Ada Madison - The Square Root of Murder

“Hello-o-o,” Bruce had sung out. “I’m busy in there. I’m checking our position; the fuel; the GPS, figuring out the best hospital to target, depending on what the nurses tell me; determining what the highest obstacle is between us and the facility, figuring in the power lines, the telephone poles; calculating the weight of the crew plus patients.”

“Okay, you’re off the hook,” I’d said.

But I still thought a class in CPR wouldn’t hurt.

Bruce had finished his lunch.

“Are you going to eat that?” he asked, pointing to my half sandwich and mounds of salads.

Without waiting for an answer, he reached over and scooped up my half sandwich. It had happened before, especially when I’d been doing all the talking during a meal.

Though I didn’t need it to make my case, I offered another horror story.

“An associate professor I met at a conference in Pittsburgh told me his dean went after his students in order to make a case against tenure. He claimed that not enough of this guy’s math majors got into good graduate schools. Underwood could do that to me.”

“Is it true?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so, but there again I’d have to spend a lot of time appealing the decision with data.”

“I thought you loved statistics.”

“Yeah, well.”

“So what’s your bottom line?” Bruce asked me.

“Meaning?”

“Is it worth it to lose your promotion over the investigation?”

Leave it to Bruce to ask tough questions. I surprised myself by how quickly I knew the answer. “I’m not going to stop trying to help.”

“No matter what it means to your career?”

“No matter what.”

“That’s my girl,” Bruce said.

I was glad to hear it, but my head hurt. “Let’s talk about something else.”

“Have you gone in to see Virgil yet?”

“Something else else.”

Probably because Bruce was ready for a nap, I was able to finagle my way out of making the call to the Henley PD immediately and into getting him to talk about his own dealings with them yesterday.

We’d moved to the den and I sat on the couch with his head on my lap. I used my most soothing voice while I rubbed his head.

“Did you think of anything else from your meeting with Virgil?” I asked. Manipulating girlfriend.

“I told you everything, about the poison and all. I know the police have questioned everyone from the president to the groundskeepers. Even delivery people and trash collectors who were around that week. The chief is pretty shook up. This kind of thing doesn’t happen every day.”

“It’s the same on the campus. I wouldn’t want to be working in counseling or admissions right now,” I said. “Can you imagine how frantic the parents are? Of the incoming freshmen especially. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were already some withdrawals. The sooner we get to the bottom of this, the better. I’m going to try to meet Lucy Bronson, the new girl in chemistry, later…”

No sense continuing. Bruce was fast asleep. I wondered how much of my rambling he’d heard. I slipped off the couch and put a pillow under his head to replace my lap. On a cooler day I might have tucked him in with one of my afghans, but the heat had let up only slightly and my west-facing den was warm from the afternoon sun.

I checked my cell in case I’d missed a call back from Lucy. Nothing.

I considered calling the police station to be sure Virgil was there. I hoped it was Archie’s day off. In the end, I decided to take my chances. I didn’t want to go on record as having preferred one cop over another.

I remembered hearing about a forty-eight-hour rule-that most murder cases are solved within forty-eight hours or not at all. It was already more than seventy-two hours since Keith had been murdered. What hope was there?

I had to give it a shot and talk to the PD, no matter how delinquent I’d been up to now.

My timeline was complete and printed out. I stuffed it in my briefcase.

There was nothing left to do but turn myself in. I left a note for Bruce and took off.

I was the only guest on the bench in the waiting area of the police building, a common posture for me this week, sitting in wait for a superior of one brand or another to chide me. Hanging around the lobby was much better than sitting in Interview Two, however, where I’d stewed before my meeting with Archie on Saturday.

I’d attached a small, round MAstar pin to my knit top. I’d picked up the pin and a cap and other logo items at a visit to the facility. My thought was that the whole emergency services thing might resonate with the cops in the building and provide good karma.

Uniformed officers, young and old, male and female, passed by me, chatting, carrying clipboards and folders, talking on cell phones. A few were behind the high counter making and taking calls. Every now and then one of them smiled at me or asked me if I’d been taken care of.

I checked out the oversized bulletin board across from me. I smiled at several cartoons and one-liners, my favorite being “If someone with multiple personalities threatens to kill himself, should it be reported as a hostage situation?”

My attention was caught by the word STATISTICS at the top of a series of bar charts. Lo and behold, tacked to the board was a graphic profile of Henley, Massachusetts, compliments of Bristol County.

I’d finished extracting the metal loops of the twister puzzle while waiting for Dean Underwood this morning and didn’t have another handy. Lacking anything to read, I walked to the corkboard and took a look at my hometown from a different perspective. Laid out on several sheets of legal-size paper was the Henley data on gender (exactly half male and half female, what were the chances?); race (ninety-two percent Caucasian); and age. I was dismayed that on my upcoming forty-fifth birthday, I’d jump to the next bracket, comprising eighteen percent of Henley’s population. Henley had a median income slightly higher than that of the state. Good to know.

Crime statistics were on the sheet also. Only seven police incidents labeled property crimes were noted for last year. If I reported all the times the boxes from Keith’s office had been stolen, the total would go up by two or three for this year. I had no clue whether the person who took the cartons from my garage was the same one who carted them to the basement of Franklin Hall. Maybe the thief who robbed the thief (me) was also robbed. I felt a wordplay puzzle coming on.

As for violent crime, there hadn’t been a murder or manslaughter in the last eight years, which was as far back as the chart went. I was sure the numbers were very different for Boston, forty miles to the north. Leave it to Keith Appleton to give our town a memorable, one of a kind statistic.

I’d been waiting almost an hour, amusing myself with other trivia on the statistics chart. Motor vehicle theft was down fifty percent from ten years ago; the month with the most number of crimes was July for three years running; the total population was up six point nine percent from last year. I flipped through data about climate and the educational level of the Henley population.

“Fascinating, huh?”

The loud voice startled me, though I saw that he hadn’t intended it. I hoped I didn’t look as crestfallen as I felt when I turned to face Archie McConnell.

He, on the other hand, was smiling. It was the smile of victory.

“I like numbers,” I said.

“You would.”

He ushered me into a large office with room for three desks and several extra chairs. A lot of coming and going and paper shuffling throughout the area, but no one was seated.

Archie took his place behind a desk with his name on it and indicated the chair I should take. We both knew that I was about to concede defeat. My role as unofficial police consultant had come to an end.