by Paula Guran
“That must be tremendously exciting.” His eyes gleamed. “Have you ever shot anyone?”
“No, no. I am armed when I need to be, of course, but so far I’ve made do with my wits and my fists.” I cracked my knuckles and smiled.
“Fascinating. You must think I’m being a silly academic; all I know about detecting is what I’ve read in books. I’m sure it’s nothing like that in real life . . . ”
“You’re not the only one, believe me.”
«Armin Fitzgerald has entered the elevator. I need to know about their fight.»
The accelerated version it would be. “Dr. Joshi, I’d really enjoy sitting and talking shop, but I’m kinda on the clock here . . . ”
He straightened up in his chair. “Absolutely. What would you like to know?”
“Tell me about the morning of the murder.”
“Very well. I came in around eight, and looked for Tony Grasso. He was in with Maya, speaking about something—”
“I heard it was less ‘speaking’ and more ‘shouting.’ ”
He grimaced. “Tony was in a foul mood that morning. He used to get ‘hangry.’ Don’t read too much into it.”
«Why would Mr. Fitzgerald be singing? There is nobody else to hear it.» That didn’t bode well.
“The police seem to have read a lot into it. Do you know what they were saying?”
As Rex said, I knew a lie when I heard one, and his “no” was about as textbook as they get. He looked me in the eye, even. “Sorry, I just heard the raised voices. I went to talk to Ahmed afterwards; I had a few things I wanted to discuss.”
“Did you mention the argument?”
“He wasn’t too concerned.”
“Then he tossed you out.”
“He had an important meeting,” Joshi said in a corrective tone of voice. “In any case, I needed to attend the symposium.”
“But you didn’t stay.”
That was a gamble on my part. He hesitated, but I’d stated it flatly and didn’t let on it was a guess. “I stayed for the first few presentations, by researchers from my group, and then came back here to catch up on my work.”
“By any chance, did you have a peek in Grasso’s office?” I pointed my thumb over my shoulder at it.
He gave me a wary look, which I met calmly. He chuckled. “You detectives. Yes, I stopped by to see if he wanted coffee, but he wasn’t in.”
“When we, ah, met the other morning, why was Jeanne Duvalier with you?”
“I needed a piece of equipment from that lab, and she knew the key code. I had gone to ask Tony for it, but I couldn’t find him.”
“And before then, you were here the whole time?”
He nodded. “I might have stepped out to use the restroom, but otherwise, yes.”
“You can see Dr. Grasso’s office pretty well from here.”
“That’s right.”
“Did you see anyone sneak in there? Maybe to take something off his desk?”
He looked taken aback. “No, not while I was here.”
He gave me a piercing look. “Mr. Baldwin,” he started slowly, cutting off my next question. “I’ve been thinking. Antonio hired you and Claudius Rex to find the device.”
I smiled. “I can’t divulge that. But TuriTech did, sure.”
He leaned in. “Have you found it?”
«Equivocate.»
“Well,” I said. “That’s an interesting question. Why do you want to know?”
“Why? We all want to know. You were gone all day yesterday, and Ahmed could barely concentrate when I talked to him; he thinks you have it already.”
I gave him my best sphinx-like smile. “Could be. Where do you think we found it?”
He stared at me for a second, then gave me a sly look. “Very clever, Mr. Baldwin. I have to say, this is absolutely fascinating, but you ought to know—”
If there was more to it than that, I wasn’t around to hear it. A certain individual with a white mustache and a look like the cat got into the cream showed up at the door. Fitzgerald had been looking forward to throwing me out ever since the moment we met, and he relished every moment. For myself, I see no reason to document the process beyond the mere fact of it.
I came back to Downtown Crossing by the T and walked the few blocks through the newly renovated parts back to the brownstone. It was not exactly a pleasant trip, between Rex’s complaining and dodging Boston’s infestation of robot-driven cars, each one wielding dozens of little cameras just to tailgate each other a little more efficiently. When I finally set foot inside, I heard a woman’s voice, an angry one.
“If you’ve got evidence of a homicide, you turn it over to me. If I can’t get my hands on you, I can sure as hell throw Baldwin back in the clink.”
So much for a “welcome home.” I followed Detective Stevens’s voice into the study, where she sat in the big red leather chair and gesticulated at an empty desk.
“It is not evidence, Detective, it is conjecture only. It is tenuous conjecture at best,” came an all-too-familiar voice from the speaker on the desk. He’d made himself sound a little deeper, and there was a hint of an accent. But there was no mistaking that diction and those ten-dollar words. “But tenuous conjecture is better than what you have got for yourself. Arresting Dr. Tomason was an act of desperation.”
Stevens half-lifted herself out of her chair, and I caught a look of fury on her face. She checked herself, though, and sat back down. “It wasn’t desperation. She’s the one witnesses heard arguing with him. And she’s the one who installed the firing authorization hardware; she might have put in a back door.”
“Eighteen months ahead of time, on the off chance she might need to murder him? Preposterous.”
Stevens made a noise that didn’t sound like disagreement. “She’s hiding something. I thought the inside of a cell would shake it loose, but she just tightened up.”
«Confound you Andy. Why did you tell Ahmed Desai that Dr. Tomason wasn’t the murderer? This detective believes we are withholding evidence and will not leave.»
I’d have apologized, but I didn’t want to. Stevens was talking extradition treaties in there.
«Your belongings have been delivered to your room, including your firearm. First, however, Haumea is expecting you in the dining room.» I stepped away from the door and made for the rear of the house.
“Andy? Is that you? Finally!”
“Nice to see you too.”
She had on a pair of denim overalls with all sorts of gadgets sticking out of the pockets. “Come on, Mr. Rex needs me to upgrade the memory in your implant, and I’m having an early dinner with a friend and you’re making me late.”
I wondered if I was ever going to get lunch. She sat me down at the little serving shelf off to the side, and took my implant out. I released the internal clamps for her, and with a little bit of fiddling, the main body of the implant slid out on its rails. It’s a slightly nauseating feeling, like a piece of your skull being removed, and it leaves your head feeling uncomfortably light.
She laid it on the big table. It didn’t look like much to me: just a little stainless steel and plastic box with a couple lights on it that promptly went out. So much for Rex’s conversation with Detective Stevens.
“Take your time,” I said. “I could use a couple minutes without Rex hassling me.”
“There’s leftover pizza in the kitchen,” she said, getting out a set of tiny little manipulators. They crawled out of their box onto the table. “Why don’t you go grab something to eat, and bring me a cup of coffee?”
There was milk in the fridge. I poured myself a glass. The pizza had been left out on the counter. Sausage, ham, and mushroom. Cold, but it tasted all right.
I brought Haumea her coffee. It had been on the warming plate awhile and was probably bitter, but she didn’t seem to care.
I went upstairs and changed into some fresh clothes, and then the door chime rang. I glanced into the office, and noted that Stevens had gone. I got
a surprise when I had a look at the screen for the door camera: Jeanne Duvalier stood fidgeting on our stoop. I let her in.
“You’re Andy Baldwin, aren’t you? I remember you from when we found Dr. Grasso.” I didn’t know what to say, so I nodded and tried to look wise. She looked past me into the house. “Is Mr. Rex here?”
I thought about Rex’s hardware, in pieces on the dining room table. “He may be awhile. Why don’t you come in?”
A couple of expressions crossed her face. If you don’t want to starve as a PI, you learn them pretty well: uncertainty, faint feelings of foolishness, Oh why am I even here?, and finally—the one that meant money—determination.
She took a deep breath and set her jaw. “I want to hire you, Mr. Baldwin. Or I mean, I want to hire Mr. Rex.”
My eyebrows went up. “To do what?”
“There’s a rumor that you told Mr. Desai that Maya Tomason didn’t kill Dr. Grasso,” she said, looking down at the floor. “Is that true?”
“I did say that, sure.” I led her back to the kitchen, not through the dining room.
“Can you prove that she didn’t do it?”
I bit my lip. “Well. I don’t know that we can prove it yet, but we think it.”
“Then I want to hire you to prove it.”
I had to confess, I hadn’t actually paid a lot of attention to Jeanne Duvalier up until then. She’d seemed to be on the periphery before, and I got the feeling she faded into the background a lot. But she’d walked in on a corpse and hadn’t lost her head, which ought to count for something.
“Why? What’s your stake in this?”
The look on her face was hard to read, even for me. “Maya Tomason is an old friend of my parents. She’s been a good friend to me. She helped me with my grad school applications, and helped me get my job. She even stood up to Dr. Grasso’s bullying. It’s my turn to help her, but I don’t know how except to ask you.”
I mulled that over. It wasn’t unheard of. Call me cynical, but I thought there might be more to it than that. I knew a guy once who’d been hired to look for something minor, and it turned out his client was trying to get him to “just happen to find” some planted evidence.
Duvalier looked antsy as the conversation lulled. “I have ten thousand dollars.”
Of course she did.
“Hang on a minute,” I said. “Let’s be clear, here. What exactly are you trying to hire us to do?”
“Prove to the police that Maya didn’t kill Dr. Grasso.”
“What if she did?”
“She didn’t. You said she didn’t.”
“Yeah, sure, but what if she did?” I held up my hand. “I’m not saying she did. I’m saying we’re not perfect and could be wrong. She’s not defending herself. Maybe she killed him by freak accident. I just want to make it clear that if there’s no proof to be found, then no proof will be found.”
She stiffened up and nodded once. “I understand. I’m not asking you to lie for anyone.”
I thought about Rex, who was incommunicado. She wasn’t asking him to do anything he wasn’t already planning to, possibly. He probably wouldn’t appreciate this interference, though. “Good, “ I said. “Gimme a dollar.”
A look of surprise crossed her face, then concentration. “You have to accept the transfer.”
I pointed my thumb at the dining room. “Can’t, that’s my implant on the table. How about a bill, you got a dollar bill?”
She gave me a very strange look, but took a small wallet out of her bag. I held out my palm, onto which she gingerly placed one translucent green polymer portrait of George Washington.
“All right,” I said, snapping the bill taut. “This dollar is a retainer. If Rex takes the case, we keep the dollar. If not, I give the dollar back to you. If Maya Tomason didn’t kill Grasso, we’ll prove it and keep the dollar. If she did kill him, then all bets are off and I give the dollar back. If you yourself killed Grasso, we are not obligated in any way to shield you, and I keep the dollar out of spite. Understand?”
“I understand.”
“Good.” I put the dollar in my pocket. (I still have it somewhere, as a souvenir.) She let me pour her some coffee, into which she added half of my remaining milk, but no sugar. “I need to ask you a few questions, since you’re here.”
“Will what I say help?”
“I sure hope so.” I took a sip of the bitter brew I’d poured for myself, grimaced, and dumped more sugar in.
She nodded, so I proceeded.
“Why did you leave the seminar?”
“How do you know that I did?”
“Call it a guess.” Hell, it had worked once already, and Tomason had seemed pretty sore on the point. Besides, it sounded like the kind of shindig I’d skip out on, too.
She frowned at me. “I just needed to use the restroom, that was all. I was nervous before my presentation.”
“Anyone see you go?”
“I told Dr. Tomason that I was going to the restroom and would be right back.”
I thought that was interesting, but I didn’t say so.
“Did you see or talk to anyone while you were out?”
“No.”
“Did you make a note of the time you left and came back?”
“No.”
“Under these circumstances, then, will you admit the possibility that you had enough time and cover to go to the second floor lab and murder Antonio Grasso?”
Her eyes hardened, but she was tougher than I’d have given her credit for. “It is theoretically possible. But I didn’t.”
“All right. Did you actually go to the restroom?”
“Yes.” She hesitated. “I was so nervous I threw up.”
“Nervous about your presentation.”
“Yes,” she said. “Of course.”
“Anyone hear you?”
She winced, then nodded. “I’m pretty sure. I don’t know who, though, I just saw shoes.”
“All right, then the police will find her, and there’s your alibi or at least part of it. And you didn’t leave the seminar after you went back? Did you see Joshi or Tomason leave?”
“No, that was the only time I left. I looked for Dr. Joshi, but the room was dark. Dr. Tomason came back after my presentation. Um, five minutes later, maybe?”
“Gotcha. How’d the presentation go?”
She smiled. “All right, thank you. I got no more or less than the usual polite applause. After the seminar I went to my cubicle on the fourth floor. I was just getting back to work when Dr. Joshi came by for an H5 connector. I thought I had one in my desk, but it wasn’t there, and he said he’d already looked elsewhere. Dr. Grasso had told him earlier that he could borrow one, but he didn’t know where they were kept.”
“The second floor lab, where you used to work.”
“Right. And . . . well, you know the rest.”
“I seem to recall it, yeah.”
Her coffee was gone, and I could tell that her patience nearly was, too. She had circles under her eyes, looked like she hadn’t slept.
I tossed back the sugary dregs of my coffee, thanked her for her time, and walked her past the office to show her the door.
The implant was ready when I got back, and Haumea installed it for me. I can never get used to that grating feeling inside my head as it slides in and then latches home. She waited for it to boot up, watching me carefully. The Jeeves OS logo was gone; in its place I saw a glowing green magnifying glass and deerstalker cap in my heads-up display.
«Excellent. This is most suitable.»
Haumea took off, and I filled Rex in on Duvalier’s visit and her status as temporary client. At his request, I recounted the conversation as best I was able.
«Confound you, Andy. We do not require a client. Losing the prior one has been complication enough.»
“That may be, but we have one. I can tell her to buzz off and try to give her her dollar back.”
«You have not received any transfer of payment.»
«You have taken her property.»
“I have.”
«Return it.»
“Well sure, I can try. She may not accept it. She might insist that we keep her property, even though we have rendered no service, in the hopes that we will change our minds. And don’t confound me again, I’m thoroughly confounded already. No room for further confounding here.”
«There is no help for it, then. Of five suspects, we have taken money from two of them and committed ourselves to vindicating a third. This does not improve our position.»
“Well, don’t look now, but there’s good odds that Tomason really did do it. We know she’s been lying to us and to the police, and she’s not even that good of a liar. We know she went up to Grasso’s office, and I’ll lay even money that she searched it and maybe took something. And if Grasso was working up something against Duvalier, then Tomason’s got motive. She’s wound up good and tight about something, and it seems to me that if she’s mixed up in murder and dealing with the kind of people who grabbed me the other night, that would do the trick.”
«Indeed. Moreover, Detective Stevens has volunteered that Dr. Tomason’s whereabouts between nine fifty-five and ten-ten are unaccounted for.»
I headed back to the office. It was a nice big space, furnished beautifully in dark-stained wood and burgundy carpets. The bookshelves were crammed with leather-bound books, which were in turn crammed with long, fancy titles. Behind a polished desk the size of a yacht sat a brand-new overstuffed leather armchair. Cute.
“Why was Stevens here, anyway?”
«She was angry that we had apparently withheld proof of Dr. Tomason’s innocence. I invited her here to talk and trade notes. She was disappointed not to find a human being here, and suggested that I was wasting her time when a voice or video call would have done.»
I thought she had a point, but Rex blathered on about how that’s not how it’s done in books. I reminded him that they’re just fiction, and pretty much ignored what came out of my implant speaker after that. I grabbed a book off the shelf with the fancy title Fer-de-Lance, rounded the desk, and plopped down.