Marshall helped Kathy and Lisa clear the glass island table and pack the dishwasher.
‘That was pretty good for some what-lef food.’ Sean patted his stomach and leaned back on his stool.
‘You criticising the food after you done wax it off?’ Jenny asked as she eased herself up onto the polished oak kitchen counter, sitting between the double sink and the dishwasher.
‘Was that a criticism? I thought I was giving you a compliment?’
‘Sounds like criticism to me,’ Jenny said.
‘Me too,’ Kathy agreed.
‘I have to say it sounded that way to me too,’ Lisa pointed out.
‘Come on. You girls are just ganging up on me. Is this another one of those gender things?’ Sean protested.
‘I’m sure Marshall and Kenneth agree with us,’ Jenny said, looking from Marshall, who was helping with the dishes, to Kenneth, who was sitting beside Sean at the island table.
‘You not getting me involved in this one. I plead the fifth,’ Kenneth chuckled and held up both palms in front of his face.
Marshall glanced at Jenny and Kathy, and pondered the question for a moment. ‘No comment,’ he said matter-of-factly, and continued to pack the dishwasher. The group enjoyed the moment in laughter.
When the dishwasher was packed, the group made themselves comfortable on the stools around the island table, with mugs of hot Milo in hand. The sun streamed in through the lattice-windowed wood doors that led to the back patio, and bounced off the ceramic tiled floor. Through the doors, Jenny noticed a hummingbird hovering by the hibiscus hedge that bordered the patio and allowed herself a smile. Looking at Mr. and Mrs. Martin, Jenny said apologetically, ‘I need to go to the supermarket, and I didn’t have any cow’s milk, so I had to use condensed and evap milk to make the Milo. I hope it is OK.’
‘Tastes great to me,’ said Mr. Martin, and everyone else concurred.
‘See Sean. That’s a compliment,’ Kenneth said, grinning from ear to ear.
‘All right, all right. I get it,’ Sean said, holding up his hands.
Laughter erupted again. Soon after the laughter subsided, there was a loud bong sound from the direction of the living room. Sean jumped up and ran to the living room and returned with his laptop. ‘Good stuff.’
‘Have you found something?’ Mrs. Martin asked, before anyone else could.
‘I wrote a little application based on the Brownian motion theory implemented by Wiener’s process.’ More blank expressions greeted Sean. ‘It’s a common way of modelling what appears to be random patterns in mathematics, economics and physics.’
‘English?’ remarked Kenneth.
‘Taking socio-economic factors and historical patterns, I looked for murder patterns that did not match my predictions,’ Sean said, slight deflated.
‘Surely, that can’t be very reliable,’ Mr. Martin commented. ‘There are all sorts of things that could cause a murder.’
‘A statistic median is applied to smoothen out the spikes due to normal stimuli. And I have found three hot spots over the last six months.’
‘Really? Great work,’ Kenneth complimented.
Beaming, Sean showed the data on his screen, ‘We have MoBay, Hagley Gap and St. Thomas. I think we are looking at Hagley Gap.’
‘Why do you say that?’ Jenny asked.
‘The MoBay spike can be related to a Don’s girl being dissed at Sunsplash, and his crew went down there to mete out some street justice. Over a two-week period twelve people were murdered. When you take out those twelve, the pattern falls back within the statistical median.’
‘OK. What about St. Thomas? That is usually a very quiet and peaceful parish. You don’t usually hear about many murders there,’ Lisa said.
‘Right. Some drugs washed up on shore about ten months ago. As you can imagine, the owners came looking for their goods and ten people were murdered over a period of one month. The police also killed the druggists. When all these are removed, the distribution looks normal.’
‘And where is Hagley Gap?’ Jenny asked.
‘I guess you haven’t climbed Blue Mountain?’ Sean asked. ‘It’s one of those small towns along the trail.’
‘We went back in our university days,’ Mr. and Mrs. Martin reminisced.
‘This is a nice one,’ Sean continued; ‘a plane crashed in the Blue Mountains, in northeast Saint Andrew. The pilot and passenger died.’
‘So why is that of interest?’ Kenneth asked.
‘Six weeks after the crash, the case was reassigned to Busha George,’ Lisa said, peering over Sean’s shoulder at his screen. Mrs. Martin gasped.
‘Why is Busha George assigned a case so far outside of the Cooperate Area?’ Jenny asked.
‘And it does not end there,’ Sean continued excitedly. ‘The crash occurred about six months ago. Over that time, there have been almost ten murders in the Hagley Gap area, which is within the vicinity of the plane crash.’
‘Hmm. So why is that significant? There are over a thousand murders a year in Jamaica,’ Kenneth asked.
Sean leaned back in his stool. ‘Because in Hagley Gap, there were only five murders in the previous ten years.’
Jenny looked at Sean. ‘I guess this is what you call a statistical anomaly?’
Sean nodded and muttered, ‘Oh yeah.’ Sean rubbed his chin, ‘There is one more thing. The passenger who died on the plane had a scar on his head.’
‘Really?’ Kenneth exclaimed. ‘That’s too much of a coincidence that Janet’s bag handler and our plane crash passenger both have scars on their heads.’
‘This is all very interesting,’ Mr. Martin interjected after a moment’s silence, ‘but when can we go home?’
Instinctively, all eyes turned to Kenneth. Kenneth slowly looked around the table, He bowed his head and said, ‘The reality is that we can’t go home until we know what this is about, and find a way to resolve it.’
Everyone spoke at once, and Kenneth had to stand up to get a word in.
‘Listen. Listen.’ Slowly the noise subsided. ‘Look. We all want to go home, but we can’t. Think about it! Whoever these people are, and whatever they want, they will still be looking for us.’ A murmur of agreement floated around the table. ‘We need to find out what is in the bag, and what is on that plane.’
‘That’s your plan?’ Mr. Martin asked bug-eyed. ‘That’s no plan, that’s suicide!’
Kenneth looked around the room. His gaze rested on Janet, ‘Are you OK with this?’ She took a deep breath, and nodded resolutely. He looked at Kathy. ‘And you?’
Kathy looked down in her lap. When she raised her head her eyes were welling up. ‘You know this is the first time since we left Jamaica that I have thought of Jeff.’ She bit her lip to stop it from quivering, ‘I worked day and night with Jeff for two years. What type of person does that make me?’ She bowed her head again.