As if by prearrangement, Halton and Green were just going down the hall when Lou Paquette emerged from Jonathan Blair’s office. He sighed sourly as he peeled his latex gloves off his hands.
“More fingerprints, Green. Hundreds of them. What do you want me to do with them?”
“Fingerprints!” Halton began to splutter. “What the hell is going on!” He tried to push past to see into Blair’s office, but Green blocked his way.
“Someone broke into Blair’s office, Professor. I want to know everyone who’s been in here.” Cutting off Halton’s attempts to protest, he turned to Paquette. “Get the prints of all the people on this floor and run a check.”
“All the people—” Paquette gaped. “There must be fifty!”
“Twenty,” Green replied.
Halton burst in impatiently. “This is absurd! Most of my students had nothing whatsoever to do with Jonathan. Their paths hardly crossed. All the Honours students and the first year post-grads—they’re down on the other wing. They never even saw him. I won’t have you upsetting them.”
Paquette ran a weary hand over the beginnings of stubble on his chin. Like Sullivan, he was a policeman who put in all the overtime a case required, but, unlike Sullivan, his wife had left him because of it years ago. He had little reason to go home any more and often fell asleep over his microscope. Green took pity on him.
“Okay, just do the people on this wing. They work the most closely with him. Oh, and there’s one other person I’d like you to check, but I’ll have to get you her prints off something in her house. She’s flown the coop.”
Paquette’s bleak face brightened. “Are we getting hot?”
“Definitely,” Green replied. “You find anything else interesting in here? Any signs of forced entry? Tampering?”
Paquette nodded. “Not the office door, but the top drawer to this filing cabinet. Someone picked the lock—not very expertly.” He led the way back inside, stepping over the files which still lay scattered on the floor where Difalco had dropped them. Green and Halton followed him into the room. Halton stopped short, staring at the mess.
“What the hell happened here?”
“Someone was curious about his files, apparently.”
“Who?”
Green shrugged. “I’m not at liberty to say, sir.”
“These people work for me!” Halton cried, his voice rising. “I must know—”
“Rumours, Dr. Halton,” Green snapped. “Remember what you said about rumours? This investigation must be kept strictly confidential, for everyone’s protection, including yours. Now would you please tell me what those files contain?”
Halton glowered at him briefly, then barrelled his way across the office. He scanned the files and his eyebrows shot up.
“They’re computer print-outs of statistical analyses. On the data Jonathan had collected to replicate Difalco’s research.”
Green knew enough about scientific research to grasp the significance of the material. In research, the subjects are tested first, then at the end the scores are subjected to statistical analysis to determine if there were differences, patterns or trends in the scores which supported or contradicted the original theory.
“Are you saying Blair was at the point of proving or disproving Difalco’s hypothesis?”
“Apparently. These analyses were dated Monday.” Halton had been scanning the pages avidly, but now he raised his eyes in dismay. “The day before he died.”
“What did he find?”
Halton wrestled his emotions back. “I don’t know yet. It will take me some time to study them.”
“How much time?”
“I don’t know. Ah, tomorrow morning. I’ll take them with me tonight.”
Green shook his head. “I can’t allow them to be out of police custody. You can look at them here tonight. I’ll post a police guard in the room with you.”
“But I have a meeting with Marianne Blair—”
“I’m sure she would not want the police investigation slowed down in any way.” Ignoring Halton’s reddening face, Green called dispatch and requested a police guard. Then he nodded to Paquette, who stood fidgeting at the door. “That filing cabinet. Was it open like that when you found it?”
Paquette nodded. “Open and empty. Looks like those files on the floor came from there.”
“Interesting. Thanks, Lou. I should be down at the station in ten minutes.”
“You going to sleep tonight?”
Green grinned. “Only if I run out of things to do.”
* * *
That seemed an unlikely prospect as Green returned to the station and made his way to the interview room where Difalco had been detained. The young man had pushed a chair into a corner and was sprawled with his legs outstretched, pretending to be asleep. He jerked upright when Green appeared, accompanied by a constable who settled unobtrusively in the corner with his notebook. Difalco barely gave him a second look.
“Two hours, Detective,” he snarled at Green, glancing at his watch. “Two hours you left me sitting in this dump. I know my rights. You’ve got to book me and let me see my lawyer, or you’ve got to let me go.”
“Paperwork, Mr. Difalco,” Green mimicked, swinging a chair into place beside the table. It was a barren room, small, airless and painted institutional beige. “It takes us ages sometimes. And you’re quite right. I have to caution you— you don’t have to say anything, you have a right to speak to a lawyer, and a right to free legal advice. But if you really weren’t doing anything wrong, you can save both of us all the trouble and paperwork if you tell me what you were doing in Jonathan Blair’s office tonight.”
“I told you. Getting some data of his that fit with my own study.”
“He was working with cats. You’re working with humans.”
“It’s called comparative psychology, Officer,” Difalco sneered. “You’ve probably never heard of it, but much of our knowledge about human learning comes from animals. A brain is a brain—although some less so than others.” Difalco had sprawled back in his chair again, arms folded, head propped against the wall. His dark eyes simmered with disdain.
Green held his gaze and leaned forward intently. “Don’t be too glib. Myles Halton is going over those files right now, and he’ll be able to tell me exactly what relevance they have to your work.” Very briefly, Green detected a flare of alarm in the dark eyes before the smile widened. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Officer. You think just because I’m a rich Italian brat I’m automatically more guilty than that fumbling limpdick, Miller.”
“You’re the one who skipped out on my interview this morning. And you’re the one I found stealing files from Blair’s private office. Miller’s done bugger-all.”
“Still waters run deep, Mr. Detective,” Difalco replied darkly. “And you never know what’s hidden in their depths.”
His equanimity was maddening. He was far too complacent for someone who had spent two hours awaiting interrogation in a murder investigation. Difalco was fencing with him, switching images and styles faster than Green could keep up. One minute a street tough, the next a petulant child, still the next a serious scientist. He was probably used to running circles around everyone else, and he had made the mistake of assuming Green was just another dumb cop. Perhaps that vanity could be used.
Green abandoned the bullying approach and sat back with a sigh. “Then why don’t you enlighten me?”
Difalco sat forward with a smile and pulled his chair up to the table. “I’m not fooled by that righteous ‘research-is-my-life’ routine of his. He’s got as many desires as the rest of us, but he’s just no good at getting them fulfilled, so he pretends they’re not there. But don’t believe it for a moment! I’ve seen how he looks at Rosalind Simmons—she’s the cheap piece with the peroxide hair you met this morning—and he’d fling her down on the office floor and rape her in a second if he thought he could get away with it. But he can’t, so he’s sneaky and secretive. He makes out like he’s interested in her work, in her mind.” Difalco threw his head back with a laugh. “Oldest line in the book. God, some women are dumb!”
“When it comes to men, yeah. They believe what they want to believe, and who am I to disillusion them? Rosalind bought Miller’s act, she might even have let him between her legs, although I can’t imagine what he’d do there, but it’s Halton she really wants. And poor old Miller hasn’t a hope in hell against the big man.”
“What makes you think Rosalind wants Halton?”
“Because every chick in the place wants Halton! You got to see how she looks at him in our research seminars. Her tongue hangs out, she lives for his every word. Miller doesn’t exist any more.”
“Does Halton respond?”
Difalco’s handsome face grimaced in disgust. “Rosalind’s not his type. Too old and tough. He likes them young, tender and adoring.”
“Like Raquel Haddad?”
A shadow flitted across his face, marring the studied smile. “Where’d you hear about her?”
“She was your research assistant. I heard she kind of hung around the floor, and I wondered if Halton had noticed her.”
Difalco flicked a piece of lint off his black Polo shirt as he worked to repair the smile. “He noticed her, sure. We’re talking a ten here, Officer, and there’s no way she could parade around the place unnoticed even if she wanted to, which she didn’t. But you don’t mess with Raquel. Lebanese women are worse than Italians. You get their whole goddamn family on your back.”
“Is that what happened to you?”
“No, but that’s what happened to Jonathan Blair, I’ll bet you any money. And isn’t that why we’re here? I mean, you want to learn who killed him, right? Not why I was poking around in Blair’s office or what lurks beneath Miller’s choir boy smile.”
“All right, what do you think happened to him?”
Difalco seemed to sense the sarcasm in his voice, because he pouted theatrically. “Oh, but you’ve got to take me seriously, man. Don’t play me along like some dumb Eyetalian from the street.”
“I don’t think you’re dumb, believe me, Mr. Difalco. I’m just getting tired of the fancy footwork.”
Difalco sighed like a child deprived of his game. “Everyone else thinks Blair is another dickless wonder like Miller, but I know Raquel had the same effect on him as she had on every other red-blooded male in the place. He got her into his lab, then he fucked her, and before he knew it, he had the entire Canadian contingent of the Lebanese Christian Militia on his ass. They’re not subtle, those guys. The honour of their women is a sacred thing.”
“Do you have any evidence to support your theory?
“Oh sure. I’m sitting here with a signed confession which I forgot to give you because I’m enjoying this so much.”
Green grinned at him patiently. He had learned the art of silence from Sharon, who used it as a therapy tool to get people to open up. Green had found it equally effective with suspects. Most people couldn’t stand silence, and Difalco was no exception.
“No, I don’t have any proof,” he snapped peevishly. “Raquel never said to me ‘my uncle is going to kill Jonathan Blair’ or anything. But she talked about her uncle always interfering in her life, trying to fix her up with nice Lebanese men, screening her phone calls, threatening to send her back to Beirut if she didn’t shape up. Not that I blame the guy, actually! Raquel was wild. If my sister did half of what she did, I’d be packing her off to a convent so fast her head would spin.”
“Did Raquel seem afraid of him?”
“Afraid, but defiant—that was the way she was. She wasn’t going to let that fat old blow-bag push her around.”
“Do you have any proof Raquel was sexually involved with Blair?”
“Sexually involved?” Difalco repeated the phrase as if it were in a foreign tongue. “God, you cops. How about the sated look in Raquel’s eye, does that qualify? She draped herself all over him, whispered in his ear, stuck her tits in his face. It didn’t take an Einstein to figure out what was up.”
“But did you ever see Blair reciprocate?”
“Blair was one of those Upper Canada College types, smooth and unreadable. Not like me. I like a girl, I let her know. But I can tell you this: he never pushed her hand away. Once, I surprised them in the elevator, and their tongues were halfway down each other’s throats. When he saw me he broke away, and that’s the only time I ever saw him unglued. He was all red in the face and breathing like he’d climbed Mount Everest.”
“When was this?”
“About two weeks ago.”
“Did they say anything to you?”
He laughed at the memory. “Blair looked like he wanted the earth to swallow him up. Raquel winked at me.”
“Did she seem serious about him?”
A faraway light glinted in Difalco’s eyes. “For that week, yeah, maybe. Raquel’s like a summer storm. She blows into your life all wild and full of passion, turns it upside down, and then—” He broke off, casting Green a startled glance that revealed yet another of his personae, one that was almost wistful. Then he restored his languid smile. “But you should be asking her all these questions, Officer, not me. See for yourself. It’ll make your day, and your night too, I bet.”
“Joe,” Green began, deliberately choosing a more intimate address, “there is something that doesn’t add up here, and I wonder if you can help me out…”
Difalco frowned at him warily.
“I’ve been a criminal investigator for over fourteen years, and I’ve seen a lot of street toughs in my day. I’ve seen Native Indian stoic, Irish and French Canadian bully, English boor, Italian macho…you’re trying to fit, but it just doesn’t sit right. I get your message loud and clear—you think you’re hot stuff, you like sex, you like women—their bodies, anyway. But I also see someone else sitting in front of me. We’re all alone here, Joe.” He gestured around the room expressively. “Just you, me and the constable taking notes, and he’s heard it all, believe me. So drop the macho stuff for me. You can put it back on when you leave here if it makes you feel better.”
Difalco came alive. “Are you trying to psychoanalyze me, Detective? You implying deep down I’m afraid my dick’s not big enough—”
“This has nothing to do with your dick. Your dick is fine. It’s just not all you’ve got.”
Difalco laughed, but a faint dull red spread up his neck. A lock of curly black hair fell over his brow, giving him the vulnerable look Green had glimpsed earlier. “I hope not. Sex is fine, but even I can’t do it twenty-four hours a day.”
“Right. So the other twenty-three hours or so, you spend closeted with computer blips and pages of numbers trying to understand how people speak. That’s the part that doesn’t fit, Joe. Where’s the glory in that, where’s the power and the big bucks that a real macho guy would need to keep going? Studs aren’t interested in brain theory.”
“Something wrong with brain theory? You saying I’m a wimp?”
“Cut the bluster, Joe. You know exactly what I’m saying. Will the real Joe Difalco please talk to me?”
Difalco studied him, his eyes narrowed and the lazy smile quite gone. “Did you really think I was that shallow? That to me being a man just means fucking all day and riding around in a white Cadillac with gold chains around my neck? I want to be somebody. Those gold-chained Romeos, they’re a dime a dozen on the street, but a doctor or a professor, they have respect. I was going into med school, you know. I was going to be ‘il Dottore’, but I couldn’t hack the bullshit. In med school they tell you where to piss and when. That’s not my style. Then I took Halton’s undergraduate physiology course and I met ‘il Professore’, and I said to myself ‘This is it!’ Nobody pushes you around, you call your own shots. Halton goes to conferences all over the world and rubs shoulders with the best. In August he’s presenting our work in Stockholm, and if I play my cards right, I get to go.” Difalco rolled his eyes knowingly. “Stockholm. You know, in Europe they have great respect for university professors. Much more than they have here. There, learning and wisdom count more than money. That’s my kind of power and glory, Officer. Hell, I already have all the money I need anyway. My old man swims in it. There’s no mystery to me, no deep dark secrets. Sorry to fuck up your amateur analysis.”
“Respect,” Green remarked, undaunted. “Respect is important to you?”
“Isn’t it to you? Would you be doing this job if you weren’t good at it and other people didn’t think you were good at it?”
“I do this job because I enjoy it and because I like the feeling of solving a case.”
Difalco snorted, flashing his white teeth. “Another dickless wonder. A ‘research-is-my-life’ type like Miller and Blair. Bullshit. Human nature isn’t like that. I’m just more honest about it than the rest of you.”
Green let the silence hang as he collected his impressions. He still felt he was grappling with illusions and contradictions that bore little resemblance to the real Joseph Difalco. Halton had said Difalco was bright and intuitive, and the last hour spent dodging each other had certainly proved that. Green had made very little headway in shaking Difalco’s story or breaking down his façade, but a few chinks had shown through. The young man had feigned disdain for women and for the gentler subtleties of romance, yet Raquel Haddad had certainly shaken him. Like a summer storm, he had said—a curiously poetic phrase for a macho stud. And more importantly, Difalco was a man who craved recognition, for whom belittlement or failure would be tantamount to emasculation. Such a man might do anything to ensure his success. Falsifying his research would be as natural as breathing…
But two minutes later, when Myles Halton called his office and a constable came down to tap on the interrogation room door, he found himself back at square one. The analysis Jonathan Blair had conducted unequivocally supported Difalco’s claim, Halton said. There had been no fraud, no attempt to mislead.
Except, perhaps, by David Miller.
* * *
Pointing his Corolla gratefully towards home, Green slipped a Sting CD into the player. Mellow rock to soothe the frazzled spirit. He was just beginning to unwind when his cell phone rang. It was Superintendent Jules himself, reminding him that he was over two hours late for his appointment with Jonathan Blair’s father, who by this time probably had a blister on his right index finger from phoning.
Swearing, Green glanced at his watch. His son would be asleep by now anyway, and any chance for a goodnight tuck-in was long gone. It didn’t matter what time he got home now, as long as he retrieved the baby from the sitter’s before Sharon got home at seven in the morning. Promising himself he’d read two bedtime stories tomorrow, he turned the car around and headed up Elgin Street towards the Château Laurier Hotel, which presided like a Disneyland castle over the downtown core. The neo-gothic stone spires gave way inside to carved oak, marble, and muted oriental carpeting. Henry Blair’s suite was on the fourth floor, and when Green knocked, the door was flung back immediately as if Blair had been pacing just inside.
In the doorway stood a handsome, well-preserved man in his late fifties, his silver hair on end and his tie askew. He seized Green’s hand and literally pulled him into the room.
“You have no idea how difficult it is, Inspector, to be trapped in this room with nothing to do but think about your dead son.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Blair. I was delayed interrogating a witness.” Blair had paced half way across the room, light and restless on his feet, and he swung back sharply.
“Any luck? Do you know who did it?”
Green could see the desperation in the man’s eyes and understood his need for answers, but he had handled enough grieving relatives over the years to know that false or premature answers, and the brief comfort they offered, were worse than no answers. And with all the people clamouring for answers in this case, he had to choose his confidants carefully. So with reluctance and regret, he trotted out his standard line. “My investigation reveals several leads. We’re pursuing them, I assure you.”
“When will you have a solution?”
“At this stage it’s too early to tell. It’s a very complex case.”
Blair had paused by a silver tray on which stood a bottle of Rémi Martin and two cognac glasses. “I’m finally going to allow myself one of these. I didn’t want to be incoherent by the time you arrived, but by God! if ever I needed a drink! Will you join me?”
When Green demurred, Blair poured himself a healthy dose of the amber liquid and picked up the glass in shaking hands. Green pictured the man under ordinary circumstances swirling the glass in his elegant, fine-boned hand, inhaling the vapours and only then taking a slow, appreciative sip. But tonight he clutched the glass and gulped at the cognac like a man just out of the desert. Green gave him a few seconds.
“When was the last time you saw or heard from your son, Mr. Blair?”
Blair slumped into a chair. “He was coming home to visit me for Father’s Day. Next Saturday, he would have arrived. He was going this weekend to buy the plane ticket. Said he’d been working too hard, wanted a break to get away from it all. University life can be claustrophobic, I know; too much inbreeding and jealousy. He sounded worn out and disillusioned, said he was thinking of transferring to the University of British Columbia. Myles Halton had been Marianne’s idea. She’d known him from her undergraduate days—we both had, actually, we were at Simon Fraser together—and she never could resist using her influence. Not that Halton needed much persuading. He was delighted to have Jonathan. Bright, articulate, hard-working and the son of an influential heiress who runs a granting agency. And to show her gratitude, Marianne is already underwriting half the cost of some new equipment he wants. I’d rather hoped Jonathan would come to graduate school in Vancouver and give just the two of us a chance for once. But who am I, after all?” He smiled wanly and rose to replenish his cognac glass.
Green watched him splash half the cognac on the table trying to get it into the glass, but he resisted the urge to help. He knew that nothing he could do would ease the pain, and he had learned to watch and wait. Brian Sullivan had a strength and presence that was somehow comforting, but despite all the compassion Green felt, he’d never learned that skill. The best way he could help was to find the loved one’s killer, and he hoped that he could glean all the important information he needed before the poor man was reduced to incoherence.
As he had hoped, after a few gulps Blair returned to his seat and picked up the thread. “I’m not going to get cynical. I’m not a cynic. Some maniac comes out of the darkness and wipes out my only child, but I’m not going to be a cynic. My son was finally coming home to me, was talking of living with me, and…” Blair broke off, pressing his eyes shut. For a long moment he breathed raggedly, and Green prayed he would recover. Finally he placed the brandy shakily on the table beside him. “I’d better not have any more of that for a bit.”
“When did Jonathan tell you about his plans to come home?”
“Last Sunday.” Blair dried his eyes with a deep, shuddering sigh. “He always calls Sunday. He said he was almost finished a portion of his research, only a week or so to go. I’d even got as far as planning some of his favourite meals. Damn!” Blair clenched his fists. “This is so hard! Have you any leads, Inspector? Oh yes, you told me you had. But who would want to do this to Jonathan? Jonathan wasn’t like his mother, always centre stage and stirring up trouble. He didn’t make enemies. Do you have any idea why he was killed?”
“I’m afraid I can’t say at this time, sir.”
“But I suppose you’ll tell Marianne. I understand within the hour she had the three heads of the police department at her fingertips, whereas I had to wait eight hours to get an interview with one inspector.”
“I have revealed nothing to Mrs. Blair either, sir.”
The distraught man ran his hand over his face. “I’m sorry. I’m sounding petty and God knows, I’m way beyond petty. I don’t begrudge Marianne her influence; I just feel so damn impotent! I don’t know what I’m supposed to do while you people figure out what happened, and Marianne runs around pretending to be in charge.”
“I’d be happy to give you the same briefings I give her.”
“Oh!” Blair looked at Green, and his expression grew rueful. “That isn’t what I meant, but thank you. I appreciate that. I’m sorry, Inspector. I know I keep saying that, but I can’t seem to keep my thoughts in order. I hope you’ll treat our conversation tonight as confidential. I wouldn’t want Marianne to know what a mess I am.”
“I don’t think she’s feeling all that different from you at this moment. The murder of one’s child is probably the worst trauma a person ever has to survive.” Green winced even as he said the words. Sullivan would have managed to make them sound human. “I think you might find it helps to talk to her.”
“I called while I was waiting for you. I asked if she wanted to come here to meet you with me. She said she was expecting Myles Halton to come over.” His face twisted, and Green watched with alarm as he paced around the oriental carpet. Anxious to fend off an emotional scene, Green flipped quickly back through his notes. Blair seemed a sensitive and intelligent man, bound to his son by similar temperament as well as by blood. Beneath the scattered thoughts, he perhaps had some intuitive grasp of his son’s recent distress.
“You said Jonathan sounded disillusioned. Did he say with what?”
“He didn’t. He’s a private person, as I normally am, present circumstances excepted. But I had the impression it might have been with Myles Halton.”
“Halton?” Green kept his voice carefully neutral. “Can you recall exactly what he said?”
“It wasn’t anything he said—about Halton, that is. He said he’d been working really hard on this project but wasn’t sure he liked the way it was turning out. I said something about all scholarly work having its setbacks, and he said he wished that was all it was. I asked him what he meant, and he said he thought he needed to get away for a bit to get some perspective. Then he commented that while he was out in Vancouver, he might look up Professor George Lester at UBC. I took that to mean that perhaps everything wasn’t as rosy as when he had started with Halton. He began with such high hopes. I’d had my doubts from the beginning, but of course I kept them to myself. Marianne would not have regarded them as credible.”
“What doubts?”
“That working for Halton would prove to be the edifying experience everyone expected.”
“Why?”
Blair had returned to his armchair and had been quietly controlled as he reported his son’s conversation. Now he fidgeted and reached for his cognac. “I’m not sure any of this is relevant, and I’m also not sure I can be objective about Halton—” he stopped abruptly “—but I knew him at Simon Fraser, even before Marianne did, and I know his flaws go deeper than Marianne thinks they do. I was in my fourth year of economics, and Halton was a freshman trying to get into our fraternity. He was brilliant and ambitious, but he was also an opinionated, loud-mouthed bully. He wanted in, and he didn’t care who he stepped on to get in. He’s acquired some social finesse since then and is probably more circumspect, but I imagine that ambitious bully is never far below the surface. I suspect he wouldn’t let too much stand in his way.”
Green let the man ramble on until the brandy and exhaustion had taken firm hold, and then he slipped quietly away. Driving back to the apartment to the soothing strains of Sting, he pondered what Henry Blair had said. The man was under extreme stress, his thoughts fragmented by shock and grief, and his judgment marred by resentment and envy. It was hard to know how much truth there was in his suspicions about Halton and about Jonathan’s disillusionment, and how much wishful thinking. Blair had lost his only son, and he was entitled to a lapse in realism. Green remembered how he had felt years ago when he came home to find his house empty and nothing but a cold note from his first wife: “I’ve taken Hannah. We’ve gone to Fred in Vancouver”. His daughter hadn’t died, just left his life, and yet the pain had been excruciating.
He shuddered as he entered the empty, too-quiet apartment, and he felt a powerful urge to go across and fetch Tony. But reason soon prevailed. Tony and Mrs. Louks were probably both fast asleep, and he was too exhausted to face night bottles and diapers. Self-preservation won and instead, he set the alarm for six-thirty and fell into bed. A night’s sleep would restore his equilibrium and as long as he picked up the baby before Sharon got home from the hospital at seven, he would be safe from her censure.
But when Sharon came home the next morning to find Tony in his high chair and pablum all over his face, she gave the baby a warm, knowing smile.
“So, pumpkin, did you have a good time sleeping over at Mrs. Louks?”
Green thought of protesting but decided against it. Somehow, she knew. The truth, humble and apologetic, was the wiser course.
“This case will take a lot of my time, Sharon. I can’t help that.”
Sharon kicked her shoes off, poured herself a cup of coffee, and reached over to wipe Tony’s chin. The baby responded by pounding his table with his spoon and laughing in delight.
Oh great, thought Green, the famous Levy silent treatment. He gritted his teeth. “It’s a mess, and there’s big pressure from on high.”
Sharon chucked the baby under the chin, picked up her coffee, and headed towards the bedroom, unbuttoning her cotton dress. Tony’s face fell as he stared at her retreating back, and in the next instant, he began to wail.
“Fuck it,” Green muttered and pulled him out of the high chair. He found her sitting on the bed in her underwear, massaging her swollen feet, and he sat the baby down beside her.
“I gotta go. Nice talking to you.”
He fumed all the way to the university. Maybe he was wrong, but she was barely cutting him any slack. Relationships were hard work, but you had to be willing to do the work. All right, he knew that she had a demanding job too, that wrestling with psychotics and talking down suicides could leave a person drained at the end of the day. But when would she understand that his wasn’t a job like any other, that he couldn’t just leave it behind at the end of an eight-hour shift? People’s futures, their freedom, sometimes their very lives depended on his being right. In his job, one slip-up could shatter a life. He was acutely aware of this when he arrived at Halton’s laboratories to check further into Jonathan’s data and found David Miller already summoned to the great man’s office. The secretary had no idea how long he might be there, but Green had only waited five minutes before Halton’s door flung back and Miller blundered past him unseeing, his skin the colour of parchment.
Green sprang forward. “Dr. Miller, a word in your office, please.”
Trancelike, Miller turned towards the sound of his voice and stared uncomprehendingly.
“Inspector Green of the Ottawa Police. We spoke yesterday.”
“Oh…” Miller passed a hand over his eyes as if to clear them. “Ah…now is not a good time, Inspector.”
“This can’t wait, I’m afraid.” Green took his elbow and steered him bodily down the hall into his office. Once inside, Miller collapsed onto the swivel chair in front of his computer and plunged his head into his hands.
“What did Halton say?” Green began carefully.
Miller rocked his head back and forth. “I’m ruined. He cut off my fellowship, he’s throwing me out of the university. All my work, all my hopes…”
“Did he say why?”
“He says I sabotaged Joe’s work. I can’t believe it! He believes that putz over me! He thinks so little of me that he’d believe... Shit!” Miller broke off, sobbing. “Shit! Shit! Shit! It’s not fair! That guy has been out to get me ever since I got here and finally he’s succeeded. But how? That’s what doesn’t make any sense!”
“Did Halton tell you how he came to this conclusion?” Miller wiped tears from his eyes and tried for a deep, steadying breath. “I’m sorry. I’m not up to this right now. I can’t think straight. I need to get out of here and clear my head.”
Green rose to his feet. “I’ll buy you a coffee somewhere.”
Five minutes later, they were settled over coffee at a little sidewalk café across from the library. Although it was just after nine o’clock, the sun was harsh and the air already soggy. Traffic crawled by in front of them, exhaust fumes mingling with the heat off the asphalt, and Green felt sweat trickling down his back. He studied Miller surreptitiously. Something in the man’s initial raw shock touched a chord. It was hard to imagine that the anguish had been faked, and that the man was capable of the calculated betrayal of which he’d been accused.
The hot, bitter coffee seemed to steady Miller, drawing colour to his cheeks. Green took up the thread obliquely.
“This place hasn’t changed at all since I came here eight years ago. There’s still only one outdoor café on the whole campus.”
Miller frowned. “You went to university?”
“Masters in Criminology, piece by painful piece. Evenings, nights, weekends. Took forever!” He grinned. “You look surprised.”
“I am. I mean—a cop. I never expected...”
“I did research, I did a thesis. I know how you get to live the stuff day and night, how important it becomes to you.”
Miller shook his head. “Not enough to sabotage somebody else, if that’s what you’re suggesting. You see, I don’t view Joe’s work as competition. Joe does. His mind is full of dreams of a post-doc at Yale, and he thinks he has to be right. But that’s not how research works. I was really interested in whether his model would work. That’s what’s important, finding theories that work, building on them and chipping away bit by bit at the mystery of the brain. All our theories are wrong, Inspector. Mine is wrong, Joe’s is wrong. We’re still light years away from the truth. All we can do is find which is a little less wrong, so we can keep expanding. Ten or twenty years down the road, scientists will look back on our work and shake their heads at the simple-mindedness of it all. Where would we be if Best had sabotaged Banting’s work? I thought Halton knew how I felt. I thought that’s one reason he took me on. I can’t believe Joe pulled it off.”
“Did Halton tell you why he believed Joe and not you?” Miller gestured vaguely. “He said something about independent data corroborating Joe’s. I was so upset I couldn’t take it all in. But it doesn’t make sense. You can’t get the data Joe says he got. Vanessa and I ran simulations. Simulations aren’t perfect, and maybe mine were way off base, but I couldn’t get them to give figures anything like those Joe reported. And Joe’s scores were faked. I saw it with my own two eyes. The numbers didn’t match!”
“You’re absolutely positive? You weren’t looking at the wrong data?”
“Oh, no.” Miller took a big bite of muffin and shook his head vigorously, sending crumbs flying. He was quite in control now that outrage was taking hold. “After I ran the simulations, I broke right into his raw data. I know I was out of line to break into his files, but I wasn’t going to go to Halton with an accusation about a fellow student until I had proof. Joe’s raw data bore absolutely no resemblance to the figures he used in his analyses. But I never dreamed the slippery bastard would turn the tables on me. In one fell swoop he wipes out his raw data and blames it on me.”
Green studied him carefully. He had seen a lot of liars in his day and had learnt to be suspicious. Still waters run deep, Difalco had warned him, but Green could not sense even a hint of deception in the man before him. Something did not add up. Blair’s own research supported Difalco’s claims, and yet Miller argued just as convincingly that it was impossible.
“Do you know where the independent corroborating data came from?” Green asked quietly.
There was no hint of deception in Miller’s reaction either. His bewildered shrug seemed genuine. “I have no idea. Halton himself, I guess. Unless…” His colour fled. “My God, Jonathan Blair!”
“What about Jonathan Blair?”
Miller covered his mouth in horror. “No! Could it be? That’s impossible!” He looked up with stricken eyes. “Inspector, this is awful!”
“What are you thinking?”
“I can’t believe I’m thinking it. I know Joe really wanted that Yale appointment, but I didn’t think he’d go as far as murder!”
“How do you figure that?” Green demanded. “Joe’s claims have been substantiated.”
“Not necessarily.” David Miller was already rising from his chair, stumbling as he groped around the table.
“Where are you going?”
“To check Jonathan’s files for myself,” Miller shot back.
“No you don’t! Miller! Wait!” Green watched the balding man blunder through the maze of tables toward the street. “Damn!” He threw a couple of loonies on the table and headed in pursuit. As he ran, he groped at his belt for his radio.
“Get me a twenty-four hour police guard on Jonathan Blair’s office. ASAP!”