22
Sally Lipton was in her office when we got there a little before eleven the next morning. She recognized me immediately. And didn’t look happy about it.
“What do you want now? I already told you I don’t have time to chitchat about Mike Singer.”
I tried being nice. “I’m sorry to bother you again, but this’ll just take a minute. We wanted to ask you about a former student, Martha Daniels.”
“I don’t know any Martha Daniels.” She reached for the phone. “Get the hell out before I call security.”
Karen held up her badge. “I’m Detective Karen Richmond. We just need a minute of your time.”
The badge had the effect that Karen had predicted. Lipton scowled but put down the phone. “All right. What do you need to know?”
“Martha Daniels was a student in a course you taught ten years ago,” Karen said. “Does that jog your memory?”
“A student from ten years ago?” She shrugged. “I’ve taught lots of students over the years. The name Martha Daniels doesn’t ring a bell.”
“The course was called Advanced Topics in Research,” I said. “You still teach it, according to the course catalog. How many students are usually in it?”
Lipton rolled her eyes. “Just a dozen or so. It’s an upper-level graduate course. Why do you care, for Christ’s sake?”
I ignored her question. “Do you teach it yourself or with guest lecturers?”
“Damn it, I’m tired of this. What do you want from me? Get out of here!”
“Just answer the question.” Karen’s tone was harsh, accompanied by a cop interrogation look. “Unless you want us to make this more formal.”
Lipton stared back at her. Then she said, “All right, fine. It’s taught by multiple guest lecturers, each talking about the area of their research specialty.”
“Do you have the roster from the year Martha Daniels took it?” I asked.
“From ten years ago? I doubt it.”
Karen cleared her throat and ostentatiously looked around the office. “You seem to have an office full of filing cabinets. Well organized. I’m impressed. There’s even one labeled courses. Think there might be a syllabus in there somewhere?”
Lipton turned red. “No, damn it. Leave me alone.”
“Why don’t you just take a look? Maybe you’ve forgotten. Unless you want us to come back with a warrant to search your office.”
I knew it was a bluff, but Lipton didn’t. “Screw you,” she said. But she got up, went to the file cabinet, and threw half a dozen hanging folders in front of Karen.
“If I have anything, it’d be in here.”
One of the folders was labeled Advanced Seminar. Karen leafed through it and came out with a syllabus for the year we wanted. She looked it over and passed it to me. There was a different guest lecturer each week of the course. Her finger was next to a name we both recognized.
Mike Singer.
Karen smiled and handed the folder back to Lipton. “Oh, this is great. Just what we wanted. Thanks so much for your cooperation.”
Lipton stared at us as we got up and left her office.
I waited until we had walked down the hall to the elevators so that we wouldn’t be overheard. Then I said, “So we have a connection. But it’s pretty slim. Hard to see how Martha’s being in a seminar course where Singer gave one or two lectures can amount to much.”
Karen shrugged. “Who knows? Sometimes things add up in ways you don’t expect. It’s like that in your business too, no?”
“Yeah, I guess it is. More often than not, scientists just keep poking around until something opens up. Then maybe you have one of those rare bursts of clarity.”
“So, let’s go pay a visit to Martha’s thesis advisor. Maybe he can add some clarity to the mix.”
“Professor Clayton Marston,” I said. “Sixth floor of this building. At least he’s bound to be more fun than Sally Lipton.”
I’d never met Marston, but I knew him well by reputation. Twenty-five years ago, when I was still a graduate student, he’d discovered a way to use fluorescence microscopy to study the movements of molecules in living cells. It was a discovery that revolutionized cell biology and earned him a host of major accolades, including one of Yale’s coveted endowed professorships and membership in the National Academy of Sciences.
I didn’t know what to expect when we knocked on his door, but being politely greeted by a short, slightly plump man with long white hair and a pleasant smile wasn’t it. He directed us to seats on a couch in the corner of his office, which was large enough to fit his stature as a major scientific force. The walls seemed to be decorated equally with awards from a variety of learned societies and with family pictures that looked like they spanned at least three generations.
He saw me looking around his office and said, “Yes, I’ve been blessed with quite a crop of children and grandchildren. Two sons and a daughter, all with families of their own now.”
“And there’s been significant recognition of your many scientific accomplishments too,” I said.
He smiled and shrugged. “I suppose. At my age, the family stuff seems more important. Anyway, what can I do for you?”
“We’d like to ask about one of your former students,” I said. “Do you remember a Martha Daniels? She got her degree, with you as her thesis advisor, about ten years ago.”
The smile faded when I said her name. “Of course, I remember all my students. When I look back over my career, it’s my students who are most important to me. Many are doing quite well at universities and research institutions all around the world, and I love to follow their accomplishments. But not Martha. She was one of my failures.”
His face tightened, and he looked down at the floor. “She was bright, ambitious, and hardworking. Wonderful in the lab, maybe one of the best students I ever had. She had an illustrious future ahead of her, and suddenly it all went wrong.”
“I’m so sorry,” Karen said. “What happened?”
“I wish I knew. It was her last year before finishing her degree. She had a junior faculty fellowship at Harvard all lined up and was excited about getting her papers out and moving on with her career. And it would have been a special one.”
He shook his head and stopped talking. “What went wrong?” I prompted.
His eyes were moist. “I’m sorry—I feel so badly about this. I don’t really know what happened. All of a sudden, she just changed. It was like she became a different person, bitter and angry. She turned down the job at Harvard and took a teaching position at a small community college in New Hampshire. I couldn’t get her to talk about it or explain her change of heart. All she’d say is that something had happened that showed her what getting ahead in science really took. And it wasn’t for her. Then two years later, she killed herself.”
I could feel his pain. But there was more that we needed to know. “And you don’t have any idea what she was talking about? It must have been a major trauma,” I said.
“Obviously, but she’d never say what it was. I tried to talk to her many times, but she’d just clam up and say she’d made her decision.”
He looked so forlorn that Karen reached over and squeezed his hand. “I’m sure you did all you could to help her,” she said. “Did she have a boyfriend? Anyone she was close to and might have talked to about this?”
His voice was shaky now. “I don’t think there was a serious boyfriend. Occasionally she’d bring a date to lab parties, but never the same young man more than once or twice. But she was close to another student in the lab, Linda Chen. They were roommates the whole time they were here. I think if Martha opened up to anyone, it would have been Linda.”
“Do you know how we can get in touch with Linda?” I asked.
“She went from here to a faculty appointment at Princeton, but she didn’t get tenure there and had to leave. I believe she’s someplace in the Midwest now, maybe Michigan or Wisconsin. Some big school like that.”
“Thank you,” I said. “We appreciate your help. And it’s been an honor to meet you.”
We left him alone with his thoughts. He didn’t get up or say goodbye.
Karen took the wheel for the drive back so that I could search for Linda Chen. PubMed made it easy. She published frequently and in top journals. Hard to see why she hadn’t made tenure at Princeton. At least from her publication record, she’d have been a shoo-in at BTI. Probably being a woman hadn’t helped. Anyway, she was now a tenured professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a top-ranked department. She’d done well after leaving Princeton. I went to her website and saw that she directed a large research group of a dozen or so graduate students and research fellows. And that she was teaching this semester. Meaning that she’d be on campus, and I could pay her a visit.
“Want to make a trip to Madison to visit Linda Chen tomorrow?” I asked Karen.
“Sorry, I’m going to have to get back to work. You can handle this one on your own, right?”
“It’s more fun with you, but sure.”
I started to check on flights to Madison but was interrupted by my phone’s ringtone. I did a double take when I saw the call was from the BTI Office of the President. The voice on the other end of the line identified himself as the president’s executive assistant, Doug Westman.
“President Emerson would like to see you tomorrow morning, ten o’clock,” he said.
I’d never been asked to see the president before, except as part of large group meetings that were ceremonial in nature. If that’s all this was, I could send a substitute and go ahead to Madison. “May I ask what the meeting’s about? I’m planning to be out of town tomorrow, and perhaps I could ask someone else from the department to take my place.”
“No, Professor Parker. The president needs to see you. He’ll explain when you’re here. Please cancel whatever else you have scheduled. We’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
