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Manipulation Part 7

By Ecri

Alan insisted he was fine and didn't need to be watched. Don wasn't so sure, so he'd arranged to stay at the house with him at least overnight. He didn't think his father would allow him to stay much longer.

At first he'd been concerned that Buchmann wouldn't be able to reach him, but then he'd reminded himself that Buchmann was the one who seemed to know everything even before it happened.

He wasn't about to let his guard down, because he did suspect either that the house was bugged or that, possibly, some other form of surveillance was being used.

He refused to be intimidated by that thought, however. He was trying to behave normally or as close to it as was possible. Don knew that, if his father had been robbed while Charlie was still safe and sound and living at home, he would still most likely have wanted to stay over.

Don spent part of the night fussing over his father, who didn't want to be fussed over, and the other part making a list of questions he could ask Larry and Amita about probability and statistics. He had a feeling there were few coincidences in his life anymore, and he wanted the math to back it up.

Don's anxiety over his situation hadn't truly lessened, but it was comforting somehow that Terry knew what was going on. He hated keeping secrets from her. If nothing else, at least the silences were back to being companionable.

He walked into the office feeling lighter and more focused than he had since he'd gone to Kraft with Buchmann's offer. Kraft had been shaken by the thought that this pointed at corruption well within the hierarchy of the FBI. Without knowing who to trust, the two men had agreed to keep it to themselves. Don had only just filled Kraft in on the need to let Terry in on it when Terry had made an appointment through channels to see the AD.

Don had smiled and explained to Kraft. "She saw me at the drop. She's turning me in."

Kraft had been surprised that Terry would do such a thing, but shared Don's relief. Whatever others thought about it later didn't trouble Don. Terry was, as she would always be in his mind, above reproach. He'd been so happy at the thought of her knowing everything, that he'd stopped on the way to work to get her a cup of coffee. He'd just arrived at his desk and passed the tall cup to his surprised partner when his cell phone rang.

"Eppes."

"Don, it's Larry. I got your message. You wanted to talk?"

"Yes, can I come by your office?"

"This is about Charles, isn't it?"

"Well, yes, but I'd rather talk to you about it in your office." Don's heart was racing. He wasn't sure if his call could be intercepted, but Buchmann had shown a surprising ability to anticipate him. If Buchmann knew he was talking about Charlie to Larry, that might be considered normal enough. If Buchmann heard what they were going to discuss, then he would know that Don was still trying to work the angles. To his relief, Larry understood his unspoken concerns.

"That's fine, Don. Let's seeit's 9:15. I'm between classes from 10:30 until 11:30, will that be all right?"

"Perfect, Larry. I'll be there."

He hung up and filled Terry inon paper. They still didn't want to take the chance of being overheard by anyone less than trustworthy. Plus, Don had seen Agent Pierce lurking nearby just before he'd answered his phone. The man didn't seem to be in the office now, and Terry's hasty note said that he'd gotten a call a few minutes ago and left.

Don wished he could put a tail on the other man, but for now, he would have to let that wait. He and Terry decided that she shouldn't risk coming with him to meet with Larry. This would leave her free to do some background checking on Buchmann and on Pierce. He watched her destroy the notes and slip their remains into her pocket. He knew her well enough to know she'd take the papers home and burn them.

He checked his watch. It was going to be a long morning.

Alan hadn't been lying when he'd told Don that he hadn't been seriously hurt, but he hadn't told his son everything. Alan was not a fool. Maybe he wasn't a genius like his younger son, and maybe he didn't spend every day solving mysteries like his older son, but he had lived a long and more interesting life than either of his sons knew, and Alan Eppes knew when things were too coincidental.

His house had been invaded, but nothing had been taken. His son was in prison. And Don, in an alcohol induced confession, had tried to take responsibility for Charlie's recent injuries–injuries that were themselves very suspicious. All of this made Alan aware that there was more going on than he was being told.

He stared at the wall in front of his favorite chair. The wall, adorned with some of his favorite family pictures, was usually a comfort to him. Usually. Now, his thoughts were a mass of conflicting ideas colored by his emotions and his memories. He wanted to help his boys, but there was little he could do, plus he was aware that, if Don knew what he was thinking of doing, he would try to prevent Alan from following through.

A glance at his wife's picture made him remember his promise to her that he wouldn't allow their family to split apart. It had broken her heart to watch as Don and Charlie had drifted apart in the years just before she'd died. When Don had returned to LA, she'd harbored hopes that her boys would learn to be the brothers she knew they could be. She had asked Alan, in a moment of deepest regret, to do the one thing she'd insisted she'd failed to do; help her boys learn to express their love for each other. She insisted that she knew they did love each other, even if they seemed not to know it. She wanted Alan to help them learn to respect each other, and to rely on each other. He'd made the promise. He'd have promised her the moon then, and she knew it. She wasn't so much a saint that she would fail to take advantage of that. She knew Alan enough to know that when he gave his word, he kept it.

He had seen Don and Charlie take the first tentative steps toward the kind of relationship their mother wished for them, but thisCharlie being imprisoned, and Don being mysterious couldn't be helping to cement this fragile closeness they were just beginning to foster.

Alan wasn't without his own connections. He'd spent a lot of years working for the city, and if he had to take advantage of that now in order to secure a little assurance that Charlie and Don would be okay, then so be it. He was less of a saint than his wife was.

He reached for the phone and called a man he hadn't spoken to since Don and Charlie had been young. It took some time for him to reach his old boss, a man named Mason, who, as it turned out, now worked at some upper-level position with the FBI.

Realizing that, he wondered if perhaps he should reconsider. He didn't want Don to think he was interfering. He brushed the thought away. Even if Don did find out, he had to do something and this was all he had. He left a message anyway, hoping Mason would remember him without him having to do too much explaining. If the man called back, Alan would be able to gauge the likelihood of finding help in that quarter.

For now, he just stared once more at the photographs on the wall, hoping against hope that his boys would be all right.

April 19

Charlie stared at the information Buchmann had sent him. A post-it note on a hardcover book read, "A little light reading" The book was The Collected Works of Mark Twain. For whatever reason the book and not-so-explanatory note had been included, Charlie hadn't given it more than a cursory glance.

His eyes remained fixed on the stack of information from which Buchmann expected him to work. He had worked on more complex problems in his life, but rarely something so sensitive. This wasn't what he thought he'd be working on when he'd agreed to Buchmann's proposition. He'd thought there would be high-tech, financial, white-collar crimes. What he was doing now was an analysis based on the research from several sources on the medical records, IQ tests, educational datait was census material from all over the world. Official and unofficial.

If it was terrorism, which was what he had been dreading, he couldn't figure out how this sort of information was useful to a terrorist. The more he read, the more he began to put human faces to the activities he was tracing. School records children. Birth records brought to mind visuals of pregnant women. Medical records sent him back to the hospital as he watched the pandemic flu victims fight for their livesas he recalled asking Don if their mother had suffered

He couldn't stop the visuals, or the tears as he remembered wishing he'd been brave enough to see his mother before she'd diedto tell her that he'd loved her

Charlie had spent more than a little time hunched over the toilet with dry heaves each time he realized what his numbers actually represented. Victims. Each and every one of the numbers was a potential victim for whatever Buchmann was planning. It was getting to be more than he could contemplate. He'd stopped eating. The food was unappealing at best, nauseating at worst. He was getting more and more drawn into the numbers of what he was doing, and more than once, he considered falsifying something.

That idea wasn't worth serious consideration. There were too many variables. If Buchmann became too irate at Charlie's actions, he might forfeit either Don's life or his Dad's, figuring that there was still one of them left alive to hold over Charlie's head. It was getting complicated and convoluted.

Charlie hadn't felt so jumpy in a long time. Every sound startled him. He was no longer losing himself totally in his equations. He was living them, but he was almost too aware of everything that hung in the balance. He'd already caught two sloppy mistakes in Buchmann's data, which had thrown off his own equations. If Buchmann blamed that on him, his friends and family could suffer.

Something rumbled in his stomach at the thought, and he darted for the toilet bowl again, but his lack of caloric intake made such moments unproductive, and for that, Charlie wasn't sure if he should be grateful or not.

He heard a creak as his cellmate shifted in his bunk. Nervously, he tried to quell his heaves, or at least heave quieter. He heard the larger man step down off the bunk, and still his stomach muscles contracted. He heard the sink running, and still he couldn't be silent. It was when the heaves finally subsided that he got his biggest surprise since he'd been incarcerated. He turned to face his cellmate, Mike, to find Mike holding out a cup of water and a damp cloth.

"You ain't been eating, kid. What could you be hurling?"

Gratefully, Charlie accepted the proffered items, and ran the cool cloth over his hot face. He ignored the question and tried to distract the man with an apology. "I'msorry if I disturbed you."

Mike shrugged it off. "It's okay, kid." He gestured to the notes strewn across Charlie's bunk and the cell floor. "You still working on clearing your name?"

Charlie nodded. "Something like that."

Mike turned and headed back to his bunk. "If you'd like a friendly piece of advice, Professor, whoever's got you between a rock and a hard place, you need to shake them off before the rock and the hard place try to shake hands. When that happens, usually the guy caught in the middle won't make it out alive."

Charlie nodded. He'd thought of that. "That, Mike, believe it or not, is not the worst thing that could happen."

Mike stared at him in disbelief, but Charlie just turned his back and returned to his work.

Buchmann grinned the grin of a man who was finally getting everything in life that he had ever wanted. He toasted himself with a snifter full of 100-year-old cognac and sat back in his chair contemplating the ultimate fairness of the universe.

He had once been ruined. Eppes had utterly ruined him, though they had not met. Even now, just the thought of that man's smiling face sent a surge of rage through Buchmann's heart that left his soul in ashes. Buchmann had vowed that, one day, Eppes would pay. This scheme he had devised had made him realize that it wouldn't be one day at all. It would be for the rest of his natural life.

Buchmann imagined the pain he had caused, the upheaval that by now must have eradicated all memory of the life Eppes had had before Buchmann had set his plan in motion. Buchmann had read once that nothing affected the memory so much as pain. When in pain, one cannot remember being without pain, and when the pain fades, one cannot accurately recall what it felt like. He wanted nothing more than for Eppes to forget what life was like before this pain.

He had a few more surprises in mind before he revealed the true extent of his treachery to his victim. Reveal it he would, because, though revenge was a dish best served cold, full knowledge of the recipe would only sweeten the final results.

Special Agent Jonathan Pierce didn't really like how the investigation and prosecution against Charlie Eppes had gone. As he waited to speak to his superior he recalled as much about the case as he could. He'd been unwilling, at first, to look into a case being headed by another agent, but the choice, after all, was not his to make. He did what he was told.

As time had passed, he'd been less and less able to explain away the things he'd done. Wrestling with the professor at CalSci had been unexpected. The interrogation had been unusual as well. At first it had seemed that the young math professor wanted nothing more than to help them find the killer.

His hands snaked out to the pile of books he'd been carrying at the campus. One of the other officers had brought them into the interrogation room. Pierce had hoped to use them to prove the man was the killer, but he couldn't understand them.

Charlie's hand had fallen on the books, but Pierce had prevented him from taking it.

Surprised, and not as outwardly terrified as Pierce had expected, Eppes had tried to explain. "I just want to show you what I've learned about the killer. You see, he's killing the same people again and again"

"You mean you are."

"No." Eppes answered in easy denial.

Pierce leaned forward. "Tell me why?"

"The motive isn't clear from the equation"

"You still know why you did it."

"Ididn't do it."

That was when Pierce had seen the fear. It was there in the man's eyes. A sudden understanding that he couldn't talk his way out of this.

"I want to talk to my brother, Special Agent Don Eppes. Can I call him now? I get" he'd swallowed hard, and Pierce had been so sure that he would crack. "a phone call. I get a phone call, don't I?"

"Listen, Eppes, you confess and I'll let you make the call."

"That's illegal. Coerced confessions don't stand up in court."

Pierce sighed. "Don't play coy, Eppes. We've got you dead to rights."

Eppes had shaken his head. "If that were true, you'd have charged me already." He'd smiled a disarming, almost charming smile, but Pierce had seen the nervousness behind it. "I see why, statistically speaking, you would believe I was your man, but you have to realize I have no motive, no history of violence"

Pierce pulled the chair away from the table and stood leaning over the younger, slighter man. "Listen, kid, you're not seeing anyone. Why would you want to see him, anyway? You wanna kill him?"

"No!"

Eppes sounded horrified to Pierce, and he filed that information away wondering how much of it was an act. Pierce lowered his voice and leaned in closer, looking his suspect in the eye. "You wanna rip his heart out? What did he do to you to make you hate him?"

Charlie Eppes' eyes widened in horror, and his mouth opened in what appeared to be shock. He forced it closed, unable, apparently to make a sound in response to Pierce's questions. Then he looked up at the ceiling as if the answers Pierce wanted would be there. Inhaling deeply, he seemed to gather strength and looked Pierce dead in the eye. "I did not kill anyone. I want to see my brother.

The rest of the interview had gone much the same. Eppes would ask to see his brother, Pierce would try to get him to crack and then he would get nervous and ask for his brother all over again. Pierce believed that the man might have cracked if he'd been permitted to continue, but Kraft had sent in the brother.

The memories were still vivid, and Pierce had no clue as to why they were staying with him. He tried to shake them off as he prepared to see his supervisor.

This weekly status meeting was a waste of time. He really didn't have much new to report, and, until the trial started in six days, he didn't have much to do. The evidence had been gathered. Now it was in the lawyers' hands.

Finally, the receptionist told him to go on through to the boss's office. He opened the door and walked in. "Mr. Mason, sir?"

Mason grinned. "Ah, Agent Pierce! Let's talk about Eppes. I want to be sure he's going to prison for a long, long time."

Pierce shook his head. "I'm not so sure we've got the right guy. I'd like to follow up..."

Mason's eyes widened. "What makes you think I care what you think?" Mason rose from his chair behind his desk and moved to a file cabinet, retrieving a file thick with documents and photographs. "You've seen the evidence. We went over it together as soon as it was brought to my attention."

"That's what troubles me, sir. Who was working on this case? It's not Don Eppes' work. There's no mention in the files you gave me about who worked on it. If it was a research team, they should be identified for when this goes to trial"

"That's need to know, Pierce, and you don't need to know. It's not your concern."

"Not my concern? I'm the arresting officer! I need to know how it was determined that Dr. Eppes is our guy." Pierce had a sinking feeling that he wasn't going to get answers, in which case he wanted in on the record that he had some ethical questions about it all.

Mason sat again and tossed the folder on the deck indicating that Pierce should take it. When he did, Mason spoke. "This Eppes character has been under surveillance for a long time. Geniuses often crack up at some point, and we thought it likely that he might. His mother died not long ago, maybe that pushed him over the edge. It doesn't really matter. What matters is that we have the information we need to conclude that Dr. Charles Eppes is a danger to society." He paged through a notebook. "See, since his arrest, there hasn't been another murder."

"Could be coincidence." Pierce said, thinking that maybe Mason had a point. Besides, he'd done his job. His job was to arrest suspects. It was up to the lawyers, judge, and jury to decide guilt or innocence.

"Not likely." Mason smiled and got to his feet again, ushering Pierce out of his office. "You've done a good job. Don't worry about anything else. It's in the hands of the lawyers now."

Pierce nodded and left. His thoughts coalesced into an amalgamation of memories. Pieces of the file he'd read, memories of the photograph's of the bodies, and, inevitably, just when he'd convinced himself that Dr. Charles Eppes was a psychotic killer, he remembered that look on his face during the interrogation. Eppes hadn't only been adamant that he hadn't killed anyone, which, Pierce had assumed, was an act. No. He had also been overwhelmed and aghast at the very suggestion that he had killed his brother.

Looking back, Pierce realized that there were only two possible reasons for Eppes' reaction. Either Eppes was a cold-blooded killer, or he was innocent.

Pierce had assumed he was the former. The suggestion that he was the latter shook his conviction in his ability to do his job. Of course, that conviction had slipped quite a bit recently. Pierce realized he had a serious decision to make. He had to decide not only if Eppes was guilty or innocent based on the evidence at hand, but also what, if anything, he was prepared to do about it in either case.

As soon as Mason had closed the door behind his agent, a door behind his desk opened. A tall, slim man entered, glaring at Mason. "He suspects something."

"It's going to be fine, sir."

"It's not if that man does any poking around. You were supposed to handle it."

"I did. I told Kraft to put a man on it. He chose Pierce." Mason backed slightly away from the other man as though afraid.

"You should have chosen someone."

"That's not how it's done, Mr. Buchmann."

Buchmann scowled. "Pierce better not be trouble. If he is, you are going to have to deal with it, Mason."

"Deal with" He swallowed. "Iwon't kill him."

"You will if I tell you to."

"You're setting me up." It was all suddenly clear to Mason. Buchmann was going to pin the murders on him if the case against Charlie fell through.

"If I decide to set you up, I won't need you to kill anyone. I'll just need you to go to prison. I can kill Pierce myself, just like I killed the other nine. Just like I'll kill Eppes."

Mason nodded, hoping he hadn't just ended his own usefulness.

To Be Continued