Measure Of Darkness

“No problem,” he promises. “End of day it’ll look like new, only better.”

There are a few more things you need to know about boss lady before we can proceed. What I said about how she treasures her privacy, believe me, that’s understating. When Naomi Nantz calls herself a “Very Private Investigator” she’s not kidding, and she’ll do almost anything to keep it that way. Also true, that she’s neither rich nor eccentric. Brilliant and difficult is not the same as eccentric. Eccentric is dressing your pets in period costumes; brilliant and difficult means you know exactly how to go about saving an innocent life and/or bringing the guilty to justice, and you don’t much care who might get offended or insulted along the way.

The assumption that she must be rich, to live in such a place and undertake cases of her choosing, regardless of recompense, is understandable, but mistaken. I’m in charge of the operating budget, paying the staff and so on, and I happen to know that she draws a salary like everyone else. Okay, more than everyone else, but still. Nor was I fibbing about the residence being owned by some sort of holding company, and legally managed through a law firm. So it is. As to who is really paying the bills and underwriting the whole enterprise—we call him (or it could be a her) the Benefactor—only Naomi knows the truth of the matter. Or so we all assume. When something extraordinary happens, she’s the one who makes contact, so she must know who it is, right?

As to the woman herself, for the past three years I’ve been working closely with her on a daily basis, and yet I know nothing for certain about her personal history, her family or how she came to be here, doing what she does. I’m not even sure if Naomi Nantz is her birth name. Boss lady is pretty much off grid and I’m inclined to respect that choice.

Up to a point.

With the repairs sorted out, I head down the hall to the library, a large room with tall built-in bookcases on three walls. There’s one corner window where if I stand on my tippy-toes I can just glimpse the Charles River. Other than the roof deck and Beasley’s kitchen, this is my favorite place in the residence, mostly because it’s so rarely used that I usually have it to myself. Not today. Naomi has taken possession of the leather-covered magazine table, setting up a laptop, a broadband phone with a couple of open lines and a secure line hardwired into a satellite phone antenna. I let her know where we stand, cop-wise and repair-wise, and she motions to a rail-back chair as she finishes her call.

“You’ll be writing up your notes for the daily meeting, of course.”

“Of course. That’s why you pay me the big bucks.”

“Probably don’t have a lot to write up, just yet.”

“Not just yet. There’ll be a lot more when Jack and Teddy report.”

Naomi nods to herself, musing, and I can almost hear her brain humming as she shifts through scenarios and alternatives. “This is a bit delicate, but there’s something we need to keep in mind.” She hesitates.

“Shoot,” I urge her. “I’m a big girl, I can take it.”

“My concern is with Jack Delancey. He’ll be our main investigator on this case—he expects no less—but the circumstances are such that he may be compromised.”

“Excuse me?”

“Friendship can do that. He and Shane go way back, and Jack holds him in the highest regard. Clearly he can’t bring himself to consider the possibility that Randall Shane might be playing us.”

“Wait. You really think he killed this professor guy?”

“I’ve no idea, but I’m keeping an open mind. The facts must lead us, not our hearts.”

“So why aren’t you telling this to Jack instead of me?”

Naomi grimaces slightly, as if made uneasy by what she’s about to say. “Because I want you to keep your eyes open. If you think Jack misses something crucial, whether accidentally or on purpose, you will report to me.”

I’m astonished. “You want me to rat out Jack Delancey?”

“An unfortunate phrase. But yes, if the situation warrants it, that’s exactly what I expect.”

Chapter Four

The Rest of Forever

Gradually he awakens, becomes aware on some primitive level that is sentient. At first there is no sense of self. He’s no more than an assemblage of pain, nerves firing from various locations on his large body, defining a vague shape. Hands painfully cramped, feet aching, joints smoldering. Something in the middle makes itself known, unpleasantly. A sack of bubbling acid? No, a stomach, seething. At one end, pounding, a brain held like a bruised yolk inside a damaged shell.

He has a name, if only he can find it.

Halfway to forever, the name finally surfaces, drifting lazily around the brain. He claims it, holds it tight. At some point Shane realizes that his eyes are open and the darkness is an actual darkness. His limbs are restrained by something soft and unyielding. He’s strapped down, elaborately, on a padded table. Testing the restraints, he measures his own unnatural weakness and surmises that he’s been heavily drugged, possibly with muscle relaxants. They’ll be watching, whoever “they” are. Darkness being no barrier with the right equipment. He stops struggling and waits, knowing they will come, eventually, and that he must prepare himself.

The rest of forever goes by. As more memories surface he replays recent conversations, examines decisions, finds himself wanting. How could he have been so wrong?

At last, from deep inside the darkness, a voice. “Joseph Keener.”

Behind him somewhere, and then closer, much closer. Close enough to feel the air move in a reedy whisper. “Professor Joseph Keener. What did he know?”

Shane attempts to speak, discovers that his tongue will not respond.

Louder. “What did Joe know?”

Eventually it becomes a kind of chant.

Chapter Five

Free Thought Radicals

At 6:00 p.m. precisely we convene in the library for the first case briefing, which is always a big deal. Naomi is a stickler for being on time, so the protocol is to show up a minute or two early, take your seat and try to sit up straight. Boss lady is never there to begin with; she always makes an entrance, and this evening is no exception. The other notable entrance of the evening belongs to Dane Porter, our attorney. Dane is five foot nothing, but feisty, and has a legal mind that’s the antidote to every blond joke. How many blond lawyers does it take to keep Naomi Nantz and her team out of jail when they overstep the bounds? Exactly one.

“Sorry I missed all the excitement,” Dane says, sauntering in on spike heels that should be registered as weapons. She’s wearing a hand-tailored power suit—wide pinstripes on a dark blue background, trim lapels, a tight-vested waist—and a custom-made handbag given to her by a female hip-hop artist (a famous one, who shall remain nameless here because she likes handguns) who happens to dance to the same music as the lovely lawyer.

“Was it really a helicopter attack? Men on ropes?” she asks Jack, who is busy examining his well-buffed nails.

“That’s affirmative,” he says.

“Alice?” Dane says, flashing me a radiant smile. “Tell me lover boy is joking.”

“Never saw the helicopter,” I say, “but there were definitely men on ropes. With guns.”

“How exciting!”

“Good evening, Counselor,” says Naomi, entering with laptop in hand. She takes the temporary command seat, directly across the table from me.

As usual it will be my job to take meticulous notes in my personal shorthand, in a form known only to myself, and to keep a precise chronology of the ongoing investigation, updated on a daily and sometimes hourly basis. The active case briefings are never, ever electronically recorded for a variety of reasons, legal and otherwise. The idea is to prevent criminals we might be investigating—or interested law enforcement agencies—from hacking into our system and determining what we know at any given moment. It’s not paranoia, because it actually happened on an earlier case, hence the precautions.

“We convene this evening in extraordinary circumstances,” Naomi begins. “A man was kidnapped from this premises by agents unknown, possibly for the purposes of enhanced interrogation. We have as yet no clue as to his whereabouts, his state of health or who, exactly, is holding him. This is intolerable, and tonight we begin the process of finding out what happened and why. Teddy, you’ll present first. Start with the murder victim.”

Teddy’s hands shake slightly as he presses a key on his laptop. An image lights up the screen. “Joseph Vincent Keener,” he announces, gathering confidence. “Age forty-two. Born, Hanover, New Hampshire.”

We’re looking at a head shot of Joseph Keener, wearing an ill-fitting suit and tie. A round, unremarkable face. Heavy black-rimmed glasses and just a hint of jowls, despite a scrawny neck that doesn’t quite fill his shirt collar. High forehead with the beginnings of pattern baldness thinning his light brown hair. His ears stick out, making him look oddly vulnerable. He’s not smiling and was glancing to the side and slightly down when the shutter clicked. Even in a formal head shot with studio lighting he seems to be lost in a world of his own.

There’s a moment of awkward silence. We’re looking at a dead man.

Teddy says, “Keener was a ward of the state—his parents, both talented musicians, died in an accident—and he was raised in a succession of foster homes from infancy. Somehow he managed to get himself enrolled at Caltech, age fifteen, which pretty much says it all. Language skills pretty average, but mathematical concepts and theoretical geometry are off the charts. When Shane called him a genius he wasn’t exaggerating. After Caltech, Joseph Keener came back East to pursue doctoral studies in quantum physics at MIT and was eventually made a full professor. There’s no mention of a marriage, or indeed of any family at all. Professor Keener is widely published, and considered something of a recluse with a possible social interaction deficit, but at MIT that’s not exactly unusual. His lectures are well attended, and despite a shyness that causes him to avert his eyes while in conversation, Professor Keener is able to take questions and lead discussions with his brilliant and often challenging students. That’s a quote, more or less.”

“A quote,” Jack says, puzzled. “Where’d you get it? You didn’t leave the residence, correct? Didn’t interview any associates?”

“There’s a site for student evals.”