The Unquantifiable Variable
By Becky Sims
April, 2005
The Eppes family and the characters and situations from the TV show "NUMB3RS" are the property of the Scotts and the creation of Cheryl Heuton and Nick Falacci. No infringement is intended, and no profit is being made.
Chapter Four, Part Two
Benito was leaning up against the checkout desk, eyes closed. It didn't look like the medicine had helped him much. The other customer was still lying facedown on the floor. The pool of blood under his right shoulder had slowly grown until the edges reached some of the pads of paper. Their edges were turning dark.
The gunman's partner hadn't moved or made a sound in over an hour. Leeda clung obsessively to Solana, who had scooted as close to her father as she could. Charlie sat on the floor amidst all the pens and pads of paper and scattered power tools. He'd adjusted the numbers for his entropy arc three times, each one showing a lower probability of the hostages surviving. He stared at the front door and tapped his fingers together as he turned over all the angles of the situation.
The phone had rung several times, but the gunman wouldn't let anyone answer it. Charlie figured it was whatever negotiator had been brought in. That was supposed to be the next step, to establish communications between the law and the people with the guns. He looked at his equations again, then the other hostages. If the FBI couldn't talk with the gunman, this stalemate could go on forever, and he was pretty sure that Benito and the two men lying on the floor didn't have much more time.
"Somebody's going to die soon." He saw Solana cringe from the corner of his eye. He looked up at their captor. "You, me . . . your friend, that man on the floor . . . . You can't keep us here forever. You can't stay here forever." He jerked his head at the window, and the gunman followed his eyes and stared outside.
"You have to talk to them sometime. For your friend's sake it should be soon. For your sake, too." He waved at the unconscious hostage on the floor. "If he dies, they won't hesitate to shoot when you finally run. Right now, at this point in time, it was a mistake. Just a reaction. You didn't intend to come in here and kill people, but they're going to die anyway if you don't talk to the person on the phone."
The gunman tensed, and Charlie stopped. His years of teaching had shown him more about body language than the entire series of psychology classes he'd taken to get his credentials. It was part of what made him such an effective teacher, that he could read when his students had taken in all they were capable of, as well as when they had processed it and were ready for more.
The man moved back by his partner's side and knelt. He tried to feel for a pulse under the jaw, but since he had his gun in his right hand, he just fumbled around. He pointed the gun at Charlie, then waved it toward his partner. "You check," he said.
"I don't think I know any more about how to do it right than you do," he said, but he stood up anyway. His knee had stiffened abominably, and he looked around to see if there was anything he could use as a cane. He reached for a pole that had been holding small circular saw blades before it got knocked over, but was stopped by a hiss. He held his hands up in the air. "All right, but it's going to take longer that way."
He hitched his way awkwardly to the floor next to the young man and put his fingers where he thought the carotid artery should be. Nothing. He didn't want to think about what the gunman would do if his partner was dead. His hands were shaking, but he just pressed harder. Finally, he felt something. "There's a pulse," he reported, "but that's all I can say." He started to pull the mask off, then hesitated, waiting to see if the gunman would do anything. It was hard to tell expressions, but when he didn't threaten to shoot, Charlie kept going. When he had it off, he froze, stunned. "He's just a boy!"
"Just turned sixteen," said the other man.
Something about his voice grabbed Charlie's attention.
"My little brother."
"You dragged your sixteen-year-old brother into a bank robbery with you?" The appalled words were out before Charlie knew it. He bit down. He'd never change the probabilities in his favor if he antagonized the man.
"He wanted to come," was the defensive answer. "Wouldn't leave me alone about it. Wanted to help—" he heaved once for air "—his big brother."
Charlie nodded. "I know that one. Even when you know there's no way, you still want it with your whole being."
The gunman lifted his chin. "You got a brother?"
"Yeah. And I'm sure that right now he's worried sick about me and cussing me out at the same time."
He let loose a snort of laughter. "Yeah, you got a big brother, that's for sure."
Charlie rubbed at his forehead. It ached like the hangover he'd had the morning after he'd discovered Don's private stash in the garage. He'd been too young to be seriously punished – his mother had felt the hangover was punishment enough – but Don had been barred from every friend for two weeks, a terrible thing to do to a high school senior. He remembered how Don had waited until they were both of legal drinking age, then took him out every night for a week to teach him about all the different forms of alcohol and what effect they'd have. Charlie hadn't had more than the occasional beer ever since, but the memory of that wonderful week with his brother warmed his heart. His mouth twitched in a small grin. Maybe he'd take Don out to whatever his favorite bar was, after he got them out of this mess. "Your brother," he said. "I don't think he's going to make it if you don't get him to a doctor."
"I can't just turn him over to the police. They'll throw him in jail."
"I don't know about that. He's underage." He sat back against a wall of bags of peat and tried to relax. He didn't really want to ask, but he had to know because it would affect his calculations. "Have you shot anyone else?"
The gunman shook his head. "First time I fired this gun was those two shots in here."
Charlie sighed in relief, though he noted the phrase 'this gun.' "I don't know how the system works, but they'll probably get him well, then they might send him to a juvenile hall or something. Better that and alive than the alternative, huh?"
The gunman looked down at his brother, then out the window, and then turned his gaze on Charlie. "You tryin' to get out of here?"
Charlie laughed. "Sure I'd like to leave. I've already missed one class, I'm supposed to have another in," he checked his watch, "twenty minutes, and what I'd really like to do is get something cold on my knee and get stitched up, but none of that is going to happen, right?"
No answer.
He sighed. "No, I didn't think so." What next? Keep him talking and risk irritating him into some drastic action? If he could just convince the man to pick up the phone the next time it rang, the negotiator he knew the Bureau would have brought in might be able to make more progress. He wondered again if Don was out there, sure he must be by now, even if just as an observer. He doubted they'd let him run the show, not since they had to know by now that he was in here. The variables, they just kept shifting. His gaze was drawn to his notes.
"Look," he finally said. "We have three men here who are in bad shape and just getting worse. That makes your situation worse. You can't hold out here for whatever it is you want while they die, one by one. You don't need Benito and this other guy – they drag down the probability of your success by thirty two percent."
"Thirty two?" He swore. "How'd you figure that?"
"I'm a mathematician. I'm supposed to be able to do that kind of problem."
"Show me."
Charlie raised an eyebrow at him. "How much mathematics have you had?"
The man raised the gun.
"Ah. I see. That should be enough." He gave up on the idea of walking, and instead simply scooted back to his pile of notepads. He drew a long line from the middle left of the page so that it rose to near the top at the center, then dropped to a level below the starting point by the time it reached the right side of the page.
"This arch represents the tendency of all situations, whether in the physical world or in human behavior, to deteriorate into chaos. I could show you the equations for it, but trust me, it's about the right shape for this situation. This highest point up here at the top represents that moment of maximum deterioration." Then he drew a vertical line on the left edge that slashed from the top to the bottom of the page. "These lines," he drew more vertical lines to the right of the first at about one inch intervals, "represent the timeline. This point here," he tapped the meeting of the first vertical line with the arc, "is when you ran out of the bank. See how the line goes upward at such a steep slope to the second line? Am I right that things got out of control really fast, starting at that first point?"
No answer, but Charlie thought from his body language that he was still listening. He brought his attention back to the paper and pointed to a spot on the arc about two-thirds of the way to the top. "We're here, now, approaching the easing of the upward slope. Change is slowing down, but it's still happening. You can't get back into control, you can't stop the ascent to chaos, until you control the factors involved." He waved his pen at the two injured men. "And those are two factors you cannot control. No one in here has the knowledge or skill. If they die, the people out there are going to get really upset, and they won't care what happens to you." His finger slid along the line toward the top of the arc. "If you want to escape—" he paused for a moment, saw that he had the full attention of his audience, "—if you want to live, you have to get them out of here."
He sensed that he'd pushed as much as was wise, and so set the pad down on the floor, casually making sure it was visible.
The gunman backed away. He went to the registers and peered carefully and for just a moment out the front windows, then went back to kneel next to the other robber. Eyes flitting from Charlie to the body on the floor, he said softly, "Ricky?" When there was no answer, he slipped out of his jacket one sleeve at a time, switching his pistol as needed, and bundled the cloth under his brother's head. When he stood up, Charlie saw he was wearing a vest with webbed pockets on the front. It was much like the one Don wore into the field, except for one very big difference. The tops of what looked like hand grenades peeked out of two of the pockets.
He scrubbed at his face. His head ached with a sickening throb.
