“Oh my,” Berger said. “Oh my, oh my.”
“Deal’s been cut, sir,” Saugust said. “Why don’t you just get it off your chest.”
“About a week later…” Berger sighed. “A week later, after my defeat, Gordon Shockley came to me with a proposition. How would I like to see my theoretical drug turned into a practical moneymaking venture? I asked him what he had in mind.”
Berger’s hands turned into white-knuckled fists.
“He started naming numbers-”
“Who named numbers?”
“Shockley. Shockley informed me about the enormous sums of money that Fisher/Tyne was planning to spend on Curedon’s R and D. He said if we could develop something even equally as good as Curedon and cut our fees by half…we could undersell Curedon and still make out like bandits.”
“Undersell to whom?”
“To Fisher/Tyne. It’s happened before. A company will abandon a project if they have something better lined up. In truth, we would have sold to any drug company willing to put up cash.”
“And you agreed to work with Shockley,” Oliver said.
“We live in a country that prides itself on free-market enterprise. As long as patents laws weren’t violated, I did nothing illegal in agreeing to develop a new drug.”
“Maybe not illegal, but unethical,” Oliver said.
“Was it any more unethical than Azor taking all the credit for work I did?”
Oliver looked at his notes, then at Berger. He sat back in his chair. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but Dr. Fulton-that’s Elizabeth Fulton for the records-she told us that any scientific discoveries that came from Sparks’s lab were his to publish. That’s just how it is in the academic world.”
Berger was miffed. “Do you want to hear my story or not?”
“Besides,” Oliver went on, “Sparks wasn’t screwing you up by monkeying with the computers-”
“I’m getting to that,” Berger responded fiercely.
“Rather slowly,” Saugust whispered under his breath.
Berger gave Saugust a hard glance, but went on. “Not wanting to be accused of academic pirating, I quit the job as liaison and handed it over to Reggie. In private…on my own time…I began working with Shockley on developing a competing drug to Curedon.”
“Where’d you get the money? Where’d you get the lab?”
“Shockley provided the money, told me he’d settle the account once we sold my drug.” Berger rubbed his cheeks. “Since I had no other source of funding, I didn’t probe. As far as the labs…I worked on my off hours and weekends at Fisher/Tyne-”
“So that’s really where you were the night of the murders,” Oliver butted in. “Tustin’s right around the corner from Fisher/Tyne’s labs. You weren’t at any dinner show-”
“I was there-”
“So tell me about the play, Doc. Better yet, whistle me a tune from the musical.”
Berger was silent.
“Way to go, Scott!” Decker said.
Marge shook her head. “I should have picked up on that. Tustin being so close to Fisher/Tyne.”
“Me, too. So this time it’s Scott. He did good.”
“He did good.”
Oliver said, “Your wife wasn’t home when we called your house. Where was she?”
“She had nothing to do-”
“I’m not saying she did,” Oliver interrupted. “Where was she?”
Berger sighed. “At her sister’s house. When I heard the horrid news coming home from the lab, I realized I was going to have to explain why I was so far away from my house. I bought a copy of the Orange County Register, looked in the entertainment section, saw the listing for the dinner show. I stopped by and picked a couple of ticket stubs off the sidewalk. If I had told the truth…that I was at Fisher/Tyne working on a competitive drug, people would have gotten the wrong idea.”
“Or the right one-”
“I did not kill Azor!”
“Detective, please!” Dorman cut in.
Oliver said, “Go on, Dr. Berger.”
“I went home…” Berger sighed again. “Quickly changed into dress clothes, called up my wife, and told her to borrow something dressy from her sister. Then I had her take me to the hospital, to make it look like we were coming back from the theater. She was furious at me…having to invent this facade for me. But…she was also scared. She knew if it all came out…”
“Somebody see you at Fisher/Tyne, Doc?” Oliver asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe. There are guards there. But I don’t check in with them, as I have my own key from Shockley.” Berger dropped his head. “My work is very hush-hush.”
“So no one can verify-”
“I swear I didn’t kill anyone!” Berger was almost in tears. “Look, I’ve taken a lie-detector test. I’ll take another one. I’m telling you the truth.”
“There goes his alibi,” Marge said.
“Don’t he know it,” Decker said.
“What do you think?”
“I think we need to question him extensively.”
“Do you want me to go on?” Berger asked quietly.
Oliver nodded. “Yeah, continue your story, Doc.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Okay, it’s the truth.”
“Where was I?”
“You were working on a competing drug to Curedon.”
“Yes. Correct. And things were going very well. I was making incredibly good progress on my drug…which I named…Marasporin…which was a marriage between several known cyclosporins and Curedon. I was surprised how fast things were going. There was just one problem.”
“What?” Oliver asked.
“Reggie Decameron,” Berger said. “He was working with Fisher/Tyne on Curedon…smoothing out the bumps. Actually, he was ironing out the wrinkles faster than I could develop my drug. Shockley was alarmed at how scientifically facile Reggie was. The man, for all his perversions, was a brilliant thinker. And contrary to what I stated before, I am sorry he’s dead.”
Marge said, “He just gave us a reason for wanting Decameron out of the picture.”
“Yes, he did.”
“Stupidity or is he really innocent?”
“He passed the lie-detector test,” Decker pointed out.
“He is also an admitted liar.”
Decker nodded, took out his notepad, wrote down Berger’s words, and underlined them.
Berger said, “Shockley was frantic with worry. After all, he had invested money in me. Lots and lots of money, or so he told me. I, for one, suspect he had invested other people’s money in me. So who knows to whom he was beholden. He suggested a way to slow Curedon’s progress with the FDA.”
“Tamper with the data,” Oliver said. “You plugged in false data to make Curedon look bad.”
“Not bad, heavens no. Just…not as good.”
“The higher mortality rate Decameron was concerned with,” Oliver said. “He was right. It was a technical error. But one that was done on purpose.”
Averting his eyes, Berger whispered, “It was a terrible mistake on my part.”
“Not a mistake, Doctor. A felony-”
“Detective, please,” Dorman chided. “Dr. Berger has been made aware of the seriousness of his error in judgment. There’s no need to remind him.”
Berger said, “My…crime, I think, is a by-product of the computer age. One tampers with numbers in machines, one is never confronted with the direct consequences of one’s errors. I didn’t see faces, I just saw numbers.”
“All those newfangled falderah machines,” Marge grumped. “Just suck you into sinnin’.”
“Talk about cheap rationalizations.” Decker rolled his eyes. “Satan goes high tech.”
Berger continued. “Fisher/Tyne logs its computer time meticulously. All operators have to keep precise records of their machine usage. We couldn’t use the computer on Fisher/Tyne’s end because unaccounted minutes would show up on the log.”
“So you got to the computer on your end,” Oliver said. “How’d you break into Leonard’s system?”