The Last Equation of Isaac Severy(17)

Isaac Severy famously didn’t have fallow periods, yet Philip watched his face for a sign that he had hit the mark. It had been years since his father shared what he was working on. Philip had stolen early glances at his father’s traffic equation, but when pressed on it, Isaac would evade all inquiry, saying only that the mathematics wasn’t ready.

This time, Isaac had looked away, avoiding his son’s eyes for the rest of the meal.

“If you’re not careful, Philip, you’ll have brain rot. Just like your brother.”

It was then that Philip had started to suspect that his father’s latest work, whatever it was, was only a mirage.

He abandoned the unpleasant memory and took one more gulp of coffee before leaving the faculty lounge.

“Yeah, see you round,” he told Kuchek.

Philip took a final glance at the note. I had been in touch with him regarding his recent research. Oh, really? And what research would that be? The topology of the geriatric brain? The calculus of killing yourself in a whirlpool bath? Philip flirted with the idea of calling the 703 number. “Hello, Mr. Lyons? Yes, I’m familiar with my father’s work, and I find it unlikely that it would be of use to anyone, let alone government scholars and their relations. Good-bye.” Still, a worm of curiosity had worked its way into his brain, and Philip wondered if his father had really been serious about contacting this man. And if so, why. He made a mental note to check his father’s study for anything unusual, and his old campus office while he was at it. Then he slipped the card in his pocket, put on his best Advanced-Topics-in-Supersymmetry face, and made his way to the lecture hall.





–?7?–


Headquarters


Hazel had been sitting on the steps outside LAPD headquarters for twenty minutes when she heard someone laughing. She turned to find Detective E. J. Kenley standing behind her, the woman’s trim figure framed in the entryway.

“You homeless now, or did your brother stand you up?”

Hazel smiled, stood to greet the towering detective, and was pulled into a vigorous embrace.

“We’re supposed to be getting lunch at Langer’s,” Hazel said. “It’s the only place that doesn’t make him gag.”

“Right. What’s that thing he likes to say?”

“I’ll eat when I’m dead?”

“Dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” E. J. said, laughing again. “He’s out on a case, but you’re welcome to loiter upstairs.”

Hazel followed the detective through security, where she flashed a badge that read MYP in large letters. Minority Youth in Peril was E. J.’s pet project. Years ago, she had gotten fed up seeing her “little brothers and sisters” disappear quietly into the shadows while the clockwork of the media snapped into atomic precision any time a blond girl from the suburbs vanished. “Want to get away with kidnapping?” E. J. had once asked in a letter to the Los Angeles Times. “Snatch up a black kid from the Jordan Downs projects and watch the ice-floe reflexes of the press. But so much as touch a towheaded girl in Utah, and the entire world yanks out its hair in collective anguish.”

The elevator opened onto the third floor, and they started down a modernist corridor flooded with natural light. When Hazel had last visited her brother at work, the building had still been relatively new, smelling of paint and freshly rolled carpet. Now the carpet shone with the steps of countless heels, and the pumpkin-colored walls seemed to belong to another era.

“I was sorry to hear about Isaac,” E. J. said as the spacious hall gave way to the hive of the main office. “I know he was like a father to you both. You want some coffee? Let’s get some coffee.”

Hazel trailed her through the belly of the Juvenile Protection Unit, catching glimpses of what her brother had to face every day. What appeared at first to be your average corporate office—everything Hazel had tried to escape in life: grids of fluorescents, watercoolers, inspirational posters—had, upon closer inspection, a more chilling quality. A desk detective scrubbed through digital footage of a teenage girl curled on a couch sobbing, while an adjacent screen featured a toddler’s legs blighted with hash marks.

“Waffle iron,” E. J. whispered.

“God, you’re kidding,” Hazel said, her hand instinctively moving to an old scar on the side of her neck. She fingered its long, petal-shaped groove, hardly aware she was doing it.

As E. J. continued down the hall, Hazel paused at a strip of corkboard lined with pictures of men, young and old. Their eyes all held the same exhaustion, the same depleted look of lives spent by turns fighting and giving in to dark impulse. A few of the photographs had a red masking-taped K covering the face.

“That’s how we mark the dead ones,” E. J. explained. “For karma.”

“Karma?”

“Late last year, this scumbag’s working on his truck, gets gasoline on his clothes. Later, he starts fiddling with the gas water heater and—whoosh!—the pilot light turns him into a human torch. A neighbor saw everything, but by the time she got her bony ass to the phone, it was all over. Some people here like to call that karma, or the universe having its way. I call it plain spooky.”

Hazel didn’t want to think about the universe having its way with people, scumbag or not. She didn’t want to think of Isaac in that tub with those string lights.