Measure Of Darkness
- -
- 100%
- +
“But you took him to mean the boy was his son.”
“Absolutely. You could tell, the way he was holding him, the pride in his eyes. He actually looked me in the eye that one time, just for a second, and I could tell how much he loved the boy. And close-up like that you could see the resemblance, I wasn’t kidding about that.”
“You haven’t seen the child in at least two years. Did you ever ask Professor Keener where his son was? Why he didn’t come around anymore? What happened to the boy’s mother? Anything like that?”
Mrs. Nadeau shakes her head, gives me a flinty, dismissive look, almost scornful. “Who are you really?” she wants to know. “If you worked with Professor Keener, you’d know what he was like. You’d know not to ask him personal questions like that. What are you, some kind of reporter?”
Boss lady always says that when you’re engaged on a case, it’s best to season your prevarication with just enough truth to make it edible—and be ready to alter the recipe on the fly. “Not a reporter, no, absolutely not,” I say, backpedaling in place. “And to be totally truthful with you—I’m so sorry I fibbed—I never actually worked in the physics department and I never met Professor Keener personally. But before he died, before he got killed, Keener hired a friend of mine to help him find his missing five-year-old son. It was my friend—he’s a former FBI agent who specializes in child recovery—it was my friend who found the body, okay? And my friend who is now a suspect in the murder.”
To my surprise, Toni Jo Nadeau grins at me. “This is a much better story, sugar,” she says, eyes bright with interest. “Some of it might even be true.”
“Please don’t tell the police. They’ll think I’m meddling.”
“Describe this ‘friend’ of yours and I’ll think about it.”
“You want to know what he looks like?”
She shakes her head. “I know what he looks like. I want to know if you know what he looks like.”
“You know… Oh, I get it. You happened to notice when he visited Professor Keener, is that it?”
“I’m waiting, sugar.”
“Okay, what he looks like. Here goes. Well, for starters, he’s a hunk, big and lean and tall. Way over six foot—I mean, I barely come up to his shoulders, you know? Soulful eyes. And a cute little salt-and-pepper chin beard.”
Mrs. Nadeau nods along with the description. “You had me at hunk, sugar. That’s our boy. I saw him ringing the bell over there last week and my first thought, I wish he was ringing the bell over here, you know what I mean? No offense, but your man is tasty.”
As you may have noticed, I’m rarely at a loss for words, but that pretty much stops my tongue. Mrs. Nadeau notices my discomfort and reaches out to pat my hand. “Wispy little thing like you, I’m guessing he really is just a friend. Don’t look so worried, these things take time.”
Wispy? I’m wearing what I call my librarian glasses, Target clothing and a cloth handbag, going for the nonthreatening mousy look. But wispy? Really?
“Man like that, he’d want a woman with some meat on her bones,” Mrs. Nadeau says. “Somebody with a little bounce in her jounce. But he may come around. You just hang in there.”
When my power of speech finally resumes, I say, “Yesterday morning, when it happened, did you notice anything wrong?”
Mrs. Nadeau explains that because of her allergies—she’s allergic to cats, why is that no surprise?—she takes an antihistamine before bed and sleeps, in her words, like a dead dodo bird. Therefore she has no awareness of what happened in the early hours, or who might have murdered Joseph Keener.
“The sirens woke me. That’s the first I knew something was wrong. The cops wouldn’t tell me what happened, but when I saw that body bag coming out I knew it was bad. The worst. The poor, poor man. I wonder who’ll get the house.”
On my way out the narrow driveway, I stop to take a gander at the dead man’s backyard. And there, partially obscured by fallen leaves, is a child’s sandbox, covered with a plastic turtle lid. Looks like it hasn’t been used in a while, but that fits with what the cat lady said, and as far as I’m concerned proves beyond doubt that a child once played here.
A little boy, missing.
Chapter Ten
Promises to Keep
Kidder loops the big brass padlock over his index finger and shows it to the woman he thinks of as New Mommy.
“You’ll be safe,” he says in his teasing, wheedling way. “It’s a finished basement with a kitchenette, full bath, a nice pool table and a big-screen TV. Plenty of room for the kid’s keyboard. It’s not like you’ll be locked up in a dungeon.”
“The basement is fine, but why do we have to be locked in?” she says. Seated on a divan, the little brat clinging to her side.
“Because your boyfriend said so, that’s why.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Shane saved my life once. I owe him.”
“That’s sweet. Down you go.”
The boy has tucked his head into her hip, averting his face. She strokes his hair, tries to calm him, but the kid picks up on her nervous tension and avoids making eye contact with Kidder. Nothing new there, the brat has never liked him.
“I need to speak to Shane,” the woman pleads. “I want Shane to tell me why we have to be locked into the basement whenever you go out. It’s not like I’m going to run away.”
“I told you, it’s for your own protection. You and the kid. I’m a bodyguard, I’m guarding, and that’s really all you need to know. Those were his instructions and I intend to follow them to the letter.”
“This isn’t right,” she mutters.
Kidder squats so that he’s at eye level. His predatory grin has all the warmth and welcome of a chilled ice pick. “This is not a topic for discussion,” he says softly. “The word comes down from the big guy, we obey. End of story.”
“But why—”
Kidder puts a finger on her mouth, feels her trembling inside. “Sssh,” he says. “You’re going to play in the basement for a while, isn’t that right? You and the kid will be nice and cozy, safe as churches. I’ll be back this evening, we’ll have pizza, maybe watch a movie.”
The touch of his fingertip is like a button shutting off her resistance. Less than a minute later he snaps the padlock on the hardened steel door of the secure room in the cottage basement, heads for his vehicle and is soon exiting the gated estate. A few miles west of the rocky coastline, this scenic road will intersect a major highway. Until then he makes sure to keep just below the speed limit. It would be very awkward if one of the local cops pulls him over, wants to see what he has defrosting in the trunk.
Yikes.
Kidder feels content with his purpose—this new, last-minute assignment is going to be fun. Challenging but fun. He glances at Google Maps in his lap and thinks happy thoughts.
Chapter Eleven
Where It Gets Complicated
I return to the residence walking on air.
Alice Crane, Super Investigator, able to successfully interrogate reluctant neighbors, discover leaf-obscured sandboxes and enter tall buildings in a single bound. Okay, the neighbor wasn’t exactly reluctant, but still, it was my idea and I came away with an eyewitness account that proves beyond doubt, to me at least, that Joseph Keener was the father of a small child. Considering the circumstance, I shouldn’t feel this happy—a kid is missing, what is there to be happy about?—but the success of the mission makes me want to punch the air and shout yes! just like they do in the movies, only Mrs. Beasley might see me and throw a stale muffin at my head. Not that her baked items ever last long enough to go stale, but you get the idea.
Be cool, girl. Like it’s all in a day’s work.
Right, right, let me give it a try. Trying, trying. Nope, never happen. I’ll never be cool. Not unless cool involves shouting, “I did it! I did it!” while bounding up the stairs to the command center.
Only to find the big room hushed and empty.
For one horrible moment I imagine that the mysterious assault team returned in my absence, abducting everyone but me. And then light footsteps come padding along the hallway carpet and boss lady pokes her head inside the door.
“You screamed?” she says, and beckons me to follow.
She and Teddy have been hunkered down at his main computer terminal, all agog over some new spy program developed by our young software genius.
“It’s so simple that it’s almost beautiful,” boss lady enthuses, acting very much like a proud mother. “And it’s functioning perfectly.”
“Simple also means limited,” he reminds her. “We can look but not touch.”
“It’s a kind of invisible, undetectable window into their system,” Naomi explains, attempting to share. “Planted by Jack’s operative at Keener’s company, QuantaGate.”
“More like a reflection of a window,” Teddy corrects. He manages to look embarrassed and pleased at the same time. Then, as if to deflect attention away from his fauxhawked self, he goes, “Alice? Um, what happened out there?”
“Oh, nothing much. Just proved that the dead professor had a kid, that’s all. With a mysterious Chinese lady.”
That finally gets their attention.
“Details,” boss lady demands.
“I should save it for the next case briefing.”
“Don’t be cute,” she says, giving me The Squint. The Squint means we’ve had our fun but joke-time is over, wisecracks are no longer appreciated. It’s boss lady turning off the friendly switch and getting serious and making you serious, too. And so I give her the play-by-play, including the demon cats and the sandbox, and Professor Keener calling the child his “keyboard kid.”
“Odd that he would call him that,” she says. “I wonder what it means, exactly. It must mean something.”
Riffing, I say, “Maybe if you’re a weird genius that’s a term of endearment. Anyhow, the point is, whatever their names are, the mother and child used to visit frequently, but the visits stopped two years ago. Haven’t been seen since, at least by the neighbor. They stopped coming around. Does that mean the mother broke up with the professor, possibly returned to China?”
“I suppose anything is possible at this point. Whoever this woman is, Keener kept her off the grid. Randall Shane never mentioned anything about the mother being Chinese.”
“He didn’t have time to mention much of anything before the windows got kicked in.”
“Good point. Give Jack and Dane a call, let them know about the boy.”
“Will do.”
Boss lady nods, frowning to herself. “I’d love to know what the ‘keyboard kid’ reference means. We’ll try Googling the phrase, but off the top of your head, what first comes to mind when you hear the word keyboard?”
I shrug. “Computers, I guess. And pianos.”
“Pianos?”
“Pianos have keyboards.”
“Right! Of course they do. Hmm. Interesting.”
Without formally ending the conversation—a habit she has when distracted—Naomi wanders away, looking even more thoughtful than usual, which is sort of like saying a saint looks even more religious when the halo blinks on.
Chapter Twelve
Waves of Water, Waves of Light
The good ship Lady Luck currently resides at an upscale marina in Quincy, just south of the city, in sight of the skyscrapers in the financial district, which seems fitting. Speaking of skyscrapers, Jonny Bing’s hundred-and-ninety-foot yacht looms over every other boat in the marina, many of them quite sizable, but nothing much compared to four stories of Lady Luck, gleaming like a huge pile of freshly laundered cash.
Jack Delancey positions his spotless vehicle in the far reaches of the marina parking lot, where it’s less likely to get dinged. He’s just back from Concord, New Hampshire, three and a half hours turnaround, a waste of time, most of it spent behind the wheel, and he’s more than ready to stretch his legs on this last little task before reporting back to Naomi. He happily saunters past a waterfront condo development, which includes a few trendy restaurants and at least one destination bar that’s been cited numerous times for an infestation of noisy, wine-quaffing yuppies. The rent-a-cop at the gate picks up on Jack’s cop vibe and waves him through with a lazy salute that makes the former FBI agent grin to himself. Beyond the breakwater the harbor sparkles under a clear sky, although the view is more than a little restricted by the sheer bulk of Lady Luck.
He proceeds along a system of floating docks. Thirty yards from the enormous yacht, Jack pauses to flip open his cell. By previous arrangement he identifies himself and announces his proximity. Less than a minute later a little Asian dude wearing a faded pink guayabera, baggy shorts and a jaunty gold-braided captain’s hat comes out to what Jack assumes is the bridge and waves him aboard. A red-carpeted gangway delivers him to one of the lower decks, where he waits for further guidance. Almost immediately the little dude with the spiffy captain’s hat leans over a rail of an upper deck and asks, in a distinctive Boston accent, “You wearing deck shoes, Mr. Delancey?”
Jack shakes his head, sticks out a perfectly polished leather shoe. “Morellis.”
“Ten and a half?”
“Eleven.”
“Wait there.”
Minutes pass. The little dude returns with a pair of brand-new Sperry Top-Siders, still in the box. He comes down a curving, mahogany-railed stairway, hands the box to Jack. “Keep ’em,” he says. “We’ve got plenty.”
“You’re Jonny Bing.”
“The one and only,” the little dude says, pleased to be recognized.
Jack unlaces his Italian handmades, slips on the Top-Siders. “Thanks for seeing me on short notice. It’s much appreciated.”
“Any friend of Dane’s. Although I do prefer friends of the female persuasion, whatever their sexual orientation. Just so you know.”
Jack follows Bing up the staircase to the second deck, then in through the open doors of a palatial salon, furnished with several leather thrones. The salon, obviously where Bing does his entertaining, is designed to make jaws drop and offshore bank accounts wither. It spans the width of the vessel, and could have been furnished by Michael Jackson, back in the day, were it not for the distinct lack of chimpanzees. Lushly draped polarized windows reveal a spectacular view of the harbor. Must be ten varieties of exotic blond hardwoods at play in the trim, all curving and varnished. The inlaid teak deck beneath his Top-Siders feels as solid and unmoving as gold bullion.
Jack whistles in appreciation, which pleases Jonny Bing.
“Hundred million,” he says, waving Jack to one of the lushly upholstered leather thrones. “Not that you asked. But people want to know.”
“I did wonder. Thanks for sharing.”
Bing takes off his captain’s hat, revealing a thatch of thick, glossy black hair, cut fashionably short on the sides, and with what looks suspiciously like an emo bang over his left eye. Add that to his diminutive size and the slightness of his build, and the second-generation Chinese-American billionaire looks like an eager teenager, but Jack happens to know that he’s in his late thirties. Bing’s slightly mischievous expression is more welcoming than might be expected, considering the high-altitude circles where he flies, or, more accurately, cruises. Jack has met his share of the super wealthy, and usually finds them guarded with strangers, or at least more outwardly canny. Jonny Bing looks like a boy who has just come down to Christmas, found everything he ever dreamed of under the tree and is willing to share his new toys with anyone who comes in the door. Or hatch, or whatever it is. Notwithstanding the fact that he’s a native of Gloucester, Jack’s experience with boats is somewhat limited—an endless summer when he was sixteen, toiling on his uncle Leo’s leaky, smelly scallop dragger as penance for various infractions, and the occasional striper fishing with a Marblehead cop-buddy who married money, and therefore can afford a nice thirty-foot center cockpit with twin outboards. The striper boat, which is Jack’s idea of rich, would fit comfortably in the far corner of the Lucky Lady’s main salon, with plenty of room left over for a bowling alley.
“Sorry about the lack of fawning servants,” says Jonny Bing, lounging back in his throne, which threatens to engulf him. “In ten days Lady heads for Bermuda, so the crew is on furlough through the weekend. We have the place to ourselves. There’s a full bar, or I could manage a juice or a coffee or whatever. Sparkling water?”
“I’m good,” Jack says. “This chair is so comfortable I may never get up. What kind of leather is this?”
“Sick, eh? It’s made from the skin of young virgins.”
“Excuse me?”
“Kidskin. Young goats,” Bing adds impishly.
“Ah,” Jack says, a little relieved in spite of himself, visions of billionaire psychopaths receding into bad movie land. “Obviously you heard about Professor Keener.”
For the first time Jonny Bing breaks eye contact. He sighs and drums his fingers on the arm of his chair. “I couldn’t believe it. Who’d want to kill poor Joe? It doesn’t make any sense. You know how they always say ‘he didn’t have an enemy in the world.’ Well, Joe really didn’t.”
“He had at least one,” Jack points out.
Bing shudders. “I keep thinking it was a mistake. Like they went to the wrong address, or mistook him for someone else.”
“I suppose mistaken identity remains a possibility, but it doesn’t look to go that way,” Jack says. “More like a professional hit.”
“That’s insane.”
“I think Dane mentioned we’re looking for background on Joseph Keener. Your name came up.”
“Whatever you need.”
“It’s usually best to start at the beginning. How did you happen to invest in Professor Keener’s company?”
Bing touches his slender fingertips together as if making a steeple. “How it usually happens. He was brought to my attention by one of my researchers.”
Jack has his reporter’s notebook open on one knee, ballpoint pen in hand. “In what context?” he asks.
Bing seems amused by the question. “You know how it works in the game of venture capitalism, Mr. Delancey? No? Why should you, you’re a man of action, am I right? Not a banker. So I could bullshit you about computer modeling and try to make it sound all scientific, but the truth is, what I do is gamble on brilliant people. And to do that I have to know about them. As you may be aware, my investments are in emerging technology. That’s my area of expertise. I made my first three hundred million betting on video streaming software while I was still at the B School. I heard about a couple of BU geeks who had an interesting idea and I backed them with money from my parents’ restaurant, and we all got very, very rich. But you can’t rely on the grapevine to bring you opportunity. You have to be tuned in. You have to find the next new thing and make your own luck, which, believe me, is not so easy. What happened in this case, Joe published a paper in a scientific journal that caused something of a stir, and we decided to meet with him and see if he had any ideas for practical applications. He supplies the ideas, we provide finance and structure for the business model. I’m an entrepreneur, not a physicist, and I do not pretend to understand Joe’s theories about gated photons, but I understood immediately that he was a genius.”
“How so?”
Bing smiles, as if at a pleasant recollection. “You and I look out this window and see a beautiful scene. Joe looks out and sees how light works, on the very smallest level. What happens when an individual photon, the tiniest component in a beam of light, is either absorbed or reflected. Joe saw and understood the energy within waves: waves of water, waves of light. At first he didn’t even want to talk with us, and swore he had no interest in founding a private research lab, but my instincts told me otherwise, and so I persisted, and finally he began to talk about light, and that’s when I knew. That’s why I succeed where others fail, Mr. Delancey, because I am tenacious by nature. I fasten my teeth on the ankles of genius and I won’t let go.”
Jack looks up from his notebook. “Strange way to put it, Mr. Bing.”
“Call me Jonny. No, not strange at all. I know exactly who I am, okay? I’m a little bulldog, I don’t give up. I keep fighting. And believe me, Joseph Keener was worth fighting for. And not just because of the financial opportunity. His ideas, the particular way he thought about things, it’s a privilege to know a person like that, because there are only a handful alive in the world at any one time.”
“So what was he like on a personal level?”
Bing chuckles, sounding surprisingly girlish. “Joe didn’t really have a personal level, not one he could share. Do you know what Asperger’s is, Mr. Delancey?”
“Not really. I’ve heard the term. Something to do with autism.”
“That’s right, and at the moment it’s a very trendy diagnosis. There’s been a lot of nonsense talked about Asperger’s syndrome, mostly by pop shrinks who should know better. They’d like us to think that every creative and difficult person suffered from a mild form of autism, from Leonardo to Einstein. It’s become the excuse for behaving like a selfish asshole. Sorry, my Asperger’s made me do it! Asperger’s means I can be rude and it’s not my fault! But I think Joe really did have some form of the disorder. He struggled mightily to deal with us mere humans, if you know what I mean.”
“Don’t think I do,” Jacks says. “What was he like? Personally, I mean.”
“Difficult to describe. It’s as if Joe wanted to connect with people but didn’t quite know how. Early on I mentioned his shyness and told him that it wouldn’t be a problem, he didn’t have to meet or talk with anyone who made him uncomfortable, and he told me the most remarkable thing. He said he wasn’t really shy, but that he had learned to mimic shyness because it’s more socially acceptable than explaining that he prefers to be alone because the only place he ever felt comfortable was inside his own head.”
“That may be helpful,” Jack says, making a note. “Did he ever mention growing up in foster care?”
“Mention it?” Bing shrugs. “Not directly. I know his parents died when he was an infant, and that he was raised by a succession of foster parents. I asked him what was that like once, he said it was adequate.”
“Adequate? A strange way to put it.”
“That was Joe. He once told me his real father was the public library. That’s where he discovered who he was, by looking in books and finding math and physics and so on.”
“What was the connection to Caltech, do you know? How he happened to go there at such a young age? To the other end of the country?”
Bing smiles. “Again, it was light. He read an article by someone who taught at Caltech and decided he had to go there. Distance from home didn’t matter, since he didn’t think of himself as having a home in the usual sense. I believe his high school principal made a few calls. Everybody knew he was special, you knew it the moment you met him. Different, but special. I can’t really explain it, but he was.”
“You’re doing fine, Mr. Bing. I’m getting the picture. The victim—excuse me, Joseph Keener—was brilliant but socially inept.”
Jack has been waiting to drop a particular bomb ever since he heard from Alice, earlier in the day. Good stuff, and he happily decides to make use of it. “How did he happen to meet that Chinese girlfriend of his, do you know?”
Bing appears stunned by the question, maybe even a little hurt. As if he’d been under the impression that he and Jack were becoming quite chummy, and a question like that was simply out of bounds.
“Chinese girlfriend?” Bing says. “No, I don’t think so. I seriously doubt that. Joe didn’t have a girlfriend that I know of. Chinese or any other kind. No, no, no.”
“I thought maybe you put them together.”
Bing puts a small hand to his heart. “Me? Why would you think that?”