The Hydrogen Murder (18 page)

"I know that doesn't justify doing what I did to
succeed," she said. "But Leder has all this power over us. And he
made it sound all right. We're a good team and we can make a
contribution."

"What you've contributed so far is the worst thing for
science as far as I'm concerned," I said, forgetting the wisdom of being
cautious until we knew for sure who killed Eric. "Some people love to
think that scientists cheat and make up data to get money. And you've helped
them believe they're right."

My sermon was more for myself than for Connie. I'd always
erred in the opposite direction, wanting to think that only the purest motives
drove research scientists. It was hard for me to take this undeniable evidence
to the contrary. The fact that the greed of a scientist might have led to a
murder made the situation even more horrible for me.

"I know, I know," Connie said, standing up and
straightening her tiny skirt. "I'm going to talk to Sergeant Gennaro. Will
you come with me?"

"Yes," I said. "I'd like to be there."

I called Matt's pager number and was surprised to reach him
at his office on a Saturday afternoon. I explained that Connie had some
information to give him about the printout, leaving out the part about who
owned the Corvette in the parking lot. I wasn't anxious to alert him further
that Connie might be the murderer. He wasn't easy to manipulate, however.

"Is Connie there in your home right now?" he
asked, his voice expressing the displeasure that I was starting to get used to.

"Yes," I said in a soft voice that I hoped Connie
didn't hear. "Everything's fine. We'll be there shortly if that's all
right."

"Hold on," he said, leaving me with a brief
interlude of Lawrence Welk-like music. He was back on the line a few seconds
later.

"There's a cruiser at Broadway and Tapley Avenue,"
Matt said. "He'll pick you up in less than five minutes. Be at the curb.
And make sure Connie knows the plan. Is that clear?"

"Yes, it's clear," I said, feeling once more at
his mercy.

I used a significantly different tone when I told Connie that
we were being escorted to the police station. I tried to make it sound as
though the department routinely provided taxi service as a courtesy to its
friends.

Before we left the apartment for our curbside rendezvous
with the police car, I remembered another question and picked up Eric's
computer printout. I thought Connie might be more willing to share information
than she had been the night before.

"What about these characters at the bottom. Do they
have anything to do with the false conductivity equations or
measurements?" I asked her.

"I still have no idea what those are," she said,
shrugging her petite shoulders. "They have nothing to do with our
data."

As she finished her sentence, we heard the police car pull
up. I was grateful that at least there was no siren and flashing lights.

~~~~

In Matt's office, Connie told him first about taking her
brother's car and being at the lab on Monday evening until one in the morning,
apparently thinking that was the most incriminating aspect of her story.

I took the printout from my briefcase and Connie showed Matt
the lines that were significant to the falsified data. Her voice was higher
than usual and she twisted her hair around her fingers like a schoolgirl. I
didn't interrupt while she explained the fudge factor to Matt in terms that I
knew were too technical for him.

 
I was still
unhappy that she didn't seem to appreciate the gravity of what she'd done with
physics research data. This is different from working backwards to get the
right answer for the momentum of a ball bearing in a freshman physics lab, I
wanted to tell her, but I decided not to speak until I was spoken to.

A young Asian man in beige slacks and sports jacket came to
the door and was introduced as Detective Wu. I pictured him living on Shirley
Avenue near where Steiner's Deli used to be.

"Doctor Provenza, I'm going to ask you to step outside
with Detective Wu and give him a new statement. And I'll want to see you again
before you leave."

I stood up, but Matt motioned for me to sit down and I did, clutching
my briefcase all the while, feeling like an up-tight puppet. I was not looking
forward to this conversation. I changed my mind about keeping silent.

"Do you think she killed Eric?" I asked.

"Let's talk about some other things," he said.
"Why don't you tell me how all this came about?"

I started with the revelation about Connie's brother, then
moved on to the session in my apartment with the printout. I felt an enormous letdown
when Matt told me they'd already closed in on identifying the car. The police
had been back questioning physics department personnel, and of course many
people mentioned Connie's twin brother from Groton.

"This, on the other hand, I don't get," he said,
pointing to the printout. Finally I saw the hint of a smile and relaxed. I
launched into my explanation of Connie's data and the way they'd faked it,
using the checkbook analogy I'd worked out in my apartment.

"Why do metals conduct more electricity than other
materials?"

"It's the way the electrons are arranged in a
metal—they're more free to move."

"And these moving electrons produce electricity?"

"Actually, these moving electrons
are
electricity—that is, we call moving electrons
'electricity.' It may sound like only semantics, but it's an important
distinction in understanding how physicists develop their jargon."

For a few minutes, I had a good time, feeling useful and
appreciated. Matt asked a few more questions and thanked me, but didn't let me
get away without another warning speech.

"I don't know what to do with you," he said.
"You apparently are not going to follow my advice, so I'm going to have to
make it stronger. This is not a suggestion. You're not to operate on your own
in this investigation. It's a violation of your contract for one thing, and
extremely foolish, for another. If you see or hear anything you think is
significant, you don't handle it yourself. You call me."

Matt leaned towards me as he talked, emphasizing certain
words by tapping his hands on his desk blotter.

"I have something else to tell you," I said.
"Not exactly what we're talking about but I should have told you
before."

He leaned forward a few more inches and opened his eyes
wide. He tilted his head and tightened his jaw. I was sorry I mentioned it, but
there was no turning back. I told him about Leder's phone call on Wednesday
night, but not the gossip from Andrea's alleged eavesdropping incident, so I
felt only partly cleansed, as if I'd been to confession and held back a sin.

He let out a loud breath, but seemed to take it better than
I thought he would. If he felt he'd intimidated me enough, he was right.

"Okay," he said. "Thank you. Is there
anything else?"

"Yes," I said. I flipped over the computer
printout so the last lines of the stack were on top. "There are three
symbols at the end of the program that seem out of place."

CHAPTER
17

I left the station with the same officer who'd picked Connie
and me up earlier in the evening. As I stepped into the white cruiser I noted
the red script along the bottom of the back door. "Revere Pride" it
read, and I wondered if whoever created the slogan meant the cars, the
officers, or the special escort service for naive amateur detectives.

Connie's car was not in front of Galigani's where I'd last
seen it, so I assumed she was finished before I was. Or else they've put her in
jail and impounded her car, I thought. In any case, I was ready to admit to
myself that it wasn't my problem. My problem was to get ready for a double date
with Peter and Rose and Frank.

As I entered the front door of Galigani's, I saw Rose
standing on the second floor landing, her hands on her hips, her eyes full of
energy. When I reached her level, she pulled me into her office.

"I can't stand it, Gloria. You have to tell me what's
going on."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

Neither of us could get much farther without a burst of
laughter.

We each took one of the upholstered chairs in front of her
desk. Rose was still in her funeral garb, but I knew she wouldn't be here if
she didn't already have a smashing outfit laid out on her bed for our evening
of dinner and dancing.

"A cruiser picks you up and drops you off. What's that
about? And what happened last night with Matt? How come you're going out with
Peter?"

"More important," I said, "how did you handle
the guest book crisis with Janice Bensen?"

She looked as if she'd lose her breath if I didn't satisfy
her curiosity. But she played along for another minute.

"I told her we'd use it as is for the evening, and then
later we'd add a cover on top of the white linen that she thinks is too
feminine. She can have any color of her choice."

"Brilliant," I said, patting her knee.

She folded her hands on her lap and looked at me as if to
remind me that she'd earned the right to some information. I knew it was my
turn. I told her why Matt stayed behind and she seemed as disappointed as I was
that it was for less than romantic reasons.

"He was really upset when I told him you had Eric's
wife and friends up here," Rose said. "I think he cares a lot about
you."

"He doesn't care about me in particular, Rose. He just
doesn't want a civilian employee dead on his watch."

"You're pouting, Josephine," Rose said, using her
old trick of calling me by my mother's name whenever she detected a regression
to my childhood training.

"Okay, never mind. Let's move on to the police
escort," I said.

I explained that the cruisers were due to what I thought was
Matt's paranoia about my having Connie in my apartment once I knew she'd been
at the crime scene on the night of the murder. To my surprise, Rose took his
side.

"I never thought of that risk," she said, frowning
as she did when she was serious. "He's right. Excitement is one thing, but
you can't be putting yourself in danger."

"Well, there won't be any more excitement or danger. My
job is almost over."

"You mean they're going to arrest one of the
scientists?"

"Not necessarily, but there's not much more for me to
do."

We looked at the clock, a mahogany heirloom like Rose's
desk. Even though most clients never saw Rose's office, it was beautifully
furnished with antiques from her family.

"Well, I've got work to do," she said, leaning
over to show me the roots of her chemically enhanced dark hair. We left her
office together.

~~~~

As soon as I closed my own apartment door behind me, I
realized that I'd left my briefcase in Rose's office. I grimaced in annoyance
since I'd wanted one more look at my notes. Somewhere I had a key to the second
floor rooms, but I'd never used it and couldn't remember where it was.

Finally I decided not to bother, that a better idea was to
fill my tub with water and lavender foam from Crabtree & Evelyn and forget
about the investigation. I couldn't give it up completely, however, so before I
got in to soak I put a notebook and pencil on the small white wicker stool next
to the tub, just in case I had a brilliant insight.

I wondered how Leder and Connie would work out the debt they
owed the scientific community. My opinion of Leder was low enough that I
thought he might divert all the blame to Connie. As project leader he could
take the high ground and say that he merely allowed his name to be used on the
research papers of his underlings and had no knowledge of the fraud. In any
case they'd have to retract their paper and face the consequences in front of a
review board of their peers.

Although the technical mystery of the hydrogen data was
solved, I still had a lot of questions. Was what the scientists had done enough
to think of them as murderers? If so, who— Connie or Leder or both? It
wasn't as if fudged data were the only motive for killing Eric.

I mentally reviewed my notes, which were as clear in my head
as they were on paper. Andrea seemed eager to cast suspicion on Leder. At first
I thought she might have made up the whole story about Leder's call to his
wife, but how else would she have known about the sleeping pills or what Leder
and his wife told the police?

There was still Andrea's own motive to think about, and
Janice's. Surely jealousy and domestic discord were still more popular motives
for murder than damage to scientific reputations. And for all his holy image, I
couldn't rule out Jim as a possibility.

Even though it was none of my business, I wished Matt would
share more of his thinking on procedural matters with me. I wondered if he had
followed up on the discrepancy in Janice's statement that she hadn't been to
the lab since Memorial Day. I also wondered if Janice knew about Eric's
scheduled meeting with the divorce lawyer or that he allegedly had a girlfriend
in California.