July 17
I asked my Dad if I could go to one of the crime scenes and he said that the first one had already been cleaned so I asked how about the second one and he said no he did not think it was a good idea so I asked Susan and she said she did not think it was a good idea but I think she was just saying that because my dad wanted her to say that I think she likes to have me around she likes to call me and invite me and she took me to meet the math lady with the funny look in her eyes and the run in the heel of her hose and the Band-Aid on her left wrist and the blue star on the palm of her hand.
I have to carefully plan my way of getting there because I cannot drive but I know I could drive but my dad will not let me and I do not have a license or even a car but the buses can get me there if I plan it right and I go while my dad is at work so he does not notice that I am gone.
I liked it when Susan asked me if I wanted to go to college because I know smart people go to college and I would like to be a smart person and if I was a smart person maybe Susan would adopt me and we could have babies. Maybe I could learn to do more of that hard math but I do not think I would want to learn it from that lady because I did not really like that lady but I liked her math. I can understand math but I can never understand people. People would be easier if they were equations. I thought that maybe I could make people into equations, like Funny Smile plus Jokes I Don't Understand plus Shaky Hands plus Smart plus Pretty equals Susan. But I cannot always tell if she's joking or not and last time her hands did not shake but her voice was funny and maybe I need to factor out the way she smells because it changes so much. But she's always smart and she's always pretty. Those are constants. I like constants because they are always the same. You cannot do math without constants. I cannot do Real Life without constants.
My mother used to say I love you and I never knew what it meant and she would get upset so I started saying it back but I still did not know what it meant. My dad tried to explain that when people love each other they want to take care of each other and make each other happy and maybe he's right but all parents do that so I think there must be more. When Susan is around I get all strange and squishy feeling and my stomach hurts and I really try to be smart and not so weird. Maybe that's what love is. I wish there was a formula for love but there is not I know because I opened the encyclopedia and looked.
I know I will be in trouble with my dad when I do this, but it will be worth it if it makes Susan happy.
When I got to the office that morning, everyone was acting strangely. Not to say they were unfriendly. Just the opposite. It was as if they were going out of their way to be friendly to me. Gave me the shivers.
Granger practically beamed when I passed by. "Morning, Susan." That was it. No griping about my report, no insults, no attempts to show his superior psychological know-how. "Sleep well?"
"I did, actually."
"I read your report on your interview with the math nerd. You really think it has anything to do with this case?"
"Well, that formula didn't draw itself into the grease."
"Good point. You're a sharp one, that's for sure. Congratulations on a nice piece of work."
Okay, so at this point, there were two possibilities. Either Granger had been taken over by one of those pods from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or he was setting me up. You can imagine which I thought was more likely. While I tried to puzzle it out, O'Bannon sailed up behind him.
"Hey, Susan."
"Hey, Chief."
"Hear you and Darcy had a fun expedition to the university yesterday."
"Yeah. Actually, I'd like to talk to you about that."
"I read your report."
"No, about Darcy. Apparently his math skills are off the chart. Dr. Goldstein was ready to recruit him on the spot and enter him in the Math Bowl."
O'Bannon smiled a little. "Of course, she doesn't know about his…difficulties, right? I expect her eagerness would fade if she knew the whole truth, don't you?"
"I don't know. I don't think anyone who can do math problems that require over a hundred steps is what I'd call normal." I was watching them both very carefully, or more accurately, watching to see what it was they were watching for. Six months ago, I would've suspected this obviously forced conversation was for the purpose of sniffing my breath, but neither of them were close enough to do that now. For some reason, they just wanted to hear me talk.
That was it, of course. Darcy told me my voice sounded funny. The Valium must've been slurring my speech. Granger picked up on it, so today they were all out to see if he was right. Thank goodness I'd stopped at one pill this morning. Although the aching in my stomach and the knocking in my knees told me it wouldn't be long before I had another one. But I didn't want to get like I was yesterday-so doped I could barely stay awake, barely assimilate information. Sure, I was an old pro at faking sobriety. But it didn't help me do my job.
"Well," O'Bannon said, "let's talk about it later." In other words, no way in hell.
"As you wish. But the woman was even talking about scholarships. This could be a golden opportunity." I turned toward my desk. "Was there anything else?"
Granger and O'Bannon looked at each other without saying anything.
"Okay, look." I took a deep breath, then started. "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers…" I went through the whole thing at lightning speed, then did it again, just for good measure. Didn't trip up once. When I'm good, I'm good. "Satisfied?"
Granger frowned. "How did you know?"
"How did I know?" I took a step closer and peered into his eyes. "Because I'm a trained psychologist and to me the human mind is an open book. In your case, a comic book. I know everything you're thinking, planning, considering, every seedy, greasy little contemplation." I leaned in closer. "I even know what you were doing in your apartment by yourself last night."
Granger pulled away, staring at me as if he were ready to re-inaugurate the Salem witch trials. "I-don't know what you're talking about."
"That's all right," I answered, eyes narrowed. "Because I do. Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!"
It's always a pleasure to see Darcy. Except perhaps on those rare occasions when he gets so excited he throws himself across my desk.
"Ooof!" I said, dodging, narrowly avoiding a collision of skulls. All the papers on my desk, not to mention my In/Out box, went flying. "Darcy, what are you doing? Are you blind?"
"You moved your desk forward!"
"I most certainly did not."
"It is at least seven inches closer to the top of the stairs than it was yesterday."
"Look, Spock, I didn't move anything. I-" But of course, I had to look. I stared at the linoleum on the floor and saw square impressions, remnants of where the legs of the desk once had been. About seven inches away from where they were now. Cleaning people, probably. "Do you calculate your trajectory on your way up the stairs?"
Darcy blinked. "Sorta."
I didn't bother asking because I knew I wouldn't understand. "What're you so excited about?"
He leaned across my desk. His face was lively in a way I'd never seen it before. "Can you keep a secret?"
Darcy had secrets? Since when? "Sure."
"Scout's honor?"
I gave him a long look. "Were you ever a Scout?"
"For two meetings. Till the Scoutmaster got mad at me and threw me out. My dad said it was my fault but it was not my fault because this other boy was making fun of me and he said that Saturn was larger than Jupiter bu-"
I held up a hand. "Periods, Darcy. Periods."
He took a deep breath. "Right."
"So tell me the secret before I burst already."
He came so close his lips brushed against my ear, which was pretty unusual for a kid with severe tactile defensiveness. "I went to the crime scene."
I pulled away, my eyes wide. "Darcy, I told you-"
"I know. But I thought that I should so I went anyway."
"I-But-" I didn't know where to begin. "Which scene?"
"The movie studio."
I looked him straight in the eye. "Darcy, I know for a fact that CS is still restricted. How could you get in?"
Darcy looked to his right, then his left. When he was certain no one was watching, he pulled something out of his underpants and flashed it at me. Something shiny. A badge.
"Where did you get that!"
"I borrowed it from my dad's desk."
"You-borrowed it! What's going to happen if he notices it's gone?"
"He already did. He thinks he lost it. He got tired of looking and went back to making pottery ashtrays."
"But-he's bound to suspect-"
"He will not suspect me. He does not think I am smart enough to do anything smart."
"And he never will if you keep doing crazy stuff like this! Darcy, your father told you to stay away!"
"But I wanted to go." His face sagged. "I wanted to help you, Susan."
I closed my eyes and blew out my cheeks. What could I say? It was impossible to be mad at him. "The uniform posted outside must've recognized you."
"I think that he did. But who is going to stop the son of the chief of police?"
Good point. "But Darcy-why did you want to go there?"
"Because I wanted to find something that would help you, so you could solve the case and not be so nervous and shaky."
"Darcy-"
"And I did."
My mouth closed. Then reopened. "You found something?"
He shook his head wildly up and down. He looked both ways, making sure no one was watching. Then he reached inside his coat.
It was only a scrap of paper, but Darcy'd had the foresight to enclose it in a plastic evidence Baggie. I held it up to the light.
It was another equation:
"Swell," I murmured. "What's this one do, prove the existence of Santa Claus?"
"Wrong!" Darcy said. He made a snorting noise, then began jumping up and down. "I know what this one does! I know what this one does!"
He was bouncing like Tigger on speed. "So, does that mean you know what this one does?"
"Yes! It's a test for determining primes!"
"Huh?"
His voice changed. I'd been around him long enough to understand that this meant he was in his mimetic recitation mode. "The theorem for determining primeness was discovered by Cambridge mathematics professor Edward Waring, the author of Meditations Algebraicae, in 1784. He named it for his good friend John Wilson, who left mathematics to become a lawyer and later, a judge. He was knighted in-"
"Stop. I get the idea. Periods, remember." Maybe it was the mellowness induced by the Valium, or maybe I've just lost all self-respect, but I didn't try to pretend I understood. "What the hell is primeness?"
"Prime numbers! Numbers that are only divisible by themselves and one."
"Oh, right, right. So you use this to find primes?"
"No. To test a number to see if it is prime. There is no way to find primes."
"Really?" I tried to act cool and nonchalant. "What about the Reimann hypothesis?"
He couldn't mask his surprise any more than he could mask any of his other emotions. "Y-Y-You know about the Reimann hypothesis?"
"Of course," I said offhandedly, declining to mention that the only reason I knew anything about it was that Dr. Goldstein had mentioned it and I'd written it down in my report. "What do you take me for, some kind of stooge?" I stared at his new piece of evidence. "Why would the killer think this was important?"
Darcy might be able to sniff out evidence, but when it came to questions that required an understanding of human motivations, he was useless. "I do not know. Maybe the killer thinks math is fun. I think math is fun. Lots more fun than killing people."
Personally, I didn't care for either. "Where did you find this?"
"In the dead lady's computer."
My forehead creased. "I remember watching the computer CSIs scanning the hard drive."
"Not inside the computer's memory. Inside the computer. In the hard shell case of the CPU."
"You opened the computer itself?"
He nodded eagerly. "And I found this!"
I assumed this scrap of paper was too small to prevent the computer from functioning. "What on earth would inspire you to open the computer case?"
"Because the bad man did."
"You mean the killer? How did you know?"
"I could see the traces of him on the outside. When I got close, I could smell them."
"Are you talking about blood? Because I know that Tony went over everything in that studio with luminal and ultraviolet light."
"Not blood. Sweat. He sweated on the computer."
"And you could tell? No way." But I had the evidence in my hand, didn't I? And I knew darn well Darcy was not capable of lying. "Why would he be sweating? The studio was at normal room temperature. All the big camera lights were shut off."
"I think that maybe he did not like what he was doing or he knew he should not do it or the lady made it hard for him and it made him upset so he started sweating. Do you sweat when you are doing something you do not want to or you know you should not do? I know I was sweating when I snuck into the crime scene and I remember once when I was five that-"
"Periods!" I fairly screamed. "What makes you think the killer didn't want to do what he did?"
"The blood. In all the wrong places."
As usual, I had no idea what he was talking about. I opened the file on my desk and pulled out the crime scene photos. "Show me."
Darcy rifled through the photos like a computer scanning its files. He pulled one out and thrust it toward me. "See the blood?"
"Yeah, I see tons of blood. The man chopped off her head."
"No, there." He pointed away from the main pool, near the top of her pillow. "See?"
I didn't. I had to pull out a magnifying glass. Eventually I was able to spot two drops of blood that were distinct from the pool. "Splatters, I suppose."
"Splatters would be elongated," Darcy said. "These drops are round. That means they fell straight down."
I didn't have to be a forensic scientist to know he was right. "When did it happen, then?"
"When he started to hurt her the first time. This-" He raced through the pics till he found the one he wanted. "And this is from where he tried to hurt her the second time."
I examined the picture and nodded. "And the third?"
"There is no third. So it must be covered with the other blood."
"So after two false starts, he finally managed to do it." Was it possible? The victim put up a fight? Our homicidal maniac was reluctant to kill? If that was the case-why do it? It didn't make any sense. What's more, it was totally at odds with the typical profile of a serial killer. And it threw my narcissistic personality disorder theory out the window.
"This is good work, Darcy. Very good work." If only I knew what it meant.
"But you will not tell my dad, will you?"
I pulled my nose out of the pictures. "I think he should know. If he understood how good you were at this, maybe he wouldn't be such a pain in the butt every time I want to take you somewhere."
Darcy rubbed his hands together, as if he were washing them with invisible soap. "I do not think that you should tell him."
"Why? Are you afraid he might punish you?" But even before I said it, I had already sensed that wasn't the problem. But if not Of course. This was Darcy we were talking about, not every other self-centered male on the face of planet earth. He wasn't afraid his father would punish him.
He was afraid his father would punish me.
"Darcy, I've got to bring this evidence to the attention of the detective squad."
"Tell them you found it."
"Take credit for your work? That's just wrong. Goes against everything I believe in."
"Would you do it…" His awkwardness was so apparent it was painful. "Would you do it for me?"
Well, if you'd been looking at his pathetic puppy dog face, you would've agreed too, right or wrong. "All right, Darcy. For now. But as soon as I think it's…safe to give credit where due, I will."
"That's okay." He cocked his head to one side. "Are you going on more interviews today?"
"I sure am."
"Can I…Maybe…I was thinking…"
I clapped him on the shoulder. "I'd be honored if you'd come with me."
His face lit up like the spotlight on the Luxor. "Oh, boy. Oh boy oh boy oh boy!"
"Hey," I said, grabbing my coat, "you're the one who's doing a favor here. At the rate you're going, you'll have the case cracked by midnight."