Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries

A vaguely European woman with intensely black hair answered the door. Dark circles under her eyes marred a natural beauty.

Murex flashed his shield. “Detective Ray Murex. Boston Homicide. Could I have a word with Mr Grandmaison?”

“I’m sorry. But he’s in the gray room. He can’t be disturbed right now.”

“Gray room?”

“His private viewing room. He’s working a practice target.”

“I should have called first, but I need to ask him about one of his students.”

The door fell open. “Perhaps I can help you. I run the registration side of TIRV.”

“Then I would like to talk with you, Mrs Grandmaison.”

“Call me Effie, please.”

The living room was decorated in the Mission style. Murex searched for signs of a military past and found none. No medals. Not even an American flag on display.

Murex took a chair. “What can you tell me about a John Doom?”

Effie Grandmaison looked blank. “I don’t place that name. Are you sure he was a TIRV student?”

“He was found dead in bed last night wearing one of your sleep masks, a TIRV binder at his bedside. According to a microcassette recorder found on his person, he was actively remote viewing a number in your binder.”

“We call them coordinates. Do you know the cause of death?”

“Not as yet.”

“What were the coordinates?”

Murex recited the numbers from memory.

Effie frowned. “I don’t recognize them, but of course we create new targets all the time. What were his perceptions?”

“Excuse me?”

“Of the target, I mean.”

“I’d like to stick with John Doom for the moment,” Murex said impatiently. “Do you have a class registry?”

“Why is this important? Do you think he was murdered?”

“Right now, it looks like he died of fright.”

Effie Grandmaison abruptly stood up. “I think this is important enough to disturb Trey. Please follow me.”

Rising, Murex followed the woman outside to a cellar door.

“The basement can’t be accessed from inside the house,” she said, throwing up the bulkhead door. She led him down into a work area, past an oil furnace, to the far end. It was very cold. Murex could see his breath. A cobwebby corner was paneled off in pine. The hard-carved sign on the door read:

DO NOT DISTURB! SESSION IN PROGRESS!

Effie Grandmaison pressed a white button. No sound came back.

“Soundproof?” Murex asked, blowing into his hands.

“And lightproof. A bell would freak him out if it went off in the middle of a session. This simply activates a green light. He’ll be a minute or so coming out of session.”

It was two minutes before Trey Grandmaison emerged, looking upset.

“What the hell, Effie?”

“I’m sorry, Trey. But this is Detective Murex from Boston. He’s here about a man who died while working a target from one of our class binders.”

Trey Grandmaison didn’t look very surprised. If anything he seemed spacey. He was a compact individual with hair so brown it verged on black. His smoke-gray eyes had trouble focusing.

“Let’s take this upstairs,” he said at last.

Trey Grandmaison looked up from the computer screen. “There’s no record of a John Doom ever taking one of my classes.”

They were in the den. It too was Spartan. The only photos showed Grandmaison in civilian clothes.

Murex asked, “How would he have gotten hold of one of your binders then?”

Effie inserted, “They are part of our course package of materials. There’s nothing to stop one of our students from loaning or selling one to anyone they want.”

Grandmaison added, “We put a copyright notice on all practice target packs, but many of our target feedback photos are things you can find in any encylopedia – Seattle’s Space Needle, Mount Rushmore, the Titanic-”

Murex interrupted, “Is there anything about doing this work that might induce someone to have a heart attack?”

“No!” Effie said suddenly.

Trey Grandmaison said, “I teach two types of RV, detective. Coordinate Remote Viewing and Extended RV. If he was lying down with an eye shield, he was doing ERV. It’s pretty safe. Half the time, my students drift off into a Delta state.”

Murex looked up from his notebook. “I don’t follow.”

“We RV in different brainwave states, detective. Alpha for CRV. Theta for ERV. Theta is the gateway to the Delta sleep state. If you go too deep, you simply click off like a light.”

“It’s perfectly safe,” Effie reiterated.

“I did hear about a candidate viewer who died of fright while working a target,” Grandmaison said slowly.

“Is that so?”

“It was back in ’87, just after I joined the unit. In between working operational targets, they would run us against practice coordinates to keep us in our viewing zone. The duty monitor came in one day and claimed he had worked up a really challenging target. The viewer who worked that one was never seen again. Rumor was he’d had a heart attack. But there was talk he’d died of fright.”

“Fright?”

“Whatever he was viewing scared him so badly his heart gave out.”

Effie said, “But, Trey, that was just a rumor.”

“Well, we never saw that viewer again. So I suppose it’s possible whatever your guy was viewing scared him literally to death.”

Murex asked, “Do you recognize this set of coordinates?”

Grandmaison took the offered notebook. “I don’t know these. I use a date system of notation. That way, if another RV instructor steals my targets, I can tell just by looking at the coords.”

“Is that a problem for you – theft?”

“My students don’t pay upwards of two thousand dollars just to remotely experience the summit of Pike’s Peak. My specialty is non-validation targets – UFOS, other planets, historical mysteries. Most were first worked back in Project Stargate. I’ve developed others. Anyone taking my class can teach others using my target packs, so I have to protect my business.”

“Is there any way of determining what these numbers mean?” asked Murex.

“They don’t mean anything.”

Murex looked his question.

“These look like randomly-generated target coordinates,” Grandmaison explained. “That’s how we worked back in the Stargate era. A computer would spit out a set of these and a tasker would assign them to the target. We RV off the coords so we’re not frontloaded as to the nature of the target. Think of the numbers as a metaphysical longitude and latitude.”

“Then how do-?”

“How do they work? Monitor’s intention. Once I assign the number to a target, my intention drives the session.”

Murex tried to keep his face straight.

“Tell you what, detective,” Grandmaison offered. “I have a small ERV class coming in shortly. Why don’t we run the group against this one?”

“I don’t see how that would-”

“Otherwise, I’m afraid I can’t help you,” he said suddenly.

Murex stood up. “I’ll keep your offer in mind.”

On the way out, Trey Grandmaison handed Murex a business card.

“In case TIRV can help in any way, all my contact numbers are on this card. Call me anytime.”

“Thanks for your cooperation,” Murex told him.

The ME’s preliminary report had come in by the time Ray Murex had returned to his desk. He skimmed it, then took it in to his CO.

“According to this, John Doom hadn’t eaten in four days before he was found. No signs of poison or foul play. Cause of death appears to be heart failure. But the ME thinks the pinpoint eyeball hemorrhages strongly indicate he was lying face down when he died, and for a period of up to six hours afterward.”

“But he was found lying face up, right?”