Simple Genius

Chapter 45

They dropped Viggie off in the schoolroom. Before they left Viggie, Michelle and Sean spoke to her teacher, a middle-aged woman.

“A special case,” the teacher said about Viggie. “But on her good days she’s as brilliant as any student I’ve ever had.”

“Alicia Chadwick says she can factor large numbers in her head,” Sean said.

“Exactly. Can you imagine being able to see millions, if not billions of numbers neatly lined up in your mind’s eye?”

Sean said, “No, I can’t. I actually have trouble remembering my own phone number.”

They left Viggie with her teacher and guard and headed out. In the hall they ran into Alicia Chadwick.

“She’s safe in the school,” Sean told her and then explained about Horatio. “Maybe he can help her.”

“Get through the ordeal of her father’s death?” Alicia asked, casting him a sharp glance. “Or something else?”

“Alicia, if she knows anything about Monk’s death we need to find that out. The sooner we find out the less important Viggie becomes to a killer.”

Alicia said, “Okay, let’s do it.”

As Sean and Michelle walked the grounds of the mansion, he said, “The place was built by a guy who made a fortune selling people canned food packed full of crap that probably killed as many consumers as not.”

“I didn’t see any sign with the name Babbage Town.”

“Funny, neither did I.” He went over the hut system with her and then gave Michelle a more detailed rundown of his conversation with Champ and the quantum computer.

“I’ve got Joan digging on who owns this place. Say what you want about her, she’s really good at that.”

“Most animals with claws are,” Michelle shot back.

They eventually came to stand in front of Turing’s now empty cottage.

“FBI Special Agent with-a-bad-attitude Michael Ventris took all the stuff but I’m having Joan run down where Monk might have traveled to.”

“You said Alicia mentioned it was overseas?”

“She just didn’t know where.”

He took her to Len Rivest’s cottage next.

“Did you check Champ’s alibi on the night Rivest was killed?” she asked.

“Computer says he clocked in Hut Number Two at eleven-thirty and punched out at three in the morning. So whoever I saw around two in the morning, it wasn’t him.”

“And since it looks like Rivest had been dead for at least five hours when you found him, that rules Champ out.”

“Suspects come, suspects go,” Sean said with a sigh.

They next walked down to the boathouse. Michelle ran an expert’s eye over the watercraft. “Nothing too exceptional, mostly recreational,” she pronounced. She motioned to a twenty-six-foot Formula Bowrider up on a boat lift in one of the slips. “One of the owners of this place must be a New Yorker.”

Sean looked at the name stenciled on the stern transom: “The Big Apple.” He pointed across the river. “How long to row across? Not for someone like you, I mean an ordinary mortal.”

She considered this. “Not knowing the current, I’d say at least forty-five minutes or so. It always looks closer on land. When you’re sloughing through the water, it’s a lot farther.”

“So there and back we’re talking over two hours, considering you’d probably be rowing slower on the way back.”

“That’s right.”

He led her through the woods to the spot where Camp Peary could be seen. Michelle pulled a pair of binoculars from her backpack and focused them.

The sun was glancing off the shiny fence surrounding the CIA’s property.

“Heck of a shot at you,” she said, studying the distance and trajectory.

“Yeah, well let’s be happy it wasn’t a helluva shot or I wouldn’t be here.”

She pointed to her left at the break in the tree line. “Runway?”

“Yep.”

She looked at the large cranes farther down the river. “Navy?” Sean nodded. “Where’d they find his body?”

“As best I can figure out, right about there.” He pointed to a wooded spot about five hundred yards down from the runway.

“So the thing is, if Monk went over there voluntarily and not just to kill himself, then he either went to meet someone, or to spy on the place and someone got the jump on him,” she said.

“Right, but if he went to spy on the place the CIA had every right to shoot him. So why cover it up to make it look like suicide?”

“Well, maybe it was suicide after all,” Michelle said.

“But what about Rivest? He was most definitely murdered.”

“Unconnected to Monk’s death,” she said simply.

Sean didn’t look as confident. “Maybe.”

As they walked back Sean abruptly said, “Look, I should’ve given you a heads-up that Horatio was coming down. I’m sorry. I was just trying to help.”

“Forget it,” she replied. But she said it in a way that Sean knew she would never forget it.