The word ‘OPEN’ appeared on the locker screen.
‘Yes!’ she shouted jubilantly.
She reached up to the locker and opened the door. It was dark inside. Her hand holding the mobile phone automatically came up. Faint light from the phone screen filled up the dark abyss.
‘There is something here,’ she whispered.
‘Careful. Let me pull it out for you.’ Aditya reached into the locker. He had to stretch to his fullest to reach something which was safely tucked away right at the back. It was heavy and bulky. Cirisha looked on in wonder as he dragged out a pile of papers in a yellow envelope.
Cirisha opened it and was about to take the papers out, when Aditya advised, ‘Let’s get out of here. It might not be safe.’
Cirisha turned to walk out of the room, envelope in hand. ‘Wait!’ cried Aditya. He came up to her, hugged her tightly and began kissing her on the lips. ‘Are you out of your mind, Aditya? You just said that we must get out of here.’
‘Shut up, you idiot.’ And he kissed her again. Holding her close to him, his arms around her, his lips seeking hers, he turned and walked out of the locker room towards the lift. It was a distance of about fifty feet. Throughout the stretch, he held her firmly in his grasp. Even for a moment he did not let go of her. Once they were in the lift, he released her from his clasp and pressed the button for the ground floor. Cirisha was wondering what was going on. He repeated the same thing the moment they got out of the lift on the ground floor and held her close to himself till they reached the car.
‘What has got into you?’ she yelled. Aditya smiled. ‘Now drive. I did this because there are many security cameras in the lobby and on the ground floor. I didn’t want any of them to capture images of the envelope that we were carrying outside. We should have brought a bag and dumped the envelope into it. But we didn’t know that we would be carrying back something like this. So I didn’t have any option but to hide the envelope between you and me. And for that I had to kiss you and hug you.’
Cirisha didn’t know what to say. ‘And by the way,’ continued Aditya, ‘that’s the longest you have kissed me in a long time.’
‘Shut up.’ Cirisha smiled as she shifted the Honda into drive mode and drove out of the parking lot towards home. She couldn’t wait to get home. In the car, Aditya opened the envelope. There were several papers on which something had been scribbled. He could not make head or tail of it. Cirisha was driving. The papers had to wait till they got home.
‘Is this what Richard wanted us to find?’
‘You are assuming he wanted us to. Maybe he left this the night before he killed himself. Or maybe earlier. And forgot about it. We just happened to stumble on it.’
‘Unlikely. How many times do I have to tell you about Richard? I have known him for seven years now. If he left it there, it ought to have a meaning.’
‘And that’s for us to figure out.’
‘That’s correct, sweetheart,’ said Cirisha with such a confident undertone that Aditya couldn’t say anything. He was getting increasingly worried about the repercussions.
52
3rd June 2008, night
Boston
It was a long night for the Raisinghanias. The documents in Richard’s locker were nothing short of dynamite. Safe inside the envelope was the entire raw data of Deahl’s research. The complete set of questionnaires of the interviews arranged by the prisons, it contained the names of people interviewed, along with the date, time and contact details. The interviewers’ names and signatures were there on every questionnaire. The material was good enough to recreate a chunk of the qualitative part of Deahl’s research. Data pertaining to another leg of the research conducted in Chicago and a few other cities was there too.
Cirisha was curious about the interviews conducted at the Boston prison. She hurriedly sifted through the papers till she found them: twenty-three of them, in a separate set labelled ‘Boston state prison’. When Aditya saw the way the documents had been arranged and labelled, he knew what Cirisha meant when she said that Richard was one of the most organized souls she had ever met.
‘See.’ When Aditya looked up, Cirisha waved a set of papers at him. ‘This says that twenty-three inmates of the Boston state prison were interviewed. It also has their names and the dates of the interviews. According to these questionnaires, Aditya, Boston prison inmates were interviewed in August last year. It’s the prison in Windle’s precinct. He is clueless!’ Cirisha passed on the papers to Aditya, who looked at them and agreed with her.
‘I will talk to him tomorrow morning. Let’s see what he has to say,’ she said. After a moment’s thought, she added, ‘I’ll go and meet him tomorrow.’
‘Why don’t you call? It will be easier,’ Aditya reasoned.
‘It is better to meet him in person. His body language speaks more than him.’
‘Don’t go alone, then. I will come with you.’
‘It’s OK, Aditya. He may not open up if you are there.’ Looking at the concern in his eyes, she added, ‘I will be careful, Aditya. I am not going into a war zone. Don’t worry.’
Cirisha got down to tabulating the interviews done at the prisons. Once done, she intended to compare them against what was mentioned in Staring Down the Barrel.
She did not have the time or the tools to validate the complex regressions and detailed analyses. Consequently her focus was entirely on the basic data and tables. That too only the ones pertaining to the main question—whether the felons would have committed the crimes if the guns had not been available. A quick analysis would do, at least for the time being. Any error identified here would call for a more detailed investigation.
She started tabulating the data from the prisons into a simple table.
Prison by prison, the two of them started comparing what they found with the data in Staring Down the Barrel. The data from the questionnaires tallied with what was there in the book. ‘I told you this is a red herring,’ Aditya commented three hours into the exercise, inviting a deadly stare from Cirisha.
‘I will get some coffee,’ said Cirisha and got up to go to the kitchen. ‘We have eight locations still to go.’
‘Yes. I wouldn’t mind a strong dose of filter coffee,’ Aditya agreed. ‘If we find that the remaining eight are in order, we will go to sleep. OK?’
Cirisha smiled and walked to the kitchen. She took a short detour to wash her face and freshen up. It was going to be a long night. She took some clothes out from the drier and put in another set waiting to be washed. Then she headed to the kitchen. Hardly had she poured water into the coffee percolator when she heard Aditya call out. ‘Ciri! Come here fast! Quick!’
She put the glass down and rushed to the living room. ‘What happened?’
‘Look at this.’ Aditya gave her a piece of paper. ‘Vermont.’
Cirisha looked at it. Aditya had quickly tabulated the information collected from the prison in Vermont. ‘Shit!’ she whispered. Her hand instinctively came up to her mouth. She was very particular about her language. ‘We have the first one.’
Aditya nodded. ‘Vermont. According to the data in the questionnaires, 80 per cent of the inmates said that they would have hesitated and probably not committed the crimes they did had the guns not been easily available.’
‘And James’s book says just the opposite. Eighty per cent of inmates say that they would have committed the crime they did even if guns were not available. This is clearly a misrepresentation.’
‘It could be an honest mistake,’ Aditya tried to reason. ‘Somebody could just have messed up the columns while capturing the data. Human error.’
‘Unlikely. But before we start jumping to conclusions let’s see the remaining seven locations too.’
By the time they were done with all the prisons, it was clear. There was a problem. Intentional or not, they couldn’t say. The data tallied for every single prison except three: Vermont, Florida and Phoenix. In all the three cities, the original data was contra
vening Deahl’s thesis in Staring Down the Barrel. Why didn’t the data for these three prisons tally with the book, especially when it tallied for every other prison?
She looked at the questionnaires for these three cities carefully. She recognized the handwriting. It was Richard’s. ‘There’s no way he could have made a mistake,’ she said to herself. That’s when it struck her. She hurriedly picked up the paper on which they had formulated the table. One didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out a weird correlation.
‘Aditya!’ she called out. ‘There is a strange coincidence.’ Aditya, who was getting up to dump the coffee mugs into the kitchen sink, stopped. He came close and looked at the papers she held in her hands. ‘The data-gathering interviews for these three locations have been done by Richard. Someone else has done all the others. What surprises me is that these three locations are the first locations to have been researched. Look at the dates of the interviews. All the other prison interactions were done later by someone else.’
‘Does it mean that Richard was deliberately kept out of the subsequent ones?’
‘Why? Why would anyone do that? Richard was the seniormost and the most capable guy on James’s team.’
Aditya shrugged his shoulders.
‘I think I know.’ Cirisha recalled Richard’s conversation. His statement that Deahl tortured the data gatherer till he sung Deahl’s tune, resonated in her ears. ‘Richard carried out the research at Vermont, Florida and Phoenix. The results were not in line with what James wanted. He moved Richard out and got someone else to give him the data he wanted—Philip and Caroline seem to have done all the rest. And Aditya, this is only the most basic analysis we have looked at. The book has a lot more detail and more scientific analysis. It will take us days to recreate it. But if the base data is flawed, the output would be junk too.’
‘This has to be the biggest sham in the history of research not only in MIT, but probably in the entire United States of America,’ Aditya said.
‘And to think of it, the guy has almost pulled it off.’
It was about 4 a.m. by the time Aditya and Cirisha went to bed. She cuddled up to him and whispered. ‘Do you think these papers have anything to do with Richard’s death?’
‘Maybe. He was so stressed by all this that he lost his mental balance.’
‘Maybe. But then, Adi, we need to make sure these papers are safe. Do you think they are safe here? At home?’
‘Ciri, these papers are not a national secret. Just plain data. They are perfectly safe here, and so are we.’
‘I don’t know. I am worried,’ she whispered and buried her face into his chest. By that time Narayanan was in the next room snoring his way into his fourth dream sequence.
53
4th June 2008
Boston state prison
‘You’ve come all the way to meet me regarding this?’ Lieutenant Windle was surprised when Cirisha showed him the set of documents. ‘It’s always good to see you, though.’
Cirisha nodded her head and faked a smile. ‘Lieutenant Windle, this is the data the research conducted by Richard Avendon has been based on. I wanted to double check with you before I look at it with any degree of seriousness.’
Windle took the questionnaires from her and looked at them carefully. ‘Strange.’
‘I remember you saying that no one had come from MIT for this research. But now these …’ and she left the sentence hanging.
‘Put it down to my old age, young lady,’ he said with a smile. He was never perturbed by anything. Cirisha admired this trait in him. ‘Do you mind if I check on this and call you back in a while?’ he added.
‘Sure, lieutenant. Thanks for all your help. I appreciate you going out of your way to help me.’ She handed him a list of Boston prison inmates who were supposed to have been interviewed, and took back the questionnaires. She needed them. They were evidence.
‘Anything for a pretty young lady.’ Windle smiled. She liked him. Not quite like the cops back home in India.
After thanking him, she walked back to her car. This was just the first of the many checks she would have to do. She still hadn’t been able to figure out why Richard had got her involved in this entire game. If Richard had really wanted to, he could have become a bigger hero by walking out on Deahl and exposing him. Why he chose not to do that was a surprise.
She was lost in these thoughts when her phone rang. She hurriedly picked it up.
‘Ms Narayanan, I have checked all twenty-three names.’
‘Oh wow! That was quick, lieutenant.’
‘I didn’t need to do much, you see.’
‘As in?’
‘Four of them are dead. The last of them died two years ago. Seven of them were released from jail on account of good behaviour quite some time back. Their prison terms were commuted. In fact, none of the seven has been in this jail for over eighteen months. Twelve of the twenty-three are still in prison. They don’t remember having spoken to anyone regarding the research that you are mentioning. There is something fishy going on here.’
Cirisha slammed the brakes hard when she heard this. She thanked her stars that there was no vehicle close to her, else she would have been a part of a mangled lump of steel. Pulling herself together, she released the brakes slowly, moved the car to the shoulder lane and parked.
‘Are you sure, lieutenant?’
‘As sure as I can be.’
‘Can you give me the names of the people who are dead and those who have been released?’ She took down the names of the eleven convicts for her records and got back on the road. She remembered what Cardoza had once told her. There are three cardinal sins in academia: stealing from research grants, sleeping with a student and plagiarizing or fudging research results. From the looks of it, Deahl had broken the third cardinal rule. And to think that a book based on such research had been shortlisted for the Bancroft Prize! It was criminal. She would have to ask Cardoza to intervene.
54
4th June 2008
Boston
‘We will have to take it to the provost. With the dean no more, it falls under Gordon’s remit to take a decision on what he wants to do with this. So what if he is only a caretaker provost? If he doesn’t do anything, I will go up to Juan. At least, as the president of the institute, he will do something about it. This is ridiculous!’ Cardoza thundered. ‘How can someone who is dead be part of the research? He can’t fabricate data in such a brazen manner. Not at the level he is. This clearly demonstrates that he drastically changed the research just to make sure that the result he got was in line with what the NRA wanted.’
‘Slow, slow, Michael. I brought this to you not for you to jump at it. Remember you had said the last time around that if we take this up, we cannot fail. Didn’t you say that James has not submitted his data to the university? He technically doesn’t need to unless there is an investigation and he is specifically asked for it.’ Cardoza nodded. ‘I still stand by it.’
‘And Michael, even if James is asked for it, he can get away by not producing it, citing privacy, confidentiality and tens of other reasons.’
‘If so, then why go through the process of creating the data? Just create the end results. Period. Write a fictional research and call it science.’
‘There could be a background to this. Richard did the interviews at the first three sites. The results went against the NRA. Richard was the one who was slated to go to Boston state prison. He had arranged for everything. But he didn’t go. Windle says no one went. But if one were to believe the questionnaires that I have with me, Philip did the interviews there, the results of which are overwhelmingly in favour of gun rights. There is a serious disconnect here. What also surprises me is that after Vermont, Phoenix and Florida, Richard had not participated in data gathering in any other place. Obviously, he was kept out.’
‘What does it show?’
‘If I were Richard, I would be mighty peeved at being kept out. Richard too would have been. I beli
eve that the data was created first to keep Richard happy, so that he felt that he was in control. Second, to keep people within the team happy and make sure they didn’t squeal to the outside world that the data was completely cooked, which normally happens when you have a dissatisfied soul on your team. And lastly, to anyone on the outside too, it would seem as if something serious was on. I checked this morning before coming to you. Both Caroline and Philip are no longer with the institute. They have left for greener pastures. Significantly richer too, I guess. So, I am reasonably confident my assessment is correct.’
‘Very possible. There could have been one more possibility, though.’ Cardoza was in a very agitated frame of mind and he was looking angry.
‘And that is …?’ Cirisha left the question hanging.
‘Maybe they did the prison interviews in most places. Remember, it’s almost impossible to get away by stating that they did the interviews all over the country, without actually doing any research interview whatsoever. Some jailor somewhere will stand up and scream that what’s stated in the research is false and that the interview in his prison, as mentioned in the book, never took place. My take, Cirisha, is that they would have done the interviews in most, if not all the prisons that they have mentioned in the book. After the interviews, they would have cooked up the data and falsified the questionnaire responses to suit their objective. In such an instance the chances of getting caught are minimal.’
‘Possible. In fact, what you are saying is more likely. These cooked-up questionnaires would then have been given to Richard for his assessment. But as far as Boston is concerned, we are sure the interviews never took place. We have to find out what actually happened.’
Bankerupt (Ravi Subramanian) Page 19