CHAPTER

27

Stupid!

Isaac hunched at his desk, faced a grubby wall. Hot and sandy-eyed and abashed, alone in the detectives’ room except for that old guy, Barney Fleischer, who always seemed to be around but never seemed to be really working.

Fleischer had a radio on at low volume, some sort of easy-listening instrumental, didn’t even look up when Isaac entered. By now, no one in the detectives’ room noticed his comings and goings. He was a fixture to all of them.

Including Petra.

Asking her to dinner when she’s rushing out on a case! What had he been thinking?

Unlike Fleischer, Petra worked. The job mattered to her. Despite all the frustration, chasing down leads that failed to materialize.

A woman like that needed to parcel out her time carefully. Why in the world would she even contemplate stopping for dinner?

With him.

To her, he was an assignment, nothing more.

And yet, she’d been generous with her time. Letting him ride along, sharing details of cases.

That skin, those eyes. The way her black hair just floated into place.

Stop it, stupid.

He started to wonder again about the June 28 murders. Was his hypothesis all part of an inane infatuation?

He’d been so certain. The thrill of discovery when he first came across the pattern had nearly blown him out of his seat.

Eureka!

Ha.

At the time, he thought he’d been careful not to leap into conjecture without calculating and recalculating, subjecting his hypotheses to multiple tests of significance. The data had seemed clear. This was something.

But what if he’d convinced himself a mathematical quirk was meaningful because he’d been blinded by his own bullshit?

Because he’d wanted to produce for Petra.

Did it all boil down to preening, the ludicrous mating rituals of an absurd little game bird?

God, he hoped not.

No, it had to be real. Petra was an expert and she believed it.

Because he’d worn her down?

All his life—his academic life—he’d been told he was built for success. That the combination of brains and perseverance couldn’t miss.

But perseverance could be pathological, couldn’t it?

He had that in him: the blindered compulsiveness, the irrational relentlessness.

Barney Fleischer looked over his shoulder and stared and said, “Hey, there.”

“Hey, Detective Fleischer.”

“Burning the midnight oil?”

“A few hours left till then.”

“She’s out, you know. Left a few minutes ago.”

“I know,” said Isaac.

Fleischer studied him and Isaac could see cold, hard appraisal in the old guy’s eyes. Once a detective . . .

“Anything I can do for you, son?”

“No, thanks,” said Isaac. “I thought I’d do some paperwork. On my research.”

“Oh,” said Fleischer. He turned his music up louder, resumed whatever he’d been doing.

Isaac took out his laptop, booted up, called up a page of numbers, pretended to be concentrating. Instead, he flashed back to the agony of self-doubt.

Step back, be objective.

Six victims, nothing in common but the date. His calculations said it had to be meaningful, but could he be trusted to think straight?

No, no, however dorky his motives, this was real. He’d run the numbers too many times for it to be anything but real.

June 28. Today was the eighteenth.

If he was right, someone, some unsuspecting, innocent, random person would step out into a night full of expectations only to experience the crushing pain of a cranium pulverized to pulp.

Then nothing.

Suddenly, he wanted to be wrong. That had never happened before.