A Murder of Crows (20 page)

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.

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.”

“So accomplice or accomplices,” Mallory said, putting his hands behind his back and pacing.

To Yslan he looked like Alec Guinness in
Smiley's People
—sans the big specs, and Guinness's obvious intelligence. She stopped herself. Alec Guinness?
Smiley's People?
Had she even seen those things
or was she somehow seeing from Decker's eyes? She didn't know.

“Check his students. Perhaps he had a cadre.”

With that Mallory strode to his waiting black Mercedes, where the uniformed driver held a back door open for him.

Yslan had an odd look on her face.

“What?” Harrison demanded.

“Cadre? What's a cadre?”

* * *

Decker looked around Grover Cleveland Rabinowitz's Spartan dorm room. It occurred to him that the boy's parents must have cleaned up after they came to retrieve what remained of their son. There were tape marks on the walls where posters must have hung. The bookshelf over the bed was empty, as were the desk drawers, the closet and the armoire

Decker sat on the bare mattress and tried to understand what this boy could have meant when he said, “So that's why; Now it makes sense. I should have known. The turd, the damned turdlet.”

He reminded himself that he taught actors not to work on the meaning of the words but rather on what could have caused the character to say those words. The Roberts Method: work backward—Z to Y to X. So what could have made Grover Cleveland Rabinowitz say, “So that's why; now it makes sense. I should have known. The turd, the damned turdlet.” Well, clearly he didn't know something before. But then—at the blast—something came clear. Something about a turd.

Then he noticed the blue paper-recycle bin tucked under the bed—and a transparent folder. He picked it out and was surprised by the title—“The Science Behind Microwaving Human Fecal Matter with Appendix of Turd Occurrences.”

HE'D BEGUN TO EXPERIMENT WITH HIS TURDS SHORTLY AFTER
what he thought of as “the incident” with Marcia.

What a stuck-up cunt she was!

Just like all the rest of them. They all claim they're so liberal, so open, so progressive —Democrats. Not him, he'd be a Republican if he ever got around to voting. Not some fucking communist.

Well, he was sweeping the men's basketball court. What a joke. What did these nerds need a basketball court for? They were brainiacs, not athletes. If there was a Division XX they'd be at the bottom of it. Not like Louisville—his team.

Well, the basketball court was his to clean on alternate Thursdays, and on a Thursday in late January was when he'd heard the music from the small gym next door and went to check it out.

Well there they were—maybe six of them, in shorts or tights and halter tops, sweating as they worked out to some hip-hop. He carefully tried the door—locked from the inside—so he rested his broom against the wall and watched through the window portal. They were all facing away from the door—what a sight that was!

But he'd forgotten there was a mirror on the far side of the gym, and one of them must have seen him watching. And they all turned toward him.

He quickly retreated down the corridor and ran into a broom closet before any of them could find him. And he hid there, like some fucking criminal, for almost a half an hour before he let himself out. But he made a note of the time, and the next day he snuck up
into the rafters to watch, but they weren't there. He thought it might just have been a one-off, but he tried again in a few days and they were back at it. And he'd watched them from the rafters, and . . .

Slowly he learned their schedule. Mondays and Thursdays and early on Saturdays. And each time he'd watch, some of the girls were different except for the one they called Marcia, who seemed to lead—she certainly led him.

And she was damned perfect. Like an old
Playboy
centerfold. Blond and beautiful. And big. He liked big women—or at least he thought he liked big women. His mother had caught him once with an old skin mag in his bedroom. He'd found it in the garbage can and carefully cleaned it and brought it home, and she'd caught him with his . . . and she'd walloped him good with a belt and screamed that he was just like his father. It was the only time she'd ever talked about his father. But hey, like father like son. And when she'd walloped him she'd been in her bathrobe and it had opened enough for him to see, so it didn't hurt, and when he'd made a mess on the bed she'd screamed at him even more.

Sometimes at night he heard her screams in his dreams. They would echo and echo and sometimes it woke him up—and it always caused the headaches. Real bad headaches. They'd gotten even worse the day of her funeral. It was snowing. He was freezing and the clothes they made him wear itched and he didn't know what he was supposed to do. So he'd just stood by the grave until some guy who he didn't even know told him to say good-bye to his mother. So like an idiot he'd stepped forward and at the side of the grave said really loud, “Bye, you old bag.” Someone yanked him back from the edge of the grave. He couldn't remember who. Maybe the first of the foster parents he'd have. Fifteen sets in the next seven years—some sort of record he guessed—until he was sixteen and got a job at the college, a real job, and a real place of his own, and he'd changed his name, and he'd held his head as the headaches came more and more often. Until he met Marcia.

It was a full month after he first saw her that he got dressed up real nice and made sure he was outside the field house when the
girls finished exercising—and Marcia came out. It was a cold day but she still had on her shorts and only a thin university sweatshirt over her halter top—and a towel around her neck.