Pulse

81

It was approaching midnight, and Jerry Lido was out-and-out drunk.

Sober, he was an expert on the computer. Inebriated past a certain point, he was an Internet genius.

Tonight he’d sacrificed his sobriety in order to solve at least part of the nagging problem Quinn had laid in his lap.

As usual, he wrote everything down so he’d remember it when he recovered from his alcohol-saturated state the morning after. He wrote very carefully with a rollerball pen on a single sheet of lined paper. From time to time he would sit back and marvel at the fullness and clarity of his handwriting. The written English language could be so elegant! Such a beautiful thing in and of itself! It was poetry without poetry-insightful and inspiring.

He wondered just how drunk he was. He knew that a certain part of his mind was functioning very well indeed. Staring at the cursive glory of his thoughts on paper, he stifled a sob of joy. And yet…

A quill! He wished he had a quill to do his thoughts true justice.

Might there be a pigeon about?

He stood up unsteadily and stumbled to the window, threw it open and felt a bracing wall of cool air engulf him.

What?

What on earth would I want with a pigeon? And don’t ’t they sleep at night?

He staggered away from the open window, toward the sagging sofa. He fell forward on the sofa so that he was lying on his stomach, one arm dragging on the carpet.

Where do pigeons go at night? What do they do?

Gotta find out. Make a note to find out…

He drifted off to sleep, comfortable enough to coo.

When he awoke and focused a bleary eye on his clock radio, Lido was pleased to see that it was only 5:15. He could sleep a while longer, if he could contain himself and not jump up and hurry to Q and A.

He punched up his pillow and settled back into the bed’s lumpy mattress. Tossed. Turned.

Maybe he should call Quinn. He could be an early riser. Sometimes.

But when Lido heard a pigeon and glanced toward the window, he saw that there was something different about the light.

It seemed to be getting darker outside.

Must be something wrong with the sun.

Then he realized the sun was okay; it usually knew what time it was. Five-fifteen was the right time, only it was not morning but evening.

No wonder Lido’s head felt ready to explode. He snatched up the papers from the bedside table. His vision swam and he was having difficulty reading his wobbly handwriting. He did not even attempt to climb out of bed yet, but lay on his back, head propped on his pillow, and reviewed his notes.

The very fact that he had to decipher his own writing jolted his memory of what he’d accomplished last night. He’d managed to hack into and decipher encrypted e-mails that had been sent and received by the second Wisconsin victim, Sherri Klinger, and her teenage boyfriend, a kid named Rory. Sherri was distraught over the death of her dog, Duffy. The e-mail correspondence mentioned where Duffy had been buried by someone and then found and moved. It was very near where the two dead women were found buried. Rory hinted at having seen something horrible (his word) at that site. Lido assumed he was referring to the earliest victim being tortured.

Christ! What effect would that have on a teenage boy?

A hacking expedition into County Sheriff’s Department files indicated something that would surely interest Quinn. The panties on the earlier, unidentified victim didn’t fit her. Sherri’s panties, the later victim’s, were her usual label and their remnants suggested they’d been her size.

But the most intriguing thing about the other murder was that dates of several e-mails indicated that the teenage Rory not only knew about it, but knew about it before the police. He almost had to have witnessed it.

The Waycliffe college faculty e-mails, bearing more recent dates, were also curious. They referred vaguely to a secret agreement (called a compact) that they had no choice but to embrace. It seemed to be about something more important than money and possible jail time, which were pretty damned important. Some critical deadline had passed, and the truth now would bring ruination (Armageddon) to them and to an institution that was never named but was undoubtedly Waycliffe College.

It was also revealed that Waycliffe College’s investment account (hacking banks and brokerage firms was easy for Lido) was top-heavy with ownership in Meeding Properties. Lido recalled that Pearl’s daughter, Jody, was interested in that company. Something about eminent domain. Amazing how, when you followed the strings, they all led to the same ball of twine.

Quinn would surely now want to take in some of the faculty at Waycliffe, put them under the lights, sweat the truth from them, and find out about this secret they shared and that had come to possess them.

It seemed as if someone at Waycliffe might know something about whether Daniel Danielle was alive and on another murder rampage, or whether he had an imitator. The puzzle pieces that might fit and complete the image were out there, waiting to be picked up and tried. The fruit was ripe and ready to pluck.

Lido smiled. It seemed that the more metaphors a case suggested, the closer they were to a solution.

He was feeling better. What might have been a developing pile-driver of a headache had faded away. He felt… proud.

For an instant the image of a pigeon flashed in his mind. He had no idea why.

Lido knew he had to get up out of bed. And now.

Things to do.

He stubbed his toe and bumped his head almost simultaneously while getting into the shower. He didn’t want to waste time before making himself presentable and plausible at Q amp;A.

A shave might have put him over the top, but Lido was afraid his hand wasn’t steady enough to achieve that without nicking himself. Unshaven, he wore an unstained tie with a blue short-sleeved shirt and an unstructured linen sport coat that was incredibly wrinkled. His feet were unsocked. His theory was that everything went okay with jeans and scuffed brown Sperry Top-Siders.

Quinn and Pearl were still in the office. Fedderman had just come in. Sal and Harold were out in the field, checking probably meaningless inconsistencies in witness statements.

Lido nodded a shaky hello.

“We’ve got leftover sandwiches and coffee,” Quinn said, thinking it was mostly the coffee Lido needed. Either that or he’d already had ten cups.

Lido simply shook his head no, and then pulled a desk chair out so he could sit on it facing the other three.

“Obviously,” Pearl said, “you have something to tell us.”

Lido sat there side-shadowed by a desk lamp, looking smug.

“Whaddya got?” Quinn asked, getting tired of this game, and increasingly curious. Lido, undoubtedly coming off a drunk, seemed uncharacteristically satisfied with himself.

“First off, I deciphered some of the encrypted e-mails between faculty at Waycliffe and employees of Enders and Coil,” Lido said. “It was a clever code, but I figured out that each letter after the second letter-those two were meaningless-was the third letter after the preceding letter that-”

“Never mind all that,” Quinn said. “What did you learn?”

“I’m still digging on Waycliffe and the law firm. Mostly I learned about a couple of kids in Leighton, Wisconsin, Rory and Sherri, who used pretty much the same encryption. Sherri was one of the two 1986 murder victims.”

Quinn waved a hand. “Whoa. This code thing makes a connection between the dead girl in Wisconsin and Waycliffe College?”

“Gotta be,” Lido said. “Rory’s full and legal name is Linden Riordon Schueller.”

Quinn felt the air go out of him. His mind wrestled with what he’d just heard. “Waycliffe College Chancellor Linden R. Schueller?”

“Unless there’s two of them,” Lido said.

He pulled a wrinkled sheet of lined paper out of a pocket so he could check it now and then as he spoke. The handwriting on it was incredibly sloppy and almost itself in code.

Lido read what he’d learned so far about Waycliffe College, Enders and Coil, and Meeding Properties. It was a maze of financial payoffs, kickbacks, and insider trading. The development that had contained Mildred Dash’s apartment was going to be business and residential space, used to wash dirty money from even more nefarious activities.

Apparently Macy Collins discovered what was going on while an intern at Enders and Coil, and, like Jody, put together what she’d learned at Waycliffe with what was said and done at the law firm.

“She had to be killed,” Pearl said, thinking about Jody.

The part about the college, the law firm, and the development company was a tangled mess that bore thinking about. Right now, it was the links between them, and two dead women in Wisconsin, that most interested Quinn and his detectives.

“They’ve got secrets,” Lido said. “That we know for sure. And those Wisconsin murder victims were teenagers.”

“We talking child molestation?” Fedderman asked.

“Could be something even worse,” Pearl said. “And more recent. It sounds like some of the faculty at Waycliffe know about the latest Daniel Danielle murders. For whatever reason, they chose to look the other way the first time, and then they were sunk. If they dummied up about one murder, they had to do it with the others.”

“They were in deeper and deeper with each murder,” Quinn said. “Once they let themselves become accessories, the crime they were committing grew more and more serious. They knew-and still know-something they’re not saying about those murders.”

“Like whether we’ve got an older, savvier Daniel Danielle on the loose, or if it’s some sicko committing copycat crimes.”

“Some people out at Waycliffe have been sitting on their asses,” Quinn said. “On information we could have been using to stop a killer.”

“Accessories to murder,” Lido said.

“Friggin’ right,” Pearl said. “Guilty like those jerks who sit on child molestation information. They look the other way and become part of the crime.”

“There might be something besides the murders,” Lido said. “Enders and Coil, and Waycliffe College, look like majority shareholders in Meeding Properties Development, the corporate entity that’s developing the area Jody’s concerned about. Illegal insider trading seems to have gone on, and money was shifted around. Other investors’ money might have gone from Meeding stock to Waycliffe, and back to Meeding. Then to something called Meeding W. Investments, a private company that isn’t listed on any exchanges. Its principals seem to be Linden R. Schueller, Elaine K. Pratt, and Wayne G. Tangler.”

“Uh-oh,” Quinn said.

Fedderman said, “Fraud, insider training, stock manipulation. Wow.”

“Don’t forget murder,” Pearl said. She looked at Quinn. He was wearing an expression she’d seen before, and that scared her. “What are you considering?” she asked.

“Leverage.”

Lido made an unsuccessful attempt to fold the wrinkled paper he’d been reading from, then gave up and stuffed it back in his pocket.

He then pulled another, folded, sheet of paper out of the pocket and laid it on the desk.

“What’s that?” Quinn asked.

“High school yearbook photo of Linden Riordon Schueller.”

They all huddled over the photo of a young, dark-haired man with what could only be described as a devilish smile. He did resemble Chancellor Schueller.

“Could be,” Quinn said.

“Is,” Fedderman said.

Pearl said, “I’m not so sure.”

“Look at the ears,” Fedderman said. “The ears don’t lie.”

Where and how on the Internet did you obtain this in-“Where and how on the Internet did you obtain this information?” Quinn asked Lido.

“You don’t want to know.”

“You’re right. I probably wouldn’t understand if I did know, so I choose not to ask.”

“Maybe like those folks out at Waycliffe,” Pearl said.

“There’s a big difference,” Fedderman said.

“Oh, I dunno,” Lido said. “Fire with fire.”

“We’re looking for a serial killer,” Quinn said. “We need answers, and we know where to find them. If there’s a conspiracy of silence at Waycliffe, it’s about to end.”

“What makes you think they’ll talk now?” Pearl asked. “We don’t have any substantial evidence that was legally obtained.”

“Yet,” Quinn said, picking up the phone.

“Be careful,” Pearl said. “We might be wrong about this.”

“I’m calling to make sure.”

Chancellor Schueller took Quinn’s call, and Quinn explained what one of his investigators had learned. He decided, for the time being, to keep the focus on murder.

Schueller listened quietly and didn’t once interrupt. Quinn figured the chancellor had to be wondering just how this information was compiled.

“My question,” Quinn said, “is why did you lie to us?”

“I didn’t lie.”

“There are lies of omission.”

“I don’t believe that’s a legal term.”

“ ‘Accessory after the fact’ is. So is ‘accomplice. ’ ”

“We both know we’re not nearly at that point, Detective. I was afraid you’d misinterpret information any of us volunteered. As it turns out, I was right.”

“I won’t mind putting that to the test.”

“You really had no reason to question anyone here, so let’s hypothesize that we made an agreement simply as a precaution. In case you suspected anyone at Waycliffe we knew was innocent. We were actually facilitating your investigation without you knowing it.”

Hoo, boy! Quinn thought. “Who are these people you trust so implicitly?”

“Those whom I and the others know well enough to be sure they aren’t torturers and killers.”

“You don’t think you might misjudge people?”

“Not the faculty I know at Waycliffe. Anyway, the odds of the killer having anything to do with this institution are so long that all of us are aware that by covering for each other, we’re not taking any substantial risk. That’s if we had such a pact, if we were covering each other-which we’re not doing. I’m simply working with your hypothesis.”

“I thought it was yours.”

“Let’s say it’s ours.”

Quinn sighed and stood up behind his desk. “Information feeds on itself and creates a larger and more dangerous beast. That’s the phase of the investigation we’re in now. When the beast grows large enough, I’m going to turn it loose on you. It goes for the throat.”

“You certainly make a colorful case for citizen cooperation,” Schueller said. “But it’s only an ominously phrased excuse for harassment that you regard as admirable conduct. I’ll contact our legal counsel and see what they think about illegally obtained information and witness intimidation.” He was lying with practiced ease. “That unfettered beast you refer to might leap in any direction.”

“That’s true,” Quinn said. “The only sure thing is that it will draw blood.”

“You do have a way with words, Detective.”

“If you think I’m good, you should read the New York Times.”

“Another thinly veiled threat?” Schueller asked.

“Not so thin,” Quinn said. “We’ll see what you think in another few days.”

He hung up.

The office was quiet for about ten seconds. Then Quinn related the other end of his conversation with Chancellor Schueller.

He looked at his detectives. “Schueller was waiting to be contacted. He had his response rehearsed.”

Everyone agreed with him.

“He’s gonna get in his airplane and fly away,” Pearl said.

“Maybe,” Quinn said. “He’s assessing the situation.”

“Think we should call Renz on this?” Fedderman asked.

“We don’t want to spook them with a light show,” Quinn said. “We want to get what we need so we can roll them up tight.”

That was when Jody entered the office. She stopped cold, sensing that something was going on.

Quinn looked at Pearl. This was going to be her call.

“I want her with us,” Pearl said.

Quinn nodded.

“Now what?” Fedderman asked.

Quinn looked at his watch. Said, “We ride.”