The Probability of Murder (2 page)

Today the petite sophomore Chelsea Derbin, a match in height to my five-three, was up, ready to wow us with a talk about one-sided surfaces. After a short talk on the life and times of Möbius, she led the group in the construction of a Möbius strip.

“Take a strip of paper and twist one end before gluing the ends together,” she instructed, as she demonstrated.

“Way to go, Chelsea,” Daryl said.

Chelsea did her best to ignore him. “See,” she proclaimed as she ran her marker around the newly formed surface. There’s just one side now! How cool is that?”

“What can you do with it?” Daryl challenged, from his lofty perch as the star student in our recently created computer science program. Daryl’s question seemed more intimidating, perhaps due to his imposing physique and a look that was more mature than many of the young men who were now part of the Henley student body.

Though Daryl could be annoying, this was the kind of participation and intelligent questioning I relished, not just from the new male students, but from all of them. It had been a tough road overcoming the resistance from both administration and alumnae to going coed. I wanted to think it was worth it.

I was still getting used to seeing names like William and Zachary mixed in with the Megans and Kaylas. I didn’t even mind that I couldn’t tell simply from the roster if Lindsey, Blair, and Devon were girls or boys.

Chelsea’s eyes grew wide at this new challenge from Daryl. She bit her lip and finally squeaked out, “You can cut this different ways and get a bunch of intertwining loops?” Chelsea’s ending with a question gave the lie to the
excitement and confidence she tried to pour into her delicate voice. Usually one to wear flowery print dresses, today Chelsea had chosen jeans and an oversize sweater. The better to hide in?

Chelsea looked at me. “Dr. Knowles?” she said, a plea for help. Her enthusiasm over Möbius strips begetting more Möbius strips wasn’t catching on among the noshing crowd in front of her. I’d hoped Chelsea, a small-town girl from the Midwest, had gotten over her timidity this year, but I could see she’d hit her limit this afternoon. She was a nervous wreck, even more so than I’d anticipated. Much as I hated to, I stepped in.

“What can you do with that beaded necklace?” I asked Daryl, grateful for the rise in popularity of unisex jewelry.

Daryl balanced his salt-laden snack plate on his knees and fingered the brown and ivory shell pieces. “These are beautiful heishi beads with a lot of meaning. I got it directly from a Native American woman sitting on a rug in New Mexico. It doesn’t have to be functional.”

Aha! A perfect opportunity to make a parallel with mathematics.

“And it might come in handy someday if you need a miniature lasso in a hurry?” I said.

Daryl smiled and I sensed he knew where I was going. “Yeah, I guess so.”

I cleared my throat in preparation for my timeworn speech about the beauty of mathematics, the meaning it brought to universal patterns, and its usefulness in describing the physical world.

In the nick of time, a lovely distraction appeared at the doorway. My boyfriend, medevac helicopter pilot Bruce Granville, who never bored eighteen-year-olds when he gave talks about his job. It wasn’t fair that he had dark good looks plus larger-than-life stories to tell.

I wasn’t the only one to notice. “Your hunky guy is here, Sophie,” said Fran.

I’d recently inherited the department chairmanship from Fran, who now directed the computer science program. Her
new bob and black designer jeans—her idea of casual Friday dress—made Fran the youngest-looking grandmother I knew.

I caught Bruce’s eye through the crowd and sent him my best smile, which carried the promise of a great weekend.

The novelty clock on the wall, with its pi symbols as decoration, read four thirty. Bruce had appeared with military precision, appropriate for a former air force man, at sixteen thirty to claim me from the drudgery of classroom life.

Known to all the Franklin Hall faculty and many of the students, Bruce greeted them as he made his way through the room to me. That he was wearing his well-aged bomber jacket from his dad’s army days added to his appeal. He snatched the stage from a grateful Chelsea.

“Time to go. Thanks, all you guys,” Chelsea said with relief in her voice. She gathered her meager demonstration equipment—scrap paper, scissors, and a marker—and turned off the boom box that had aired her syncopated background music. She’d given it her best shot. I gave her a reassuring word about the next time and so on, but she rushed by me, saying, “Restroom.” I had an idea why. I hoped I hadn’t pushed her too hard to take charge of today’s show-and-tell.

“Let’s give a shout-out to Chelsea,” Daryl said to her retreating back.

“Woo hoo,” sang a small chorus of her peers, those who weren’t already connected to their smartphones.

Meanwhile, my handsome dark-eyed date was closing the gap between us, chatting with people as he did so.

“Do you know what’s going on over at the library?” I heard Bruce ask Fran.

She shook her head. “Nothing I know of.”

“The place is surrounded,” he said.

“Surrounded by what?” I asked, joining them.

“There’s a fleet of cop cars in front of the building,” Bruce said. “The main library gate’s closed off. I had to park across the street and walk in through the tennis courts.”

That was strange enough. Then I became aware of ringing cell phones in all corners of the room. The sound wasn’t that unusual, since the official end of the party also meant cell phones could be turned back on, but there seemed to be an inordinate number of calls coming in today, their varied ringtones creating a mathematically complex cacophony.

“Could it be just campus security having a meeting?” Fran asked.

“Nuh-uh,” Bruce said. “I doubt it. Unless it’s an emergency drill. I saw an ambulance headed into the gate, plus all the patrol cars from town. Official Henley PD. You know, protect and serve.” Bruce saluted and Fran laughed.

Bruce sounded facetious about the competence of the Henley Police Department, but he wasn’t fooling anyone. As a pilot with MAstar—Massachusetts Shock, Trauma, and Air Rescue—Bruce was on good terms with the state’s law enforcement agencies. Fran and a select few of those gathered at the party also knew that he was best buds with one of HPD’s detectives, Virgil Mitchell.

I overheard snippets of conversation from students speaking into their cell phones. A few were texting. I felt left out.

“I’m walking over there right now,” I heard from one student.

“There’s a fire truck on campus, too?” from another, apparently being clued in by someone at the library site.

“No way,” from a female Jordan.

“Way,” from a male Reece.

Daryl, the blue-eyed blond with an appreciation of Native American crafts, spoke into his phone, then announced to the assembly, “They’re taking someone out of the library on a gurney.”

Unfortunately the Ben Franklin lounge windows faced away from the campus, so we didn’t have a line of sight to the alleged emergency scene outside the Emily Dickinson Library.

Bruce and I fell in with the flow of people streaming toward the front door.

“We’re out of here soon, no matter what, right, Sophie?” Bruce asked me.

As much sympathy as I felt for whoever was on the gurney, I hoped nothing would interfere with the getaway in Boston that we’d planned.

“To Boston, the home of the bean and the cod.”

“Where the Cabots speak only to Lodges,” Bruce responded.

“And the Lodges speak only to God,” I finished.

“Ten minutes, tops, and we’re on our way,” Bruce said, squeezing my hand.

I squeezed back. “What’s to keep us here?”

My mind was more on Boston than the Henley campus as Bruce and I filed out the front door with a dozen or so people. The rest of the crowd took the elevator to the basement, presumably to use the exit closest to the library. We stepped out into a chilly, darkening afternoon with just the right amount of fall snap in the air. My favorite season, with classes in full swing and the taste of pumpkin and cranberries always close at hand.

Bruce and I had both been out of town at conferences lately, which ate into our time together, above and beyond Bruce’s tricky seven days on/seven days off schedule at Henley’s airfield.

“After dinner tonight there’s that midnight showing of
The Eiger Sanction
in Cambridge,” Bruce reminded me as we made our way toward the library, where it seemed the entire Henley College population had gathered.

“A seventies movie. Can’t wait,” I said, in that way that he knew meant, “If you insist.”

Bruce was also scheduled to leave on Sunday morning
for a climbing trip to New Hampshire. He’d be available only through spotty cell phone reception and maybe through the park rangers when the visibility allowed. Not my favorite arrangement, but he was passionate about his mountaineering hobby. With an exciting, risky job piloting helicopters into accident scenes on the ground, you’d think he’d take up chess to relax, but not my guy. Hanging off the side of a mountain was his way of unwinding.

The next twenty-four hours, give or take, were ours, however. We were headed north for an excursion in which we’d be roughing it at a four-star hotel overlooking Boston Common. My duffel bag was in my campus office, packed and ready to be transferred to Bruce’s SUV.

I couldn’t wait for a dose of special togetherness before Bruce left to scale the heights with two of his buddies. The fair-weather summer and early fall tourists would be long gone and we’d have the north shore’s beautiful wharf areas to ourselves.

In return for watching that nearly forty-year-old Clint Eastwood climbing movie, I’d made Bruce promise to spend an hour with me at the Museum of Science, where a new mathematics exhibit had opened. I hoped to get inspiration for the Math Department’s next turn as entertainment committee for a Franklin Hall party. As much as I was a fan of Möbius and one-surface structures, my goal was to have props that were more titillating than strips of paper.

The closer we got to the library, the more jarring the scene in front of us became. An unsettling feeling came over me as we watched the ambulance take off, shooting out of the main campus driveway, patrol cars blaring behind it. I could hardly believe the number of cell phones that were raised high to document the event. Did anyone really want a photograph of another person’s misfortune?

“It’s going to take forever to get to the hospital by the roads,” Bruce said. His standard half-joking plug for using
air transport, particularly his own MAstar, for medical emergencies.

The lights of the remaining police and campus security vehicles, about a hundred feet away, swirled red and blue as chatter from police radios and onlookers rose up and reached us.

I looked at Bruce. Without speaking, we considered our next move. Option one was to take off as planned, immediately, without a backward glance. Our curiosity could be satisfied later tonight or tomorrow by a phone call to Fran or any other member of the Henley College community. Or we could even wait until Monday morning. Option two—

“We should at least find out who’s in the ambulance,” I said, knowing Bruce would agree. It was his life’s work after all. And my campus.

“Sure, just a quick Q and A,” he said.

I nodded. “And then we’re out of here.”

“It’s probably no one related to the campus,” Bruce said.

“Yeah, some walk-in off Henley Boulevard,” I said. “It happens a lot.”

“You don’t have the tightest security at that entry point.”

“Retired cops. What can you expect?” I asked with a smile.

“I won’t tell Virgil you said that,” Bruce teased.

“Anyway, he’ll never know. There’s nothing here that a homicide detective would care about.”

“Nah.”

We sounded convincing.

As we approached the building, I saw the faces of the students and staff closest to the police tape, which wound its way to the open library doors and inside the main lobby area as far as I could see. I guessed most of the onlookers had been in the library for the start of this drama. I could tell from their reactions that it was no stranger who’d been carted off campus with such ceremony.

“Since when does a medical emergency require crime scene tape?” I asked Bruce, nervousness coming to the fore.

He shook his head slowly, processing the scene in his mind.

“Dr. Knowles, do you know what’s happening?” Daryl Farmer, the most vocal boy at the party—they were too young for me to think of them as men—came rushing up to me. “It’s Ms. Crocker. I heard someone say she was shot or something. I think she might be dead.”

“Charlotte Crocker? The librarian?” Bruce asked.

Charlotte Crocker, the librarian. Charlotte Crocker, my friend. I stopped short, unable to move. Charlotte Crocker shot? Dead? It wasn’t possible. I pushed the absurd phrases out of my head.

Charlotte and I were gym partners, lunch partners, shopping partners. She’d been Henley’s reference librarian only two years, but had made her mark on students and faculty.

I’d finally met her only family less than a week ago. Charlotte and I had taken her nephew to tour the MAstar medevac facility where Bruce worked. Noah, a senior at a Boston college, was interested in being a helicopter pilot. Charlotte was excited about the day, seeming every bit as curious about what was going on at the airfield as Noah was. It was clear she doted on him.