Roy slept nine hours in his own bed and felt worse for it.
He was at his desk on the fourth floor of the field office by twenty to seven with the notebook, a legal pad, and a bad coffee from the machine by the elevators.
The memo with deep backgrounds on Hale and Reed was due to Meyer at the end of the day. He’d go back to his own squad on Monday and somebody else would read whatever he wrote. He still wanted to be on the case on Monday, but doubted he would be.
At seven Meyer ran the morning call from Leadville. Roy listened on speaker with the volume turned down.
“We’re at two hundred and sixty as of this morning,” Meyer said. “Everybody else went back to their own offices, mostly for the banks. The aircraft go home Sunday.”
Nobody had seen Hale or Reed in nine days. Roy had watched two manhunts of similar scale wind down before. The aircraft always went first.
“Roy, you still with us?”
“I’m here.”
“Five o’clock.”
“You’ll have it.”
Meyer moved on to the next person.
At seven thirty, Odom came in and sat down at the desk facing his. He had not seen her in person in two weeks. Three lines were already blinking on her phone. She put the first one on hold before she had her coat off.
“Greeley,” she said. “A credit union. Their wires went out yesterday with their signatures on them. The other end rejected them because it doesn’t believe the signatures.”
“Is somebody stealing from them?”
“They don’t know. That’s why they called us.” She picked up the second line, said “Please hold,” and put it down. “Every bank from here to Grand Junction thinks it’s being robbed. No one can tell what’s happening. And we can’t either.”
“Did any money actually leave Greeley?” Roy asked.
“No. That’s the problem. It was their payroll. About four hundred people in Greeley didn’t get paid yesterday.”
Roy looked at the three blinking lights. He wanted to pick one of them up more than he wanted to work on the stupid memo no one would read.
“You could help out here,” Odom said.
“I’m on the manhunt.”
“You’re working on a memo.”
She picked up the Greeley call and turned her chair away from him.
He opened the notebook to where Basalt started.
The first line was 3rd chair — nominee? It was underlined, and there was a line through it. Under that was Hale — runner, fast. Trail races. Frying Pan Rd, Basalt Mtn, early AM. Then CT — crosses road, with road underlined. Then eleven pages of phone numbers.
He started working on the memo. Reed took four pages. Hale took one: MIT, the doctorate, the lab in Basalt, and a race photograph from a start line in the dark.
He looked at runner, fast for a while. Then he added a sentence on Hale’s page: Subject is a competitive mountain runner (Grand Traverse); search radius estimates based on hiking pace may understate distance traveled.
He got to Rosen, MIT, ran seminar — Hale talk (yr?) and stopped, because he needed a date.
He looked up the MIT seminar program on the web. It was ugly and blue. The talks were on Thursdays, one a week except around Christmas and in the summer, each with a title and a name and a small link after it that said Video. He found Hale on the third page. Classical Preprocessing for Period Finding on Neutral-Atom Hardware. S. Hale, Basalt Labs. A Thursday in April, two years ago.
There was no link after it.
He went back to the first page and counted. There were seventy-one talks. Seventy of them said Video.
He wrote the date in the notebook. Next to it he wrote no video.
At the bottom of the page it said Organizer: E. Rosen. Department contact: L. Faherty, with an email address and a 617 number. It was twenty to ten in Denver, almost lunch time in Cambridge. He called.
“Physics, this is Lorna.”
“Ms. Faherty, my name is Roy Pittman. I’m a supervisory special agent with the FBI in Denver.”
“Is this about Samantha Hale?”
“Yes.”
“Everybody who calls these days is asking about Samantha Hale. Give me the main number for your office. Not yours.”
He gave it to her. She hung up.
Four minutes later his desk phone rang.
“Okay,” she said. “You’re real. What do you want?” Roy wished he had her on his squad.
“The Thursday seminar. Every talk on the page has a video except one.”
“They all get recorded. That’s the whole point of Eli’s thing. The people who can’t come watch it later.”
“Hale’s doesn’t have one.”
He heard her typing.
“Huh,” she said.
“Can you tell me why?”
“I’m an admin on the site. Somebody on staff has to be because the students graduate and leave. So, another thing for me to do.” She typed some more. “There’s a history. Media removed from public listing. Reason, speaker request. User, erosen. That’s Eli.”
“When?”
“Monday. Four thirty-one in the afternoon.”
“Eastern?”
“We’re in Cambridge, Mr. Pittman.”
Roy wrote Mon 4:31 EDT — removed — speaker request — erosen.
“Is the video still on your server?”
“I wouldn’t know how to find out,” Lorna said. “I’d have to ask Eli.”
“Don’t ask Eli.”
The line was quiet for a second.
“Why?” she said.
“I’d appreciate it if this call stayed between you and me.”
“Who would I tell?”
He thanked her and hung up. He called Tran, who answered on the first ring.
“It’s Pittman. Monday, the Rosen interview. What time did you knock on her door?”
He heard pages rustling.
“Five-oh-nine,” Tran said. “Subject closed laptop.”
“Thank you.”
“Is something —”
“I’ll call you later.”
Roy put the phone down and wrote a second line under the first. 5:09 EDT knock by Tran. Recording? — NO.
Thirty-eight minutes. Rosen had lied to them.
Roy sat back until the chair creaked and put his feet up on the open bottom drawer.
He looked at the first line again and underlined speaker request. Hale had been missing since the Tuesday before.
He had no idea why someone would lie about a video of a physics lecture.
Across the desks Odom was saying wire and counterparty and I understand, sir.
He took the notebook and his cell out to the stairwell and called Meyer, who picked up outside somewhere, with wind on the line.
“Ben. I want to go back to Boston.”
“What for?”
“The MIT witness. I want to re-interview her.”
“Did she give us something?”
Roy looked at the notebook. If he told Meyer what it was, he’d lose control of it and it would be one of Meyer’s guys heading to Boston.
“It’s paper,” Roy said. “A loose end.”
“Take whatever you need,” Meyer said. He sounded happy about it. “Take the weekend. But I still want the memo at five.”
“Got it.”
Roy knew Meyer was happy because Boston was almost two thousand miles from Leadville. If Rosen turned out to be nothing, Roy was done on Monday.
He called Hurley and got her voicemail.
“It’s Pittman. I’ll be in Boston tomorrow about Rosen. Nobody calls her before I get there. And I’m going in with you this time.”
Then he looked for a flight. The only seat left on the first United out Saturday was a middle seat in the last row, next to the bathroom. He took it.
When he came back in, Odom was hanging up the phone just as another line lit up. She looked at it, and then at him.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Boston. Tomorrow. First thing.”
“Then you’re here today,” Odom said. She pushed a button, and his phone rang.
Roy picked it up.