The Theory of Death (4 page)

The architectural styles of the five colleges were as different as the institutions. Duxbury was the oldest and the biggest, constructed during the mid-1800s with its imposing limestone and brick buildings. The women’s college, Clarion, was built in the twenties: cleaner lines and more intimate buildings. Postwar Morse McKinley specialized in government, international affairs, and economics. It resembled a dingbat fifties apartment building that had metastasized into collegiate dormitories. Littleton was the eco-friendly fine arts and theater college where Decker and McAdams had spent the majority of last winter, investigating an art heist that had turned deadly.

Kneed Loft’s architecture was brutal sixties design when ideas and thought reigned supreme and aesthetics ranked in desirability with the military-industrial complex. It was a block-long rectangular bunker of brick and brownstone with small, square windows. Decker had never been inside its hallowed halls. There hadn’t been any occasion for a visit.

It was almost eight in the evening by the time he and McAdams arrived at the college. The temperature was in the low thirties with a breeze that was dry enough to chap the lips and sting the eyes. A black starry sky canopied the white lawns of the sprawling campuses. The administration offices were closed and it would probably take a number of phone calls to get them to open. Since the college was small—six hundred students total with six dormitories—it was easier to pass around flyers and see if any identification could be had by facial recognition.

The residences were named after twentieth-century scientists: Fermi Hall, Bohr Hall, Einstein Hall, Planck Hall, Goddard Hall, and Marie Curie Hall lest anyone think that Curie was referring to her husband, Pierre. The first dorm they came across was Planck Hall. It was two stories of dreary, functional brick devoid of charm and style. Since neither Decker nor McAdams had access keys, they knocked on an unmanned glass door and of course got no response because it was doubtful that anyone heard them. A minute later, a student swiped her residence card and the two detectives piggybacked on the open door, coming in after she had bounded up the stairs.

The first thing that came into view was a Volkswagen Jetta sitting in the foyer. How they got a full-size car in a lobby was anyone’s guess. Behind the driver’s seat was a steel robot with a sign around his neck, dubbing him Rupert. He wore a beret, sunglasses, and driving gloves. The students coming in and out of the dorm walked around the car as if it was a completely natural phenomenon.

The rest of the lobby was the usual college mess: used bottles of beer and spirits, discarded red cups that had held beer and spirits, pizza boxes, stale french fries and other assorted old takeout, overflowing trash cans, and outerwear strewn about the floor. Since there wasn’t much fresh air circulating other than the door opening and closing, the garbage reeked.

“Phew!” McAdams waved his hand in front of his nose. “Poor Rupert. Should we start with him since he seems to be the eyes and ears of Planck?” Tyler bent over and showed the flyer of John Doe’s postmortem to the robot. “You know this guy?” He paused. “It might help to take off the shades, dude.”

Decker smiled. “Let’s start upstairs and work our way down.”

They climbed to the second level. Most of the doors were open and the space was a cacophony: music, human voices, and mechanical noises that sounded like hammering and drilling. They started on one side and it didn’t take long for John Doe to be identified by Damodar Batra, a senior with a duel major in math and mechanical engineering.

“Oh shit!” Batra stared at the picture, his mouth agape. “Is that Eli Wolf?”

He had pronounced the name
E
-li—long E, long I. Decker said, “Spell it for me.”

Batra complied. He was short in stature with black straight hair and a dark brown complexion. Sitting cross-legged on his bed, he had headphones around his neck, and surrounded by two laptops, a phone, and a tablet. “What happened?”

“Is Eli a friend of yours?”

“Kind of. Eli really doesn’t have friends per se. He’s kinda schizoid, but that’s more of the norm here than not.”

“So how well do you know him?”

“It’s a small school and an even smaller math department. We’ve taken some classes together. Now that we’re seniors, we have different advisers, so I don’t see him so often. We’re both busy.” A pause. “My God, he looks … dead.” He looked up. “He’s dead?”

“Yes, he’s deceased. This is a postmortem picture.”

“God, that’s totally fucked up!” The boy seemed genuinely shocked. “What happened?”

“We’re still evaluating,” Decker said. “What can you tell me about him?”

“Not much. We weren’t like the best of friends but we certainly knew each other.”

“What was his major?” McAdams asked.

“Theoretical math.” Batra’s jaw muscles bulged. “I believe he was doing some postgrad work on Fourier analysis and Fourier transforms.”

Decker turned to McAdams. “Any idea what that is?”

“Not a clue.” Tyler looked at Batra. “Please explain in simple English if possible.”

“Fourier did work on temperature gradients like about three hundred years ago. Heat travels from hottest point to coldest point and how fast it travels is dependent on the material. The way to explain this mathematically was figured out by a guy named Fourier. He took complex waves that make up things like temperature gradients and broke them up into simpler sine waves. You guys know what a sine wave is, right?”

Decker said, “I believe trigonometry was a prerequisite for Harvard.”

“You went to Harvard?” Batra asked.

“He did.” Decker pointed to McAdams.

“Amplitude, frequency, and phase,” Tyler said.

Batra laughed. “Do you know about eigenvalues?”

“Nope. But I know enough first-year tort law to sue almost anyone.”

“You’re in law school.”

“That is the unfortunate case, yes.” McAdams pointed to Decker. “He, however, is a full-fledged attorney.”

“About thirty years ago,” Decker said. “Can you give me a layman’s definition of an eigenvalue?”

“It’s easier to give you a mathematical explanation. It involves matrices and nonzero vectors, which mean nothing to almost everyone in the universe except weirdos like me. The point is, all of this stuff starts out theoretical but it has very practical applications.” Batra looked up. “Eli had a great, great mind. He could picture complex math like gradients, vectors, and matrices in his head. It was a gift. What happened to him? Was it an accident?”

“Why would you think it was an accident?”

“It wasn’t an accident?” This time, Batra seemed genuinely stunned. “He committed
suicide
?”

“I’m not sure,” Decker said. “Did he seem depressed lately?”

“Not to me. If anything, he seemed very okay. I know his thesis was going well.”

“It sounds like you know Eli better than you think.”

“Everyone in our class knew about Eli. He was … exceptional.”

“Who was his thesis adviser?” McAdams asked.

“Theo Rosser—he’s chairman of the department. Eli also worked with Dr. Belfort and Dr. Ferraga. He could have worked with anyone. He had the entire mathematics department in awe.”

“Would you have phone numbers for any of them?”

“Uh … hold on, I’ll see if they have something listed in the faculty roster.” It took him a few minutes to find what he was looking for. “Nothing for Rosser beyond office phone number. I have Dr. Belfort’s cell number. She’s my adviser.”

“First name?” Decker asked.

“Katrina Belfort.” He recited the digits out loud. “Hope that helps.”

“It’s a start,” Decker said. “And you have no idea who he might have hung out with?”

“He didn’t hang out with anyone. He was always in the library working on something that no one else understood.”

“He had to eat,” McAdams said. “Ever see him in the dining hall?”

“Sure … sitting alone most of the time. Sometimes he’d be sitting with a group of people, but I think that had more to do with availability of chairs than anything social. Or it could be that they were picking his brain. He was a helpful guy.” He thought for a moment. “You know, you might want to contact Mallon. They sort of hung out.”

“Is Mallon male or female?”

“Female … not that it mattered to Eli. Or to Mallon, for that matter. She’s pretty much a loner herself. Katrina Belfort is her adviser as well, so I see her occasionally at meetings.”

“So you both have the same adviser?”

“Yes. Mallon, Ari Weissberg, and me.”

“What is Mallon’s last name?” Decker asked.

“Euler. Spelled like the mathematician but pronounced You-ler instead of Oi-ler. I think she has a distant relationship to the great one.”

“Where can we find Mallon?” Decker asked.

“She’s in Marie Curie. You want her cell number?”

“That would be helpful.”

Batra gave it to them. He shook his head. “God, this is horrible. I’ve got to take a minute to absorb it. Is there anything else?”

“Yes, and this is important,” Decker said. “You have just identified our John Doe as Eli Wolf. Are you sure it’s him?”

“Almost positive. But if you want further corroboration, keep passing flyers around.”

“First we’re going to talk to Mallon Euler. If she identifies him as Eli Wolf, then we’ll start doing notification.”

“His parents. Shit, that’s bad.”

“I’m asking you to sit on this until we’ve contacted them. Do you happen to know where we can contact Eli’s parents? Maybe there’s a family phone number in the student directory?”

“I don’t think there’s a family phone number because I don’t think there’s a family phone. I seem to recall that Eli Wolf’s family is Amish.”

T
HIS TIME, THE
vehicle sitting in the lobby was a 1970 bronze Cadillac Eldorado convertible. The dummy, again wearing shades, sat behind the wheel, costumed in complete livery.

When McAdams offered Mallon Euler the flyer, she looked at the paper but refused to hold it. She sat cross-legged on her bed, her face revealing nothing. She wasn’t much of a person if physical substance were the criterion. She was elfin: small, painfully thin, heart-shaped face with pixie short blond hair, and deep blue eyes. She wore a sleeveless blouse even though the room wasn’t hot, showing off her stick arms, and denim shorts. Hotel-type slippers on her feet.

Decker said, “Do you know him?”

A nod of the head. Her eyes suddenly watered. They went from the flyer, to McAdams’s face, then back to the flyer.

“Who is he?” Decker said.

Her focus was still on the flyer. “He’s dead?”

“Yes.” Decker waited, but no response came. “Who is he?”

“Eli.”

“Last name?”

“Wolf … Elijah Wolf.”

Decker turned to McAdams. “Two IDs and that’s good enough for me.” To Mallon: “Where did he live, Mallon? Which dorm?”

“Goddard Hall.”

“Do you know the suite number?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Does he have a roommate?”

“A single. He’s a senior. Most seniors have singles.” She looked at her lap. She whispered, “What happened?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

“When did it happen?”

“I’m not sure of the exact time. We found him this afternoon in a remote section of the woods—off the Elwood exit from the highway. Any idea why he might have been there?”

“None. I don’t even know where Elwood is.” She continued to stare at her lap as she talked.

“Were you and Eli friends?”

“We had similar academic interests.”

“That doesn’t preclude friendship.”

She looked up, then down. “We talked research.”

“What kind of research?”

“Math.”

“How often did you two speak?”

“All the time.”

“But you don’t consider him a friend.”

“I don’t have friends.” A quick glance to McAdams and then she returned her eyes to her knees. Another tear escaped from her left eye. She brushed it away. “But it doesn’t lessen the pain of losing him—his mind.” She spoke in a hush. “It’s so horrible.”

Another tear followed by another. Decker handed her a box of Kleenex. “When was the last time you saw Eli?”

“Yesterday.”

“What time?”

“One in the afternoon. We met for lunch at the dining hall.”

“And how did that go?”

“The usual.”

“I have no idea what the usual is, Mallon.”

“We talked math.”

“Anything different about Eli’s behavior?”

“No.”

“Did he seem upset or depressed?”

“Not at all.”

“Preoccupied?”

“No.” Eyes went to Decker, to McAdams, and then downward. “I’m not good at judging emotional states. But to me, he seemed fine … maybe even a little … upbeat. Things were going well with his thesis. That much I know.”

“Did you see him regularly?”

“Yes. At least twice a week.”

“So who called whom to meet for lunch?”

“I never call anyone. We texted.”

“Before I forget, what’s his cell number?”

The girl recited the digits robotically. To McAdams, Decker said, “Can you call the number?”

“Already on it.”

Decker returned his attention to the girl. “Who texted whom?”

“I texted him. I was stuck on something and asked him to take a look at my work.”

McAdams hung up from the call. “Hmm …”

“Voice mail?” Decker said.

“Disconnected … and there’s no new number.”

That was consistent with suicide: the kid was checking out. Decker said, “What’s your research?”

Her eyes slowly lifted to his face. “It
was
fractals.”

Decker asked McAdams, “Any ideas what a fractal is?”

“I do, as a matter of fact,” McAdams said. “They’re repeating patterns found in nature.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

Tyler scrunched his forehead. “Suppose you have a three-leaf clover. And you examine one of the leaves of the clover and discover it’s lobed into three sections and the lobe looks just like the clover in miniature, and then you look further at one of those lobes, and it’s also in three sections. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.” He looked at Mallon for confirmation.