The Book of 21 (6 page)

“Don’t many students come to the professors for help when they first start?”

“Some need extra help when they first start, until they get the hang of it. Even then, you don’t usually see a TA need that much help. I don’t think she ever had legitimate trouble. It was more likely that she stopped needing to see him because she figured out he was… the way he was. I’m telling you this for one reason; I fear that now that Richard is gone, she’ll figure it won’t hurt anyone, and then she’ll try to make the claim anyway. I’ll need you to remember what I’m telling you now and bear witness to it if she does. I’d like to protect his memory, if nothing else.”

“I will, if that happens, Ms. Brinker.” He turned and left.

As John exited the building to look at the exterior of the window, he held his cell phone to his ear and waited for Harry to answer. After a few rings, he heard a click that told him Harry was picking up.

“Hi, John, hold on a second,” Harry groaned.

John then heard a click, and silence told him that Harry had something more important to do.

“Come on, Harry,” he murmured to himself with the phone still to his ear.

As the sunlight warmed his face, John realized that the throng of students he saw earlier had evaporated. He figured that they were in class. John rounded the building and located Dunglison’s office window.

The window was about twenty feet from the ground. The sheer wall beneath the window was bereft of ivy, so there was not even foliage to provide a natural ladder. It would be easier to climb down from the roof than to scale upward from the ground. He recalled Brinker’s words; campus security locked the wing but not the building. That meant someone could access the roof from another wing and descend from above by rope. He would need to lock down access to the roof until Harry’s team could do a sweep.

It was then, that someone bumped into him.

A mangy looking homeless man let out a moan and mumbled, “Uh, sorry man…” The man then continued on his way.

There were plenty of homeless people in Philly. While one occasionally strayed onto campus, it was not where you normally found them. John instinctively checked his wallet—still there. He checked his gun—still there. His cell phone was still pressed to his ear, so that was accounted for. Everything seemed in place.

He remembered Dunglison’s remark about encountering vagrants on the way to the train station. A quick pat told him that his shirt pocket still contained the disk. He reached for the letter in his hip pocket; it was gone.

John looked at the man tottering down the sidewalk and yelled, “Hey! Free—”

Before he finished the word, the bum broke into a run.

Chapter 5:
The Chase

A few seconds ago, the vagrant could not walk straight; now, he was a gazelle. John started after him. In a few seconds, the guy had gone the length of the building, knocking down a student along the way.

John was only twenty feet behind the man and gaining ground. Without breaking stride, he called out to the flattened student, “Are you OK?”

The face of Amy Ritter looked up at him, and answered, “Yeah, I think—lookout!”

John, still in full stride, turned back toward the bum just in time to see a fist coming toward his face. A searing pain ripped through his head. He felt as if he were falling backward, even though he could still feel his body moving forward. After what seemed like an eternity, the back of his skull bounced off the ground.

The earth around him seemed to be moving up and down, as if he were on a tilt-o-whirl. His eyes struggled to focus. His limbs flailed awkwardly when he tried to move them.

“Oh my God! Oh my God! Are you OK?” Amy cried.

To John, her voice sounded far away, though her form seemed to tower directly over him.

Amid the tilting landscape, he was able to catch a glimpse of the bum bolting away. John tried to get up but it was no use; the best he could do was to roll slightly in the general direction of the fleeing man. He watched helplessly as the guy disappeared behind a building.

A kid appeared next to Amy and laughed out, “Dude, you were
wrecked
, man.” His voice seemed a little closer than hers had a few seconds ago.

“Shut up, Jerry!” Amy yelled. “You are such an
asshole
. Get help! Go!”

Blood soaked John’s shirt, and he felt his face to confirm that it was coming from his nose. The tilt-o-whirl kept moving. He tried to focus on Amy’s face. In all his years as a cop, he had never passed out, and he hoped he would stay conscious now.

“Son-of-a-
bitch
,” he gurgled through the blood running down his throat.

“You’ll be OK. Just look at me; focus on something close,” Amy directed. She started digging in her purse, pulled out a travel pack of tissues, and thrust one of them forward. “Here, take this.”

He held the small tissue to his nose, and it became instantly soaked with blood. He dropped it and took another from Amy.

After a few minutes, the world leveled out.

John propped himself up on his elbow and looked for his cell phone. It lay about five feet away with the flip-top bent to the left.

“That lid is not supposed to bend like that,” he gurgled.

John turned and saw her staring at his side. Following her gaze, he realized that his gun was exposed. He covered it with his coat and looked up at Amy.

“I take it you are not faculty,” Amy prodded.

“No, I’m not.”

“It figures. Profs are usually all talk and no action. So far, you seem to be the opposite.”

“Believe me, if I had the choice, I’d opt for talk at this point.”

He managed to sit up and felt increasingly steady. John then caught motion out of the corner of his eye. Across the commons, he saw two men from campus security running his way.

“Oh good,” he scoffed. “Looks like it’s time for me to talk to these guys.”

John started to get up, and she took hold of his arm to steady him. His first reaction was that she was too close. He was still a little disoriented and wanted some space. When he reached a full stance, however, he found he was still shaky and was glad she lent a hand.

“Are you OK, sir?” asked the closer of the two approaching guards. He sounded remarkably full of breath, despite his recent sprint.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” John grunted.

“We have an ambulance on the way. The crew will take you to the hospital to get checked out.”

“I’d appreciate some help over to that bench, but we don’t have time for anything else.” John pulled out his wallet and revealed his badge. “I need you to seal that building off as soon as possible, gentlemen. It’s now a part of a murder investigation.”

The security guard looked at John’s badge and the identification next to it. “Sure thing, Detective McDonough. The commander told us that you were on campus. We’ll call in and seal off Logan as part of a police request.”

“Thanks, but just Dunglison’s office and the roof would be enough for now.”

John sat down on the bench and took a fresh tissue from Amy. He watched the two security guards conferring in a low tone. They did this well enough that John was not sure whether they were talking themselves into taking action or talking themselves out of doing anything about the situation.

“Hey guys, I don’t think that homeless guy just happened along and randomly chose to punch me in the face today. I found a ton of evidence in that building already, and if it’s gone when forensics gets here, a murderer is going to get away.” John was bluffing, but due to the throbbing in his head, he did not have the mental agility to be persuasive in any other way.

With that, a guard spun toward him with an outstretched arm and waved his hand. “We’re on it, Detective McDonough. Just stay here until the ambulance shows up.”

“There’s no time for the ambulance; you can tell them to go home. I need to get somewhere.” He watched the security guards walking away and yelled, “Hey!”

The talkative guard turned toward him and asked, “Yeah?”

“Thanks again, gentlemen.”

The guard gave a nod and continued his stroll toward the building.

As he watched the men disappear into Logan, John said to Amy, “Thank you, too.” Turning toward her, he could tell she had been staring at him.

Her cheeks suddenly flushed. She turned quickly to her purse and put her empty pack of tissues away. She rustled in her purse, closed it, stared at the ground for a second, and then turned back to John.

“Sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

“I was staring at you. You caught me. It’s just…” She thought for a moment, then continued, “Well, a lot of cops would have been a lot less kind to campus security. I’ve seen it here before.”

“Less kind?”

“Most cops are jerks to campus security. The whole rent-a-cop stigma is an issue.” She blushed again and fidgeted with the clasp on her purse. “You sure are different from most of the guys I find here.”

John was glad he came off that way. He shrugged, and then asked, “Besides the gun, what makes me so different?”

“Most of the guys here are trying to puff up their chest to show how important they are. They’re willing to screw you over and treat you like crap to get ahead. I guess, in all fairness, that is not limited to the men.”

“You have a bleak take on humanity,” he laughed.

“Chalk it up to experience,” she said with a shrug. “Is it true? I mean, are you really here about a murder investigation?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it Dr. Dunglison?” She winced. “You were in his office.”

John hesitated for a second, and then he knew what he had to say. “Yeah,” he grunted, as he braced himself for a flood of tears.

Amy blinked once, then shrugged and said, “It’s really crappy to say, but I don’t think I’ll miss him.”

John had expected her to start blubbering about the loss. Now, he was wondering whether Amy would wait for the corpse to get cold before she filed the sexual harassment claim that Brinker had predicted. He opened his mouth to see what drove Amy’s ambivalence, but she broke the silence first.

“The man was a bit of a prick, but I really shouldn’t be mad at him.” She smiled and sighed, “Just par for the course, I imagine.”

“So, what was it you didn’t like about Professor Dunglison?” he asked.

“Do you know the old saying, ‘Don’t speak ill of the dead,’ Detective McDonough? I should probably follow it. I don’t think it will matter much.”

“Cops have an old saying too: ‘Everything is relevant,’” he countered. While there was no such saying, he figured the tiny lie would be harmless and might save him a few minutes of trying to be clever with his questions.

“When I first got here, I had a crush on Dunglison. Here was this guy making a living at doing what I wanted to do. He was smart, successful, and good-looking. He seemed like the perfect man.”

“But…” John prodded.

“Then I met Ted Hallman, and Ted would tell me about the stuff he was working on, and the stories he was finding. A few months later, Dunglison published almost everything Ted had gathered without even including him in the credits. Ted was crushed; he almost left Dunglison. That was how I learned the two of them were gay, and right away, I knew my fantasy of Dunglison and I getting together was not going to happen. He was gay, which meant he would never want to be with me. More importantly, he was thieving prick, which meant I would never want to be with him.”

“Ted and Dunglison stayed together, though.”

“As far as I could tell, yes. Ted was screwed, and I don’t mean that literally. With Dunglison being his advisor, Ted didn’t have much choice if he ever wanted to get his degree.”

The old saying, “Don’t crap where you eat,” popped into John’s head. He was smart enough not to utter it.

“I think this is going to be rough on Ted,” she said. “I think it will be good for him in the end, though. Do you know if they told him?”

John thought about whether he should say anything. While she kept her composure at the news of Dunglison’s death, upon delivering this news, he would again risk a gush of tears. She had been open with him so far, and he reasoned that he wanted to keep her that way. If she eventually learned he had withheld the information about Hallman’s death, she might start withholding information as well. He braced himself, and said, “Ted Hallman was also at the scene. He’s dead as well.”

He watched as her eyes darted between his. After what seemed like a long time, she sat down on the bench.

“Wow,” she said. She looked at John, cracked a weak smile, and her eyes filled with tears.

“Did Hallman ever talk to you about his work?” he asked.

“Yeah, he did, a lot. It’s rare to find someone here that you can trust to proof and critique your work without trying to steal it. We shared our work a lot. His writing was a lot better than mine.” She wiped a few tears from her eyes.

“Did he ever talk to you about something called
The Book of 21
, or something called
The Core Codex
?”

“
Le Coeur Codex
,” Amy corrected him. “You don’t think that had something to do with Ted’s death, do you?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think. What do you know?”

“They’re the same book. It was the topic of probably the worst paper Ted ever produced.”

“Why is that?”

“The whole thing started out with a good folk tale. There were these twenty-one gods that ruled the universe. They were the embodiment of things that were both good and terrible. People thought it would be good to imprison the terrible ones because, well, they were really bad. The problem was that the people found that they had to take the good with the bad; they couldn’t imprison the bad ones and leave the good ones free for a variety of reasons. Sorry if I don’t have the details; it’s not easy to remain totally clear at a time like this.” She paused to wipe away an overflowing tear and then continued, “Anyway, the people decided to go for it and reduce their suffering, even if meant reducing their joy. Will you trade the chance at ultimate joy for a reduction in ultimate suffering? The tale had good themes. It kind of read like a study in Keynesian economics of the soul.”