Chapter 13
Friday of finals week finally arrived. There had been no time to sip tea. Thinking about anything but immediate crises was out of the question. Not all the problems created by the precipitous departure of two members of the Division of Fine Arts had been solved, but at least Chris was keeping her head above water.
Students in Richard Bjornson's classes would get grades and credit for their work. The three faculty members assigned this task had his assignment sheets and grade book to aid them. The sculpture area and the bathrooms were available again. The police had left black fingerprint powder on every surface in the welding studio and Bjornson's office and the custodians didn't even complain, so fascinated were they about being in the crime scene.
The conference room was finally empty after the police used it to interview everyone in the Division of Fine Arts over the course of four days. When they finally packed up and left on Thursday, the only thing Chris knew for sure about Bjornson's death was that he had been murdered. The X-ray taken before the body was shipped down to the capital had revealed another big round metal object in his skull, one nearly twice the size of the one that killed Elizabeth Page.
Over at the Midstate University Museum of Art, Acting Director Rachael Jacobsen continued to demonstrate she could be a whirlwind of efficiency in gathering the loose ends and taking over. Chris realized she could relax, at least about the management of the most public part of the Division of Fine Arts.
All in all, it was the best one could do. Maybe better than I have a right to expect, Chris mused as she packed her briefcase for an early departure. Bjornson's memorial service was scheduled for three o'clock at Camford Baptist Church.
Charlie was shutting down his computer when Chris emerged from her office, bundled against the weather. She waited while he finished, and together they set off for the parking ramp. The campus was quiet. Finals were over and the students had virtually disappeared. The sun was low and having no effect against minus two degrees.
"It was a week for the ages, Charlie," Chris said as they crunched over the snowy path. "With so much going on it's hard to remember that Richard was killed just five days ago."
The drive to the church was a short one and Chris was pleased to see a respectable scattering of cars in the parking lot. Perhaps not everyone in the Division of Fine Arts had come, but it looked like most had. She waited for Charlie while he pulled in next to her.
The service was nearly identical to the one held for Elizabeth Page. The minister spoke at some length about Richard Bjornson, a man he was frank to admit he'd never met. Based on his telephone conversations with Bjornson's brother and some Midstate faculty, the Reverend Carlson formed a picture of the man that was in some conflict with the reality experienced by members of the Art Department. He apparently believed Richard's practical joking was all done in a spirit of benevolent fun. Several members of the department lifted their heads and looked at the minister in disbelief as he droned on about teasing being a sign of affection and affection in any form being a manifestation of God's love for all his children. Some seemed to have difficulty restraining an impulse to correct this impression immediately, but eventually it was over. Everyone rose and began filing out. Relief was the strongest emotion Chris read on the faces that passed.
Dean Campbell-McFee waited for them by the door. "Congratulations on getting through the week without losing your mind, Chris. I think you really did a very good job handling the emergencies, and I think you could use a drink at the Camford Inn. Join us, Charlie?"
"Thanks, Lorraine," Chris replied. "I needed that."
"And the drink?"
"And the drink. Come on, Charlie, it's too late to do anything useful at the office." They set off in a caravan behind the dean's car.
When they walked into the Camford Inn and found a booth away from the door, Charlie commented that it was appropriate to come there to toast Bjornson since it was his "joint of choice."
"Was it really?" asked the dean. "I wonder why." They looked around at the tastefully restrained leather booths and the antique mahogany bar. It had manufactured the ambiance of an English gentlemen's club. It seemed an unlikely hangout for the scruffy sculptor.
"They have a two-for-one happy hour after nine o'clock," Charlie said.
"Oh." That explained a lot.
When they had their drinks, the dean repeated her praise for Chris's grace under pressure. They touched wineglasses.
"Here's to Richard Bjornson, who was just getting started artistically," Chris said somberly. The three of them drank a sober toast.
"Who will the Do-Nothings belong to when the show comes down?" Campbell-McFee asked eventually.
Chris shrugged. "I suppose his brother will get everything. He doesn't have any other immediate family. It's unfortunate, too, because it sounds like his brother didn't much care for Richard and thought his being an artist was stupid. You notice he didn't bother to come out here for the memorial. The brother took over the family business, I gather, and has some big bucks."
"Maybe we can convince him to leave the sculptures with Midstate as a sort of memorial to his brother," Charlie said as he swirled beer in his glass. "He probably doesn't want to pay to haul them to Richmond, Virginia."
Chris looked at the dean. "You see why he gets such good evaluations every year?"
"You want to come to work for me, Charlie?" the dean asked.
Chris said, "Hey, you've got Eloise. Keep your mitts off Charlie."
Ignoring both of them Charlie said, "I have to call him about some other business and I could just sort of suggest it."
"I think that is a great idea," said the dean.
Chris agreed. "And more of Bjornson's work will probably sell now that he's gone."
"Then I'd better do it first thing Monday morning. That way we can keep the money," Charlie declared and finished his beer.
When she walked through her back door, a pan with chicken fresh from the oven was on the counter island before her. Chris found her son and his friend Ted Olsen setting the table. Walter greeted her by woofing politely, but was too preoccupied following Drew from room to room to engage in his usual noisy ritual. Pansy was standing at the sink washing vegetables for salad, her cane resting against the counter. It was not going to be pretty when Pansy left and Chris reverted to canned chili and hot dogs.
"Guess what, Dear," Pansy said, wiping her hands on a paper towel. "Drew and I both have news. Mine first. I took Walter for a walk today and we did just fine. I had my cane just in case, but he was very good. We went around the block."
"That's great, Mother. " Chris bit back an urge to fuss at her about risking a fall on the snowy sidewalks. "Walter didn't try to pull you around?"
"He was the soul of patience. I think he knows I'm not ready to run a marathon," Pansy replied, pulling brownies out of the oven and replacing them with the chicken to keep it warm.
"And Drew's news?" Chris asked, searching the refrigerator for something to drink.
"We're gonna build an electromagnetic gun for Mr. Ryquist tomorrow," Drew said, coming into the kitchen. Ted trailed behind him. "He says he's got all the parts."
"Sweet, huh?" said Ted. "I mean, it's like so cool! We get to see how they test it and everything!"
"I thought Richard showed the police how it worked," Chris said, trying to cover her surprise.
"He was supposed to build them one from scratch strong enough to kill somebody. Guess he got killed before he did that," Drew shrugged.
"Why are you two helping them?" Chris looked from one boy to the other.
Drew shrugged again. "We went over to see Bjornson working on one of his pieces, like, a couple days after the opening, y'know? Guess I forgot to mention it. He showed us what he was doing, so the cops want us to show them." He glanced nervously at his friend.
Ted came to Drew's rescue. "Yeah, Dr. Connery. It's just that we saw the pieces when they were apart for that big fountain deal he was making, y'know? The one h
e was going to call 'Fountain for the Desert' or something like that? The one that sort of spits ball bearings into the air?"
Chris remembered the sculpture quite well. It still stood to one side in the welding studio where Bjornson had been working on it before his death. It consisted of a large basin with five chrome-plated tubes standing vertically in the middle. They were all at least six feet high and about an inch in diameter. The first time Chris had seen it was when a student reported Bjornson had plugged it in and nearly blown a hole in the ceiling with a barrage of ball bearings. The student had found it hilarious—from the safety of the hallway. Chris had been less entertained. By the time she got down there it had been unplugged, but the damage to the ceiling was obvious.
"I wound the copper wires too tight," Bjornson had offered by way of explanation. He hadn't been concerned about the ceiling.
"Just please be careful, you two," Chris said abandoning any pretense of being a cool mom. "If we're right about that being the way two people were killed, it's obviously very dangerous."
"Hjelmer won't let them shoot the thing," Pansy said firmly. "Will he?"
"We have to try it to know if we did it right, Drew's Gramma," Ted said with irrefutable logic.
"Besides, he needs to see if it can be made powerful enough to break a person's skull," Drew said and turned to his friend. "What will they shoot it at, do you think?"
Ted said, "I'd set up a coconut, but maybe they've got something in the crime lab that makes a better human head than that."
Pansy looked from one boy to the other with widening eyes. Finally she turned to Chris. "Can we be there?"
"I can't imagine the police would want us all there, Mother," Chris said, shaking her head.
"Well, I want to keep these boys from doing something dangerous," Pansy declared virtuously.
Chris threw up her hands. "Too late, Mother."
"I suppose that's true, Teensy," Pansy said with a trace of resignation. "But wouldn't it be fun to see it work?" Fun did not describe what Chris thought it would be, but she conceded that they would attend the demonstration if Ryquist would allow it, and they settled at the table to make short work of Pansy's dinner.
When all was said and done, the building and testing of the electromagnetic gun went very smoothly. Ted Olsen came armed with pages of diagrams printed off the Internet. Ryquist and a police technician had gathered PVC pipe, welding rods, copper wire, and extension cords on the worktable in the center of a storeroom in the basement of the Camford police station.
Chris decided this was what Ryquist meant when he said he'd see her this weekend because he agreed without fuss to let Pansy and Chris attend, though Drew insisted before they arrived that they stay in the background and try not to be too obvious. He could have saved his breath.
Pansy kept asking questions as they worked. It was all far more complex than Chris had anticipated based on the boys' previous conversations, while at the same time the materials were frighteningly untechnical. It ought to be harder to make a murderous weapon, she thought and then remembered that there wasn't much that was complex in throwing a rock or using a big stick.
The boys exercised their newfound physics jargon with the police technician, who introduced himself only as Bill and who was obviously having the time of his life. There was a lot of conversation about force perpendicular to the direction of the current and other things that were incomprehensible to Chris. Eventually she gave up trying to understand what they were saying and let the dialog simply become sound, much as she did when she was in a country whose language she did not speak. She was only here to prevent her son from sticking his head in front of the blasted thing once it was complete. She idly scanned the diagrams Ted had brought along.
She tugged on Pansy's arm at one point. "Mother, look at this." They peered down at a cut-away diagram of a futuristic military tank. The caption indicated that it was a proposed "rail gun" and would, when perfected, be able to obliterate anything it aimed at using an electromagnetically driven projectile. The two women were silent as they read.
"I guess that answers the question of whether one of these things could be made powerful enough to kill someone," Pansy said quietly.
Behind them a discussion began on whether the device would need a trigger.
"Depends," Ryquist said. "Does this thing go off as soon as it's plugged in?" Ted and the technician nodded. "Then I'd say it needs a trigger. You can't be too accurate hitting a target if you have to be bending down to plug it in or using two hands to attach it to an extension cord."
They immediately directed their activity to designing what the technician called a "pressure plate for closing the circuit. Nothing simpler in the world," the technician said.
Easy for you to say, Chris thought.
After another half-hour Chris was about to suggest she and Pansy just give up and let them continue without motherly supervision when the technician began patting the table, hunting for his calculator under the accumulated papers. Behind him the conversation had turned to figuring the "muzzle velocity" of a certain configuration, the details of which were lost on Chris.
Ryquist pulled on his lower lip, his eyes shifting from one speaker to another. When the technician had located his calculator, he and the others exchanged a lot of arcane jargon that Chris realized finally had to do with predicting how fast the ball bearing would be going when it left the tube.
Ted offered, "I bet we could do some serious tweaking with two-twenty." The technician, who was only five or six years older than the two boys, agreed and started banging on his calculator once again until Ryquist intervened.
"Got to keep it to what we know or think we know the killer used," he said. "Don't go trying to improve this sucker."
The boys were clearly disappointed, as was the technician, though he was smart enough not to let his boss see that.
Ryquist turned to Chris and Pansy. "You understand what they're talking about?"
"Not a word," Chris said. Pansy just shook her head.
"They're trying to calculate the configuration that will do the kind of damage we found. It would be nice to get it right without having to spend a month experimenting."
"Do you understand how this all works, Hjelmer?" Pansy asked, the tone of every word indicating that she was in awe of a person who could do that.
My lord! She's in full flirt-mode. She'd seen this in her mother twice before and a husband was the result each time. Since Hjelmer Ryquist was apparently a happily married man, one could only assume Pansy was acting on reflex or was just practicing for her return to Florida.
Ryquist ignored Pansy. He turned his attention once again to the animated discussion continuing around the calculator. A stiffening back forced Chris to join her mother on one of two folding chairs against the wall. They'd been there for three hours and still the weapon existed only in the imaginations of the participants.
At one o'clock Pansy and Chris went to pick up lunch. There was still no weapon in evidence. When they returned, however, a plastic tube about thirty inches long and about an inch and a half in diameter was standing on two notched blocks of wood. It was pointed at a hay bale on a table pushed against the opposite wall. A normal two-wire appliance cord went to the back where it split, one wire going through a cardboard cap on the end and the other to a cardboard flap standing upright on top of the tube. A hole had been drilled in the tube and a wire with a bare copper end poked out. It was held down with electricians' tape.
The four men were engaged in an animated debate about whether a coconut or a bale of hay was a better target. Ryquist finally held up a hand and announced they would conduct the experiment using the bale of hay as a target because he wanted to see whether there would be any telltale marks on the bearing from its passage through the tube. Hamburgers and police authority finally put the discussion on hold.
"How did you get it together so quickly?" Chris asked between bites.
"Nothing to it once we decided how
much wire to use and how to wrap it on the rails inside the tube," Bill, the technician, said as he dragged a french fry through a puddle of catsup.
Chris looked at Hjelmer.
"I'd hate for the criminal class to figure this out," he said. "It was twenty-five minutes work. No more."
"Cheap, untraceable materials," agreed the technician.
"As long as your criminal can find a place to plug it in," said Drew.
"Can you feature it?" Ted laughed with his mouth full. "Guy wants to hold up a gas station, comes in with this thing and has to ask the clerk to plug it in?"
"There's the battery one that guy built," Drew said. "You know, the one with the web site? That would probably be good enough to rob a gas station with."
Chris's food almost lost all flavor in her mouth. Pansy, delicately removing the pickles from her hamburger, pretended not to hear.
Drew continued. "I mean, if you could make it look threatening. It didn't really pack a lot of punch and it looked like some kid's whiz-bang toy."
Everyone agreed that wouldn't do the job for the average gas-station-robbing thug.
"When are you going to test it?" Chris asked. She could see her whole day disappearing into this project.
"Right now," Bill said as he stood and wiped his hands. Pansy and Chris cleared away the luncheon debris while Drew and Ted joined the technician in a final appraisal of their handiwork.
Bill was the first to sight down the barrel at the bale of hay standing against the far wall. Then Drew and Ted each took a turn. Finally Bill shooed the boys toward the rest of the group clustered at the rear of the room. He plugged the cord into an extension lying on the table.
"Fire in the hole," he said and pressed the cardboard flap down to put the bare wire taped to its underside in contact with the bare wire coming out of the tube. The whoosh was immediate, as was a thunk. Everyone stared silently at the bale of hay. There was a clearly visible hole punched in its side.
Ryquist was the first to speak. "Guess that would do the job." He and Bill leaned down, peering at the hole.
"How far in is it?" asked the tech with some amazement. "That looks like at least as far as a twenty-two caliber bullet would go." They began breaking into the bale, looking carefully for the bearing. When they found it, Bill put it under a microscope and declared that he could see no marks that hadn't been there before.
"If this catches on, the bad guys are going to win a lot more often," Ryquist said grumpily as he dusted hay from his pants leg.
Drew grinned. "But only if they have really long extension cords."