Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  I couldn’t quite remember if we were still at the Doctor-Sergeant stage or if we’d gotten as far as Gloria and Matt.

  FOUR

  I woke up to Columbus Day, October 12.

  Besides the changing seasons, another thing about the East Coast that I’d missed were holidays like Patriot’s Day on April 19 and Bunker Hill Day on June 17. Berkeley parking meters called October 12 ‘Indigenous Peoples Day,’ and California residents in general emphasized a different set of holidays, like a Mexican battle victory, Cinco de Mayo on May 5.

  The most curious to me was Admission Day on September 9.

  “Is that some holiday for school registration?” I’d asked when I was new on the West Coast. My greatly amused friends informed me that the holiday was to commemorate California’s admission into the union.

  To recover some dignity, I reminded them that I was from Massachusetts, one of the states that was on the admissions committee.

  “You ought to thank me,” I’d said, and we called a truce.

  I looked at my wardrobe choices. I had clothes in several sizes, some for my thinner times and others, more often used, for my fuller figure phases. My resolution to get to the smaller sizes by fall hadn’t worked out so I put on my mid-range dark gray suit and a white cotton shell. I added a necklace of hematite beads and pinned a small replica of crossed Italian and American flags to my lapel.

  Just as when I was a kid, there’d be a parade later in the day starting at the base of the statue of Christopher Columbus outside Saint Anthony’s Church and flowing down Revere Street to the beach. I remembered years long past, watching my father march with the Sons of Italy, carrying the huge bass drum around his strong dark neck. I wondered if they kept the custom of ending up back at the church with a special mass at its main altar. No wonder we used to think Columbus was one of the saints.

  I checked the clock. For two reasons, I wanted to arrive early at Russo’s Cafe where I was to meet Matt. The first reason was tied to another inherited trait from my mother. Josephine would have the table set for dinner—she called it supper—by four in the afternoon. If you were ten minutes late, she’d be furious. She’d have been waiting two hours and ten minutes by then, and blamed you for every second.

  “Why did you even bother to come?” she’d ask, blowing smoke through her nose and breathing heavily under her flowered cotton apron.

  I was a little better than that since my lifestyle didn’t permit all-day meal preparation, but still, I had a reputation among my friends for always being way ahead of schedule.

  The second reason I wanted to be early is that I was resisting the image of Matt and the rest of Russo’s lunch crowd seeing me pull up in my sleek Cadillac. I didn’t want people to think I was running for office. I began to doubt the wisdom of my deal with the Galiganis.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Rose had told me. Small comfort, since it came from someone who thought of six cylinder cars as toys for teenagers.

  Russo’s Cafe, an up-scale sandwich and coffee shop a block from the post office on Broadway, was at the site of the old five-and-ten where I bought all my Christmas presents until I was in college. The new owners had taken advantage of the large room and high ornate ceiling to create the look of old Rome, with plaster columns and murals of chariots and ancient fountains. Several armless white sculpted figures were scattered among the small round tables, as if waiting to be fed.

  Although I’d arrived early enough to park in one of the few spots around the back of the restaurant, Matt was already at a table with an espresso and a stack of papers and manila folders in front of him. As I approached, I could tell he didn’t know whether or not to stand. Feminism confuses a lot of men, I remembered. He rose halfway and rearranged the table so that the piles of paper were out of the way of the second place setting. Smooth move.

  I guessed that Matt also had two wardrobes. He was a little thick around the middle, but not fat, just enough to give him a solid appearance. His hair had about the same amount of gray as mine, still showing up dark in photographs, but mostly gray as it fell on the hairdresser’s cloth. His long nose, with its straight downward slope, was also like mine and fit right in with the Mediterranean decor. As I considered the similarities in our appearances, I wondered if I was infatuated with my twin. I remembered reading a pop psychology article that said it was a sign of high self-esteem if you were attracted to people who look like you. I decided not to pursue that concept, conscious that a little psychological knowledge is a dangerous thing.

  The second awkward moment after the should-I-stand-for-a-lady dilemma consisted of a round of call-me-Matt, call-me-Gloria. We eased the situation by getting to business.

  “Here’s the report,” Matt said, his voice gravely as I had remembered. “Not much to go on, but since you know a lot of the principals, you might have some ideas.”

  I settled down to the six pages of single-spaced type and a sheaf of crime scene photographs while Matt excused himself. I watched him walk past the kitchen to the men’s room, his dark rumpled suit receding into a row of fake Italian palms. I wondered what percent of my excitement was from seeing him again and what percent from the challenging puzzle before me. I’d long ago accepted the occupational hazard of a lifelong career in science—trying to measure everything. Even excitement.

  I opened the envelope of photographs, keeping it low on my lap so as not to offend the sensibilities of those dining at tables around me. Most of the other patrons at Russo’s were in business suits and career dresses and I envisioned them as tax accountants and retail clerks and at other non-bloody occupations.

  I noted with relief that these crime scene photographs were a little easier to take than the ones I’d had to look at for my first case, which were of a gruesome murder in a chemistry lab. Eric Bensen had been the victim of a relatively clean murder. I found it easier to take the pools of blood around his torso, as long as all of his body parts were intact. I saw that Eric had fallen on his side, and looked almost comfortable spread out on his lab floor. The fabric of his khaki pants that was visible looked clean, and his left arm was tucked under his upper body as if he were taking a quick nap on a small red carpet.

  I took a deep breath and a long drink of lemony water to counteract the queasiness that had come to my stomach in spite of the tidiness of the crime scene, and moved on to read the pages of text.

  I was ready with some questions when Matt returned.

  “There’s nothing in this report about disks or printout around Eric’s desk,” I said. “His computer screen is blank and the area around him looks bare in these photographs. Would the officers have listed papers and disks if they were there?”

  “Absolutely,” Matt said. “Maybe he was doing something else that didn’t require the computer?”

  I thought about this as our waiter brought my dry cappuccino and eggplant and pepper sandwiches for both of us.

  I pulled out the photograph with the best shot of Eric’s workplace. His computer monitor and keyboard were surrounded by yellow sticky notes and dozens of small figures, a few of which I could identify—Batman, Spiderman, Wonderwoman, Superman. Among the other action heroes in different sizes was a small white plaster bust of Albert Einstein, similar to ones I’d seen in science museum gift shops. I could also make out a soft drink can, a framed photograph of his wife Janice, and a mug full of pens and pencils, but there was no sign of floppies or hard copy anywhere.

  As I pointed to the peripheral equipment in the photograph, Matt pulled out a pair of rimless half glasses and followed my fingers with his gaze.

  “This shows Eric had a complete system with his own printer and drives,” I said, “so he wasn’t just using a terminal connected to a mainframe. It’s hard to believe all his disks and printout are stored out of sight.”

  “So, does that mean you think the murderer stole the computer stuff?” Matt asked. “And if so, why?”

  While we ate, I told Matt my initial theory that the murderer might be
a scientist who stood to lose a lot if Eric retracted the journal article with their hydrogen data.

  “Then it would make sense that the killer would try to remove all evidence that there was something wrong with their work,” I said. “And that evidence would most likely have been around Eric’s computer.”

  “Wouldn’t the error in the data eventually be found out anyway?” Matt asked.

  Temporarily abandoning loyalty to my profession, I explained that this kind of thing happened all the time. Not murders necessarily, but borderline dishonesty. It wouldn’t be the first time scientists exaggerated the potential of a new technology in order to get funding to further the research.

  Although I still didn’t know the exact nature of the discrepancy or error Eric had uncovered, I’d been around research science long enough to make a good guess. I told Matt that the error wasn’t necessarily an incorrect number or calculation. It could be that the team had neglected to account for some particular factor in their experiment, like a magnetic effect, or a temperature dependency. In an extreme case, scientists who used complicated computer programs to do their calculations could actually fake data, by adding a line or two to their software that even another expert in the field might not be able to uncover.

  “Maybe a few years later,” I told Matt, “the discrepancy between promise and fulfillment would be obvious, but it could be suppressed until long after money had been granted and large facilities were built. And even then, it could be passed off as something no one could have known before.”

  “Hmf,” was all I heard from Matt, so I continued.

  Reluctantly, I gave him some other examples of this kind of incident, drawing from the history of weapons technology and nuclear energy.

  Matt had been taking notes with his right hand, holding his sandwich in his left. He put down both, wiped his hands on his napkin, and shook his head, as if he’d just heard about another pop idol on drugs.

  “I guess I’m still naive about what goes on in the world of science,” he said. “I feel a lot more comfortable with people killing each other over insurance money or large family fortunes. I understand the motives involved in wills or domestic situations, but I’m out of my league here.”

  The phrase “domestic situations” got my attention and I wondered if I should I tell Matt about Janice. Not now, I decided. As bitter as Janice Bensen seemed to be about her life with Eric, I couldn’t picture her standing in front of him with a gun and shooting three times. But then, I was new to this life of crime solving, so it was hard to picture anyone other than an obvious madman killing another person.

  Awkward moment number three came when our waiter brought the check. I reached for my purse. Matt smiled and held up his hand like a stop signal.

  “Department expense,” he said.

  Another smooth move. Like my late beloved Uncle Tony, Matt had a left-leaning grin and a habit of raising his thick eyebrows when he smiled. I mentally gave Matt a role in the fourth Godfather movie, which I desperately hoped was in the works. I cast him as head of security in a legitimate family pastry business.

  “I wonder if you’d consider visiting the murder scene with me,” Matt asked, leaning forward to stuff his wallet in his back pocket. His jacket fell open just enough for me to see the gun holstered in a light brown leather case under his arm.

  It was hard to play it cool, but I managed a simple, “I’d be happy to.”

  “I brought this along in case you agreed,” Matt said, spreading a legal-sized packet of paper in front of me. Another charming crooked smile.

  I recognized the standard consultant’s contract, like the one I’d signed a few months before. Matt reminded me of the conditions of the contract. I wasn’t an investigator in the sense that he was, so I couldn’t ask suspects about alibis, for instance, or motive. But I could be present when he asked those questions, and I could ask technical questions, like how close was this research to achieving full superconductivity at room temperatures?

  He also warned me, as he did the last time, not to do any personal interviews on my own.

  “At this point, everyone who knew Eric Bensen and had a motive and the opportunity to kill him is a suspect,” Matt said. “And we don’t want you in any danger.”

  Matt had no reason to think I’d do any sleuthing on the side. On my last contract, I’d stuck to the rules, and done only what was required of me. Moreover, I’d never been one to take risks when it came to my body or any of its parts. I wouldn’t even consent to let Rose’s hairdresser have a go at getting rid of my gray hair. I was afraid she’d do just that, and I’d be bald.

  “I have no plans to play detective,” I said, breaking into what I hoped was delightful, flattering laughter.

  But this case felt different to me from my one and only other murder case. I’d known Eric Bensen and all the more obvious suspects personally, and I wondered if I meant what I said.

  FIVE

  As much as I’d looked forward to going to the Columbus Day parade, I agreed with Matt that we needed to get to the gas gun lab right away. I left my Cadillac and rode with him in his unmarked beige Ford. He drove to within a block of the parade, so at least I heard the band music, smelled the popcorn, and felt a little vibration from the pounding of hundreds of boots hitting the pavement at the same time.

  “I could use my light and siren and plow through the lines— get you really close to the action,” Matt offered.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, afraid he was serious.

  We headed across town just after one o’clock, driving through older residential sections of Revere that hadn’t changed much over the years, with small shingled houses and well-kept lawns, tiny by the standards of the newer developments in the western part of the city. Most of these side streets off Broadway still held enough tall elms and maples to give the city the look of a fall scene on a postcard.

  Matt wanted one more look around Eric’s cubicle before our scheduled meeting with Doctor Ralph Leder, the project leader for the hydrogen research. We entered the building, made our way to the basement, and walked toward the steep ramp that lead down another half level to the gas gun lab. The crime scene tape was still hanging across the ramp and a uniformed policewoman was sitting on a chair in the corridor. I remembered reading in the police report that the security guard had found Eric’s body at four in the morning when he noticed that the ramp door was open.

  “Pretty quiet down here,” the policewoman said as Matt greeted her and unlocked the door. Since she made no attempt to cover a wide yawn, I figured she knew Matt from the station. Some parts of police work are more interesting than others, I thought, happy to be involved in a new puzzle.

  The temperature seemed to drop two degrees with each foot as Matt and I made our way down, putting this sub-basement at about forty-five degrees, colder than the air outside. I breathed in the odor of rust and cold metal and realized I missed walking around in places like this. I missed the thick logbook that I’d carried around all day and my short white cotton coat, its pockets cluttered with scraps of paper and small tools.

  The gas gun lab was one enormous room, divided into sections by a motley selection of drab green felt partitions and black plastic curtains. To a layperson the multi-million-dollar sixty-foot gas gun at the far end of the room would be hard to distinguish from the water pipes that lined the ceiling. Tiny red and green lights from the row of high-voltage power supplies called attention to the giant piece of equipment resting on brackets above them.

  The rest of the room in front of the gas gun, uncarpeted and unpainted, held cubicles with desks and workbenches. There were no windows and just the one door that led to the ramp and then up to the basement corridor. Even with all the overhead lights on, the room looked overcast, as if it might rain any minute. It was easy to understand how someone could have entered and left this isolated area unnoticed.

  Matt took me over to Eric’s desk, a few yards in from the edge of the ramp door, his chair facing the ent
rance. I remembered that the newspaper account said the shots were fired from a distance and I asked Matt about it, since there wasn’t what I considered a great distance between Eric’s chair and the door.

  “A distance means more than a foot,” Matt said, and although he was anything but patronizing, I felt like the novice I was. I made a resolution to check the web for police procedural information before I asked any more stupid questions.

  I stepped onto the plastic pad under Eric’s chair for a closer look at his computer system.

  “Has anyone tried to pull up the last file Eric was working on?” I asked.

  “We did boot up the machine, but there wasn’t anything listed with a time for late Monday night or early Tuesday morning.”

  I told Matt that Eric was the computer genius of the project, and that all of his responsibilities revolved around the software he was writing. I couldn’t imagine that he’d come here in the middle of the night to do anything but computer work.

  “I think it would be worthwhile to dig deeper and see if a file was deleted by the murderer,” I said.

  “If it’s deleted, it’s gone, right?”

  “Not exactly. If you just hit “delete,” the name of the file will disappear from the directory and you won’t see it listed anymore, but the file’s still in there somewhere, and there’s software available that will allow you to retrieve it.”

  “I never knew that,” Matt said. “Let’s hope the killer didn’t either. I’ll ask Casey over at our computer lab to come by and check it out.”

  As we turned to leave, I looked at Eric’s computer monitor. His collection of action figures was there, but something about them looked different from what I remembered seeing in the police photographs.