The Last Equation of Isaac Severy(43)



Alex suggested that they drop her off at the house first and that he continue to his destination from there. She thought of asking where he was going, but that old reflex of not wanting to appear like she cared too much kicked in. As she gave in to the SUV’s lurching movements, she thought back to the map and wondered aloud, “What did you know about Isaac’s traffic project?”

Alex began to idly spin his wig on one finger like a plate. “How much do you know about chaos theory?”

“Some.” Hazel thought of the drip-drip of the kitchen faucet, and of how her brother had used the theory as a very cute excuse not to clean his room: “My room isn’t messy, it’s an intelligent system hiding in apparent disorder.”

“There was that book everyone was reading in the nineties,” she offered. “And I know Isaac used chaos in his work.”

“Then you know he was trying to create a mathematical model of traffic using chaotic math.”

“Right, his project with the city.”

“We talked by phone quite a bit during that time,” Alex said, smiling sadly at the memory. “That project was supposed to be his way of helping drivers better navigate the roads, but it quickly turned into this obsession—this need to forecast specific events. Some might argue that Los Angeles traffic is already fairly predictable: just avoid the morning and evening commutes. But that’s an oversimplification of motorist behavior—it doesn’t take the ‘noise’ into account. It doesn’t consider everything we can’t foresee: a driver’s mood, the weather, debris in the road, rubbernecking, a flat tire, a stray dog, a fly buzzing in a driver’s ear. Isaac knew that if he was going to truly predict the patterns of traffic, he would have to know absolutely everything. He would have to deal with the noise. Of course, there’s no way to predict each of those tiny chance occurrences—it would be insane to try. But with mathematics, if he could somehow boil all this arbitrary activity down to a single mathematical constant, he might predict congestion, even accidents, right down to the precise minute and location.”

“It’s funny,” Hazel said. “I never thought to ask him, why cars? I mean, no one likes traffic, but if that kind of prediction is actually possible—and not just sci-fi nuttiness—why not predict the next meteor impact or terrorist attack? At least something more dangerous than whether someone’s going to have a fender bender on the 405.”

Alex gave her a knowing look, one that a teacher might give a clever student. “Yes, but for Isaac, there was safety in studying something as mundane as vehicle gridlock. It’s ongoing, it’s local, it was a starting point.” Alex fell back against the seat. “But then he gave up.”

“I thought the city yanked his funding.”

Alex looked out the window as they left the traffic of Franklin Avenue and turned onto Beachwood Drive. “You’re right. He never entirely gave up on things.”

Hazel thought of the map, of all the dots that seemed to ignore the freeways. “What if his traffic project just evolved into something else?”

He turned to her. “You know, of course, that even if we crack this, we might find nothing but demented grandpa mathematics. Good-natured numerical oatmeal.”

Good, she thought. If his work is oatmeal, I can destroy it without guilt.

As the SUV wound up the canyon, Hazel realized these were their last few moments together. “So what’s our next move?” she asked in an oddly spunky tone, as if she were the sidekick in a teen mystery. But Alex didn’t have a chance to respond, because at that moment, as they turned a corner on Durand Drive, the driver shouted something that made his passengers lean forward. Through the windshield, they could see three police cars and an ambulance filed along the shoulder. At the bottom of the steps leading up the hill to the Severy house stood a small crowd.

The first person Hazel noticed was a neighbor from down the road, sitting on the ground in his gray jogging suit. He was bent over, the hood of his sweatshirt twisted around and held to his face. She knew it was illogical, but her first panicked thought was of Gregory.

“Stop the car,” she said.

As the driver hit the brakes, she was already climbing out. A group of Beachwood residents and police were blocking her view of the hillside. As she moved toward them, she was vaguely aware of her costume, a visible morning-after aura clinging to it. But no one seemed to notice or care.

“Poor thing,” someone said.

“It was far too dangerous. I don’t know how many times I said so.”

Hazel nearly cried out with relief when she spotted her brother. She headed through the crowd and threw her arms around him. He turned to embrace her without taking his eyes from the hill. He looked exhausted, his expression one of restrained misery.

“A neighbor found her on his run,” he said.

Hazel pulled away and pushed herself toward the scene. Near the bottom of the concrete steps leading up the bluff to the house lay a woman’s body, turned upward, head pointed downhill. Her arms and legs were bent in a gruesome imitation of the cardinal directions, her neck twisted in such a way that her face was hidden from the crowd. But the hair was unmistakable: the pre-Raphaelite locks of Sybil Severy-Oliver. Instead of her hair tumbling down her shoulders, it was spilling away down the slope. She wore some kind of robe or coat, which was only half on, and her silk nightgown rode up her thighs, exposing the elastic of her underwear. One foot wore a satiny bedroom slipper. The slipper’s mate, in the echo of a fairy tale, sat several steps up the hillside.

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