Circular Reasoning Chapter 2 That night he was listening to the baseball game when the phone rang. A properly cynical police detective, he thought, should be listening to some obscure classical composer and drinking whiskey. He preferred baseball, another game with rules that stayed put, more or less. He reached over to the side table and turned off his radio. He was sitting in his black leather recliner, positioned so he could look out the windows to the back yard. Picking up the phone, he was surprised to hear a woman’s voice, and even more surprised when it identified itself. “Philman? Katarina Johnson. Why don’t you think it’s a Circle case?” I’m fine, and how are you? “Eight people have been convicted for ten murders termed ‘Circle cases,’ but none of those convicted, nor none of those murdered, have ever actually been proven to be a member of the Circle.” And did I say you could call me at home? “That doesn’t prove that a different murder wouldn’t be a Circle case.” “True, it’s only evidence against the theory that we have a chain of murders and thus should be expecting others. Then there’s the fact that the death of an obscure person, not involved in politics, hardly fits the profile for an organization that thinks that large corporations are ...” “Retaliation killing. Diversion.” “There’s no evidence of that.” “Is there any evidence pointing against it?” None of your friends call you ‘Kat’ do they? “Against conspiracy theories, the facts themselves are powerless.” There was an instance of silence. “What’s your theory then?” Her voice was quick, precise. Not angry, not sneering, just efficient. “At the moment, I don’t have one because the facts don’t yet suggest one. It is very easy to draw a circle on the floor. The circle could be an accident. It could be a copy-cat killing. It could have been intended to mean something else entirely. And yes, an organization that claims the rich are the source of our problem, and corporations evil, has been willing to be killed rather than do violence, and whose members have gone on hunger strikes in jails rather than eat meat may well have killed an impoverished writer of unpublished poems, but I’m not going to start with that assumption.” He realized that some edge of emotion had crept into his voice, which he normally tried to keep absolutely level. He put his hand over his eyes. In the silence, he continued softly, “why is it so important for this to be a Circle case?” “Now it’s you that doesn’t get it.” I didn’t say you didn’t get it, not directly. “The worst thing you can tell the media,” she said, “is ‘I don’t know.’ Being wrong is far less trouble.” “How glad I am that you will handle that.” “You think that’s the wrong way to handle it?” “Well, the sort of wrong I’d do would be far more trouble.” Why are you talking to me at all? Why now? “I’m holding a press conference tomorrow at 10am. Let me know before then if you’ve got any specifics.” And she hung up without saying goodbye. He put the phone down and looked at if for a second. She’d caught the distinction that should the theory about a chain “Circle cases” be proved false, it would not count against any evidence suggesting that this case was a Circle case. Interesting he thought, that she’d made that distinction. She might also understand a related distinction: that previous convictions for a crime were not proof that the person had committed one more. But then, she might also point out that there were the usual exceptions for cases where the prior bad acts had some specific relevance to the current accusation. He stopped, smiled at himself. She might get that, but she wasn’t likely to be fascinated by it. To the room he said, “so maybe you’re not just a pretty face after all.” He picked up the radio, turned it on and got up and went out onto his back deck. A foot above the lawn, it was bordered by low built in benches. He’d added some planters, and one year had flowers in them, but they were bare now. He lay down, full on his back on the deck and looked up at the first stars becoming visible against the deep blue darkening sky. Forensics’ official preliminary report had thudded onto his computer by the time he’d returned from the crime scene. It began with a three dimensional map of the trailer that he could view from any angle or walk through by moving his mouse. At various points the cursor rolled over hot spots and by clicking he could pull up data on that part of the trailer. Moving virtually into the living room you would encounter an animated 3D simulation showing the likely location of the body before it fell, its path as it fell, and giving a 55 percent probability that the killer was between 5’8” and 6’1”. Then they ran that against the distribution of heights by gender to show that it was more likely to be a male who committed the crime. Great, we can now rule out dwarfs, Martians and NBA players. Can’t rule out soccer moms. By snaking his way through four menus, he could turn that display off and read a linear narrative. By disabling the default options he was able to print it out. Nine DNA samples, analyzed in the portable lab in the trailer, had proven to within one chance in 23.8 trillion that the deceased was the same person his driver’s license, mailbox name and credit cards said he was. 61 fingerprints all matched the deceased with greater than a 99.5 percent probability except for one that was only 70 percent certain to be DuBois. This partial print from the bathroom had driven forensics into a fury of effort to resolve the remaining uncertainty, without success. There was information on the force required to open each window, fingerprints on the inside and exterior, and the results of modeling to estimate how many times they’d been opened in the past week leading to the conclusion that the intruder did not come in a window. The victim’s routine had been assessed by wear patterns in the carpet, residual compression of seat cushions, finger print distributions on the wall, the pattern of scratches on surfaces and skin oil residue on light switches, furniture and kitchen cabinets. Much to the amazement of all, it appeared that Mr. DuBois ate, watched TV, worked at the computer, went to the bathroom, walked in the hallway and slept in his bed. A change in routine recently could not be ruled out, nor could it be proven. Philman was always impressed by the specialization of career paths in Forensics. This case had brought in a number of them, including the domestic dirt expert. The team had picked up samples from the doorjambs, the carpets, between the sofa cushions, in cracks in linoleum, under the fridge, behind the toilet, at the back corner of closet shelves, on the window sills, as well as from shoes and a dozen places outside the trailer for comparison. Actual dirt, stale potato chips, dust bunnies, all had come under scrutiny and the expert had concluded that there was no real evidence that anything in the house had come from outside the immediate neighborhood that couldn’t be attributed to being tracked in by DuBois. Still no evidence of their murderer. Cores taken from the trailer’s walls and floor were presented, described and analyzed. Samples from the trap under the kitchen sink and the bathroom were compared. Apparently he’d once brushed his teeth in the kitchen sink. No drug residue was found in either sample. They had also reached into the toilet to extract scrapings from the trap there. All showed no signs of residue from anyone other than Mr. DuBois. The distribution of parasites was as expected. No one else lived there, no had come close enough lately to use the sink, the toilet or the bathroom. Hair and fluid residue from the bed had been collected and investigated and there was no sign of urine, vaginal fluid or blood and only DuBois’ seamen. There was no sign he’d recently shared the bed with anyone else. Shoes had a chapter all to themselves, as did the rest of the victim’s clothes. All the clothes were the proper size for the victim. Philman couldn’t bring himself to read every single word of the report, but he was pretty sure that they had found nothing from any other person. Because he’d been killed with a knife, forensics had investigated every knife in the house, looking for trace evidence, attempting to discover if a knife might be missing. A butcher block stand in the kitchen with two empty slots got several pages of attention, but it appeared from the pattern of gunk that that no knife was missing. A list of the 59 known types of knives that could potentially match the wounds were provided as well as the standard lamentation that no law had been passed mandating unique serration patterns for all knifes. Philman read the paragraphs about the glasses over and over. DuBois’ glasses were a designer brand, inconsistent with the dead man’s clothes, housing and occupation. They had delicate, thin frames made from an advanced composite material, which held lenses with several specialized coatings. The lenses themselves were equally advanced, very lightweight, having the finest optical properties. Well, the dead man had been a poet, perhaps wanting to see clearly was not that surprising. Philman stretched a time or two and adjusted the compact radio on his chest. The announcer’s voices floated out, resuming their account of an at-bat. He liked these announcers, their voices were easy, they knew when to be silent. He could listen to them night after night and not find them grating. Forensics had also attacked the computer in the trailer. A laptop, two or three years out of date, it was filled with downloaded documents on a myriad of subjects from domestic political issues, foreign policy, history, impressionist art, animal behavior, court decisions and the publishing industry. There was nothing on sports, cars or women. The documents had all been read into various political analysis programs that were among forensics’ most guarded secrets. Only the most general conclusions were made available to Philman; if he wanted more, he’d have to make a formal request. Forensics wasn’t supposed to come to conclusions, but their report fairly itched with the desire to label the writer a leftist agitator. That is, forensics concluded that the poet thought sex was not evil and poor people were often screwed by the political system. The absence of anything remotely recreational, at least as defined by norms for a male of that age, also excited forensics, they thought it was very important. The half-inning concluded and the radio station went to commercial. Sam and Mindy would be surprised to know that their allegedly anti-technology boss had an illegal piece of technology on his radio that suppressed commercials. Standard mute buttons with timers had first been attacked by stations going to random length commercials. Then decoder circuits had been added to radios that went online via wireless, cracked the encrypted signal that broadcasters were using to coordinate commercial length with remote broadcasts, and suppressed the volume for the required time. These had been ruled illegal, an unconstitutional censorship of an advertiser’s right to be heard. Now they were only available on the black market from web sites hosted on pirate ships and constantly traveling vans. Philman had found one of these and purchased the circuitry and program. Forensics had not found any personal connections in all the dead man’s files that had anything to do with either family or politics. No personal correspondence at all. No friends, casual e-mail, no phone numbers, blog postings, nothing. That was unusual, way off the charts. Beneath the officially descriptive prose, forensics’ utter disapproval poured from every syllable. Or so Philman thought, but maybe he imagined this sort of thing. Philman had already determined that the dead man had no local family and only two brothers, both halfway across the country. There was no evidence that he spoke with them. He’d still have to tell Victim Advocacy. This remoteness was consistent, at least, with the absence of family correspondence. There was nothing to girl-friends, old or current, nothing related to a hobby, and certainly nothing related to any political groups. Lots on political ideas, but nothing on any groups, terrorist, political, religious or social. Philman had ordered a trace of Internet Service Providers, both the one the dead man directly communicated with and its primary connections. Philman had checked the little box on the electronic warrant application web-form that said “terrorism related” and it conveniently popped up a form with the eighteen most popular terrorism related justifications. All he had to do with click on “Suspected Circle Gang involvement,” and the form went to the top of some judge’s email pile. An hour later, Philman had his warrant and the police computer had already sent it to the appropriate automated agents at the Service providers who would conduct a search. The Service Providers were required to retain three days worth of all message traffic. Some of that would be encrypted in ways even the police couldn’t crack. Appeals to various corporations would produce decrypts of some of it, or at least sworn statements that nothing had been found relating to the murder. It might produce something, although even the dumbest criminals knew about the three-day requirement and often stopped communicating for that period before committing a crime. One had already been convicted on the strength of what he hadn’t used the net for, the theory being that not using the Internet for three days was sufficiently odd that it was evidence of criminal intent. The search warrant to the Internet Service Provider also had been sent to the phone company for DuBois’ phone records. All Philman had needed to do was check another couple of boxes on the “Integrated Warrant Application Process” screen and off it had gone. But DuBois hardly used his phone at all. The radio resumed as Philman’s team came to bat in the bottom of the 7th, trailing by one run. It was a close, low-scoring game, full of the pleasant tension that made the sport intriguing. He loved the isolated world of the diamond, able still to block out the corporate complications that threatened to consume the sport. The game followed paths. A 2-1 count could only be followed by a limited number of things, a ball, strike, a hit, an out, and a few rarer possibilities like an argument. It couldn’t be followed by a 1-1 count or a strikeout. Even the arguments of baseball were formalized, occurring for a limited number of reasons. And yet, the game had infinite variety using these limited choices. A team could be behind, no runners, two outs, two strikes, a second from extinction, yet the inning could go on for several batters, in theory forever. And the blood on the floor. Forensics had been determined to find a pattern connecting the shape of this circle with previous Circle cases based on its shape, thickness, direction of drawing, something. Chopping his way through the jungle of statistical prose mixed with police writing, Philman concluded that forensics had failed to make a link. Other than that the blood belonged to the writer. And that the circle had been drawn with some sort of “object inconsistent with animated organic matter” which Philman thought meant that a stick was still possible, but that a finger had been ruled out, at least a live finger. Drawn clockwise, this apparently was more consistent with a socially well-adjusted individual than with a psychopath. Philman put the radio on the deck and sat up, his arms around his knees. No matter how carefully he’d read the report, it all added up to an exceptionally clean crime scene. He’d have to read the autopsy report which would have more of the same, but somehow, all that language was harder to take when it described a person. Ninety pages and we’ll learn he was killed with a knife. Sam and Mindy hadn’t found anything among the neighbors yet, either. Baseball was soothing to listen to. There were many indications that the declining audience for a voice-only description was going to lead to the canceling of radio broadcasts entirely in favor of Internet based integrated video and web presentations. Philman didn’t want to watch the game, he wanted to hear it. Maybe he’d have to listen to archives of past games he never heard the first time around, but he didn’t think that would be as satisfying. His team tied the game in the 7th, lost the lead in the 8th to a solo home run and did not come back. Game over. That was that. Philman turned off the post game commentary, if he’d solved the case, he could take listening to explanation of an activity without profit, but he’d had enough for one day. He went inside and saw the phone. Why had Katarina called him at home? Was she concerned he wouldn’t get to work in time for her to get input for her press conference? Was the media that hot on her trail? Was she going to be a nagger, bugging him repeatedly for everything? He could block her phone, but that would probably trigger some sort of protest. He’d collect more evidence before deciding what category to put her in. Maybe she just couldn’t stand not to hear my voice. He laughed. So what was his next move on this case? He could play Buddha and talk Zen about being still until the case came to him, he’d regularly driven his staff mad with that attitude, but this case wasn’t going to fall into his lap. And the absence of obvious directions to pursue, combined with what Katarina’s actions said about likely media pressure … Focus, Robert, focus. Just keep working the system. |