Numb3rs s02e15 Episode Script
The Running Man
A most impressive showing, Ron.
That was awfully, awfully fast.
Thank you.
Thank you, thank you.
Any thoughts on my pace calculations? There may be something in the physics of "swing time.
" Airborne duration during a running stride.
Yeah There are new studies into the time it takes the nervous system to transmit contraction instructions to the muscles: "twitch time.
" "Twitch time.
" The whole concept has me examining some interesting algorithmic concepts.
Undoubtedly, more interesting when discussed over dinner.
Do you care to join us for an Okie Dog? As much as I hate to run and run, but I I've barely got time to shower.
I'm doing calibrations over at the DNA lab most of the night.
Uncharitable as it may sound, it pains me to share your aptitude with genomes.
See you tomorrow afternoon at the LIGO lab, professor.
- All right.
See you.
- Professor.
So you're having a sophomore work at your precious Laser Interferometry lab, hmm? Some sophomore! His technical acumen with complicated machinery unprecedented at the undergrad level.
If he had a similar gift at mathetmatics, I think we'd be looking at the next Charles Eppes.
Go.
I come in to calibrate the synthesizer for the morning tests I walk in, I see two guys pushing it down the hall, and I turn around and there's another guy there with a gun, and he cold-cocks me.
Was the weapon a shotgun, a handgun; maybe it was a rifle? No, it was a nickel-plated Beretta.
It was a nine-millimeter.
You know a lot about guns.
You grow up in South Philly, you see your share.
Could you recognize the burglars if you saw them again? The guy with the gun.
The other two guys were pretty far away.
I'd definitely try.
I'll be right back.
Okay.
So how is Ron? He won't be we aring a tight hat anytime soon, but he's fine.
He was walking in, the burglars were coming out and kind of walked right over him.
You guys know him? Yeah.
Ron works with us.
He's one of Larry's assistants at the LIGO project.
Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory.
We measure ripples in space-time, trying to prove the existence of black holes It's been said that he's the, uh, the "next Charlie Eppes".
What was stolen? It was a Mark Five DNA Synthesizer.
Is that serious? A DNA synthesizer has many functions, most of them positive: genetic analysis, anthropological study But it's also used to sequence microorganisms invertebrate vectors of infectious diseases bacterial pathogens Wait a minute, Charlie, you're saying this thing could make a disease? No, it can't really make them.
But with the DNA and protein sequence data it contains, it could customize them.
And by "customize," you mean Weaponize.
These burglars cut through the roof.
They came in through the air ducts.
What about these sensors? Why didn't they trip? They're passive infrared motion sensors.
They're body temperature sensitive.
They used these to jam them with high and low temperature signals at the same time it gave it a false read.
So they had the place cased pretty well ahead of time, right? Really well cased.
These floor bolts they're only unlockable by a biometric iris scanner.
And there's no sign of forced entry.
Yeah; inside job.
Looks like it.
What exactly did they take? A Mark Five DNA Synthesizer.
It can be used to produce a billion DNA copies in under three hours.
We could have a serious national security problem on our hands.
Using this synthesizer to determine the sequences of pathogens, those pathogens can then be redesigned for greater infectiousness.
So conceivably, this thing could be used to create a pandemic.
Using a less sophisticated synthesizer, a professor in New York stitched together a polio virus genome, which then spontaneously started making infectious polio viruses.
The thing can design bioweapons.
There are a lot of rogue nations out there that would like to get their hands on that ability.
So we're not just talking about high-end theft here, this could potentially be espionage.
Either way, we gotta find the thing before it hits the black market.
What'd you say about the biometric sensor? Only five iris scans can open the security bolts.
And all five professors are ablibied.
Actually, the biometric sesnsor doesn't read the iris.
No, it reduces it to a series of values, turning the iris into a constellation of sorts a diagram of simple lines, connected by unique points.
And each point has a specific value, based on its position sort of like how stars are measured by their relationship to one another in the night sky.
The values are represented by a combination unique to the thumbprint, and it is that number that the biometric sensor compares to its database of allowed values.
So then they just hack the combination.
But first they have to decode the scanner's algorithm.
Which they had to have prior access to.
And someone would have to have the mathematical and the technical aptitude to run the algorithm.
Someone like Professor Charles Eppes.
Or maybe "the next Charlie Eppes".
That was a joke, David.
I was making a joke for Larry's benefit.
Wh-what? What? The kid that walked in on the burglars he's supposed to be some kind of technical whiz, right? And he has access to that DNA lab.
But the security cameras give him an alibi.
Only for the actual heist he could've had something to do with it: the planning of it, the setting up of it "An Attempt to Find a Number in Base 12, by Charles Eppes".
Hey! Grade Two.
Mm I was quite quite, uh, quixotic in elementary school.
You know, my mother used to pack all my old schoolwork in boxes, so I'm just, uh taking a trip down memory lane.
Is it even remotely possible that our recent discussion of the future has you retreating into the past? I'm not retreating I'm simply reminiscing.
Reliving old glories that can be a dangerous narcotic.
So I understand the campus is abuzz about the, uh DNA lab burglary.
You know, just color me idealistic, but I find it inconceivable that any student of science could sabotage the efforts of so many for short-term monetary gain.
Are there any suspects? They're talking to a lot of people.
Yeah? Anybody in particular? You know that joke I made to David it might have, um purely inadvertently put some extra attention on, uh on Ron Allen.
Oh, Charlie Ron Allen has surmounted incredible obstacles just to get into Calsci I know.
Well, that you could erect one more barrier, just out of some some careless remark? Larry.
They're not singling him out.
They're talking to everyone who had access to that lab, okay? Okay.
You know that if you were to fall under similar scrutiny I would go beyond the boundaries of the observable universe to defend you, and you know that.
I always thought your interests in music were computational, not compositional.
What have you got here? I've never seen this.
Don and I took piano lessons when we were children, but Hm, "Etude in G Minor" by who is that? Margaret Mann.
Margaret Mann? That's my mother's maiden name.
She was a lawyer.
Who apparently also composed an etude in G minor.
Yeah, I figured you guys would come back around to me.
Why'd you think that? Poor kid from the bad neighborhood.
I been the usual suspect since I was ten.
Ron, we're not talking to you because you had a rough childhood, okay? You're one of several people with the technical expertise and unrestricted access necessary to pull off this burglary.
I'm not blaming you.
I'd suspect me, too a guy who has to work four different jobs just to stay ahead of his student housing bills? Fencing his synthesizer for maybe $50,000, that'd smooth off a lot of corners.
You seem to have worked out the math pretty thoroughly.
Well, when you spend your life with nothing, you know what everything costs.
Look, I grew up in foster homes and homeless shelters.
I stole textbooks, and I taught myself enough to get a GED.
I'm too proud of what I've accomplished to risk it all for something so stupid.
It's sort of a persuasive argument.
Didn't persuade me so much.
Why? I don't know.
The way he brags about growing up hard.
Throws us some street slang to try to sell it.
You think someone with that kind of history wouldn't talk about it so much? You work that hard to polish yourself you want to put some distance on it, too.
Doug Windham? When are you guys gonna stop hassling me? No hassle.
We just want to talk.
His shoots a lot further than yours.
Sorry.
Every time I see a badge, I just want to hurt someone.
Someplace private we could talk? It's not gonna be that long a conversation.
LAPD Burglary Detail gave us a list of go-to guys for high-end break-in tools.
It just so happens your name had a big fat star next to it.
That's 'cause they're lazy.
This shop has been straight for five years, yet you guys are here hassling me every time a safe goes down.
And notice, I'm still not in jail.
So theoretically, if we wanted to get by a passive infrared motion sensor and a biometric iris scanner I.
R.
motion sensor can get jammed with an oscillating heat pulse.
Biometrics, I don't know, they're after my time.
Well, who picked up the torch? I don't know.
But when you guys find out, why don't you have the LAPD put a big fat gold star next to his name.
Clearly this guy knows more than he's saying.
Why don't you do a phone dump on his cell and the machine shop.
You know, go back, like, two or three months.
Job like this got to take a while to set up, right? Yeah, think so.
Megan, how we doing on the interviews? Uh, I'm more than halfway through Calsci's list.
What do you make of this Ron Allen kid? Well, his life story would make a hell of a movie.
Uh, remake of The Wrong Man, perhaps? The administration is asking me and other project managers to suspend Ron from all lab work till your investigation is completed.
Well, that might be a good idea, Larry.
The theft of a DNA synthesizer is not a simple one.
In the hands of a hostile government it could be used to create an avian flu virus this could be one of the worst WMD threats our country has faced.
Listen, I appreciate the seriousness of this theft, but now to my knowledge, you have no evidence that links Ron to this crime.
Hey, Larry, This is an ongoing investigation here.
You are casting a black cloud over a young man who's faced stupendous odds, a young man whose promise at such a young age, it's incalculable.
A young man who isn't real.
I did a deeper background check into Ron Allen.
Born in Philadelphia August 24, 1987.
Died November 21, '87.
The kid you think Ron Allen is, Larry, he doesn't exist.
There's no sign of him.
Well, he had to know it was just a matter of time till we figured out who he was.
Yeah, well, which we still don't know.
What's the matter with this room? Could use a vacuum cleaner.
Other than that, it's your typical college kid stuff.
Yeah.
Perfectly typical.
But all over the map.
There's hip-hop and heavy metal, and kung fu movies and horror films.
What were you into sophomore year of college? Cheerleaders.
And I was Kurosawa and Coltrane.
But if you look around this room, there isn't one thing that wasn't recorded, written or filmed in the last two years.
It's like he went out and bought a bunch of magazines of what college students were into and then bought everything to make himself look typical.
So he wasn't hiding just his identify but also his personality.
Reeves.
That's great.
Thank you.
All right, whoever Ron Allen is, he paid his cell phone bill on time the GPS just tracked him to a bookstore on campus.
None of the clerks recognized his photo.
I didn't see him hiding in the stacks, either.
Why don't we call him and ask where he is? Yeah, why don't we? Hello? Excuse me, Miss? Do you know this man? Oh, um that's Phil.
Phil? Phil Stark, my boyfriend.
Would that happen to be his phone? Uh he said I could use it.
Who are you guys? FBI.
Oh, my God, he's not in trouble? We just want to talk to him.
Well I don't see how you're gonna do that.
Why not? He's in the desert.
He left to go camping yesterday.
Great.
So we'll go search the Mojave Desert.
So is he Phil Stark or is he, you know, Ron Allen? Well, that's the thing he's Phil to his girlfriend, he's Ron Allen to the people at Calsci, there's no fingerprints on the guy anywhere.
Well, at least you know one place not to look for him.
Yeah, well, we got a lot of real estate to cover and not a lot of time.
It's bad enough that synthesizer's out there.
We don't know what the guy knows or whose hands he's gonna put it in.
You know, Larry's devastated.
Larry.
Isn't it funny the people who are closest to us, they always find it easy to keep secrets.
You know, it's interesting you say that, because I don't recall you ever telling me that Mom was a published composer.
What-what what is this? Where did you find this? I found it in the garage.
What, Mom? Yeah, see? Margaret Mann.
Oh.
Yeah.
Your mother was a very talented musician.
She even had an offer to study in Vienna.
What are you talking about? No way.
Oh, that's why all those piano lessons with the-the nightmare woman Petrie Dish with the lozenge breath.
Mrs.
Petrie.
You know, one time she filed my fingernails for me.
Wait, hold on.
Why didn't she ever play? Did you ever see Mom play that piano? Well, she had to make a choice between the law and music.
And when she made the choice, then music was a closed issue.
Except that it wasn't.
These-these compositions are dated through the '80s, through the '90s I mean, I think she was writing music up until You know? No, I didn't know.
Hey, hey! Doug, careful with the TV! Your grandkids are gonna be working for me for free! Come on! Gino McGinty.
This guy's rap sheet's just about as old as he is.
Mostly receiving and possession of stolen property, major ties to about a dozen foreign black markets.
Doug Windham's phone dump had a bunch of calls back and forth with McGinty before the burglary.
There were about a half a dozen after, too, including one 15 minutes after we talked to him.
For a guy not in the burglary business anymore, he sure does keep some shady company.
I want to put together a raid team, but Don doesn't want to risk spooking anybody yet.
Last thing we need is that synthesizer leaving the country before we can locate it.
I went to bat for him.
I stormed into your brother's office, I put my own name on the line for I don't even know his name.
I made a complete fool of myself.
Larry, your heart was in the right place.
Well-intentioned ignorance is a slender defense at best.
He was a complete and utter fraud.
Not a complete fraud.
I mean, he certainly knew how to run this equipment.
And here I am, scrutinizing infinitesimal ripples in the space-time of Einstein's relativistic universe, when all the while, I can't see this, this immense lie played out right before me.
You are exactly right.
Why is this not comforting me? LIGO doesn't see cosmic events, does it? No, the events emit gravitational waves which we measure with lasers and mirrors.
Which is how I'm checking my own predictions on quantum corrections.
Well, then.
You didn't see Ron either.
You saw the waves he created.
You were unable to trace Ron Allen's history because he was careful to conceal his past.
What he couldn't conceal, however, was the impact of his past.
I'm so hoping you have one of those cute little analogies for this.
As a matter of fact, I do.
A person's journey through life is like a stone skipping across water.
No matter how briefly it lands in one place, it leaves ripples behind, evidence that it has been there.
Now by studying those ripples, we can determine the path of the stone.
And with a little math and a lot of luck, we can determine where the stone began its journey.
Ron Allen's ripples were his facility at operating technically sophisticated apparatus.
Couldn't he have learned to use these machines at CalSci? Any one of them, perhaps, but to be able to operate these three different machines with his skill level, well, that's like teaching yourself how to fly a helicopter, sail a yacht and race a Formula One car.
So he had to know how to use the same kind of equipment before CalSci then.
And I'm assuming the scientific community at this level is pretty small, right? Somewhere in the tens of thousands.
But I refined my search with a new set of ripples.
Remember, track and field.
Right, because he ran long distance.
Right, so I went through research projects, filtered the names of research assistants against college track meet times, and I found these three.
Although, I got to tell you, there's probably more.
University of Hawaii's Duke's Bioanalysis Group, 1999.
And MIT's Genome Research Team, 2001.
He's like a chameleon.
More like a snake, shedding successive skins.
Probably has a new identity by now.
And a new target.
University of Hawaii accepts Paul Combs, who says he grew up on a Wyoming ranch.
He's an unspectacular, but a solid B-student with an interest in astronomy, microbiology and competitive running, who disappeared in 1998 with seven grand worth of computer equipment.
He surfaces again as Henry Viera, a freshman at Duke in 1999.
This time, he say he grew up on an Alaskan fishing boat.
Now he's a better student and a faster runner.
That makes sense.
He knows the classes and runners improve in their mid-20s.
Yeah, only this time his disappearance coincides with the theft of a $15,000 electron microscope.
Then Allen Donaldson gets into MIT in 2001.
Introduces the "kid from the street" story.
He's got to be on his way to 30, trying to pass for 18 at this point.
Star student, star runner, and gone the next year along with something called the Mass Spectrometer, worth upwards of $40,000.
All right, so, what? He builds the identities of a dead guy from another state? So he gets the birth certificate, which gets him a driver's license, Social Security card, all that.
It fits our spy theory.
Actually, it doesn't.
Because the stuff he's stealing has value, but it's not sensitive enough for an agent to break cover.
Okay, so he's just a thief.
That doesn't really work either, because although he's stealing bigger every time, there's just not enough money there to justify the time he spends as a student.
Wait a minute.
What if the thefts weren't an end, but a means? A means to what? You know, like Ground Hog Day, right? He gets to live the same life over and over again, but each time better.
Like a junkie stealing just enough to get to his next fix.
Only his high is from the false celebrity he gets with every new persona.
Yeah, but this thing, the synthesizer's a much bigger deal than that.
Because he needs a bigger fix to get the same high.
Right.
We just got lucky on the Gino McGinty wire tap.
We got him on tape planning to move a major piece of merchandise this afternoon.
Good.
You know, I don't believe I've ever appreciated the resemblance to Pan before.
The Pentatonic Scale.
It's fascinating how a simple set of fractions can come alive.
What do we have here? Norwegian Willow Flute.
The attendant one-dimensional wave equation has mesmerizing harmonic properties.
It also makes a very nice noise.
Okay, uh, not to look a gift horse in the mouth, Larry, but the, uh, the emotional rebound is, uh, is bordering on manic depressive.
Look, I'm taking solace in the fact that this man fooled everybody.
So misery loves company.
Well, it also loves bright, new research assistants, and I actually interviewed a very promising applicant just today.
There's always another young, brilliant student coming down the road, isn't there? Yeah, sure.
I mean, one would hope so, right? Let me ask you something.
Did you actually think that I was jealous of Ron Allen? Well, I mean Yeah, maybe a scooch.
I'll be honest with you.
You weren't exactly wrong.
Not jealous of Ron not specifically But? Well, you know, when I was a 13-year-old freshman, it wasn't much fun, but it was cool.
Everything I did was that much more impressive, because of how young I was.
And, you know, it was always, "If he's able to accomplish that now, "can you imagine what amazing things he'll accomplish when he's 25?" Now I'm 30 years old.
Listen, listen.
Paul Erdich published more than 1500 papers.
He died, literally, at the chalkboard at age 83.
Come on.
You haven't seen your best years yet, Charles.
No, but I'll never come ahead of schedule again.
Anyone interested in lunch? Hey, you know we never seem to throw away much from this house, do we? You know, that was the deal I made with Mom.
She let me quit piano as long as I never quit music entirely.
So you started making your own instruments.
It was a very early sign that parenting Charlie Eppes would present some very unique challenges.
You know, she must have been so disappointed that Don and I didn't like the piano.
And I'm thinking that's the reason that she kept her passion for the piano hidden from us.
No, Charlie, she didn't keep it hidden from you guys.
She kept it hidden from me.
Why do you say that? You know how your mother and I met? Sure, you were working for a housing developer and she was an intern for a tenants rights organization, right? Ooh, a latter day Romeo and Juliet story.
You see, um, we decided that I would support her in her last year of law school and she would support me through graduate school.
Then she told me that music wasn't really a serious option for her.
She was too much in love with the law.
Somehow I think I was a little too eager to believe her.
She just didn't want me to know what a hard decision it was.
That she gave up something that she really loved.
For something she loved more, Alan.
You can't lose sight of that.
Well maybe.
About time you guys got here.
This thing's been burning a hole in my warehouse.
Get this thing on the truck.
Come on! You got to be kidding me.
FBI! FBI! Don't move.
Against the truck.
Hands on your head.
Let's go.
Let me ask you something.
Since when is selling quality electronics at low prices a federal crime? Since you started selling Mark V DNA synthesizers.
So your buyer was Cuban.
A Cuban national.
Is that right? That's right.
To tell you the truth, I'm as shocked as you are.
I got you selling a bioterror weapon to an enemy state.
Bioterror? Yeah.
Ah.
And I thought it was a photocopier.
We got you.
We got you on tape.
Windham calling you and telling you we were getting close.
Never seen this kid before in my life.
You gonna waste my time here, Gino? He tipped you off, only he'd never done a job this big before so he needed your expertise.
No, no - I sell electronics, okay? Yeah, sometimes I don't know where they're coming from or where they're going, but I don't steal.
Fact - you set him up with a crew.
Fact - you sent him to Windham to get the tools.
So what are you talking to me? Go talk to Windham.
Well, selling tools isn't a crime, but using them is, and in this case it's a Federal rap treason.
That's life in SuperMax.
So you know that little mistake, that, that thing you've been worried about doing for the last 15 years? Well, you made it.
You sure made it now, buddy.
I paid Doug Windham, 50 Gs for the damn thing.
I took it out of his shop myself.
So what, you're telling me he stole it? All I know is Windham's too greedy to help some kid set up a score and settle for short money.
Now, I can guarantee you, he was his partner whether he liked that or not.
FBI! FBI! Let's go! Take the office.
Hey, David.
Come take a look at this.
David Bullet to the chest, no sign of a fight.
Well, the techs just gave us a fast fingerprint match to the ones we lifted from Ron Allen's dorm room.
I'm thinking maybe Allen shows up looking for for his payoff, has some kind of beef with Windham and wins.
Now he's got maybe 50 grand disappearing money.
Or maybe not.
Foreman says they're missing a portable plasma cutter.
Burns through metal like butter.
They use it to cut though vault doors in case of emergencies.
Sounds like our boy's planning a bigger heist.
So there are four states of matter - solid liquid, gas, and, when you superheat gas plasma.
Actually, you know what? There's five, if you consider Bose-Einstein condensates Which we really don't need to consider, right? No, I guess not.
A plasma cutter uses an electrode circuit to spark a stream of directed plasma 30,000 degrees Fahrenheit at 20,000 feet per second.
Now, this particular model can cut ten inches All right, all right.
of one-inch steel plate in under a minute.
Which means Ron Allen whoever he is can walk through just about any door he feels like.
So, the question is, what is the guy after? I think he's looking to do something spectacular.
Something to save his jilted ego.
I mean, he's being competing against kids with less experience for nine years.
He knows that's all gonna come out and he's gonna be held up to ridicule.
So, he's got to prove to us that he's not some loser, that he's a genius.
Oh, he's no genius.
He's Wesley Shryer from the suburb of Wheaton, Illinois.
A cop from Wheaton PD recognized him from one of the older photos we sent out.
They went to high school together.
Cop says, and I quote, "He was average to the point of forgettable".
Went to community college for two years.
Then he dropped off the face of the Earth after '95.
Whoever he is, we better find him, before he steps up his game.
Fraud or not, Ron worked on an impressive breadth of research.
Biochemistry, astrophysics, genetics Yeah, but doing the same thing over and over again.
Never challenging himself, never reaching I'm wondering if I see a little of myself in Ron.
You?! Well listen, I can vouch for your academic credentials, and to the best of my knowledge, you're not homicidal.
I'm talking about living in a bubble.
The safe, comfortable world of academia.
But Charlie, I don't know anyone who challenges himself as relentlessly as you do.
Yeah, and as far as living in some academic bubble, I mean, look at us.
We're out in this garage.
We're trying to predict a thief's next target by connecting experience with-with potential targets.
And we're not there yet.
We need to find a new approach, a, uh, a shortcut of some sort.
Something like like Benford's Law.
Benford's Law? That's a simple probability observation.
No, that's not all it is.
If you take any table of wide-ranging values- census data, test results, land mass sizes- in more than 30% of the values.
And so on You know, the old story goes that Simon Newcomb discovered it by flipping through books of logarithm tables.
He discovered that the earlier pages are more worn than the later ones.
Benford's Law is not about conscious decision making.
It is a statistical phenomenon.
Precisely.
Which is why it's highly unlikely that Ron Allen spent nine years working at a specific theft?! I mean, after all, the most valuable machines today didn't even exist nine years ago.
That's right.
Ron's knowledge base would pull him more toward one target than another.
So, he opens his book of knowledge to a well-worn page where the spine is already cracked.
University of Hawaii's telescope.
He worked with cosmic gravitation signatures.
Which explains his familiarity with LIGO's raison d'etre.
At Duke, he worked with Beowulf computer clusters LIGO has a Beowulf Cluster.
And with MIT's genome project, he must have come in contact with lasers Lasers photodetectors.
Photodetectors LIGO is the well-worn page.
He's gonna rob the LIGO lab.
My LIGO lab?! All right, come on.
You know, why don't you let me go first, just in case? No, no, if he has already been in here, I don't even know if I want to live.
Okay, the computers they all seem to be here and accounted for.
Of course, the big-ticket items they're in here.
All right, well, why don't you open that up? Laser diodes alone are worth $150,000 apiece.
The sapphires, upwards of half a million.
That's a sapphire? Invaluable in optics.
You know, bathysphere windows? Those are sapphires.
Now, those are fabricated, but still intensely expensive.
And where's the other one? Oh, it's down in the LIGO tunnel with the laser.
Okay, uh, so nothing's missing.
No, it would appear we got here first.
That is, if he's coming.
Do you see that? Don, we've got a suspicious vehicle parked in the middle of the running track.
Right, well, check it out, and let me know what you see.
What's that running track? Like, a mile from here? Four kilometers, I would think.
All right, so they're not our guys.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
The LIGO tunnel.
What about it? Measurements are taken by shooting lasers through an L-shaped vacuum pipe with four-kilometer arms.
Now, that thing runs directly beneath the running track, and it bypasses all of our alarm systems.
You just said there's a sapphire in the tunnel.
All right, Megan, that's our guys.
Go, go, go! FBI! Get down on the ground.
Let me see your hands.
Get down! Get down.
FBI! Get down on your knees right FBI! Get your hands up! Come on, I got him! Down! Get down! Put your hands behind your head.
Get your hands on your head.
Get your hands on your head! Face down, right now.
I knew I couldn't keep it going anymore.
It got harder and harder to pass for 18.
The more places I worked, the more I worried I'd run into someone I knew.
The scientific community just isn't that big.
The LIGO job was supposed to be my retirement.
So, why steal the synthesizer? You had to know that was going to bring some attention to you.
I needed the cash to put the heist together.
And I was still on schedule until you guys tipped to Windham.
And then Windham wanted a piece of the LIGO job, so you shot him? Things got crazy, but it wasn't me.
It was Jackson.
Oh, yes, Ron.
Blame the dead guy.
It's the truth.
You have to know how funny that word sounds as it comes out of your mouth.
You know, every one of those schools turned down Wes Shryer the B student from the good high school.
They weren't judging me for my merit, for my ability, for my potential.
They penalized me for not having some hard luck story.
So, you penalized people with real hard luck.
All I did was level the playing field.
Get my fair shot.
Fair? Spend 18 years dodging gangs working to help support your family beating every odd out there just to get your high school diploma.
You do that and you can sit here and talk to me about what's fair.
Hello? Dad? Dad I was thinking That seems to be your perpetual state, Charlie.
about Mom.
Her music Yeah I've been thinking about that a lot, too, Charlie.
I went through guilt and anger an irrational sense of betrayal that she hid this from me.
Dad, I don't think she was hiding it.
Well, not in the way you mean.
You know, I have places that I'd like to go to be alone.
I go hiking.
You go fishing.
Do you think your mother needed to be alone with her music? It's just part of being human, you know? To want to find some place solely for yourself.
Whether it be outside in the world or deep inside your head.
That was awfully, awfully fast.
Thank you.
Thank you, thank you.
Any thoughts on my pace calculations? There may be something in the physics of "swing time.
" Airborne duration during a running stride.
Yeah There are new studies into the time it takes the nervous system to transmit contraction instructions to the muscles: "twitch time.
" "Twitch time.
" The whole concept has me examining some interesting algorithmic concepts.
Undoubtedly, more interesting when discussed over dinner.
Do you care to join us for an Okie Dog? As much as I hate to run and run, but I I've barely got time to shower.
I'm doing calibrations over at the DNA lab most of the night.
Uncharitable as it may sound, it pains me to share your aptitude with genomes.
See you tomorrow afternoon at the LIGO lab, professor.
- All right.
See you.
- Professor.
So you're having a sophomore work at your precious Laser Interferometry lab, hmm? Some sophomore! His technical acumen with complicated machinery unprecedented at the undergrad level.
If he had a similar gift at mathetmatics, I think we'd be looking at the next Charles Eppes.
Go.
I come in to calibrate the synthesizer for the morning tests I walk in, I see two guys pushing it down the hall, and I turn around and there's another guy there with a gun, and he cold-cocks me.
Was the weapon a shotgun, a handgun; maybe it was a rifle? No, it was a nickel-plated Beretta.
It was a nine-millimeter.
You know a lot about guns.
You grow up in South Philly, you see your share.
Could you recognize the burglars if you saw them again? The guy with the gun.
The other two guys were pretty far away.
I'd definitely try.
I'll be right back.
Okay.
So how is Ron? He won't be we aring a tight hat anytime soon, but he's fine.
He was walking in, the burglars were coming out and kind of walked right over him.
You guys know him? Yeah.
Ron works with us.
He's one of Larry's assistants at the LIGO project.
Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory.
We measure ripples in space-time, trying to prove the existence of black holes It's been said that he's the, uh, the "next Charlie Eppes".
What was stolen? It was a Mark Five DNA Synthesizer.
Is that serious? A DNA synthesizer has many functions, most of them positive: genetic analysis, anthropological study But it's also used to sequence microorganisms invertebrate vectors of infectious diseases bacterial pathogens Wait a minute, Charlie, you're saying this thing could make a disease? No, it can't really make them.
But with the DNA and protein sequence data it contains, it could customize them.
And by "customize," you mean Weaponize.
These burglars cut through the roof.
They came in through the air ducts.
What about these sensors? Why didn't they trip? They're passive infrared motion sensors.
They're body temperature sensitive.
They used these to jam them with high and low temperature signals at the same time it gave it a false read.
So they had the place cased pretty well ahead of time, right? Really well cased.
These floor bolts they're only unlockable by a biometric iris scanner.
And there's no sign of forced entry.
Yeah; inside job.
Looks like it.
What exactly did they take? A Mark Five DNA Synthesizer.
It can be used to produce a billion DNA copies in under three hours.
We could have a serious national security problem on our hands.
Using this synthesizer to determine the sequences of pathogens, those pathogens can then be redesigned for greater infectiousness.
So conceivably, this thing could be used to create a pandemic.
Using a less sophisticated synthesizer, a professor in New York stitched together a polio virus genome, which then spontaneously started making infectious polio viruses.
The thing can design bioweapons.
There are a lot of rogue nations out there that would like to get their hands on that ability.
So we're not just talking about high-end theft here, this could potentially be espionage.
Either way, we gotta find the thing before it hits the black market.
What'd you say about the biometric sensor? Only five iris scans can open the security bolts.
And all five professors are ablibied.
Actually, the biometric sesnsor doesn't read the iris.
No, it reduces it to a series of values, turning the iris into a constellation of sorts a diagram of simple lines, connected by unique points.
And each point has a specific value, based on its position sort of like how stars are measured by their relationship to one another in the night sky.
The values are represented by a combination unique to the thumbprint, and it is that number that the biometric sensor compares to its database of allowed values.
So then they just hack the combination.
But first they have to decode the scanner's algorithm.
Which they had to have prior access to.
And someone would have to have the mathematical and the technical aptitude to run the algorithm.
Someone like Professor Charles Eppes.
Or maybe "the next Charlie Eppes".
That was a joke, David.
I was making a joke for Larry's benefit.
Wh-what? What? The kid that walked in on the burglars he's supposed to be some kind of technical whiz, right? And he has access to that DNA lab.
But the security cameras give him an alibi.
Only for the actual heist he could've had something to do with it: the planning of it, the setting up of it "An Attempt to Find a Number in Base 12, by Charles Eppes".
Hey! Grade Two.
Mm I was quite quite, uh, quixotic in elementary school.
You know, my mother used to pack all my old schoolwork in boxes, so I'm just, uh taking a trip down memory lane.
Is it even remotely possible that our recent discussion of the future has you retreating into the past? I'm not retreating I'm simply reminiscing.
Reliving old glories that can be a dangerous narcotic.
So I understand the campus is abuzz about the, uh DNA lab burglary.
You know, just color me idealistic, but I find it inconceivable that any student of science could sabotage the efforts of so many for short-term monetary gain.
Are there any suspects? They're talking to a lot of people.
Yeah? Anybody in particular? You know that joke I made to David it might have, um purely inadvertently put some extra attention on, uh on Ron Allen.
Oh, Charlie Ron Allen has surmounted incredible obstacles just to get into Calsci I know.
Well, that you could erect one more barrier, just out of some some careless remark? Larry.
They're not singling him out.
They're talking to everyone who had access to that lab, okay? Okay.
You know that if you were to fall under similar scrutiny I would go beyond the boundaries of the observable universe to defend you, and you know that.
I always thought your interests in music were computational, not compositional.
What have you got here? I've never seen this.
Don and I took piano lessons when we were children, but Hm, "Etude in G Minor" by who is that? Margaret Mann.
Margaret Mann? That's my mother's maiden name.
She was a lawyer.
Who apparently also composed an etude in G minor.
Yeah, I figured you guys would come back around to me.
Why'd you think that? Poor kid from the bad neighborhood.
I been the usual suspect since I was ten.
Ron, we're not talking to you because you had a rough childhood, okay? You're one of several people with the technical expertise and unrestricted access necessary to pull off this burglary.
I'm not blaming you.
I'd suspect me, too a guy who has to work four different jobs just to stay ahead of his student housing bills? Fencing his synthesizer for maybe $50,000, that'd smooth off a lot of corners.
You seem to have worked out the math pretty thoroughly.
Well, when you spend your life with nothing, you know what everything costs.
Look, I grew up in foster homes and homeless shelters.
I stole textbooks, and I taught myself enough to get a GED.
I'm too proud of what I've accomplished to risk it all for something so stupid.
It's sort of a persuasive argument.
Didn't persuade me so much.
Why? I don't know.
The way he brags about growing up hard.
Throws us some street slang to try to sell it.
You think someone with that kind of history wouldn't talk about it so much? You work that hard to polish yourself you want to put some distance on it, too.
Doug Windham? When are you guys gonna stop hassling me? No hassle.
We just want to talk.
His shoots a lot further than yours.
Sorry.
Every time I see a badge, I just want to hurt someone.
Someplace private we could talk? It's not gonna be that long a conversation.
LAPD Burglary Detail gave us a list of go-to guys for high-end break-in tools.
It just so happens your name had a big fat star next to it.
That's 'cause they're lazy.
This shop has been straight for five years, yet you guys are here hassling me every time a safe goes down.
And notice, I'm still not in jail.
So theoretically, if we wanted to get by a passive infrared motion sensor and a biometric iris scanner I.
R.
motion sensor can get jammed with an oscillating heat pulse.
Biometrics, I don't know, they're after my time.
Well, who picked up the torch? I don't know.
But when you guys find out, why don't you have the LAPD put a big fat gold star next to his name.
Clearly this guy knows more than he's saying.
Why don't you do a phone dump on his cell and the machine shop.
You know, go back, like, two or three months.
Job like this got to take a while to set up, right? Yeah, think so.
Megan, how we doing on the interviews? Uh, I'm more than halfway through Calsci's list.
What do you make of this Ron Allen kid? Well, his life story would make a hell of a movie.
Uh, remake of The Wrong Man, perhaps? The administration is asking me and other project managers to suspend Ron from all lab work till your investigation is completed.
Well, that might be a good idea, Larry.
The theft of a DNA synthesizer is not a simple one.
In the hands of a hostile government it could be used to create an avian flu virus this could be one of the worst WMD threats our country has faced.
Listen, I appreciate the seriousness of this theft, but now to my knowledge, you have no evidence that links Ron to this crime.
Hey, Larry, This is an ongoing investigation here.
You are casting a black cloud over a young man who's faced stupendous odds, a young man whose promise at such a young age, it's incalculable.
A young man who isn't real.
I did a deeper background check into Ron Allen.
Born in Philadelphia August 24, 1987.
Died November 21, '87.
The kid you think Ron Allen is, Larry, he doesn't exist.
There's no sign of him.
Well, he had to know it was just a matter of time till we figured out who he was.
Yeah, well, which we still don't know.
What's the matter with this room? Could use a vacuum cleaner.
Other than that, it's your typical college kid stuff.
Yeah.
Perfectly typical.
But all over the map.
There's hip-hop and heavy metal, and kung fu movies and horror films.
What were you into sophomore year of college? Cheerleaders.
And I was Kurosawa and Coltrane.
But if you look around this room, there isn't one thing that wasn't recorded, written or filmed in the last two years.
It's like he went out and bought a bunch of magazines of what college students were into and then bought everything to make himself look typical.
So he wasn't hiding just his identify but also his personality.
Reeves.
That's great.
Thank you.
All right, whoever Ron Allen is, he paid his cell phone bill on time the GPS just tracked him to a bookstore on campus.
None of the clerks recognized his photo.
I didn't see him hiding in the stacks, either.
Why don't we call him and ask where he is? Yeah, why don't we? Hello? Excuse me, Miss? Do you know this man? Oh, um that's Phil.
Phil? Phil Stark, my boyfriend.
Would that happen to be his phone? Uh he said I could use it.
Who are you guys? FBI.
Oh, my God, he's not in trouble? We just want to talk to him.
Well I don't see how you're gonna do that.
Why not? He's in the desert.
He left to go camping yesterday.
Great.
So we'll go search the Mojave Desert.
So is he Phil Stark or is he, you know, Ron Allen? Well, that's the thing he's Phil to his girlfriend, he's Ron Allen to the people at Calsci, there's no fingerprints on the guy anywhere.
Well, at least you know one place not to look for him.
Yeah, well, we got a lot of real estate to cover and not a lot of time.
It's bad enough that synthesizer's out there.
We don't know what the guy knows or whose hands he's gonna put it in.
You know, Larry's devastated.
Larry.
Isn't it funny the people who are closest to us, they always find it easy to keep secrets.
You know, it's interesting you say that, because I don't recall you ever telling me that Mom was a published composer.
What-what what is this? Where did you find this? I found it in the garage.
What, Mom? Yeah, see? Margaret Mann.
Oh.
Yeah.
Your mother was a very talented musician.
She even had an offer to study in Vienna.
What are you talking about? No way.
Oh, that's why all those piano lessons with the-the nightmare woman Petrie Dish with the lozenge breath.
Mrs.
Petrie.
You know, one time she filed my fingernails for me.
Wait, hold on.
Why didn't she ever play? Did you ever see Mom play that piano? Well, she had to make a choice between the law and music.
And when she made the choice, then music was a closed issue.
Except that it wasn't.
These-these compositions are dated through the '80s, through the '90s I mean, I think she was writing music up until You know? No, I didn't know.
Hey, hey! Doug, careful with the TV! Your grandkids are gonna be working for me for free! Come on! Gino McGinty.
This guy's rap sheet's just about as old as he is.
Mostly receiving and possession of stolen property, major ties to about a dozen foreign black markets.
Doug Windham's phone dump had a bunch of calls back and forth with McGinty before the burglary.
There were about a half a dozen after, too, including one 15 minutes after we talked to him.
For a guy not in the burglary business anymore, he sure does keep some shady company.
I want to put together a raid team, but Don doesn't want to risk spooking anybody yet.
Last thing we need is that synthesizer leaving the country before we can locate it.
I went to bat for him.
I stormed into your brother's office, I put my own name on the line for I don't even know his name.
I made a complete fool of myself.
Larry, your heart was in the right place.
Well-intentioned ignorance is a slender defense at best.
He was a complete and utter fraud.
Not a complete fraud.
I mean, he certainly knew how to run this equipment.
And here I am, scrutinizing infinitesimal ripples in the space-time of Einstein's relativistic universe, when all the while, I can't see this, this immense lie played out right before me.
You are exactly right.
Why is this not comforting me? LIGO doesn't see cosmic events, does it? No, the events emit gravitational waves which we measure with lasers and mirrors.
Which is how I'm checking my own predictions on quantum corrections.
Well, then.
You didn't see Ron either.
You saw the waves he created.
You were unable to trace Ron Allen's history because he was careful to conceal his past.
What he couldn't conceal, however, was the impact of his past.
I'm so hoping you have one of those cute little analogies for this.
As a matter of fact, I do.
A person's journey through life is like a stone skipping across water.
No matter how briefly it lands in one place, it leaves ripples behind, evidence that it has been there.
Now by studying those ripples, we can determine the path of the stone.
And with a little math and a lot of luck, we can determine where the stone began its journey.
Ron Allen's ripples were his facility at operating technically sophisticated apparatus.
Couldn't he have learned to use these machines at CalSci? Any one of them, perhaps, but to be able to operate these three different machines with his skill level, well, that's like teaching yourself how to fly a helicopter, sail a yacht and race a Formula One car.
So he had to know how to use the same kind of equipment before CalSci then.
And I'm assuming the scientific community at this level is pretty small, right? Somewhere in the tens of thousands.
But I refined my search with a new set of ripples.
Remember, track and field.
Right, because he ran long distance.
Right, so I went through research projects, filtered the names of research assistants against college track meet times, and I found these three.
Although, I got to tell you, there's probably more.
University of Hawaii's Duke's Bioanalysis Group, 1999.
And MIT's Genome Research Team, 2001.
He's like a chameleon.
More like a snake, shedding successive skins.
Probably has a new identity by now.
And a new target.
University of Hawaii accepts Paul Combs, who says he grew up on a Wyoming ranch.
He's an unspectacular, but a solid B-student with an interest in astronomy, microbiology and competitive running, who disappeared in 1998 with seven grand worth of computer equipment.
He surfaces again as Henry Viera, a freshman at Duke in 1999.
This time, he say he grew up on an Alaskan fishing boat.
Now he's a better student and a faster runner.
That makes sense.
He knows the classes and runners improve in their mid-20s.
Yeah, only this time his disappearance coincides with the theft of a $15,000 electron microscope.
Then Allen Donaldson gets into MIT in 2001.
Introduces the "kid from the street" story.
He's got to be on his way to 30, trying to pass for 18 at this point.
Star student, star runner, and gone the next year along with something called the Mass Spectrometer, worth upwards of $40,000.
All right, so, what? He builds the identities of a dead guy from another state? So he gets the birth certificate, which gets him a driver's license, Social Security card, all that.
It fits our spy theory.
Actually, it doesn't.
Because the stuff he's stealing has value, but it's not sensitive enough for an agent to break cover.
Okay, so he's just a thief.
That doesn't really work either, because although he's stealing bigger every time, there's just not enough money there to justify the time he spends as a student.
Wait a minute.
What if the thefts weren't an end, but a means? A means to what? You know, like Ground Hog Day, right? He gets to live the same life over and over again, but each time better.
Like a junkie stealing just enough to get to his next fix.
Only his high is from the false celebrity he gets with every new persona.
Yeah, but this thing, the synthesizer's a much bigger deal than that.
Because he needs a bigger fix to get the same high.
Right.
We just got lucky on the Gino McGinty wire tap.
We got him on tape planning to move a major piece of merchandise this afternoon.
Good.
You know, I don't believe I've ever appreciated the resemblance to Pan before.
The Pentatonic Scale.
It's fascinating how a simple set of fractions can come alive.
What do we have here? Norwegian Willow Flute.
The attendant one-dimensional wave equation has mesmerizing harmonic properties.
It also makes a very nice noise.
Okay, uh, not to look a gift horse in the mouth, Larry, but the, uh, the emotional rebound is, uh, is bordering on manic depressive.
Look, I'm taking solace in the fact that this man fooled everybody.
So misery loves company.
Well, it also loves bright, new research assistants, and I actually interviewed a very promising applicant just today.
There's always another young, brilliant student coming down the road, isn't there? Yeah, sure.
I mean, one would hope so, right? Let me ask you something.
Did you actually think that I was jealous of Ron Allen? Well, I mean Yeah, maybe a scooch.
I'll be honest with you.
You weren't exactly wrong.
Not jealous of Ron not specifically But? Well, you know, when I was a 13-year-old freshman, it wasn't much fun, but it was cool.
Everything I did was that much more impressive, because of how young I was.
And, you know, it was always, "If he's able to accomplish that now, "can you imagine what amazing things he'll accomplish when he's 25?" Now I'm 30 years old.
Listen, listen.
Paul Erdich published more than 1500 papers.
He died, literally, at the chalkboard at age 83.
Come on.
You haven't seen your best years yet, Charles.
No, but I'll never come ahead of schedule again.
Anyone interested in lunch? Hey, you know we never seem to throw away much from this house, do we? You know, that was the deal I made with Mom.
She let me quit piano as long as I never quit music entirely.
So you started making your own instruments.
It was a very early sign that parenting Charlie Eppes would present some very unique challenges.
You know, she must have been so disappointed that Don and I didn't like the piano.
And I'm thinking that's the reason that she kept her passion for the piano hidden from us.
No, Charlie, she didn't keep it hidden from you guys.
She kept it hidden from me.
Why do you say that? You know how your mother and I met? Sure, you were working for a housing developer and she was an intern for a tenants rights organization, right? Ooh, a latter day Romeo and Juliet story.
You see, um, we decided that I would support her in her last year of law school and she would support me through graduate school.
Then she told me that music wasn't really a serious option for her.
She was too much in love with the law.
Somehow I think I was a little too eager to believe her.
She just didn't want me to know what a hard decision it was.
That she gave up something that she really loved.
For something she loved more, Alan.
You can't lose sight of that.
Well maybe.
About time you guys got here.
This thing's been burning a hole in my warehouse.
Get this thing on the truck.
Come on! You got to be kidding me.
FBI! FBI! Don't move.
Against the truck.
Hands on your head.
Let's go.
Let me ask you something.
Since when is selling quality electronics at low prices a federal crime? Since you started selling Mark V DNA synthesizers.
So your buyer was Cuban.
A Cuban national.
Is that right? That's right.
To tell you the truth, I'm as shocked as you are.
I got you selling a bioterror weapon to an enemy state.
Bioterror? Yeah.
Ah.
And I thought it was a photocopier.
We got you.
We got you on tape.
Windham calling you and telling you we were getting close.
Never seen this kid before in my life.
You gonna waste my time here, Gino? He tipped you off, only he'd never done a job this big before so he needed your expertise.
No, no - I sell electronics, okay? Yeah, sometimes I don't know where they're coming from or where they're going, but I don't steal.
Fact - you set him up with a crew.
Fact - you sent him to Windham to get the tools.
So what are you talking to me? Go talk to Windham.
Well, selling tools isn't a crime, but using them is, and in this case it's a Federal rap treason.
That's life in SuperMax.
So you know that little mistake, that, that thing you've been worried about doing for the last 15 years? Well, you made it.
You sure made it now, buddy.
I paid Doug Windham, 50 Gs for the damn thing.
I took it out of his shop myself.
So what, you're telling me he stole it? All I know is Windham's too greedy to help some kid set up a score and settle for short money.
Now, I can guarantee you, he was his partner whether he liked that or not.
FBI! FBI! Let's go! Take the office.
Hey, David.
Come take a look at this.
David Bullet to the chest, no sign of a fight.
Well, the techs just gave us a fast fingerprint match to the ones we lifted from Ron Allen's dorm room.
I'm thinking maybe Allen shows up looking for for his payoff, has some kind of beef with Windham and wins.
Now he's got maybe 50 grand disappearing money.
Or maybe not.
Foreman says they're missing a portable plasma cutter.
Burns through metal like butter.
They use it to cut though vault doors in case of emergencies.
Sounds like our boy's planning a bigger heist.
So there are four states of matter - solid liquid, gas, and, when you superheat gas plasma.
Actually, you know what? There's five, if you consider Bose-Einstein condensates Which we really don't need to consider, right? No, I guess not.
A plasma cutter uses an electrode circuit to spark a stream of directed plasma 30,000 degrees Fahrenheit at 20,000 feet per second.
Now, this particular model can cut ten inches All right, all right.
of one-inch steel plate in under a minute.
Which means Ron Allen whoever he is can walk through just about any door he feels like.
So, the question is, what is the guy after? I think he's looking to do something spectacular.
Something to save his jilted ego.
I mean, he's being competing against kids with less experience for nine years.
He knows that's all gonna come out and he's gonna be held up to ridicule.
So, he's got to prove to us that he's not some loser, that he's a genius.
Oh, he's no genius.
He's Wesley Shryer from the suburb of Wheaton, Illinois.
A cop from Wheaton PD recognized him from one of the older photos we sent out.
They went to high school together.
Cop says, and I quote, "He was average to the point of forgettable".
Went to community college for two years.
Then he dropped off the face of the Earth after '95.
Whoever he is, we better find him, before he steps up his game.
Fraud or not, Ron worked on an impressive breadth of research.
Biochemistry, astrophysics, genetics Yeah, but doing the same thing over and over again.
Never challenging himself, never reaching I'm wondering if I see a little of myself in Ron.
You?! Well listen, I can vouch for your academic credentials, and to the best of my knowledge, you're not homicidal.
I'm talking about living in a bubble.
The safe, comfortable world of academia.
But Charlie, I don't know anyone who challenges himself as relentlessly as you do.
Yeah, and as far as living in some academic bubble, I mean, look at us.
We're out in this garage.
We're trying to predict a thief's next target by connecting experience with-with potential targets.
And we're not there yet.
We need to find a new approach, a, uh, a shortcut of some sort.
Something like like Benford's Law.
Benford's Law? That's a simple probability observation.
No, that's not all it is.
If you take any table of wide-ranging values- census data, test results, land mass sizes- in more than 30% of the values.
And so on You know, the old story goes that Simon Newcomb discovered it by flipping through books of logarithm tables.
He discovered that the earlier pages are more worn than the later ones.
Benford's Law is not about conscious decision making.
It is a statistical phenomenon.
Precisely.
Which is why it's highly unlikely that Ron Allen spent nine years working at a specific theft?! I mean, after all, the most valuable machines today didn't even exist nine years ago.
That's right.
Ron's knowledge base would pull him more toward one target than another.
So, he opens his book of knowledge to a well-worn page where the spine is already cracked.
University of Hawaii's telescope.
He worked with cosmic gravitation signatures.
Which explains his familiarity with LIGO's raison d'etre.
At Duke, he worked with Beowulf computer clusters LIGO has a Beowulf Cluster.
And with MIT's genome project, he must have come in contact with lasers Lasers photodetectors.
Photodetectors LIGO is the well-worn page.
He's gonna rob the LIGO lab.
My LIGO lab?! All right, come on.
You know, why don't you let me go first, just in case? No, no, if he has already been in here, I don't even know if I want to live.
Okay, the computers they all seem to be here and accounted for.
Of course, the big-ticket items they're in here.
All right, well, why don't you open that up? Laser diodes alone are worth $150,000 apiece.
The sapphires, upwards of half a million.
That's a sapphire? Invaluable in optics.
You know, bathysphere windows? Those are sapphires.
Now, those are fabricated, but still intensely expensive.
And where's the other one? Oh, it's down in the LIGO tunnel with the laser.
Okay, uh, so nothing's missing.
No, it would appear we got here first.
That is, if he's coming.
Do you see that? Don, we've got a suspicious vehicle parked in the middle of the running track.
Right, well, check it out, and let me know what you see.
What's that running track? Like, a mile from here? Four kilometers, I would think.
All right, so they're not our guys.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
The LIGO tunnel.
What about it? Measurements are taken by shooting lasers through an L-shaped vacuum pipe with four-kilometer arms.
Now, that thing runs directly beneath the running track, and it bypasses all of our alarm systems.
You just said there's a sapphire in the tunnel.
All right, Megan, that's our guys.
Go, go, go! FBI! Get down on the ground.
Let me see your hands.
Get down! Get down.
FBI! Get down on your knees right FBI! Get your hands up! Come on, I got him! Down! Get down! Put your hands behind your head.
Get your hands on your head.
Get your hands on your head! Face down, right now.
I knew I couldn't keep it going anymore.
It got harder and harder to pass for 18.
The more places I worked, the more I worried I'd run into someone I knew.
The scientific community just isn't that big.
The LIGO job was supposed to be my retirement.
So, why steal the synthesizer? You had to know that was going to bring some attention to you.
I needed the cash to put the heist together.
And I was still on schedule until you guys tipped to Windham.
And then Windham wanted a piece of the LIGO job, so you shot him? Things got crazy, but it wasn't me.
It was Jackson.
Oh, yes, Ron.
Blame the dead guy.
It's the truth.
You have to know how funny that word sounds as it comes out of your mouth.
You know, every one of those schools turned down Wes Shryer the B student from the good high school.
They weren't judging me for my merit, for my ability, for my potential.
They penalized me for not having some hard luck story.
So, you penalized people with real hard luck.
All I did was level the playing field.
Get my fair shot.
Fair? Spend 18 years dodging gangs working to help support your family beating every odd out there just to get your high school diploma.
You do that and you can sit here and talk to me about what's fair.
Hello? Dad? Dad I was thinking That seems to be your perpetual state, Charlie.
about Mom.
Her music Yeah I've been thinking about that a lot, too, Charlie.
I went through guilt and anger an irrational sense of betrayal that she hid this from me.
Dad, I don't think she was hiding it.
Well, not in the way you mean.
You know, I have places that I'd like to go to be alone.
I go hiking.
You go fishing.
Do you think your mother needed to be alone with her music? It's just part of being human, you know? To want to find some place solely for yourself.
Whether it be outside in the world or deep inside your head.