He tried to focus on other suspects. Logic dictated that Elizabeth had been killed by someone who knew her. The fact that the alarm hadn’t been set meant that either Elizabeth had forgotten to turn it on or she’d disarmed it to invite someone inside. More likely the latter. Elizabeth wasn’t one to forget things.
Denny’s house had been broken into later that night. This suggested a possible connection between Denny and Elizabeth or, more likely, Denny and himself. Almost certainly the same person had broken into both homes—a glass cutter had been used on a window in both cases, and neither forced entry had resulted in detectable fingerprints.
Denny hadn’t reported his break-in to the Boston police after reading about Elizabeth’s murder. Was he just being self-centered and lazy? Probably. He hadn’t been much of a friend lately, but the two of them went way back.
Barnes reminded himself of that—Denny was his best friend. Not even money had come between them. And they’d certainly had their share of financial setbacks. Especially Denny. He’d sunk a lot into the fraudulent Zeiman Richter Fund that at one time had seemed like such a great investment. Yet Denny never mentioned money problems. With all the surgical procedures he did, he should be making enough to maintain his lifestyle.
If Denny wasn’t involved, then who were the remaining suspects? Shirley? Certainly Elizabeth would have let her into the house, but Shirley had no motive to hurt her. Their project together was finished, and any surprises with that were unlikely. GBF-complex had already been used for years to treat toxic calcium levels in cancer patients, in much higher doses than were present in the coated screws used for orthopedic surgery, and the drug had been shown to be safe and effective.
Maybe Carmen, the maid. She had access to the house, but her only likely motive would have been money, and nothing appeared to have been stolen.
Then, of course, there was Claire, or more likely Claire’s significant other, Darcia. Would Elizabeth let Darcia into the house? Even if Elizabeth didn’t know her personally, she probably wouldn’t turn away a judge. If Elizabeth had been having an affair with Claire, that would give Darcia a motive to kill her. But that seemed pretty extreme behavior for a judge, even one characterized as a “psycho bitch.”
Finally there was Jarrell Pharmaceuticals. Was it just a coincidence that this corporation happened to be funding both his research and Elizabeth’s, just a coincidence that both research projects could generate billions of dollars for the company? Probably, but it was still unusual. And what would Jarrell Pharmaceuticals gain from her death? Maybe the company needed to hide something she’d discovered. Even so, Barnes couldn’t think how that would work to their advantage. If Elizabeth had discovered anything potentially dangerous in the GBF-complex-coated screws, even an unethical corporation would want to scrap the project before sinking more money into it. The last thing a pharmaceutical company would want would be to conceal something that could damage them down the road, that could not only tarnish their image but generate massive lawsuits. Unless . . .
He shuddered at the thought. A pharmaceutical company would never benefit from concealing a major flaw during drug development unless they intended to sell the product not to patients but instead to another drug company. That wasn’t unusual in the pharmaceutical industry, but most of the time, it happened earlier in development, not when the product was this close to being approved by the FDA. If a company managed to sell a defective but promising product, they could make a small fortune and, at the same time, severely damage their competition. Of course, the key to doing that would be to conceal the problem. Yet it seemed unrealistic that Jarrell Pharmaceuticals would murder a medical doctor to enhance their profits or avoid a financial loss. They might allow patients to die, but that’s very different from killing an investigator. And what about all the other investigators? The GBF-complex-coated screws had already been tested on thousands of patients in hospitals throughout the country. If the screws were defective, surely other investigators would have noticed as well.
Barnes made a note to ask Shirley whether Jarrell Pharmaceuticals had indicated they intended to sell the GBF-complex-coated screws to another company. Even if she was somehow involved in a conspiracy, he had nothing to lose by posing the question. He could also ask his contacts at the company.
But a more troubling question was whether he personally might have been connected to Elizabeth’s murder. He and Elizabeth held most of their assets separately, and the fact was he would now make a fortune from her research. And this at a time when his own research had been stalling, and when his own finances were problematic.
But money wasn’t the only possible motive. Murder is often a crime of passion. That could have provided an incentive for Darcia, but it could have also provided an incentive for him. A wife’s infidelity and resultant pregnancy are undeniable motives for murder.
That put him on both lists—money and passion. Two possible motives for him but only one for each of the other suspects.
What if he had hired someone to kill Elizabeth? If she’d told him she was pregnant with another man’s baby, in theory that could have pushed him over the edge. And it would explain the note demanding a final payment of $10,000—hiring someone would almost certainly cost double that or more. Also, the alarm wouldn’t have gone off because he would have told the intruder the code to disarm it.
In theory that was all possible, but harming Elizabeth wasn’t something he would do. To plot her murder—or anyone’s—was unfathomable. Sure, he had a temper—most surgeons do—but you need more than that to conspire to commit murder. He loved Elizabeth. He would never harm her.
Yet part of him wanted a second opinion. That’s what he always recommended when a patient was ever in doubt, and if it was good advice for his patients, it should be good for him, too. But only one person knew him well enough to give him a second opinion about his relationship with Elizabeth: Denny.
Barnes gathered up his summaries and threw away his older notes, then picked up the phone.
“I have to ask you something,” he said after apologizing for bothering his friend.
“Go for it, buddy.” Denny sounded annoyed, but then he often sounded that way.
“Did I seem . . .” Barnes tried to choose his words carefully. “. . . different after I moved into the Ritz before I left for Toronto?”
“You were moody as hell, but that’s understandable. You really didn’t talk about it. Least not that I recall.”
“Yeah. I was just wondering whether I seemed, you know, really pissed off.”
“Not enough to kill her, if that’s what you’re driving at.”
Barnes was taken aback by how quickly Denny surmised the purpose of his questions. Of course, Denny was no idiot, but Barnes hadn’t expected him to pick up on that. “There are some things I probably haven’t told you,” Barnes admitted.
“I’m not sure I want to hear ’em.”
“Well, let me—”
“Look, buddy. Unless your bank account shows a large, unexplained cash withdrawal, I wouldn’t lose any sleep.”
Barnes unfolded the letter demanding $10,000. “I don’t have that. But maybe something worse.”
Denny said nothing in reply, and Barnes decided not to elaborate. “Never mind. Forget I said it.”
“Already forgotten.”
“Change of topic: Do you remember the last time you and I bet on a football game?”
“Yeah. The Patriots’ season opener. You got lucky in the last quarter, and I dropped a G.”
“Yeah, I remember that. It was a good game. I picked up another thousand from Burt at the gym.”
“I won’t tell you what else I lost. That wasn’t a good weekend. But, hell, easy come, easy go.”
“Yeah. You know whether I’ve bet on anything since then?”
“I don’t keep tabs on you, buddy, but you didn’t mention anything as far as I recall. Why? Somebody hitting you up for money?”
“No. I just want to be sure I’m squ
are with everything.”
“You’re square with me.”
“That’s good to hear. Sorry I bothered you with this.”
“No problem.”
“I guess I’ll let you go, then. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Take care, buddy.”
Barnes hung up. He wished he had never called.
Down the street outside Barnes’s house, an unmarked van sat parked at the curb. Inside, among elaborate recording equipment, two men wearing headphones listened to the telephone conversation.
“Sounds pretty damn incriminating to me,” one said, removing his headphones after Barnes hung up.
“Toast,” said the other. “The guy is toast.”
Chapter 46
Sitting at his desk in the station, Wright played the tape for Gould. “I don’t have that,” Barnes’s voice said on the recorder. “But maybe something worse.”
Wright turned off the tape.
“Time for a search warrant,” said Gould, chewing noisily on bubble gum and smelling strongly of the cologne Gloria had given him. “Let me hear the rest of it.”
Wright played it for him.
After the tape finished, Gould said, “Let’s haul his butt in.”
“Not just yet.” Wright scooted his chair back to escape the fumes. “Barnes doesn’t know if he did it. Otherwise he wouldn’t be talking about it with his friend.”
“We don’t give a rat’s ass if he knows.” Gould moved closer. “All that counts is, did he do it? And if he’s still trying to figure that out, then he didn’t pitch that letter yet, or nothing else.”
“Yeah . . .” Wright debated whether to say something about the cologne. “But if he doesn’t know, we probably can’t find enough against him to convict. Besides, it’s not like he’s a flight risk. He can’t remember anything from one day to the next, so there’s no way he can skip town and start over somewhere else. Let’s just wait. In the meantime, he’s writing down everything he needs to remember. He probably rewrites his notes every day, maybe even more often than that.”
“So we search the premises and take all his scraps of paper, everything we can get our hands on. If we can’t nail him for murder one, we can still book him for illegal gambling.”
Wright edged back a few more inches. “Let’s wait a day or two. Tomorrow is trash pickup, and we can look at the lists he throws away. In the meantime, maybe he’ll figure out he’s guilty. If he does, we’ll find out, too.” He pushed his chair back some more.
“You afraid of something on your desk?”
“What?”
“You keep scooting away from your desk. What’s with that?”
“Actually it’s not my desk. It’s your cologne.”
“Maybe if you wore some,” Gould said, “you’d get used to it.”
“Yeah, but what about everyone else?”
“Very funny.” Gould smelled his shirt. “You think I’m putting on too much?”
“I think if I lit a match, you’d go up in a ball of flames.”
“All right. I can take a hint. Let’s get back to Barnes. What do you think he’ll do if he figures out himself that he did it?”
“Hard to say.” Wright reflected on the impact that the realization might have. For Barnes to discover that he’d orchestrated the murder of his wife—the woman he probably still loved and now needed more than ever—would be devastating. “Obviously, for him, flight isn’t an option.”
Gould moved closer. “So you think he might turn himself in?”
Wright held his ground. “No.” Then he added, “More likely he’ll kill himself.”
Despite mounting evidence against him, Barnes couldn’t believe he would harm Elizabeth. There must be some other explanation for the letter demanding $10,000. A gambling debt of some sort—that must be it. He would have to wait until Saturday, two days, to find out. Then, hopefully, the author of the letter would contact him after he failed to deposit the money by noon as instructed. If push came to shove, he could always show the letter to the police, but now that didn’t seem like a good idea.
The more he thought about everything, the more convinced he became that solving this case was going to require a major break. With no clear motives and no obvious suspects, he needed some way of finding more clues. The logical thing to do was to resume looking through Elizabeth’s papers, notes, and computer disks from work. According to his notes, he’d already reviewed several of the files on her computer disks but had found nothing useful. Many of them had turned out to be progress reports of research, but none of them seemed to contain anything controversial or otherwise problematic. He was amazed at the volume of work his wife had done. While most researchers focus on one project at a time, she seemed to have been involved in at least three or four simultaneously.
After a couple of hours, Barnes took a break and had a can of ravioli and a cup of coffee for dinner. Then he resumed looking at Elizabeth’s various projects from work. He put a disk into the disk drive and listed the files. One was a large text file. He opened it and found a progress report on Elizabeth’s research with Shirley, labeled “Summary of GBF-complex-coated screws in phase II/III.”
If nothing else, at least this would give him a better understanding of what exactly her most important recent project had entailed. But before he could read it, the telephone rang.
It was Shirley. He remembered her and her boyfriend from dinner at the Union Oyster House, and he fished through his pockets for a note to see whether he might have written something else about her.
Then he saw it—You had sex with Shirley last night. Maybe she didn’t have that boyfriend anymore.
“How are you doing?” he asked, not sure what tone or direction the conversation should take.
“Good. I had a pleasant relaxing evening, and that doesn’t happen very often when I’m on a first date. I just got back. We met for dinner in Harvard Square.”
Apparently whatever had happened last night couldn’t have been too serious if she was going on a date with someone else and telling him about it. “So you might have a second date with this person?” he asked.
“Maybe. We don’t have much in common, except chemistry—he’s quite a hunk.”
“What does he do for a living?”
“He teaches humanities.”
“Humanities? Somehow I can’t picture you with a humanities teacher.”
“No, neither can I, but, like I said, he’s a hunk. I met him at Elizabeth’s funeral.”
“So you pick up men at funerals?”
“Hey, I’ll take them wherever.”
“How did you meet him at the funeral?”
“He spoke there briefly, to the mourners, and read a poem he’d written—about death, very sad but in an uplifting way. Afterwards I ran into him and asked how he knew Elizabeth. He said that she gave him poetry.”
“Really? What does that mean?”
“He said he’d been unable or unwilling to write after the death of his wife, but that Elizabeth gave that back to him.”
“Was this recent?”
“I guess.”
Barnes suddenly saw an image of a urine container on the bathroom counter, with Elizabeth standing next to it and holding a positive pregnancy test. He looked through his notes for more information. “Did you get the impression they were . . . Could they have been having an affair?”
“Oh, I don’t think so. I don’t think Elizabeth would do that.”
He wondered whether she would tell him if she knew. Shirley and Elizabeth were pretty close. Then he saw in his notes that Claire had mentioned that his neighbor, Marshall, had gone to the funeral. “Is his name Marshall?” Barnes asked.
“It is. How well do you know him? Please don’t tell me I’m dating a drug dealer or an embezzler.”
“Maybe both. I don’t know him.” He jotted notes while he talked. “What else did he say about Elizabeth?”
“Not much. We talked mostly about each other.”
Cou
ld Elizabeth have been having an affair with him? Did that man write the love letter mentioned in his list? Barnes felt the urge to run across the street and confront him, but instead he just took notes.
Then he saw something else in his notes, a question about Jarrell Pharmaceuticals and the research Elizabeth and Shirley had been doing. “On an unrelated note,” he said, “do you know whether the sponsor of your research intended to sell the GBF-complex-coated screws to another pharmaceutical company?”
“That’s an odd question,” said Shirley. “What makes you ask that?”
“I don’t remember. It’s in my notes.”
“Not that I’m aware of. It would be unusual this late in drug development. Usually companies do that before they get to the expensive multicenter studies. Besides, I think if they were going to do that, they would have to notify me, or at least the university . . . You really don’t know why you want to know?”
“Maybe I’ll figure it out later,” he said. “I’m not all that well organized.”
“Well, I can tell you anything you like about the research. If you don’t have plans, we can talk about it tomorrow over dinner.”
He thought about that. Probably more questions would come up between now and then that she might be able to answer, including about Marshall, and he really didn’t like eating alone. No matter how busy he and Elizabeth were, they always tried to have at least one meal a day together, and usually it was dinner.
“All right,” he said. “Does seven o’clock work for you?”
“It does. I’ll stop by with something from somewhere, if that isn’t too specific.”
“That works for me. Thanks.”
After talking to Shirley, Barnes returned to his computer and the summary of GBF-complex-coated screws in clinical trials. He was reminded of the work only because it was right in front of him. Even before his conversation with Shirley had ended, he’d forgotten that she was dating Marshall, and that Marshall had likely been involved with Elizabeth. A residual anger lingered, but he didn’t know the source of it. The distraction of talking about Jarrell Pharmaceuticals and then scheduling dinner with Shirley had been sufficient to push Marshall from his thoughts.
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