Crazytown (The Darren Lockhart Mysteries) Read online

  But he was wrong.

  “Do you have any preliminary suspects?” Assistant Director Chalmers asked.

  “The main suspects have to be the parents, sir. Standard procedure dictates to investigate the immediate family, particularly in the case of a younger victim. Neither parent seems to be particularly motivated to assist with the investigation.”

  “I see. Anyone else?”

  Lockhart went through his mental notes. “Off the record, sir?”

  “Off the record?” Chalmers repeated. “If you don’t see fit to include it in your report, then so be it.”

  “The deputy, Fredrick Lind.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Lockhart’s face tightened at the thought of Lind. “I don’t know, sir. It’s just a feeling. He has a temper and a direct relation to the family. He’s engaged to the Weber daughter, the victim’s older sister. He seems quite defensive regarding his fiancée.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line and Lockhart spent the next several minutes explaining why he allowed someone with a relation to the family to continue to take part in the investigation. Director Chalmers seemed apprehensive, but he left it to Lockhart’s discretion. In the end, Lockhart was instructed simply to proceed as normal.

  The conversation left Lockhart disconcerted. He wasn’t sure if the directive was suggestive of his current importance—or lack thereof—to the department or if there was something more to the investigation than they were letting on. Perhaps there were those within the Bureau who were starting to buy into his Jack the Shooter theory.

  When Lockhart drove over the hill into Duluth from the woods, it was as if the city appeared out of thin air. There it was, nestled in front of a backdrop of a sea-sized lake. Lake Superior, true to its name, wasn’t just on the horizon; it was the horizon. It filled the agent’s field of view in all its panoramic glory and still it was easy to forget exactly how big it was. Somewhere around 10 percent of the all the freshwater in the world was right there in front of him. It was an impressive sight, even for someone who had spent extensive periods of time on the East and West Coasts. There, as far as the eye could see, an endless field of blue.

  In fact, Duluth basically existed because of Lake Superior. It was a city built on a port, and it survived by playing temporary home to college students and haven to a bevy of tourists.

  The UMD campus sat about halfway down the hill to the lake, toward the north end of Duluth which, for some reason that Lockhart couldn’t figure out, people kept referring to as “East Duluth.”

  Lockhart had a bit of difficulty finding available parking around the campus and was ten minutes late for his meeting with Mikey’s physics teacher, Professor Hubert Mendez. By the time he found Professor Mendez’s office amongst what turned out to be something of a maze of inter-connected buildings and hallways, Mendez was packing papers into a shoulder bag. Lockhart knocked on the frame of the open office door. “I apologize for my tardiness, Professor. I didn’t take a lack of available parking into account when I left this morning.”

  Professor Mendez looked over the top of his glasses at Lockhart as he brushed strands of hair from his forehead to the side of his already awful comb-over. He was a short man, but he didn’t carry himself like a man bothered by his stature or lack thereof; had the look of a man that knew exactly how smart he was. There was smugness about him, the culmination of self-confidence and insecurity. He wanted people to think he was as sure of himself as he thought he was, and it was plain to see simply by the nearly OCD way in which he was packing his bag that he was the type of man that rarely accepted anything short of precision. “I’m on my way to a class. You can talk as we walk,” he said, not interested in Lockhart’s parking excuse.

  The professor walked at something of a fast shuffle and remained two steps ahead of Lockhart as they made their way down the twisting hallways that seem to continually shift from old to new architecture. The school itself had grown stages at a time as the class sizes increased. It was obvious that even the hard blows the North Woods economy had taken due to the decrease in iron ore production made no impact on how many students wanted to attend school in Minnesota’s port city.

  “I really must be going, Mr. Lockhart. I have a class.”

  Lockhart skipped to catch up and hear what the professor was saying as his voice was largely lost in the click-clack of his perfectly shined shoes on the stone tile floor and the constant murmur of traveling students. “Professor Mendez, I need to talk to you about a student who was taking one of your online classes, Michael Weber Jr.”

  “So I heard from whomever it was that called to make this appointment you were late for,” the professor huffed, though he did not bother to turn his head as he said it. “I have an Advanced Physics class to teach, and I…wait, did you say was taking one of my classes?”

  “Yes, Professor. Michael Weber is dead.”

  Mendez immediately stopped and turned. “What?”

  “He was killed three days ago. I’m a bit surprised you haven’t heard of this on the news or at least from someone at the school.”

  The professor stuttered to answer, “Uh, well, I…I don’t really have much interest in current affairs. I have a great deal of work to do between my classes and own research grants.”

  “No one in your department heard about this? No one has said anything?” Lockhart asked, doing his best to sound skeptical.

  “Michael was just auditing the classes. He wasn’t on our official class lists. Also, we are only a couple of weeks into the semester. I can’t imagine anyone would have drawn the connection.” Professor Mendez took a few steps over to the brick hallway wall and leaned his back against it. He let his bag fall from his shoulder to the floor. “My God,” he said to the floor. “Why?”

  “That’s what I’m here to find out, Professor. I’m hoping you can help me.”

  The professor’s gaze remained fixed on the ground. “I don’t understand. I never met Michael Weber, so why talk to me?”

  “Have you ever met Michael Weber’s parents?”

  The professor let out a long breath and told Lockhart he had met the Webers the previous January, at their insistence, right after Mikey had enrolled to audit the class. They had demanded (their word for it) the chance to speak with him before letting Mikey sign up for the classes, even though he would be taking them over the Internet and would never actually set foot on the Duluth campus. Mendez recalled that the mother had seemed pleasant enough, but the father seemed to take everything out of context. “Not only did he seem completely against the classes, but the man seems a bit arrogant, as if he knows even more than me or the rest of the faculty here. It was absurd. He kept trying to spout information he had heard from one place or another to make it seem like he had some grasp on Physics. He had none. If anything, it made him look less intelligent and far more boorish.” Mendez also vaguely recalled Lisa Weber’s name from an intro class, but he couldn’t place her face. He speculated her parents had probably mentioned her name during their conversation. He wrapped up his quick-winded speech by making sure Lockhart knew that he had never personally met Mikey.

  “That’s fine, Professor, but is there anything you can tell me about Michael Weber as a student?”

  Mendez smiled for a brief moment, the first time since Lockhart had met him. “For extra credit on a test last week, I asked questions such as why theories like cold fusion and time travel are impossible. Well, Michael argued they are possible. His assumptions are wrong, of course, but Michael was adamant and wrote me several e-mails to that effect, though he never actually provided me with any sort of equation or empirical proof to support such outlandish claims.”

  Lockhart wrinkled his nose in confusion. “Humor me, Doctor. Why are cold fusion and time travel impossible?”

  Professor Mendez stood up straight again and looked at his watch. He picked up his bag again and resumed walking. “Simply speaking, cold fusion is fusion that can happen at room temperature, the prim
ary issue being the repulsion of like-particles. The reason fusion is hot in the first place is because fusion reactions don't happen unless there is enough kinetic energy to get the protons close enough to fuse.”

  Lockhart didn’t really follow but seemed to remember things like that in movies he had seen so he moved on. “And time travel?”

  The professor laughed out a strange, snickering sound. “Well, it makes for good movies, I suppose. However, it’s been disproven by some of the most advanced minds in the world, even recently.”

  “How so?”

  “Recent research indicates that a single proton cannot move faster than the speed of light. Therefore, time travel cannot be possible. The theory being that if faster than-light travel is possible, special relativity theory suggests that there would be some inertial frame of reference in which a signal or mass would be moving back in time.”

  “Okay,” Lockhart said, barely keeping up. “In that case, how did Mikey think that he would be able to do any of that?”

  “That’s the strange thing. Michael never really had an answer. The young man had a unique mind. When we teach students math and science, we teach them A to B to C. We expect them to show us how they got to the answer, and that showing their work is just as important as the answer itself.”

  “And how was Michael different?”

  “Well, Michael’s grades in algebra made it easy for people to assume that he was just an average student at best. However, if you look at his actual tests, he always got the right answer. It was simply as if he didn’t really care about how he got there.”

  Lockhart jotted notes down as he struggled to keep up with the professor. It was such a strange shuffle that Lockhart would have felt more comfortable just jogging along. “You mentioned his ‘average’ grades, Professor. How did he come to audit college-level classes if he wasn’t a standout student?”

  Mendez slowed for just the briefest of moments and flashed a smile over his shoulder. “Actually, that was a bit of fate, if you will pardon my use of an abhorrent term. The science teacher at his school was my doctoral advisor.”

  “One of your old professors teaches K-12 sciences in Crayton?”

  Professor Mendez nodded. “Yes. His name is Dr. Walter Heath—quite a brilliant man, really, but something of an anomaly in the field as well. He enjoys asking questions more than getting answers. This makes him an excellent teacher, but not exactly the type desired amongst the faculty of major universities.”

  Lockhart knew—from friends that had taught—that college professors, particularly at the state and private universities, were expected to devote a large amount of their time to research. He had once heard that less than 20 percent of a college professor’s time involved teaching classes and holding office hours. “So,” Lockhart said as Professor Mendez finally started to slow his pace, “Dr. Heath recommended Mikey for the classes?”

  “That’s right,” Mendez said as he stopped at a lecture hall doorway and finally turned to face his visitor. “Now, I’m very sorry, but I have to a class to teach. Please feel free to contact me any time, outside of class hours of course. You can get my information from the department secretary. I am sorry about Michael, and I am happy to help in any way I can.”

  Lockhart shook Mendez’s hand and thanked him for his time as they parted company. He hung around a few minutes outside of the lecture hall and listened in on the class, trying to get an idea of what sort of classes Mikey was a part of. Within a few minutes, he realized that teenager or not, the boy was studying things that were vastly beyond his own understanding. Besides, he needed to get back to Crayton. Dr. Heath would need to be questioned.

  Chapter 21

  Lockhart called ahead to Deputy Lind and asked him to meet at the school for his interview with Dr. Heath. Furthermore, he asked him to call ahead to the school to get a copy of Dr. Health’s employment record, since they could provide any background information that the school had for Lockhart to send to the Bemidji office for a background check.

  As he approached the city limits he saw that the “Crazytown” sign had been tagged with a “1” over the “2” in the population number of 642. It was completely tasteless, but it was not unexpected. Kids, let alone kids dealing with a peer’s death, do stupid things.

  It was after five in the evening by the time Lockhart made it to the school parking lot, which only held six remaining cars, including the deputy’s police cruiser.

  The deputy stood outside the front doors of the school as Lockhart walked up. He had called and informed Dr. Heath of their arrival and subsequent need to talk. The deputy went in to confirm that Heath was in his class room, but he obeyed the special agent’s requirement that he not speak to any potential witnesses or suspects alone. Lockhart made sure to voice his appreciation for Lind’s cooperation.

  Dr. Heath’s classroom looked much the way Lockhart expected it to, like pretty much any other science classroom he had seen. There was a wall-to-wall blackboard covered with chicken scratches of scientific formulas and terms; the school system seemed disinclined to upgrade to the more common dry erase boards. Over a dozen two-person lab stations were situated in rows of three. With its prominent collection of diagrams and preserved animals, it could have just as easily been a taxidermy class as a school science lab.

  Dr. Walter Heath sat at a desk in the front corner of the room, his back turned to the windows that ran wall to wall lengthwise. As he had been Professor Mendez’s doctoral advisor, Lockhart expected a much older man. Instead, he saw a thin man, about the same age as Lockhart himself, with a full head of wiry—if not frizzy—blonde, hair that puffed out somewhat like an afro. He sat with his head down, focused on papers that he was feverishly marking with a red felt pen.

  Lockhart knocked on the door frame of the open classroom door. “Dr. Heath?”

  “Yes?” he said, lifting his head hesitantly as his eyes still tried to scan the papers in front of him. “Ah, you must be Special Agent Lockhart. Deputy Lind told me you need to speak with me. Please…” He stood, capped the grading pen and flicked it onto his desk. “Please tell me what I can do to assist in your investigation.” Heath spoke quickly, excitedly, a typical indication of guilt in suspects, though it could have just as easily been eccentricity in the case of Dr. Heath. He shook Lockhart’s hand energetically and shifted almost constantly as he stood across from Lockhart and the deputy.

  The deputy closed the door and took a seat at one of the lab stations.

  Dr. Heath’s eyes flittered between Lockhart and the deputy. “What can I do?”

  Lockhart took his time. He retrieved his notepad and flipped through it. He wanted to make Dr. Heath wait a little bit to help figure out if he moved so erratically because he was nervous or if that was just his way. “Let’s see…” Heath shifted, but it was consistent, as though he could just take off for a run and just as easily answer questions. “Why don’t you start by telling me about Michael Weber, Jr.?”

  Special Agent Lockhart had no idea what he was getting into when he asked what he had considered to be a mundane question, but Dr. Heath took the question and ran with it. He went into great detail as he described the results of Mikey’s tests, projects and class participation, seemingly everything he knew about the boy. He repeated constantly how brilliant the boy was and said he had an obligation to see how far the boy could develop mentally. Heath’s voice lowered and became remorseful when he spoke of the public school system: “They are always mistaking intelligence for a learning disability labeling young geniuses as troublemakers because they are just bored with the standard curriculum.” Heath got more excited when he changed the conversation back to Mikey. The man was a soda bottle, constantly being shaken by his own words and waiting to burst its top. Lockhart wondered if his questions were a relief valve or if Heath was always so animated. Later, the deputy would inform Lockhart of all the nicknames the school kids had for Dr. Heath, most of which were carved into the lab tables.

  “Did you ever
have teacher conferences with Michael’s parents?”

  Dr. Heath slowed his side-to-side shifting, and his eyes darted around for several silent moments. “Mr. and Mrs. Weber? Yes, I spoke with them a few times. I spoke with them several years back when their daughter Lisa was a student of mine. I vaguely recall the parents being disinterested at best, though they did seem more involved last year when I first presented the notion of Mikey taking college courses.”

  “What do you mean by involved?”

  “Well, I recall that the father had no interest in physics, biology or the Earth sciences. It was his opinion that the boy would serve his time better in shop classes and attending a vocational college. Please don’t get me wrong. This country was built on the backs of the blue-collar workers, and they practice a noble trade. However, Mikey was, for lack of a better term, better than that.”

  Lockhart looked back at the deputy, who looked as if he could have been asleep standing up. He returned his gaze to Dr. Heath. “And what do you mean by better?”

  Again, Heath went off on the different professional careers available for the sort of problem solving mind that Mikey had: advanced cryptography, chaos theory, quantum physics, and astrodynamics, to name a few. Lockhart made sure to note them all. Heath noted that Mikey had an important kind of mind, saying he was the sort of person who didn’t need to bother with creating a theory or hypothesis, then try to prove it because he saw the answer from the get-go. The real trick was to figure out how he got there,” Heath said, growing even more excited. “Actually, come to think of it, Mikey did contact me about a week ago.”

  Lockhart saw the deputy’s face rise up and look at Dr. Heath; something had finally been said that had gotten his attention. The deputy started to open his mouth, but Lockhart interrupted him, “What about?”

  “He wasn’t specific in his email. See, he was the student of a former student of mine, and I had made the recommendation that Michael audit his classes, though it was something of a formality. There is no doubt in my mind that Michael was at or above the level of most college students. Well, I guess he had taken a test in which he was asked to explain why certain scientific hypotheses—more along the lines of science fiction—were impossible. Something about that had gotten him very excited, and he wanted me to recommend some books.”