The Last Equation of Isaac Severy(82)

Gregory’s face twitched, betraying a surfacing memory. “He called me two days before he died, told me he had an equation that revealed the city’s murders—including what I was doing. I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about, that he’d finally lost it, but somehow I knew it was true. I knew that he saw me.”

Hazel was still trying hard to process this. “What do you mean, he saw you?”

“He said that his mathematics had led him to me. He wouldn’t say how, but all I can think of is that he was testing out his equation and by coincidence saw me at the exact time and place of one of the so-called accidents. Once he’d connected me to that crime, he kept tabs on me. After he died, I found a tracking device on my car.”

“If he knew what you were doing,” she asked in a low voice, “why didn’t he turn you in?”

Her brother leaned close to the glass. “He mailed me a letter just before he died. I left it for you, in our old hiding place. It’s quite a read.”

This surprised her. But then why should she be surprised that Isaac had written more than one letter? She thought of telling Gregory about her own letter from him but realized they were short on time. She still had so many questions, including one she was afraid to ask.

“What about Sybil?”

He bit down on his lip. “What about her?”

“Isaac predicted her death, too. I found these on a map he left behind.” She reached into her coat pocket, where she had kept the two identical dots. She held them up for him to see. “It’s the date and time of Sybil’s death. Twice.”

She detected a disturbance pass over her brother’s face, one that for a moment made him look like a boy again. Hazel desperately wanted to embrace him as she had done when they were small, when one of them had been sad and they huddled together on a single mattress—an isle in a sea of hurt. Then the look was gone, and the man was there once again.

“She was pregnant,” he said, as if it were a confession.

She frowned. “How do you know? Are you sure?”

“I saw the autopsy.”

Hazel pulled the dots from the glass and stared at them in her hand. She saw them now not as redundancies, but twin deaths occurring at the same instant. Is that what Isaac had meant when he wrote Three will die?

For one wild moment, she almost asked Gregory where he had been that night. But no. Her brother had adored Sybil. Her next thought was to ask who the father was, but she put this notion out of her mind, too, and said simply, “No wonder Jack was so messed up.”

“I don’t think he knew.”

“How could he not know his wife was pregnant?”

“Autopsy said she was only a couple months along. Maybe she was undecided about telling him.”

“Well, he must know now.”

He shook his head. “The coroner’s office owed me a favor, so I asked them not to disclose it to the family. Least I could do.”

“Least you could do?”

“I’m telling you, okay? No one else. There’s been enough pain.”

She nodded in understanding. A door opened behind him, and a guard appeared.

“What’s it like in there, anyway?” she asked.

“They keep me busy with dumb work, though I have plenty of time alone to think. I’ve been writing a lot, just so there’s a record of what I’ve done and why. Maybe someday Lewis can read it, I don’t know . . .” He let the rest fall away. “Reflection, I guess that’s what my life is now.”

He turned to the guard and held up a finger. “Be an aunt to Lewis. He’ll love you if you let him.”

It wasn’t a final good-bye, but tears pooled in her eyes. “Wait,” she said, voice breaking. “How’s the food?”

He smiled. “Good as any. It’s all the same to me.”

At the guard’s prompt, Gregory hung up the receiver and blew his sister a kiss.

*

No longer seeing any reason to avoid Beachwood Canyon, Hazel paid her first visit to the house in weeks. She let herself in with a key hidden in a potted palm, stopped off at the kitchen for a butter knife, and climbed the stairs. Outside Isaac’s study, she knelt on the floor and pried up the chronically loose plank to reveal a narrow space. Their childhood hiding place was mustier than she’d remembered, with fresh termite trails in the wood. At the bottom sat the letter her brother had promised. After replacing the board, she sat back against the wall to read it. There were two envelopes: a larger one addressed to Gregory at his house and a smaller one folded within, scrawled with the single word Proof. She set aside the letter and opened the smaller envelope. In it she found a stack of photocopied clippings, a few of which fell to the floor. She had only to glimpse the headlines to see that these were news briefs detailing unusual deaths throughout LA County: “Family Car Rolls Backward onto Mother,” “Man Drowns in Own Bathtub,” “Film Producer Dies in Freak Yard Accident.” She set these aside and unfolded the handwritten letter, its script shaky.

Dearest Gregory,

As I expressed on the phone when we last spoke, I am conflicted about your actions. On the one hand, you are doing what I and many others can’t summon the courage to do: to live out our most violent revenge fantasies against those who hurt the innocent. On the other, I think about the child you once were . . . and my heart splits in half.