Chief Roberts entered the room in mid-sentence as he gave orders to someone down the hallway. He glanced at the file he held while he shut the door, and then looked at Chris.
“Professor Walser,” He held his hand out, “I apologize for all this, and I hope you understand the situation we’re in.”
Chris held his left arm to his side as he took the Chief’s hand and gave a quick shake. The Chief picked the chair off the floor and sat down opposite Chris. He laid the file in front of him, unopened, and rubbed his hands together, looking down at the file.
“What we need right now,” he looked up at Chris, “is some basic information, so we can proceed with the investigation.”
“I’ll be of whatever help I can,” Chris answered.
“Well, for starters,” began the Chief, leaning back in his chair, “I want you to understand that we had no choice in taking you into custody. The evidence points to your guilt, and given the abilities Memorites have, you were an obvious flight risk,” the Chief raised his hand as if expecting an objection from Chris, “not that we assumed any guilt.”
“I understand, Chief Roberts,” Chris said calmly, “if I were in your position I would have done no differently.”
“Well,” that caught the Chief off guard, he’d watched Tucker’s attempt at questioning and assumed he would receive the same evasive responses. “I’m glad you agree.”
Now that Chris was being treated with respect, he found it easy to respond in kind.
The Chief looked at Chris for a second or two, trying to read him. As with every other Memorite he’d ever met, Chris was a complete, blank book. His body language displayed nothing but a calm, relaxed confidence. Chris was now holding his arm in a position that didn’t look nearly as odd, while still covering the area his TacCom hid.
“The problem I’m having,” said the Chief, “assuming you didn’t do it, is how you could be right there, and not know anything was going on.”
“That’s not all that unusual,” Chris responded, “What we Memorites do, in a nutshell, is receive and process data. We can receive and store data without actually thinking about it. Since the sights and sounds and smell of the things happening around us are just more data...,” he paused, “some Memorites, and I must confess I belong to this number, have a tendency—when we are focusing on other data—to store the information about our surrounding without noticing it.”
“In other words, your mind was elsewhere.”
“That puts it a bit too simply. The sensory inputs I received during that period were stored, and I reviewed them this morning on my way to the station. I did hear the gunshot, or rather the sound of the silencer, close to where I was sitting, but I stored the data without processing it.”
“That sounds like a dangerous habit.”
“Normally it isn’t, but obviously, in this case, it could have been. It isn’t a habit that’s encouraged and is one of many that I need to work at removing,” Chris said modestly.
“So,” the Chief rose from his chair and stood back against the mirror, “you have everything you saw and heard last night...stored?”
“Yes, although for most of that time, I had my eyes closed to better focus on the processing I was doing.”
“What did you see or hear?”
“At 1:32:05 am Professor Engstrom and a student whose voice I recognized as belonging to Janie Daniels, sophomore, 3.7 gpa, from...”
“We have all the personal data about her we need for the moment,” the Chief interrupted, “what happened then?”
“They exited the faculty office building and walked along the walkway toward the parking lot.”
“Now hang on a second,” the Chief interrupted, “first of all, didn’t you say you had your eyes closed most of the time? And besides, you couldn’t see that exit or the walkway from where you were sitting.”
“The sound of the door opening and closing and the sound of the girl’s hard-soled shoes, cross-linked to the layout of the campus, allowed me to pinpoint their positions.”
The chief raised his eyebrow in a sign of skepticism, “Okay, go ahead.”
“They got as far as the breezeway when they were met by two other students, Kristy Reynolds, junior, GPA...sorry...and Gary McKee, who were, I believe, returning from a party of some sort. Miss Daniels chose to return to the dorms with Miss Reynolds and Mr. McKee.”
“What then?” asked the Chief, expectantly.
“A few seconds later the gun fired.”
“The body was found several yards past the breezeway, you didn’t hear Engstrom walk any further?”
“Well,” Chris took a deep breath, “Memorites don’t make sounds when they walk if they can help it.”
“Why?” this puzzled the Chief.
“It’s a fairly easy thing to learn, and it’s not seen as any sort of burden to do so. It was something the Founder put a priority on.”
“Hm.” Unusual Memorite trivia thought the Chief.
“Which also leads to another paradoxical conclusion,” noted Chris.
“What?”
“I have no data regarding any sound the shooter made when leaving. The shot was fired about four yards directly behind me.”
“What’s the paradox in that?”
“The grounds were covered in dry leaves and small twigs; it would be virtually impossible for anyone to get across it unless they were able to hold a visual image of the ground and could reference that visual image quickly. Something easily done by a Memorite.”
“Interesting,” the Chief sat back down, “our people concluded that the murder could only have been done by a Memorite, but for different reasons. But why is that a paradox?”
“Chief Roberts, as individuals the Memorites are fairly powerful. The abilities we possess are significant compared to the average person. As a group, that power increases geometrically. The Founder knew that this was a danger and had no intention of beginning such an organization without guarantees that it wouldn’t become a threat. The training a Memorite goes through is as much about the limits to our actions as it is about the actual techniques and abilities we learn. The foundational limits are outlined in a document referred to as the Memorite Code. We hold it sacred. Its tenets and teachings are drilled into us until it becomes second nature, almost as ingrained as the human instincts for breathing or blinking. To commit this murder is so contrary to the Memorite Code that it is more likely that you would reach up and pull your eye out of the socket than for a Memorite to even contemplate doing such a deed.”
“And there are no Memorites that disagree with the code?”
“No,” Chris answered, “the slightest sign that any Memorite has slackened in his respect for the Code, they are returned to the Academy and retrained.” Chris took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “There is the paradox, only a Memorite could have done this, but no Memorite would have.”
Looking at Chris intently, the Chief reached for the case file. He withdrew a diagram and laid it on the table in front of him.
“This is a diagram of the crime scene my people drew up.” The Chief pointed to what was a carefully measured layout of the wooded area, “Here, here, and here are openings through the branches that would allow someone here,” the Chief pointed to a spot near the wooded area about twelve feet behind the bench, “to see the walkway or rather someone on the walkway.”
Chris looked at the diagram while the Chief spoke.
“We found a shoe and a knee impression in the damp ground at that spot and gunfire residue on the branches in front of it.” The Chief stood up. “The largest of these openings is barely eight inches across. To use one, the shooter would have had to know when the victim would be passing in front of it. He would have had to time the speed of the victim by using the other openings and fired blindly at the third at exactly the right time.”
“He wouldn’t have needed to use two of the openings to time the pace,” Chris noted, “in fact, the shooter would have needed to be familiar with the pace Todd usually walked at, otherwise the timing would have been a risky gamble. The third opening was a backup, obviously needed in this case because of the interruption of the two students in the breezeway.”
Chief Roberts grabbed the diagram and turned it around. He looked at it intently, and then said, “You’re right. That makes perfect sense. But how would...,”
“Todd took the same route as a matter of habit, so the spot could have been chosen beforehand. The shooter only needed to know when he would be walking there at a time that there would be few witnesses. Given the cover, even a few witnesses wouldn’t have mattered.”
Normally, Chief Roberts would have been infuriated that someone finished his sentence. He was too intrigued. He studied the diagram more.
“You realize,” he said as he looked up at Chris, “that the information you’ve given me incriminates you. You were there. You would have known his patterns. You would have been able to watch for the right opportunity.”
“Except that had I gone to that much effort, why would I then sit on the bench so that witnesses could see me?”
Chief Roberts had to think, “You would have been a suspect anyway, given the rumors about the animosity between you and the victim.”
“Purely rumors, I can assure you.”
“Anyway, throwing in one act of clumsiness to use as an excuse to claim your innocence might be a workable plan.”
“Perhaps, but even given half an hour of preparation, I could have devised any of dozens of plans to kill Todd, and no medical examiner in this nation could have been able to tell it wasn’t natural causes.”
“I thought you said Memorites don’t kill.”
“I said we don’t murder. I never said we didn’t know how. Memorites have been helping law enforcement for almost a decade now. We are very familiar with methods of taking a life. It’s necessary when solving crimes to be familiar with those types of crimes.”
“So, we have another reason why this wasn’t a Memorite, to contrast against the reasons why it was?”
“No, the conclusion is that the shooter didn’t have time to devise an alternate method. That the shooter, assuming it is a Memorite, was familiar with Todd’s habits only meant that he had the opportunity to observe, not necessarily for any evil purpose. Memorites remember everything. The same would explain the knowledge of the positioning of the gaps in the trees. All it would have taken is passing along on that side of the woods. The data would then have allowed the shooter to orchestrate the plan in a matter of seconds.”
The Chief sat back and placed his hands on the edge of the table. He stared blankly at the table and began drumming his fingers. His eyes seemed to focus on something imaginary hanging in the air just above the table. He took a deep breath and let it out loudly through his nose.
“There’s still something I keep coming back to,” he said, “There are no Memorites that have just decided to chuck the whole game and gone off and hid?”
“Every single Memorite that ever violated the code was returned to the Academy and retrained,” Chris replied, then paused, “except two.”
The Chief sat back, “Well, where are they?”
“They’re both dead,” at least, Chris thought, that’s the official position of the Memorite Society.