The Last Equation of Isaac Severy(30)

Given Flor’s concern about the condition of the room, the place was, except for the dust, exceedingly tidy. She pushed open the hallway doors to find a king-sized bed under a creaseless quilt and a bathroom and second bedroom in the same unspoiled condition. If Isaac had slept here, he was careful to erase all evidence.

Hazel passed a kitchenette and entered a spacious living room decorated in a clubby bohemian fashion set off with modern Danish pieces. A shelf set into one wall held a collection of vintage liquor bottles. In front of it, a pair of leather-upholstered chairs confronted a baize-topped card table, where a suspended game of checkers awaited its next move.

At the far end of the living room, a computer monitor dominated a small wooden desk. Tacked to an adjoining wall hung an oversized map pocked with red adhesive dots. Hazel stepped closer and saw that it was a street map of LA and the surrounding area. The dots had chains of incomprehensible numbers written on them.

The map immediately made her think of Isaac’s traffic project. A similar map had hung for years in his study at home, though with flags instead of dots. Had he returned to the project? Hiding his obsession from his family? She scanned the dots, but they didn’t appear to correspond to the map’s roads or freeways. The points were scattered across the city, gathered here and there in dense pockets, and thinning out as they neared the map’s edges. Was this the work she was supposed to destroy?

Hazel turned to the computer and hit the power button. A minute later, a prompt appeared on-screen: Password Required.

“Are you kidding me?” she said, wondering how long whatever she was supposed to be looking for would be dangled beyond reach. But Hazel reminded herself that Isaac had given her everything she needed to know up to that point. If he wanted her to access his computer, surely he had provided the password.

She pulled her grandfather’s letter from her purse and read it again, even though she practically had the words memorized. But she couldn’t see any more meaning to be extracted. Hazel surveyed the contents of the room, hoping to spot a clue in the decor. There were several board games stacked on a shelf, many of them old or obscure, including the unpopular geography game Ubi, and Letter Jungle, a disastrous cross between Scrabble and Hungry Hungry Hippos. The wall map seemed her most likely ally, but she couldn’t begin to know how to make sense of it. On the opposite wall, a large sunburst mirror reflected her frowning forehead.

Reminded of the photograph of Isaac covering a bathroom mirror in prime numbers, Hazel took the Fitzgerald novel from her purse. She flipped through it again and found something she had disregarded before. Inside the cover, written in light pencil, was a short string of numbers. This being a used book, she had initially assumed this was an old Dewey decimal or inventory number, as she used for her own store; but when she looked at it properly, she saw that it didn’t resemble either one: 137.13.9. There was that number again, 137, and there was that same 3 of Isaac’s. When Hazel pulled up the password prompt again, she typed in the digits, both with and without decimals, backward and forward and in various combinations. But she got only Sorry, password incorrect. She even tried typing the primes she remembered from the Polaroid in one solid block.

Sorry, password incorrect.

Finally, littoral.

Sorry, password incorrect.

Hazel pushed the chair back from the desk and flung open the drapes. As her eyes adjusted to the sun, she saw that the full-length window let out onto a rooftop patio. She slid it open and climbed out into an enclosure of succulents, prickly pear, and agave, wondering how anyone was able to tend the garden if the maids weren’t allowed through Isaac’s room. Could there be direct access to the patio? She stepped to the railing but didn’t see one. As she looked out over Hollywood and the 101 Freeway, a profound sense of unease came over her. There were no more messages to follow, no more codes to decipher. If his work was important enough to require all this secrecy, why leave it to her? Why not to Philip or Paige, or even Gregory, someone who might have an idea what to do next?

She imagined her grandfather’s response traveling to her from some distant, unspecified place: “I leave it to the one they will—”

—least suspect? But am I really to destroy this? How can I do anything when I can’t access your computer?

“After I mailed you that letter, there wasn’t much time before—”

Before what? What happened that morning?

Hazel went back inside to call her brother. She thought of asking him to meet her at the hotel, where she would show him everything. He’d know what to do. But when the line rang and his voice mail kicked in, Isaac’s warning, Do not contact police, even those related to you, came back to her with full force. She hung up. But a question lingered. Why shouldn’t she trust her own brother?

In frustration, she fell back onto a damask sofa and covered her face with a pillow.

*

Hazel opened her eyes to the drapes billowing in the breeze. She sat up, head aching. She held her grandfather’s letter crumpled in one hand. Her phone had woken her. Fishing it from the sofa, she saw she had a voice mail from Bennet. The ache in her head was now overtaken by a constriction in her chest, and the instant she heard his cool, detached voice—“Listen, we should probably talk . . . ”—she knew what was happening. It’s the girl with the tights, isn’t it? He went on: “I hate to do this over the phone, and with everything that’s going on, but I thought you’d be back by now. Please call me.”