That Sleep of Death

by Richard King

  “I had heard that Professor Hilliard was instrumental in getting Professor Miller-More her job here.”

  “Harold was in favour of it, certainly. But I hired her.”

  “But she was romantically involved with him at the time, I think.”

  “Yes, for a short time. She was young, after all, and Harold was quite a lady’s man. But Jane is a serious person and Hal wasn’t one for commitment. Jane and I got to know each other over the years of working together and our relationship is built on a very firm foundation of love and respect.”

  What about passion? I wondered. The dean looked every inch the bluff, hearty he-man, but he spoke like a pompous dry stick of an academic. Why a woman would prefer him to the dashing Harold Hilliard was beyond me. But women like stability and solidity. Or so I’m told.

  “I see,” said Gaston. “So there is no truth to the rumours that your wife was contemplating returning to Harold Hilliard?”

  “I haven’t heard any such rumour,” he said, unperturbed. “But of course no one would mention any such nonsense to me. Universities are incredible rumour mills, as I’m sure you’ve discovered in the course of making your inquiries. No, no, there’s no truth to it at all. Jane and I are devoted to each other.”

  “I’m sure it’s just the gossip of the bored, trying to make a story where there is none,” Gaston said. “When was the last time you saw Professor Hilliard?”

  “I think I saw him at the faculty club last week.”

  “And on the morning of the murder, your wife left home at her usual time?”

  “Yes, it was a very ordinary morning, until we heard the news of the murder. My wife was very shocked, as I’m sure you understand.”

  Gaston’s cell phone chose that moment to ring, and he said, “Excuse me, please,” taking the phone out of his inside jacket pocket. He spoke to someone in French, in low tones, then hung up. To Dean More, he said, “Do you know someone named Steve Mandopolous?”

  “Steve? Why, certainly. He’s part of our security team.”

  “Well, it seems that your chief of security, Mr. Alexander, assigned him and a couple of other fellows in his department to search for Hilliard’s computer, which as you may have heard, was missing from his office. And they’ve apparently found it.”

  “Hilliard’s laptop?” I asked, excited.

  Ignoring my question, he asked me, “Do you know where the Mclntyre Science Centre is?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “It’s the round building up on Docteur Penfield Boulevard.”

  “The computer they found may be Hilliard’s. They can’t be sure until they’ve done some checks. Tell me, Mr. More, is there someone on campus who looks after computer installations, programming, that type of thing?”

  “Well,” A strange look passed across More’s face, as if he was trying to do an intensely difficult bit of mental arithmetic, much too fast. “There’s Barbara Young downstairs. She’s in charge of our campus network and the Internet hookups and that kind of thing. I suppose that she’s our resident computer expert.”

  “Please call her and ask her if we could drop by her office later. Tell her we’ll be bringing a computer with us. After the crime unit has had a chance to try to get prints from it, I’d like her to help me find out what’s in the files.”

  Fred More looked a little put out at receiving a direct order from a police detective, but he picked up his phone, pressed a button and said, “Donna, get me Barbara Young down in …” he turned his head and looked at me and then at Gaston, apparently realizing that the two of us, who were not used to university protocol, might be surprised that he was unable to make a simple phone call without help.

  He cleared his throat and said, “Never mind, I’ll do it myself. Just get me her local.”

  He hung up.

  Gaston walked over to the window of Dean More’s office and looked out at the McGill ghetto. Once it was an area of inexpensive greystone buildings, rooming houses, and apartments, but it’s been yuppified over the last few years, and converted back into single-family dwellings and condominiums. There are some high rises that accommodate students, but the urban poor who used to share this neighbourhood with them are gone.

  About ten seconds later, Donna came in and placed a sheet of paper in front of him him. “Will that be all, sir?”

  “No, wait here, Donna. These gentlemen will be leaving in a minute,” he said with a distinct emphasis and a significant look in our direction, “and then we can go over the, the …” he glanced wildly around his bare desk.

  “The registration spread sheets, sir?” asked Donna solicitously.

  Neat save, I thought.

  “Yes, yes.”

  Donna said in soothing voice. “I do have some questions about them.”

  “Of course,” the dean said, pride intact, and called Barbara Young all by himself.

  “Hello, Barbara?” he said. “It’s Fred More calling.” There was a pause while he listened to her and he continued, “Fine thanks. Listen, I’ve got a policeman with me and he needs your help with a computer. He needs to know what’s in it. He’s investigating the Hilliard murder. He wants to know if you’ll be available to meet with him.”

  He covered the mouthpiece and asked Gaston, “When to you want to see her?”

  Gaston looked at his watch and mumbled, to himself as much as to anyone else, “It’s two now and the fingerprint tests will take about an hour plus travel time for the CSU so let’s say between three-thirty and four.”

  “Between three-thirty and four.” Dean More repeated into the phone. “Thanks, Barbara, I’ll tell him.” He hung up and looked at Gaston. “That will be fine. She won’t leave until she sees you.”

  “Thank you. May I use your phone?” Not waiting for Fred More’s agreement, Gaston got up and walked over to the credenza and dialed his office. He told whoever he spoke to where the crime scene team was to go. The person on the other end of the line apparently thought that they had all the time in the world to do this; Gaston, with a commanding edge in his voice, said he wanted the unit there immédiate-ment or faster, if possible. He gave directions, hung up, and turned to Dean More. “Thank you for taking the time to see us.”

  “Not at all,” said More, stiffly. “I’m glad I could help.”

  As we left More’s office I glanced back and observed that he appeared to be a lot more interested in his secretary than he was in the registration statistics.

  “How far is it to the McIntyre building?” Gaston asked.

  “About a five-or ten-minute walk. Just up the hill on Docteur Penfield.”

  We crossed the campus. At McTavish Street we turned and went up past the student union building.

  As we walked I made conversation about the missing,now found computer. “It’s good luck that the computer was found,” I said.

  “Humpf,” Gaston responded. He obviously didn’t like the idea of having to rely on luck and wanted to reserve judgement until he saw the computer and learned how it was found. He puts a lot of meaning into a “humpf.” We passed the rest of the walk in silence.

  In the lobby of the McIntyre building a man of about my age, wearing the uniform of the campus police, was waiting for us. He had neatly combed black hair and eyes as black as printer’s ink. He was standing next to a table on which there was a green plastic garbage holding what I took to be the computer.

  “Mr. Mandopolous?” Gaston said, extending his hand.

  “Inspector Lemieux?” Steve Mandopolous said, shaking the extended hand.

  “This is Sam Wiseman,” Gaston said, introducing me. Steve and I shook hands.

  “Is that the computer?” Gaston asked.

  “Yes. I put it in a garbage bag so as not to ruin any prints.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “I didn’t. The elevator repair people found it. It was on top of one of the elevators. They were inspecting the car and when they went onto the top to check the cabling they noticed it.”

  “Let
’s take a look at it. Put it down on the table.”

  Mandopolous did as he was told. Gaston pulled a set of surgical gloves from his pocket, slipped them on and carefully slid the computer out of the plastic bag. It was stained with black grease but it didn’t look damaged, at least not from the outside. There were no obvious dents or banged corners.

  “Where exactly was it found?”

  “On top of the elevator. We were in luck — the elevators were out of service. It’s their annual inspection,” Steve told Gaston. “Someone must have shoved it down the elevator shaft to get rid of it. Their bad luck that the elevator was stopped between floors.”

  “And our good luck,” I put in.

  “Quite,” agreed Gaston. “The crime lab will have to take a close look at it but I really think that the most important thing about this computer is what’s in it, not what’s on the case. Steve, tell me how you think the computer ended up on top of an elevator car.”

  “Sure.” Steve straightened his back and stood at attention as if he were reporting to a superior officer in the army. “The elevators are inspected once a year. There are a lot of elevators in the university when you consider how many buildings there are so the inspection crew is here pretty much all the time. We’re pretty used to at least one elevator being out of service somewhere on campus and we know the repair men pretty well, almost as if they worked for the university, too.

  “They were in this building testing the doors and the braking mechanism on each floor. The elevator doors can be open between floors while they do their tests. There are danger signs and barriers at each open door to prevent accidents. But it doesn’t prevent someone from tossing something down the elevator shaft. The thing is, it’s really dark in there and you can’t tell if the elevator car is above or below the door you are tossing something through. I believe that the person who tossed this was in a hurry and didn’t realize that the car was just below the level of the open door. So the computer didn’t fall very far. If the car had been above the open door we never would have found this thing. The only place they never inspect is the bottom of the elevator shaft.”

  “Do you know from which floor the computer was thrown into the shaft?”

  “It’s very difficult to say. The last thing they do is crawl out onto the top of the car to check it out. But the repair guys can’t tell when or from where the computer was tossed in. They’d been working on that car for at least two days around the time of the murder so there was a lot of opportunity to use the elevator shaft to dispose of unwanted items, whether it was murder evidence or not.”

  “Mr. Mandopolous,” Gaston said warmly, “your kind of reporting makes my job so much easier.” He must really have loved Mandopolous’s summation because he stopped and shook his hand.

  Just then one of the CSU team came over and took Gaston aside. They went into a huddle; Steve Mandopoulos and I stretched our ears trying to eavesdrop on their conversation. Gaston noticed our interest and said, “If you don’t mind, I’d prefer that you wait for me in the foyer.”

  What he meant was the lobby we’d passed through on our way to the scene. There were chairs and a coffee-and-soft-drink machine. It was full of students, most of them wearing white lab coats, hanging out between classes. Steve Mandopolous and I looked at each other, then we left. Reluctantly. We went to get a cup of vending-machine coffee in the snack bar on the main floor. Frankly, I thought we deserved better.

  I didn’t understand why we could not be present when Gaston and his team took fingerprints from a computer and examined the corridor and elevator shaft. But I was sure he had his reasons. I thought it would be a good idea to see what Mandopolous knew in the way of campus gossip. Fingerprints of a different sort, you could say.

  “Do you spend a lot of time with the academic staff?” I asked him. I mentioned specifically the dean and his assistant, but I hoped he would have some comments to make about the rest of the campus at the same time.

  Steve understood that my question was motivated by more than just idle curiosity. “Too much time. Like those two, the dean and his assistant. That guy is such a mook it’s not funny.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do I mean? The guy can’t do anything. He looks good for the university but he sits on his hands and wonders why he can’t find his ass. Look. Instead of doing something or taking a coffee break he has to look important and she knows how to make him feel like a big shot. If he didn’t have a lot of people to cover for him he wouldn’t have a job. He was no big deal as a teacher and I can’t see that he’s any better as an administrator. He’s constantly ogling his assistant, and she lets him get away with it.”

  “You mean they’re …?” I raised my eyebrows but did not finish the question.

  “Who knows for sure. I see things, that’s all. Maybe I have a suspicious nature.”

  “But he’s married to Professor Miller-More. She seems so nice. Or does it turn out that she’s some kind of controlling bitch? I mean, sometimes people seem nice, but…”

  “No way, everybody likes her. I don’t mean she’s everybody’s friend, she’s rather a reserved person, but she’s nice to everybody. But that’s what I mean. First she was going with the dead guy, Hilliard, and everybody says they’re just right for each other and then, all of a sudden she dumps him and marries More and everyone says they’re the perfect couple. So who knows? Get what I’m saying?”

  He seemed to be saying he didn’t know anything. I decided to take one final shot at uncovering some more information. “What about Hilliard? I hear that he was something with the ladies.”

  “Yeah, he seemed to get around. Lots of juicy stories there but no one ever actually caught him at anything. So, either it’s all just talk, or he’s a real careful guy. I know he wouldn’t try anything like More does, with his secretary. Too obvious. I guess it’s the quiet ones who get away with murder.” Then, remembering that Hilliard actually didn’t get away with anything, he paused and finished his thought, “Or get murdered, anyway.”

  “So you think his murder had something to do with a woman?” I asked.

  “What else? No one ever got killed over a class assignment, did they?”

  “I guess not,” I answered.

  We sat in silence as I thought over what Steve had told me; it wasn’t much, but it did tend to confirm some of our suspicions about Hilliard’s love life. Still, he told me nothing that would narrow the list of suspects. Arlene Ford was still a suspect. Nothing I had learned eliminated her. There was still the possibility of jealousy over another woman. Jane Miller-More might have had a fight with Hilliard because he wanted her to leave her husband. A fight that could have ended badly. Dean More had once had a motive for jealousy, when he was trying to get Jane away from Hilliard, but he’d succeeded, and apparently was more interested in Donna than his wife anyway, if Steve was right. Allan Gutmacher could have done it in a fit of possessiveness over his girlfriend. It didn’t seem that anything actually developed between Sarah Bloch and Hilliard but one never knew, did one? And there didn’t have to be anything between them. Allan only had to believe that there was something going on to become enraged and try to have it out with Hilliard. That kind of thing can end violently even if nobody intends it to.

  At this point Gaston reappeared, carrying the computer in the plastic bag.

  “We’re finished,” he announced. “Thanks for waiting. Mr. Mandopolous, would you be so kind as to accompany us to Ms. Young’s office? I’d like you to be there in case she has any questions about where and under what circumstances you found the computer.”

  The three of us trooped off back to the administration building.

  chapter nineteen

  We knocked at Barbara Young’s office door. There was a sound of conversation behind the door and then it was opened by Fred More, who invited us in. I wondered what had happened to the important registration work he and Donna had been so keen to get to. But his office was only two floors up, and why shouldn
’t he be here? It seemed a little funny, though.

  Barbara Young must be a pretty important person, I thought, because she had a large office. There were stacks of computer printouts everywhere. The pages of the ones I could see were in some kind of computer hieroglyphics. She also had three computers on a long table behind her desk. Two of them were flashing screen savers and she was working on the third. When she got tired of looking at her computer she could turn her head a quarter turn and look out one of her three windows onto lower campus.

  Ms. Young — Dr. Young, I was to learn — was sitting with her back to us at her desk typing away at top speed on a computer on the table. Without stopping or looking up she said, “Hi. Be with you in a moment. I just want to get this code down before I forget it.”

  While we waited I took another look at the colourful screen savers on the computers next to where she was working. After staring at them for a few seconds I realized that I was looking at something a little more complex than the usual whirling lines of a screen saver. One of the computers was constructing a very colourful design. As new pieces to the computer jigsaw were added the puzzle became larger. I noticed that a small part of the design would become magnified, changing the screen completely and new pieces would be added to the abstract for a while until it magnified a small section and changed again. I then observed that as the design on one computer got larger the design on the other computer became correspondingly smaller. Pieces of the colour puzzle moved from one computer to the other. As one design was broken down the other constructed itself with the imported pieces. I realized that I was looking at the construction and deconstruction of a fractal; that one computer was importing pieces of the fractal from the other. At a certain point, as one of the computers finished its design and the other was left with a blank screen, the process reversed and the computer with the blank screen began importing fractal data from the other computer to construct its own design. I didn’t understand how all this worked but I was impressed.