Read Online Strip Search by William Bernhardt - Free Book Online

emotion, he did a pretty damn good version of the cold shoulder treatment.
    “Darcy,” he said, clearing his throat, trying to carefully choose his words, “…are you…interested in the case Susan is working on?”
    Darcy’s head turned ever so slightly in his direction. “Y-Y-Yes,” he said.
    The stuttering again. Whenever Darcy was around him. “Can I show you something? Something to do with the case?” Even as he’d stuffed the document in his satchel, he’d had misgivings about showing it to Darcy. He didn’t need to be involved in anything this ugly. Still, as long as he kept Darcy away from the crime scene…maybe…
    Susan was always able to find a way to make Darcy useful.
    “Here it is.” He slid a photocopy of the imprint Escavez had taken off the grill. The mysterious formula:
     

     
    “Can you read it?”
    “Yes.”
    “Do you know what it is?”
    “It is…an equation.”
    “I know how good you are in math. Can you, uh, tell me what it means?”
    Darcy tilted his head to one side. “What it means?”
    “Yeah. We think it must have some significance. It was found at the scene of the crime. Do you know what it means?”
    “Are you asking me…can I solve it?”
    As if he knew. “Okay, can you solve it?”
    Darcy took it into his own hands and stared at it. “What does
n
stand for?”
    “I don’t know. Why?”
    “It is used twice. If I knew what
n
was, then I would be able to maybe narrow the range of possible solutions.”
    “Well, we really don’t know what—”
    “What does
a
stand for? Or
b
?”
    “Darcy, we don’t know what any of the symbols stand for.”
    “Then it is impossible for me to solve it. I could give you a list of possible solutions in algebraic form. But there would be an infinite number of numerical answers. Unless I know at least one of the integer substitutions, I cannot narrow it down to one solution.”
    “We don’t know what the formula stands for, or what it means, or what you do with it. Maybe it’s something theoretical. Like E = mc 2 . I mean, that has some meaning”—or so he’d heard—“but you don’t know what any of the numbers are.”
    “I do not have to. I know that E is energy and M is mass and c is the speed of light. Even if I do not have any of the numbers, the equation is still true.”
    “Well, then—”
    “But without one of the numbers, I cannot possibly give you any of the others, so I cannot solve it.” He laid the paper down.
    O’Bannon blew air through his teeth. Every conversation they had always turned out like this—with both of them totally frustrated. He thought Darcy would jump all over this—a clue to a crime involving mathematics, his strongest subject. At school they used to call him the human calculator. He could multiply five-digit numbers in his head. So why couldn’t Darcy help now?
    “Well, thanks for trying, son.”
    “I-I-I did not try, because it was not possible. Why would you ask me to do something that was not possible?”
    “Well, I didn’t know—”
    “Y-Y-You don’t think I can do anything. Y-Y-You wouldn’t ask me to do anything that was possible.”
    “Darcy—that’s not true!” O’Bannon protested, but it was too late. Darcy was already back on the floor, his eyes glued to the book, either reading or not. Damn it all. He should’ve known better. He shouldn’t have come home asking for trouble.
    Or maybe, just maybe, he should’ve recognized what everyone else already knew.
    Susan could work with his son. But he couldn’t.
     
     
     

9
     
July 13
     
     
    “I HOPE YOU don’t mind meeting me so early in the morning, Rachel,” I said, as I passed her the Krispy Kremes. “I’m on a new case. And I’m supposed to be in the office at nine o’clock sharp.”
    “I don’t mind. Which one’s cream-filled?”
    I pointed. She wolfed. Rachel is my beautiful, effervescent, clear-skinned, sixteen-year-old niece, who is good for a smile even at this godawful time of the morning.