Crazytown (The Darren Lockhart Mysteries) Read online

  “It would serve to reason that any type of energy research could lead to accidents, Special Agent.” Chalmers wasn’t giving up anything. It wasn’t an interrogation, but it was starting to feel that way for Lockhart.

  “Sir, is there any chance that the research Dr. Heath was doing would lead to an attempt on his life or his disappearance?”

  Lockhart could hear a brief sigh and rustling of papers on the other end. He knew that, even if Chalmers was willing to share what he knew, it would be limited over the phone. “Frankly, Special Agent, I was not inclined to allow you to venture down this avenue of questioning—not with me. However, given the death of Professor Mendez and the disappearance and presumed death of Dr. Heath, I will make the necessary files available to you at the Bemidji office. Needless to say, it is highly sensitive material of the highest clearance levels.”

  “Yes, sir. I understand.”

  Click.

  The other end of the line went dead, and Lockhart was left to wonder if the newfound information would make things easier for him, or more difficult. Considering how things had been going so far in Crazytown, he didn’t expect much to be easy.

  Chapter 33

  Lockhart stayed at the scene for hours. Eventually, Chief Donaldson brought him a sandwich from Joy: a turkey club, nothing regional or original. There were moments in life when Lockhart wanted nothing more than what he could see, something he knew would be familiar the moment that he bit into it. A turkey club would normally serve to fill that want, but he only had a few bites. He just wasn’t hungry.

  As night fell, the fire chief proclaimed that there was no body found among the rubble, but given the severity of the explosion and heat of the fire, they would continue to search for remains—of any kind.

  Around eight p.m., Lockhart kicked around the remains of the house with the police chief, trying to figure out how and where the fire had happened. The deputy came out to see if there was anything he could do to help, but Lockhart wasn’t overly interested in any further assistance from the locals, truth be told—particularly from men he didn’t fully trust.

  In the failing light, the three men wandered around the debris. With no particular goal in mind, a malaise hung in the air. The shifting and crunching of wreckage nearly muted the sound of snapping twigs from the woods.

  This time, the figure wasn’t standing, but taking off at a lumbering run. Lockhart drew the gun from his holster and pursued with only a single word: “Freeze!” The sun started to disappear behind the trees, and the woods grew thicker with each step deeper into the forest. Lockhart, the chief and the deputy split up and fanned out at the chief’s recommendation.

  Suddenly, Lockhart couldn’t see a thing. The foliage was too thick, and the trees were an endless curtain of distractions. He slowed his movement to a dead stop and then just stood there and listened. All around him the trees crackled and shifted. Leaves and pine needles brushed against each other, creating an ambient noise that prevented him from being able to focus. All the sounds were foreign, and he couldn’t track the noise of a movement. A loud snap of a twig to his left, where the chief and deputy had gone, quickly got his attention. He remained there and stared in the direction of the noise, waiting for the sound of footsteps.

  Instead of footsteps, a gunshot rang out with a BANG!

  And then another BANG!

  Lockhart spun his back to the closest tree as cover. There was no way to know where the shot had come from and who had fired it. He took a quick peek around the thick trunk and darted to another tree at a diagonal line toward the sound of the gunshot. He zigzagged and changed his levels to turn himself into anything but an easy target. Somewhere in the woods, there were at least two armed men with much greater knowledge of the land, both of whom he had his suspicions about.

  The image of the chief, on his back, with the man he was pursuing bent over him wasn’t what he expected. Less than 100 feet off, the chief was sprawled out on the ground, his face flushed red, with small, shallow puffs of breath hit the cold air. The suspect was on his haunches, leaning over the chief.

  “FBI! Hands up! Stay where you are!” Lockhart yelled.

  The suspect stayed hunched over. He wore baggy khaki pants with a thick green ski jacket and a large red flannel cap with ear flaps. Lockhart could see blistered white skin on his hands, but nothing else. Suddenly, the figure made an awkward attempt to run. It almost looked like it was in slow-motion, like an old man with knees that barely worked anymore.

  Lockhart squeezed off a shot that exploded into the trunk of a tree that stood just feet from the suspect. Lockhart moved smoothly, his gun trained between the shoulder blades of the suspect. “My gun wouldn’t be out if I wasn’t willing to put a bullet in you.”

  Then, just like that, the suspect had stopped completely; his hands were down at his sides.

  “Hands up.”

  The figure didn’t move.

  “I said hands up!”

  Lockhart’s eyes were locked on the suspect, and his finger was tight on the trigger of his Glock, ready to fire if need be. He watched the suspect shake his head ever so slightly from side to side and he expected the figure to run.

  “I’m not done yet.” The voice came out sounding more like an animal’s growl: intense and definite.

  “Yes you are. Now put up your hands, and get down on your knees.”

  The air around Lockhart was suddenly charged with a wave of heat. For just a moment, it felt almost tropical in what had been a brisk Minnesota day.

  “See you soon,” the man growled.

  Then, there was only blackness.

  Chapter 34

  Only the tap of Lockhart’s shoe could be heard late at night in the Bemidji FBI office. Lockhart had requested to be left alone so that he could concentrate on combing through the case files. He was a level of exhausted that was beyond what coffee could handle, but he needed answers.

  Lockhart had stayed by the deputy’s side as he desperately tried CPR on Chief Donaldson. He had watched as the paramedics took John Donaldson’s lifeless body away. He had offered his condolences in the form of a hand on the deputy’s shoulder. He couldn’t think of any words that would make the situation better. The man’s friend and boss was dead, and the suspect had gotten away, even though Lockhart had him dead to rights. There was nowhere to go. The two were alone. The next thing he knew, he was on the ground, looking up at the sky.

  The suspect had disappeared.

  Lockhart had welcomed his mother’s phone call as he left the scene. Her voice kept him awake during the drive. She asked him how it felt to be an official FBI agent, and he told her it was easy to get nervous and he worried that he would let people down. It was true when he’d first started with the Bureau and it was still true—maybe now more than ever.

  The hope had been that somewhere in Dr. Heath’s files, the answers to it all would surface. It wasn’t a surprise that the information provided had been limited. There were still gaps in the files, things Lockhart simply wasn’t cleared to know, and what he had been cleared to know was just a jumble of sentences that must have been put together by someone with a talented grasp for complicated vocabulary and convoluted language and jargon.

  After reading just a page of the file, Lockhart thought it was stupid to keep the information from anyone, since it didn’t really say anything. It made vague references and blanket statements to something called “energy research.” However, one name did appear: Rupert Sheldrake. There was no other mention of the name, and Lockhart couldn’t find any record of anyone by that name working for the Bureau, so he did what all good investigators do when they reach the limits of their knowledge: he decided to Google it.

  The first results were for a biochemist who dealt with something called morphogenesis, having to do with the way organisms take shape. However, none of it dealt with energy research. There were also names he had never heard before like Tipler and Krasnikov. Another search yielded that they were long dead physicists who had
dealt with all kinds of research. Even ridiculous theories like time travel were mentioned.

  Lockhart felt a cold wave pass over his skin. A terrifying theory started to piece itself together in his head—a theory that meant the man he was chasing was not only dangerous, but altogether insane.

  Lockhart slumped back into his chair and fell into a fitful, restless sleep.

  Chapter 35

  The silence of the room was regularly spiked with the beeping of Laura Weber’s heart monitor. Since the fire that destroyed her house and killed her husband, Laura had been under observation at the hospital’s intensive care unit for severe smoke inhalation and second degree burns. Lockhart had also posted an officer outside the door, just in case.

  Lockhart sat in the lone room chair next to Laura’s bed and waited for her to wake up. Both of her hands were bandaged from where she had tried to open the basement door after the explosion. Per her initial statement following the fire, her husband was in the basement when the bomb went off. She tried to open the door and burned her hands. At that point, the house filled with smoke and flames, and she found her way outside through the front door.

  Lockhart sat there and stared at her; as if he could will her awake. After about twenty minutes, he got tired of waiting and decided to expedite the situation. He reached over to the bed and wrapped one of his hands around her bandaged fist. He squeezed it gently and Laura’s eyes popped open with a scream. When the nurse rushed in to check on her patient, he held up his hand. “It’s all right,” Lockhart assured her, showing his badge. “Mrs. Weber was just having a nightmare.”

  The nurse stood there for a moment, her eyes trained on the medical equipment. She must have decided there was no emergency because she left promptly, although she did cast Lockhart a disapproving eye on her way out of the room.

  Laura’s eyes scanned the room and she asked, “Wh-what happened?” She looked down at the hand that Lockhart had grabbed.

  Lockhart sat back down in the chair, slouching. “In case you were wondering, it wasn’t just a bad dream. The explosion, the fire, all real.”

  Laura continued to look around, groggy from sleep and possibly pain killers. “Wh-where are my…my boys?”

  He kept his eyes on her and chewed his lip. “It took you four days to ask that? They’re in the custody of child protective services.”

  “What? Why?”

  Lockhart leaned forward. “Are you serious? You and your husband are—or were, in his case—suspects in the death of your son. You and your late husband have been uncooperative with a federal homicide investigation. You are now a single parent that is recovering in an ICU. Do you think you are fit to care for them right now?”

  Laure’s eyes narrowed to points. “I want to see them. Now.”

  “That’s not my call, Laura, and even if it was, I wouldn’t allow it.”

  “You’ve got a lot of gall…” her voice trailed off. Her lips were pursed, and Lockhart was sure that if her hands hadn’t been in bandages, they would have been balled into fists.

  He leaned back again and paused for a moment as he debated his next words. “How long were you and John Donaldson having an affair?”

  Laura’s eyes were full circles, straining against themselves as her secret was said out loud. “How? How did you know?”

  Lockhart shook his head. “Frankly, I really didn’t. There was just something about you two, something about how he acted around you when we went to question you and your late husband. It was a bit of a stretch. After all, he wasn’t used to dealing with killers, but the look in his eyes when he suddenly had to act official in front of you just didn’t fit.”

  She shut her eyes and twisted her head away with a groan.

  Lockhart sat there and waited. His patience wore thin quickly when she neither moved nor spoke. At first he thought her pain medication must have made her pass out again, but a slight whimper told him she was still awake.

  “He was with you when Mikey was killed, wasn’t he?”

  He saw the back of her head move up and down, confirming his suspicions.

  “If either of you had told anyone that, you would have alibis for the crime, but not the adultery.” It wasn’t a question; he already had his answer and Laura offered no response, so he decided to go on. Lockhart flipped open his notebook and read aloud from her transcribed statement about the explosion.

  “Yeah, so what?” she asked once he had finished. She had turned back to face Lockhart with contempt pouring from her eyes. “I don’t need to explain myself to you.”

  Lockhart didn’t say anything, he just sat there staring at Laura. It turned into a strange staring contest of sorts, Laura taking a stand and trying to defend actions that got in the way of the investigation.

  It didn’t take nearly as long as Lockhart expected for Laura to crack. “It was supposed to be a one-time thing,” she said. “It was a mistake, I was lonely, he was kind. Then it happened again. I don’t know if it was so much that I loved him as much as he paid attention to me and he was there.”

  “Where were the twins?” Lockhart asked.

  “What?”

  “In your statement,” Lockhart continued, “you say you burned your hands on the basement door handle because that was where your husband was. So I was wondering, where were your sons when all this was happening?”

  “I, uh…” Laura’s eyes moved back and forth quickly. “I think they were downstairs with their father.”

  “You think they were or you know they were?”

  “I don’t know. There was an explosion. Things were…well, confusing.”

  “And your motherly instinct didn’t kick in? You didn’t even think to look around for your children?”

  Laura’s eyes welled with tears. “There was so much smoke, and I—”

  Lockhart pushed himself up out of the chair and leaned over her bed, his face just a foot from hers, cutting her off from spitting out any further excuses. “Oh, I know. I was there. It was really bad in the boys’ room. They were huddled together on the floor, crying, when I got there.”

  Laura looked at Lockhart, her eyes strained wide with surprise. “You?”

  He nodded. “Me.”

  Tears fell in streams from Laura’s face. Lockhart walked over to the bathroom and grabbed a box of tissues from the counter. He took a tissue out and dabbed the tears away from her eyes. “I’m not the bad guy here, Laura. Are you ready to cooperate now?”

  Laura nodded slowly and released several wet sniffles.

  “Good. Now tell me what happened the night Mikey was killed, before you had your little tryst.”

  Laura took several moments to catch her breath, and even then, her voice was broken. “We had a fight after Lisa left.”

  “What about?”

  Laura looked away. “It sounds so stupid now.”

  “Laura?”

  Slowly, her head turned back to face Lockhart. “Mikey drank some of his father’s whiskey.”

  Lockhart’s brow furrowed, and his mouth fell open. “Come again?”

  “Michael didn’t like Mikey taking those classes and was telling him all about it, so when Mikey walked right over to the counter, grabbed the bottle, and took a swig...” Laura’s voice broke again, and new tears streamed from her face. Her voice coming out in sobs as she said, “He coughed so hard I thought he was going to hurt himself.”

  “Why did he take the drink?”

  “He said he wanted Michael to love him, so he took a drink to be more like him.”

  “What did Michael do?”

  “He called him an ingrate. He said Mikey wasn’t his son.”

  Lockhart cursed under his breath. “Laura, why didn’t you tell investigators any of this?”

  She turned to look at Lockhart. Her face was so innocent and soft all of the sudden. “What would you have done? You have a fight with your son and he runs off. The next thing you know, the police are telling you he’s dead.” Laura coughed. “If I’d have done something differ
ent, maybe he’d…maybe my Mikey would still be home, still be alive.”

  She had lied to him out of guilt. Lockhart wanted to yell at her. He wanted to tell her exactly how much time had been wasted trying to prove that her or her husband had killed Mikey when they could have been pursuing other investigations.

  Laura brought her large bandaged fists to her face and tried to wipe away the tears. “Michael was so sad. He got so depressed afterwards. That was why he was in the basement. He started sleeping down there after you came to the house. That was why he was down there when the house exploded.”

  Lockhart fell back into the chair with a deep, pained sigh. “Mrs. Weber…” His voice trailed off. He had no idea where he needed to go. No question seemed to be valid, so he asked the only thing he could think of: “Do you have any idea where your son might have gone after he left the house?”

  Mrs. Weber shook her head. Her lip quivered, and she took several breaths before the words exploded from her mouth, “God, I don’t know! I’m so sorry!” Laura Weber’s heart monitor was starting to beep violently, and nurses came in to try and calm her down.

  Lockhart felt the momentary impulse to console her, but he refrained. She had been through so much, but he wasn’t sure he wanted her to feel any better.

  Outside the door, Lockhart looked at the police officer tasked with guarding the room. He was a younger-looking cop who stood at attention like a good soldier. The North Woods sure did seem to fancy the military.

  As Lockhart turned to walk down the hall, he almost tripped over someone sitting right next to the door: Lisa Weber. Lockhart looked down at her, but she didn’t move. He turned to the police officer and suggested he go get a cup of coffee, leaving the two of them alone in the soft light of the hospital hallway. “Lisa? Are you all right?”

  Her gaze never flinched. “Am I all right? My dad and brother are dead. My mom is a suspect in the murder, not to mention being in the ICU because of burns she got when my childhood house exploded. My other brothers are with CPS. Does that sound all right to you?”