The Quotient of Murder (Professor Sophie Knowles)

by Madison, Ada

  Bruce gave me his most serious look. “Sophie, Einstein or no Einstein, maybe this guy knows you’ve been asking questions. Maybe somehow he knows you went to Boston and saw Wendy Carlson and he thinks you know more than you do about those old bank robberies. I need you to be careful and let me be there for you.”

  I did my best to express how much that meant to me. Then, so we could enjoy our dinners, which were due to arrive, I agreed that Bruce could call in sick and stay with me if there was no unmarked police car in front of my house. I loved how we compromised.

  Getting my hands under control to meet my no-spill objective for the evening was easier than taming the thoughts and questions in my head. I wondered where Wendy Carlson was at the moment. Fleeing? Hiding? On her way to Henley to correct the error she’d made all those years ago? I’d lost hope that Virgil’s techs could retrieve her number from my cell phone. Maybe I’d put Andrew on the case.

  I’d forgotten to ask Virgil again about the hundred-dollar bill he was having tested. Since I was the one who’d found it, I felt I should get a heads-up on the results. What else was there to worry about or close the loop on? I was afraid I’d forgotten something important.

  How rude would it be for me to take out my notepad now and make a checklist? Bummer that it would have to be paper and pen since my smartphone, with its Notes app, was still in the hands of the HPD.

  “Bring it on,” Bruce said.

  “Huh?” Had I been talking out loud? Or was he addressing our efficient young waitress, who’d served our aromatic fish dinners.

  “I know you’re making a pie chart or spreadsheet in your head, so”—he opened his palms and wiggled his fingers—“tell me where you are in this puzzle. What’s the status?”

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You’re the greatest.”

  “I know.”

  I dug into my shrimp salad. Bruce, unaffected by the crustaceans’ struggles in the tank at the entrance to the inn, had ordered lobster Newburg with extra cayenne pepper, and seemed to enjoy his first taste.

  “There’s Jenn’s backpack,” I said, buttering a piece of French bread. “Where is it? You know how on TV they’re always finding purses and wallets in Dumpsters after they’ve been stolen and stripped of cash and credit cards? I wonder if the police looked for it?”

  “There aren’t a lot of dumping places along that stretch of Main,” Bruce reminded me. “The closest one might be the one behind the campus coffee shop.”

  “The Mortarboard,” I said, picturing an area of campus I seldom strolled. “The Dumpster is not right on the street; it’s set back, on the campus.”

  “I can’t see the guy heading back onto Henley grounds to dump his load. He wouldn’t risk that.”

  “Good point,” I said. “And he didn’t cross Main, at least not while he was in camera range, so maybe he just took it to his vehicle. Assuming he had a vehicle.”

  “A backpack takes longer to look through than a purse or a wallet. My guess is he took it home and went through it at his leisure.”

  “Well, the police know where he lives now.”

  “If—”

  “I know, if the guy on the video is even the worker Barker ID’d. If, if, if. But I have to start somewhere.”

  I took a sip of lime water and a calming breath. During that short break, I looked around at the other patrons in the crowded dining room. Too many of the guests at adjacent tables were looking in our direction. It was tempting to feel flattered that they found our conversation more interesting than their own, but I suspected one or two of them might have nine-one-one on standby. From snippets of our chatter, they might reasonably assume we were about to accuse Albert Einstein of robbing a bank and fleeing with a backpack containing one hundred dollars.

  “What are the other loose ends around the attack and the murder?” Bruce asked.

  I motioned for him to lower his voice. “I think we’re scaring people,” I said.

  “Good thing I don’t have my flight suit on, huh?” he said, in an only slightly lower tone. He followed with a near whisper, “There’s that bill you found. Do you think it fell out of Jenn’s backpack?”

  I shook my head. “I can’t imagine that Jenn would be carrying that much cash.”

  “Didn’t you tell me she said something about money to the commuters who found her?”

  “Yes, but she could have just meant that the guy took her money—maybe she was worried about her checkbook and what little cash there might have been in the backpack—not necessarily that there was this other money, the hundred-dollar bill. Besides it’s a little hard to take everything those commuter guys said literally.”

  “Because they may have lied about chasing the bad guy? I wouldn’t be so hard on them.”

  “What would you have done?” I asked.

  “That’s different. It’s my job.”

  “It’s your DNA.”

  I saw no point in reminding Bruce how it took a certain kind of person to embrace jobs like his and Virgil’s in the first place.

  “The other option,” I began, “is that Jenn’s attacker lost the bill in the struggle, and his prints are on it, and that would be one more data point.”

  “You’re thinking they’re Einstein’s.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, stabbing a shrimp in as gentle a way as possible, not to further frighten our neighbors, which now included a toddler at the next table. I gave the little girl my kindest smile, and hoped her parents would be reassured.

  “And that would put him at the scene of the crime.”

  I nodded. “Do you think Virgil’s job is always as hard as this?”

  “I know it is.”

  “So I should cut him some slack if he doesn’t act like I’m his partner?”

  “You said it,” Bruce replied, laughing and soaking up creamy sauce with bread.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  I thought the day demanded dessert and warned Bruce that if he declined to order his own, it had better not be because he thought he’d get some of mine. I was in a good mood, but not that good.

  • • •

  Rring, rring. Rring, rring.

  Bruce’s ringtone was the closest he could find to an old-time teacher’s bell, to balance out the sound of helicopter blades on my cell phone, he’d claimed.

  The call came as I was halfway through a dessert called triple chocolate dazzle—a brownie with chocolate ice cream and hot fudge sauce. Despite my warning that I wouldn’t share, I pushed my plate to Bruce, who’d already polished off a sweet-smelling praline delight. I was suffering from what my mother would call “your eyes are bigger than your stomach” syndrome.

  “No kidding,” Bruce was saying into his phone. Then, after a pause, “Wow,” then a final “Good news. Thanks.”

  All this, while I waved my arms and mouthed, “Who is it?” twice and, “What is it?” three times. And to the absent Virgil, I mouthed, “Where’s my phone?”

  Bruce clicked off.

  “Virge got a work call, so his dinner with Judy was cut short.”

  “She’d better get used to it if she wants to see him,” I said. “He called you just to say that? That was ‘good news’?”

  “Not exactly.”

  I gave him a look that would have withered his flight suit, and he quickly caved.

  “Jenn’s awake,” he said, a broad smile crossing his face and lighting up the whole room.

  I nearly sailed over the blue green tablecloth to hug him, probably the effect of the Inn at Henley’s nautical theme.

  “Virgil says her parents are going to take her home as soon as she gets clearance, so if anyone would like to visit, now would be the time. Interested?”

  I caught our waitress’s eye. “Check, please.”

  • • •

  The light snow had continued to accumulate while we were at dinner, and now formed soft piles on the edges of the sidewalk. Bruce was dressed for fall, not winter. In my judgment, a
sports jacket didn’t qualify as cold weather garb. Still, his arm around me provided extra warmth as we turned into the lot where we’d parked my Honda.

  “ETA to Henley General ten minutes,” Bruce said, sliding behind the wheel of the car.

  I was beyond excited that Jenn was awake. A huge smile formed every time I thought about it on the trip from the Inn. It hadn’t been easy to convince Bruce to drop me off at the hospital and take off for his shift in my car. I was sure someone in the group would drive me home. As part of the deal, I had to accept Bruce’s smartphone, since mine was still with the HPD and Bruce would be well connected at the MAstar trailer.

  “It’s not wired to the Bat Phone, is it?” I asked, as I took the device from Bruce. “Am I going to get a call to rescue a cat from a tree in the middle of the night?”

  “You’d be surprised how seldom that happens.”

  What Bruce didn’t know was that I was ready to make almost any deal as long as I got to see Jenn Marshall awake and functioning.

  • • •

  I arrived at the hospital and found Jenn’s student friends in the waiting room. Patty threw her arms around me, surprisingly not a first for a roommate of one of my majors, but usually the emotion was related to a rejuvenated GPA.

  “The Marshalls are in with Jenn,” Patty said. “They’ve been in there awhile even though the doctors said they could have only a few minutes.”

  “Maybe she got a boost of energy when she saw her parents,” Lauren said. “I hope so. I tweeted some other friends that she’s awake, and I’m getting lots of retweets and woots.”

  “Glad to hear it,” I said.

  “The doctors still won’t let anyone else see her, though,” Andrew added. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  Willa and Lauren donned their many layers of outer clothing. “Yeah, they wouldn’t even let Professor Morrell in, so he left,” Lauren said.

  I found it curious that Ted would come. I suppose he found out the same way the students did, through Patty, who had essentially lived with the Marshalls these last few days.

  “You have to be a cop to get in there now,” Willa grumbled. “We’re leaving.”

  “But we’ll be back if Jenn wants, you know, company later,” Lauren said, as Willa dragged her by the elbow.

  “Has Detective Mitchell been here already?” I asked, addressing Andrew and Patty.

  “Yeah, and they let him in right away, even before her parents got in,” Andrew said.

  “I’m sure that’s procedure,” I said. Pretty sure. I’d been present on occasions when Virgil got a call from a hospital that a crime victim or witness or suspect was physically able to talk. Virgil would drop everything—including Judy this evening, apparently—to get there before the person was “tainted” by other visitors, in his words.

  “He wouldn’t tell us what Jenn said,” Andrew noted. “But we asked someone coming out of the wing—I think, maybe, like a male nurse—if he’d heard anything. He said he could see through the window that the detective showed Jenn something.”

  A bit removed from firsthand information, but we might as well go with it, I decided.

  “He thought it might have been a photo,” Patty said.

  “The guy also said Detective Mitchell looked disappointed, so I’ll bet Jenn didn’t recognize the picture,” Andrew added.

  The mug shot of Ponytail was my guess. As far as I knew, we didn’t have a good likeness of the other worker, unless Virgil’s techs had been able to pull one off the web. The other worker, my Einstein, didn’t have a record, or Barker wouldn’t have hired him, and the videos didn’t even come close to being useful for an ID by anyone who wasn’t familiar with him to begin with.

  “Did the Marshalls tell you anything about how Jenn is doing?” I asked Andrew. Patty had excused herself for a trip to the vending machine. After my triple chocolate dazzle, I could easily pass on candy, or anything else that came out of a machine.

  “Yeah, Mr. Marshall came out and talked to us, which was very nice of him,” Andrew said.

  “I’m sure they both appreciate your concern,” I said, thinking that Andrew was giving Los Angeles a very good name for compassionate youth.

  “She’ll need a ton of therapy,” he said. “The best things I heard are that she has temporary dysfunction with no long-term complications. Not that I understand that completely, but I like the sound of it.”

  “Me, too,” I said. I figured doctors were slow to use phrases like “full recovery” and this was as good as we were going to get.

  “They’ve assigned a case manager in Fitchburg who’ll coordinate everything,” Andrew continued. “Physical, speech, neurology, and on and on. Even a vocational counselor to advise her about coming back to school and all.”

  I wondered how soon Jenn would be fit to be moved to her hometown. I knew it wasn’t the most important thing, but I hoped she’d be able to help Virgil find her attacker first. Only Jenn might eventually be able to tell us if the second worker was the guilty party, and possibly give us a clue about why he might have chosen her to batter, her backpack to steal. Unless she’d blocked out the memory, which would be the second best thing to happen.

  “I just hope they find the guy,” Andrew said, summing up my thoughts. He put his backpack down, letting it rest between his legs.

  “I can’t believe she might not come back this spring.” Patty had returned with chips, candy bars, sodas. Apparently, the vending machine was out of hard-boiled eggs and bags of granola. She unloaded everything onto a small table. “Help yourself,” she told Andrew and me. “I guess I should just be more grateful, huh? I mean, I thought she was going to die”—Patty held back tears—“but I want her all the way back, you know what I mean?”

  Andrew nodded and picked up a bag of chips with sea salt.

  We sat for about ten minutes with our own thoughts, Patty and Andrew snacking while I felt a bit guilty, having enjoyed a full meal at the Inn.

  I watched as doctors and nurses with unidentifiable titles passed by. How did you tell who was who these days—doctors, nurses, paradoctors, and paranurses. I saw only one woman and one man in white coats. Most of the employees wore cotton pants in a dull shade of blue and a tunic top in a matching shade or a print, with hearts, flowers, kittens, or butterflies. The most popular design I noticed was a yellow and green short-sleeved shirt with images of dogs on skateboards. We could have been in Hawaii.

  Rring, rring. Rring, rring.

  The phone startled me. I wasn’t as used to Bruce’s ringtone as I thought. I walked away from Patty and Andrew and clicked on.

  “Hey, Sophie.” Judy Donohue’s voice. “I was so glad to hear about Jenn. Whew, huh? Have you seen her?”

  “No, not yet. I’m getting bits and pieces that say she might be able to go home in a week or so.”

  “Home home, or back to school?”

  “To Fitchburg, most likely.”

  “Any word about returning to school?”

  “No. How’d you find me at this number, by the way?”

  “Virgil gave me Bruce’s number. He said he had your phone and you had Bruce’s. I didn’t ask why.”

  “Long story.”

  “Listen, I have Virgil’s car.”

  “You have Virgil’s car?” I parroted.

  “Long story.”

  We both laughed.

  “I can pick you up at the hospital,” Judy said.

  “Thanks, but you don’t have to do that. Patty, Jenn’s roommate, has a car. She’ll be able to take me home.”

  “I was hoping to talk to you,” Judy said.

  “Another long story?”

  “All good,” Judy said.

  “What’s convenient for you?” I asked.

  “I can be there in ten or fifteen.”

  “That will work. I doubt that I’ll get in to see Jenn tonight anyway. I’ll wait for you at the main entrance so you won’t have to park.”

  I clicked off, with a smile. Jenn was awake and Judy had a go
od story to tell me.

  I assured Andrew and Patty that I was all set for a ride home from the hospital with Judy and sent them on their way.

  Andrew issued a parting reminder over his shoulder. “See you tomorrow, Dr. Knowles. Don’t forget, I’m going to work on your email problem after our seminar. Be thinking of an appropriate e-punishment for the hacker.”

  “Done,” I said. My evil twin had already decided to find a way to spam the culprit with ads for the puzzle magazines that featured my submissions.

  I gathered my cumbersome winter wear, ready to locate the correct color-coded line to the hospital’s exit. Halfway into my heavy jacket, I saw Mr. and Mrs. Marshall walking toward me, from the other side of the glass-topped double doors of the waiting room.

  A cautiously optimistic smile adorned each of their faces, one that said there was hope for their family. Mrs. Marshall pushed through the door and approached me with her arms open and gave me a tearful hug, a surprise, since I hadn’t felt that we’d connected over the past few days.

  Mr. Marshall waited his turn then said, “Dr. Knowles, we’re glad to see you. Andrew and the girls said you’d get here as soon as you could.”

  “She wants to talk to you,” Mrs. Marshall said, stepping back and taking a deep, audible breath. She dabbed at her eyes and smoothed her skirt, the same one I’d seen the first day of Jenn’s hospital stay. “Do you mind going in? The doctor says she should be okay for another few minutes, then she has to take a pill and, I guess, that puts her to sleep.”

  “But just sleep, that’s all,” Mr. Marshall said. I understood that he meant “not another coma.”

  I did my best not to knock them over on my way to Jenn’s room.

  • • •

  It was all I could do to maintain a smile at the sight of my heavily bandaged and bruised student. Jenn was surrounded by lifelines of tubes and blipping green lines that made it difficult for me to believe she’d be leaving the hospital anytime soon. I tried to adjust my breathing to avoid large doses of whatever foul-smelling chemicals were nearby. I hoped they weren’t being pumped through Jenn, or any other patient. I had great admiration for Jenn’s parents, keeping up their spirits in the face of the sights, sounds, and smells in the tiny room, for their daughter’s sake.