The Last Equation of Isaac Severy(81)






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The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is.

—TOM STOPPARD, ARCADIA, 1993





–?27?–


The Assassin


Hazel picked up the green telephone as Gregory, on the other side of the glass, did the same. He looked oddly well—relaxed, even—in his standard-issue jumpsuit, and his eyes held unmistakable relief.

“Eggs,” she said into the receiver. In that single name, she tried to inject everything she felt about her brother, in all its affection and complexity.

The day after the incident at Union Station, Gregory had turned himself in to the LAPD, but not before officially confessing to E. J., who, after all, had deep down already known. Better to get it over with. The two had then gone together to their superiors with the revelation that Gregory had killed many, many people: fourteen in all. He didn’t point out that these were all very bad people; he thought it in poor taste to pat himself on the back. But he did make it clear to the chief of their division that Detective E. J. Kenley had figured out the entire thing and surely deserved a promotion. Maybe, while they were at it, E. J.’s Minority Youth in Peril project could be granted some additional funding. E. J. yelled at Gregory to shut the hell up, but she felt buffeted by so many conflicting emotions that she had to get up and walk out of the room.

Within hours, the story had hit the national news. Hazel felt nauseated by what her brother had done, but she forced herself to listen, read, and watch whatever was available, if only so that it might reveal the part of him she did not know or hadn’t wanted to know. She thought she would never hear an end to the phrases cranked out for the occasion—vigilante justice, renegade cop—as well as all the predictable allusions to fictional characters who had taken the law into their own hands. A few of the headlines betrayed a certain misty-eyed awe for the detective-gone-bad, with labels like “Abuse Avenger,” “Southland Renegade,” and “Lone-Wolf Cop.” But there had been an immediate backlash against such characterizations, and much online scolding of the media for Gregory’s portrayal as some kind of modern-day Zorro or Count of Monte Cristo.

His story elicited plenty of screaming on both sides. One celebrity attorney went on national news and shouted, “If Greg Severy wants to be a Wild West vigilante, let him die like one: at the gallows tree.”

Hazel knew that she was supposed to feel some kind of outrage at her brother’s actions, something closer to what her sister-in-law was going through: “How could he do this? How could that monster do this to us?” But when Hazel’s initial nausea had passed, a curious sense of wonder set in at her brother’s hidden motivations, his complete dedication to his crimes, and his ability to conceal his parallel life so effectively. How much mental exertion must it have taken to manufacture these accidents, each one tailored to its unlucky recipient? Her brother may not have been blessed with a mathematical brain, but he had a frighteningly methodical one.

She wondered if Tom would have been his most recent victim had Gregory not been interrupted, and had their former foster father not finished the job for him. Or would the outcome have been the same, regardless of her and Alex’s interference? Tom’s death had deeply rattled her, not least of all because the instant she had recognized him on the train platform, some ancient anger had risen within her to wish him over the edge. She wanted to punish him for everything he had done and not done, for all the injuries that would never heal, no matter how many years of therapy she and Gregory paid for. And when he had fallen onto those tracks, it was as if she had actually pushed him. A part of her had wanted him to die, yes, but Hazel also knew it was just another of her involuntary mental projections, and when the train screeched to a stop, she felt only horror and pity.

“So here I am,” Gregory said flatly. “In the onesie I’ll be wearing every day for the rest of my life.”

It now occurred to Hazel that the comic violence she had been mentally conjuring for years had been reflected in her brother’s mind. But with him, the dark wishes had transformed into action. She smiled sadly.

“E. J. called me before it hit the news. You’re like this psycho hero now.”

“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

Hazel leaned forward, as if they were seated at a café table instead of separated by bulletproof glass.

“I’ll visit you as much as I can. I will.”

Gregory glanced away. “It’s weird,” he said. “After so many years of fantasizing about his death, I was actually sorry to see him go over the edge.”

“Would you have pushed him?”

He shook his head. “Something happened this time. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do any of it anymore.”

Her throat constricted. “I never thought he would look so—”

“Defeated?”

She nodded.

A few seconds passed before either of them spoke.

“Haze? You never said why you were at the station. Don’t tell me: the concurrence of events?”

She shook her head. “I only knew that something would happen at that spot. Isaac’s math told me.”

His eyes flickered with far-off understanding. “So the equation is real.”

“Wait, you knew about it?”

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