He stood in the half-open doorway and spoke without turning to face Gideon. "I'll tell you what I told them. She's gone somewhere where she can choose her own commitments, her own rules. You have your psychological profiles, use them." David slammed the door in Gideon's face.
2.04 Wed. Mar. 18
AFTER meeting Julia's parents, Gideon rented a room at a motel and slept for nearly twelve hours. At eight the next morning he drove back into the Zimmermans' Brooklyn neighborhood and drove up to Madison High School. It was an imposing pile of brick looming over the street. He parked in front of it for a long time, wondering what he was doing here. Whatever had happened to Julia here was ancient history—
He was supposedly looking for what had happened to him, his brother— not what had happened to Julia Zimmerman.
What he needed to know was why this woman needed a stolen supercomputer, and why the government was going to extreme lengths to stop her.
In the end, it was Julia Zimmerman—as much as the faux Secret Servicemen, as much as Lionel—who was responsible for Rafe's death. Gideon told himself that that was the reason he was here, unearthing her history. Julia was central to what was going on.
She was certainly central now to his investigation.
Gideon needed to know what drove her, to know what thoughts moved behind her enigmatic gray eyes.
He turned off the engine and entered the school armed with a crutch and his badge.
Gideon walked into an empty classroom. A green metal desk presided over ranks of tan desks. The ceiling was high, and a trio of windows let in the morning light. Lining the rear wall was a long table with a half-dozen computers. Green blackboards flanked three walls, one marked up and labeled, "Do Not Erase," it was a list of problems for calculus homework. The symbols looked somewhat familiar.
"Problem #8: Test to decide the convergence or divergence of the following infinite series.
After talking to two mathematicians already, Gideon felt he could almost understand the notation. It was very similar to the Zeta function, another infinite series of additions. Gideon tapped his finger next to the "°°," thinking of that other infinity, the one Julia used for the Evolutionary Theorems Lab, the one on the business card, "No."
"Can I help you?" came a voice from behind him.
Gideon turned and saw a thin, white-haired man carrying a stack of papers that seemed wider than he was.
"Mr. Sandier?" Gideon asked, turning around to face the man.
The man nodded as he emptied his papers onto his desk. "And you are?"
Gideon extended his hand. "Gideon Malcolm. I'm a detective with the Washington D.C. Police Department. I wanted to ask you about one of your former students."
Sandier didn't take Gideon's hand, making an attempt to appear as if he hadn't seen the gesture. "A little out of your jurisdiction, Detective Malcolm, aren't you?"
"I'm investigating the background of a crime that happened in the District."
Sandier looked at Gideon's crutch and up at his face. "Do I know you?"
"If you could give me a few minutes."
Sandier looked at the pile of papers in front of him. "Only a few minutes. I have papers to grade, and it's only . an hour before my first class."
Gideon nodded.
Sandier pulled out a red pencil and pulled the top paper from off the stack in front of him and began checking pages of handwritten equations.
"Do you remember a student named Julia Zimmerman?"
The red pencil stopped, leaving an unfinished red mark on the paper under Sandler's hand. "Yes," he said. "Some students aren't easily forgotten."
"What kind of student was she?"
Sandier looked up, "The worst kind, Mr. Malcolm. Intelligence with no respect behind it. Disruptive. Mocking. That's what kind of student she was."
"Mocking?"
Sandier returned to checking his paper. "She was mocking just by being in my class. I teach an honors class in Calculus, the highest level of mathematics offered in this district. It is a serious subject that should be treated seriously. I've taught this class for twenty-five years, and there is no place for girls like her here."
"Girls like her?"
"Questioning the authority of her instructor, making him look foolish in front of his students . . ."
"What did she do?"
Sandier lowered his pencil and looked up at Gideon. "Zimmerman was bored by school. Those types, most of them, they just stop coming to class. Occasionally they do the work, hand it in, but they're otherwise absent. Those types don't make it to my honors class. She was different. She came, every day, and held everyone responsible for her own boredom." Sandier shook his head. "She was ruthless with errors. It didn't matter whose. Anyone could be writing an equation on the board—I have the students do it with the homework problems— and sooner or later there would be a soft sigh from Zimmerman's desk, she'd shake her head and resume reading whatever it was she was really interested in . . ."
Sandier didn't admit it, but Gideon was certain that he'd been on the receiving end of that sigh.
"She was always right about it. The problems were wrong. The few times I asked her what she found wrong, she could recite the whole problem and identify at least three obvious errors without looking at any notes or the blackboard." Sandier looked back down at the paper he was grading. "She resented this class. She never took notes, paid no attention to the lectures, and spent the class period reading books that had nothing to do with what we were supposed to be studying."
"She didn't do the work?"
"She had a five-subject, college-ruled notebook. In the first week of class she filled that book with every study question in the textbook. Whenever I'd assign homework after that, she'd find the page in that notebook, tear it out, and hand it in after class. She was arrogant, aloof, and I had to get special permission to test her out of my class."
Gideon stood there, looking at the ranks of desks, picturing a young Julia Zimmerman feeling trapped in a class that was far beneath her ability. Again, he wondered what he was doing here. Still, he asked, "What kind of books did she read?"
"What?" Sandier asked.
"The books she read in class, the ones that had nothing to do with what you were studying."
"It was a long time ago, I don't remember the titles."
Gideon was certain he was lying. However, he didn't press the point because he wasn't sure what he was trying to discover here. "What kind of person was she? Did she have a lot of friends?"
"Friends? Not from this class. She intimidated people, they kept their distance."
And in return she savaged anyone who made a mistake. A little revenge for being so isolated. Gideon wondered why she came to the class at all. Sandier was right. A lot of kids like that—smart enough to be bored with their classes—he knew ones like them, often ended up fading out of class entirely.
What was your home like, Julia?
What was your life like?
A black Lincoln Town Car idled two blocks away from Madison High School. Two men waited inside the vehicle. Both wore charcoal-gray business suits. The driver wore a crimson tie, the passenger's was
black. They were splitting a bag of McDonald's takeout between them.
The driver sipped a cup of coffee while the passenger peered through a thin pair of binoculars at the Nissan parked in front of the high school.
"What's he doing here, Nev?"
Nev rummaged in the bag between their seats, his hand emerging with a single french fry. He ate it without moving the binoculars. "It isn't our job to figure that out."
"This wasn't on the list of the Doctor's probable contacts."
Nev loosened his tie, letting his collar open on a deep bruise that graced his neck. "We're assigned to this guy because he might come across something no one else has."