Steven James - The Knight

“I’m leaving for the hospital in about half an hour.” Then he added soberly, “It’s been a busy week. I’ve barely been able to keep up. I plan to get started about ten.”

I’m not a fan of watching autopsies. I looked at my watch: 9:09.

It struck me that in less than forty-eight hours I would be back on the stand in Chicago. I decided not to think about that. “Is it all right if I swing by and have a look at the body before you get started?”

“Sure. I’ll have Lance Rietlin meet you. He’s my resident this year. He’ll get you whatever you need. Something specific you’re looking for?”

“I have a few questions about the wounds, the way he was attacked. I’ll see you there.”

“OK. See you soon.”

Pocketing the phone, I turned to Cheyenne. “We can let CSU finish up here. If we leave now, I think we’ll have just enough time to inspect the corpse before Dr. Bender gets started.”

She pulled out her keys. “Let me take one more look around. I’ll meet you at the car.”

Tessa and Dora had taken some time away from the videos to shower, dress, and eat a breakfast of cold pizza before returning to the computer to check their Facebook pages.

After ten minutes, Dora slapped the desk.

“I just remembered this other video I wanted to show you.”

Every one of her words sounded slightly squished because of the strawberry bubble gum she’d popped into her mouth a few minutes earlier. “Have you seen the ones of those kids doing the Rubik’s Cube blindfolded?”

“Uh-uh.” Tessa had heard about the Rubik’s Cube videos and knew they’d been around for a while but hadn’t really been that interested in them. But now it sounded like it might make Dora happy, might keep her from thinking about the reason she hadn’t been able to sleep so well, so she acted like she was into the idea. “Sure, yeah, let’s check ’em out.”

“It’s pretty insane.” Dora was tapping at the keyboard. “You ever try to figure one out?”

“Nope.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, why?”

Dora shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just, you’re so into puzzles and stuff.” She scrolled to a frozen video image of a Chinese girl about their age holding a Rubik’s Cube. “Here’s the best one. She does it in less than a minute.”

She pressed “play,” and Tessa watched as the girl in the video studied the mixed-up cube, waited while someone else blindfolded her, and then twisted the sides until, only fifty-seven seconds later, the entire cube was solved. Then she set it down, removed the blindfold, and smiled.

“Amazing, huh?” Dora pulled her own Rubik’s Cube off her bookshelf and handed it to Tessa. All the sides were mixed up. “At first I thought maybe she memorized the moves, but I don’t know, she must have twisted it like forty or fifty times.”

“Let’s watch it again.”

They did.

“Seventy-two,” Tessa said.

“Seventy-two what?”

“She twisted it seventy-two times.”

Reaching across the keyboard, Tessa slid the cursor to the “play” icon and tapped the mouse button. Dora took the opportunity to look in the mirror and pick at her hair.

When the video was done, Tessa began to study the cube Dora had handed her.

“It’s wild, huh?” Dora said. “I can’t do it. There are like a billion different combinations.”

Tessa considered that… six sides… nine squares on each side… “Probably more than that,” she mumbled.

“So, see?” Dora said. “That’s what makes it so amazing that those kids can solve it blindfolded.”

“I think I can do it.”

“Do what? Solve it?”

“Yeah,” Tessa said. She was already practicing twisting the sides, getting a feel for the way the cube worked, the way one turn would affect the color combinations on the other sides.

“Well, yeah, if you practice for like-”

Dora’s dad called to her from the other room, and she tapped a finger against the air. “Hold that thought.”

While her friend slipped away, Tessa examined the cube. There were at least three ways to go about solving it. First, cheat. Look up the solution online. Maybe watch an instructional video.

Not exactly her thing.

Second, work the cube until you instinctively knew the patterns, sort of like typing or learning a musical instrument. But that would take days, weeks. Maybe longer.

No, to solve it quickly, you’d need a different approach.

So, math. By assigning a different number to each of the fifty-four squares, solving the cube became nothing more than a slightly-OK, a little more than slightly-complex three-dimensional algebraic equation. And since the middle pieces didn’t move, and each of the other squares was fixed in relationship to the neighboring square on the adjacent side of the cube, the number of turns needed to solve it shrank exponentially.

She figured that, however mixed up the sides were, the cube could always be solved in fewer than forty turns.

Probably less than thirty.

The girl in the video hadn’t been efficient enough in her solution.

Dora returned and plopped beside Tessa on the bed. “My dad is so totally lost this week without my mom around.”

“Where is she again?”

“Some real estate convention thing in Seattle. Comes back on Wednesday. Anyway, he has to go to the hospital to do an autopsy and he needs me to run some errands. So I’ll have to drop you off at your house by ten.”

That gave them half an hour.

“No prob.” Tessa mentally assigned numbers to each of the fifty-four tiles on the cube. “I’m ready.”

“If you say so.” Dora held out her hand. “Let me mix it up.”

“It’s already mixed up.”

“I’ll mix it up more.”

Tessa managed not to roll her eyes. “Whatever.” She gave Dora the cube.

Dora turned her back, and Tessa could hear the sides clicking, turning.

In truth, mixing up the cube would be just like shuffling a deck of cards in which three times through was no different than twenty times-the degree of randomness introduced into the order of the cards was statistically identical; you could twist and mix it for five minutes, five hours, or five days and it wouldn’t really alter the number of turns required to solve it.

After about thirty seconds or so, Dora turned and handed Tessa the cube.

She studied it. Rotated it 360 degrees. Memorized the color combinations.

“Time me.” Then she closed her eyes.

“You can’t be serious.”

Tessa opened her eyes. “What?”

“With your eyes closed?”

“The Chinese girl did.”

“She probably practiced forever.”

“Maybe she didn’t practice at all. Who knows? I can do it.”

“No way.”

“OK, how about we put a latte on the line. If I can solve it, you buy me one on the way home.”

Dora shrugged. Chomped her gum. “OK. And vice versa. Do I need to get you a blindfold or can I trust you?”

Tessa closed her eyes again. “You can trust me.”

“All right, girl.” Then a pause. Tessa assumed that Dora was checking her watch. “Ready… set… go.”

She took a moment to mentally review the relationship of the fifty-four numbers.

“I started the time,” Dora said.

“Shh.” Tessa began turning the sides of the cube, reorienting the numbers in her head with each turn, visualizing them twist and flip around each other as if the cube were transparent and all the squares had the numbers stenciled on them. Calculating, recalculating their position, their movement, their patterns. It wasn’t as difficult as she’d thought it’d be.

“That’s thirty seconds.”

“Quiet.”

In her mind’s eye, she saw the sides forming, the red side complete, the white side missing only one side piece. She paused. Thought. Twisted.