Astride a Pink Horse (12 page)

“So who’s the missile-squadron-hating neighbor, and what’s his story?”

“You’re going to have to call Lillian for the details. All I know is that she was told his name’s Grant Rivers and he runs a cattle ranch outside of Buffalo.”

“Damn, Freddy. That’s four hours north of Cheyenne.”

“I know,” Freddy said, suppressing a chuckle. “So you get the chance to head back north from Denver in the morning, and maybe even the opportunity to have coffee and doughnuts with Major Cameron. Gotta go. You know how this bird of mine guzzles jet fuel. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“When do you get back from Albuquerque?”

“Tomorrow night, late. I’ll need you back from Buffalo by then because I may also need you to check on that black preacher, Wilson Jackson. And just so you know, I ripped the air force a new one in the first piece I wrote. Go online and have a look. See you tomorrow night.”

“But—” was all Cozy could get out before Freddy was gone. Upset at having to drive all the way to Buffalo and then maybe back to Cheyenne to talk to some preacher before he could head home to Denver, he muttered, “Shit,” and slapped his dashboard with an open palm. Thinking that a four thirty a.m. start from Denver would probably be necessary for the long trip he was staring at, he floored his accelerator and didn’t let up until he was doing a hundred and five.

Silas Breen reached the outskirts of South Bend a little before midnight. Beaming like a starry-eyed teenager with a crush and with a MapQuest printout of the Notre Dame campus lying open on the seat next to him, he headed straight for campus.

A flat tire had slowed him down outside Toledo, and he’d only been back on the road for half an hour when a hailstorm that had lasted a good twenty minutes had put him even further behind
schedule. Nothing, however, was going to stop him from visiting the college he’d once dreamed of attending.

By the time he reached the campus, he was shaking, and when he finally made it to his number-one destination—not the famous Notre Dame football stadium or the basketball arena but rather the symbol of the school recognized worldwide, the administration building’s golden dome—he was teary-eyed. For several minutes he simply stood beside his truck, motionless in the street, mesmerized by the strategically lit dome with its statue of Mary, the mother of God, on top. He would have stood there in awe for much longer if the Big Ben chime of his cell phone hadn’t broken the trance.

The person on the other end of the line, responding to Silas’s absentminded “Silas,” was cryptic and abrupt. “Bravo 3 here. Reached your base yet?”

“I’m in South Bend now,” Silas said. Suddenly clearheaded, he wondered why F. Mantew insisted on communicating with some kind of half-baked military code when he wasn’t doing it by fax.

“And you’re out tomorrow, yes?”

“By tomorrow afternoon, after I’ve toured the campus. Just like we agreed,” Silas said, thinking that Mantew’s response sounded somehow rehearsed.

“Don’t linger. Bravo 3 out.”

“Bravo 3, my ass,” Silas mumbled after closing his cell phone. He’d been raised on army bases—spent most of his life on them, in fact—and he’d had to listen to the same kind of nonsensical gibberish from his father for most of that time. “Bravo, my ass!” he yelled. Thinking that the slow-talking, insistent Mantew had
sounded as if he was in an echo chamber, Silas slipped back into his truck. He’d savor the whole enchilada that was Notre Dame tomorrow, he told himself, cranking the engine. Experience all there was to experience. Staring out the open window of his truck and up at the statue of Mary one last time, he crossed himself, smiled, and slowly drove off.

Laramie’s tree-lined University of Wyoming campus had always held a special rustic, turn-of-the-twentieth-century charm for Bernadette. It was an idyllic, old-school charm that as much as announced to traffic speeding by on Interstate 80,
No need to stop and drop your tainted bicoastal baggage here
.

Before being grounded, she’d done recruiting for the air force there, and she’d always found it especially rewarding when some young co-ed, enchanted by the possibility that she, too, might have the chance to become a fighter pilot, made the initial step toward becoming one.

Her visit to campus this time, however, was solely to talk with Dr. Rikia Takata, who according to the math department’s website was not only the holder of the department’s lone endowed professorship but also one of the nation’s leading theoretical mathematicians and an expert on using mathematics as a tool in the fight against terrorism. She’d also scheduled a meeting with Dr. Takata’s department chairman, who’d sounded eager to speak with her when she’d called earlier that morning until she’d mentioned that she was spearheading the investigation into the Tango-11 break-in.

She’d skipped breakfast, and she was feeling a little queasy when she slipped into a metered parking space in front of the building that housed the mathematics department. Deciding to let
her stomach settle a bit, she picked up the paper on the seat next to her and reread a profile of Professor Rikia Takata that she’d downloaded off the university’s website: “With Dr. Rikia Takata leading the way, researchers at the University of Wyoming are formulating powerful new algorithms designed to facilitate quick and thorough searches of massive amounts of data. These searches may well allow investigators to penetrate the well-disguised rules that govern the behavior of terrorists.

“Among many other tools, Dr. Takata and his research team assemble and access data from billions of cell-phone calls, email messages, web-surfing records, credit-card receipts, and train and airline manifests in order to, in a very real sense, enter the minds of terrorists. Takata, a 2010 recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant, further seeks to develop formulas that will define in mathematical terms precisely what the optimal arrangement of secret terrorist cells might look like and to eventually construct methodologies for destroying such cells.”

Thinking,
Why not just give the man a cape and tights and stamp a great big
S
on his chest?
Bernadette set the glowing profile aside, stepped out of her vehicle, and headed for her nine o’clock meeting with the mathematical version of America’s next caped crusader.

Ross Hall, the native Wyoming sandstone building she was headed for, looked boxy and institutional. Once inside, however, she found the building to be airy and inviting. The hallways bustled with students headed for nine o’clock classes, and as she wove her way between them, she found herself thinking back to her own college days at UCLA. Nothing she’d seen so far looked like
a gymnasium, which was what Dr. Takata had told her his office looked like during their phone conversation the previous evening, but thus far she’d seen only students, hallways, and doors.

As she brushed past several smiling students, all of whom looked pleasantly surprised by her uniform, she understood very well that she was rubbing shoulders with the sons and daughters of farmers and ranchers, outfitters, seed sellers, ditch riders, and county linemen, not the children of privilege she’d known at UCLA.

Rikia Takata’s office door, two feet taller than any other door in line with it, had six-inch-tall brass numerals screwed into it at eye level announcing to anyone within eyeshot that they’d reached Room 118. A nameplate below the room number sporting similar-sized letters read, “Rikia Takata, PhD.” An expensive-looking antique door knocker to the right of the nameplate gave the door a look of tenured-professor permanence. When a chubby-cheeked blonde girl who looked to Bernadette to be no more than seventeen or eighteen pulled the door open and called back, “See ya, Dr. T.,” Bernadette scooted around her and into the room to see a small-boned Asian man waving good-bye to the girl. Beckoning Bernadette inside with the opposite hand, he looked her up and down and deadpanned, “Major Cameron, I presume? I’m Dr. Takata. Come in.”

Trying her best to disregard his obvious speech impediment, Bernadette extended her right hand, clasped Rikia Takata’s loosely in hers, pumped his arm once, then followed him down a narrow stub of hallway that quickly opened onto a thirty-foot-square room.

Enjoying the surprised look on Bernadette’s face, Rikia said, “Welcome to my gymnasium, Major.”

“Thank you,” she said, suspecting that the open, airy room with its twelve-foot-high ceilings and polished hardwood floor was courtesy of MacArthur Genius Grant money. The maple-wood floors and high ceiling did give the space the feel of a gymnasium, and the life-sized painting of a basketball backboard, hoop, and net on the west wall, done in brown-and-gold University of Wyoming school colors, served to emphasize the point.

Rikia smiled as Bernadette’s gaze drifted from that wall down to the half-dozen computers lined up like little soldiers on three picnic-style tables that ran along another wall. An antique rolltop desk, dwarfed by the space and stacked high with papers, occupied the very center of the room. A high-backed leather captain’s chair sat just to the right of the desk. Lining the wall opposite the picnic tables were eight identical ten-foot-tall mahogany bookcases, all overflowing with books.

“So what do you think of my gym?” Rikia asked finally.

“Impressive,” Bernadette said, half expecting Takata’s response to be
Of course
. But instead he walked over to a corner of the room, retrieved a basketball from the floor, and tossed it to her.

“Have a shot at the basket.”

Looking puzzled, Bernadette said, “I don’t think …”

“Go ahead. You won’t hurt anything, and if you do, what the heck—it’s only state property.” He smiled, flashing a set of misaligned teeth. Bernadette shrugged and aimed a shot at the painting on the wall. The ball hit the backboard a few inches above the rim and ricocheted toward a computer keyboard. Before it could make
contact, Rikia sprang across the room, grabbed the ball, set it on the floor, and placed one foot on top of it. “So how can I help you, Major Cameron?”

“As I mentioned during our phone conversation last night, I’m hoping you can help me resolve a security breach that occurred at a decommissioned military installation known as Tango-11 near Wheatland.”

Rikia skillfully kicked the basketball into the corner it had come from. “Your problem has been all over the news, Major. I’m afraid that solving murders is outside my skill set, however.”

“I wouldn’t expect that it would be in your field, Dr. Takata, but my understanding is that you and your cousin, Kimiko, have long-term ties to the antinuclear movement, and I’m looking into the possibility that the break-in and trespass at Tango-11 might have involved antinuclear activists. In fact, Sarah Goldbeck, whom I’ve spoken with at length, has told me that she was surprised that you and your cousin didn’t show up for a protest that occurred at the Wheatland Courthouse the other night.” Smiling wryly, Bernadette said, “She was expecting you.”

“Seems you know a lot about me that’s secondhand, Major. As for that protest you mentioned, my cousin and I were busy.”

“I see. Is there any chance that either of you might’ve known the man who was found murdered at the Tango-11 site, Thurmond Giles? He was a retired, heavily decorated air force sergeant.”

“I’ve heard the name, of course; it’s been all over the news. And as I understand it, your victim was African American. But no, I didn’t know him, nor did my cousin. And I don’t particularly like your inference, Major. Your question suggests that my cousin and
I could be suspects.” Rikia’s eyes widened in mock surprise, and he thumped his forehead. “Oh, I almost forgot. We’re Japanese, and in America that would of course make the two of us permanent suspects.”

“I don’t think there’s any need to—”

“You’re right, Major. You didn’t think. You barge into my gym, take a shot at my basket, and then try to link me to a break-in and murder at some military installation. You’re nothing more than a female version of Orwell’s Big Brother. Now, would you please leave my gymnasium?” In his anger, Rikia had to struggle even harder than usual to enunciate.

“I’m sorry I offended you, Dr. Takata.”

“And I’m sorry you’re dressed in that terrorist uniform. Now, leave.” With both arms outstretched, he waved Bernadette toward the door.

“For the record, I’m wearing a United States Air Force uniform, sir.”

“Terrorist, U.S. military—one and the same,” Rikia said, his arms still waving.

“We’ll talk again, Dr. Takata,” Bernadette said, straining to control her anger.

Ignoring her, Rikia sprinted to the door, slammed it shut behind her, and called out from behind it, “One and the same!”

Dr. Art Dagoni’s mathematics departmental chair suite occupied the second floor of Ross Hall at the opposite end of the building from Rikia Takata’s first-floor “gymnasium.” The suite had neither the trappings of a private-sector corporate office nor the airiness
of Takata’s large room. Shaded by a string of stately, fifty-year-old Colorado blue spruces, the pedestrian-looking space, even with its secretarial outer office, was several steps down the academic ladder from Rikia Takata’s accommodations in terms of size and visual appeal.