Numb3rs (2005–2010): Season 2, Episode 15 - The Running Man - full transcript
When a DNA synthesizer with terrorist possibilities is stolen from a university lab, Charlie and the team must find it before it leaves the country.
A most impressive showing, Ron.
That was... 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. But you know
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.
Well, undoubtedly, more interesting
when discussed over dinner.
Do you care to join
us for a... an Oki-Dog?
As much as I hate to run,
and run, but I... I barely
got time to shower.
I'm doing calibrations over at
the DNA lab most of the night so...
Uncharitable as it may sound,
but 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 mathematics,
I think we'd be looking
at the next Charles Eppes.
Go.
We all use math every day.
To predict
weather, to tell time,
to handle money.
Math is more than
formulas and equations.
It's logic.
Math is more than
formulas and equations.
It's rationality.
It's using your mind to solve
the biggest mysteries we know.
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 coldcocks 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... So how is Ron?
He won't be wearing a tight hat
anytime soon, but he's fine.
He was walkin' in, the
burglars were comin' 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.
It's... 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 V DNA Synthesizer.
It's that serious?
Yeah. 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 and ahead of time?
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?
Mark V DNA Synthesizer
can be used to produce a billion
DNA copies in under three hours.
I mean, 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.
This 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 alibied.
Well, actually, the
biometric sensor
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 and 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.
Right, 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.
W-W-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.
Yeah, but the security cameras
give him a hell of an alibi.
Only for the actual heist. I mean, he
could've had something to do with it.
You know, the planning of
it, the... the setting up of it...
"An attempt to find a 70-digit
"narcissistic number in base 12.
"By Charles Eppes."
Hey! Grade Two.
Mmm. I was... I was
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... 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?
Oh, well, you know
that joke I made to David.
It might have, um,
purely inadvertently
put some extra attention
on, uh, on Ron Allen.
You know, 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.
Huh.
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...
Hmm, "Etude in G Minor"
by... Who is that?
Margaret Mann.
Margaret Mann? That's my...
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've 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?
Fencin' 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 wanna 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 wanna hurt someone.
Someplace private we can 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...
IR 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.
I mean, look, clearly this guy
knows more than he's sayin'.
All right, why don't you do a phone
dump on his cell and the machine shop?
You know, go back,
like, two or three months.
A job like this gotta take
a while to set up, right?
Yeah, think so. Hey, Megan,
how we doin' on the interviews?
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? Hey.
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... 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.
Did a deeper background
check into Ron Allen.
Born in Philadelphia,
August 24th, 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.
All right, 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.
And none of the clerks
recognized his photo.
I didn't see him hidin'
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 wanna 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 to
search the Mojave Desert.
So is he Phil Stark,
or is he, you know, Ron Allen?
No, 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.
W-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, she
was a very talented musician.
She even had an
offer to study in Vienna.
What are you talking
about? No way.
Hmm.
Oh, that's why all
those piano lessons
with the... the
nightmare woman...
Petri 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.
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.
And there were about
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 wanna put
together a raid team,
but Don doesn't wanna
risk spookin' 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 hopin' 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 1 car.
So he had to know how to use the
same kind of equipment before CalSci then.
Right, 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 gotta tell you,
there's probably more.
University of Hawaii's
2.2-meter telescope, 1996.
Duke's bioanalysis group, 1999.
And MIT's genome
research team, 2001.
He's like a chameleon.
More like a snake,
shedding successive skins.
And 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 7 grand worth of
computer equipment.
All right. He surfaces
again as Henry Viera,
a freshman at Duke in 1999.
This time he says 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, uh, runners
improve in their mid-20s.
Yeah, only this time his
disappearance coincides
with the theft of a $15,000
electron microscope.
Hmm. And 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 off 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. Right.
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, wait a minute.
What if the thefts weren't
an end, but a means?
A means to what?
You know, like
Groundhog 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.
Hey, we just got lucky on
the Gino McGinty wiretap.
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.
Hmm. The pentatonic scale.
It's... It's fascinating how
a simple set of fractions
can... 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
the 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?
Can I 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?" And...
Now I'm 30 years
old. Listen, listen.
Paul Erdos published
more than 1,500 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? No.
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.
But 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?
Do you know how
your mother and I met?
Sure, you were working
for a housing developer
and she was, uh, an intern
for a tenants' rights
organization, right?
Ooh, a latter day Romeo
and Juliet story, huh?
Yeah. You see, uh, we decided
that I would support her in
her last year of law school
and she would support
me through graduate school.
You know, 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.
Wow.
Maybe.
It's about time
you guys got here.
This thing's been burning
a hole in my warehouse.
Come on, get it out. Get
this thing on the truck.
Come on! MAN:
Roll it out. Roll it out.
Oh, you're kidding me.
FBI, FBI! Don't move.
Against the trunk. 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 sellin' a bioterror
weapon to an enemy state.
Bioterror? Yeah.
Wow. You know, 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.
Are you... 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, no. I sell
electronics, okay?
Yeah, sometimes I don't
know where they're comin' from
or where they're
goin', 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.
Sellin' tools isn't a
crime, but usin' 'em 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 doin'
for the last 15 years?
Well, you made it. You
sure made it now, buddy.
I paid Doug Windham
50 G's 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 it or not.
FBI! FBI!
FBI! Let's go!
I'll take the office.
David, come take a look at this.
David.
Bullet to the chest,
no sign of a fight.
All right. Well, the techs just
gave us a fast fingerprint match
on the ones we lifted from
Ron Allen's dorm room.
I'm thinking maybe Allen
shows up looking for his payoff,
has some kind of beef
with Windham and wins.
And 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 through vault
doors in case of emergencies.
Sounds like our boy's
plannin' 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... 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,
at 30,000 degrees Fahrenheit
at 20,000 feet per second.
Now, this particular model
can cut 10 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.
Somethin' 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 gotta 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
P.D. 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'd 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.
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.
I-I-If you take any table
of wide-ranging values,
census data, test
results, land mass sizes,
one appears as the first digit in
more than 30 percent of the values,
two appears 17.6 percent,
three appears 12.5 percent,
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
gravitational 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.
With photo detectors.
Photo detectors.
LIGO is the well-worn page.
He's gonna rob the LIGO lab.
My LIGO lab?
All right, come on.
Why don't you let me
go first, just in case?
No, no, if he's
already been in here,
I don't even know
if I wanna live.
Okay, the computers
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, I mean, 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. MEGAN: Okay.
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 4-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!
Okay, Don.
FBI! FBI!
Get down on the
ground. Get down!
Get down! FBI!
Get down on your knees!
FBI! Get your hands up!
Come on, let's go!
Get 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
gonna 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.
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,
workin' to help
support your family,
beating every odd out there just
to get your high school diploma.
You do that,
then you can sit here and
talk to me about what's fair.
Hello?
Dad?
Dad, I'm thinking...
That seems to be your
perpetual state, Charlie.
About Mom.
Her music.
Yeah.
I've been thinkin' about
that a lot, too, Charlie.
I mean, I went through guilt,
and anger,
and 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 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, isn't it?
To wanna find someplace
solely for yourself.
Whether it be
outside in the world
or deep inside your head.
♪
That was... 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. But you know
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.
Well, undoubtedly, more interesting
when discussed over dinner.
Do you care to join
us for a... an Oki-Dog?
As much as I hate to run,
and run, but I... I barely
got time to shower.
I'm doing calibrations over at
the DNA lab most of the night so...
Uncharitable as it may sound,
but 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 mathematics,
I think we'd be looking
at the next Charles Eppes.
Go.
We all use math every day.
To predict
weather, to tell time,
to handle money.
Math is more than
formulas and equations.
It's logic.
Math is more than
formulas and equations.
It's rationality.
It's using your mind to solve
the biggest mysteries we know.
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 coldcocks 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... So how is Ron?
He won't be wearing a tight hat
anytime soon, but he's fine.
He was walkin' in, the
burglars were comin' 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.
It's... 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 V DNA Synthesizer.
It's that serious?
Yeah. 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 and ahead of time?
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?
Mark V DNA Synthesizer
can be used to produce a billion
DNA copies in under three hours.
I mean, 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.
This 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 alibied.
Well, actually, the
biometric sensor
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 and 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.
Right, 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.
W-W-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.
Yeah, but the security cameras
give him a hell of an alibi.
Only for the actual heist. I mean, he
could've had something to do with it.
You know, the planning of
it, the... the setting up of it...
"An attempt to find a 70-digit
"narcissistic number in base 12.
"By Charles Eppes."
Hey! Grade Two.
Mmm. I was... I was
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... 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?
Oh, well, you know
that joke I made to David.
It might have, um,
purely inadvertently
put some extra attention
on, uh, on Ron Allen.
You know, 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.
Huh.
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...
Hmm, "Etude in G Minor"
by... Who is that?
Margaret Mann.
Margaret Mann? That's my...
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've 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?
Fencin' 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 wanna 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 wanna hurt someone.
Someplace private we can 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...
IR 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.
I mean, look, clearly this guy
knows more than he's sayin'.
All right, why don't you do a phone
dump on his cell and the machine shop?
You know, go back,
like, two or three months.
A job like this gotta take
a while to set up, right?
Yeah, think so. Hey, Megan,
how we doin' on the interviews?
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? Hey.
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... 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.
Did a deeper background
check into Ron Allen.
Born in Philadelphia,
August 24th, 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.
All right, 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.
And none of the clerks
recognized his photo.
I didn't see him hidin'
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 wanna 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 to
search the Mojave Desert.
So is he Phil Stark,
or is he, you know, Ron Allen?
No, 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.
W-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, she
was a very talented musician.
She even had an
offer to study in Vienna.
What are you talking
about? No way.
Hmm.
Oh, that's why all
those piano lessons
with the... the
nightmare woman...
Petri 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.
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.
And there were about
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 wanna put
together a raid team,
but Don doesn't wanna
risk spookin' 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 hopin' 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 1 car.
So he had to know how to use the
same kind of equipment before CalSci then.
Right, 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 gotta tell you,
there's probably more.
University of Hawaii's
2.2-meter telescope, 1996.
Duke's bioanalysis group, 1999.
And MIT's genome
research team, 2001.
He's like a chameleon.
More like a snake,
shedding successive skins.
And 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 7 grand worth of
computer equipment.
All right. He surfaces
again as Henry Viera,
a freshman at Duke in 1999.
This time he says 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, uh, runners
improve in their mid-20s.
Yeah, only this time his
disappearance coincides
with the theft of a $15,000
electron microscope.
Hmm. And 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 off 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. Right.
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, wait a minute.
What if the thefts weren't
an end, but a means?
A means to what?
You know, like
Groundhog 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.
Hey, we just got lucky on
the Gino McGinty wiretap.
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.
Hmm. The pentatonic scale.
It's... It's fascinating how
a simple set of fractions
can... 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
the 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?
Can I 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?" And...
Now I'm 30 years
old. Listen, listen.
Paul Erdos published
more than 1,500 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? No.
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.
But 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?
Do you know how
your mother and I met?
Sure, you were working
for a housing developer
and she was, uh, an intern
for a tenants' rights
organization, right?
Ooh, a latter day Romeo
and Juliet story, huh?
Yeah. You see, uh, we decided
that I would support her in
her last year of law school
and she would support
me through graduate school.
You know, 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.
Wow.
Maybe.
It's about time
you guys got here.
This thing's been burning
a hole in my warehouse.
Come on, get it out. Get
this thing on the truck.
Come on! MAN:
Roll it out. Roll it out.
Oh, you're kidding me.
FBI, FBI! Don't move.
Against the trunk. 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 sellin' a bioterror
weapon to an enemy state.
Bioterror? Yeah.
Wow. You know, 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.
Are you... 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, no. I sell
electronics, okay?
Yeah, sometimes I don't
know where they're comin' from
or where they're
goin', 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.
Sellin' tools isn't a
crime, but usin' 'em 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 doin'
for the last 15 years?
Well, you made it. You
sure made it now, buddy.
I paid Doug Windham
50 G's 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 it or not.
FBI! FBI!
FBI! Let's go!
I'll take the office.
David, come take a look at this.
David.
Bullet to the chest,
no sign of a fight.
All right. Well, the techs just
gave us a fast fingerprint match
on the ones we lifted from
Ron Allen's dorm room.
I'm thinking maybe Allen
shows up looking for his payoff,
has some kind of beef
with Windham and wins.
And 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 through vault
doors in case of emergencies.
Sounds like our boy's
plannin' 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... 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,
at 30,000 degrees Fahrenheit
at 20,000 feet per second.
Now, this particular model
can cut 10 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.
Somethin' 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 gotta 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
P.D. 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'd 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.
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.
I-I-If you take any table
of wide-ranging values,
census data, test
results, land mass sizes,
one appears as the first digit in
more than 30 percent of the values,
two appears 17.6 percent,
three appears 12.5 percent,
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
gravitational 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.
With photo detectors.
Photo detectors.
LIGO is the well-worn page.
He's gonna rob the LIGO lab.
My LIGO lab?
All right, come on.
Why don't you let me
go first, just in case?
No, no, if he's
already been in here,
I don't even know
if I wanna live.
Okay, the computers
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, I mean, 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. MEGAN: Okay.
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 4-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!
Okay, Don.
FBI! FBI!
Get down on the
ground. Get down!
Get down! FBI!
Get down on your knees!
FBI! Get your hands up!
Come on, let's go!
Get 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
gonna 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.
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,
workin' to help
support your family,
beating every odd out there just
to get your high school diploma.
You do that,
then you can sit here and
talk to me about what's fair.
Hello?
Dad?
Dad, I'm thinking...
That seems to be your
perpetual state, Charlie.
About Mom.
Her music.
Yeah.
I've been thinkin' about
that a lot, too, Charlie.
I mean, I went through guilt,
and anger,
and 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 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, isn't it?
To wanna find someplace
solely for yourself.
Whether it be
outside in the world
or deep inside your head.
♪