Nondisclosure

by Geoffrey M Cooper

  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.”

  23

  The Central Administration Building, otherwise known as the Presidential Palace, was an imposing ten-story structure with a gleaming granite and glass facade; marble floors; and a striking, all-white interior. I arrived ten minutes late, a gesture intende
d to express my resentment at the peremptory summons that brought me here. On the other hand, I wore my one and only suit, purchased two years ago for my son’s wedding. I wasn’t sure what kind of mixed message I was trying to send. Maybe that I was some sort of independent conformist.

  The receptionist on the top floor seemed unfazed by either my tardiness or my attire. She said the president would be with me shortly and directed me to a waiting area next to a floor-to-ceiling window with a breathtaking view of the Charles River. I took a seat on an overstuffed couch and started leafing through one of the copies of the BTI alumni magazine that were spread out on a side table. Several copies of President Emerson’s recently published memoir, The Academic Life, were also there, waiting to be perused.

  They kept me waiting ten minutes, just long enough to establish that my time was less valuable than Emerson’s, before the receptionist took me into his office. It was big enough to house at least two laboratories. Two of the walls were dark wood paneling, covered with oil paintings in gold frames. Fine art wasn’t my area of expertise, but they looked like they belonged in a museum. The other two walls were glass, one with the view of the Charles River I’d had in the waiting area and the other with a cityscape of downtown Boston. Several conference tables and seating areas of different sizes were scattered around the room, and the floor was covered with two oversize Chinese rugs.

  Emerson got up from his desk to greet me, and we met halfway across the office.

  “Thank you for coming to see me,” he said. “I’m a great admirer of the work you’ve done with our Integrated Life Sciences Department. It’s become a real center of excellence in the institute. The rape and murder of your poor student sullied things, of course, but I understand you even handled that as well as anyone could have.”

  He sounded like I was here for a friendly chat. Not like I’d been dragged in for a command performance. I thanked him and waited for what was to come next.

  “Would you care for some tea? I always find it helps me relax, and I’ve had a hard morning already,” he said. “An eight o’clock fundraiser with members of the board of directors.”

  “I’m fine, thank you,” I said.

  “No, please join me.” He walked over to a granite counter near his desk. “Do you like Earl Grey? Or I can offer green tea, if you prefer.”

  “Whatever you’re having, thank you.”

  “Good, Earl Grey it is, then.” He poured bottled water into an electric tea kettle and spooned the tea into tea balls. When the water was ready, he served the tea in mugs with gold BTI insignias. I declined milk or lemon, and he led us to a seating area with leather armchairs and a marble coffee table. I had the view of downtown and was pretty sure I could see the roof of my condo building.

  He took a sip of his tea and smiled. “So good of you to come talk with me. I seldom have a chance to meet with real scientists anymore. Most of my time seems to be spent raising money, protecting the institution from damaging legislation, things like that. And of course, dealing with all manner of problems that threaten to derail our mission. That’s why I so admire the good work you’ve done in your department. Wonderful to see.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate the kind words.”

  “Doing the administrative work is hard, isn’t it? I mean, you’re an accomplished scientist, and now you’ve also had to deal with some of the same kind of administrative problems I face in this office.”

  “Only on a much smaller and simpler scale,” I said. Where was this going?

  “Not always so simple, is it? We always have to be careful to make sure we’re supporting our most productive faculty, don’t we? That’s where the real strength of either a department or the entire institution lies.”

  I drank some tea. “Most definitely. Although I think it’s also important to be fair with everyone and to give our young faculty every opportunity to develop their careers. After all, that’s where the future lies.”

  “Yes,” he said, “but it’s the top senior faculty who determine a department’s standing. Who would you say is your best faculty member?”

  I hesitated. This wasn’t a game I wanted to play with the president of the institute. “Well, we have several outstanding people. I don’t think I could name just one.”

  He put down his mug and frowned at me. “Come now, that’s ridiculous. Surely you know who your top faculty member is. Michael Singer.”

  “Well, he’s certainly up there.”

  “Up there indeed! He’s by far your best in terms of grants, papers, awards—however you want to measure it. And if you’re going to lead your department effectively, that’s not something you should ignore.” The old boys’ friendliness was gone now, replaced by the demeanor of an annoyed senior executive talking to a subordinate who doesn’t quite get it.

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “Then perhaps you can explain why you’ve been poking around Yale, asking questions about Mike’s ancient history?”

  I drank some more tea to stall for time. So this was why we were here. Maybe he was embarrassed by his signature on Singer’s nondisclosure agreement. But how did he know about my visits to New Haven?

  “The accounting office was investigating some irregularities involving consulting payments to a Yale faculty member from Singer’s grants. I made a trip down there to talk to her about it, hoping I could clear things up.”

  “Sally Lipton. Yes, she complained about your visits. Apparently, you barged into her office twice, the last time accompanied by one of our institute detectives.” He leaned forward and furrowed his brow. “That is totally inappropriate. It’s not your business to act as an investigator and certainly not to involve the institute police in your inquiries. Your job is to support your faculty.”

  “As I said, I was hoping that Dr. Lipton could clear things up.”

  “Then it seems particularly odd for you to have made your second visit after the auditors concluded that the consulting payments were appropriate and terminated the inquiry. And I understand you were also asking about a former student, Martha Daniels. What does she have to do with it?”

  Lipton’s complaints weren’t a big surprise—but to the president of BTI? What the hell was going on?

  Emerson got up and raised his voice an octave. “Never mind. Don’t bother trying to answer. But listen carefully. I want you to stop screwing around with this. Just back off and treat Singer like the outstanding scientist that he is. If I hear of any more inquiries, I’ll have your job.”

  I stood up too. Something was really weird for him to get involved like this. “You can have my resignation as department chair anytime you want. I’ll happily go back to being an ordinary faculty member. I’d love to be able to focus on my research.”

  “You think being a tenured professor will protect you? You’re a fool. It’d take a bit of effort, but I can easily enough get a revocation of your tenure too. Just keep looking into Singer if you want to see me do it.”

  I headed over to the river when I left the Presidential Palace. The meeting had been bizarre, and I needed to try to make some sense of it. Whatever Emerson was afraid that I might find out had to be big. Big enough to make him cross the ultimate academic line of threatening to fire a tenured faculty member. And despite the nonchalance of his threat, he wouldn’t be able to pull that off without a formal academic proceeding that would take months of work by several faculty committees. Getting rid of tenured faculty members was a big deal that would generate a ton of publicity and probably result in intervention by organizations that were dedicated to protecting academic freedom. The American Association of University Professors and the like. It just wasn’t something that a university president would want to do.

  So what was this about? He clearly hoped and expected that his combination of cajoling and bullying would make me drop the matter. Perhaps he’d offered Singer such a sweet retention deal at Yale that he didn’t want word to get out. Maybe there was some kind of relationship between them that woul
d be a substantial embarrassment for the current president of BTI. That would explain the nondisclosure agreement as well as his going so far as to threaten me.

  Possible, but if that was it, Sally Lipton and Martha Daniels would presumably have to know what it was all about for them to have signed the agreement. And they were both awfully far down the totem pole of academic life to be included in details of a senior faculty retention.

  So that left the possibility that Singer had been forced to leave Yale because of some type of misconduct—something nasty that was covered by the agreement and that Emerson didn’t want to become public. Like the illicit use of research funds, which was why I’d started looking into this in the first place. Some kind of sustained scam with Sally Lipton that had started in New Haven and continued to the present day. A fraud that Emerson would most certainly want to cover up if he’d offered Singer an easy way out at Yale and then continued to support his career at BTI.

  I didn’t like being bullied, and Emerson’s involvement had the opposite effect from what he wanted. Somehow or other, I was going to find out what had happened at Yale ten years ago that was so important.

  I checked my watch. Not quite eleven. Plenty of time to catch an early afternoon flight to Madison.

  Maybe Linda Chen was the key.

  24

  The Department of Chemistry’s website told me that Linda Chen taught an organic chemistry class from ten to eleven the next morning, so I figured the best way to catch her would be to show up right after her lecture. I got to the lecture hall at about ten forty-five and slipped into a seat in the back. As I expected, it was a big class. Maybe two hundred students. To her credit, almost all of them seemed to be paying attention. In fact, I’d give her high marks as a lecturer if I were here to evaluate her teaching. She was animated and kept the class engaged by asking questions and throwing in colorful anecdotes and the occasional joke as she went along.