A Murder of Crows

by David Rotenberg

  I’m fuckin’ fifty-three and I’ve been summoned here like some stupid pimply undergraduate—and I hate this damned robe.

  That’s right, everyone, ignore me—ignore Neil Frost. Look the other way—then look down and that’ll be your last look.

  Neil’s laugh erupted from Viola’s throat. It hurt to hear. Viola Tripping stopped spinning. Her arms came down to her sides and tears coursed down her cheeks so that Decker couldn’t tell if it was rain or tears.

  “Are you all right?” Decker asked.

  “So much hate. So much hate.” She held out her arms to him.

  Decker enfolded her to his chest then sat on one of the folding chairs and pulled her onto his lap. He felt her entire body heave as she wept. Finally she stopped, slid off his lap and moved back to the final resting spot of Dr. Neil Frost, hater.

  She opened her arms and it was as if someone yanked her head back—she screamed, then held out her arms and began to rotate, and her mouth opened and Dr. Frost’s vitriol spewed out.

  Fuckin’ graduation and graduants and the rest of this idiot faculty. Full professors. Everywhere full professors. Morons!

  I only came to get my final paycheck. What kind of sophomoric idea was it of the provost’s to withhold final paychecks if you didn’t attend the fuckin’ graduation?

  But this graduation is going to be like no other. No—this is going to be a momentous graduation. One that no one will ever forget. No one.

  Look at them all. All so excited. So expectant. So young. Way too many are brownies and slant-eyed bastards! It’ll serve the lot of them—the whole lot of indulged, pampered, preening pancakes. The Chinese, Japanese and Koreans—pancakes. The Southeast Asians—brownies. The Americans—puffed pastries. And the women—all of them—cunts, just cunts.

  Pancakes, brownies, puff pastries and cunts—I’m saving you from being eaten alive by the American military-industrial complex the way I was. Saving you, you ungrateful peons.

  Twenty minutes to show time. Time for me to make my ever so polite excuses—my bowels, you know, must have been something I ate, sorry, so sorry—and then like Snagglepuss make with my exit stage left—”

  Decker felt the cold and the slime between his fingers then saw the perfect squares enter his retinal screen and knew beyond knowing that this man’s words were the truth—at least the truth as he saw it. He opened his eyes and stared at Viola Tripping. Waited, but she put her arms to her sides and stared into space. “No more?” he asked.

  “That was the last thing he thought.”

  Decker nodded, then read the file of one Professor Neil Frost.

  * * *

  As he did, back in the provost’s office Yslan and Harrison turned from their receiver and flipped open their copy of the professor’s folder.

  Neil Frost was a perennial assistant professor—the definition of an academic failure. He had been denied full professorship three times. He was fifty-three years of age and rented an apartment west of the village. He had no other address. Divorced twelve years ago, a sixteen-year-old daughter—whereabouts unknown—wife remarried, three kids, new husband works for the Pentagon, had been Frost’s contact there. What other business contacts he’d had since then hadn’t panned out. There was a note from the Pentagon warning that he was an unstable individual, and a reference to Gerald Bull that drew a scowl from Harrison.

  There were several student complaints about his insulting language and one about a sexual harassment allegation that had been settled on the quiet.

  His departmental evaluations were below average, but it was noted that although he was tenured he saved the department big bucks by accepting a pittance of a salary to teach the introductory courses.

  There was also a note about a petition he tried to start to stop the provost’s new rule that required all faculty members to attend graduation to receive their last paychecks.

  His security clearance was minimal, but there was no sticker on the front of his folder to indicate that he was a security risk.

  “And we’re sure that he died in the—”

  Yslan held out another folder and nodded. “Dental match, came in yesterday.”

  “Get a team over to his apartment. I want it taken apart piece by piece.”

  “Let’s wait for Decker.”

  “Why?”

  “I hope he can tell us whether this is truth or fantasy.”

  They didn’t have to wait long for Decker to contact them.

  “I assume you got the Frost stuff?”

  “Yeah, Mr. Roberts, we got it. So?”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Not your concern. So, is it true?”

  “As far as I can tell, yeah.” He didn’t bother to mention the three perfect rectangles that crossed his retinal screen as Viola Tripping spouted the final thoughts of Dr. Neil Frost.

  “And you’re sure he was surprised by the blast?”

  Decker didn’t answer.

  “Mr. Roberts, was he surprised by the timing of the blast?”

  After a pause Decker said, “I think so.”

  “You think so!”

  “Hey, this isn’t my usual way of working, so all I can say is that I think so.”

  “Okay. Anything else strike you as possible?”

  “No, just a whole lot of grocery lists, textbook requests, thoughts on how to avoid coming to graduation—stuff like that—but nothing else all that interesting.”

  “How’s Viola holding up?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like this before. I have nothing to compare it to. She seems okay.”

  “How far have you gone?”

  “We’ve done the professors on the stage—at least the ones we could identify. And part of the first two rows of students.”

  “Anything there?”

  “Yeah, a couple who were giving each other hand jobs while they waited, and they apparently had invented a porn site that they’ve sold for a bundle. Wanna hear the name of said porn site?”

  “No.”

  “Well, too bad. It was Reachoutandfuckapornstar dot com. They received just short of three million dollars for their little invention—I guess their hand jobs were celebratory.”

  “And who says America is falling behind in research and development.”

  “Not me.”

  “What else have you got?”

  “The need for a coffee. I’m beginning to lose focus.”

  “Will do—strong, black, in a mug. It’s on its way.”

  * * *

  Two hours later Decker and Viola Tripping came across the first hint of how the bombs might have been linked. A student named David Pern had been sitting in the fourth row awaiting his turn. He’d evidently been either talking or thinking to himself, because Viola Tripping’s words came out in torrents and her spinning was unusually fast.

  * * *

  I turned down three major job offers. Three. Everyone else here is going to work, but I’m going home. Home to Momma. Four years away from her has about killed me. All the phone calls weren’t enough and going home to La Porte was so expensive. Just getting to the airport cost a hundred dollars. But I did it and every time I brought home inventions I’d made to make Momma’s final years more endurable.

  I wish you could have been here for this. I think you’d be proud of me.

  It was so hard, but I did it. I did it for us.

  What the . . . Flash of light from the stage. Jeepers. I know what this is—I’d warned them about it. My terrorist projection model had the graduation of the science class at MIT number four on the hit list.

  Blood and flesh and bone on the proscenium arch of the stage—the dead on that stage were yesterday’s news. Oh, shit—me and my classmates are the future.

  A scream—then a single thought,

  Who’s going to help Momma now?

  Decker contacted Yslan again.

  “Is he telling the truth, Mr. Roberts?”

  “You mean was he telling—”

&nbs
p; “Okay, was he?”

  “Yeah. Not sure if this kid’s observations are of any value. But they at least confirm the sequence.”

  “They do more than that,” Harrison said to Yslan. “Get this David Pern’s terrorist threat assessment paper. I want to know exactly who read it and when. It could have given someone an idea.”

  Agents were sent scurrying.

  * * *

  Just an hour before dawn Viola Tripping uttered the word “jihadi” for the first time. She was speaking the final thoughts of a chemical engineering student named Ahmed Veladi, who was in the seventh row.

  Viola Tripping’s spin this time was like a slow minuet. Her words though, were accented—clearly a South Asian, either an Indian or a Pakistani.

  I don’t love America—but I don’t hate it, either. And I don’t take orders from illiterate beardos with cheap plastic glasses who believe that every word in some dumb book was supposedly dictated by God himself, like the Evangelicals in this country who believe the same thing about their silly book. These two groups deserve each other. Best two out of three mud wrestling would be good. Maybe an HBO pay-per-view special. The Christian Right against the Muslim Brotherhood—cheerleaders against women in burkas!

  Sure, I’ve been approached—fuck, every brown chemical engineering student has been approached. Everyone has an uncle’s friend’s father’s mechanic’s third cousin who has jihadi contacts.

  An ugly snicker.

  If the West knew the extent of the jihadi movement they wouldn’t allow a single Muslim from outside the country into America’s places of higher learning.

  What’s that? Shit! This shouldn’t be happening to me. It’s not fair.

  A scream of pain, then an even uglier snicker.

  How stupid. Stupid of me. Who the hell said that there is fairness in the world except these foolish Americans?

  Decker reported this only because of the jihadi reference, but Harrison latched on to it and got the information directly to the head of Homeland Security. Shortly this kid’s dorm room was swarming with FBI agents.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later Viola Tripping stopped her spinning and began to giggle. The sound of her innocent laughter was so odd in this place of death that Decker wondered if this was all too much for her. Finally he asked, “Do you need a rest?”

  She shook her head slowly, but she was smiling.

  “What was this—” he checked his chart to get the name—“Charles Roy thinking?”

  She looked away from him but giggled again.

  “What? What was he thinking about?”

  “About touching Jelena’s booby.”

  “That was his last thought?”

  “No his last thought came after the blast.”

  “And that was?”

  She giggled again.

  “Come on.”

  “It was “Shit, now I won’t be able to touch Jelena’s tit again.”

  “Fine All-American thought for the end.”

  “He wasn’t all American.”

  “No?”

  “No, he was Indian. He was thinking about India—how much he felt the responsibility to return home and help his country, how he should marry the girl his mother had found for him. Then he thought of a job offer from Siemens and the chance to live in London—in London with money! There he could find an Indian girl on his own—well, actually he wanted to find a Croatian girl. He liked Croatians—and they seemed to like him.”

  “And I suppose Jelena was . . .”

  “Croatian? Yes.”

  With her small hands she made the most innocent indication of a large-breasted woman Decker had ever seen—and amidst the horror—the two laughed.

  Then she stopped and said, “He named the probable explosive components when he heard the bomb from the stage and said, ‘Whoever made this explosive device had a heavy hand with the RDX.’ ”

  “And when he heard the bomb behind him?”

  “He wondered if Siemens would honour the insurance policy in the contract he had signed. Then he got upset that he wouldn’t be able to touch Jelena’s breast again.”

  * * *

  The only other student they encountered whose final thoughts were of interest was a boy who evidently was sitting by himself. And all Viola Tripping could get was:

  So that’s why; now it makes sense. I should have known. The turd, the damned turdlet.

  * * *

  Harrison and Yslan assumed the kid was cursing his fate—granted, in an odd way, but a boy’s curse nonetheless.

  Decker wasn’t sure. The phrase “now it makes sense” wouldn’t leave his head.

  Along with his marine guard he walked Viola Tripping back to her room, then went to the town square and sat in the gazebo. The rain had stopped and a milky sun was rising.

  Yslan approached him. She had her files in one hand. “You okay?”

  He looked at her. He had no way of answering the question, so he just shrugged.

  “Something specific troubling you?”she asked.

  He thought for a long moment then asked, “What was the kid’s name who talked about the turd?”

  Yslan glanced quickly at her files. “Grover Cleveland Rabinowitz.”

  “And what dorm room was he in?”

  Yslan checked her file again and answered his question. Then asked one of her own: “Why?”

  But before she could get an answer her phone buzzed. It was Harrison and he was in a hurry.

  46

  A TALE OF TWO PADS—T MINUS 4 DAYS

  YSLAN SAT BESIDE HARRISON AS THE CASCADE OF THE POLICE cherry-tops scolded across his now hard-set facial features. They drove fast out of Dundas and raced under the thruway that divided the rich college town from Stoney River, the dilapidated village that housed the workers.

  Passing the liquor store, the only store with a neon sign on Main Street, and the two dollar stores—each a one-dollar store—and the inevitable Greek pizza joint, they sped down by the river.

  There they found 137 Demerit Street and unit 21—Professor Neil Frost’s apartment.

  They didn’t bother with the niceties of warrants or finding the landlord—these were poor people and they knew better than to challenge authorities.

  In apartment 21, a one-bedroom with a stained bedsheet covering the street-side window, they had a view into the life of an unsuccessful academic—i.e., one who tried to live only on the salary the college paid. Successful academics made less than 40 percent of their salary from their universities, the rest from private industry. First-class professors of math, physics and chemistry—not to mention computer science—were in great demand in the private sector. The universities often had policies against taking on outside work, but they couldn’t do anything about it. They needed A-list computer, math and science profs to attract the kind of students they wanted, who in turn would contribute generously to the endowment funds without which the universities couldn’t function.

  Neil Frost was not, as was evident from his digs, a first-class or A-list anything.

  Discoloured popcorn ceilings, 1970s appliances in the kitchen, bookshelves made of stacked bricks and warped boards. A faux leather couch that had a rip in the seat of the centre sectional piece and a clearly sagging foundation—one leg was missing and it was propped up by what looked like dozens of test booklets. The only up-to-date thing in the whole place was a huge HD flat-screen TV filling most of the living room wall.

  First they searched for a computer—none.

  In a stack of papers—mostly takeout menus from various fast-food restaurants—they found his Dell laptop warranty. They decided that he must have taken it with him to the graduation, so it—along with his cell phone—was history. The place had no land line.

  “Get his cell phone number from the college. I want his phone records. And see if he has a computer in his office,” Harrison barked.

  “The professors were expected to provide their own computers,” Yslan said.

  “How do
—”

  “I checked.”

  “Let the forensic guys know that anything at the blast site that could even possibly be part of a hard drive is to be bagged and brought to us right away.”

  Yslan nodded, although she had already ordered that on the day they arrived.

  The fingerprint guys were already hard at it, but it was quickly becoming obvious that there were many sets of prints in the place. The dear professor had clearly not applied himself to cleaning, so some could be weeks if not months old.

  It was Yslan who found the only real clue in the whole place. Beneath the filthy George Foreman grill was a large sheet of paper evidently used to catch drippings. On the back side of it was a shopping list. “Sir, I think you’d better—”

  She didn’t get out the rest before Harrison had the sheet of paper in his hands and was shouting, “Damn it to fucking hell!”

  * * *

  Outside the apartment, on Demerit Street, Harrison huddled with Yslan and Mallory, the head of Homeland Security.

  “And you’re sure?” Mallory asked.

  “It’s a bomb maker’s shopping list.”

  “Not really, Harrison,” Mallory insisted.

  “Okay. It’s a list for components to build a detonator for a bomb.”

  “I buy that.”

  “Mallory, he could get the stuff to make the actual bombs from any one of more than a dozen labs on this campus.”

  “And you’re convinced this Professor Frost person died in the blast?”

  “We got lucky with dental records,” Harrison said.

  Yslan looked at Harrison. No one had told Mallory, or anyone for that matter, about Viola Tripping. Surely Mallory was wondering how they’d gotten to Professor Frost’s apartment.

  “So it was a suicide bombing,” Mallory said.

  Yslan breathed a quick sigh of relief and snuck a look at Harrison. Both knew from Viola Tripping’s recitation that Neil Frost had every intention of sneaking away before the bombs went off. This guy was no martyr. Of that they were sure.

  “Did he have an accomplice?” Mallory asked.

  “There had to be,” Yslan piped in.

  “Or two or three,” added Harrison. “Assembling the bombs wouldn’t be hard. And if the shopping list Special Agent Hicks found proves true, then the bombs were detonated from a cell phone signal. But the bombs were surrounded with metal shards. This was a tent, not an enclosed space. The shards did more killing than the bombs themselves. And it must have been several hundred pounds of scrap to have done this much damage.”