by Dan Willis
Bell rubbed his chin for a moment, then shook his head.
“Can’t say that I do,” he admitted. “But I can look through my files if you like. I keep records on any mysterious happenings that make the papers.”
It was a long shot, but Alex was grateful for it.
“Thanks,” he said, sticking out his hand for Bell to shake. He fished one of his business cards out of his shirt pocket with his left hand and held it out. “Give me call at this number if you find anything.”
“The runewright detective,” Bell read off the card. “You’re the one who caught the Ghost. I ought to slug you for that.” Despite the resolve in his words, there was no malice in the man’s voice. “I really wanted that one to be real.”
The idea that an actual vengeful spirit had returned, bent on murder, wasn’t the kind of thing Alex would wish to be real. The idea was terrifying. Still, he knew what Bell meant. The old man had probably spent his whole life looking for signs of things stranger than mundane magic and had come up empty.
“Sorry,” Alex said.
“Whatever happened to him?” Bell asked. “The Ghost, I mean. I didn’t see anything in the papers. Shouldn’t he have been put on trial by now?”
“He died in prison about six months after he was captured,” Alex said.
The Ghost had been a man named Duane King who’d used escape runes to enter and leave his victim’s homes unseen. The price of that power was that runes burned up his life energy, leaving him almost nothing in the end. Alex had been surprised he lasted as long as he did.
Bell seemed to have run out of steam with his questions, so Alex took the opportunity to excuse himself and stepped back out onto the street. The September air was cool, despite its being just after noon, and Alex headed to the street to hail a cab. The news that the blood rune had some basis in reality was encouraging. If he could find out more about it, he might figure out the killer’s true motive. That would put him one step closer to catching the man. Unfortunately, all Alex really knew was that the strange symbol might have come from a vast region of trackless jungle in Africa. It wasn’t exactly a solid lead, but it was all he had.
The mathematics building at Columbia University was a three-story brick building with rows of tall windows, spaced at regular intervals, that ran its entire height. As Alex approached, he could hear the sound of lessons being given in the large lecture halls and the small classrooms courtesy of the open windows. With the cool weather starting to supplant the heat of New York in the summertime, everyone was taking advantage.
A large pinboard in the lobby of the building contained the name, Dr. Samuel Phillips, Dean of Applied Mathematics, and gave the number for an office on the third floor. When Alex reached it, the door opened into a waiting area, much like his own office, and a perky student intern told Alex that Professor Phillips was preparing to teach a class in room three-fifteen at the end of the hall. Alex thanked her, and a few moments later he entered the designated classroom.
The room wasn’t large, maybe big enough for twenty students, but it did have three tiers leading down to a well at the bottom where three enormous blackboards hung on the wall. These boards were on weighted cables and could be raised up to the top of the room, or lowered so the teacher could write on them. All of the upper boards were covered with the kinds of mathematical gibberish Alex had seen on Alice Cartwright’s rollaway boards.
A slender man with bushy gray hair and rounded shoulders stood squinting at the center blackboard. He wore a white coat, like a doctor, presumably to keep chalk dust off his clothes. As Alex approached, the man checked the writing on the board, comparing it with a book of notes he took from his pocket, then went back to chalking symbols.
“Professor Phillips?” Alex asked.
The man held up a cautioning finger, then consulted his book again. He went back to the board and wrote another two lines before he sighed and dropped the piece of chalk in the wooden tray below the board.
“I’ve told you not to bother me during prep time,” he growled, still scrutinizing the board. “If you have questions about an assignment, I have teaching assistants who can help you.”
“I’m afraid there’s been a mistake,” Alex pressed on. He took out a business card and stepped up next to the man. “I’m not one of your students, I’m a private detective.”
Phillips looked at the offered card, then at Alex, before turning back to the board.
“Then I definitely don’t have time for you,” he said. “I have a class in ten minutes, and I have to make sure these calculations are correct.”
“Please, Professor,” Alex said, pocketing his card and taking out the pages with Alice Cartwright’s math on them. “A woman was murdered two days ago.”
“I can assure you,” Phillips said in an irritable voice. “I had nothing to do with that.”
“That isn’t what I mean, Professor,” Alex pressed on. “I believe she might have been killed over some math.”
That got Phillips attention. He whirled on Alex with the look of a man who’d just heard a profanity during Mass.
“That’s absurd,” he said.
“Can you just take a look at this, please,” Alex said, pressing the paper with the central calculation from Alice’s board against the front of Phillips’ coat.
The Professor hesitated, then snatched the papers out of Alex’s hand.
“Since it’s clear you won’t go away until I see this,” he said, unfolding the paper. He looked for a moment, then handed it back. “This is Fermat’s Conjecture,” he said. “No one would kill over it.”
He started to turn back to the board, but Alex grabbed his arm.
“Why do you think that, Professor?”
“Because, Fermat’s Conjecture isn’t a secret, it’s one of a dozen or so proofs that mathematicians all over the world are trying to solve. There are probably hundreds of people working on it as we speak.”
“So it’s like a puzzle that people are trying to figure out?” Alex asked.
“Essentially,” Phillips confirmed. “It’s a formula proposed by Pierre de Fermat in the early sixteen hundreds. He wasn’t able to prove that it was true, but generations of mathematicians since have made the attempt. Eventually someone will figure it out.”
“Will that someone make a name for themselves?” Alex asked. “Maybe secure a high paying job?”
“Of course. Whoever solves Fermat’s Conjecture will be famous.”
“Well, Professor,” Alex said. “In my business, that sounds a lot like motive.”
Phillips looked at him for a moment as if he hadn’t understood the words Alex had spoken, then he shook his head.
“No, no,” he scoffed. “First of all, the person who solves Fermat’s Conjecture will only be famous to other mathematicians. There are only a handful of people capable of making a serious attempt to solve it, so it’s not exactly the Nobel Prize. Secondly, as I said, mathematicians capable of working at the level of Fermat’s Conjecture are a very small fraternity. Anyone in that group will already have a good paying job. They have skills that are in demand.”
Alex held out the second sheet where he’d copied the rest of Alice’s calculations. Phillips glared at Alex then took the paper. As his eyes moved over the math, his eyebrows got gradually higher and higher.
“This is good work,” he said at last. “Very impressive. I’d say that whoever did this is more than capable of attempting Fermat’s Conjecture. Whose work did you say this was?”
“I didn’t,” Alex said. “Her name was Alice Cartwright.”
A look of profound shock washed over Professor Phillips face and he leaned against the blackboard for support.
“No,” he gasped.
“You knew Miss Cartwright?” Alex probed.
Phillips nodded, unable to find his voice for a moment.
“She was my student,” he said in a wistful voice. “Years ago, of course, but I’d never forget her. She had a great mind, the kind of intellect
a teacher yearns for but only finds if he’s lucky. It was an honor to teach her.”
Based on the Professor’s reaction Alex was pretty sure he could cross the man off the list of potential suspects.
“And you're sure no one killed her over this Farragut’s Conjecture?”
“Fermat’s Conjecture,” Phillips corrected absently. “And no, no one would have killed her over that.”
“She worked as a computer,” Alex said. “Could that have involved something worth killing over?”
Phillips took out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead before nodding.
“Unfortunately, yes,” he said. “Computers are private contractors who check people’s math,” he explained. “When architects design buildings, they usually hire a computer to make sure their math is correct. It wouldn’t do to have the building fall down, after all.”
That made sense, but Alex couldn’t see Alice being killed by a rogue architect. If she’d found errors in the math, he’d want them fixed. Architects whose buildings fell down tended not to get much work after that.
“Apparently she worked for the government,” Alex said. “What kind of work with Uncle Sam would need a computer to do?”
“The secret kind,” Phillips said. “If the Navy wants to build a carrier, someone has to check the math. If the runway is a few feet too short, people can die. If the guns on a battleship are too light, recoil could literally knock them off the deck. There are lots of things Washington might want a calculator to check.”
Now that sounded like motive. It also sounded dangerous. The Germans had already proved that they were willing to cause trouble in America, and this could be real trouble. He’d have to ask Sorsha about it when he saw her that evening.
“Thank you, Professor,” Alex said, flipping his notebook closed and returning the scraps of paper with Alice’s math to his pocket. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
He turned to go, but before he reached the door, Phillips called after him.
“Young man?”
Alex turned to find the Professor staring intently up at him from the well of the room.
“When you find out who killed Alice, would you come by and tell me about it? I…I’d like to know.”
Alex didn’t have a clue what all the scribbles on the boards meant, but this he understood. The man had loved Alice in a way, cherished her as a student. He wanted closure as much as any blood relative.
“Sure thing, Professor,” Alex said in a gentle voice. “I’ll let you know.”
10
The Home Office
Since Alex had restocked his red-backed book, he decided to skip the cab and just open his vault. The hardest part turned out to be finding a quiet place to open his vault. Not everyone knew about runewright vaults, but those who did understood that a runewright shutting himself inside his vault was committing suicide. It wouldn’t do for word of his new abilities to get out, so he always had to find a place where he could open his vault unobserved. In this case, he finally located a large janitorial closet with enough room on the back wall to draw the chalk door.
It actually took Alex longer to find the closet than it did to actually get back to his office. When he arrived, he headed straight for the front room to check in with Sherry. Before he could traverse the hallway, however, the door to the map room opened and Mike Fitzgerald stuck his head out. When he saw Alex, his bushy mustache turned up in a way that reminded Alex of a fuzzy caterpillar.
“I thought I heard you, Mr. Lockerby,” he said.
“Mike,” Alex said. “And call me Alex, you’ve got the job.”
Mike chuckled and nodded, a little embarrassed. He was in his forties and was raised to always observe propriety in the workplace.
“Sorry,” he said. “I wanted to let you know that I had eleven successful cases over the last two days.”
“That’s great, Mike,” Alex said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Keep it up.”
“Well, I also wanted to let you know that I also did two other cases.”
That got Alex’s attention. Clearly Mike was unsure how he would react to that.
“Tell me about them.”
“One was a couple who misplaced the deed to their home,” Mike said, tugging his mustache nervously. “Turns out one of them put it in a book of poetry for safekeeping. The finding rune led me right to it. The other one was a wife who thought she lost her diamond bracelet.”
Alex could tell by the change in Mike’s voice that the other shoe was about to drop.
“Let me guess, her husband got in with his bookie and hocked it.”
“Not exactly,” Mike said. “He did hock it, but it was because he lost his job and was trying to keep it from his wife while he looked for another one.”
Just when you think you’ve got people figured out, they surprise you.
“How did the wife take that?” Alex asked.
“She was upset,” Mike said with a shrug, “but it was because the husband didn’t tell her. She did pay her bill.”
The way Mike said it, he expected Alex to be worried about the money.
“Go back when you have a break and give her the money back,” Alex said. “Times being what they are, we don’t take money from people who just lost their income.”
These days twenty-five bucks wasn’t a lot of money for him and he could afford to make such decisions. In the old days Alex would have done the same, but it would have been much more painful.
“You sure about that, Mr. Lockerby?”
“Alex. And yes, I’m sure.”
Mike visibly relaxed at that.
“On the other hand,” Alex went on. “You got lucky this time. This case could have gone bad fast. The last place a detective wants to be is between a feuding husband and wife.”
“I see what you mean,” Mike said. “I guess I won’t take any more of those.”
“I didn’t say that. I just want you to think it through if someone comes to you looking for lost things. Use the finding rune here and if it shows an unexpected location, bring me in.”
Mike relaxed and grinned.
“Thanks. Mr. — Alex. I will. One other thing,” he said when Alex started to turn. “I’m almost out of finding runes.”
Ales suppressed a sigh. He only had six of those himself and he didn’t want to take the time to write more. He would need at least one if he located a clue to the missing herbs in the list of other items stolen by the thieves, two would be safer.
“Here,” he said, opening his rune book and carefully tearing out four of the six runes. “I’ll try to write some more sometime today, but I might not be able to get to it until tonight.”
“What do you want me to do if I run out of runes?”
Alex thought about that for a moment. Mike wasn’t proficient enough at rune lore to make advanced finding runes or any other standard runes, but his work with minor runes was excellent. Alex still hadn’t managed to fully restock his rune book, and he needed about fifteen minor runes of various kinds.
“If I get you a list of runes I need done, along with flash paper and ink, can you write them for me?”
Mike nodded.
“Of course, assuming I know them.”
“I’ll get you the list as soon as I’m done with Sherry,” Alex said. “Do the ones you can in any spare time you have.”
Mike promised to take care of it and withdrew back to the map room.
“Hey boss,” Sherry said as he entered the waiting room. She sat behind her desk with at least three notepads in front of her and a stack of case folders in the far corner. This time Sherry was not alone in the waiting room. A plump, morose-looking woman in a purple dress sat on one of the couches clutching a beaded handbag. She had the look of someone who always thought of themselves as ‘put-upon’.
“She’s waiting to see Mike,” Sherry said before Alex could approach.
“I just spoke to him, so I imagine he’ll be out in a minute. Any luck with those robberies?”
<
br /> Sherry gave him her version of Leslie Thompson’s million-dollar smile. She didn’t quite have it down, so it was more of a hundred-grand smile, but for most guys that was plenty.
Selecting one of the notepads in front of her, she tore off the top two pages and handed them to Alex.
“I got a hold of each warehouse and got a list of the people who had items stolen in the break-ins,” she said. “Then I called them and made a list of everything taken. I hope it helps.”
Alex took the papers with a grin. Whether it helped or not, Sherry had just saved him hours of work, and with the deadline to find Mr. Su’s herbs looming, Alex needed every second. He’d promised Mr. Su that he’d let him know his progress by today. With any luck, he’d have something to report.
“Thanks, Doll,” he said., beaming at her. “I owe you.”
“I take flowers, chocolates, and preferably, expensive lunches.”
Alex promised to take her somewhere nice for lunch next week and withdrew to his office. He wanted to get started on the property list, but he still needed to call Detective Nicholson and let him know about Alice Cartwright, so he set the list aside and picked up the telephone.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the operator at the Central Office said a moment later. “Your party doesn’t answer. Is there someone else I can transfer you to?”
“No,” Alex said, “I’ll call back later.”
He hung up and sighed. He’d have to brief Nicholson sooner or later, but it wasn’t his job to go tracking the man down. He’d call again as soon as he’d finished with Sherry’s list.
He picked up the two notebook pages and read through them quickly. Nothing jumped out at him as being a better candidate for his finding rune than the rest. He was going to have to call each of the victims and get the story on their stolen items.
“At least they’ll know what the call is about,” he said with a chuckle. The longest part of calls like these was explaining who you were and why you were calling.
