The Quotient of Murder (Professor Sophie Knowles)

by Madison, Ada

  That was Bruce. If you’re going to be cold, you might as well be really cold and linger outside in it.

  “We can get symphony tickets,” I said. To play into his likes, I added, “And walk along the Charles.”

  “You don’t even want to walk through the campus parking lot in this weather.” Bruce bit the end off a carrot. He chewed with a more thoughtful expression than required for the activity, then waved the carrot at me. “Something’s up. What’s in Boston?”

  “I might want to check someone out.”

  Bruce gave me his “uh-oh” look, and I confessed, telling him all I knew about Wendy Carlson, including what color pj’s she wore twenty-five years ago.

  “You want to visit the roommate of the girl who jumped from the tower in the eighties?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe you want to visit. Or maybe it’s her roommate?”

  “Maybe she jumped.” I waved my hand in an iffy motion. “Maybe she didn’t jump.”

  Bruce took a long breath, trying to keep up. “You haven’t spoken to her? The roommate?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t know if she’s working tomorrow, or even if she still works at the BPL?”

  “That’s what’s in the alumni directory.”

  “Which is always up to date, of course. Do you update your entry for your undergraduate degree every year?”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “For your grad school directory. Ever?”

  I fiddled with the crust of my bread. “Sometimes.”

  “How about this. Write the roommate a letter and wait to see if she answers. She may not want to talk to you.”

  I’d been dismissing that possibility. I had a bright idea. “I’ll call the BPL, see if she’s working this weekend.”

  “And if she is?”

  “I’ll just show up.”

  “What about skiing?”

  “Do I have to quote my grandmother again?” I asked.

  Bruce smiled and we recited her one-liner together.

  “Don’t participate in any sport where there are ambulances waiting.”

  But our usual laughter didn’t follow as the memory of real-life ambulances on our campus flooded the room.

  When Bruce left, our weekend plans were still unresolved. He knew not to push me when I was wallowing in indecision. It didn’t hurt that he’d just returned from a New Year’s Day ice climb in the Southwest, so if he were to be deprived of skiing in New Hampshire this weekend, it wouldn’t be a big deal.

  I’d sat with my jaw clenched as I’d watched the video of Bruce and his buddy doing the Ames Ice Hose climb near Telluride, Colorado. Each time Bruce slammed his axe into the ice, I was sure it wouldn’t hold for the next step up the mountain. If he hadn’t been sitting beside me, safe and whole, eating popcorn, smiling at the memory, I would never have caught my breath.

  To me, ice was what went into iced tea and melted pretty quickly. It hadn’t been easy, therefore, to watch Bruce thread a thick screw through an icicle, then pass a rope through the hole it made. Then lift himself with that rope.

  “How can you do that?” I’d asked, not expecting an answer.

  “It’s probably just as well you can’t hear the grunts and groans,” Bruce had said.

  He was right.

  Now it came down to me. Boston or not? A different kind of adventure. I wasn’t sure what to do other than start with a little fact-finding.

  I checked the library hours online and saw that I had plenty of time to make a call before they closed at five. I punched the number for the BPL, tapping my fingers to speed the process. After a few rerouting steps, I reached a live operator.

  “This is Dr. Sophie Knowles from Henley College. I’d like to find out if one of your employees will be working tomorrow.” I hoped my voice carried the ring of authority and my credential would overpower any impropriety in the query.

  “Is this regarding your research, Dr. Rawls?”

  Rawls? I cleared my throat. What a good idea, using a fake name.

  “Yes, I want to ensure continuity if I drop in tomorrow.”

  “And who is the researcher you’ve been working with?”

  I realized I had no idea if Wendy Carlson was a researcher. With a bachelor’s in physics, but no degree in library science according to the Alumni Office, she could be working anywhere in the BPL, from the map room to the computer center to the café. She could be a bookbinder for all I knew. I’d worked myself into a research corner, however, and I had to go with that.

  “Wendy Carlson,” I said, clenching my jaw, fiddling with a paper clip.

  The wait was endless, until, “Yes, here it is. Ms. Carlson will be at her desk tomorrow from nine to four.”

  I said a quick thank-you, quitting while I was ahead, and clicked off before she could ask the topic of my research. My creativity went only so far.

  I let out my breath. I could now make an informed decision about a trip to Boston. I wondered what it would be.

  • • •

  Enjoying the warmth of my cottage, I was in no hurry to return to campus. I sat for a while on a comfortable chair in my office generating a short anacrostic around a quote from Einstein about pure mathematics.

  Halfway through, I remembered that I hadn’t retrieved my messages from my landline. I reached over to the phone on the corner of my desk and clicked the button.

  “Hey,” said Ariana from Florida. “You’ve absolutely got to come down here sometime. Oh, how about now? I got your message about the whacked-out heater in Franklin. Pleeeeeeeze, just get on a plane. Hey, get Bruce to fly you down.” She’d trailed off, laughing.

  I smiled, remembering a photo Ariana had sent from her phone the other day. She looked stunning, stretched out on the beach, on a lounge chair that happened to match her green and white swimsuit and complement her currently blond hair. I hadn’t told her about Jenn’s attack, and probably wouldn’t until her vacation was over. No good would come of spreading bad news.

  We all knew I wasn’t about to leave my classes and fly to Florida, but it was nice to know that I now had two warm-weather alternatives to icy Franklin Hall—I’d been invited to Rwanda and to Florida.

  The next message wasn’t so welcome.

  “This is Eric from Henley Savings Bank. Please call me at your earliest convenience regarding an issue with your credit card.”

  Now what? First Kenny, now Eric. Didn’t the world know I was busy, looking into a twenty-five-year-old death of one student and a day-old attack on another? I let out an annoyed grunt and called my bank to make sure there was an Eric (unlike Kenny) and that the number he left was legitimate. Part of me was disappointed; I’d been hoping this was another error, as Leila, my editor, called it, or a stunt, as I called it.

  I was shunted around to three different departments, placed on hold, and had not only music, but advice for putting my dollars to work for me—all piped into my ear before I reached Eric.

  After making sure I was having a nice day, Eric asked, “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions, Ms. Knowles?”

  “That’s fine.” I knew I sounded otherwise, though it was probably not Eric’s fault that something had gone wrong in credit card land.

  I gave Eric the last four digits of my social security number, the street where I grew up, and my mother’s maiden name, though she wouldn’t have liked that he called it that. “It’s my only name,” she’d say. “Margaret Stone.” She was thrilled when I chose it as my puzzle-writer pseudonym.

  “Thank you, Ms. Knowles. Do you have your credit card in your custody?”

  “Yes,” I said, drawing out the word, as I fished in my purse for my wallet, then inspected the card. “I do.”

  “Have you been out of the country recently?”

  Not since college, but I didn’t think Eric needed details of life in hostels across Europe more than twenty years ago. “No, I haven’t left the country. Can you tell me what this is about?”

  “We’ve f
lagged some charges to your card in the Philippines.”

  I stood and walked into the hallway. I paced a well-worn path between my bedroom and my kitchen. “Where did you say?” I asked, though I knew I’d heard him clearly.

  “We have five hundred and fifty dollars in charges in three stores in Manila and Quezon City over the last week.”

  “I can’t imagine how that happened. I’ve never been in the Philippines. I hardly know where it is and I’ve never heard of Quezon City. I’ve been in Henley all week.”

  I spared Eric my litany of classes, puzzle deadlines, and the bigger issues of life and death that were already on my plate. I doubted he’d care how busy I was, but wasn’t it his job to find out who had impersonated me in another country? Maybe that was asking too much.

  “We understand,” Eric said to my protestation of ignorance of the Philippines.

  I wondered who were the “we” who understood, but I was too flustered to query Eric.

  “Can you tell me the name of the person who made these charges?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid not. But we’re prepared to take care of this,” he said. “The charges will be removed, but you need to come down in person to the bank and sign a form.”

  “Make an exasperating trip downtown and stand in line at the bank” wasn’t on my to-do list.

  “Can’t you fax me the form?”

  “I’m afraid not. You understand. We have to follow certain procedures to ensure that your—”

  I interrupted Eric when a thought came to me. “I just remembered, my friend Judy had this happen to her once and she didn’t need to appear in person. She was able to do everything online. I think they sent a pdf. Is there a way I can do that?”

  “I’m afraid not. Every bank is different, Ms. Knowles. You’ll also need to stop using your card immediately. Destroy it and we’ll issue you a new one shortly. In the meantime, let me give you a temporary number that you can use until you receive your card in the mail.”

  “Okay, are you open tomorrow?” And don’t say you’re afraid not, I added to myself.

  “From nine to one. And we close at five today. Can you hold, please?”

  With great reluctance, I added “Make an exasperating trip downtown and stand in line at the bank” to my to-do list for Saturday.

  Grateful as I was that I wasn’t going to have to pay for someone’s Philippine souvenirs, I felt overwhelmed by the notifications I’d have to make. I thought of all my automatic billing sites—cable, video and magazine subscriptions, phone service, utility bills—and all the sites where I’d stored my credit card information—bookstores, clothing sites, gift registries.

  I regretted every time I’d hit yes to “Do you want to save this information?” or checked off “Yes, remember me.”

  “Ms. Knowles?” Eric was back from “hold, please” land.

  “Yes, I’m here.”

  “We’re sorry for the inconvenience.”

  “Thanks.”

  “We also suggest you contact the Henley Police Department and file a report. They’ll come out and interview you.”

  Great. Did homicide detectives handle credit card theft? Could I just ask Virgil to take care of it?

  I thought about how this intrusion might have happened, all through the virtual world. My card had never left my wallet, which had never been out of my possession. How wonderful that we’d come so far technologically. A thief no longer had to be present to steal a credit card.

  My cozy mood ruined, I ran my credit card through my shredder, piled on layers of wool, pulled on fleece-lined boots, and left for campus.

  I wished I had time to pick up some popcorn for the video showing.

  • • •

  The Music Department was located in what was alternately called an interesting feature of the Administration Building or an architectural glitch. It was accessible only by descending a few steps from the third floor where a strange-looking door opened onto a hallway with a large auditorium on one side and a row of small rooms on the other. Attempts to match this pseudo-wing with its corresponding outside wall were hopeless. Arches and small turrets seemed to converge on that face and showed no simple connection to the labyrinth inside.

  When I arrived a few minutes before three, most of the viewers had already taken seats on folding chairs in the small, windowless room Randy’s secretary had prepared. Music stands, instrument cases, and boxes of sheet music had been pushed against the back wall. As I entered the room, I heard Randy congratulating Virgil for finding his way.

  “Good directions,” Virgil said, pointing to me, bringing me into their conversation. Not an easy trick, since Randy matched Virgil in height, both leaving me in the dust of five-foot-three. Randy and I shared hair color, however, each with a swatch of gray over brown, while Virgil’s crop of dark hair was probably no different now from when he’d sat for his yearbook photo.

  “Dr. Stephens—” Virgil began.

  “It’s Randy, please,” Henley’s First Musician said. Randy took a bow, as he often did for no apparent reason.

  “Randy has a nice setup for us here,” Virgil said. He pushed back his cuff and looked at his watch. “We’ll wait a few more minutes before we start the show.”

  I nodded at the students I’d invited—Willa, Brent, Patty, Andrew, and Lauren—and five or six other students, apparently chosen by the group I now thought of as my regulars, those who had been at the hospital and in my home. I made my way to an empty seat at the front, between Ted and Andrew, each of whom took a turn leaning into me. Andrew said, “I hope this works and we see someone walking toward Jenn with, like, a baseball bat, or something.” A second later, Ted said, “I don’t know what they’re expecting—that we’ll see some guy carrying a golf club?” One sports reference in each ear. It was almost more than I could handle. Both men had whispered, as if we were in church.

  At three ten by my smartphone, Virgil thanked us all for coming and explained where the footage we were about to watch had come from and what time period it covered. We learned that it had already been gone over by the police downtown and by the three commuters who’d come upon the attack and rescued Jenn. The students had been unable to identify anyone who looked like the man they’d chased off. In fact, according to Virgil, the three young men agreed only on his clothing—“dark”—but not on any other physical characteristics.

  “But I’d know him if I saw him again,” each one had maintained.

  I wondered if the cops’ job was always this hard.

  I was ready with the Notes app on my phone as the first images rolled, or pixelated, their way across the screen. I figured this camera site to be high up on the Clara Barton dorm, facing the front entrance. We saw students come and go, with long lapses in any activity. The screen showed a corner of the Student Union building, reminding me that I’d plucked a one-hundred-dollar bill near that spot. It was in the pocket of my jacket, now hanging from a hook at the back of the room. I typed a note to myself to talk to Virgil about it when this session was over. I probably should have dropped it off at lost and found in the Administration Building and been done with it. The chances that it was Jenn’s were near zero, but maybe it had fallen from the wallet of a more financially comfortable student, who would be looking for it. Or, better yet, by Jenn’s attacker who had left his prints all over it. I could dream.

  Virgil spoke again before the next segment. “By the way, we’ve already cut some of the footage that has no movement at all. We could have queued up the rest so this wouldn’t take so long, but I wanted to make sure we didn’t miss anything. Remember, there might be someone at the edges who seems strange to you, or maybe you see someone who’s been hanging around lately but doesn’t belong. That’s what we want to know.”

  I wondered if Virgil was telling us everything. Maybe he had a suspect in mind, a man he’d already identified, and we were here to confirm his suspicions. I looked left and right, at Ted and Andrew, and over my shoulder to Randy and several student
s whom I didn’t recognize. Was it one of them Virgil was targeting? Surely not someone who’d been to Henley General and to my home. Virgil often quoted the rules of interrogation, how you never directly confronted the person you thought was guilty until you had incontrovertible evidence. First, you brought him over to your side, asking for cooperation, getting him to a point where he wanted to confess. Maybe Virgil was courting someone in this room. I pulled my sweater around me and faced front again.

  We held our collective breath at the most intense part of the footage, time-stamped during the hour Jenn was attacked, when the three commuters, all male, exited the dorm and walked west. I didn’t want to watch as the young men turned out of camera range, to where we all knew Jenn had been overpowered. I heard Andrew draw in his breath and hold it until the segment ended. I gave his shoulder a pat and was rewarded with a small smile and a thank-you nod.

  Nothing useful came from the footage captured by the middle residence, Nathaniel Hawthorne Hall, which may or may not have meant that Jenn hadn’t passed by there after she left Franklin Hall. The inadequacy of our camera system was never more apparent as we realized there were more hidden zones than areas covered by the system.

  We saw a long shot of the fountain that graced the center of the campus. In good weather, the bench surrounding the water sprays would have been crowded with sun worshippers; today we watched a couple of hardy construction workers head that way carrying what was most likely lunch. The men sat facing the back of the Administration Building as if they were keeping watch over their equipment. If they’d been facing the other way, they might have seen Jenn and the thug who had beaten her.

  The last footage came from a recording set up on the top floor of Paul Revere, the dorm closest to the Administration Building and Henley Boulevard. This camera was trained on the pedestrian entrance to the campus, which also happened to be the direction of the construction activity.

  We watched the men split up into twos and threes, some climbing into the cabs to eat, some walking toward the campus coffee shop.