O’Connor spent most of the next day working with Rifkin to compile the relevant information from Holly’s notebooks and compare the times of her experiments with Pam’s travels. She was ambivalent about the findings. They were consistent with Holly’s story, but it wasn’t enough to convince her that Pam had acted alone.
The committee convened half an hour before Holly was due to appear and O’Connor passed out a summary spreadsheet.
“As you can see,” she said, “Weller’s travel schedule had her available for almost all of Holly’s experiments. And as Holly suggested yesterday, there were several experiments that didn’t work when Weller was out of town recently on extended trips. So it fits with Holly’s story, although I still find it a little hard to believe.”
Samuelson nodded. “I agree. It seems much more likely to me that they did it together and Holly made up her story to put all the blame on Pam.” He snorted sarcastically. “So much for honor among thieves.”
Fuller frowned and looked at his watch. “It’s three fifteen now. Let’s bring Holly back in and see what she has to say. Maybe we can get a confession out of her and be done with this. Isn’t she here yet?”
Rifkin opened the door and looked out at the waiting area. “No, she’s not. I’m going to start looking for her.”
Holly wasn’t in the lab, nor did she respond to emails, phone calls or texts. The committee adjourned and at four o’clock O’Connor called the Harvard University police to ask if they could check Holly’s apartment.
• • •
It was almost six and O’Connor was thinking about going home when two University officers and two Brookline police detectives showed up at her office.
“I’m afraid we have bad news,” one of the University officers said. “Holly Singer is dead, apparently from a suicide.”
O’Connor’s eyes widened and she leaned on the chair next to her. “Oh my God! What happened?”
“It looks like she took a lethal dose of Nembutal. She left a suicide note saying that she and Pam Weller committed some kind of fraud together. Is that what your committee was investigating when you called us earlier?”
“I can’t believe it, this is terrible. Yes, that’s what we were investigating. Holly failed to show up for her scheduled meeting with the committee. We’d interviewed her yesterday and most of us thought that she and Weller were both guilty, although Holly tried to claim it was Weller alone. But I guess this settles it.”
One of the Brookline detectives asked, “Would she have had Nembutal available to her in the lab?”
“Yes, it’s commonly used for rodent euthanasia. The lab would have kept a stock.”
“Can you show us?”
O’Connor took them to Pam’s lab and used her master key to let them in. They found a stock of Nembutal in the cabinet above Vicky’s lab bench. One of the detectives put a vial in a small plastic bag. “It looks the same as what we found in her apartment.”
O’Connor squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “This is awful. A young person killing herself. It’s just so sad, even if she was involved in this dreadful fraud.”
The Harvard officer nodded. “I’m sorry. There’ll be an autopsy and more follow up of course. But it looks like that’s what happened.”
• • •
DeSilva was home having a before-dinner glass of wine when O’Connor’s call came in. He was sickened by the story, but at least it brought things to the conclusion he’d come to expect. The cops might want to investigate further, but it was clear enough to him. Time to bring this sad affair to an end.
He personally called all three members of the investigation committee. All agreed that they’d been on the verge of concluding that Holly and Pam had acted jointly, and this sealed the case. DeSilva then directed James Fuller to call a meeting for six thirty the next morning and to have a final report of the committee’s findings on his desk by seven thirty. He had to be on top of this before it came out in the press.