The Quotient of Murder (Professor Sophie Knowles) (23 page)

Bruce laughed.

I waited while a sudden burst of loud laughter, appropriately timed, erupted from a table close to mine. It looked like an office party, with wrapped presents at one end of the table. A strange choice of venue, I thought, but who was I to talk?

“I’m simply interested in my friends’ welfare,” I told Bruce. “Both of them. So, have you heard anything from your buddy?”

“My friend’s not talking,” Bruce said.

“Mine either.”

And we both laughed. The hospital cafeteria had become a happy place.

We moved on to dinner plans. I longed to do something normal and shop for food. A selection of cheeses, veggies, bread, and cookies sounded good. Nothing that involved a hospital, a police station, a barricaded hotel room, or an unfinished tower; no computer problems or home break-ins; no funny nicknames, injured students, or former students; no missing librarians.

“I was thinking pasta primavera,” Bruce said. “Penne, broccoli, zucchini, carrots.”

“Perfect,” I said.

“Okra.”

“Eeuw,”
I said and clicked off.

I took a last sip of tea from my mug and grabbed my jacket, ready to take off for campus.

I stopped when I heard “Hey, Dr. Knowles.”

Andrew the Hacker rushed toward my table.

“I didn’t expect you here,” I said.

“Jenn’s gone.” Andrew looked crestfallen.

I nodded. “I was too late, too,” I said. “But she’s on her way home. That’s the good news.” In other words, we could be mourning her death.

“Yeah, I guess that’s good. I texted Willa, Brent, and the others. They’re all upset that she didn’t even say good-bye.”

“It might be a while before we figure out what’s happened,” I said, preparing myself for that truth at the same time. “Jenn probably needs some time. It’s not just physical recovery that matters now.”

Andrew heaved a heavy sigh. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“How did you know I was in the cafeteria?”

“The nice ladies at the desk told me you were headed this way.” It was good to know the ladies’ type—cute young guys. “Anyway, I really came to tell you that I fixed it so you won’t be getting that spam.”

“That was fast,” I said, unsure why Andrew had made the trip here to tell me in person.

“Stopping the spam was easy. I started to dig around and I found out who did it.”

“Someone did it? I mean, of course,
someone
did it, but you mean you could tell exactly who?”

“Not always, but this guy wasn’t that good.”

“Okay. But you didn’t have to come all this way to tell me.”

“I couldn’t tell you over the phone. The person is . . . You’re not going to believe what I found.”

“What is it?” I asked. I didn’t need another blow to my psyche.

I’d expected Andrew to come up with a string of numbers as the source, or a code that he could use to filter out future spam. Not a person, not someone he knew, apparently. I took a deep breath. Was Einstein stalking my email? No, Andrew didn’t know Einstein.

“I mean, seriously, Dr. Knowles. You’re not going to believe me.”

Dramatic Andrew. “Tell me.”

“It’s too . . . it’s too . . . too crazy.”

Andrew showed no signs of giving up his results.

“Tell me, Andrew,” I said, more harshly than I meant to.

He flinched. “Dr. Morrell did it.”

My turn to flinch. Ted? What could Ted have to do with my email? “Are you joking, Andrew? Did Dr. Morrell take away some credit on your lab report again and you’re getting even?”

He held up his hand, scout’s honor style, his boyish features emphasizing the sincerity of his words. “Dr. Knowles, I’m not joking.” He reached into his backpack and extracted several pages of printout.

I dropped my jacket on one chair and sat down on another. Andrew stayed standing. How could this be? Maybe Andrew himself hacked my email. He had all the skills not only to hack into my computer but also to pin it on someone else. Except why would he choose Ted as his victim? Why not another student, which I’d have been more likely to accept without question? He could even have blamed the meter maid who patrolled downtown Henley.

I was getting so far off-track that I was accusing anyone of anything willy-nilly—from thinking Pete Barker was part of the old gang to now thinking it was Andrew who’d set out to make my life miserable with spam. Who was next? Morty Dodd, our gatekeeper, as a bank robber? Woody, our trusty Franklin Hall janitor, mugging Jenn? Maybe Virgil and Judy weren’t dating at all, but entering into a conspiracy to drive me crazy.

I’d lost control.

“I’ve been through this, like, eighteen different ways,” Andrew said, smoothing out the printouts, his expression becoming more and more somber. “I can show you exactly how I traced it.”

“Not now,” I said.

“Maybe Dr. Morrell is playing a joke on you?”

I shook my head. “He doesn’t joke like that.” Riddles and brainteasers, yes, but pranks that caused real inconvenience? No. I thought a minute. “Andrew, could Dr. Morrell also have sent emails claiming to be someone else?” Someone like a copyeditor.

“Absolutely. You can use a Unix command and it’s, like, no problem to impersonate someone else, so it looks like it came from anywhere you want.”

“And using someone’s credit card information.”

“Do you ever shop online?”

Only about eight times a day. “Yes, I do.”

Andrew shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, “There’s your answer.”

He pointed to the printouts again. “I can show you—”

“Andrew, I need a minute.”

To his credit, Andrew caught on immediately. “Sure. I’m going to grab a coffee.” He looked at my empty mug, a soggy, shriveled tea bag hanging from its rim. “I’ll bring you another tea. And how about a cookie?”

“Thanks,” I said.

I doubted that would do it, but it would be a start.

I was grateful for Andrew’s sensitivity in giving me time to digest the new information. Henley General’s busy cafeteria wouldn’t have been my first choice of meditation site, but I felt my legs wouldn’t carry me out the door until I put things in some kind of order in my mind.

Ted Morrell, mild-mannered chair of the Physics Department and my colleague in Ben Franklin Hall for fifteen years, had hacked into my computer and sent me down three separate paths of annoyance and concern. That I knew of. What else had he inflicted on me that I was unaware of or blamed on others?

I put my elbows on the table, my head in my hands, and breathed deeply. A picture formed that began to make sense. Ted was certainly computer savvy enough to send me phony emails. In other words, he had the
means
, the first element in
means, motive, and opportunity
, the familiar summation of criteria for developing suspects in criminal cases. Ted also had
opportunity
, though I wasn’t sure he’d even need physical access to accomplish the job; he’d asked to use my computer the day the group of students and faculty were at my home, the first day Jenn was in the hospital. He’d claimed that his laptop battery was dead and I’d nonchalantly sent him down to my home office, with instructions on the use of my equipment.

Motive
was another story. Why would Ted annoy me with spam copyedits, fill my email inbox with junk, and steal my credit card ID? It was clear that whoever had hounded me hadn’t meant to wipe me out; he’d wreaked just enough havoc to keep me busy and distracted. I thought back to my spam email and the ads I’d received. For eyeglass repair—check, Ted wore glasses. For golf clubs—check, Ted played golf. For chess software—check, and ditto. For pets—I wasn’t sure about this one, but it didn’t necessarily matter. He could have chosen a few ads at random.

I remembered something Ted had said in the lounge when I complained about my annoying copyeditor and the spam ads. He’d commented on how I might have to drop the investigation, meaning, at the time, my curiosity about Kirsten Packard’s fall from the tower. Was that Ted’s motive? To distract me? Was this just another aspect of the big cover-up of twenty-five years ago? Maybe that cover-up wasn’t for the sake of Kirsten’s father, the DA, after all, but for Ted himself, in the middle of a promising career. Ted would have been in his early forties, the right age to be seeking tenure at the college.

Great. Now I had Ted throwing Kirsten off the tower and asking Wendy to help him out by not telling the police anything that would instigate an investigation. I wished now that I’d confronted Ted earlier, asked him why he lied to me about knowing Kirsten Packard and her family. It was a long way from the “I might have met her once or twice” that he admitted, to “Her father was my roommate and best friend in college.”

I was about to accuse Ted of the crime of B&E, breaking into my house, to add to my level of distress. But I couldn’t imagine his doing that. That would connect him to the money in the tower, and, in turn, to the attack on Jenn.

I had to draw the line somewhere.

Just in time, I noticed Andrew hovering a few tables away, giving me space. I waved him over.

“Thanks,” I said, meaning for the space and for the fresh mug of tea. I didn’t think I could handle a hospital cookie, however. I put it in my purse and told him I’d enjoy it later. Not likely.

Andrew put his coffee on the table and took a seat. “I’m really sorry, Dr. Knowles. I’m still kind of, like, shocked. I can go over it again, or I can get my friend Doug back in Berkeley to look at it. I didn’t want to get anyone else involved without asking you first.”

Good choice. “It’s okay, Andrew.”

“Do you still need a tower key?”

“I’m all set. Detective Mitchell is going to meet me there.”

“The cop Dr. Donohue is going out with?”

I laughed, enjoying the release it brought. Judy would be happy to be part of campus gossip so quickly, I thought. Virgil, not so much.

As for me, I was ready to take on a physicist.

• • •

Andrew and I headed to the parking lot together, then parted ways. I hinted that he should keep our little project confidential and told him I owed him one—at least one.

He zipped his lips, then unzipped them to say something about being glad to help.

I drove toward campus, having decided that it was better to approach Ted in person, with no warning like a phone call or a voice mail message. I did also consider getting Andrew’s help to spam him two hundredfold, but that would be mean, and not very useful in the long run.

I pulled into the entrance on Henley Boulevard and surveyed the parking lot. Ted’s car was one of the few faculty vehicles still on campus. I remembered that he had an afternoon lab on Mondays from two to four; it should be breaking up any minute. I’d give him a little time to wrap up the session, then barge into his office.

In the meantime, as luck would have it, I saw another opportunity—Pete Barker talking to a couple of workers. Shouting at them, would be more accurate. Ted wasn’t going anywhere. I could talk to him whenever. Now would be the time to get into the tower. I checked my smartphone one more time to see if Virgil had reported in after his meeting. Nothing yet.

I lowered my window and waved at Barker. He waved back and held up his hand to indicate that I should wait for him. No problem. I wedged my car into a small spot near the library, grabbed my purse, and walked toward the fountain. The sun was low in the sky, soon to disappear and leave us even colder.

Barker yelled a command or two and the men walked off toward the diminishing fleet of industrial vehicles by the east wing of Admin. Dismissed, I guessed, by Barker’s orders. Barker was barking orders, I mused. Funny.

Then not so funny. I stopped in my tracks. My mind flew back to my visit with Wendy and her story about long-ago days with Kirsten and her pals in the diner. The nicknames of the men Kirsten pressed her into meeting came back to me. Ponytail, because he had one. Einstein, because he was smart. And a third guy who split from the group. I gulped. Big Dog. Not Smoky, a name I’d made up when I’d briefly considered that Barker, the smoker, might be involved. Not an imaginary Smoky, but Big Dog. Einstein’s competition for the role of leader. Big Dog, because, as Wendy had said, he was always barking orders.

Coincidence? I thought not. Hard as it was to grasp, the three men in Kirsten’s and Wendy’s life had all been circling the money in the tower for twenty-five years. The Warnocky cousins roamed New England furthering their career in crime until the tower was reopened. Big Dog had obviously made a career change to construction, keeping clean, but staying close to ground zero.

But Barker had been in the best position to grab the money for many months. He must have charged up to the tower in the middle of the night every chance he got, as Bruce had suggested Einstein and Ponytail might do. Who knew how many times he’d searched, to no avail. Now that his job—and his possession of a key card—were coming to an end, he was desperate. And thanks to the urgent message I left on his phone, he figured out that I knew where it was.

Barker’s interest in music and smooth talk wasn’t his way of flirting at all; it was an interview, to see if I knew more than he did.

Was it Barker, not Einstein, who attacked Jenn for her key? Which one killed Ponytail? It was pretty clear that he’d sent the police on a wild-goose chase to a vacant lot they thought was Einstein’s address.

Shivering, I woke up to the present and realized that Barker was closing the gap between us. My car was behind me. I turned to gauge the distance to my car, and Barker moved faster.

“Sophie,” he said. “You’ve come to take me up on my offer of a tour of the tower.” He pointed to the sky. “A perfect time of day to see the city lights.”

Before I could react, he was upon me, taking my arm, steering me to the nasty entrance to the tower. “I got your message. Let’s take a walk.”

I felt a hard object poking my left side. I was sure it wasn’t a carillon dowel. My purse hung from my right shoulder. I couldn’t figure a way to reach my phone or anything else in the purse that I could use to defend myself. If I screamed or tried to break away and run, I’d be dead, but Barker would be caught. Would he take that chance? Would I?

The campus was nearly deserted. The only people in sight were Barker’s own men, packing up at the far end of Admin. For all I knew they were in on it, waiting for their cut. The administrators in the offices far above me weren’t likely to be looking out their windows. In fact, they’d be packing up to go home soon, too.

“This isn’t a good time,” I said. Playing it cool. Maybe it wasn’t a gun prodding me along. Maybe Barker didn’t know I had a good guess about the money. And maybe three hundred and thirteen wasn’t a prime number.

Barker—Big Dog—squeezed my arm harder. “You’re wrong,” he said. “It’s the perfect time. I’ve waited many years for this moment. And you’re going to take me to what’s mine.”

“I’m not sure where it is,” I said. No use pretending I didn’t know what he was talking about.

“But you have a pretty good idea, I know, or you wouldn’t all of a sudden want to go up to the tower. I watched those cops come down empty-handed. But you’re a smart one. I don’t know how, but you figured it out. And now we’re going to get it.”

He pulled me along, seeming to push the gun farther into my ribs with each step. “Move. I don’t have time to waste.”

Barker used his key card to enter and pushed me ahead of him into the cavernous tower entrance. We climbed the steps more slowly than Barker wanted, I knew. I pretended to be winded, clumsy, tired, anything to avoid ending up in the belfry. Ending up like Kirsten Packard.

“Did you kill Kirsten because she wouldn’t tell you where she hid the money?” If nothing else, I’d die smart.

“I don’t know who did that,” he said. “I wouldn’t have been so stupid. I’d have gotten the money first.”

Like now.
I felt a symphony of shivers, from my toes to my head.

“And Ponytail?” I asked, a touch of sadness in my voice, as if the smarmy-looking man had been a friend.

“He had to go. But I didn’t do that either. Ponytail was a stupid, stupid man. He attacks the girl at lunchtime with guys all over the place. He told me he didn’t think she’d put up a fight. He saw her come down from the tower and head for the bank, so he decided on the brilliant play of stealing her backpack in broad daylight.” Barker paused, then shouted, his voice echoing down the dark, dank stairwell. “Which had all of two hundred dollars and change.”

I wondered if I should feel bad that Jenn’s backpack hadn’t been full to the brim with hundreds like the one I’d found in the bushes. If it had been—in other words, if Jenn had been greedy—I wouldn’t be on my last outing.

We’d reached the lobby floor and entered the museum area. After the near blackness and cold of the stairway, the brightness and warmth of the room was startling. I saw Barker’s ruddy face clearly now, the determined look, every muscle set in place.

I saw the gun, too. But he’d denied killing either Kirsten or Ponytail. Did that mean he wouldn’t kill me either? He had no reason to lie to me at this stage.

Barker caught me looking at his gun. “I know what you’re thinking. Will I kill you after I get the money? Maybe throw you off the tower?” He laughed, enjoying his position of power. “We’ll see how it goes.”

“You mean if the money is where I think it is?”

“I like you, Sophie. We might have had a thing, you know, in another life.” I tried not to show my disgust. “We’ll talk after you show me the money.”

Show me the money
. From the movie
Jerry Maguire
, though I doubted Barker realized it. I thought of Bruce, who would have been able to quote the next line, whom I might never see again. I struggled to hold back tears. I thought of my friends and my students. Would they even know what had happened to me?

“So where do we go from here?” Barker asked.

I could tell him we’d passed the money on the way. Send us back down the stairs, point to a corner on a landing, and make a dash for the door. I could . . . No, I couldn’t. Nothing like that would work.