Killer Summer

30

The door to the Incident Command Center in the Blaine County Sheriff’s Office was closed, a MEETING IN PROGRESS sign on the wall alongside.

Walt addressed Barge Levy, as Fiona took pictures of Janet Finch’s inspection of the Adams bottles.

“One thing you didn’t explain, Sheriff,” Finch said, never taking her attention off the bottles, “is how you talked Arthur Remy into allowing this.”

“Who said I did?”

“You have the access card. You opened the case.”

“True. And true.”

“Go ahead, be that way,” Finch said.

“Every once in a great while, blind luck plays a hand in an investigation.”

“You stole it from him?”

“Remy showed up at the emergency room earlier,” Walt said. “Slipped and broke his knee, he claimed. I was contacted because the on-call orthopedist and his radiologist judged the fracture to be blunt-force trauma-a baseball bat, maybe a martial-arts kick, to the knee. We ask them to report that kind of difference of opinion, primarily to head off domestic violence against women.”

“And?”

“He left his pants.”

“Excuse me?” Finch said.

“Remy left his pants in the emergency room. Was driven home in a pair of hospital scrubs. One too many painkillers, and he spaced out and forgot his pants. The pants, and their contents, were turned over to me. I’m required to do an inventory, and, as it happens, the card was in his pocket. I’d seen it before. This office has every intention of returning Mr. Remy’s belongings. We have been in communication with him, and it was agreed I would pass along his things when I see him tonight at the auction.”

“Holy shit! Did he ask about the card?”

“Not a word. I’m sure he didn’t want to attract my attention to it.”

“Who says there’s no God?” Finch said.

“Other than the photographs, we can document the test results, right?” Walt said.

“Of course,” Levy said, still making adjustments on what appeared to be some complicated electronics.

“I’d rather have a spectrometer,” Finch said. Wearing cotton gloves, she viewed the labels with a loupe, and, as she did, she made noises like she was in the throes of really good sex.

“Trust me,” Levy said, “the piezoelectric effect is just as conclusive. We can measure density, size, clamped capacitance, and low-field dissipation.”

“English?” Walt said.

“She can determine the pattern of any microfractures,” Levy said. “Listen, we wouldn’t have this gear if I didn’t know what I was doing. It was donated by the father of one of our students after we found those pottery shards out at Muldoon. Remember? The mine cave-in? The piezoelectric effect was the cheapest way to determine if it was authentically Native American without sending the shards out to a lab, which would have cost aplenty.” He laughed one of his laughs. “Turned out they were common gardening pots. But, hey, I got the equipment donated, so who’s complaining?”

“The results will have to be verified,” Finch reminded. “No offense, but they’re not going to take the word of a grad student and a school principal.”

“Alternative-school principal,” Levy corrected. “And I taught science for twelve years. And graduated from MIT, don’t forget.”

Finch didn’t comment.

“Do you know someone?” Walt asked.

“I can ask one of my professors to examine the data we collect,” Finch said. “There will definitely be someone on campus who can do this.”

“But not before the auction?”

“Doubtful,” Finch said, “it being a weekend and all. But, who knows? These bottles are famous. I can think of a couple people who would jump at a chance to examine them.”

“I can try Lowry, at MIT,” Levy said, “there’s always a chance…”

“Dr. Lowry would do it,” Finch told Walt. “If he signed off on this, no one would dispute it.” She flattered Walt with a look. “Thank you for doing this.”

“Don’t mistake this as benevolence,” Walt said. “Those bottles are evidence in a homicide. If they’re fakes, that impacts the investigation. It’s something I need to know.”

“I would so love to see you bust Arthur Remy,” Finch said.

“That’s not how it works,” Walt said. “But if Remy is pawning off fakes…” He didn’t finish the thought.

“We’re ready,” Levy said.

He ran nearly the exact same test five times. The glass near the engraving was exposed to ultrahigh sound frequencies that were then measured from different places on the bottles. A laptop computer crunched the data, displaying it as a color-coded graph that Levy studied and then saved before repeating the test.

At the conclusion of the tests, Levy looked up from the laptop, wearing a grave expression. “The microfractures are random,” he said.

“I knew it!” Janet Finch looked as if she’d won the lottery.

“That’s good?” Walt asked Levy.

“They’re fakes,” said Finch, smiling widely.