by Linda Barnes
He shook his head slowly. “Money?”
“Money, jewelry, information. How do you make sure people don’t take stuff out of the building?”
“Shit. The cleaning crew?”
“Not the whole crew, just one bad apple. What could he do?”
“Let me see.” He leaned back, seemed to be running a floor plan through his head.
I said, “Maybe you could let me see.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’d like to look around the place, if that’s okay with you. It would help if I could see the setup.”
I watched him decide. Eddie had told him to cooperate. He’d enjoyed his lunch.
“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”
I paid the bill and we walked back, right past the startled receptionist and down the hall. Once through another set of doors, I could see that a designer had made an attempt to counter the sterility of the reception area. The walls were pale gray, the carpet an agreeable blue. Tall floor plants and an occasional ficus tree added green to the color scheme. It could have been a stockbroker’s office or a suite of medical offices. I inhaled. The air was chilly and I couldn’t identify the faint underlying odor.
“Foundation bring in the camera unit in the foyer?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Before, they didn’t have shit. We got cameras at all the exits.”
“They lose anything before you got brought in?”
“Not that I know of.”
“I was just wondering why they decided to beef up security.”
He shrugged.
We passed several doors with see-through glass panels.
“Main lab,” Spengler said.
“Is that on-camera?”
“No, just the exits.”
Dowling, once inside the place, would have had free reign. A low hum came from the general direction of the lab. I peered inside, saw long flat tables, racks of tubes and flasks, microscopes hooked up to computer screens. Some of the machines looked similar to those in the forensic-technology lab at Schroeder Plaza, the new police headquarters building. Two walls were covered with whiteboard, and a complicated series of letters, numbers, arrows, and tree formations was scrawled on them in vivid primary colors. Two figures in lab coats, one of them Asian, stood in front of an equation, pointing and gesturing. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
“Are there limits to what employees can bring in and out?” I asked.
“You bet. No discs in, no discs out. Guys gotta open their briefcases or backpacks if we ask, but, tell the truth, once we know the guy’s a legit hire and he’s been around for a while, we don’t ask, because if these guys want to get stuff out, they’re gonna get stuff out. They sign agreements when they sign on to work here, nondisclosure and shit, so the best defense is the legal department. A lot of this stuff, it’s not patented yet, just ideas. So you gotta trust the people you hire.”
“I see,” I said, trying to keep him juiced, keep him talking.
“That’s one of the reasons I’m not killing myself over the cleaning crew. You know, maybe they’ll take a few bucks somebody leaves in a drawer, but what else are they gonna take? They wouldn’t recognize what’s worth stealing.”
I smiled. “What is worth stealing?”
“You kidding? Read the newspapers. Most of these little biotech shops, they’re hoping Johnson & Johnson or some other big pharma’s gonna come in here and buy them, take ’em over. Only suppose Johnson & Johnson doesn’t need to buy what they got, suppose they can just steal it?”
“Drug formulas.”
“Yeah, and processes. How you put it together. Till the patent’s fixed, till it’s all registered in Washington, D.C., everything’s up for grabs. Shit like that happens. It’s like there’s stuff in the air, ideas. One scientist reads the same article as another, and, wham, the lightbulb goes off at the same time.”
As we walked, the architecture of the place became obvious. The big lab was the central block, with windows onto the courtyard and several doors onto different corridors. The individual offices were in the outer square, windowless cubicles. We passed a corner office with Helving’s name on the door. Spengler kept walking toward another door, one without a nameplate.
“This is where the security people hang out. I thought we’d check and see if there are any theft reports I’m not aware of.”
He spoke as if this would be a remote possibility. I was wondered why Fording held a position on the Scientific Advisory Group’s board, and what that position meant in terms of his relationship with Chaney, his subordinate at the ed school. Chaney had assured me Fording would toss him to the wolves if he were accused of sexual misconduct. Fording had maintained his support for his colleague. Which one was telling the truth?
In a small room, a scrawny man in Foundation garb stared at a bank of security cameras. As soon as he heard Spengler open the door, he slipped headphones off his ears, tried to stuff them into a drawer, forgetting in his haste to turn the power off. The sound was cranked up so loud, I could hear it, and I could tell by the look on Spengler’s face that he could hear it, too.
“Hey, Joe,” the scrawny guy said, fastening a phony smile across a round face. “How ya doin’? Introduce me to your lady.”
“She’s a PI, jackass, and I told you not to listen to that heavy-metal shit while you’re watching the screens. Fire alarm goes off, you won’t even hear it. Miss Carlyle, meet Gordo.”
“She’s a PI?” He sounded like he didn’t believe it.
“Look, we had any trouble with theft lately?”
“Nah.”
“Any other kind of trouble?” I asked.
“Such as?”
Spengler jumped in before I could reply. “Looks like we got a con working a cleaning crew.”
“No shit. That place is fucking bonded. We should get their ass.”
“There haven’t been any complaints?”
Gordo bit his lip and furrowed his brow. “Nah. Hey, the con, she a woman?”
Spengler shrugged, glanced at me.
I said, “No, a man.”
“Oh,” the moon-faced Gordo said, “okay, then it’s not what I thought.”
“What are you talking about, jackass?” Spengler asked.
“Remember?” he said. “I’m sure I told you. You know, about that other PI—can you believe it, a broad, too—excuse me, a lady, a woman, the one who wanted to take a look at everybody on the cleaning crew, everybody came in for the clinical meetings, everybody in the whole damn place. Smoked like a chimney, and when I ask her to put it out, she launches into this whole shit storm about fucking Massachusetts, how we don’t leave anybody alone, no smoking, no drinking, no—”
“I don’t remember you saying anything.” Spengler’s tone was ominous.
“She find what she wanted?” I asked.
The guy shrugged, sorry he’d mentioned it, but I didn’t intend to abandon the subject. Two PIs nosing around one business was out of the ordinary. It gave credence to Chaney’s theory: Dowling might have been blackmailing another employee.
“You said the PI was looking for a woman?”
“Nah, it was just … well, she’s a woman, and she didn’t seem right somehow. But if you know the con’s on the cleaning crew, well, then it isn’t her, is it? Plus, she said she’d be back, but she didn’t come.”
“Then maybe she did find what she was after,” I said. “You showed her the surveillance tapes?”
“Yeah. Nothing wrong in that, is there, Joe?”
“How many did she look at? She have a specific time period in mind?”
“February, March, but like I told her, we only keep tape for two weeks. It’s not like we got tons of room to store old tapes. We reuse ’em.”
“But she still wanted to look.”
“Right. While she smoked and swore at me. She was pretty gung ho, pretty damn eager, like it was gonna mean a fat promotion for her or something. Said she’d be back, seemed pretty damn sure ab
out it, too, but then she never shows up. Can you believe that?” He sounded angry, as though she’d promised him cash and never delivered.
“Can you show me the tapes?” I asked.
“Which ones?”
“The ones she watched.”
“Nah. Ones I showed her, they been taped over already.”
“Did she say why she was going to come back?”
He shrugged. He knew all right, but he was lying. He wasn’t skilled at it.
“What did the person look like, the one she was watching for on the tapes?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Yeah, but you’re not dumb. She’d stop the tape, freeze the frame when a certain type came on-screen. A certain person. You must have noticed.” I was shamelessly flattering the man. Often, that works.
He made a face. “I dunno. I wasn’t payin’ all that much attention, tell the truth.”
“You remember her name?”
“Nah.”
“She tell you her name?”
“I think so, but I can’t remember it.”
“She give you a card?”
“Hey, jackass,” Spengler said. “How about some cooperation?”
“Hey, yeah, I believe she did.”
The business card wasn’t in the top drawer of the desk, the place Gordo seemed to think he’d find it. Wasn’t in a file marked “miscellaneous,” which is where Spengler expected it to be. Once he saw that the search was going to be a protracted one, Gordo reluctantly realized he must have stuck the lady’s card in his wallet by mistake.
Spengler said, “You dupe a tape for her? What did she pay you?”
“Shit,” Gordo said. “Just one. Hey, for a hundred bucks, you’da done it.”
“I’d have told my boss about it,” Spengler said.
“Hey, I figured it didn’t have anything to do with this place. You know what those PIs do. It’s some guy cheating on his wife is all. None of Foundation’s business.”
Spengler blew out a breath and looked at me. I shrugged.
“I want that tape,” Spengler said.
Gordo said, “Well, I ain’t got it no more. She didn’t show, so I tossed it.”
“Which one was it?”
“We ain’t got it no more. Some February, March shit. Nothing special. It’s been taped over five times by now. Hey, sorry. Sorry I brought it up.”
Spengler asked him a couple of other sharp questions—about the female PI, about missing packages, mail gone astray, everything down to lost umbrellas, but to no avail. Gordo had decided to clam. I didn’t think he was holding back. Spengler offered me the other PI’s business card and I gave it a quick glance before tucking it in a pocket. No one I knew.
“I’ll be sure to let Eddie know how much I appreciate your help.” I shook Spengler’s hand.
“Thanks,” he said. “You give PIs a good name.”
“Not like that other bitch,” Gordo muttered.
Spengler gave him a look that said his days with Foundation were numbered.
CHAPTER 28
My cell shrilled as I walked back to the car. It was Chaney. He said he couldn’t meet me at Improvisational Technologies after all. His teaching assistant desperately needed to go over tomorrow’s class work; a review was essential.
I accepted the weak excuse without protest. “Not a problem. Tell me, did Denali Brinkman ever work at Impro?”
“No. She was an undergrad.”
“Did she ever visit?”
“I think so.” He sounded hesitant. “Occasionally. We went in late at night. None of my colleagues would have seen her with me.”
The lovers would have appeared together on the surveillance tapes. I pictured the unknown PI in the small room I’d just vacated, viewing the flickering screen, watching. Watching for what? For whom? If I hadn’t already known the identity of Chaney’s blackmailer, I might have imagined that the other PI, someone less than honest, worked for him, scouting possible victims.
I’d seen Dowling pick up the money with my own eyes, but maybe I’d jumped to the wrong conclusion. Maybe Benjy was the one working for someone else, someone who’d tired of him, killed him, and now wanted Chaney to pay for the crime.
My client murmured another apology and hung up.
Who else would have hired an investigator? A competing drug-development company wouldn’t be interested in exits and entrances. Margo Chaney’s aristocratic face flashed through my mind, Mrs. Chaney, practically bedridden. She’d asked whether I was the kind of investigator you hired if you suspected your husband was unfaithful.
I glanced at my watch: 3:30. The business card I removed from my pocket was battered, as though Gordo, the guard, had crumpled it before smoothing it into his wallet, but it was legible, black print on cream-colored stock. Helen Orza, Investigations. No address, but a phone number with a 603 area code. New Hampshire, the Live Free or Die state. I settled into my car, which had been neither towed nor ticketed, despite the steak house’s dire warning, and reached for my cell.
I got a recorded message. “Hey, it’s Helen. Leave your number, hon, and I’ll get back to you.” Very professional, I thought sourly. I left a message, emphasizing that it was urgent. The lack of address was frustrating, but I didn’t think it odd, not for a woman in this business. I wondered fleetingly if the phone was a cell, if the woman worked out of her local Starbucks. I could find her in a cross-referenced directory if I had to, provided the number wasn’t for a cell.
All I needed was for this damned hydra case to sprout a head from New Hampshire. Not that New Hampshire’s far away, but why couldn’t Helen Orza have lived on Memorial Drive, along my pathway home? On the way to Harvard’s Admissions office?
I checked my battery, then used the phone again, this time to call Fitch’s office. Yes, the receptionist recalled my visit. I told her how extremely grateful I was for her help, explained that while she’d given me Albert Brinkman’s address and Brian Dowling’s address earlier in the day—she did remember that, didn’t she?—I’d forgotten to get the name of the gentleman at Harvard’s Admissions office who’d been so helpful to Mr. Fitch in the Brinkman matter.
She informed me that Mr. Fitch was unavailable. News flash. I feigned dismay, intimated that I’d probably lose my job because of my dumb, dumb mistake. My boss really needed that name.
She was young, new to the job. She wanted everyone to like her and she didn’t want me to get in trouble. She zapped me on hold, then came back a few seconds later to eagerly reveal that Horace Matheson was the name I wanted. I thanked her gravely. She wasn’t going to last long in the legal business.
I hung a quick left out of the steak house’s lot. Fitch, the lawyer, had given me the gift of advice: Don’t discuss Brinkman’s sudden withdrawal from the case with Harvard’s legal representative; talk to someone in Admissions instead. Was it genuine advice, or a stall? You don’t get to work in Admissions unless you have some discretion, and I wondered what tool I could use to pry information out of Matheson. Brinkman was dead; there was no compelling reason for her file to remain confidential, but there was no compelling reason to release information, either.
The office for undergrad admissions is housed in Byerly Hall, one of three main buildings linked by colonnades in dignified Radcliffe Yard, between Brattle and Garden streets. The building’s known less for its architecture than for the multiple chimneys that vent the laboratories inside. They worked well; instead of stinking of chemicals, the entryway smelled of old books and fresh coffee, and I wondered if Harvard had found a way to bottle the scent, like new-car spray.
I followed discreet signs to the Admissions office. It was high-ceilinged and spacious, with a reception desk set far enough from the door to allow easy entry. When I asked to see Mr. Matheson, the receptionist gave me raised eyebrows and a quick once-over.
“You have an appointment?”
I handed over a card. “I can wait.”
I can wait—the most fearsome words a receptionist he
ars. The dark-haired woman eyed my card, caught private investigator, and hesitated, one hand on the telephone, considering, perhaps, the effect the announcement that a private investigator wished to see Mr. Matheson might have on the assembled doting parents and potential students.
“I’ll be right back,” she said firmly as she disappeared down the hall.
The waiting area had twin sofas, four upholstered chairs, two reading lamps, and a coffee table stacked with copies of Harvard Magazine and the Harvard Crimson, the undergraduate newspaper. A young man with a stalk for a neck and wire-rimmed glasses sat next to his similarly long-necked mother on one of the sofas. They clutched various maps of the area. A teenage girl, wearing a black suit, occupied one of the armchairs. Her attire was designed to make her look more sophisticated, but it wasn’t working. She kept staring around the office and grinning widely. Every time someone entered, she glanced up eagerly, as though expecting Tommy Lee Jones to stroll through the room. No, not Tommy Lee. Her age, she’d be happier with Matt Damon or Ben Affleck. Natalie Portman. I wondered whether Harvard would live up to her expectations. A youngster who looked barely sixteen had another chair. He read the Wall Street Journal with devoted intensity.
One reason I was so willing to wait was that I’d brought my reading material with me. I sat as far as I could from the door, the desk, other people. I didn’t want anyone peering at Denali Brinkman’s autopsy report over my shoulder.
Here’s the deal: When I was a cop, the guys made a big production out of trying to gross out the rookie broad. They made book on how long I’d be able to stand waiting in a stifling bedroom with a bloated corpse for the ME’s crew to show up and haul the body away, on whether I’d puke during autopsies. I’d steeled myself, and little by little, by not passing out, not crying off, refusing to react, I passed the stupid hazing ritual.
The yellow envelope measured ten by fourteen. I opened the string closure and slid out seven typed pages.
The name on the initial sheet was Jane Doe, but someone had crossed it out with typed X’s and written in “Denali Brinkman.” “Approximate Age” came next: “20–30 years.” “Sex: female. Height: 60″ (residual). Weight: not applicable.”