"You talked about queuing theory, Dr. Eppes."
"Call me Charlie." Better yet, don't say anything at all. My head hurts.
But Rufus was determined to make the time useful. And, unfortunately for Charlie, Dr. Eppes was equally determined. Rufus plowed ahead. "Queuing theory. How does thinking about toll booths help here?"
"Queuing theory is not about toll booths, although that's one application. It equally applies to anything with multiple supply lines. Amusement parks, the well-run ones, use it extremely well to process the greatest numbers of customers in the least amount of time. Supermarkets. Things like that. It's a concept of efficiency." Charlie closed his eyes against the bright ceiling lights. It didn't help. The only good thing about this office is that it came equipped with a leather recliner as well as a lounger, and Charlie was reclining behind the desk instead of lounging. His ribs hurt, his arm hurt, his head hurt, and his pride hurt worse than the rest of him put together, but one minute on that lounger, he knew, and he'd fall asleep instead of remembering Halligan's data. Her real data, the stuff that would crack this case instead of his ribs. Let Rufus put up his feet on the sofa instead. "What were we looking at when I talked about it?" I hate not being able to remember.
"Cows," Rufus replied promptly. "Cattle. In the field outside."
That stirred some brain cells that had been dormant. He kept his eyes closed, trying to picture the scene, and, incidentally, avoid the light that hurt his eyes. "Describe it to me. Describe where we were, what was going on."
"We rode horses to the slopes overlooking the field. There were," Rufus stopped to think, "like about forty or fifty head of cattle, munching on hay, not moving around very much—"
"What color?"
"The cows? Brown, for the most part. White patches, here and there, not too much black. Horns. Lots of horns."
"I assume two per animal. What were they doing?"
"Eating hay," Rufus said. "Chewing their cud. Mooing every now and again."
That didn't sound right. There was something more to the description, something that Rufus had left out. Charlie frowned, and gave that up as hurting his head too much. He rubbed at his temples, hissing when one hand encountered sutures hidden underneath a bandage. That stung. "Tell me more about what they were doing. The cows, I mean."
Rufus looked blank. "What's to tell? They were cows. Cows don't do too much. They were eating. No wolves around, if that's what you're asking. No little calves, either, although I think Nogales said something a while ago about the calves being sold to the local ranchers. They want to keep this herd small, just for experimental purposes."
"Eating grass? Is that what they were doing?" Charlie kept his eyes closed, trying to picture it in his mind's eye.
"Yeah. No. Eating from bales of hay. There were bunches of hay all over the field. The grass was a little scarce. It's autumn, and the elevation is high."
It was there, there on the tip of his tongue. The secret was there, if only Charlie could remember what it was. "I need to see those cattle. That field. Tell someone to saddle some horses."
"Horses? The way you look? You feel up to it, Dr. Eppes?"
"Yes. I need to see that field."
That took Rufus aback. "I let you do that, your brother will fire me. After he shoots me. And boils me in oil." And there would go my shot at a job in L.A. Rufus tried a different tack: distraction. "How about the yield? You were pretty insistent that the yield was funky."
Charlie gave up temporarily on queuing theory. Rufus didn't sound like he could be persuaded no matter how much Charlie begged. Time to cut his losses: he allowed himself to be switched to thinking about the yield of the process. "Can you get me those numbers, the ones that Dr. Bostwick was using?"
"Got 'em right here." That Rufus could provide, and did. "Ninety three percent. That's what Dr. Bostwick said. Seemed pretty pleased with it, and Mr. Stewart did, too."
"I'll bet," Charlie muttered. Open eyes, focus on numbers, force eyes to stay open despite the bright lights beating down on him with all the subtlety of a sledge hammer. The calculations went swiftly in his head; Bostwick's arithmetic, at least, was accurate. He stared at the numbers, willing them to impart more information that just a ninety three percent yield. There was something else here, something that he could almost taste, it was so close… "I have to see the cattle."
A shadow darkened the office door: it was Don, shades hanging over his shirt pocket. "Not a chance, buddy. You may not have realized this, but you were shot. Oh, look," he drawled. "Your arm is in a sling."
"Very funny," Charlie returned, wishing that he felt up to a bigger complaint. "Here I am, trying to remember whatever it was that I was thinking of, and you're not helping. You could least try to help jog my memory."
"What, by taking you horseback riding again? You may be a genius, Charlie, but sometimes you are not very bright. Why do you want to see the little moo-cows?"
Charlie sighed. "What did you see when you looked at the cattle?"
"I saw cows. I saw cows eating, and doing very little else. They were in little bunches, munching at the bales of hay that had been tossed out for them. There was some grass as well, but the hay bales seemed to be the tastier treat. Every now and again one cow would take a swing at another cow and move it out of the way so that it could amble slowly to the next bale of hay." Don glanced at the computer in the room, taking the humor out of his voice, thinking. He sobered his voice. "I can probably pull up a picture of the field on the corporate web site. It won't be live, but it looked like the field that you went to," he offered.
"Do that."
It took a little while. Don was no slouch when it came to computers, but he needed to contact the company IT department to get a password to simply open up the screen, and then it was just easier for the technician to slave the computer to his own in the department. Don was reduced to relaying instructions from his brother to the computer technician who was convinced that the FBI consultant was, if not crazy, significantly impaired by the earlier events on the slope. Don almost joined the technician in his doubts.
Charlie stared at the scene on the screen. It looked idyllic: the sun shining onto a springtime setting, mountains rolling off into the distance, and several cattle meandering past a bale of hay. The cattle in the picture had been chosen for their attractiveness: they looked contented and well-fed. Don didn't remember the cattle in the field looking quite that healthy, but any corporate pictures would be carefully contrived to present the best possible image. And the animals that he had seen, to be fair, didn't appear mistreated in the least.
The effect on Charlie was electric. One moment he was staring blankly at the scene, and the next he had gripped the arms of the recliner. He leaned forward.
"Charlie?"
"That's it." Almost a whisper.
"Give, buddy."
"The cattle." Charlie closed his eyes again, only this time he was remembering the field of cattle. "The cattle were bunched up, munching on the bales of hay."
"We all saw that," Don said carefully.
"Yes, but the cattle were bunched up. They were going after the bales, but not all of the bales. They were eating from some, but not from others. Don, they were avoiding some of the bales!"
"Okay," Don said slowly. "And how does that help us?"
Charlie opened his eyes, trying to keep the exasperation down, trying to remember that not everyone could read his super-charged mind. "Queuing theory. One of the basic tenets is that people—and cattle—will line up in approximately equal lines at all the bottlenecks unless there is some other force at work. If you see a long line at the grocery store, you'll head for another cashier to get through faster. If you see one long line at a toll booth, you'll go through the toll with the shorter line. The lines equal out, so that every line remains approximately the same length. Don, the cattle weren't going after the bales equally! They weren't adhering to queuing theory!"
It clicked. "Which means that something was driving the cattle away from those particular bales." Don remembered the scene perfectly, now that Charlie was discussing it. He even remembered thinking that it was odd how the cattle had bunched up in one area and not in another, had dismissed the thought when other, more important things had come up. Things like saving your life, buddy. Push that thought down. Event over. Need to move on. Charlie was safe, the dis-information passed to the interested parties. "What would drive those cattle away from those bales?"
It was meant as rhetorical, but Charlie didn't take it that way. "So glad you asked." The mathematician forced a grim smile. "That's where my question about the yield comes in."
"Remind me," Don grunted.
Professor Eppes took over, headache forgotten. "A ninety three percent yield is theoretically possible but unlikely, especially in an initial process rendering. When first deriving products of this sort, the goal is to produce something that works. How much is created doesn't really matter at this stage of the game. Refinements that improve the yield are a secondary step; necessary for profitable production but still not a high concern yet. If a ninety three percent yield was a reality here, the corporate board of directors would be jumping through hoops and shouting for joy. And the scientific community would be agog."
"Sounds like you don't think ninety three percent is quite right," Rufus observed.
Professor Eppes beamed at his pseudo-pupil. "Exactly. Those numbers that I downloaded from Dr. Halligan's computer? The real results. The real yield. She was keeping her own records, in secret." He stopped short, staring off into space.
"Charlie?"
Charlie reached out his hand, clutching at the desk. "Paper. I need paper."
"Charlie?" Don repeated. What was going on with his brother?
"Now, Don. There's six pages of data to recopy. Let's not take a chance on my memory failing again. Hurry."
"So how does this help us figure out who's behind Dr. Halligan's murder?" It was a reasonable question, but Don rather wished that Colby hadn't asked it. It put him to the trouble of coming up with an answer. He gave Sarge a gentle nudge, asked for a brisk walk instead of the ambling pace that Sarge proposed. Colby's horse swung in beside, echoing the gait.
"Not sure," Don finally said. He repositioned the shades on his face to a more comfortable spot. "I suppose I could tell you that it's just another excuse to do a little horseback riding."
Colby grimaced. "Don, I haven't ridden since I was a kid. I can't mention in polite company where it hurts."
"Aren't you lucky that I'm not polite company?"
A snort was his only answer.
"We need some of that hay," Don told him. "Charlie thinks that the hay is actually from two different crops, one using Bostwick's formula and the other without. Charlie says that Bostwick may have supplemented his Formula K-19 with some inert substance to weight it down and make it look like he was getting a great yield, so some fields actually had the K-19 stuff and some had a placebo. Thinks that Halligan found out, and that's why someone decided to have her killed. It'll take a laboratory to check, but for right now I simply want samples. I'll let the eggheads decide if he's right."
"And in the meantime, we're ratcheting up the pressure. This little jaunt alone should be making someone very nervous." That pleased Colby more. "Somebody ought to crack soon. We've got David working the computer angle, we're hitting the cattle and the results. Who do you think it is?"
"Clueless," Don had to admit. "I like Stewart for this, but nothing concrete ties him in. You?"
"Me, too. There are those debts of his. Pretty convincing motive."
"Yeah, but not enough for a conviction. Bostwick is another possibility. This formula doesn't work out, he also loses. In fact, you could pretty much say that about the entire facility. Most of 'em have stock option deals as part of their remuneration package. Caldwell does well, they retire rich. Caldwell flops, so does their balloon."
"I could get really paranoid and start thinking that they're all in on it," Colby offered.
"Thanks, but no thanks." Don swung down to open the gate to the field where the cattle were. "Stay here. I'll get the samples."
The cattle were at the other end of the field, heads lowered to the grass, chewing their cud. Don saw nothing to change his opinion of the animals; the hides sleek, maybe a little bit muscular instead of plump, but he was used to seeing cattle being fattened for market. These were experimental animals being subjected to a variation of a food source. Although now that he was a bit closer than binocular range, he could see that some of the animals were a bit on the scrawny side. Not unhealthy, exactly, but a little—yeah, definitely the nervous type. Which wasn't what Don was used to. All the cattle that he'd been around—not that he considered himself an expert, but still!—would simply lift a bored head to observe the two legged intruder and then go back to placidly doing as little as possible. Get close and they'd react, but not at this distance. Not this level of nerves.
Here, six of them lifted their heads to eye him with suspicion, another dozen following suit. Three of them stomped loudly, signaling their concern. Okay, we'll get our samples and leave the nice little moo-cows alone. He bent to grab a handful of hay, keeping a close eye on the half ton animals.
He needed more samples, from other bales, for comparison. Still watching, Don quietly and calmly walked to another bale, selecting another handful and placing it into a separate bag for study. He really needed a third sample, and the next bale was much closer to the cattle than he would have liked. One of the cows stomped. All the cattle by now were staring at him, all forty of them. Don felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. Was there such a thing as a cow gone wild? Mad Cow Disease with an attitude?
"Don?" Colby called quietly. The younger agent felt it, too. "You want me to come get you with the horses?"
"Slow walk, Colby." Nothing that would spook the cattle. Don advanced toward the final bale, all his attention on the cattle several yards away. It was an even exchange: the cattle were eyeing him with equal fervor. He bent, not looking at his objective, and grabbed, then started backing away.
Retreat pleased the cattle, and emboldened them. Their adversary was retreating, and that was a signal for them to advance. Three pawed the ground menacingly.
"Colby?"
"Right behind you, boss."
Don felt the hot breath of Sarge, heard the whuffle behind him. He reached back to take the lead from Colby, swinging himself up into the saddle, prize hay samples in his hand. "Let's get out of here."
The horses felt it, too, and put a bit more alacrity into their walk to get beyond the fence, more than willing to break into a not so gentle canter if the two legged beasts on their backs would let them. Don paused to be sure that the gate was closed, a shiver running up and down his spine.
Colby put it into words best. "That was the weirdest ride I've ever taken, boss. What the hell got into those cattle?" And, "what the hell is in that formula Bostwick's making?"
The arm was out of the sling and the ten fingers were tapping in digits at the speed of a math genius on a mission. Charlie had needed the paper to remember what the figures were that he had downloaded from memory, needed to see the numerals on paper in front of him, but once all six pages were complete he wanted them in the computer where he could play with rearranging them into the convoluted sequences that his mind had already composed.
Rufus was staring over Charlie's shoulder with dumbfounded and reluctant admiration, watching as complex formulaic expressions wedged themselves into the appropriate boxes and wiggled the numbers into new formations. This happened several times, as Charlie refined and caressed the data into the format that he wanted. Colorful graphs sprang up onto the computer screen.
"Wow," was all that Rufus could say.
Charlie spared him a half smile, concentrating on the work. "It's coming together nicely. Assuming that I've remembered the data correctly."
"Are you finding out stuff?"
"I suspect so. How does a final yield of forty three point six sound?"
"Not nearly as attractive as ninety three. Sounds like a certain formula may actually be a real money loser. Is that what the real yield is?"
"Again, assuming that the raw data is correct, yes. Assuming I remembered it correctly. Lots of big assumptions here." Charlie leaned back in the recliner, wincing, grabbing onto the armrest to ease himself back. Yes, I can close my eyes now. Wouldn't mind if you turned down the lights, Rufus.
"Which means that we now have a clear motive for someone to kill Dr. Halligan."
Charlie started to shrug, and thought better of it when broken rib bones grated against each other. "Your department, Rufus. Motives, I mean. Me, I play with numbers."
"Which is what I'm supposed to be doing, too," Rufus said ruefully. He sighed. "I watch you work, and I can't keep up. And I know that's what Area Director Thomas wants from me."
"If that's what he wants, then he'll have to spring to send you back for an advanced degree, won't he?" Charlie kept his eyes closed from his reclining position. "Assuming that's what you want. More big assumptions. Although," he mused with a carefully serene expression, "I would love to know how you calculated the trajectory of the bullet that killed Dr. Halligan. The concept of ballistics just doesn't support it."
"Yeah, well, about that…"
"Yes, Rufus?"
"The position of the casings may not have quite as close to my determined location as I previously thought."
Small smile. "I know."
"You knew?"
"Pick up your jaw, Rufus," Charlie instructed. "Of course I knew. You think you're the first undergraduate to try to trick me? Or grad student, for that matter. They're usually out to make names for themselves in whatever fashion seems most practical. Some of them are pretty good at it."
"Oh." Something like fear passed over Rufus's features, and his thoughts weren't difficult for Charlie to decipher: falsifying evidence would be grounds for disciplinary action, possibly even termination. And, hesitantly, "does Don know? Special Agent Eppes?"
"No."
In a smaller voice: "is he going to know?"
"Not from me."
More silence, more thoughts. "You know I wanted your job."
"Yes. But I'm a consultant, not an agent. This isn't the kind of 'job' you want. It's not full time. It's not even part time. Although the benefits package is great." Charlie opened his eyes and deliberately stared Rufus down, daring the agent to contest the statement.
"Oh." Rufus took several long moments to digest that. Then, suspecting that his leg was being pulled, "you get benefits? As a consultant?"
"Sure. I get to hang around with all you cool G-man types. And every now and again I get to sneak into the real world instead of being confined to the Towers of Academia. Not bad for a super-nerd geek math professor. Believe me, where I come from, that's a benefits package worth having. You know how many of my colleagues drool over what I do? I think Professor Langerton—who's pushing seventy, by the way—wants a picture of Megan to stick in the drawer of his desk where Mrs. Langerton can't find it. I get to see the same thing in real life on a routine basis." Charlie then went serious. "Rufus, if the L.A. office wants you, they know where to find you. Don spent several years in other places, New Mexico to be exact, and then requested a transfer here. You've got a good background, and a sensible head on your shoulders. Put in your time, get a reputation, and you'll be able to write your own ticket to anywhere you want."
"Even L.A.?"
"Even L.A.," Charlie acknowledged. "Who knows? By then another university in another town may have wooed me away from CalSci with dreams of huge grants. Don might be coming after you on his hands and knees, begging for someone who knows how to add two and two."
Rufus winced. "I should be so lucky."
"Just you keep reminding them: you're a trained agent. Not a scatter-brained academic like me." Charlie slipped his arm back into the awkward sling, trying to emphasize the point. "Can't let me out without a keeper. Just ask Don."
Rufus knew when he was being handed a gift. "Thanks, Charlie. And I mean that. I owe you a big one."
"I'll collect someday," Charlie assured him. He reached for his Styrofoam cup of coffee, wincing when the muscles in his arm objected. Rufus automatically leaned over to help. "Thanks." Charlie sipped and made a face.
"Cold?"
"Yeah. Yours?"
"Yeah. Hang on, let me get a couple of fresh cups from down the hall." Rufus was back in seconds. "We were in luck; the pot was full." He replaced his broad frame onto the other chair where he could look over Charlie's shoulder at the spread sheet on the computer monitor and quaffed a deep sip. "Aagh. Terrible stuff. Whoever made this pot should be shot." He turned to weightier matters, setting the cup aside. "We should call Don, let him know what you found out. And David; Don told me to check on him periodically, see if anyone is taking the bait, while he and Colby go after the hay samples."
"Go ahead." Charlie put down his own cup of coffee. Rufus was right; the stuff tasted vile. But it contained caffeine, which would counteract the sleepiness of the pain-killers that the docs had prescribed and Don had all but forced down his throat, so Charlie sucked up another healthy swallow before setting it aside. He yawned. Damn narcotics.
Rufus pulled out his cell phone, not trusting the security of the communications within Caldwell, to call David first. "Ringing. No answer; voice mail is picking up."
"Maybe he's busy?"
"He'd pick up from me. Standard protocol." Rufus tried again. "Still no answer." He pursed his lips. "That's odd. I don't like that."
"David was working alone." Charlie picked up on his concern. "Colby went out with Don. You want to go check on David? He's just down the hall and down one flight." He yawned again. "I may take a nap in this chair. I'm beat. Hard work, remembering numbers." He blinked. "Go check on David. He's got the danger post. I'll be okay here. Nobody's after me. I'm just the consultant." He winked. "Nobody wants my job."
Rufus rolled his eyes. "Back in five," he promised.
