John Lutz - Pulse

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.