
"I'm sorry. She must've been young."
"Was, yes."
She waved a bee away. "Is your dad in the area?"
"Nope. Professor in Chicago."
"Math?"
"Naturally. Runs in the family." He told her about Wall Street, the financial crimes, statistics.
"All that adding and subtracting. Doesn't it get, I don't know, boring?"
"Oh, no, just the opposite. Numbers go on forever. Infinite questions, challenges. And remember, math is a lot more than just calculations. What excites me is that numbers let us understand the world. And when you understand something you have control over it."
"Control?" she asked, serious suddenly. "Numbers won't keep you from getting hurt. From dying."
"Sure they can," he replied. "Sometimes. Numbers make car brakes work and keep airplanes in the air and let you call 911. Medicine, science."
"I guess so. Never thought about it." Another crooked smile. "You're pretty enthusiastic about the subject."
Tal asked, "Pascal?"
"Heard of him."
"A philosopher. He was a prodigy at math but he gave it up completely. He said math was so enjoyable it had to be related to sex. It was sinful."
"Hold on, mister," she said, laughing. "You got some math porn you want to show me?"