But Decker was persistent. “How did your father ruin careers? Did he sabotage experiments? Did he steal someone else’s research?”
Europa stared out of the window. “No, nothing illegal. If he had done that, he wouldn’t have been so feared. Instead, he decimated within the proper channels.” She hugged herself. “To understand my father’s potency, you’d have to know the academic world.”
Decker said, “I’ve heard its moral accountability falls somewhere between politics and Hollywood.”
“You’ve got it.” Europa gave him a beleaguered smile. “In academia, to be associated with the right people is all-important. And Dad was the right person to know. His stamp of approval added prestige to anything it touched. He was on the board of many scientific organizations and peer-review journals. A good word from him could immediately advance a career just as a well-placed barb could set it back ten years. During his scientific years, Dad doled out much more criticism than praise. He had brought down many a promising career with a single, snide comment. Presenting a paper to Emil Euler Ganz was an ordeal akin to being placed on the rack. A few of Dad’s remaining colleagues have enlightened me as to how truly sadistic he was, taking pleasure in smashing someone’s life’s work.”
Decker formulated his question. “Of all the people your father … offended—”
“Ruined.”
“Is there any specific person that sticks in your mind?”
“No. My older colleagues might be able to help you.”
“I’ll ask around,” Decker said.
“Approaching my father’s colleagues might be akin to entering the enemy camp.” She smiled. “Maybe not now that he’s dead. I’m sure they got their revenge witnessing my father’s downfall in cosmology. Since Emil Euler Ganz had become an object of derision, Dad’s enemies could discredit his previous criticism of their past work.”
She seemed bitter. Decker asked, “When you entered the field, did they hold your father’s behavior against you?”
She thought for a moment. “I’m sure a few did. Mostly, people felt sorry for me. As a girl, I had been abandoned by him. As a scientist, I was now saddled with this embarrassing nutcase called Father Jupiter. In reality, even before Jupiter my father had lost his scientific luster.”
“Why was that?”
“He was espousing some way-out theories even before he took his famous hike. Now, the few times I’ve spoken to him, his mind was as scientifically sharp as ever. But we kept our conversation on neutral ground, never talking about his postulations.” She got up and poured herself another cup of coffee. “Which are not as crackpot now as they were then.”
Decker asked, “What kind of crackpot theories did he hold?”
Europa returned to her desk. “It’s a long story as well as a complicated one.”
“I’ve got time. Try me.”
“How’s your working knowledge of physics?”
“I know Newton had three laws of motion.”
“That’s a start.”
“Actually someone at the Order clued me into that one.”
“Who?”
“Someone named Bob.”
“Ah …” Recognition. “Tall, thin … I think now he sports a beard.”
“Goatee.” Decker tried to hide his surprise. “Does he have a last name?”
“Changes with the wind. When I knew him, it was Robert Ross.”
Decker wrote it down in his notes. “Where do you know him from?”
“From Southwest. We were fellow students—actually dated for a couple of months. He was a fanatic admirer of Emil Ganz the scientist. With my father gone, I was his sole link to the great man. But when Dad was resurrected as Jupiter, Bob went directly to the source. At one time, he had a working brain. By now I’m sure it’s mush.”
“He impressed me as being sharp. But what do I know?”
Europa shrugged. “Maybe.”
Decker regarded her with a swift glance. She wasn’t as separate from the Order as Decker had thought. She had kept in contact with her father via phone, she had dated one of the members, and had been best friends with her father’s woman. Also, she remembered Pluto, albeit not fondly. And this was what she admitted to. Who knew what she wasn’t telling him. He said, “Explain your dad’s whacked-out theories.”
She sighed heavily. “Dad had developed some far-out theories about teleportation and time machines into alternative universes—a combination of H. G. Wells and Beam me up, Scotty.” Again, a sigh. “Not that this bears any relevancy to your investigation.”
“Actually, it may be very relevant,” Decker answered. “Maybe he chose to end his life because he believed that he was transporting himself to a better place with a time machine.”
“Even so, why would that be relevant to the police?”
“Because we have to make sure no one tries to follow in your father’s footsteps. I don’t want another Heaven’s Gate—not anywhere and certainly not in my district.”
“How can you guarantee that?”
“With adults, we can’t. Kids are another story.”
“I see your point.” She held up a finger. “So you are viewing this as a suicide.”
“Everything’s open,” Decker said without emotion. “Especially since your father had enemies.”
“That he did.”
“Getting back to your dad’s theories … did any of them have any scientific bases?”
“Of course. Before my father vanished, he’d been working on superluminal loopholes—things that could scientifically account for instantaneous time travel, backward-in-time travel and faster-than-light travel.”
Decker raised his brow. “Okay.”
“Not a science fiction reader, Lieutenant?”
Decker smiled, “I liked it when Han Solo did that warp speed thing on the Millennium Falcon.” He leaned forward. “What travels faster than light?”
“Undiscovered subatomic particles called tachyons—”
“Undiscovered?”
“They’re out there. We just haven’t found them yet. Also photons coming from the same electromagnetic wave. Subatomic particles called kaons travel backward in time. With them, we see the result of the event before the actual event takes place.”
“I don’t follow you,” Decker said. “I was taught that nothing travels as fast as light. Are you saying that’s not true?”
“I believe you mean that you were taught that nothing travels as fast as electromagnetic radiation. Visible light is only one small part of the spectrum. You’ve got UV waves, microwaves, radiowaves, infrared waves … any of this ring a bell?”
“No.”
She tapped a pencil on the surface of her desk. “All right. I’ll try to sum up twentieth-century physics in a couple of paragraphs.”
“I’m taking notes.”
“Stop me if I lose you.” She finished the dregs of her coffee. “For years, physics was based on Newton’s three laws of motion. The second law deals with the orbits of heavenly bodies. The fact that some of the orbits didn’t comply with Newton’s mathematics bothered no one. They just added a fudge factor, an arbitrary number that makes the math fit the physics.”
“You can do that?”
She chuckled, “It’s not ideal—something akin to smashing a square peg in a round hole—but physicists do it with theories that almost work until someone comes along with a theory that works better. Newton’s theories worked for most cases so why quibble with the few exceptions? Something wasn’t right, but no one knew how to fix it.”
“I’ve known a few cases of that.”
“I’ll bet.” Europa leaned over her desk. “Then along came Einstein, who ushered us into the modern world. His theories on the curvature of space explained the inconsistency in Newton’s planetary laws. But he is best known to the layman for his remarkable theory of relativity. It changed our concept of time from something absolute and immutable to something relative from party to party.”
“Which means?”
She stopped, took in a breath and let it out. It appeared as if she was used to confusing people. “Words don’t do it justice. The mathematics is beautiful, but that won’t help you either. Please interrupt me if I’m going too fast.”
“Oh, I will. Go on.”
“All right. This is the standard model used to explain it. Picture a train pulling away from a platform. To the person on the platform, it appears as if he is standing still and the train is moving, right?”
“Right.”
“But to the person on the train, it seems as if the train is standing still and the platform is moving—”
“But we know the train’s moving.”
“Only because you’ve been taught that it’s the train that moves.”
“But the train is moving. It’s going from place to place. The platform isn’t budging.”
“In space, Lieutenant, you have no way of knowing who or what is actually moving. You always have the option of assuming that you’re moving and other guy is standing still.”
Decker said, “But if you’re moving, you’re moving.”
“Sorry. Motion is relative. So is time, distance and mass. And the faster you go, the more relative it is. Now, at slow speeds, the relativity factor isn’t going to make much difference. Suppose you’re cruising at sixty miles an hour on the freeway and I’m stalled on the shoulder with a flat tire because I didn’t have the time to take my bald retreads into the garage. If you zoom past me at one o’clock in the afternoon, what time will my car clock read?”
Decker said, “It’s not going to read anything because your motor’s turned off.”
She laughed, showing teeth. She had a nice smile when she chose to use it. “It wasn’t a trick question, sir.”
Decker smiled boyishly. “One o’clock.”
“Brilliant.”
“Thank you.” Decker noticed that talking about science loosened her up. That was good. Loose people had loose lips.
She continued. “But as your speed approaches that of light, everything changes. For instance, say you’re in a spaceship going ninety percent the speed of light. Now, inside your ship, everything looks normal to you. The clocks run on time, your spaceship has the same dimensions and your clothes still fit you. Are you with me?”
“I’m here.”
“But to another ship out in space, your rocket will look shorter by a factor of two, your clock will appear to run half as fast and your weight will be twice as heavy.”
“So you’re saying fast speeds distort things. I can buy that.”
“But here’s the entire point of relativity. To your eye, everything inside your spaceship is normal. To your eye, it’s the other guy who’s distorted. His clock is slow, his rocket is shorter and his mass is twice as heavy. To your eye, he’s distorted. But to his eye, you’re distorted.”
“So who’s right?”
“You both are.”
“A Solomonic approach to physics,” Decker stated.
Again, she smiled. “It’s all perspective.”
Decker said, “Getting back to your father, you’re saying he based his theories of teleportation on Einstein’s relativity. Something like he could transport himself from one place to another because everything’s relative?”
“Actually, Einstein wasn’t a major factor in my father’s theories.”
“So there’s more.” Decker held up his pencil. “Shoot, Doc. I’m ready for you.”
She chuckled. “Einstein’s theories kicked off a revolution, but he wasn’t the final word on cosmology. That belongs to quantum physics.”
“Is this going to make me feel really stupid?”
“I’ll keep it simple,” Europa said. “There are two distinctly different aspects to how we view light or any electromagnetic radiation. Now, Newton stated that light acts like a wave, that it’s continuous and uninterrupted, that it has rises and falls, peaks and troughs. Okay so far?”
“I’m with you.”
“Quantum theory says light is not a wave, but discreet packets or bundles made up of particles called photons. Two contradictory theories—light as wave, light as particles.”
“Dare I ask? Which one is right?”
“They both are. Sometimes light behaves as a wave, sometimes it behaves like photons. If you thought relativity was bad at pinning things down, you don’t even want to know about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. It says that although you can make predictions on how these photons will behave over the long run, you can never say exactly how they will behave over the short run. At any given moment, you have no way of knowing which energy state any given photon will occupy. Are you with me?”
“No. Can I ask what photons have to do with teleportation?”
“You’re a single-minded man, Lieutenant.”
“A bad physicist, but a decent cop.”
“Photons, sir, have been one of the links implicated in instantaneous travel. Before Dad dropped out, he was one of the few men who was trying to prove that photons originating from the same packet of light had this instantaneous link between them. Whatever was happening to photon one was also happening with photon two no matter what the distance between them was. All because once they had shared the same light bundle. Are you with me?”
“Instant communication.”
“Instantaneous communication,” Europa corrected. “Now, since mass can convert to energy at the speed of light—E equals MC squared—then atoms—like the kind that make up your body—can be converted to electromagnetic energy or light in the form of photons. And since there is an eternal, instantaneous link between photons from the same packet, you can transport your atoms—now in photon form—instantaneously from one position in space to another using this superluminal link. Which is considered a scientific lost cause. Although things can move faster than light, they can’t seem to transport meaningful information … things like organized atoms. Which is what my father spent his scientific life trying to prove. He hit walls, but that didn’t stop him. When he couldn’t do it as Emil Euler Ganz, he went metaphysical and tried to prove it as Jupiter.”
She frowned. “But you know how things get messed up going from theory to actuality. Sometimes we physicists predict it right on—like with the atom bomb. We knew the math way before we had the technology. But most of the time, we sit there and wallow in our own mistakes. Like a baby with a dirty diaper, just crying and squirming while waiting for someone who knows better to clean it up.”
Oliver said, “I can buy the thing about time slowing down. Ever been to an opera?”
Decker laughed, but Marge said, “I like opera.”
“That’s ’cause you’re a woman.” Oliver bit into an egg roll. “Sure you don’t want one, Deck? They’re vegetarian.”
“No thanks.” He added sugar to his tea. “So when are you two meeting with the death certificate guy … what’s his name? Omni?”
“Nova,” Marge said. “We found out he’s a podiatrist.”
Decker made a face. “A podiatrist signed Ganz’s death certificate?”
“Maybe Jupiter’s feet were cold.” Oliver polished off a wonton.
“I’m sure they were if he was dead,” Marge said. “For your information, Scott, there are plenty of men who enjoy opera.”
“None of them heterosexual.”
“That’s ridiculous!”
Oliver thought it over. “Okay. Maybe there are a few effete Englishmen who like opera. But I dare you to find one straight guy who likes ballet.”
Decker tried again. “What time are you meeting Nova the podiatrist?”
“Six-thirty,” Oliver said.
Decker looked at his watch. “That’s in a half hour.”
Oliver pointed to Marge’s entree. “Put a dent in your cashew chicken or we’ll never make it.”
“I’ll take the rest to go. The soup filled me up.”
Oliver said, “That’s another gay thing—soup. Straight guys would never get filled up by soup. Straight guys don’t even eat soup. Soup is a broad thing.”
Marge said, “Were you always this concrete or am I just noticing it more?”
Oliver rolled his eyes. To Decker, he said, “So Ganz was a schmuck. Doesn’t surprise me. All these cult leaders are megalomaniacs.” He attacked the remnants of his Mongolian chicken. “I mean look what he was into—time machines, alternative universes … instant travel through space. Playing God basically. Good sci-fi, but for a man of Ganz’s stature … he was freaking out.” He turned to Marge. “You know, the whacked-out ideas combined with the headaches that Venus told you about … maybe he had a brain tumor.”
Decker said, “When Europa spoke to him, she said he was still scientifically sharp.”
“That’s her opinion,” Oliver said.
“I found it interesting that Ganz had made enemies.”
“It’s irrelevant, Deck. Unless one of them sneaked into the Order and laced his vodka with cyanide.”
Decker said, “You never know when the past can come back to haunt. Besides, Ganz wasn’t completely divorced from his former life. He kept in contact with Europa, his significant other was Europa’s girlhood friend—”
“What?” Marge broke in. “You said that Europa’s around forty.”
“She is.”
“Venus looks about thirty.”
“So she looks young,” Decker answered. “Europa said she was a pretty girl.” He told them Jilliam’s background.
Marge said, “So Ganz was the father Jilliam never had. Where have I heard that one before?”
“And she was also a young piece of ass,” Oliver said. “Yes, it’s the same-old, same-old. But so what? Why the fascination with the past, Deck? Do you have a former associate of Ganz who you think was out to get him?”
Decker admitted he didn’t. “This Bob—the one who dated Europa—she said he was obsessed with Emil Ganz the scientist.”
“But Bob met Ganz after he had become Jupiter, right?”
“Right.”
“So Bob couldn’t have been a past enemy. He would have been too young to be one of Ganz’s colleagues.”
Decker conceded the point. “In fact, he was Europa’s former schoolmate.”
“Look, Loo. Even if every single one of Ganz’s former acquaintances hated his guts, I don’t see what that would have to do with his death. Ganz stopped being Ganz twenty-five years ago.”
Marge said, “If someone murdered him, it has to be a current member of the Order. Someone who wouldn’t arouse suspicion by being there, don’t you think?”
“Maybe.”
Oliver wiped his mouth. “You like this past coming back to get him theory, don’t you?”
Decker said, “I’m trying to get a complete story. So if it turns out to be something other than suicide, I’ve got avenues to explore.”
“Then start with Pluto,” Oliver said. “He’s my nominee for asshole of the month.”
“Actually, I like Europa,” Decker said. “She phoned the police about her dad’s death, and she knows the key players in the Order—”
“Including Pluto?” Oliver interrupted.
“She claims she didn’t know Pluto, only that she met him and didn’t like him.”
“Something in her favor,” Oliver said. “Why would she want to hurt her father now?”
“He was a lousy father,” Marge said.
“He was always a lousy father,” Oliver retorted. “I repeat. Why now? You think she’s been harboring a murderous grudge for twenty-five years?”
“I like simple reasons,” Decker said. “Like money—”
“Ganz had been a professor in his former life,” Oliver broke in. “How much money could he have saved up?”
Marge said, “If he had won a major scientific award, maybe lots. What’s the Nobel prize worth these days?”
“He didn’t win the Nobel prize,” Oliver grumped.
“There are plenty of other organizations that give money to genuises just for being genuises,” Marge answered.
“Or Ganz could have worked for NASA or some other scientific government agency,” Decker said. “Maybe he moonlighted in industry as a consultant—in aviation or aeronautics or even a think tank. Point is, we don’t know what Ganz was worth. We don’t even know who holds the deed for the Order.”
“The building?”
“The building, the land, its bank accounts. Does it have its own bank accounts? Since this is a suspicious death, maybe we should find out.”
No one spoke for a moment. Then Marge said, “Looking into Ganz’s finances … do you think it’s a good use of our time, Pete?”
The implication was right on. Decker blew out air. “Probably makes more sense to wait for the pathology reports to come in. Could be I’m obsessing.” He sipped tea and gave his words some consideration. “How busy is tomorrow, Margie? Could you give it a couple of hours?”
Marge said, “Not a problem.”
“Okay, do the basics. Bank accounts, brokerage accounts, insurance policies—” He stopped himself. “That’s going to take longer than a couple of hours. Margie, you do the bank and brokerage accounts. Scott, you call the assessor’s office and find out who holds the deed to the land, then poke around for insurance policies.”
Marge said, “Pete, insurance isn’t applicable in cases of suicide.”
“They’ll pay death benefits if it’s accidental death. And if he took out whole life insurance, there’d probably be a nice little nest egg cash policy as well as death benefits.”
Oliver was dubious. “You want me to cold call insurance companies? That seems kinda … screwy.”
He was right. Score another for his crew. Decker said, “How about this? Ganz was a full professor at Southwest University of Technology. Faculty usually gets all sorts of perks—health insurance, car insurance, life insurance. Start there with the insurance angle. If you reach a dead end, call it quits and we’ll reevaluate.”
“Simple enough.” Oliver looked at Marge. “Are you gonna take that last egg roll?”
“It’s all yours.” She turned to Decker. “If Ganz had secret money, don’t you think Venus would make a better suspect than Europa?”
Decker said, “Venus wasn’t officially married to Ganz. Kids would be first in line to inherit.”
“Unless he made other provisions in a will,” Marge said.
Oliver said, “Jupiter didn’t seem like the ‘will’ type.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Decker said. “For a guy who was into spirituality, he had his feet firmly planted in earthly trappings—a pretty, younger girlfriend, attendants who waited on him, people who worshiped him. We found an empty fifth of vodka under his bed.” He shrugged. “Doesn’t sound like any capuchin I’ve ever known.”
Marge smiled. “Exactly how many capuchins have you known, Pete?”
Oliver said, “What does cappuccino have to do with this? Speaking of which. How about some dessert? Ever try litchi nuts, Loo?”
“Have to pass.” Decker finished his tea. “I’ve already missed breakfast and lunch with the family. Don’t want to press my luck by missing dinner.”
Each time Decker pulled into the driveway, he grew wistful. Because each passing day brought him that much closer to the end; good-bye to the acreage, the horses, the ranch land, the orchards, the freedom of his carefree divorced days.
Well, carefree wasn’t exactly the right word.
Truth be told he was miserable in that interim period—lonely and disagreeable. Ah hell, who was he kidding? He hadn’t been the Marlboro Man in over seven years. Only thing he and Marlboro had in common was sucking nicotine.
After killing the motor, he got out of the car. The front door opened and a little stick figure with orange ringlets and open arms came running to him.
“Daaaaddeeee!”
“Hannah Roseeee!” He bent down, scooped her up and threw her over his shoulder—a small, chortling sack. He opened the front door with his foot and threw his briefcase onto one of the buckskin living room chairs. He tossed Hannah onto the couch as she squealed with delight. Within moments, Rina materialized, drying a dish. She wore a maroon sweater over a denim skirt. Her thick, black hair was secured by a barrette. She had recently trimmed her long locks. Now they fell just past her shoulders. A becoming style for her beautiful face. Except that most of the time, as required by her religious beliefs, she kept her hair covered with a scarf or a hat, or, at the very least, tied up in a braid or a bun.
