The Square Root of Murder

by Ada Madison

  I wondered if Gil had been ribbed by her colleagues about changing to a more feminine look, and so had changed back. As one of the few women in the graduate mathematics program, I’d had my own minor problems; I imagined Gil would have had even bigger ones. I remembered her mentioning how she chose her nickname.

  “Most Gillians use ‘Jill’ or ‘Lil,’” she’d said. “I use ‘Gil’ so when you’re reading it, you might think it’s a boy’s name, a nickname for ‘Gilbert’.” She’d emphasized the hard G in Gil and laughed. “It gives me a little head start in getting an assignment. Then I show up and, voila, I’m a girl. But I do a good job, so it’s not usually a problem from then on.”

  I understood perfectly.

  Once Gil had left us, it was zero hour for Rachel and me.

  Rachel sat on the edge of the bed, allowing me the luxury of the folding chair Gil had dragged in. An open window onto the airfield made the room seem less cramped and stuffy. I looked longingly at a twin engine, wishing I were airborne, or anywhere but here.

  It was clear that Rachel wasn’t going to start without some prodding. I could tell by the tears that started to well up in her eyes.

  This was not my forte. Give me a student scared to death to take a math test or demonstrate how she evaluated a definite integral and I’ll boost her confidence and have her ready well within her timeframe. I’d also had my share of successes in getting a girl back on her feet after being dumped by a cruel boy from another school. But a murder suspect looking to me for help—that was beyond the scope of my experience. I hoped I could get up to speed in a hurry.

  I plunged in.

  “Rachel, tell me what happened when you brought the plate of food to Dr. Appleton yesterday.” Was it just yesterday?

  Now her tears came in torrents, her sobs beating a quiet, steady rhythm. At least Gil’s room was equipped with tissues. I handed her the box.

  “You have to talk to me, Rachel.”

  I heard a thunderous clattering in response.

  Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack.

  The Bat Phone.

  We covered our ears. I thought the pummeling sound would never stop.

  Besides the assault from the Bat Phone, there was so much stomping and loud activity in the hallway that I was afraid to open the door.

  I heard a man shout, “Four-vehicle crash on Route Three Southbound near the Sagamore.”

  Then, Gil’s voice: “Code yellow, everyone.”

  I’d never been here when a call came. My heart raced as if I, too, had to suit up and rush out. I took a breath and told myself no one’s life depended on me.

  “Did she say code yellow?” Rachel asked. “I would have expected code red or code blue.” She shuddered.

  I was quick to share my insider knowledge with Rachel. “Code yellow reminds the crew to go at a sensible pace. Too fast and they might slip up; too slow and they’ll blow their mission. Yellow means just right.”

  Seconds later, Gil crashed into her room. “ ‘Scuse me,” she said.

  She zipped her flight suit to the top of her very fit body, hooked a radio onto her belt, and grabbed her helmet from one corner and a backpack from another, in seamless, swift motions. Army Reserve training, I guessed, reinforced by all her jobs since. Rachel and I both went stiff, not moving a muscle, lest we interrupt the choreography. Gil dashed from the room as quickly as she’d entered, leaving the flimsy brown door to swing in its frame.

  The clamor had shifted to the airfield where MAstar’s helicopter was parked. Rachel and I turned to look out the window. A pilot—the PIC, pilot in command, as the in-group knew—was already in his seat. The tall, lanky guy next to the pilot in the front was one of two flight nurses that made up the group of three who responded to every call. Gil ran to the back of the aircraft and climbed in and they were up in a flash, maybe five minutes total from the call to liftoff.

  I thought of Bruce. This was a regular part of his job, if not every day, then at least a few times a week. It’s what he was here for. I hoped I’d be able to see him in action some time. As the helicopter became smaller and smaller in the air, I hoped most that wherever the MAstar crew was off to, they arrived in time to help.

  I felt like saluting.

  I turned to Rachel. “Well, that was exciting,” I said.

  And we both laughed.

  With everyone gone on their mission, Rachel and I moved to the trailer living room, which sported dark brown leather-like chairs and a sofa, a combination television set and DVD player, and a wood-like coffee table. Magazines and DVDs were stacked neatly in a rack. No sign of a used glass or plate; no socks or towels flung around. The only stray item was a single remote control that was lined up with the edge of the coffee table. I wondered if the room was always this neat or if someone had picked up for our benefit this morning.

  Knowing Bruce and the spit-polish code of order that seemed to prevail for military types, I guessed that even though the MAstar trailer was a sort of male bastion, these were males who’d had a heavy dose of neatness training.

  We had a lot more space in this room, plus the dubious benefit of a barely working air conditioner. Rachel sniffed and cleared her throat. Her upright posture and firm expression indicated that she’d gotten over her crying jag and was ready to talk. Maybe the urgency of the flight mission had gotten to her and put things in perspective. She might be in trouble, but she was not sprawled on a highway or trapped in her car.

  I sat waiting, a welcoming expression on my face.

  “I lied, Dr. Knowles.”

  No, no, no. A chill overtook my body, and it didn’t come from the low-end A/C unit. Had I been that far off about my assistant? A woman I thought of as a friend? In an uncontrollable reflex, my eyes shot to the exit sign over the door. If not my rational self, some part of me seemed to think I was closeted in a trailer with a murderer.

  Rachel didn’t look like a killer, sitting there with her arms wrapped around herself, her straggly hair and faded jean shorts, frayed at the bottom, giving her a waif-like look. When she held a wad of tissues to her face and blew her nose loudly, it was almost comforting. Killers don’t do that, I told myself uselessly.

  I stared at a point over Rachel’s shoulder where there was a map of the MAstar bases, eleven of them in all, spread across the state. I wondered if they were all on missions now and if any of their empty trailers were serving as confessionals. As for speaking, the best I could do was mimic a radio talk show host.

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  “You’re going to hate me.”

  “I won’t hate you, Rachel.” Unless . . . I bit my tongue.

  “At the party, okay?”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  “I picked up a piece of the cake from the table and grabbed a can of soda to take to Dr. Appleton, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And I went upstairs, okay?” She paused to take care of her nose again. “When I said I knocked on Dr. Appleton’s door and he didn’t answer? That was the lie.”

  “Okay.” I was getting into Rachel’s rhythm. “So Dr. Appleton did answer the door?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t knock?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  Bad question when the answer is ambiguous. I could see that I’d need to go into puzzle-solving mode to move this along. “The door was open.”

  “Yes.”

  Finally, getting somewhere. Possibly.

  “You went in,” I guessed.

  Rachel nodded slowly and sucked in her breath; her eyes went wide. “You could see his legs, on the floor behind his desk. I put the food on the chair near his computer table and I tiptoed over to look in case I could help him get up or something, but I was scared because I knew he’d yell at me if he was busy down there.”

  “Busy on the floor?”

  “Like, looking for something he dropped? Or going through the bottom drawer?”

  I hadn’t thought of those possibil
ities. “But he wasn’t busy.”

  “No.”

  “What did you see, Rachel?”

  She took a breath. “His shirt was torn open and you could see his undershirt. And his face was all red and his eyes”—Rachel closed her eyes as if her professor’s body was in front of her at this moment in immodest attire, a lascivious look on his face—“I couldn’t look. I didn’t touch him, but I knew he was dead. I picked up the food and ran out. Then I put the plate and soda outside the door, to make it look as if I’d never gone in.”

  I let out a big sigh, feeling like I’d been at the scene myself and just got out in time before losing my lunch. I threw up my hands. “Why didn’t you call the police, Rachel? Or at least let someone know? Anyone.” I tried to keep my voice even.

  “Everyone knows how bad things are going with my research, and you said yourself how I’ve been mouthing off lately. I was scared someone would think I did it.”

  I didn’t feel it necessary to remind her that a very important someone did think she did it. And maybe wouldn’t have, if she’d simply reported what she walked in on. She might have been just another suspect, instead of sticking out like a prime number.

  “You have to tell the police. You have valuable information that they can use in a murder investigation. Don’t you see how important this is?”

  “It’s not like I actually saw anything.”

  “You saw a dead body at a certain time and place yesterday. If nothing else, that helps establish a timeline.”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess?” I paused. The last thing Rachel needed was my anxiety-ridden response. I lowered my voice. “You have to promise me that you’ll go to the police station. In fact, you can come with me this afternoon. I have an interview there myself.”

  I’d made it sound as though I’d initiated the meeting with Archie. Archie cop, me reporter.

  Rachel pointed across the room to an old, round fan on a high stand. “It’s roasting in here. Can we turn that on?”

  “If it works.” No promises from her about making a trip downtown, I noticed.

  We shared the chore: moving the fan, finding a socket, adjusting the speed—all very legitimate distractions while Rachel stalled and stalled. I tried to think of another occasion when she’d put off a distasteful task. I couldn’t. Not even when she worked on the biology floor.

  “What else can you remember? What did the office look like?”

  “Just his regular office stuff. But his desk was a mess and, you know, it’s usually in perfect order.”

  “Did the police tell you what they found?”

  “They didn’t tell me much, except that Dr. Appleton had been poisoned, and that they were talking to everyone in the building. But I knew it was more than just routine with me because they asked me things like did I work more closely with Dr. Appleton than the undergraduates, and did I have a key to the chemical cabinet.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I just said how Dr. Appleton was a strict teacher, but people respected him for it, and I was glad I had him for an adviser. I guess all that was another lie, but I wasn’t going to make myself look worse.”

  “And the key to cabinet?

  “I told them the truth but then when they asked me where it was, I couldn’t find it. It’s always on a separate key ring in my purse, the one you gave me, with the metal pi symbol on it? But I went to get it, and it wasn’t there, Dr. Knowles. I lost it.”

  Or someone took it.

  I didn’t know too many legal terms, but premeditated was one that stood out. If someone went to the trouble of stealing Rachel’s key ahead of time, then Keith’s murder wasn’t a random act, in the heat of an argument, but a well thought out frame-up of Rachel.

  From outside, I heard the sound of a plane taking off. At least this time it was not an emergency mission, but one of the many small plane owners treating friends or relatives to a bird’s-eye view of the beautiful New England landscape.

  “Rachel, you said Dr. Appleton’s desk was a mess. Did you see anything in particular that was . . . out of place? Papers strewn about? Anything like that?”

  She frowned, thinking, then shook her head. “Not that I remember. I think his lamp was knocked over, but I’m not sure. I was only in there, like, a minute.”

  “So no yellow computer paper everywhere, for example?”

  “You mean like what we use for drafts?”

  “Maybe.”

  Rachel bit her lip. More thinking. “No, I think I’d remember that.”

  I tried to keep track of the inconsistencies without taking notes, which I was afraid would intimidate my witness. The crime scene people had not found the cake Rachel said she left outside the door, but they had found pages of Rachel’s thesis on yellow paper, which Rachel had not seen.

  A medium hard puzzle, I told myself, not impossible, once I have a little more information. And as long as I can trust Rachel to tell the truth from now on.

  “Did you see anyone else in the corridor, when you arrived or when you left?”

  “No, you know no one stays around on Friday afternoons except for a party.”

  “Did you see Woody, by any chance?”

  Rachel twisted her lips in concentration, as she did when she was assembling a graphing lab for me. “I might have heard him. There was definitely some noise when I got there. It could have been Woody’s cart rolling down the other wing.”

  I wondered why the police hadn’t told Rachel that pages of her thesis had been crumpled up and thrown around the late Keith Appleton’s office. I debated whether to tell her now. Virgil hadn’t exactly sworn me to secrecy.

  Another time, I decided. Rachel needed a breather from her intense confession.

  And I had a cop to meet.

  CHAPTER 8

  As I drove toward town, rolling around in my head was a big question: What obligation did I have to tell the police about Rachel’s lie? It wasn’t as if she’d confessed to murder, but the simple fact of withholding information from the police was a crime, wasn’t it? If I didn’t report Rachel, were we dealing with crime squared?

  I wondered if I could trust Virgil with my question. I doubted it. Not after the ridiculous performance I’d given last night. I had to hope that Rachel herself, who’d declined my invitation to accompany me to the police station, would see the light and be completely forthcoming before she had to be grilled under a bare bulb.

  The Henley skyline was coming into view, the golden dome of its city hall sparkling in the sun. The dome essentially was Henley’s skyline, sitting atop its tallest building. Henley was a three-exit town these days, four if you counted the outlying one that led to and from the airfield. In the direction I was traveling, the next exit would take me to what was formerly an industrial area where all that was left were rows of abandoned factories, a few of which had been turned into warehouses. The following exit ramp ended up downtown, where the police station awaited me; the one after that, the last exit, practically flowed into the college campus.

  My appointed time with Detective Archie loomed in my mind, but I had about an hour and forty-five minutes to spare. Thanks to my cheekiness, which put me in an apologetic mood, he now had an advantage, even more than his cop status gave him. I wondered what his birthday was. Knowing it always helped me get a handle on a person. Bruce claimed that knowing a person’s favorite movie—if you could upload only one to your smartphone—told him everything he needed to know.

  I’d done nothing to prepare for my two brushes with law enforcement this weekend. Big mistakes. I had to turn that around and I couldn’t do it without trying to anticipate what Archie might ask and prepare an answer that spoke of complete cooperation.

  Either that, or I needed more information in my own arsenal.

  Without further thought, I drove past the downtown exit and the police station and headed for the off-ramp that led to campus. I couldn’t help myself. I had the gall to think that I might find something the poli
ce overlooked, maybe a scrap with scientific notation they weren’t used to. To be honest, I also wanted to check on Franklin Hall. The only way I could explain that, if anyone asked, was that I was worried about the building and how it had survived this crushing blow. A silly reaction, as if the building itself had been affected by Keith’s murder.

  From a distance of a few hundred yards, nothing looked different. The administration building tower, taller than Franklin Hall’s, was still intact; the surrounding brick buildings had the same aura of steam as yesterday from the heat wave that wouldn’t quit. The various grottos with statues of our founders were standing in their proper places, as were the small fountain behind Admin and the blooming flowers around the library.

  There was a significant lack of fun-loving students kicking up sprays of water.

  I’d driven onto the campus from the south side, between Admin and the library. The walkways were empty, but that wasn’t too strange for a Saturday afternoon, especially one that was a good beach day for those lucky enough to have houses or friends with houses on the Cape.

  The lot closest to Franklin Hall had no cars. Evacuated, you might say. I didn’t know what I expected, but the building I worked in stood there, same as always, red brick, one big solid figure shaped like an L with a slightly thicker short side. I saw no crime scene tape on the outside of the building, and no police presence. Had the facility I called home already been cleared by the police? All the better for them to be able to concentrate on interviewing people. Lucky for me.

  I got out of my car and walked slowly up to the building. With every step I had to remind myself that there was no longer a dead body on the fourth floor. That didn’t mean there was no one lurking on the first floor—my floor—however. I scanned the windows, not knowing which I preferred, signs of life or of emptiness. All that reflected back to me were the stark rays of the sun.

  I climbed the stately steps under the clock tower, fumbling for my key to the large, heavy front door. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had to use it. I was almost never the first one to arrive. I preferred late morning classes and had the seniority to make the schedule work for me. When I did drop in on an occasional Saturday, I’d find at least a few people, students or faculty, cramming in the science library or grinding out what they hoped would be useful data in one of the labs at the last minute.