Visiting Professor (23 page)

Doolittle and Mitchell exchange puzzled looks. Doolittle turns back to Lemuel. “All this foreign hustle and bustle in Backwater
came across as a seven on the Richter scale located in the FBI’s Rochester office, which Mr. Mitchell here heads,” he explains.
“That’s how we discovered you were in the country.”

“We know who you are, sport,” Mitchell says.

“You know more than I do,” Lemuel remarks under his breath.

“We also have a pretty good idea,” Doolittle says, “thanks to an MIT alumnus who is a key player in a major Middle East franchise,
exactly what it is you do.” He extracts a three-by-five file card from the breast pocket of his tweed jacket and reads aloud:
“Falk, Lemuel, forty-six, member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, divorced, Jewish, atheist—”

“Hey, I am no longer an atheist. Studying chaos, I found traces of randomness, which could be footprints of God. …”

Doolittle looks up, nods once, then goes back to the card. “Divorced, Jewish, we’ll skip atheist, it doesn’t influence the
situation one way or the other. Tenured professor of pure randomness and theoretical chaos at the V. A. Steklov Institute
of Mathematics in Leningrad.”

Lemuel mumbles, “There is no Leningrad anymore,” but Doolittle cranks up his voice a notch and plows on as if he has not heard
him.

“Falk,” he says, consulting the card, “appears to have devised a computer program that dips with near-perfect randomness into
three billion, three hundred and thirty million, two hundred and twenty-seven thousand, seven hundred and fifty-three decimal
places of pi in order to extract a random three-number key, which is then used to encipher and decipher secret messages.”

With a screech of wheels, Norman swings the cruiser off the Interstate, past a sprawling trailer park, past a drive-in movie
with
The Ten Commandments
flickering on the screen, onto a narrow, winding dirt road. “I’m taking a long cut,” he calls over his shoulder, “so you
gents can finish your conference before we get where we’re going.”

“I have given a lot of thought to the relationship between the going
and the getting there,” Lemuel mutters. “It is within the realm that the going without a getting there is the ultimate trip.”

“How’s that again?” Mitchell inquires.

“We want you to come on board the A.D.V.A. flagship as a senior researcher,” Doolittle is saying. “We want you to break the
military and diplomatic ciphers you created for the Russkies. What’s in it for you? This is the question you could and should
be asking.”

“So what
is
in it for me?”

“I’m glad you asked. A new identity so the bad guys from Reno can’t find you; a six-figure salary; a rent-free three-bedroom
ranch-style house within commuting distance of our base, which is situated at Fort George Meade, Maryland; a Mercedes sedan
with tinted windows; a permanent visa; a green card; eventual American citizenship are part and parcel of the offer.”

“Part and parcel,” Lemuel repeats with interest.

“A free one-way steerage-class ticket back to Russia,” Mitchell pipes up from the front seat, “is part and parcel of the offer
if you turn us down.” Doolittle starts to interrupt, but Mitchell waves him off. “It’s better for everyone concerned if we
don’t mince words—”

“Mince words,” Lemuel repeats with interest.

“If you decide not to accept our generous offer,” Mitchell continues, “we send you packing with a note addressed To Whom It
May Concern’ stapled to your forehead which reads: This is to certify that Falk, Lemuel, forty-six, a member of the Soviet
Academy of Sciences, divorced, Jewish, atheist, was extremely helpful in aiding a secret United States government agency break
Russian-language ciphers.’ “ Mitchell drapes a mean smile over his face. “You can lay money on it, sport, they won’t make
the mistake of letting you out of the country a second time. You’ll spend the rest of your natural life queuing for recycled
toilet paper and swiping sausages made of sawdust and cat meat from the V. A. Steklov Institute canteen.”

“We have almost got to where we was going,” Norman calls. He bounces the cruiser over railroad tracks, deftly maneuvers it
into a back alley and brakes to a stop next to a back door. A naked bulb over the lintel illuminates a wooden sign that reads:
“County Sheriff.”

Lemuel clears his throat. “Let me risk a wild guess,” he says. “You want me to take my sweet time before making a decision.
You want me to think about it a minute or two before saying yes.”

“I will definitely enjoy working with you at A.D.V.A.,” Doolittle
notes. “In addition to your other qualifications, you obviously have a sense of humor.”

Sheriff Combes’s beer
belly swells over his tooled leather gun belt as he sinks back into his swivel chair. “I’m all ears,” he announces, sucking
pensively on a twenty-five-cent cigar.

“All ears is something I can relate to,” Lemuel fires back. “I used to be all toast.”

The sheriff, eyeing Lemuel across the desk, fixes his professional squint on him. “What language are we talkin’ today?” He
waves a beefy hand to clear a tunnel in the cigar smoke so he can get a better look at the man who claims to have solved the
serial murders. “Use the King’s English, talk turkey,” he orders.

“Talk turkey?”

“Get down to brass tacks.”

“Brass tacks? Hey, what language
are
we talking today?”

“Who’s the perpetrator who went’n murdered all those folks?”

Lemuel sifts through the file folders, extracts one and begins to walk the sheriff through his theory. “You need to start
off by understanding that the serial murders are chaos-related,” he says. “The victims were not selected at random, even though
to the naked eye the crimes may appear random. If the serial murders were really random crimes, right? they would exhibit
a telltale pattern of random repetitions—for instance, two victims wearing red flannel shirts; for instance, two victims with
the same age or occupation. The failure to come up with this telltale pattern means the killer set out to simulate randomness—he
painstakingly selected the victims for their apparent randomness.”

“Why did he wanna go’n stimulate randomness?”

“The answer is as plain as the nose on your face, no offense intended,” Lemuel tells the sheriff. “He wanted to convince the
police that the crimes were random in order to throw them off the track.”

“I’m still all ears.”

“Once the police assumed randomness was the motive for the crimes, they would start looking for the nut case responsible for
a series of serial murders, they would not dig very deep into the possibility that one of the victims had been killed for
a motive other than randomness. At this point, the perpetrator could murder the one person
he really wanted dead, but dared not kill unless and until that particular murder could be disguised as just another in a
series of random murders.”

The sheriff takes this all in with a skeptical nod. “I reckon,” he says, without specifying what he reckons.

“Using game-theory concepts, I calculated that the serial killer would murder the person he really wanted dead about two-thirds
of the way through the list of victims, and then kill a third again as many people to keep up the appearance of a serial murderer
stalking the tri-county. So I began seriously sifting through the files at murder number twelve. At murder number fifteen,
I hit pay dirt—I discovered the real victim of the serial murderer.”

“The fifteenth victim was Purchase Honeycut, the self-styled tri-county used-car czar,” the sheriff recollects. “Made some
thin’ of uh splash when they found his corpse.”

“According to the file you gave me, Honeycut owned the Purchase from Purchase dealership on the Interstate outside of Hornell.
Buried in the same file was a little-noticed detail: Honeycut had a silent partner, none other than his brother-in-law, Word
Perkins, the handyman-night watchman at the Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Chaos-Related Studies.”

“Bein’ uh silent partner is not a crime. How about motive?”

“Honeycut and Word Perkins made out a notarized agreement stipulating that if one of them died, the business would revert
to the living partner. When they started out twelve years ago, the dealership was worth peanuts. Since then, Honeycut divorced
Perkins’s sister and built up the Used-Car Bazaar to the point where it is worth a small fortune. Check it out. The dirty
details are all in the fine print of the state police report. Since the police were looking for a serial murderer, the notarized
agreement got lost in the shuffle.”

The sheriff scratches several fingernails across the stubble on his cheek. Distracted by the sound, Lemuel says, “There is
more.”

“Hit me.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Give me the more.”

“Honeycut’s body was discovered in an automobile graveyard off Route 17.”

“He was found slumped over the steerin’ wheel of uh wrecked
Toyota, the entry wound from uh .38 caliber dumdum bullet rubbed with garlic in his left ear,” the sheriff recalls.

“You definitely have an eye for detail, Sheriff. So do you remember what was in his jacket pocket?”

The sheriff nods his heavy head carefully, almost as if he is afraid of dislodging a thought. “Uh hearin’ aid, which was peculiar
inasmuch as Purchase Honeycut wasn’t deaf.”

“But Word Perkins was. Is.” Lemuel brings up a grunt of satisfaction. “From a psychological point of view, there is a certain
logic to a deaf man shooting his victims in the ear.”

The sheriff rocks forward until the edge of his desk bites into his stomach. “There wasn’t no blood splattered around the
vehicle, which meant Honeycut was shot somewhere else an’ his body dumped in the Toyota.”

“Let us, for the sake of argument, slip into a plausible fiction.” Lemuel closes his eyes. “The two partners have been getting
on each other’s nerves ever since Honeycut divorced Word Perkins’s sister. One night Honeycut turns up at Word Perkins’s apartment
in Hornell. Maybe they quarrel about money—Honeycut has been milking the dealership and Word Perkins feels he is not getting
a fair share of the profits. Maybe they quarrel about politics—Honeycut is a lifelong Republican, Word Perkins is a reform
Democrat. Either or, it does not alter the dynamics of the story. Honeycut does not give a centimeter. Word Perkins pulls
out a pistol. ‘I never could stomach folks who own what they know,’ he shouts. Honeycut backs away, holds up a hand, desperately
tries to talk him out of pulling the trigger. ‘You will never get away with it,’ he pleads. ‘The police will suspect you the
instant they discover you inherit the dealership on my death.’ Word Perkins cackles cruelly. ‘I have already killed fourteen
people, each victim carefully selected to make the murders appear random. You will be the fifteenth.’ Honeycut sees he cannot
save himself, but he can return from the grave to point an accusing finger at his killer. So he slips a spare hearing aid
lying around on a table into his pocket in order to send a message to the police.”

“What we gotta do now,” the sheriff says excitedly, snatching the telephone off the hook, punching buttons, “is go’n see if
the power of the hearin’ aid found in Purchase Honeycut’s pocket matches the hearin’ deficiency of the alleged perpetrator.
If it does, we’ll drive
over to Hornell, we’ll advise Mr. Word Perkins of his right to remain silent, then we’ll beat the shit outa him till he talks.”

Lemuel wanders into the outer office and helps himself to a cup of water from the cooler. A teletype machine clatters away
in a corner, spitting out paper, which accumulates in a carton on the floor. Two deputy sheriffs are playing gin at a desk
near the door. A third is straddling a bench, spit-polishing his knee-length leather boots. Lemuel can see that the deputy’s
socks have holes in the heels. Norman is nowhere in sight, but his voice drifts over a partition. He appears to be chatting
with someone on the phone.

“Sheriff sure as heck expects to be involved. … No, no, he ain’t got no thin’ ‘gainst the state police makin’ the actual arrest,
but it has got to be clear it’s the sheriff that went an’ investigated the tip, it’s the sheriff that went an’ broke the case,
it’s the sheriff that went an’ ordered the arrest. … Yeah. … He ain’t forgot the nuclear dump deal. … Sheriff figures he owes
you one, so he’s not ‘gainst sharin’ the photo credit. … When we march her out, how about the sheriff’ll be on one side and
one of your boys on the other. … Right or left, it don’t make no difference to him. … No problem, she can be handcuffed to
the state police officer as long as the sheriff has got a firm grip on her other elbow. … Yeah, wheelin’ an’ dealin’, buyin’
an’ sellin’, we’re talkin’ drugs, we’re talkin’ LSD, we’re talkin’ amphetamines, we’re talkin’ all kinds of shit.” Norman
delivers a horselaugh into the phone. “Would you believe in a hollowed-out sex book called
The Weight Report
or
The Height Report
, though what weight or height’s got to do with sex I sure as heck don’t see. … No, we don’t expect as how the incriminating
evidence’ll be hard to find. I actually been up to her place once on department business, I don’t remember an awful lot of
books floatin’ around. … Right. Right. Rendezvous at the Kampus Kave on South Main at eight. We’ll hit them up for a lasagne
on the house before we arrest the perpetrator. Yeah, see you.”

The sheriff materializes in the doorway of his office. “Norman,” he brays.

Startled, the deputies playing cards, the deputy shining boots look up. Norman bolts from his cubicle.

“I reckon as how I went’n solved the serial murders,” the sheriff announces. “‘Member the hearin’ contraption we found in
the pocket of Purchase Honeycut? Well, actin’ on uh tip from uh civic-minded citizen, here present, I went’n checked it out
with the Hearin’ Center
in Hornell. The power of the hearin’ aid matches the audio deficiency of the handyman oven at the Chaos Institute, who by
coincidence turns out to have inherited the used-car dealership of the late lamented Mr. Honeycut.”