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bedlamsbardTitle: The Calculus of Crime
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bedlamsbard
Fandom: CSI:NY
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Don Flack, Danny Messer
Word Count: 2509
Summary: "S’far as we can figure he pushed his mom out the window of his room and stabbed his father to death with a kitchen knife – but the knife in the kitchen’s clean as clean and there’s no physical evidence to show it was him pushed the mom outta the window."
Disclaimer: None of these are mine. Characters are the property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer Television, CBS, and Alliance Atlantis.
Author's Notes: This, um, started out in canon and ended in the Bardverse. Post-Bloody Sunday, post-There But for the Grace of God (mirrorverse). More notes at the end.
“You still here, Messer?”
Danny turned at Flack’s voice. “Yeah. Our perp’s in the box, but he ain’t talkin’. And we don’t got the evidence to prove he did it, either. Nightmare situation.” He scowled at the window of the interrogation room.
Flack matched him scowl for scowl. “We got another D.J. Pratt on our hands here, Danny?” he asked softly.
“Nah, the kid doesn’t have the guts. S’far as we can figure he pushed his mom out the window of his room and stabbed his father to death with a kitchen knife – but the knife in the kitchen’s clean as clean and there’s no physical evidence to show it was him pushed the mom outta the window.” Danny turned back toward the window. “I know he did it, though. I can feel it.”
“He smart enough to hide the evidence?”
“Kid’s a fucking genius,” Danny said. “On paper an’ everything. You oughta see his MENSA scores.”
“Motive?”
“Ha,” Danny said flatly. “I wish. That’d be the day.”
Flack glanced at the kid. Fourteen, fifteen, blond-haired, blue-eyed, looked innocent as the day he was born. “Lemme in there with him.”
“This ain’t even your case, Flack.”
“Yeah, but my case’s closed and I got nothing better to do. What’s it gonna hurt, huh? Might learn somethin’.”
Danny chewed on his lip. “Yeah, okay,” he said finally. “Mac’ll have my ass if nothing comes outta it, though.”
Flack winked at him with more gaiety than he really felt. “Promise I’ll get you a clue, at least.”
-
Tyler Brian was a small kid, relatively speaking; Flack had been all arms and legs when he’d been that age, gawky as a colt. He had the small, reddish eyes of someone who didn’t get enough sleep, spent all their time bent over sheets and sheets of notebook paper with a pen in his hand. Pen. Danny’s notes had said that he never used pencil, and there’d been graphite trace on the back of Mrs. Brian’s sweater. Tyler Brian didn’t look like the kind of kid that would ever commit double homicide.
Flack had seen a lot of those.
He took a seat across the table from Tyler, watching the kid’s brilliant mind try and scrabble out the reason why a strange detective would be interviewing him. He finally said, “What, are you some kind of social worker or something?”
“Just another homicide detective,” Flack said. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
“You’re here to try and prove my nephew killed my sister and her husband,” the woman sitting beside Tyler said, stirring. She held out a hand toward him. “Elsa Kasanov. I’m Tyler’s aunt and legal guardian – and his lawyer.”
Flack took her hand. “Detective Flack. Nice to meet you. Aren’t you worried you got a conflict of interests?”
“Not at all. Tyler’s welfare is my interest.”
He nodded. “Good to know. I’m just gonna ask your nephew a few questions.”
Ms. Kasanov nodded warily. “Remember Tyler’s a minor, Detective.”
“I can take care of myself, Aunt Ellie,” Tyler said, scowling.
Flack flipped through the folder Danny had given him. “So you’re a math genius, Tyler.”
The kid nodded. “Yeah.”
“Knew a kid like that once.” Flack put down a yellow legal pad and a handful of pens and pencils in front of Tyler. “Write down whatever’s on your mind,” he said. “Get it out of your head and then maybe we can talk about what happened Saturday evening.”
“I told the other detective,” Tyler began. “I was in the bathroom –”
“Get the equations out of your head first,” Flack interrupted. “Then we’ll talk.”
“I don’t like your tone, Detective,” Ms. Kasanov said. “And whatever you’re trying to do –”
“I’ve dealt with people like this before,” Flack said. “Trust me, it will be easier for all three of us if he gets the genius stuff off his mind for a little while.”
Tyler’s aunt fell silent, glaring at Flack. A few minutes later, she told her nephew, “Don’t write anything that might incriminate you.”
Tyler mumbled a reply. Flack played idly with his cuffs while he waited, now and then catching sight of the lines of numbers straggling their way across the paper. His brain itched at the sight, the part he’d choked into catatonia waking up and revving the engines; his fingers ached for an ink pen and a composition book. Just the barest glance of those numbers was enough to spark off four other equations in his mind.
Tyler finally put his pencil down. “All right,” he said. “Now what?”
Flack picked up the legal pad and flipped pages casually. “This is one of the Millennium Problems.”
“Yeah?” said Tyler, bristling with teenage bravado. “So you paid attention in college calc, big deal. I bet you failed the class.”
“Tyler,” Ms. Kasanov said warningly. “Be mature.”
“For your information I aced calc my freshman year of high school,” Flack said. “Which, trust me, was long before the Millennium Problems were named.” He tapped the upper corner of the first page. “What’s this?”
“Part of the equation.”
“Don’t lie to me. It’s separated from the rest of the calculations, the numbers never show up in the proof, and it’s written in pen. All your calculations are in pencil.”
Tyler looked at Ms. Kasanov. “Aunt Ellie?” he said.
“Obviously he was writing a note to himself,” the lawyer said.
“In code,” Flack said flatly. “And he had to pick up a different writing utensil to do so. This is three numbers, Tyler. It’s a locker code, isn’t it?”
“No,” Tyler said, shaking his head.
“It was on your mind. It’s not your locker, you wouldn’t have to write your own combo down. Whose locker is it? And what’ve you got in there?”
“Detective Flack, you’re making unwarranted accusations,” Ms. Kasanov said sharply. “Tyler, don’t say anything else.”
“He doesn’t have to.” Flack pulled out his cell phone and speed-dialed. “Hey, Danny, get someone down to the kid’s school and have ‘em check out a locker with the combo 43-12-17.”
“You got somethin’ outta him?” Danny said, faintly disbelieving in his ear.
“Yeah. Be a prince and send a CSI down there, won’tcha? Buy you a drink.”
“You got it. I’ll call you when we open the thing.”
“Thanks, Messer.” He snapped his phone shut. “You wanna tell me what’s in that locker, Tyler?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tyler said, glancing at his aunt again.
Flack smiled. Easy smile, charming and disarming. “Sure, kid, just keep tellin’ me that. I did mention I just sent a CSI down to your high school to check it out, didn’t I?”
Tyler shook his head. “You don’t have anything, Detective.”
“Sure I do.” Flack ripped the sheets of paper Tyler had covered with equations off the legal pad, picked up the pen, and started scribbling. P=NP. He could do this. Didn’t even have to think about it, because that part of his brain he’d been suppressing since college looked at the challenge and fucking orgasmed, presenting him equations in sloppily wrapped packages with bright red bows that flowed out his fingers and onto the paper.
He could feel Tyler and his aunt watching him with astonishment, eyes drilling holes into his forehead. Flack ignored them, scribbling faster and faster, ink smearing with the urgency. When he finally finished, it was with the side of his hand dyed black with ink and the five pages of equations almost unreadable.
“Detective Messer tells me you do all your work in pen, Tyler,” he said casually. “Why’s that?”
Tyler was looking at the legal pad in shock. “I – because if I screw up, then I deserve to get the points taken off,” he said. “I don’t screw up.”
Flack tapped the pages he’d torn off earlier. “But you did these in pencil,” he said.
Tyler glanced at them. “Well, yeah, but because you only gave – me –” He’d spotted the pens and pencils spread across the table and went abruptly silent.
Ms. Kasanov leaned forward. “Do you have a point, Detective?”
“Sure I do,” Flack said cheerfully. “Mary Brian had graphite trace on her. Only problem is, Tyler, you don’t use pencil, just pen. ‘Cept, apparently, when you’re working on P versus NP. Why? Are you too afraid you won’t be able to work out a Millennium Problem on the first try?”
“They’re the hardest unsolved math problems in the world,” Tyler said. “There are professional mathematicians that haven’t solved the Millennium Problems yet. I just don’t want to waste paper.”
Flack leaned back. “So what were you working on Saturday night? P=NP?”
Something in Tyler’s eyes flickered. “I was in the bathroom,” he said. “I already told the other detective that.”
“Right, right,” Flack said. “But just for the sake of things, what were you working on before you went in? I mean, before someone pushed your mom out the window of your room.”
“I wasn’t working on anything,” Tyler said.
“Detective, do you have a point?” Ms. Kasanov demanded.
“Absolutely,” Flack told her. “’Course, I’m not gonna tell you what the point is right out, am I? That’d be stupid of me.”
Tyler’s eyes were on the pad Flack’s hand was half-covering. “Yeah,” he said, “and you’re not stupid. Where’d you go? Rensellaer Polytech?”
“University of Virginia.” Behind the mirror, Danny’s eyes had to be crossing. The only one that knew where Flack had gone for college was Mac, and that was only because he had Flack’s file.
As if summoned by the thought, Flack’s phone rang. He raised it to his ear. “Whatta ya got for me, Danny?”
“Lindsay just called me from the high school,” Danny said. “The locker’s an empty one, but all the combos are in the system, anyone coulda hacked in and got the combo and the locker number.”
“What was in the locker?”
“Buncha books, higher level math, that sorta thing. A couple on the Millennium Problems. Three notebooks, two of ‘em full, one of ‘em halfway there. All equations and shit. Handwriting matches Tyler Brian’s, and it’s in pencil. One of the notebooks’s got blood on the cover.”
“Dynamite,” Flack said, grinning. “Thanks, Messer. Tell her to bring ‘em over, will ya?”
“Been there, done that. This gettin’ you somewhere?”
“Hell yeah. I’ll get ya a confession all nice and signed. You’re payin’ tonight, though.”
“I’m down with that. Hell, you close this case for me, I’ll even take my clothes off all by myself.”
“Gonna hold you to that, Danny,” Flack said. “Talk to you later.”
“All right. Close up that case for me, Flack.”
“Will do.” He snapped his phone shut and flexed the fingers of his prosthetic hand. “Turns out I just got back some interesting news from my partner, Tyler. You know what was in that locker – you know, the one with the combo that’s not a combo?”
Tyler shook his head.
“A bunch of books on the Millennium Problems and a couple notebooks full of equations. All of ‘em match up to your handwriting. Ain’t it funny how that happens?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tyler said.
“Seems they’re all in pencil too, and one of them’s only half-full. Was that the one you were workin’ on the night you pushed your mom out the window? What, did she have a problem with you being a math genius or somethin’?”
“Mom thought I was wasting my time on the Millennium Problems,” Tyler said, staring at his hands.
“Tyler, be quiet,” Ms. Kasanov said.
“Why’d you kill your dad too, Tyler?” Flack continued. “He was in the kitchen making a turkey sandwich, that’s all. Did he think you were wasting your time too? I know you replaced the knife in the kitchen. Only problem is, you had blood on your hands, and it got on your notebooks when you were busy moving them to the school. Were you afraid someone was going to figure out what you did by reading your equations?”
“My mom told me not to work on the Millennium Problems!” Tyler yelped. “She said that they were unsolvable, and that I should spend my time on more important stuff. I didn’t want her to see the books, that’s all, so I moved them, and – and –”
“Tyler, be quiet,” his aunt said again, wide-eyed. “Detective, I think –”
“No, I – I – went to the bathroom, yeah, and she came in and saw the books and she flipped, so I – I just –”
“You pushed your mom out a window because she didn’t like the math problems you were workin’ on?” Flack said. “Jesus Christ. I just told my parents to go to hell and went to a college three states away.”
“She didn’t understand,” Tyler said, almost crying now. Ms. Kasanov was just shaking her head, looking horrified. “I was almost there, I’d almost solved them, if she’d just given me the time and the space, I could have – I didn’t mean to kill her, I just wanted her to get away, and the window was right there – I didn’t mean for her to fall. And my dad heard the thump and he’d know, so I just – I went downstairs and I grabbed the knife and I stabbed him and I got my books and I went to school and I hid them so no one would know – I thought maybe – I didn’t know, I didn’t mean –”
“Stand up,” Flack told him, almost gently. Tyler obeyed, tears streaming down his face. Flack went around behind him, pulling out his cuffs. “You know what, Tyler? You weren’t even close on P=NP.”
Tyler’s eyes flicked toward Flack’s equations. “But you’re a cop,” he whispered.
“I’m in a building full of the smartest cops in the NYPD,” Flack said. “How’d ya think I’d be any different just ‘cause I’m a homicide dick?” He pulled Tyler’s arms behind him and cuffed him. “Double homicide, kid. That’s a long, long time away.”
“That was a coerced confession,” Ms. Kasanov said, trailing along behind them.
“Sure it was,” Flack said. Danny pulled open the door for him. Flack pushed Tyler toward him. “All yours, Danny. Meetcha at Sullivan’s?”
“I’ll call you when the paperwork’s done,” Danny told him, grinning a little around the edges. To Tyler, “Come on, kid.”
“That was extremely unethical,” Ms. Kasanov told Flack, staring at the back of her nephew’s head.
“Ethical’s a concept,” Flack said. He stepped back inside the interrogation room to pick up the discarded pieces of legal paper and looked at the pad in his handwriting for a moment. Then he ripped the pages off and crumpled them up, stuffing them into his pocket. “Justice is what counts, ma’am.”
“That’s not justice.”
“He killed your sister,” Flack told her. “If that’s not justice, I don’t know what is. Excuse me.” He put Tyler’s equations into her limp hand and left her behind him, staring blindly down the hall like a lost woman.
He needed a drink to get rid of the equations dancing through his head.
This story was partially inspired bysynecdochic's fantastic SGA fic, Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose, but only for the Millennium Problem contribution. The Millennium Problems are the seven hardest unsolved math problems in the world, and there's a $1 million prize for anyone that solves one of them. (As a note: Just out, a group of Chinese scientists may have solved the Poincare Conjecture.)
The equation Tyler is trying to solve, or at least the one he's working on in this story, is P vs. NP, which I chose out of the seven Millennium Problems because it seems like it could have a possible application towards crime. A second reason was because of its connection to the game Minesweeper -- something both a high school student and a bored cop would probably sit around playing a lot of.
Now, I'm not going to say Flack -- this Flack -- could have solved one of the Millennium Problems in ten or twenty minutes (the Poincare Conjecture proof is 70 pages and took, uh, a while), but I figure he could have gotten a good solid start on it. Or maybe he just scribbled out the equations (my theory). I'm also not going to say that he could have solved one of the Millennium Problems. However, this is, in fact, fiction.
Oh, and the University of Virginia? No reason. But there's a story there, I bet -- along with the reason Flack came back to New York to become a cop. Never questioned his future my ass. Everyone questions their future.
On the mention of the prosthetic hand: Flack loses one hand in Bloody Sunday and gets a very high tech prosthetic in There But for the Grace of God (the mirrorverse).
Author:
bedlamsbardFandom: CSI:NY
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Don Flack, Danny Messer
Word Count: 2509
Summary: "S’far as we can figure he pushed his mom out the window of his room and stabbed his father to death with a kitchen knife – but the knife in the kitchen’s clean as clean and there’s no physical evidence to show it was him pushed the mom outta the window."
Disclaimer: None of these are mine. Characters are the property of Anthony Zuiker, Jerry Bruckheimer Television, CBS, and Alliance Atlantis.
Author's Notes: This, um, started out in canon and ended in the Bardverse. Post-Bloody Sunday, post-There But for the Grace of God (mirrorverse). More notes at the end.
“You still here, Messer?”
Danny turned at Flack’s voice. “Yeah. Our perp’s in the box, but he ain’t talkin’. And we don’t got the evidence to prove he did it, either. Nightmare situation.” He scowled at the window of the interrogation room.
Flack matched him scowl for scowl. “We got another D.J. Pratt on our hands here, Danny?” he asked softly.
“Nah, the kid doesn’t have the guts. S’far as we can figure he pushed his mom out the window of his room and stabbed his father to death with a kitchen knife – but the knife in the kitchen’s clean as clean and there’s no physical evidence to show it was him pushed the mom outta the window.” Danny turned back toward the window. “I know he did it, though. I can feel it.”
“He smart enough to hide the evidence?”
“Kid’s a fucking genius,” Danny said. “On paper an’ everything. You oughta see his MENSA scores.”
“Motive?”
“Ha,” Danny said flatly. “I wish. That’d be the day.”
Flack glanced at the kid. Fourteen, fifteen, blond-haired, blue-eyed, looked innocent as the day he was born. “Lemme in there with him.”
“This ain’t even your case, Flack.”
“Yeah, but my case’s closed and I got nothing better to do. What’s it gonna hurt, huh? Might learn somethin’.”
Danny chewed on his lip. “Yeah, okay,” he said finally. “Mac’ll have my ass if nothing comes outta it, though.”
Flack winked at him with more gaiety than he really felt. “Promise I’ll get you a clue, at least.”
-
Tyler Brian was a small kid, relatively speaking; Flack had been all arms and legs when he’d been that age, gawky as a colt. He had the small, reddish eyes of someone who didn’t get enough sleep, spent all their time bent over sheets and sheets of notebook paper with a pen in his hand. Pen. Danny’s notes had said that he never used pencil, and there’d been graphite trace on the back of Mrs. Brian’s sweater. Tyler Brian didn’t look like the kind of kid that would ever commit double homicide.
Flack had seen a lot of those.
He took a seat across the table from Tyler, watching the kid’s brilliant mind try and scrabble out the reason why a strange detective would be interviewing him. He finally said, “What, are you some kind of social worker or something?”
“Just another homicide detective,” Flack said. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
“You’re here to try and prove my nephew killed my sister and her husband,” the woman sitting beside Tyler said, stirring. She held out a hand toward him. “Elsa Kasanov. I’m Tyler’s aunt and legal guardian – and his lawyer.”
Flack took her hand. “Detective Flack. Nice to meet you. Aren’t you worried you got a conflict of interests?”
“Not at all. Tyler’s welfare is my interest.”
He nodded. “Good to know. I’m just gonna ask your nephew a few questions.”
Ms. Kasanov nodded warily. “Remember Tyler’s a minor, Detective.”
“I can take care of myself, Aunt Ellie,” Tyler said, scowling.
Flack flipped through the folder Danny had given him. “So you’re a math genius, Tyler.”
The kid nodded. “Yeah.”
“Knew a kid like that once.” Flack put down a yellow legal pad and a handful of pens and pencils in front of Tyler. “Write down whatever’s on your mind,” he said. “Get it out of your head and then maybe we can talk about what happened Saturday evening.”
“I told the other detective,” Tyler began. “I was in the bathroom –”
“Get the equations out of your head first,” Flack interrupted. “Then we’ll talk.”
“I don’t like your tone, Detective,” Ms. Kasanov said. “And whatever you’re trying to do –”
“I’ve dealt with people like this before,” Flack said. “Trust me, it will be easier for all three of us if he gets the genius stuff off his mind for a little while.”
Tyler’s aunt fell silent, glaring at Flack. A few minutes later, she told her nephew, “Don’t write anything that might incriminate you.”
Tyler mumbled a reply. Flack played idly with his cuffs while he waited, now and then catching sight of the lines of numbers straggling their way across the paper. His brain itched at the sight, the part he’d choked into catatonia waking up and revving the engines; his fingers ached for an ink pen and a composition book. Just the barest glance of those numbers was enough to spark off four other equations in his mind.
Tyler finally put his pencil down. “All right,” he said. “Now what?”
Flack picked up the legal pad and flipped pages casually. “This is one of the Millennium Problems.”
“Yeah?” said Tyler, bristling with teenage bravado. “So you paid attention in college calc, big deal. I bet you failed the class.”
“Tyler,” Ms. Kasanov said warningly. “Be mature.”
“For your information I aced calc my freshman year of high school,” Flack said. “Which, trust me, was long before the Millennium Problems were named.” He tapped the upper corner of the first page. “What’s this?”
“Part of the equation.”
“Don’t lie to me. It’s separated from the rest of the calculations, the numbers never show up in the proof, and it’s written in pen. All your calculations are in pencil.”
Tyler looked at Ms. Kasanov. “Aunt Ellie?” he said.
“Obviously he was writing a note to himself,” the lawyer said.
“In code,” Flack said flatly. “And he had to pick up a different writing utensil to do so. This is three numbers, Tyler. It’s a locker code, isn’t it?”
“No,” Tyler said, shaking his head.
“It was on your mind. It’s not your locker, you wouldn’t have to write your own combo down. Whose locker is it? And what’ve you got in there?”
“Detective Flack, you’re making unwarranted accusations,” Ms. Kasanov said sharply. “Tyler, don’t say anything else.”
“He doesn’t have to.” Flack pulled out his cell phone and speed-dialed. “Hey, Danny, get someone down to the kid’s school and have ‘em check out a locker with the combo 43-12-17.”
“You got somethin’ outta him?” Danny said, faintly disbelieving in his ear.
“Yeah. Be a prince and send a CSI down there, won’tcha? Buy you a drink.”
“You got it. I’ll call you when we open the thing.”
“Thanks, Messer.” He snapped his phone shut. “You wanna tell me what’s in that locker, Tyler?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tyler said, glancing at his aunt again.
Flack smiled. Easy smile, charming and disarming. “Sure, kid, just keep tellin’ me that. I did mention I just sent a CSI down to your high school to check it out, didn’t I?”
Tyler shook his head. “You don’t have anything, Detective.”
“Sure I do.” Flack ripped the sheets of paper Tyler had covered with equations off the legal pad, picked up the pen, and started scribbling. P=NP. He could do this. Didn’t even have to think about it, because that part of his brain he’d been suppressing since college looked at the challenge and fucking orgasmed, presenting him equations in sloppily wrapped packages with bright red bows that flowed out his fingers and onto the paper.
He could feel Tyler and his aunt watching him with astonishment, eyes drilling holes into his forehead. Flack ignored them, scribbling faster and faster, ink smearing with the urgency. When he finally finished, it was with the side of his hand dyed black with ink and the five pages of equations almost unreadable.
“Detective Messer tells me you do all your work in pen, Tyler,” he said casually. “Why’s that?”
Tyler was looking at the legal pad in shock. “I – because if I screw up, then I deserve to get the points taken off,” he said. “I don’t screw up.”
Flack tapped the pages he’d torn off earlier. “But you did these in pencil,” he said.
Tyler glanced at them. “Well, yeah, but because you only gave – me –” He’d spotted the pens and pencils spread across the table and went abruptly silent.
Ms. Kasanov leaned forward. “Do you have a point, Detective?”
“Sure I do,” Flack said cheerfully. “Mary Brian had graphite trace on her. Only problem is, Tyler, you don’t use pencil, just pen. ‘Cept, apparently, when you’re working on P versus NP. Why? Are you too afraid you won’t be able to work out a Millennium Problem on the first try?”
“They’re the hardest unsolved math problems in the world,” Tyler said. “There are professional mathematicians that haven’t solved the Millennium Problems yet. I just don’t want to waste paper.”
Flack leaned back. “So what were you working on Saturday night? P=NP?”
Something in Tyler’s eyes flickered. “I was in the bathroom,” he said. “I already told the other detective that.”
“Right, right,” Flack said. “But just for the sake of things, what were you working on before you went in? I mean, before someone pushed your mom out the window of your room.”
“I wasn’t working on anything,” Tyler said.
“Detective, do you have a point?” Ms. Kasanov demanded.
“Absolutely,” Flack told her. “’Course, I’m not gonna tell you what the point is right out, am I? That’d be stupid of me.”
Tyler’s eyes were on the pad Flack’s hand was half-covering. “Yeah,” he said, “and you’re not stupid. Where’d you go? Rensellaer Polytech?”
“University of Virginia.” Behind the mirror, Danny’s eyes had to be crossing. The only one that knew where Flack had gone for college was Mac, and that was only because he had Flack’s file.
As if summoned by the thought, Flack’s phone rang. He raised it to his ear. “Whatta ya got for me, Danny?”
“Lindsay just called me from the high school,” Danny said. “The locker’s an empty one, but all the combos are in the system, anyone coulda hacked in and got the combo and the locker number.”
“What was in the locker?”
“Buncha books, higher level math, that sorta thing. A couple on the Millennium Problems. Three notebooks, two of ‘em full, one of ‘em halfway there. All equations and shit. Handwriting matches Tyler Brian’s, and it’s in pencil. One of the notebooks’s got blood on the cover.”
“Dynamite,” Flack said, grinning. “Thanks, Messer. Tell her to bring ‘em over, will ya?”
“Been there, done that. This gettin’ you somewhere?”
“Hell yeah. I’ll get ya a confession all nice and signed. You’re payin’ tonight, though.”
“I’m down with that. Hell, you close this case for me, I’ll even take my clothes off all by myself.”
“Gonna hold you to that, Danny,” Flack said. “Talk to you later.”
“All right. Close up that case for me, Flack.”
“Will do.” He snapped his phone shut and flexed the fingers of his prosthetic hand. “Turns out I just got back some interesting news from my partner, Tyler. You know what was in that locker – you know, the one with the combo that’s not a combo?”
Tyler shook his head.
“A bunch of books on the Millennium Problems and a couple notebooks full of equations. All of ‘em match up to your handwriting. Ain’t it funny how that happens?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tyler said.
“Seems they’re all in pencil too, and one of them’s only half-full. Was that the one you were workin’ on the night you pushed your mom out the window? What, did she have a problem with you being a math genius or somethin’?”
“Mom thought I was wasting my time on the Millennium Problems,” Tyler said, staring at his hands.
“Tyler, be quiet,” Ms. Kasanov said.
“Why’d you kill your dad too, Tyler?” Flack continued. “He was in the kitchen making a turkey sandwich, that’s all. Did he think you were wasting your time too? I know you replaced the knife in the kitchen. Only problem is, you had blood on your hands, and it got on your notebooks when you were busy moving them to the school. Were you afraid someone was going to figure out what you did by reading your equations?”
“My mom told me not to work on the Millennium Problems!” Tyler yelped. “She said that they were unsolvable, and that I should spend my time on more important stuff. I didn’t want her to see the books, that’s all, so I moved them, and – and –”
“Tyler, be quiet,” his aunt said again, wide-eyed. “Detective, I think –”
“No, I – I – went to the bathroom, yeah, and she came in and saw the books and she flipped, so I – I just –”
“You pushed your mom out a window because she didn’t like the math problems you were workin’ on?” Flack said. “Jesus Christ. I just told my parents to go to hell and went to a college three states away.”
“She didn’t understand,” Tyler said, almost crying now. Ms. Kasanov was just shaking her head, looking horrified. “I was almost there, I’d almost solved them, if she’d just given me the time and the space, I could have – I didn’t mean to kill her, I just wanted her to get away, and the window was right there – I didn’t mean for her to fall. And my dad heard the thump and he’d know, so I just – I went downstairs and I grabbed the knife and I stabbed him and I got my books and I went to school and I hid them so no one would know – I thought maybe – I didn’t know, I didn’t mean –”
“Stand up,” Flack told him, almost gently. Tyler obeyed, tears streaming down his face. Flack went around behind him, pulling out his cuffs. “You know what, Tyler? You weren’t even close on P=NP.”
Tyler’s eyes flicked toward Flack’s equations. “But you’re a cop,” he whispered.
“I’m in a building full of the smartest cops in the NYPD,” Flack said. “How’d ya think I’d be any different just ‘cause I’m a homicide dick?” He pulled Tyler’s arms behind him and cuffed him. “Double homicide, kid. That’s a long, long time away.”
“That was a coerced confession,” Ms. Kasanov said, trailing along behind them.
“Sure it was,” Flack said. Danny pulled open the door for him. Flack pushed Tyler toward him. “All yours, Danny. Meetcha at Sullivan’s?”
“I’ll call you when the paperwork’s done,” Danny told him, grinning a little around the edges. To Tyler, “Come on, kid.”
“That was extremely unethical,” Ms. Kasanov told Flack, staring at the back of her nephew’s head.
“Ethical’s a concept,” Flack said. He stepped back inside the interrogation room to pick up the discarded pieces of legal paper and looked at the pad in his handwriting for a moment. Then he ripped the pages off and crumpled them up, stuffing them into his pocket. “Justice is what counts, ma’am.”
“That’s not justice.”
“He killed your sister,” Flack told her. “If that’s not justice, I don’t know what is. Excuse me.” He put Tyler’s equations into her limp hand and left her behind him, staring blindly down the hall like a lost woman.
He needed a drink to get rid of the equations dancing through his head.
This story was partially inspired by
synecdochic's fantastic SGA fic, Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose, but only for the Millennium Problem contribution. The Millennium Problems are the seven hardest unsolved math problems in the world, and there's a $1 million prize for anyone that solves one of them. (As a note: Just out, a group of Chinese scientists may have solved the Poincare Conjecture.)The equation Tyler is trying to solve, or at least the one he's working on in this story, is P vs. NP, which I chose out of the seven Millennium Problems because it seems like it could have a possible application towards crime. A second reason was because of its connection to the game Minesweeper -- something both a high school student and a bored cop would probably sit around playing a lot of.
Now, I'm not going to say Flack -- this Flack -- could have solved one of the Millennium Problems in ten or twenty minutes (the Poincare Conjecture proof is 70 pages and took, uh, a while), but I figure he could have gotten a good solid start on it. Or maybe he just scribbled out the equations (my theory). I'm also not going to say that he could have solved one of the Millennium Problems. However, this is, in fact, fiction.
Oh, and the University of Virginia? No reason. But there's a story there, I bet -- along with the reason Flack came back to New York to become a cop. Never questioned his future my ass. Everyone questions their future.
On the mention of the prosthetic hand: Flack loses one hand in Bloody Sunday and gets a very high tech prosthetic in There But for the Grace of God (the mirrorverse).
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-07 06:09 am (UTC)Behind the mirror, Danny’s eyes had to be crossing. The only one that knew where Flack had gone for college was Mac, and that was only because he had Flack’s file.
I desperately want to hear that conversation in Sullivan's. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-06-08 12:04 am (UTC)And Flack's equations may occur again. (They are the P=NP proof -- and there's at least one genius on staff who knows what that means)
I desperately want to hear that conversation in Sullivan's.
I think this Danny's smart enough not to mention it; they all have their secrets and this is obviously one of Flack's. Of course, depending on the circumstances, it could very well come up sometime in the future. (Oh. There goes the plot for Blue Blood. Go away, I'm not writing you)