The Cunningham Equations Read online

  “What do you know? You want to tell me how to live my life?” He slumped against Alfie, sweating copiously.

  She helped him up from the terminal. Her hands were overly gentle. He examined the red polish on her fingernails as she urged him to his feet, saying from far away “You’ll feel better after you throw up.”

  He started walking. The room heaved; the slave terminals looked like apples bobbing in an unsteady pan of water. He found the doorknob, brass patined to schoolhouse brown, and let himself into the hall. The corridor had a Dostoevskian surrealism.

  Lucy and the whispers, the need to get back to his classroom and a bottle came alive again. Helen McIntyre was reviving it after he had nearly forgotten. She avoided his eyes when he returned, concentrating on scratching Dobie’s ears. The dog lifted brown eyes, asking Blaise if this was all right.

  “Why don’t you go home, Miss McIntyre?” The vodka bottle in Alfie’s pedestal drew him.

  “You’ve got to go, too, Blaise. You can’t drive until you’re sober. And you can’t go home. They’ll find you there.”

  “So what?” He tried to hate Helen or at least dislike her. But she was right in her own way. Gordon promised salvation and Helen offered safety, a guardian angel. “You’re wasting your time.” He waved his hand, brushing cobwebs from his face. “I won’t hold it against you.”

  Having waited long enough without input, Alfie began powering down. Blaise heard the procedure as surely as if the computer were talking. The drives were quiet, but fans shutting off were the giveaway.

  “Why don’t you come home with me, Blaise?”

  Helen’s eyes were clear blue and tense, her irises jerky. Blaise recognized the reaction of a child expecting to be hit. Quiet filled the shadowy classroom with its graveyard atmosphere.

  “Do you know what you’re saying, Miss McIntyre?” Her eyes dropped away. “Yes, Dr. Cunningham.”

  “That’s a kind offer, but . . .”

  “You don’t want to.”

  “Helen, it won’t work—whatever it is that you expect.”

  “Come and we’ll talk.” Helen spoke swiftly, as if she had to get her thoughts out while she could.

  “I need a keeper,” Blaise said. “Not a mother.”

  “I know.” She was laughing even though her smile was compassionate. “That’s what I want to talk about.”

  With its picture window overlooking a pocket-size dichondra lawn and wideleaf rubber tree slightly larger than a bush to break her view of the picture window across the street, Helen’s white stucco had been middle class in the ’50s. Strained and varnished wood trim gave it the air of a landlocked yacht. The house across the street was the same, but with oriental red trim.

  A jog formed an entranceway to the living room, which had been enlarged by tearing out the kitchen wall and replacing it with a breakfast nook and service bar. Three bedrooms and a bath and a half reduced the backyard to a vanishing point enclosed by redwood fence. When they went inside Helen’s nervousness came out as compulsive chatter.

  “I don’t do varnishing,” Blaise said. He took one end of an off-white sofa. He never knew what to call decorator colors except if it had been silk he would have known it was old ivory and his mother would have told him not to sit on it.

  Helen tried not to titter but the sound came out in a nervous burst. She covered her mouth with her palm and that made it worse. “I’m sorry,” she gasped.

  The ride from the university in Helen’s car restored Blaise’s equanimity. Dobie had been quiet, not that Helen seemed to mind bringing him. “I like it when you laugh at my jokes,” he said. “That it’s a stupid joke makes me more appreciative.”

  Perched gingerly on the other end of the sofa, Helen stared without hinting whether Blaise was cat or canary. Dobie lay on his feet, effectively immobilizing him.

  “You think you might have a drink in the house?”

  Helen looked away. “I wasn’t joking about the policeman. You’ll have to see him and you should be sober.”

  “All right.” Opening up the kitchen had given the mostly white room an airy feel. “Your design?”

  “Yes.” She looked at him again, unable to express her thoughts. Helplessness made her gawky.

  “What is it you want, Helen?”

  She bounced off the couch and smoothed her skirt down over her hips. “Would a beer help?”

  Blaise nodded and followed her with his eyes.

  “Is Tres Equis all right?” her voice emerged bodiless from the depths of the refrigerator.

  “¿Por que no?”

  She came into the front room with a cork-top tray. It was a nice pour, the foam an even head to the rim of the tapered crystal glass, chill beer underneath still rich with glittering bubbles. “I don’t speak much Spanish,” she said.

  “Enough for beer.”

  “Enough,” she agreed.

  She watched as Blaise sipped the beer before gulping half. It postponed his need for something stronger.

  “Tell me what you want, Helen.”

  “I want you to live here.” She played with her hands. “Sit down. You’re making me nervous.”

  Helen glanced at the end of the couch as if that was too close and settled instead on a matching chair where she could see Blaise without turning her head. “It’s business.”

  “I’m a little vague today. I don’t remember any business.”

  “The program you put into Aifie for me. The one I run when you’re not at the school.”

  “That’s not business, Helen. It’s just a little favor.” Blaise started to rise.

  “Please!” She mangled her hands some more. “Right now it’s my only business. I’m making money. A lot of money. I know that doesn’t impress you, but it’s important to me. Without your help I’m nothing.”

  “I doubt that.”

  She laced her hands together, laying her face against her fingers. “A woman stockholder with no contacts. A nothing. I don’t want that again.” Helen’s eyes were tense, seeing some thing she wasn’t telling Blaise.

  “I’m told you’re good at sales.” Blaise was uncomfortable.

  “People think they’re entitled to fringe benefits just because they’re rich. I started in a brokerage house and the first big account I landed wanted favors. Personal favors.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why? You weren’t the executive who told me to keep the account any way I could.”

  The beer had gone flat. Blaise shook the glass to stir up a little fizz. Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought dumb than to open it and prove it. His mother had liked that adage. Probably because it was true. After a while Helen understood that he was not going to ask for the steamy details and some of the tenseness went out of her.

  “You’re going to be dropped by the university, Blaise.” Blaise’s hand trembled. He managed not to spill beer on the white shag carpet. “How do you know?”

  “The dean was . . . glacial. I’ve taught there two years, and I’ve never seen him the way he was today. There’s the drinking. Then that blond student—and finally the police. Dean Carden will announce a lack of funds in your department and that will be that. He’s done it before. For less cause.”

  Helen looked directly at Blaise. Her eyes were wet. “I know the teaching assignment means a lot to you. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not firing me.” Blaise wondered if the tears were for herself or for him. He smiled and it hurt. But a gentleman accepts adversity with class. Family tradition. His parents had agreed about a lot of things.

  Helen collected the tray. “Do you want another?”

  Blaise nodded.

  She got another beer and put it down on the table before sitting next to him on the couch. She put her hand on his knee.

  Feeling her heat penetrating his slacks, Blaise Could not control himself. “Is there a difference between keeping an account or a computer?” he asked.

  Helen snatched her hand away. “Bastard!”

&nb
sp; “Dastard,” he muttered. “Anyone can be born a bastard but to get a ‘D’ you have to work at it.” If it would have helped he would have bitten his tongue off. Too late now. “I think you’d better take me back to my car.”

  “Yes.” Helen picked up her leather bag, probing inside before going to the door jingling the keys impatiently.

  “It wouldn’t have worked,” he said as he passed her in the doorway. Dobie seemed to slink in his wake. The dog looked up at Helen with regret in his dewy eyes.

  Helen walked to the other side of her white Buick and got in, slamming the door. She sat stiff, arms rigid on the wheel.

  “I could get a cab.” Dobie lay very quiet in the backseat. “Not with a dog! I’m doing this for Dobie—not for you.” Front wheels squealed as the car rocketed away from the curb. “You don’t know what I want.”

  “You have a nice neat life and you’re on your way up. Why get in line for a disaster waiting to happen?”

  “That’s for me to decide.” She clamped her lips shut. Helen had nice lips, finely molded with a lush rose color. “Helen, you can still use Alfie whenever you want.”

  “I know that.”

  “Then why are you mad?”

  She glanced at him, fury etched into her face. The road was turning and she was not. Blaise said, “Watch the road.” In the university parking lot, Blaise put his hand on hers and she shook it off. “We’re still friends, aren’t we, Helen?” Silence.

  Blaise got out. The yellow VW looked pathetic alongside the sleek white Buick. Helen was pointedly silent. “You’ll get over it tomorrow,” he said. “You’ll see I was right.” Helen wheeled the car around in a screeching turn and bounced out of the lot.

  Getting into the familiar depths of his beetle with its worn cloth seats and floor shift that always struck his leg when he was careless or in a hurry, Blaise leaned over the wheel for a long time. He knew Helen was crying when she drove away.

  Dobie nuzzled his cheek. “Are you mad, too?” The dog cocked his ears as if he liked Helen more than Linda. He rotated a soft brown eye at Blaise. But what did he know? Dobie was too young for women.

  The garage floor quaked when the bug bumped off the cement driveway onto wood. There was no door from the garage into the house so he had to walk around to the front. “Dr. Cunningham?”

  Blaise shaded his eyes. The sun had started settling toward the ocean and the heavyset man in the doorway was mostly shadow.

  “I’m Sergeant Miller. May we come in and talk?”

  Dobie growled and the policeman backed off.

  “There is a city leash law, sir.”

  “There are also,” Blaise said icily, “things in the constitution about private property.”

  The sergeant was in his late forties. He had gray eyes, short hair with a hint of gray, a neat salt-and-pepper mustache, and wore a brown sharkskin suit with a double vent in the jacket. A leaner, taller man wearing a three-piece blue worsted suit stood behind him.

  “You have identification?”

  The sergeant took a leather case from his jacket pocket and showed Blaise his gold badge and identity card with the San Diego Police Department.

  Unlocking the door, Blaise ushered Dobie in first.

  They stood in front of the big window. Sergeant Miller said, “You have quite a view.”

  Blaise said, “Yes.”

  “This is Inspector Fennelli from San Francisco. He has some questions he’d like to ask, if you don’t mind, Dr. Cunningham.”

  Miller looked around. “May we sit down?”

  The sergeant took the far end of the couch and the inspector the chair facing the couch. Blaise couldn’t see both men at the same time, which he supposed was deliberate. Dobie seemed uneasy, inspecting the arrangement, circling the men, then coming back to lay in front of the inspector.

  “What did you do when you first left San Francisco, Doctor?”

  “I took a direct flight to San Diego that laid over in Los Angeles a half hour.”

  “Before you got on the airplane?” The inspector had a whiskey voice and a way of peering at Blaise, lowering his head staring up at his own eyelids, that seemed to doubt every word. Now and then his eyes twitched as he stared at Dobie.

  “How tall are you, Professor?”

  Blaise turned his head to see the sergeant who smiled amiably. “Six one.”

  “When did you last see Esther Tazy?”

  “Tuesday, I believe. The date is on the ticket stub.”

  “Where did you see her?”

  “Technological Intelligence Laboratories in San Francisco.”

  “How much do you weigh, Professor?”

  Blaise held his eyes steady on Inspector Fennelli. “One hundred and seventy-nine pounds, Sergeant.”

  “Do you want to cooperate with us, Doctor?”

  “By getting whiplash answering your questions?” Fennelli smiled gently. “By coming with me to San Francisco to see a gentleman who knew Esther Tazy slightly.”

  “Slightly?”

  “Perhaps that is an exaggeration. More precisely, to let a man who saw Esther Tazy’s killer take a look at you.”

  “She’s dead?” Blaise felt a black emptiness inside, a shock almost like the one he’d experienced when they came to him with the news of his parents’ deaths. He’d been responsible then. The others only suspected, but Blaise knew. If he’d been sober they would never have driven off to fulfill his lecture commitment. And they would have still been alive. Neither policeman said anything.

  Blaise looked from one detective to another. “I didn’t know anything about that.” Inside, though, something said, It’s your fault again, Cunningham.

  “That’s good, that you don’t know anything about it, because, Dr. Cunningham”—and Fennelli smiled in his gentle way—“the killer is large and blond and must have known Miss Tazy. You are blond, are you not, Dr. Cunningham?” Dobie’s restless growl rumbled in the still room.

  No way exists to separate the ingrained learning habits of a lifetime from the inherent natural ability to learn. So the researcher must disregard the eccentricities of the past to concentrate on the potential of the future.

  FROM A SEMINAR ON

  THE CUNNINGHAM EQUATIONS

  CHAPTER 5

  Blaise had gotten on the jet with Inspector Fennelli, watched the runway rush and drop.

  “I don’t suppose you have jurisdiction in San Diego?”

  “No.” Fennelli put down his magazine and looked bland. “You will have in San Francisco.”

  “Of course, Dr. Cunningham.” Out the window, the airliner’s shadow was sharp on the translucent green surface of the ocean as it banked for the short run to Los Angeles. Upside windows revealed fluffy stacks of white clouds. “I don’t like flying,” Fennelli said. “Too many things can go wrong.”

  “I could change my mind in L.A.”

  Fennelli shrugged. “There is always Sergeant Miller.” Blaise had been lucky. Helen kept him sober and the San Francisco flight completed the drying-out. Interrogation in the Bay City was more intense, but a witness, a dog walker, said he wasn’t sure Blaise was the man because of the rain and the wind. He’d said the same about a yellow-haired boyfriend of Esther Tazy’s from the lab. So Blaise had gone home again.

  He put his hands behind his head and stared into the plaster over his bed. Even though it predated the architectural style, the home his parents had left him could have been a typical Mizner house: stucco gunked onto chicken wire stretched between two-by-fours. If the termites left the wood alone it might stand another half century. When he was a child, Blaise imagined monsters trapped in the plaster. The monsters had grown real with time.

  He closed his eyes. Fennelli had said things like Esther’s murder just happened in San Francisco. The boyfriend could have been jealous, Dr. Cunningham. But not you. Fennelli smiled like he knew something, like he didn’t care who was guilty. So long as he had someone. Fennelli didn’t need to add that if the boyfriend washed out he’d be b
ack for Blaise.

  Blaise’s face itched. He’d been sweating more in his sleep, waking with the aftertaste of nightmares he couldn’t remember. The bed was fetid from alcohol and dirty linens.

  What had happened since Fennelli was muddy.

  Gordon was gone.

  Helen was gone.

  Even Esther. He’d had fantasies about Esther Tazy. She was bright and sexual, too hard to hurt. He thought he could be comfortable with her until he discovered he was too easily hurt.

  Hemmett.

  Blaise strained. When memories didn’t come right away dread enveloped him like a wave of black water. His chest tightened, making him giddy, the way he’d felt when his mother read Ovid’s Metamorphoses out loud, then queried him in English to establish a three-year-old’s knowledge of Latin. That he had understood was unworthy of comment or congratulation. It was only expected.

  Dobie. Dobie was missing!

  The steady thump of Blaise’s heart became noticeable by its absence. A void existed in his memory. He couldn’t have just left Dobie in the house. The plaster ceiling writhed in obscene patterns. Blaise’s mouth was dry. He’d never forgotten like this before. And he’d been almost sober. Helen! He’d called her and left the door unlocked. Relief flooded through Blaise. Dobie was safe and he had filled the gap in his mind. He breathed again. Humming, he headed for the steamy pleasures of the bathroom.

  “Dr. Cunningham!”

  The voice competed with the shower hiss. Blaise had been thinking of Dr. Hemmett, who asked what Fennelli wanted and if he knew Esther worked for GENRECT.

  Hot water sapped him, making the stretch to turn off the shower a major exertion. Wrapping a towel around his middle, he stepped out. Steam followed in a billowing cloud.

  “Dr. Cunningham!” The voice rose now that it had no competition. “I know you’re here, Doctor.”

  Blaise stumbled to the front of the house and leaned against the railing that prevented people from missing the turn to the stairs and falling into the living room. “How do you know I’m here, Miss Peters?”

  “Because that wreck you drive is cluttering the garage.” Blaise was dripping on the hall rug. “I’ll get dressed.”