Excerpt: Central Central

A man ran breathlessly down the hall. To either side, the windowed doors, the bulliten boards, papers taped to the wall, droll cartoons, were all the trappings of academia. The running man apparently paid them no heed.

He crashed to the floor, nearly crashing into a tall woman. She carefully put down the cardboard boxes she was carrying. Then, still bent, she reached a hand to the man, and pulled him to his feet. Breathless, he said to her: "They've killed him!"

"Take a breath or two. And show the way." She pushed him back the way he came.

They walked briskly down the hall. There was a pause, and then she turned to him. "Let's get this all worked out now. I'm Susan Masterson. Who are you, and who has killed whom?"

"Reginald Poorter. Reg. They killed the professor --- Keirson. They killed professor Kierson."

Susan stopped, and put a hand on his shoulder, bringing him to an impatient halt. "Who did, Reg?" Her brows were tight, but her jaw remained relaxed.

"I don't know!"

"Are they still there?"

"No. Yes. I don't know. He's dead, I didn't look."

"I see." Her tone was flat, and there was a hint of disapproval. His shoulders drooped.

"Have you called the police?"

"I tried. My phone didn't work."

Reaching into a pocket, Susan pulled out a cell phone. She flipped it open with a practiced gesture, and began to dial, when she stopped, and froze for a moment, then shrugged. "No signal. Let's go, then." And with that she began to walk again, at the same brisque pace, with perhaps a bit more urgency in her step. Her knees bent just a fraction more.

"Here --- it's here." Reg pointed to a door, ajar and devoid of the mess of post-it notes, photos, and papers that adorned the other offices. ON the door was only the name: Dr. Richard Keirson, PhD. Susan stepped to the side, and gave her companion a little shove. He frowned for a moment, and then his eyebrows raised, and he stepped far down the hall. She tiled her head to one side.

*** ON the roof, an HVAC system blows air cool from the summer heat. Motors spin, fans whir as the slowed molecules are shoved repeatedly and unendingly along narrow metal tunnels. The repeated impacts of fan blade and air cascade along columns of the gas, and emerge, altered but not erased, from the metal grating screwed to an office wall. They bounce one last time to escape from their maze, and then echo freely in the larger space, impacting hard surfaces, desks, walls, and the floor.***

With her foot, Susan pushed the door open fully, waited only a fraction of a second, and then stepped inside. She glanced briefly across the room. Then her head turned all the way to her left, turned almost around to face the way she came in. Like an old woman eating corn on the cob, she turned her head, slowly, almost mechanically, to the right. second by second, she moved her gaze across the room.

He gaze paused a moment longer on the desk, and on the body slumped in the chair which was several feet from the writing surface. She also paused for some time on a corner of a filing cabinet, where there was a smudge, or a scrape. She blinked, and backed up for just long enough to wave a hand to her companion, and then stepped closer to the filing cabinet.

Reg walked in hesitantly, eyes always on the body in the chair. "I only walked outside for a minute. He said that Dr. Rivera had posted her new paper... so I stepped outside the door to look. She's right across the way --- I was five feet from the door. And he doesn't even look dead, does he? I walked in, and I thought he had fallen asleep."

Immediately, Susan spun around and glared at him. "So is he dead?"

"Yes. Yes! I went to check his pulse---"

Susan grabbed and gave her head a little shake, and took the one step from the cabinet to the body. She pulled off her glasses, and held them in front of his mouth, while pressing her finger to his throat. Then her hand jerked back.

"It's cold."

"That's what I was going to say."

"But you left the room for five minutes, you said!"

"I did."

She stared at him, and sighed. "I see. You worked for the professor?"

"Yeah..."

"You know his research?"

"Inside and out."

"Good. Run and grab my boxed of things."

Reg looked at her suspiciously. "Why?"

"They're my things," she said simply. "And we'll need some way to carry all this paper," she said, gesturing at the desk in front of her.

"Oh," he said, his face carefully blank.

"We can't go to the police: you're the obvious suspect and I'm the only other possibility. Did you kill him?"

"No!"

"Neither did I. Now, the boxes." She paused only for a fraction of a second to give a little frown, and then said "I've always gotten an excellent signal from this building."

Reg was already out the door.Susan returned her attention to the tiny graffito on the side of the filing cabinet. It showed a little man peering over a wall, and read, "Kilroy was here."

***

They sat outside, across from each other at a picnic table. Spread between them were two laptops and all the pagers of notes and research from Kierson's office.

Her tall figure, narrow and angular, was tense. Her gray hair was wound tightly behind her head, and her glasses rested on the end of her nose. But for the wariness of her gaze, and the limber tension in her body, she might have looked the part of a harsh school librarian.

His hunched form was a little harried, a little yellow, but his eyes were alert and focused on the page in front of him. After a few moments, he put down that page and picked up the next, again giving it his full attention. Once, every few pages, his gaze rose to focus on the woman across from him. His eyes would remain there a few seconds, until she glanced over the rim of her glasses and returned his attention blandly. Then they would both return to their work. The patter continued for a few hours.

Finally, he broke. "This is nonsense! None of this as anything to do with our research!"

"No, it doesn't seem to, does it," she replayed calmly.

"This doesn't sound like the prof at all! Conspiracies! People watching him, following him. Watching everyone. They read like the ramblings of a paranoid. Maybe K was sick. Maybe he wasn't killed, he just died."

"No, i have to say that seems reasonable at first, but, I don't think so. Do you?"

"Not really. He seemed like he was getting sharper every day!"

"Reg, Tell me about your research."

"We worked on information organization --- data representation, visualization. How to arrange a whole mass of numbers into something intelligible---" Reg trailed off, frowning. "Susan Masterson," he muttered. "Masterson...

"You were the woman the prof ranted about --- he called you a---" and Reg blushed a deep red.

"Yes. I had my things in those boxes because---"

"Because he got you fired, didn't he?"

"As good as."

"He didn't say, but he was so gleeful all morning. Something had tickled his fancy..."

"That was me. Or the lack thereof."

"he said you were a crackpot," Reg said slowly, doubtfully. "That your information manipulation was ridiculous. A scam. Little better than magic."

"Well, he would."

"But --- randomness? Really? The prof's method works so well, and has the same organization every time!"