Critical Mass by Sara Paretsky Read Free Book Online Page A

coincidence.”
    “Perhaps Martin wouldn’t go out of his way to be in touch with her, but Judy might have tried calling him, you know.”
    The lines in her face deepened. “No!” she shouted.
    “Who else would your daughter reach out to, besides Lotty, if she was really frightened?”
    “You mean who else could she con? After all this time, I’m happy to say I don’t know!”
    I hesitated for a moment, then pulled out the photo of the metal pod on stilts.
    “Do you know any of these people? I found it in the house where Judy’s been—”
    She snatched it from me. “That—oh! So she stole that after Martin’s bar mitzvah, along with my pearl earrings and forty dollars in cash. What was she doing with it?”
    “What is it, Ms. Binder?” I asked. “Lotty said the people looked familiar, but she couldn’t remember their names.”
    “Of course she couldn’t: she was a Herschel. The rest of the world was beneath her notice. Just go! You’ve hurt me enough for one day.” She thrust the photo inside her sweater, her face squeezed into a tight knot of misery.
    I put one of my cards next to the rockets. “If you change your mind about your daughter, or if you want me to help you find your grandson, let me know.”

5
    COMPUTER GAMES
    I BRUSHED PAST KITTY and left Martin’s room, but before I reached the basement stairs, she called to me. “Ms. Detective! Don’t run off.”
    I went back to Martin’s den. After a certain amount of backing and forthing, she decided she wanted to hire me to find her grandson. I told her I’d get her a standard contract, but that my rates were a hundred dollars an hour. She backed and forthed some more, but in the end, her worries about her grandson trumped her worries about money and contracts. She told me she’d pay for two full days’ work and then we’d see how I’d done. I also managed to dig out the name of the company where Martin had been working: Metargon, some ten miles north of the house.
    When I got back outside, my body felt as though someone had tied me to a wall and thrown rocks at me. I wanted to go to bed for a year or two until my muscles stopped aching, but after slumping in my car for a time, I pulled away from the curb. As I left Kedvale Street, I saw the blinds twitch in Kitty’s front window.
    Since I was already north, I decided to go to Metargon first, to see what they knew about their missing computer tech. Before I turned onto the expressway, I looked up the company on my iPad. I’d heard of them, of course, because their game box, the Metar-Genie, was an industry leader, and their search engine, Metar-Quest, was coming up the ranks as a rival to Google. I hadn’t known, though, that Metargonwas big in energy technologies. They were defense contractors, they had plants in seventeen countries around the world. Martin had worked in their computer research lab, just the place for a young man with a passion for rockets and computers.
    I had an easy drive at this time of day, but once I got to Waukegan Road, it was difficult to spot the building. Every big-box retailer on the planet has an outlet along Waukegan. Sprinkled among them are giant fast-food outlets. Their signs flash and dazzle in a muscular competition for notice, but Metargon didn’t draw attention to itself. I finally parked outside a Kentucky Fried and made my way down the street on foot, looking for street numbers.
    Metargon had wrapped itself in a forest of evergreens. I found the sign and the address on a small plaque attached to a set of high rolling gates. On the left, at driver’s-window height, was a phone. I picked it up and told the scratchy voice at the other end that I was hoping to speak to someone about one of their computer techs. The voice asked me to spell Martin’s name, then put me on hold.
    While I waited, the gates rolled open and a few cars came out; a UPS truck pulled up behind me and got buzzed through. I was tempted to walk in behind it, but I continued to