“Yes,” said Carter. “It was just some sort of lung infection, but the brother … he’s broken up about it. You know how it is when you decide to do something after meaning to deal with it for years, and then something stops you? I guess that’s what’s happening with the professor’s brother. He’s upset and seeing a pattern where there isn’t one. Just lousy luck. But … I’m being paid to ask around. I have to ask some pretty paranoid questions. Gets embarrassing, to be frank, Ms. Watson.”
“What sort of paranoid questions?”
“Nothing too crazy, just the usual. Did Professor Belasco have any enemies? Did he move in any suspicious circles? Did he have any dangerous habits? Usual things.”
“The professor?” Watson almost laughed. “He wouldn’t mind me saying this, used to joke about it himself, but he was a very boring man. Pleasant, but his work was his life. After Gemma died, it really was all that there was to his life. He was here most of the time. I don’t think he had an opportunity for some sort of clandestine life.”
“No other women?”
“None. Unless they could talk pure math, he didn’t have much interest.”
“No enemies?”
Here, Watson grew quiet and looked uncomfortable. “Nobody who hated him enough to kill him, if that’s what you mean?” she said finally.
“Anybody who disliked him at all,” said Carter, at pains to be casual. It was no big deal. He wasn’t going to make a song and dance about it. She should just tell him to get it out of the way.
“Scientists don’t usually get on well with everyone,” said Watson. “You have to understand, Mr. Carter. There are some powerful egos out there. If they get even a little bit bruised, they can hold a grudge for life.”
“Any example?”
“Nobody that would kill, put it that way.”
“I didn’t think they would.” Carter took out his notepad and warmed up his most charismatic smile. “If you could give me whoever had the professor on their shit list, I can ask them a few questions, prove they didn’t have anything to do with it, and tell my client there’s no story here other than what the police have already reported.” Watson seemed loath to name names, but keen to spill gossip all the same. “There must be somebody?” he said gently, nudging her toward that gossip.
“There was one,” she said reluctantly. It was a reluctance that faded quickly as she told Carter the story.
* * *
His name was William Colt. It was a good name for a cowboy, but Colt was about as far from a cowpuncher as it was possible to be. Looking like a suitable candidate for a David Byrne biopic set around the time of More Songs About Buildings and Food, Colt was not a popular man around campus. Carter found himself adjusting his approach to suggest (without stating as much) to interviewees that he had been hired by the academic administration to investigate William Colt with an eye to either defunding or even expelling him. Once whoever he was interviewing understood by Carter’s double-talk that Colt might be deep in the shit, they could hardly wait to help pour more on his head.
“Arrogant asshole” and variations was a common epithet, along with an admission that he was undoubtedly brilliant and any institution would be happy to have him, and indeed could take him with Clave College’s blessings, just so long as it was understood that Clave wouldn’t take him back when his new college discovered what an arrogant asshole he was.
Nor was he quite the genius he had been when he first joined the college. His work was produced as and when he felt like doing so, and he was failing to maintain the tutorial levels that were expected of him as a postgraduate. He seemed to have raised the hackles of just about every lecturer he had ever encountered, but he did have one special bête noire.
James Belasco.
Normally their paths would hardly have crossed, Colt’s field of study being combinatorics as opposed to Belasco’s topology.
“That all changed about a year ago,” Professor Delaine told Carter as he walked with her across the campus toward the commissary building. “I think Will was getting restless, and the idea of specializing in one branch of math was frightening him a little. We talked about career options, but he kept talking about how limiting he found it, and how if everything was mathematics, then mathematics was everything.”
“What did he mean by that?”
“Every branch of science likes to think it’s important, and of course, they all are. But they’re specializations. Much of biology, for example, is biochemistry, which is a specialization of organic chemistry, which is a specialization of chemistry, which is a specialization of physics, and physics is practical mathematics. No matter which set of matryoshka dolls you open in science, the innermost is always math.” She winced slightly at a memory. “Will thinks there might be another doll inside that.”
“Something underlying math? Such as?”
“The purest form of it. The mother of everything. He’s not the first to think that way, and he’s not the first to be disappointed. The truth of it, Mr. Carter, is that we’re already there. The different branches of mathematics are simply different aspects of the same discipline. The innermost doll looks like calculus from one direction, number theory from another, and so on. The next doll outward takes those views and begins to interface them to the real world. Information theory, game theory, statistics, modeling reality from the purity of numbers.
“It’s probably blasphemous of me to say it, but God is right there in that act. From the ‘Let there be light’ of pure math through the five subsequent days of creation embodied in applied mathematics. I’m an atheist because I don’t need a god to explain the universe. I have seen the truth of the numbers, and they should be enough for anyone.”
“But not Colt?”
“No. Young and restless. Which is good, don’t get me wrong. Restless minds are questioning minds, and curiosity makes us what we are. William’s didn’t take him into the broader world, though, not when he had it here on campus in microcosm. He made a nuisance of himself in some of the other departments. He was the subject of debate for some weeks in the collegiate corridors of power, such as they are. Then he lost interest, and turns up when he feels like it. His work is still good, on the occasions he produces it, but not as sharp as it used to be. He’s lost some of his fire. Coming into money was probably what did it.”
Carter’s cop instincts were not about to let a mention of sudden wealth go by, and he asked about it.
“He won a decently sized prize on the state lottery, some tens of thousands.” Professor Delaine grimaced. “A startling event. The faculty was appalled. A mathematician, somebody who actually understands numbers, buying a lottery ticket. It beggars belief.”
* * *
Delaine was hardly the only member of staff to be more or less candid about William Colt, but none of them could offer any concrete suggestions as to why there was enmity between him and James Belasco, other than Colt not taking the work seriously. It was left to Carter to do a little detective work to find somebody who would give him details.
A very little detective work, as it turned out. Outside Belasco’s office was a notice board bearing a schedule for tutorial groups and this Carter had photographed in passing. Now he checked the names of those in the groups against the society lists in the student union building, and found a couple of likely candidates. Having made friendly contact with campus security, and after a few more inquiries, Carter was able to locate one of the names having lunch in the cafeteria.
Jason Xu smiled when Carter introduced himself and started spinning a line about a potential disciplinary action against William Colt.
“Bullshit,” said Xu good-naturedly. “This is about Professor Belasco. Everyone knows it.”
“Okay,” said Carter, “that’s cool. I prefer being up-front in any case. Colt and Belasco. I keep hearing about bad blood, but no details.”
“You think Colt killed the prof?” Xu was eating a Caesar salad in a plastic container. He speared a piece of anchovy wi
th his fork and chewed it while he waited for an answer.
“It’s not a murder inquiry. This place would be dense with homicide cops if it were. I’m just trying to find out what went on in the professor’s life. It’s a pretty broad brief, but it’s what his family wants me to do.” Carter didn’t mind not being entirely up-front. “I keep hearing the name William Colt. What was going on there?”
“Colt’s a dick,” said Xu without hesitation. “He’s smart. No one is saying he isn’t, but he knows it and thinks it’s a superpower. He’s like … what’s that kind of autism? The mild kind?”
“Asperger’s?”
“Asperger’s syndrome, yeah. He just doesn’t deal so well with reality. Goes around like he’s the lead character in a movie and everything has to be about him.”
“Playing a role, huh?” Carter had found Xu’s name on the Roleplaying Society notice board.
Xu laughed. “Man, don’t get all Dark Dungeons on me. I know what reality looks like. A game’s a game. When we put the dice away, we’re done for the evening. Colt’s not playing a game. He honestly thinks the world’s a big story and it’s all about him.”
“Okay. And how did that play into his relationship with Professor Belasco?”
“He suggested … nah, he flat out said that Belasco had a poor intellect. That’s fighting talk in these halls. It’s not even true. Belasco was a prodigy back in the day. You find his name all over. Not such a bright star these days, but that’s math for you. Almost every big name you can think of did all their best work before they were thirty. Newton developed calculus when he was, like, twenty-six. You know that? Colt got off on saying Belasco’s best work wasn’t that great, and he was burned out.”
“He said this to Belasco’s face?”
“Pretty much. He was snide about it. Really got into Belasco’s grill. A guy can only have so much patience with that kind of shit. Colt was saying he was warming to topology as a field—”
“That was Professor Belasco’s specialty, right?”
“Yeah, and Colt was saying he was going to rewrite the book on topology and everyone who went before him would be forgotten.”
“Like Belasco.”
“Yeah. Like Belasco. Belasco didn’t take it lying down. Colt is, as mentioned previously, a dick, and has pissed off just about everybody on campus at one time or another. Belasco had been sitting on some shit that Colt pulled over in archaeology, but then Colt pissed him off so Belasco was going to put together a formal complaint.”
“Which you know how?”
Xu laughed. “Because he said it right in front of us in the tutorial group. Kicked Colt out, and said he wouldn’t be happy until Colt was expelled.” Xu shook his head, smiling ruefully. “The prof’s standing went up with us all that day. Nobody can fucking stand Colt, man. But now … Belasco’s dead.” He looked appraisingly at Carter. “You sure this isn’t about a homicide?”
Chapter 12
THE STREET
“Such a thrilling life you lead.”
Lovecraft was packaging books while Carter told her about the day.
“I don’t see what this Colt kid has to do with anything,” she continued as she neatly sliced squares of Bubble Wrap with a pair of open scissors. “He’s an asshole. So what?”
“He’s the only one I could find with anything like a motive,” said Carter. “‘So what?’ is a good question. I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
“Go back to New York. Haven’t you got any cases there?”
“Not now. I closed an investigation just this week and that’s all I had. I can’t leave this one. Somebody wanted me involved. Well, I’m involved. I want to know why I was dragged into the Belasco death.”
Lovecraft finished cocooning a first color edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and began sealing it with tabs of tape already cut and arranged in a row along the edge of the counter. “Yeah, that was weird. I can see why that bothers you. So, what did you find out in archaeology?”
“What?”
“You said he had caused trouble in the archaeology department. What was that about?” She regarded his blank expression, and grinned. “You forgot to ask.”
“It’s on my list.”
“You have a list? Wow. Mr. Organized.”
“Colt’s been missing for a few days. His car’s gone, too. The timing’s suspicious.”
“A few days? So he wasn’t here when Belasco died?”
“He hadn’t been seen. Told someone he’d had a breakthrough in number theory and was going to break the bank at some casino.” Carter checked his notes. “He won a lot of money on the lottery, too. Or at least he said he did.”
“Gambling problem?”
“Only the kind where you wonder what to spend all the winnings on. The lottery thing seems to be true. Maybe he really does have a system?”
Lovecraft snorted with derision. “Get real. A lottery is just random numbers. Every one of those things is scoured by statisticians to spot patterns. Maybe the balls aren’t perfectly uniform in some way. Maybe one of the machines is a little eccentric. Waste of time. The whole point of a lottery is that it’s a lottery. You can’t come up with a system that gives you a magic set of numbers. Only time I’ve ever heard of a lottery being scammed statistically was in Ireland, I think. It was possible to buy enough tickets to give a better than fifty-fifty chance they’d win the jackpot, and that week’s jackpot was big enough to pay off the investment. They had to buy hundreds of thousands of tickets, though, and there was always a gamble it wouldn’t work. Plus, they had to hire a small army of shills to buy the tickets without arousing suspicion that the probabilities were being gamed.”
“Did it work?”
“Yeah, but it’ll never work again. The lottery people detected irregularities in the betting patterns and are wise to it now. Plus, it was still a gamble; they could have lost everything but for smaller prizes. Plus, it cost a fortune in seed money. I don’t think your lone postgrad has that sort of backing or organization.”
“He just got lucky.”
“Maybe he thinks he’s lucky now. Going to break the bank at Monte Carlo.”
“Don’t think the freeway goes to Monte Carlo. Maybe Atlantic City’s more his speed.”
“Does anyone still go to Atlantic City? I’ll stick with imagining him playing baccarat against Le Chiffre like James Bond.”
“I saw that movie. It was Texas Hold’em.”
“Philistine. Saying such things in a house of books. Shame on you.”
Carter’s phone buzzed. It was Jason Xu.
“Hey, you said I should call if I remembered anything? Well, I haven’t, but I thought you’d like to know—Colt’s back on campus.”
* * *
Carter was back at Clave College within the hour. He already had the details of Colt’s car, and prowled the college parking lots first, but didn’t see it. Debating the possibility that Colt had already been and gone, Carter parked in the same lot as the Belasco death site and went looking for Xu.
The route took him past the mathematics building and, as he walked by the side entrance, he saw a man who looked a lot like a young David Byrne walk out carrying a black duffel bag slung across his shoulders.
Carter walked on without hesitation, got to the corner, and checked his phone as if he’d just received a text. He wasn’t sure why he was being so circumspect; there was no good reason why he shouldn’t have just approached Colt, confirmed his identification, and then asked him a few questions. He could only put it down to a hunch, although the more he analyzed his feelings, the more he realized that he had already marked Colt down as—if not Belasco’s murderer—certainly involved. There was too much circumstantial detritus floating around the man. Colt felt guilty, although Carter could not be sure of exactly what.
He also wondered if there was some fear there. Belasco had died in a way that seemed to have baffled scientific theory. Maybe he had just had a fit, or maybe the fit was induced, and maybe
the fit was induced by Colt. Carter had no desire to join Belasco as a footnote in a forensic journal. He would observe William Colt, and see if the bad feeling he had about Colt had any reality to it. Maybe he was just what everyone thought he was, an egotistical cocksucker of a genius. Just that and no more, as if that wasn’t enough.
A sideways glance showed the playacting with his phone had been unnecessary; Colt was walking away from him. Carter quickly consulted his mental map of the area and decided to risk losing Colt in favor of getting his own car. He started at a brisk walk until Colt was hidden behind the mathematics building, and then broke into a run.
He reached his car and drove out onto the street, turning left to see if he could spot Colt. He had barely started looking when a red Mazda3 went by with Colt at the wheel. He must have parked on the street rather than using a college parking lot. The car looked new; maybe he hadn’t wanted anyone to see it.
Carter drove down an access road to the rear of the chemical engineering building, made a three-point turn, and headed back out in pursuit of the red Mazda3.
* * *
Colt was easy to follow. His car was distinctive even at a distance, and he was in no hurry. Carter was able to hang back far enough to let a couple of cars between him and his quarry, and to avoid ever being directly on Colt’s rear fender.
Carter had carried out enough mobile surveillance to keep much of his attention not on Colt, but on the traffic ahead of the Mazda. Seeing changing traffic conditions ahead allowed him plenty of time to make decisions as to how he should proceed. The only even slightly problematical moment was when a slow driver pulled out in front of Carter and proceeded at a determined five miles per hour below the limit. It was a rookie mistake to hope the slow driver would get out of the way or suddenly discover the gas pedal, so Carter carried out a resolute overtaking maneuver the first chance he got. It brought him a little closer to Colt than he would have liked, but he tucked in behind a twenty-year-old Lincoln and hid there for the next few minutes before progressing back to his former tailing position.
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