Chapter 2
Don wandered around the crime scene, counting bodies, and hoped that Charlie could make some sense out of what they had found on the computers at yesterday's scene, and the one last week. Each member of the family here — both parents, the two little girls — all of the bodies had been branded in the same way as the bodies at those other two scenes. An obvious connection. He tore his eyes away from the tiny blonde and sought out Colby. Maybe he had found a computer here, too. There could be more data for Charlie.
He found Colby in a small office, and sure enough, he stood over a computer with one of the CSI techs. Don was about to ask what they had when he felt the cell phone on his waist vibrate. He ripped it off his belt and flipped it open without looking at the call display.
"Eppes."
"Don…I think…I think you'd better come over here."
Don frowned. "Charlie, I'm at a crime scene right now. Looks like it's connected to what you've been working on for us, and there's another computer here. We'll have some more data for you soon."
His brother took a breath, but it didn't make his voice any steadier. "No, really, Don. I don't need any more data. The data is a smokescreen. I need you to come over here now."
Don wandered for the far side of the room, where there was less activity and noise. "What is it? You've got something already?"
"Yes. Yes, I…I really think you should come."
Charlie was starting to freak Don out a little. "You still at school? This crime scene is close. I'm actually only five minutes away."
"Yes. I'm…going up to the roof of the math building right now, though. I've been running an experiment up there with one of my freshman classes, and I need to bring it in. It's starting to rain harder, again. Just wait in my office if I'm not back by the time you get here…"
Charlie sounded like he wanted to say something more. Don headed for his SUV, balancing the phone between his neck and ear and using both hands to snap his jacket closed against the rain. "Charlie?"
This time Charlie sounded a little scared. "Um…Don…who knows I have this data? Besides the team, I mean."
Don ran into Megan in the driveway and spoke to her over the cell, taking it again in his hand. "Charlie's got something," he said, and she nodded. He opened the door of the SUV and concentrated on Charlie again. "What? It's an open investigation, Buddy, any number of people could know…we've used our CSIs, the DNA lab, computer tech lab…why?"
Charlie sighed a little. "Never mind. Just come over, okay?"
Don started the engine. "On the way, Buddy," he said, and he flipped the phone shut again.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Charlie sat at the desk a moment after Don disconnected, undecided. His brother was on the way here, so the kind of precautions Charlie felt in his gut he should take regarding the data were probably unnecessary. He was probably getting all freaked out over nothing. Don would explain it.
He started to rise and go to the roof, then sat down again and opened his top desk drawer, rummaging around until he found a couple of thumb drives and some of the Cal Sci bubble envelopes he kept around for mailing disks. Quickly, he saved the data in two parts on the thumb drives — one would make no sense without the other. Then he ran an encryption program he had designed himself over the entire unit of information and e-mailed it off to Don's home e-mail. This was ridiculous — Don would be angry when he got here and Charlie told him they had to go to his apartment to see what he had to show him — and Charlie hesitated again. In the end, he decided the feeling in his gut was definitely not his ulcer — it had only been an hour since he had something to eat — and he quickly addressed the envelopes while his laptop followed his command to erase all the information he had worked on so painstakingly this afternoon. Charlie then automatically ran his defrag program over the partition of the disk he saved for FBI-related work. All material gained during any FBI investigation was always sensitive, and he had long ago developed the habit of extra security measures.
While the defrag program still ran, he left his office and walked to the department secretary's office. He dropped one envelope into the intracampus mail slot, the other into off-campus outgoing mail. Then he turned and headed the other direction, to take the stairs to the roof.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Dr. Anne Kincaid enjoyed having her office located in the old section of the second floor in the math & sciences building. Two years from retirement, it was the same office she had claimed for almost 40 years. She knew how to hit the old-fashioned radiator in the winter for more heat. She knew how to take the screen off the window so that she could open it out, away from the building, and let the air circulate in the spring and summer, as it was intended. If the occasional bug came in, well, that was what fly swatters were for, right? Several years ago administration had stopped trying to talk her into relocating her office, and maintenance had stopped trying to talk her into leaving the screen on the window.
This afternoon she heard the rain start pounding against the window again, and she rose from her desk to turn and open it. So a few things might get wet. So what. Small price to pay for the fresh smell a fall rain would bring into her office.
Pushing the window out as far as it would go, Dr. Kincaid turned back to her desk in time to see that curly headed young man pass her office, and heard him open the door to the stairwell, located just a few feet away. He must be going up one flight, to the roof again. She rolled a new sheet of paper into her IBM Selectric and thought about that boy. She knew that Cal Sci considered keeping him a coup — he was rather gifted at mathematics, even she had to admit that — but this experiment he did every fall with his freshman class on the roof was a bit unorthodox. Something about weather and storms and lightning — all rather Ben Franklin-esque. She started to type, soothed by the solid clicks made by each keystroke, and wondered again why they all preferred computers, now. She thought of the young doctor again. Yes, he was as addicted to computers as the rest of them — but at least he still knew what chalk was. He kept an actual black board among the white and clear boards in his office, and seemed to enjoy conducting classes in the old lecture halls…and she often saw streaks of chalk dust in his hair. She sighed. Unless, of course, even the young doctor was getting old. Maybe he had gray hair now…
Rats. She had grown distracted, made a mistake. She opened the drawer to find the typewriter eraser, and noticed two more men, these in trench coats, heading toward the stairwell. She heard the door open and frowned. Was she wearing her glasses? She put a hand to her face to check, found them there where they were supposed to be. Those men had looked a little old for the young doctor's freshman class, She shrugged, wondered what she was looking for in her drawer, and stood to leave, forgetting to close the window.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
A long-ago class had built a waterproof shelter on the roof for the components of the experiment, and as Charlie approached it, he saw that someone had already moved everything inside. It must have been raining longer than he thought.
He turned to go back downstairs, backing away quickly when the door from the stairwell opened and two strangers came through it. He backed almost all the way to the opposite edge of the roof. The two men had not said anything to him, but they were coming at him in a way that he found threatening.
"What do you want?" His voice was shaky.
They stopped a few feet from him. "We need you to come with us, Dr. Eppes. We have some work for you to do."
He started to shake his head. The taller of the two men spoke. "Unless, of course — you've already done it? We know that you have the data."
Charlie shook his head again. "I…I don't know what you're talking about."
The shorter of the men came to stand beside him. Charlie wanted to back up more, but he was almost out of roof…and besides, the tall one was standing on the other side, now. He looked from one to the other, and saw metal glint in one's hand, under the other's coat…Charlie thought about the thumb drives, safe in outgoing mail, and was glad he had trusted his gut.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
By the time Don fought with traffic, reached Cal Scit, parked and got up to Charlie's office, his brother still wasn't there. He started immediately for the roof. He remembered that Charlie had told him to wait in his office, but he knew his brother — he could get involved in that experiment on the roof and stand out in the rain for hours, completely forgetting about him. So Don headed for the stairwell.
One floor later, he opened the roof access door and saw Charlie facing two men, all the way over on the other side, near the edge. "Hey Chuck!", he called over the rain, walking rapidly toward the group, "whaddya doin' over there? It's raining, you idiot!"
The men turned toward Don, then, and he recognized the glint of gunmetal even in the near-darkness. It looked like a sawed-off shotgun. He quickly ripped open his jacket and went for his own weapon even as he took off in a sideways crouch-run, searching for cover on the way back to the roof access door. He saw the waterproof shelter the students had built near the roof's edge, and as he leapt for it he heard Charlie yell, heard an explosion that could have only come from the shotgun, felt his finger convulse on the trigger of his own service weapon and heard it discharge. He waited, mid-air, to come down and see where everything had landed.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Charlie saw Don burst through the roof access door and started to panic. Don was walking, almost jogging, toward them, yelling something, when Charlie saw the shorter man raise his arm, which seemed to turn into a sawed-off shotgun before Charlie could warn Don. He yelled — he wasn't even sure what — and launched himself at the man, and in his peripheral vision saw Don running in a crouch back for the door.
Several things happened at once. He heard the assailant grunt as he hit him, and saw his arm jerk, and knew that he had hit too late — the shotgun had been fired. He felt the hot metal as the man swore and brought it up sharply into his nose, and he was surprised after the roar of the shotgun that he could still hear the bones of his nose breaking. He felt himself sinking to the roof while something burned into his arm, and he was temporarily blinded by the pain in his nose as well as the burn of his arm.
Charlie let himself hit his knees on the roof, and didn't care that he was blind, wanted to be blind forever.
He had already seen too much.
He had already seen Don get blown off the roof.