QB1 by Pete Bowen Page B

Liz?” I asked. “I want to go see
Matt Benson and then we’ll call it a night.” She nodded her head
and continued to stare out the window. The silent treatment; I knew
the silent treatment. The silent treatment usually meant one thing
when it came to me and women. I had fucked up somehow. “Anything
new, Roger?” I asked as he typed away on his computer.
    “They may be close to finding Higgs
Boson.”
    I looked over at Liz, “Higgs Boson?” She
shook her head. “Third baseman for the Devil Rays?” I asked.
    Roger laughed. “Higgs Boson is the ‘God
Particle’ thought to be critical to forming the cosmos after the
Big Bang. Higgs Boson has only been theoretical up to now, but
they’ve been making big jumps forward in the science at the
LHC.”
    “The LHC?”
    “The Large Hadron Collider project in Geneva.
It’s a 15 mile looped tunnel that creates mini-Big Bangs by
smashing together particles. It’s only operating at half speed now
because it’s new, but in the next few years as they begin operating
it faster, at conditions that recreate the Big Bang, the scientists
are pretty sure they’re going to find it. You have to look for the
Higgs in the low mass region where many people think the Riggs
is.”
    “Yea, I don’t think it’s there,” I said.
    “Why not?” asked Roger.
    “I think it’s in Milpitas.”
    Roger ignored me. “They think they have just
detected the Top Quark-a massive, short lived particle. The Higgs
is a theoretical energy particle. This is exciting stuff, Mr.
Mullins. The more they raise the energy, the closer they get to the
conditions of the Big Bang. The more likely they are to find the
Higgs.”
    “And why do we want to find this, Roge?”
    “Because then we’ll know how the cosmos was
formed 10 billion years ago after the Big Bang. The Higgs gave mass
to the disparate matter spawned at that time.”
    I thought about it for a moment. “What is the
practical application of knowing this stuff?”
    “What’s the practical application of knowing
why an apple falls from a tree? It furthers our knowledge of all
life to know how and why we got here and the principles in which
the world operates.” He looked at me with the sarcastic look worthy
of the dumbass I am. “And, Anthony Reilly received a speeding
ticket in Los Gatos a month ago,” he said, “a 95 in a 45.”
    “Find out who gave it to him,” I said. “Maybe
he told the cop where he was going to be for the next month.”
    I looked at Liz still staring out the window.
I picked up the intercom and spoke to the driver, “Eddie, coffee,
Starbucks or something.” Jesus quickly found a place and I handed
Roger money and told him to get coffee for us. When the Roger
closed the door and walked off, I slipped beside Liz and said,
“Something I did?” She looked at me for a moment, smiled and rose
up and straddled me. Facing me now, she took my head in her hands
and kissed me hard in a long lingering kiss. It almost hurt it was
so hard. She put her hand inside my shirt and thrust her tongue
down my throat. Then after playing for awhile as she had me pinned
into the seat, she abruptly stopped and sat back down next to me
again as Roger opened the door and got back in with a bag of
food.
    Liz was staring out the window again. As we
started to drive off, she said in a quiet voice, “I think I know
who killed Tony.”
     
    Chapter 15
     
    That fourth game of the season. The day that
Baltimore’s Dometrius Daniels, alias Dominent D, alias Mr. D, alias
DD, came to town. Three hundred and five pounds of mean speed and
muscle. You can make an argument that he is the best player in
football. He is certainly the dominant defensive football player in
football. With fourteen sacks of the quarterback last year, he’s a
player that you have to know where he is, all the time. He has to
be double teamed on every play.
    On the Thursday prior to the Baltimore game,
Jeffery Chang, the San Francisco Pro bowl left tackle, pulled