Dead of Night

23

LOG

17 Dec. Friday 21:17 (addendum)

… The conjunction of visible planets confirms the existence of unseen planets, all fixed in orbit by gravity, a calculable force. Does a single force link Applebee, Frieda, assault/murder, African exotics, a 17-year-old prophecy, and water?

Standing behind me, looking over my shoulder as I sat at the computer, Tomlinson said, “Laken and I aren’t going to be shocked if you admit you know something about cryptography. Scout’s honor, no need to play innocent. Tell us the difference between secret code and a cipher. Or maybe they’re the same thing.”

It was nearly midnight. The party was still going strong. Only a few hundred feet of water separated us from music and loud laughter-Christmas carols in Spanish now. I could see silhouettes of people dancing on the docks, doing the salsa or merengue through the screened windows.

I’d left Rona chatting with Mack and the guides, men clustered around. She told me she had a hotel room, not to worry, she’d be just fine. I didn’t doubt it. For a woman who claimed to have grown up gawky, she enjoyed being among men, and knew how to hold court.

Despite her prying questions, it didn’t take long for us to get back on friendly terms, which was a relief. So, in good conscience, I’d returned home.

Tomlinson and Lake agreed to follow when they were ready.

When they joined me in the lab, I told them what had happened to Frieda, and Applebee. Tomlinson focused in when I mentioned Asperger’s syndrome, which suggested he knew something about it. Then I opened the computer documents, including Frieda’s note to me.

He’d met Frieda, and he’d seen Applebee’s remarkable diorama, so Tomlinson was moved by what she’d written:

Hey, Doc. You’re the only guy I know with the background to understand Jobe’s files, attached here. Remember me telling you my brother used numbers as words? He also associated numbers with stuff like moods and emotions. Colors, too. Quite a few Aspie kids do this.

He told me 4 was the only true number because it had four letters. Numbers you could trust were 99 and 66, because they had value even upside down. 3, 6, and 13 were yellow numbers. 2 and 5 were red. 8 was blue.

He was a special brother, and I will miss him every day of my life. Maybe it’s my twin’s intuition, but I have a feeling that Jobe stumbled onto something bad that got him killed. It scared him enough to send his computer to me for safekeeping.

I’ve already set up some meetings with his clients, and started poking around. Nothing’s going to stop me from finding out why someone would hurt such a gentle person.

He’d have wanted these files to go to you, Doc. Opposite sides of the same coin…

She’d signed it: See you soon!

I would not be seeing her soon. The lady was now sealed away in a refrigerated locker at the county medical examiner’s office… or maybe already on a stainless steel table. She would soon be further diminished by a hole in a Tallahassee cemetery, or an um, into which she would shrink and shrink and shrink in memory until she vanished into infinity.

Frieda Matthews was a good one. A fine person who was dear and bright and solid. I admired her intellect. I liked the sound of her laughter. I valued her as a person. The transition from animate to the inanimate occurs in a microsecond. It is the interval of a flame extinguished, but it is an eternal microsecond. I would never see her again.

I kept her message on the computer screen long enough to read twice. Then I opened the documents from a folder labeled:

TROPICANE/EPOC.

At the top of the first page, first document, was written: DO NOT LET THEM FIND THIS!

A note from brother to sister.

Someone had been after his computer.

Otherwise, the pages consisted of nothing but numbers. Digits were sometimes separated by spaces, rarely punctuation. An occasional period or colon.

Studying the screen, Tomlinson and my son both reacted with the muted grunts and sentence fragments that signal confusion.

“That message at the top-who doesn’t he want to have this?”

I said, “The people who were trying to beat information out of him the night I came along. The ones who also maybe killed his sister. I’m speculating.”

Lake whistled softly. “Shouldn’t the federales know? Or the police?”

The boy spoke English without accent, but he sometimes used Spanish words unconsciously. “The feds know. I’ll forward these files to the FBI, but there’s no reason for us not to try and decode them. Maybe we’ll learn something.”

Lake put his hand on my shoulder, as Tomlinson used a favorite phrase: “It is time for us to put on the ol’ thinking caps, my brothers.” Added: “Which means at least one of us will need beer. Several, in fact.”

Tomlinson returned from the galley carrying a galvanized bucket heavy with ice and bottles. As he opened a beer and took a long gulp, I told them what I remembered about cryptography.

Tomlinson’s guess was right. I’ve dealt with various forms of secret writing. I’ve had to create methods of encrypting messages, and also tried to crack messages that had been encoded-too seldom successfully.

I shared the basics: Code substitutes groups of letters or figures for words or phrases. Shorthand is code. Police radio-speak is code-“10-4” means affirmative. In Morse code, SOS is three dots, three dashes, three dots.

A cipher, in contrast, is text in which every letter is assigned a substitute. Done well, the text is unreadable to all but those who possess the cipher’s key.

I’d asked Frieda if there were any numbers larger than twenty-six, because the simplest form of cipher uses numbers in place of an alphabetical counterpart. If A is 1, B is 2, and Z becomes 26. The cipher’s key can be shifted: If A is 25, B may be 24, and Z is 0.

A quick look told me this was more complicated. I touched the computer screen as I explained why. Many of the numbers were in blocks of four, set apart by spaces. There were also blocks of eight, though fewer.

I said, “A typical document doesn’t contain that many four- or eight-letter words, but I still think it’s a form of substitution cipher. Dr. Applebee knew it well enough to create long documents, which suggests that there’s consistency in the substitution system. If there is, we’ll figure it out.”

A good cipher system cloaks repetition, I told them.

“That’s why the Nazi’s Enigma cipher was so tough for the Brits to crack. The Germans used a machine similar to a typewriter, but it had a series of wheels that changed the alphabetical sequence by one letter after every twenty-six keystrokes.”

Otherwise, I said, patterns become obvious. Certain letters of the alphabet, specific combinations, are used more than others. The same is true of certain words, particularly short words.

“The most frequently used letters in English are E, T, A, O, and N, in that order. The way I remember is to think of ‘Estimated Time of Arrival, ON.’ The next most commonly used letters are I, R, and S, as in Internal Revenue. Easy. Beyond that, I’ve forgotten. I’ll put it down on paper for you.”

I described other decoding tricks: contact analysis, and also the most commonly used double letters.

“Keep in mind that Applebee created the system for himself, nobody else. The guy had Asperger’s syndrome. What may’ve seemed sequential to him might seem unlikely to us. His sister told me their neuron pathways function differently.”

Tomlinson surprised me, saying, “I may be able to relate to an Aspie better than you think. A month or so ago, Deet took me aside, and asked me a bunch of questions about what I was like as a kid. He kept me cornered for an hour or so.”

“Deet” was Dieter Rasmussen, the German shrink with the beautiful boat.

“You didn’t mention it.”

“No. It would’ve sounded like I was blowing my horn. You know how some people talk about their flaws, but in a way that actually glorifies? A major turnoff, which I try to avoid. Deet told me he thought I have a touch of Asperger’s syndrome.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Some of the characteristics he described, I have to agree. Wired differently? No one’s going to argue that one, compadre. When I was a kid, I preferred being alone to socializing. I transposed words, wrote my sevens backward-which is why I still cross sevens and my gs. And my interests tended to be, oh, shall we say, just to the right of lunatic obsessive.”

He used both hands to shoo it away as if unimportant. “The other stuff, though-lack of imagination, the temper tantrums-don’t fit. But Dieter said symptoms vary. A touch of Asperger’s can be a good thing. Thoreau, Thomas Edison, Isaac Newton, a bunch of others-they were undiagnosed Asperger’s people. It’s common in the arts and sciences.”

I said, “If it helps you crack these files, I hope he’s right. We don’t have much time. Lake and I are both supposed to leave day after tomorrow.”

My son said slowly, “Yeah, Doc, but we don’t have to leave. Maybe you do, but I don’t.” He was looking at me, gauging my reaction. I got the impression he was testing to see if I’d risk upsetting Dewey by postponing my trip.

Interesting. He’d met the woman. They appeared to get along fine. Yet, he’d thrown this out to measure something, I felt sure. Maybe to find out how much independence I’d retained, how much I’d forfeited to the woman who would soon be the mother of his half sibling.

There were complicated subissues involved. Children are no less complicated than adults-survival requires heightened awareness in primate young. I had to tread lightly.

I said, “Your mother isn’t my biggest fan to begin with, and letting you stay longer wouldn’t raise my stock. If you’re not home by Sunday, she’ll never let you come back. Let’s not risk it.”

Lake tilted his head-part shrug, part nod of concession-which told me that he was aware I’d dodged his deeper question.

Tomlinson, however, seemed oblivious to the subtext, because he plowed ahead. “The boy’s right, Doc. It’s no accident that the secret files of Jobe Applebee got dropped in our laps. We have a moral obligation to see this thing through-no matter what it reads on your plane tickets. We don’t choose our evils; our evil chooses us.”

I said nothing-Lake had to leave Sunday because what I’d said about his mother was true. She’d never let him return. Even so, I listened as Tomlinson asked, “What are the chances we’ll crack these files within the next day or so?”

I said, “Zero. Even if we discover the cipher’s key, we’d still have to create an algorithm that would convert it from numbers to letters. Either that or translate it one word at a time. Ransom probably knows enough about computers to do the programming, but we’re still talking days. Maybe weeks.”

Tomlinson had anticipated the answer. “Okay, then here’s what we need to do.” He nodded to me. “Let’s drive to Kissimmee tomorrow and find where Frieda was killed. Take a look around, see what makes sense, what doesn’t. If her death was accidental, then this deciphering gig is no longer a moral priority. You can both fly off as planned. But if we see something that tells us the lady was murdered, then that’s our dharma. You can no more run off to Iowa than we can hear the sound of one hand clapping.”

In reply to my son’s puzzled expression, I shook my head quickly: Don’t ask.

“Same’s true for me,” Tomlinson continued. “I’ve got to follow it through. How pissed off do you think your sister’s going to be if I’m not here on Sunday for our live Webcast? She’ll shit a brick. Or ice cubes, is more like it. What would that cost her in Good Karma offerings?”

I could see that he was inwardly pleased with the idea.

After they’d left, alone in my lab I continued the copepod procedure, hooked on the idea that a hybrid could be developed. During the waiting periods, I did some research on Florida’s sugar industry-“Big Sugar,” it’s commonly called-hoping for a clue to what Applebee might have hidden in his encrypted files. Internet search engines produced a pile of hits.

I’d forgotten how big Florida’s sugar industry is, and how much political clout it has. I was also surprised at some of the environmental-friendly changes that had taken place in the last few years. Most of those changes had to do with the way the industry disposed of water.

More surprising was an entry in a Dutch newsletter that someone had translated into English and posted on an investment group’s Web page. It claimed that Florida’s sugar industry faced certain collapse. It predicted that much of its agricultural acreage would soon be for sale.

Could that be true?

I spent half an hour confirming it.

Something else I did was fret about Dewey. I’d left a message for her earlier. Around 1 A.M., I realized she hadn’t returned my call.

I’d left the phone in the house, and so I walked across the breezeway and dialed Dewey’s home phone. I got her voice mail again. Same when I tried her mobile.

I tried an hour later. Same results.

Odd.

It was only midnight, Iowa time, but it wasn’t like her to stay out so late, even on a Friday. It also was unusual that she didn’t answer her cell phone. The woman carried the thing everywhere.

I continued tinkering with Applebee’s files, messing with different decoding keys, trying to get my mind off Dewey. Not easy.

I pace when I’m worried and I soon began to pace. I paced between the lab and the house, alternately willing the damn phone to ring, then willing Jobe’s complicated cipher to give me a little break.

Neither cooperated.

We all have perverse, destructive components in our psychological makeup. I don’t know why, but we do. Gradually, on some perverse level, I was pleased that Dewey hadn’t answered, even though I was anxious to confirm that she was okay.

How many times had she criticized me for calling too late, or forgetting to call? Now here it was 2:30 A.M., Florida time, and she hadn’t even bothered to tell me she’d be out of touch.

In the adolescent game of scorekeeping, leverage shifted a little bit my way. In the future, if I didn’t feel like calling for a night or two, the lapse was now acceptable. She’d set the precedent, not me. In fact, all future demonstrations of independence were now justified-satisfying because Lake had questioned whether I could still act independently.

I tried one more time at 2:45, standing outside on the porch above the shark pen, looking at stars, feeling a tropic wind on my face.

No answer, so I cloaked my indignation in a message saying that I was concerned, to please call no matter what time she got in. Added too sharply that I’d be driving to Kissimmee in the morning because of Frieda’s death. I didn’t need any additional worries.

Then I clomped down the steps to check my specimen tank a final time. Paused once for long seconds, listening, because I thought I heard the sound of footsteps on shells. Paused again, hearing something, or someone, moving through mangroves.

Got my rechargeable spotlight; shined it around from the top deck. I varied the search pattern, switching it off for minutes. Then switched it on, painting the shoreline yellow.

Raccoons.

I went to bed.