Chris Jordan - Measure of Darkness

“So the boy has been missing for more than a year.”

“Apparently, yes. Immediately on hearing the news Professor Keener took a leave of absence, went to Hong Kong and from there to the mainland to search for the boy. He was gone for two months-took medical leave with MIT’s permission-and returned broken inside. Clare described him as ‘hollowed out.’ The experience would have been difficult for a normal person-for him having to deal with strangers was torture. He had bribed police in Hong Kong, hired private investigators in Beijing, pleaded with government officials, all to no avail. He came back to Cambridge convinced he would never see Joey again. Clare tried to get through to him, suggested grief counseling and so on, but he refused help and threw himself into his work. Clare says he began spending about eighty percent of his time at QuantaGate, often sleeping over in his lab. And showing up on campus only when it was absolutely necessary.”

“You don’t recover from a thing like that.”

“Right,” I agree. “But there’s a strange kind of twist. For the first time, the professor alluded to his distrust of Ming-Mei. Apparently he suspected that she may have been involved in the kidnapping of her own child. Clare never liked the woman, but she was dismissive of the idea-the woman she’d seen in all those video clips had clearly loved the boy. She said the professor never could figure people out, that he had no ability to read faces. He was ‘easy to fool and got people wrong,’ that’s how she put it. Plus, he’d become increasingly paranoid. Clare got the impression that he believed he was being spied on.”

“Oh? Now, that’s interesting,” Naomi says. “Spied on by who?”

“Clare didn’t know, and she thinks he didn’t know, not really, although he complained about his own security guards poking around. That’s how she put it, ‘poking around.’”

“At the university? No, unlikely,” she says, correcting herself. “At his company.”

“Correct. QuantaGate.”

“Fascinating.”

“Thought you’d like it. But there’s more. Another twist. Ten days before he was killed, Keener took Clare aside. Everything had changed yet again, his whole demeanor. He had suddenly become convinced that he’d been ‘wrong about everything.’ Clare’s words. She’d never seen him so agitated or excited. And the weird thing was, he was happy. No, happy is wrong-her impression was that he was ‘filled with hope,’ which isn’t the same thing as happy, necessarily. I asked, did he tell her why he was suddenly hopeful, and she said no, not exactly, but her gut told her it had something to do with Joey-what else could it be? He did tell her that ‘someone was going to help,’ and that it would ‘soon be over.’ Clare had no idea who or what he was referring to, but I’m assuming that the ‘someone’ was Randall Shane.”

Naomi nods. “Makes sense. That’s about when Shane came into the picture.”

“That was their final conversation, and his last visit to his campus office. Clare texted him various messages about physics department business, but he never responded. He was either in the lab at QuantaGate, or home.”

“We can’t know his location for a certainty, and we shouldn’t presume.”

“True. We have nine days unaccounted for. For all we know he could have been in Paris or London or Hong Kong. But somehow I doubt it. He was waiting for his son to be returned.”

“When Shane recovers, we’ll have a much better idea of the timeline.”

“ If he recovers.”

“Yes. If.”

Silence, while we think about that and what it might mean, both for Randall Shane and the missing boy.

“One thing that bothers me,” I say. “Why would anybody shoot a textbook and put pictures of it on the wall, in a place of learning?”

Naomi smiles. Understanding that this is my gift, a chance to dazzle and impress me with her amazing mind and memory. She doesn’t fail.

“Harold Edgerton, the inventor of the stroboscopic flashbulb,” she says, not missing a beat. “Born 1903, died 1990. Famous for his amazing stop-action photographs, taken in his lab at MIT. A droplet of milk that looks like a miniature crown, captured in a microsecond. A bullet exploding through an apple, that’s his most famous shot. Doc Edgerton loved his bullets, loved to stop them in time.”

“Too bad he isn’t still around,” I say, musing. “We could use a guy who can stop bullets.”

Dane Porter has excellent thumbs, and if there is ever to be a contest for dexterous and speedy texting, she feels confident that she’d win. Her client, Randall Shane, is conked out for the moment, and in any event isn’t likely to complain if she parks her butt on the windowsill of his private-and very secure-room and brings her BlackBerry up to date. Legal matters, social engagements and enough gossip to fuel a reality show, if only they knew. Which they probably do, given that her list of correspondents includes a number of media-savvy individuals otherwise known as celebrities.

She’s bouncing flirts off an old girlfriend when a tall, broad-shouldered woman ducks in, having flashed an ID at the police officer stationed just outside the door.

“Monica?”

The assistant director ignores her greeting, heads straight for the patient. Right, Dane thinks, old pals, possibly lovers. Bevins touches Randall Shane’s hand, cupping it gently in both her own, but the big guy remains unconscious, submerged in deep sleep.

Dane remains perched on the windowsill, not wanting to intrude, but not wanting to disturb the moment by leaving, either. And when the attending physician enters to offer a consult, and Dane makes her move to exit, Bevins locks eyes with her, indicates that she should stay.

Three minutes later, the doctor having slipped away, Monica Bevins picks up a chair in one hand, quietly positions it next to the windowsill and sinks her long and large frame onto the seat with a sigh.

“I was hoping you’d be here,” the big woman says, her voice barely above a whisper. “We need to talk.”

Dane is a bit surprised by the opening gambit, but then she gets it. “Assistant Director Bevins, you know I can’t disclose anything the suspect may have said to me in confidence. Lawyer/client privilege.”

If it’s possible to snort quietly, that’s what the FBI agent does. “Lawyers,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “I’m here as a friend, you idiot. Not to build a case against a man I love like a brother. Give me a freakin’ break.”

“Sorry. My mistake.”

Bevins sighs, glances at the man in the bed, her eyes moist. “My God, look at him,” she says. “I bet he hasn’t slept that good, or that deeply, since the accident. You know about that, of course.”

“His wife and daughter. Yes.”

Bevins nods. “The doc says what he’s doing, he’s catching up. That whatever was done to him, it involved keeping him awake in a heavily drugged state for days. That, combined with his existing sleep disorder, may have deeply affected his memory.”

Dane checks to make sure the police officer remains on the far side of the open door, unable to overhear their whispered conversation. That was part of the deal, along with the handcuff to the bed rail, that the door would have to remain open, to prevent what the custody detectives called “any funny stuff.” There’s the usual ambient noise of a hospital, plus the urban symphony of perpetual construction-jackhammers rattling in the distance-and the hiss and moan of traffic on Storrow Drive. Dane concludes that as long as they keep it low, there’s no way they can be overheard.

“He remembers that Joey is alive,” Dane confides. “The professor’s missing son.”