mother. And she hadn't given too much thought to her mother.
They closed up the plane. They ask her to turn her phone off soon. Marianne stared at Polymath's logo on her phone. She'd taken the Sorter exam. Everyone at Blue Water involved with the deal had taken a test drive. It's how her superiors knew they wanted the technology so badly. However, she had not solicited any feedback from the sphinx and it hadn't offered her any. In that moment she considered asking for advice. From a computer.
“Screw that idea.” she said.
Then the icon blinked. For the first time since she'd installed the app on her phone, it was reaching out to her. She ignored it and called her boss, Dale Benedict, instead. He had left earlier this morning and she have already arrived in Boston. Marianne and Dale had a unique work relationship. He was the only one at BW she trusted and, despite being twenty years her senior, the only person from work she spent any time with off the clock. Their relationship was not romantic, but she kept it a secret from her other friends. She didn't need to hear the phrase daddy issues even one more time. It was true, nonetheless, that Dale fit a place her in life that needed someone with more life experience.
Marianne figured that maybe she'd wanted to pour her heart out, but found herself relieved when the phone went to voicemail. What had she expected to accomplish in the next three minutes? Better to wait.
She said, “Hi Dale, it's me. Just boarding now. When you plug back into reality, you're going to see some stuff about Paul. I don't know how to feel about it. It's just one more thing that's making me feel my heart's not into my work. There's something I've been meaning to tell you. I'm sorry I've kept it a secret, but I've been interviewing and... I don't know, I'm weighing my options.”
The flight attendants made the warning about electronic devices and Marianne hit end. She wasn't satisfied with that message. She wanted to kick herself because she hadn't said what she'd wanted to say. This was the wrong time to make Dale doubt her resolve. She still wanted to see the deal through and make him proud. Instead, she'd basically resigned.
The Sorter icon was blinking.
Marianne's finger hovered over the power off button, but then she activated the Sorter instead. A message box came up and said,
“What you want to do is the wrong thing. Dale won't understand.”
There was an hour glass. Then, another message popped up underneath the first.
COMMENCE PROGRAM ASSET THREE
One of the flight attendants came down the isle to perform the pre-flight check. Marianne closed the Sorter app and powered off her phone. Then her plane made the long, slow crawl out of purgatory and into freedom.
EIGHT
“Are you serious?” said Keller. “You don't want to piss off a federal judge.”
Ruth said, “Any suggestions? The more we talk about it the worse it will get.”
The lieutenant didn't want to let it go, but he did. When she hung up, Ruth called for Jason to get in the car. Some days were better and some days were worse, but most days it was clear to Ruth that she wasn't going to ever see Keller's good side. She was unsure whether this had something to do with her or if it was just the man's disposition, but she hadn't met many people who had become his favorites so she shrugged it off.
As they pulled away from home, Jason asked his mother what the hurry was.
“I'm late for work.” she said. “And I've got to appear in court today.”
“Is it a good case?”
“Not really. It's from the days when I used to investigate gang activity.”
“Sounds good to me.” said Jason.
“This one's about tax evasion.”
Well, that was how they caught Al Capone so it wasn't too bad. It was another criminal in prison, at any rate. That is, it would be if she made it to the courthouse on time. They drove up to John's tiny cottage in Watertown. His van was parked outside, with the name “Judge Network Solutions” written on the side in a jagged font. As they walked up to the front door, Ruth noticed that he'd managed to get some gutters installed. Inside she found the house in its usual disarray. The dining room table was cluttered with mail and piles of books, including several on the JFK assassination and September 11th terror attack conspiracies. There was a cardboard box filled with a stack of single spaced printed pages. The title on the top page read “Manaoh's Regret.”
There was something else on the table, something that made Ruth pause. It was a disk about three inches in diameter, with concentric rings and figures and eyes. John had taken the device that Norman Shaw had been holding before he shot himself, the one whose image had appeared on her phone. He'd hidden it from her all this time, but now there it was on the table. As they had when before, Ruth's eyes picked out red letters in the mess of symbols. It spelled “Limited”. She reached out her hand as if to take it, but thought again. Ruth let it be.
She saw John standing in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen. He was talking with someone in the kitchen that she couldn't see. She didn't recognize the voice, but it was male.
“Where's Alice?” she said. “Who are you talking to?”
John turned to her, saying, “She's at her day program.”
He stepped back as the man in the kitchen came through the doorway and stood with them in the dining room. This other man was dressed in cargo shorts and a sweat splotched Sunday River tee. He wore a brace on his nose and bandages on other parts of his face. Ruth pointed at him, speechless.
“This is Jimmy.” said John.
“The man you hit?”
Jimmy said, “Well he did more than hit me.”
“Jimmy put the gutters up.” said John. “He did it for a good price too, as a favor.”
Ruth said, “A favor for breaking his nose?”
“Is this your girl?” said Jimmy. “She looks sharp.”
“Yeah, she's a cop.” said John, and Jimmy stepped back a little. “Plain clothes detective.”
Jimmy nodded and waved. “Hi, ma'am. Yes, it was a favor. You see I was doing some time and I just got out a little while ago. Been trying to find work but my ex keeps stepping on me every chance she gets.”
John said, “It turns out that Jimmy grew up in Chelsea, like me. We probably went to school together but hung out in different circles. Anyway, his dad knew my dad and he's got some new information on where my dad might be.”
Ruth looked at the ceiling and back again. She glanced at the books on the table. Then she picked up the box with manuscript entitled “Manoah's Regret.”
She said, “You know John, I read your novel, or as much as you've written so far. It's good. It's really good; it is. And if you spent as much time on it as you spent on these conspiracy theories or looking for a man you haven't seen in fifteen years and don't like anyway, you could've finished it by now.”
“It's not a theory.” said Jimmy. “When I was in lockup I met this old gang boss by the name of Yancy. I don't know his first name; he was just Yancy. And he said he didn't know where Big John – you know, John senior? He didn't know where he was, but he knew who did.”
Ruth shook her head and checked her watch. She didn't know what to think or say about this new bit of information. Why couldn't Yancy ever leave her alone? She'd put him away and he'd escaped and gone mad and hunted her down. Now he was locked up again, but again he'd found some way back to her. There was no time for this.
She said, “John, I've got to go. You said you could take Jason?”
“Sure.”
“But you and this guy are doing what?”
Jimmy said, “I was just leaving, ma'am.”
He brushed by her and left by the front door. Ruth and John looked at each other. John was a slender guy, no more than 160 pounds. He was good looking but didn't wear it well. She came over to him and brushed the side of his head with her finger tips.
“Thanks for doing this.” she said.
“I want
to do this. I like the kid.”
She kept her hands on his head. She needed to go, but just a few more seconds wouldn't hurt.
Ruth said, “You know, it would look better if you grew it out.”
“So you keep telling me. Come on, let's go.”
They went to the curb and Jason tugged on the rear doors of the van. John grasped a key chain on his belt and pulled it out of the hook to which it was attached. A steel cord unspooled from the hook. John unlocked and opened the door. Jason crawled inside and John let the steel cord reel the keys back to his pants. Ruth realized she was frowning when John turned back to her. She turned it into an unconvincing smile.
“Don't worry.” said John. “There's nothing in there he can hurt.”
Inside the van, Jason was enumerating the types of equipment.
“Infiniband QDR finer, a Mellanox router – hey John, you've got a Symetricom GPS to IRIG server with a rubidium oscillator? Who uses that?”
“Well, it sounds exciting.” said Ruth. “What are you going to do today?” When John took a little too long to answer she said, “Don't tell me you're going to follow Jimmy's lead?”
“You'll never guess who Yancy pointed him to.” He paused for effect. “Keller.”
“What? Keller and your dad – wait. No. Absolutely not. Leave Keller alone.”
“Do you think you could get him to talk to me?”
“He barely talks to me, John. Don't you have some other work to do?”
“Whoa!” cried Jason. “What's in there?”
Both adults snapped their