The Green Trap

by Ben Bova

  “Michael Cochrane, please. He’s expecting me.”

  “And you are?” she asked. She was a pert redhead, her hair full of curls, her smile seemingly genuine.

  “Paul Cochrane. His brother.”

  Her brows arched. “You don’t look like brothers.”

  “I know,” he said, almost ruefully. All his life he’d heard that.

  She turned slightly to tap at her keyboard and Cochrane saw that she had a miniaturized microphone next to her lips on that side of her face. A wire-thin arm extended up into her bountiful curls, which hid her earplug.

  She frowned slightly. “He’s not answering, Mr. Cochrane.”

  “He’s probably busy. Maybe I could go back and knock on his door?”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible,” she said, shaking her head. “Security, you know. He has to come out here and escort you in.”

  “But he asked me to come out here and see him,” Cochrane insisted. “He’s expecting me.”

  She shook her head. “You’re not on the expected list, Mr. Cochrane. I’m afraid there’s nothing—Oh! That’s funny.”

  “What?”

  “His voice mail just went into its ‘out of office’ message. He’s left the building.”

  “What? Just now?”

  “I guess. Maybe you can catch him in the parking lot.”

  “What’s he drive?”

  The receptionist grinned knowingly. “A Fiat Spider convertible. Fire-engine red. Great car.” Tapping at her computer keyboard, she added, “Slot number fourteen. That’s around back.”

  “Thanks.”

  Cochrane hurried out of the lobby and sprinted around the square building, limping slightly on his bad leg. Mike probably just remembered he’s supposed to pick me up at the airport, he grumbled to himself. Several cars were leaving the parking area, but he didn’t see a red convertible among them and slot fourteen was empty. No Fiat Spider in sight.

  “Sonofabitch,” Cochrane muttered. “He’s gone to the frigging airport. Or he forgot all about my coming here today and went home.”

  Walking slowly back to his rental car, Cochrane phoned his brother’s home number. This time the answering machine’s message was in Mike’s wife’s voice. Nobody was home, Irene pronounced slowly and distinctly, like the kindergarten teacher that she was. Please leave your name and number. Christ, Cochrane said to himself, I hope they haven’t taken off for the weekend. That’d be just like him, the irresponsible pain in the ass.

  With the GPS tracker mounted on the rental car’s dashboard, Cochrane left the highway and headed for Mike’s house, maneuvering through residential streets until he found the place. It was an unpretentious clapboard two-story house, painted white with Kelly-green trim and a neat little lawn in front bordered by pretty flowers. A hefty silver SUV sat in the driveway: a Chrysler gas-guzzler, Cochrane saw. No Fiat Spider, though.

  Cochrane pulled up on the driveway beside the SUV and got out of his Corolla. He rang the doorbell once, twice. No answer. He tried the doorknob; locked. Feeling angrier by the microsecond, he went to the garage and stood on tiptoe to peer through the dusty windows of the garage door. It was empty.

  Shit! He’s at the goddamned airport looking for me and getting mad, Cochrane said to himself. I was an idiot to come out here. Maybe this is Mike’s idea of a practical joke, get me out here on the promise of paying what he owes me and then leaving me hanging here like a stupid fool. My big brother, the wise-ass. He’s got the laugh on me on this one, all right.

  He thought about leaving a blistering message on Mike’s cell phone but decided against it. Not with Mike’s unforgiving temper. Never say something you’ll regret later, he told himself. Dad’s wisdom. All those years of letting Mom nag and complain without ever yelling back at her. People thought Dad was pussywhipped. Cochrane knew better. He just didn’t care what Mom said. It wasn’t important to him.

  Instead, Cochrane told his brother’s cell phone which hotel he’d be at, waiting for him. It was hard to keep the irritation out of his voice.

  The university travel office had reserved a room for him at the Days Inn in Redwood City, the lowest hotel rate they could find in the Palo Alto area. Friday going-home traffic was jamming the highway now and as Cochrane inched along, fuming over his brother’s thoughtlessness, he decided he’d check out the next morning and get the hell home and let his brother laugh at him all he wanted to.

  Damn! He asked me to come out here. And then he just leaves me here stuck in traffic like a goddamned idiot. No wonder he and Irene never had kids. Mike’d forget where the hell he left them. He’s so goddamned completely self-centered.

  Cochrane was feeling sweaty and thoroughly aggravated by the time the little map on the GPS dashboard display told him to take the next off-ramp. It took nearly ten minutes to inch through the crawling traffic and finally get off the highway. He passed a sign warning that minimum speed was forty. He’d been unable to get up to fifteen for the past half hour.

  At the hotel’s front desk he informed the room clerk that he’d be checking out in the morning instead of staying the weekend. The clerk didn’t bat an eye. He rolled his travel bag to his room and didn’t bother to unpack it; he merely pulled his laptop computer and toiletries kit from the bag and went into the bathroom for a long, steamy shower. Mike didn’t call.

  After a mediocre, solitary dinner, Cochrane went to his room and tried the home phone again. Again Irene’s voice-mail message. Fuming, he watched television for a while, then turned in. He tossed uncomfortably on the hotel bed: the pillows were too thin, the air conditioner too loud. The room smelled funny, like disinfectant. At last he fell asleep and dreamed of being a little boy lost in an airport.

  A pounding on the door awakened him. Startled, he sat up in the bed, blinking sleep from his eyes. Squinting, he saw that the digital clock on the bed table’s green glowing display read 1:38 A.M.

  The door thundered again. “Police! Open up!”

  Cochrane hadn’t packed a robe. Still slightly fuddled with sleep, he clicked on the bedside lamp, then grabbed for his jeans, thrown over the room’s only chair.

  “What do you want?” he called as he pulled the jeans on.

  “We want to talk to Paul Cochrane.”

  Cochrane pulled on his glasses, then grabbed his shirt and wormed his arms into it. Without bothering to button it, he went to the door and peered through the peephole. Two men in dark suits stood out in the hall: one white, one black. They sure looked like cops, he thought.

  “Can I see some identification?”

  The black man pulled a slim wallet from his back pocket and let it fall open in front of the peephole. Cochrane saw a silver badge.

  He unlatched the security chain and opened the door. The two police detectives pushed in, forcing Cochrane backward toward the bed.

  “What’s this about?” he asked, trying to sound resolute.

  The detectives’ eyes shifted, taking in the whole room, the meager furnishings, Cochrane’s opened bag on the stand next to the television.

  “You’re Paul Cochrane,” the black man said, more of a statement than a question.

  “Yes.”

  “You have a brother, Michael?” asked the white detective. He was burly, sour-faced, his eyes sagging, his mouth curved downward.

  “Yeah. What’s happened?”

  “Sorry to break the news, sir,” said the black man. “I’m afraid your brother is dead.”

  “Dead?” Cochrane’s knees went wobbly.

  “Murdered,” said the white cop.

  Cochrane sank down onto the rumpled bed.

  REDWOOD CITY:

  DAYS INN

  Murdered?” Cochrane heard his voice squeak.

  “A blow to the head with a blunt object,” said the sad-eyed white detective. “In his office at the…” He hesitated a moment.

  “The Calvin Research Center,” the black detective finished for him.

  “Mike? Murdered?” Cochrane couldn’t
get his mind around the idea. “Are you certain it’s him?”

  The white cop pulled a three-by-five oblong of photographic paper from his inside jacket pocket. “This your brother?”

  Cochrane took the photo in a trembling hand. And almost retched. Mike’s face was distorted, his mouth twisted, his eyes open and staring blankly, his hair matted with blood that pooled beneath his battered head.

  “Well?”

  Fighting back the bile burning up his throat, Cochrane handed the photo back to the detective. “That… that’s my brother,” he managed to say.

  “Several people at the research lab identified the body,” said the black man.

  Cochrane sat on the bed, breathing hard, staring at the floor. He realized that he was barefoot; it made him feel stupid, exposed.

  “I’m Sergeant McLain,” the white cop said. “He’s Sergeant Purvis. We need to ask you a few questions.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Cochrane murmured, barely hearing him. “Go right ahead.”

  McLain pulled a slim notepad from his jacket pocket and flicked it open. The only light in the room was from the bedside lamp. He squinted and read, “You arrived at San Francisco International at three-eighteen this afternoon, right?”

  Cochrane nodded as Purvis pulled the chair from the corner, turned it around, and sat on it backward, facing Cochrane, his arms folded on the chair’s back.

  Still standing, McLain said, “You drove past this motel and went straight to the Calvin lab, didn’t you? The receptionist remembers you coming in around four, four-fifteen.”

  “That’s right. My brother wasn’t there.”

  “Yes, he was,” said Purvis softly.

  Before Cochrane could react to that, McLain said, “You had time to meet your brother out back in the parking lot first. He’d bring you into the building through the rear entrance. You could have doubled back to the parking lot and then come in the front way, so the receptionist would see you.”

  Realizing what the detective was saying, Cochrane protested, “That’s not true! I didn’t—”

  McLain went on, “Then you drove here to the motel, checked in, and made sure plenty of people saw you having dinner in the restaurant. And you told the room clerk you were checking out tomorrow instead of staying the whole weekend.”

  “I didn’t kill my brother!”

  McLain’s hard expression didn’t alter by a millimeter. “I didn’t say you did. I’m just talking theoretical.”

  “I didn’t kill Mike. I didn’t even see him.”

  Purvis said, “He was murdered just about the time you were at the lab.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Cochrane repeated.

  “You were at his house, too,” McLain added. “Fingerprints on the front door, the garage door. What were you looking for?”

  “My brother!”

  For a long moment McLain stood in sour-faced silence in the middle of the motel room, his shadow against the wall huge and menacing in the light from the bedside lamp. Purvis sat straddling the chair, his eyes boring into Cochrane.

  Cochrane remembered, “Wait a minute. At first the receptionist said his phone didn’t answer. Then it went into the voice-mail mode. While I was there in the lobby! You can ask her.”

  Purvis looked up at his partner. “That means that his brother was murdered while he was in the lobby.”

  “If he’s telling the truth,” McLain said, as if Cochrane weren’t there.

  “It’s the truth!” Cochrane insisted.

  “We can check it out easy enough,” said Purvis.

  McLain seemed to think it over, his baggy eyes studying Cochrane all the while. At last he nodded to Purvis. “Okay, that’s it. For now. Let’s go, Ty.”

  Purvis got to his feet, then fetched a card from his shirt pocket. “You think of anything, anything at all, give me a call.”

  Struggling to his feet, Cochrane accepted the card, his hand still trembling. “I’ve got to get back to Tucson. My job….”

  “We can’t keep you here,” McLain said, sounding disappointed about it. “Just don’t try to leave the country.”

  Cochrane shook his head. The two policemen left, closing the door softly behind them. Cochrane went back to the bed and sat on it. He sank his head in his hands.

  Mike’s dead. Murdered. Somebody killed him while I was in the fucking lobby of the building asking for him. Who in the name of Jesus H. Christ would kill Mike? Why?

  He fell back on the bed, his unbuttoned shirt crumpled against his back.

  Irene! he thought. Mike’s wife. Where is she? Where was she when Mike was killed?

  Sitting up again, he reached for the phone on the bed table, then realized he hadn’t memorized Mike’s number. He opened the drawer and fumbled for his cell phone, pressed buttons until his brother’s home number came up in the tiny screen.

  Irene’s patient schoolteacher’s voice said mechanically, “We’re not home at the moment. Please—”

  Cochrane snapped his cell phone shut.

  Mike. Cochrane saw in his mind the redheaded kid he’d played baseball with. The older brother who’d lorded it over him all his life. The grown man with the wise-guy grin and the endless enthusiasm for everything he did. And the hair-trigger temper. He’s dead. Somebody bashed his skull in while I was standing a couple of hundred feet away like a stupid idiot

  On an impulse he tried Mike’s cell number again. He can’t be dead. This is all some kind of mistake. He’ll answer the phone and—

  “Hey, I can’t take your call right now. Leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you pronto.”

  Cochrane shook his head. No, Mikey, you won’t get back to me. Not ever.

  He clicked the phone shut and wondered why he couldn’t cry. He wanted to. But the tears would not come.

  Melvin Calvin

  A member of the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley from 1937 until his death in 1997, Calvin received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for identifying the path of carbon in photosynthesis, which led him to a lifelong interest in adapting photosynthetic techniques for energy production. In his final years of research, Calvin studied the use of oil-producing plants as renewable sources of energy. He also spent many years testing the chemical evolution of life and wrote a book on the subject that was published in 1969.

  TUCSON:

  STEWARD OBSERVATORY

  Cochrane sat behind his desk wondering if he was sinking into paranoia. His office had only one window; it looked out on the campus, mostly concrete with a few trees offering scant shade to the students who walked or bicycled along the paved paths between buildings.

  He’d gotten back to Tucson late Saturday afternoon, after spending most of the day in the San Francisco airport waiting for an available flight. By the time he’d reached his apartment building just off the campus, he was exhausted. But there was something subtly wrong about his living room, something that sent a chill of anxiety up his spine.

  It wasn’t that the place had been ransacked; the apartment seemed as neat and orderly as when he’d left it. But he didn’t remember leaving the newspapers on the sofa like that, and he never stacked his journals in the bookcase flat on their covers, he always stood them up, spines facing out.

  Somebody’s been in here, he thought. Cochrane searched through the apartment. Nothing much seemed out of place, really. Nothing stolen. Not that there was anything much to steal. Living room, bedroom, everything as he’d left it, pretty much. Maybe I did leave the newspapers on the sofa, he said to himself, scratching his head as he stood in the middle of the living room.

  He went to the kitchen and opened the dishwasher. It was empty. He distinctly remembered it held a week’s worth of dirty dishes; he’d turned it on just before he’d left.

  The dishes and glasses were back in their cabinets now. The forks and spoons were in their drawer.

  A burglar who doesn’t take anything and leaves the place neat and tidy? Cochrane shook his head. What was he looking for? How could
he get in? The front door was still locked when I got here.

  Puzzled and more than a little worried about his own mental state, Cochrane went to bed. Mike’s murder is making you paranoid, he told himself. Sleep it off.

  He awoke early Sunday morning, the vague memory of unpleasant dreams troubling him as he showered, shaved, and then phoned Irene again. Still nothing but the damned answering machine message.

  He made up his mind to go to his office. Nothing better to do, and the silent apartment gave him the creeps. The campus was quiet as he parked in his assigned slot in the cavernous parking garage. He walked slowly to the observatory building, paying no attention to the scent of orange blossoms that wafted on the cool morning breeze or the bees that hummed tirelessly from flower to flower. His leg throbbed sullenly, but exercise was good for it, according to the doctors. A pair of National Guard jets growled through the cloudless blue sky as he pushed open the building’s front door.

  Once in his office, Cochrane couldn’t work up the interest to boot up his computer. He simply slouched in his desk chair and swiveled around to stare out the window. He tried to phone Irene again and got the damned answering machine message once more.

  I should’ve stayed in Palo Alto, he said to himself. I should’ve gone to the house. She must be home. Maybe I could’ve gotten those cops to find her for me. Absently, he dipped a finger into his shirt pocket, then realized he’d left the card Sergeant Purvis had given him at his apartment.

  Then a new thought hit him. Maybe they killed her, too! Maybe she’s lying dead in their house. The SUV was parked out on the driveway. Jesus!

  He picked up the phone on his desk and punched out Mike’s home number again. The phone rang once, twice…

  “Dr. Cochrane?”

  He looked up. A young woman was standing in his office doorway. No student, he immediately realized. Too well dressed. She was wearing a tailored white blouse and a midthigh skirt of deep green. Her face was oval, with lustrous dark hair pulled back tightly. Green eyes, almond-shaped, almost Oriental. Good figure. Nice legs.