The Tree of Knowledge, Daniel Miller [unputdownable books txt] 📗

at her black jacket. Eva secured her hold around the man’s neck by placing her left arm behind his head, squeezing the blood flow to his skull. Five, four, three, two, one. His body went limp. She deposited the cop’s body behind the door and resumed her seat at the desk. The backup generator would be on soon. She needed to hurry.

She searched the database for Wally McCutcheon and found the case number. She opened the attachments in the case. Just a few pictures of the dead body and an autopsy report. Nothing incriminating. Then she saw it: a picture of the tree in Wally’s hand, evidence number 0127698.

Eva took Peggy’s key to the evidence cage out of her pocket and opened the door. She scanned the boxes, looking for the details in the McCutcheon case. She opened the file and perused the evidence. There was almost nothing. A logic tree, some fiber samples, and notes on interviews with Puddles and Belial. She grabbed the logic tree and replaced it with the more innocuous version of the tree that Puddles had touched outside. With a tweezer, she then grabbed the few fibers and hairs that she had swiped off Albert’s coat and placed them in a bag.

Objective two was complete. It was time for the final act.

***

Albert paced and whistled in the waiting room of the Princeton police station in darkness, completely oblivious to the goings-on inside. He had tried to exit through the front door, but the electronic locks were disabled, trapping him inside. He wondered how long it would be before the power came on. How long it would be before Weatherspoon came out to meet him.

He peered through the glass divider separating the front waiting room from the main office. Stained-oak receptionist desks dotted the front of the open office layout, and some type of command center anchored the rear. Through the darkness, Albert could barely make out two cops standing, heads down, futzing with their radios. They seemed to be having trouble with the signal.

And then he noticed something else. Tiptoeing behind them. A figure in the shadows. Lean and light yet somehow familiar. He stepped closer to the glass to see what he could make out.

The two cops continued to chat and play with their radios as the figure crept behind them. Albert pressed his hands against the glass. It was a woman. It was Eva! She was carrying something, a nightstick. Albert shouted and pounded on the glass, but his voice was muffled by the barrier.

The cops looked up to see what the ruckus was.

Albert shouted, “Look behind you!”

The cops strained to hear.

Albert banged his pointer finger against the glass, gesturing to the woman in black. But it was too late.

With two swift swings of the baton, Eva cracked the officers’ skulls, dropping them to the ground. Her eyes met Puddles’s. They shined in the darkness. She smiled. She charged toward him.

At that moment, Weatherspoon stepped out from the side hallway, through the steel door, and entered the waiting room.

“What’s all this about, Puddles?”

Albert rejoiced. “Detective, thank God you’re here. She’s attacking the station.”

Eva continued to advance toward the waiting room.

Weatherspoon stepped toward Albert, his back to the office door.

“Slow down, Puddles. What are you talking about? Who’s attack—”

But before the detective could finish, Eva burst through the steel door, leapt into the air, and plunged a needle dripping with Rohypnol into his neck. The giant officer cried out for a moment and then slammed to the ground. His body writhed, fighting against the darkness before finally succumbing.

Eva reached out two gloved hands toward Albert. In one hand was a nightstick; in the other, the needle.

“Hold these.”

Without thinking, Albert complied.

“Wait, what happened? What have you done?” shouted Puddles.

The woman in black shook her head. “I didn’t do anything, Dilbert. In fact, I was never here. You, on the other hand . . . you just attacked a police station. And in a few seconds, the power to this building is going to come back on, and all these cameras are going to be recording you sitting in the front lobby with a club in one hand and a needle in the other.”

Albert backpedaled, suddenly aware of his precarious position. “Why are you doing this?”

Eva walked to the door. As the power flickered back on, she opened it, being sure to avoid the camera. She tapped on the door with her fingers and looked outside, avoiding his gaze. “You made me do this, Albert. I never wanted this,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper.

“What do you want?” Albert begged.

Eva paused and looked out at the sky, now dark and rippling with storm clouds.

“I want you to run.”

Chapter 16

The table of Professor Turner’s living room was strewn with papers, each one containing a game tree sprawling out from a different goal.

Turner paced the floor of his living room as he opined on the true power of the Tree of Knowledge.

“Ms. Koh, what you have before you is a different way of seeing the world. It may be overwhelming at first, but you must understand that the Tree is nothing more than a modern extension of the work of the ancients.”

“How so?”

“Have you had the opportunity of taking Professor Puddles’s Classical Logic class yet?”

“I haven’t,” said Ying with a blush.

“Ah, what a shame. The classics are my favorites, and Albert shares my passion. As you may or may not know, the founder of classical logic was our good friend Aristotle, my personal hero.”

“Really? Isn’t he a little outdated at this point?”

Turner gasped and touched his chest as though Ying had attacked a family member. “The man was the quintessential Renaissance man. He was the first to determine that the sun was larger than the Earth. He extrapolated the tremendous evolution of the Earth from the minor geological changes of his time. He was the first person to lay out formal rules of logic. And, as a good friend of