A Murder of Crows

by David Rotenberg

  She put aside the report and knelt as she had done that September day long ago when the locusts had come and in one afternoon eaten their entire tobacco crop. She had been only a kid but she knew that the disaster visited from the skies had irrevocably changed her life. For a moment she heard the locusts all around her—in her hair, up her shirt, in her nostrils. She shook her head. Here! she commanded herself. Stay here and find out what the fuck happened here.

  25

  A COLLECTION OF CLUES—T MINUS 12 DAYS

  HARRISON AND YSLAN STARED AT THE PHOTOS OF THE BLAST SITE lined up on the desk in the provost’s office. To one side stood a terribly thin man, the Provost himself, clearly anxious not to be in the same room as the two NSA agents.

  Of the photos there were only two of the faculty on the stage—all of whom were now dead. One shot was from so far away that they could barely distinguish male from female. The other was from the side of the stage so that only a few of the faculty members’ faces could be seen.

  “Wasn’t there a seating plan or something for the faculty?” Harrison demanded of the provost.

  “They were all such free spirits, you couldn’t tell them anything, like where to sit.” The man’s voice was a cross between a whine and whimper. “Why is this important; they’re all dead.” This last word came out more as a breath than a word.

  Yslan looked to Harrison. Both knew the provost’s question was reasonable, but until they had real forensic evidence to work with, identifying the victims was at least a place to start.

  Yslan had already established the provost’s whereabouts at the time of the blasts. He was puking his guts out, evidently frightened at having to read aloud all the foreign-sounding names of the graduates. The students had refused to give their names in phonetics, stating in an open letter published in the school newspaper, “It’s time you learned how to pronounce our fucking names!” A janitor who had cleanup duties in the restroom had confirmed his alibi.

  “So all we really have to identify the professors who were victims is this?” Harrison said, pointing to the list of attending faculty members and the two photos.

  “And the inquiries from families missing loved ones,” Yslan added.

  “In the hours to come there’ll be a lot more of those. Have we asked for dental matches?”

  “Yeah, but it could be some time before we get any.”

  “I can identify some of them from their gowns and tassels,” piped up the provost, suddenly alive and confident—lecturing. “You see, in determining your academic regalia colors, all PhD degrees use PhD blue, which is dark blue. For example, a doctorate in psychology would include in your academic hood colors the color gold—of course we don’t have any psychology degrees here since we’re a science college—however a PhD in psychology, if we had one, would use dark blue. If you have multiple degrees, like Professor Zhang Fang or Professor Charles David—well, almost all of them have more than one degree—the rule is that you use only one hood and only one degree or discipline color. You use the hood and color that represents your highest-ranking degree, with doctoral as highest, master’s as second highest, bachelor’s as third highest. If you have two different degrees at the same highest ranking, you generally use the most recently awarded degree as your hood.

  “If you have an unlisted degree, there is no official color and it is dependent on the individual college or university to determine the color to be used for your hood. Typically, the most similar degree on the official chart is chosen. For example, if your degree is in an advanced computer science field, usually the school chooses science gold for the degree color. Clear?”

  “Yeah, perfectly,” Yslan said quickly, fearing he would continue. She already felt a familiar weariness in her bones that she remembered all too well from lectures delivered by other self-satisfied professors.

  Then much to Yslan’s surprise, using the academic colours, the provost named more than half of the professors in the photos.

  “What about the students?” Harrison asked. “Surely they were sitting in alphabetical order, weren’t they?”

  “Some were, yes. Some had already left for jobs. Some were too drunk to attend. Most refused to take any more orders and sat wherever they wanted.”

  “Swell,” Yslan said. “ ‘Anarchist Geniuses Blown to Bits’—good headline.”

  “Hicks!” Harrison’s voice was as ragged as she’d ever heard it. “Get it through your head what happened here. More than eighty percent of the brains behind this country’s present defence systems and as much as fifty percent of the defence network’s future brains were obliterated today. This is the single most serious blow to the safety of this country—ever.”

  Mr. T stuck his head in the office. “Forensics are ready, sir.”

  “Send them in,” Harrison said, then turned to the provost. “Do you mind?”

  The provost was about to say that this was his office, then looked at Harrison and decided he didn’t really need his office for the foreseeable future. He made his way out as six forensics techs shoved their way past him.

  As they flipped open their laptops, Harrison turned to Yslan and said, “Recheck the provost’s alibi. He wasn’t on the stage when the fucking thing blew up. I want to know why.”

  “He’s a suspect?”

  “He’s alive when the rest are dead—so yeah, he’s a suspect.”

  “I’ll send for the janitor who saw him in the men’s room.”

  The techs began to spout figures.

  Harrison put up his hand for them to stop. “When you boys talk numbers it usually means you don’t have dick.”

  The head tech looked up and eyed Harrison. Yslan noted that there was clearly no love lost here. “Two huge blasts, one just seconds after the other. Shards of metal—”

  “What kind of metal shards?”

  The tech reached into his briefcase and pulled out a clear plastic evidence bag. Inside it was a piece of steel plate maybe six inches by four inches with razor-sharp edges. It clanked as it hit the desktop.

  “And you found—”

  “Hundreds and hundreds of them.”

  Harrison picked up the evidence bag. It was heavier than he thought it would be.

  “So it wasn’t a suicide bomber?”

  “Not unless there were two of them and they were both world-class weight lifters.”

  “So the bombs were planted before the ceremony?”

  “Yep.”

  “Anything more?”

  “Not yet.”

  “When?”

  The head tech shrugged.

  “We need more,” Harrison said, then added, “Quickly.”

  The forensic guys closed their laptops and headed out.

  The white-haired agent that Decker Roberts had named Ted Knight stepped into the room, and Harrison turned to him. “I want names of dissidents within a two-hundred-mile radius and the addresses and names of anyone who’s been in a mosque in the entire state—include Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and fucking Vermont, too.”

  “Already done,” Ted Knight said, handing over a lengthy printout.

  “How many men—”

  “We have forty.”

  Turning to Yslan, Harrison said, “Get them a hundred more and every Arabic speaker we have. And get our photo geniuses to work on those pictures. Once they’re worked up show them to the provost, show them to the grieving families, show them to the goddamned janitor. I want names put to those faces and exactly who sat where.”

  26

  AN INTERVIEW OF A JANITOR—T MINUS 12 DAYS

  WALTER JONES WAITED PATIENTLY IN THE PROVOST’S OUTER office. He’d only been there once before and then it was to clean up after a party of some sort. And of course the place had been empty then. After five or six these admin offices were all empty. Now, however, it was a hub of activity as what Walter assumed were federal officers came and left the provost’s inner office like bees reporting back to the hive then being sent out on new missions.

 
Walter had been told to be there at six thirty, and he’d arrived a few minutes early, but it was now almost eight o’clock and he had the evening shift. When a large black man came out of the inner office, Walter gathered his courage and said, “My name is Walter Jones. I was told to be here at six thirty.”

  The black man looked at his watch and mumbled an apology and went back in the office. Five minutes later an attractive woman opened the office door. Walter caught a brief glimpse inside. It reminded him of a war room scene from a World War II movie. He liked World War II movies.

  The attractive woman introduced herself. Walter missed the first name, but got the second—Hicks.

  “Sorry to make you wait, Mr. Jones.”

  Walter shrugged and said, “That’s okay.”

  A marine entered, and the woman talked to him in a hushed voice, then turned back to Walter.

  “Look, I just need to know one thing.”

  “Okay.”

  “Did you see the provost in the men’s room shortly before the graduation?” She paused. “Before the bombs.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She smiled and turned toward the office. Then turned back to Walter. “What was he doing?”

  Walter wasn’t going to tell her that the guy was reciting over and over again to the mirror “We can do this, yes we can, yes we can do this” while he was popping Ativan like it was PEZ. Which he was. But Walter shrugged again and said, “It’s a men’s room.”

  This Hicks person smiled, turned and reentered the provost’s inner office.

  That’s it? Walter thought. That’s the entire investigation? Walter tried not to smile, but he wanted to. Oh, how he wanted to.

  27

  A MASS OF MEDIA—T MINUS 12 DAYS TO T MINUS 8 DAYS

  THE MEDIA COVERAGE INTENSIFIED AS IDENTIFIED BODY PARTS were slowly released to grieving family members. A memorial was planned to be held in ten days’ time. The president himself was going to deliver the eulogy. His imminent presence caused yet more delays as agents had to be pulled from interrogations into protection planning. And all the nation howled for revenge—and the president’s office applied pressure to Harrison, that he promptly passed on to Yslan and the interrogators.

  But nothing moved.

  Upper New York State is cut off from much of the nation. It is a backwater, and those left there are sometimes an angry lot. The place had always been a breeding ground for alternative religions. Joseph Smith found the sacred Book of Mormon just up the road at what the locals call the East Jesus exit of the thruway. The area was also populated by hundreds of radical nuts, dissident nuts and nuts and berries of every variety. And each and every one of these mouth breathers seemed to hold some grudge against the military, the country’s foreign policy, Washington or “the lack of godliness in the nation.” No doubt someone up here celebrated Sugar Plum Tuesday with the sacrifice of a goat.

  Put beside these guys, the mosque folks seemed downright rational—although it was clear they were also terrified and not fully cooperating.

  After four days the NSA had unearthed nothing but a few kooks and the reality that as many as twenty labs on the campus had the ingredients necessary to make the two bombs and none of these potentially dangerous substances were kept under any serious lock and key.

  Yslan was summing up all this for Harrison when she noticed that he had moved a cot into the provost’s office—and that he clearly hadn’t slept for days. She wondered how many.

  “So you’re telling me that we’re nowhere. No suspects, no real leads, and frankly few stones left unturned.”

  “I’m afraid that’s what I’m telling you, sir.”

  Harrison looked away from her.

  “We need help, sir.”

  He turned back to her but before he could object she said, “I’ve sent our people to find Viola Tripping.”

  “You’ve got to be out of your mind. If the press ever finds—”

  “They won’t unless we tell them.”

  “They better not.” He took a deep breath then said, “So did they find her?”

  “Of course.”

  After another deep breath he asked, “When’s she—”

  “Tonight.” Then she quickly added, “She’ll only travel in the dark.”

  * * *

  Back in her room Yslan watched her monitor as the tiny figure of Viola Tripping held tightly to the huge arm of Mr. T. She had drawn a black shawl over her head, and when she moved she looked like ET under its blanket. Ted Knight followed them, taping their every move with a tiny camera attached to his lapel. Yslan looked away from the image, and despite herself a smile creased her face. I think of them as Mr. T and Ted Knight—like Decker does. When did that start? Shit, if someone asked me their names, I’d say Mr. T and Ted Knight! Then, without any seeming reason, Viola Tripping pulled back the shawl and stared into the camera and screamed at the lens.

  The scream seemed to pierce Yslan’s heart, and she grabbed her chest in pain. For a moment she thought that she was having a heart attack.

  She got the call from Mr. T a few moments later that Viola Tripping was safely in the windowless room that she’d requested. The room was down a long corridor in the basement of the old physics building. There had been rumours as to the original use of the room—World War I poisoned gas test site was the most popular, and the most likely. This university had been in bed with the military hierarchy of America for a very, very long time.

  “Is she here?”

  Yslan hadn’t heard Harrison come into her room.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And she has to be in the actual place of the death?” Harrison demanded.

  “Yeah,” Yslan replied.

  “Why?”

  Yslan shot Harrison a withering look.

  She didn’t know why. And she knew he knew that she didn’t know why. Finally she said, “We’ve tracked her for almost five years. We have miles of tape of her speaking for the dead. All I know is that Viola Tripping can do this, speak for the dead, as long as we obey her rules.”

  “Stand in the exact spot the person died?”

  “Right.”

  “And keep her locked in a room without windows.”

  “Right—and one more thing.”

  “What?”

  “Every time she stands in the place of the dead person, she can find less and less of the deceased’s final thoughts.”

  “Are you telling me that we may have only one shot at this?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, we’ll record her first . . . pass, or whatever you call it.”

  Yslan looked away.

  “What?”

  “The lights may distract her. Lately she’s needed to be in almost perfect darkness.”

  “Infrared then.”

  “No. She senses it.”

  “Well then, we’ll mic her.”

  “Sure,” but she thought, It won’t help because Decker needs to see to be able to tell if a person is lying. Recordings are unreliable for him.

  Somehow Harrison was ahead of her.

  “And this Viola person can’t tell if a person is lying, can she?”

  “No. She just repeats the thoughts that were in the person’s head just before he dies.”

  The reality that they’d need Decker sat there between the two of them, but Harrison shoved it aside.

  “And how does she do that?”

  “Senses, hears, intuits—I don’t fucking know how she does it.”

  Harrison lit a cigarette and let out the smoke in a long straight line. Yslan could have killed for a smoke, but before she could speak, Harrison hung his head and said, “We really don’t know sweet fuck all, do we?”

  Yslan took a step away.

  “Do we, Special Agent Hicks?” he asked more forcefully.

  “We know things, sir—but not enough.” She failed to add that she seemed to understand her gifted synaesthetes better as time went on—especially after the days she’d spent interrogating Decker
Roberts. But she had the oddest sensation that it wasn’t Roberts’ answers to her many questions that clarified things—it was actually just his presence so close to her.

  Mr. T stuck his head in the room. “Got the enhanced photos ready, boss.”

  “Good, leave them on my desk,” he said.

  “Will do,” Mr. T said and left.

  Harrison turned to Yslan. “And you’re sure you want to go through with this?”

  She turned to look at him full-on. “Have we got another choice? Is there something new from forensics?”

  Harrison momentarily recoiled: he wasn’t used to being interrogated. “Just that the bombs could well have been built in one of the school’s labs.”

  “Right. Any idea which one?”

  “No.”

  “Right. And how’s about the two hundred twenty-seven interviews you’ve done? Any leads there?”

  “No.”

  “Right, so we move to plan B.”

  “Viola Tripping?”

  “Viola Tripping.”

  * * *

  Yslan took a deep breath and tried to calm herself. She had been tracking Viola Tripping for the NSA even longer than she had been tracking Decker Roberts, but Yslan had never met her before. She’d just seen video—lots of video—and it scared the bejeezus out of her.

  Viola Tripping was in her early forties but was many inches shorter than five feet tall and had the vacant open face of a medieval cherub. Her blond hair fell in childish cascades across the peaches and cream complexion of her face, and her milky cataract-obstructed eyes were always wide open—even when she slept.

  She reminded Yslan of the two spooky Englishwomen in the film Don’t Look Now, which cured her of any desire to see Venice—although any place that Julie Christie went . . .