Don swung himself around the door frame, ending up against the inside wall of the garage halfway behind a blackboard. The motion made his head spin; for a few seconds he saw the interior of the garage in triplicate.
Charlie was sitting at a paper-strewn desk, looking like a chastised student in his CalSci t-shirt while Padgett paced in front, wearing Don's jacket and ranting like a mad lecturer. He had a kitchen knife in his right and Don's gun in his left. Don could tell from the way he waved it around that Padgett didn't know the first thing about firearms. If startled, he might well shoot Charlie by accident. Or, Don thought, Padgett could just as easily shoot Charlie intentionally. In the narrow confines of the garage, you wouldn't have to be a crack shot to hit what you were aiming at.
"The parameters of the threespace…..proves beyond doubt…..never listen, never even listen---can't understand. Only I can…"
Don's head was pulsing with pain and his hearing cut in and out. Charlie kept glancing behind him as though an exit would appear in the back wall. No, no, Don coached silently, do not ever take your eyes off the man with the gun. He couldn't tell whether Charlie had seen him. Don tried to catch his brother's eye. Charlie was kind of slumped over; he looked lopsided, somehow. Don blinked him into focus. Charlie was bleeding: half of his shirt was saturated with blood
Anthony Padgett was getting more and more agitated, pacing faster, talking louder. He wasn't a big guy; the tall but skinny schoolboy from the porch. Normally taking him down would be no problem. But normally, Don could see straight and hear right. Normally he had equal or superior firepower and back up. Normally he wasn't dealing with someone who veered from shy to violent in less than the time it took to hammer a nail into place.
Don wasn't sure he could get out of the garage without being noticed. Even if he did, could he get back to the house and summon help before Padgett had a complete meltdown?
"Go away! Leave me alone!" Padgett shouted, although Charlie hadn't said anything.
"It's still wrong," Charlie said, as calmly as if Padgett had asked him a question during office hours. "But I think it can be corrected quite simply."
Wrong, Don thought. With violently unpredictable suspects, you need to be either forceful or obsequious. They are God and you are dirt, or vice versa. You don't talk to them like you're on the same level. And you certainly don't disagree with them.
Padgett stopped pacing and stared at Charlie. "Doesn't need to be fixed," he seethed. "It's perfect."
Charlie looked at him. "Halfway through the third equation, there's a series with F sub 1 in the denominator. If F sub 1 is zero, your solution is invalid. Division by zero is an undefined operation."
Don held his breath, certain that it could be heard in the sudden silence. Miraculously, something inside Padgett seemed to respond to Charlie's professorial tone.
"If you adjust your answer set so that it includes solutions such that the F sub1is not zero, you should be fine." Charlie picked up a pencil, careful not to make any sudden movement, not to break eye contact. He kept his wounded right hand in his lap. "Here." He held the pencil out to Anthony. Anthony, he reminded himself, trying to connect with Carol's oddball student, the strange but harmless student who needed help with a flawed thesis. "Anthony, take the pencil and correct your work."
Don knew what his brother was doing. Knew it as clearly as if Charlie's mathematical logic had somehow cut through the tension and the pain in his head. Take the pencil, Anthony, he urged mentally.
Padgett tightened his grip on the knife, but he put the gun down, his eyes flicking between Charlie and the notebooks spread out on the desktop. He recognized his notebooks. The numbers were clear and quiet and certain, like always. Professor Eppes faded out of his vision as he focused on his equation, his elegant and perfect Equation Number Three.