33
Late Friday afternoon, my curiosity finally got the better of me. I drove to Colgate and parked outside the apartment complex where Willard and Mary Lee lived. I knocked, this time hoping to catch her at home instead of him. She opened the door and regarded me briefly without saying a word.
She was small. Her face was a perfect oval, her features fine. Her red hair was straight, chin-length and cut jaggedly. Her forehead was high. A fine haze of red freckles gave her complexion a ruddy hue. Pale brows, blue eyes with no visible lashes. Very red lips. She was a slip of a thing, so delicately built that it made her feet look too big for her slender frame. “You’re the private detective who was here.”
“Yes.”
Her smile was pained. “You’ll be happy to know Willard told me everything. Full confession.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I had no guarantee he’d actually told her the whole truth and nothing but the truth so I was reluctant to interject a comment. “Can I have a few minutes of your time?”
“Why not? I’m leaving, so it’s lucky you caught me when you did. We can talk while I pack.”
I followed her into the apartment. Willard was clearly somewhere else so I didn’t bother asking about him. She proceeded to the bedroom, which was small and painted white. The bed was neatly made and a big soft-sided suitcase was sitting open on the spread. This was a room where the couple didn’t seem to spend much time. Tidy, but no books. No easy chair, no reading lamp, and no photographs. The closet doors were open, and I could see that the space had been divided democratically: a quarter for him, three quarters for her.
I took a position at the foot of the bed while she resumed her packing. She removed a pair of slacks from a hanger and folded them neatly before she placed them in the right half of the open suitcase. She had a packet of tissue paper on the bed, and she’d stuffed a sheet into the toe of each shoe before she tucked the pair in along the sides. She’d already packed underwear and sweaters.
I said, “Where will you go?”
“A motel for the next few days. After that, I don’t know.”
“Did Willard explain why I was here?”
“Because you’re a friend of the detective he hired.”
“Not a friend. He was someone I’d worked with in the past.”
“He sure had Willard wrapped around his little finger. I still can’t believe he hired a guy to follow me. What was going on in his head?”
“I guess he was feeling insecure.”
“He’s an idiot. I wish I’d realized it earlier.”
“He told me you quit your job.”
“That’s a move I’ll live to regret,” she said. “Jobs are scarce. I’ve been putting out résumés for two months and getting no response. From now on I’ll mind my own business, assuming I ever work again.”
She returned to the closet, picked two hangers off the rod, and returned to the bed. She removed a dress from each of the hangers and folded them, using tissue paper to minimize wrinkling.
“Pete taped a telephone conversation between you and Owen Pensky.”
“That’s nice. Did he plant cameras in the apartment so he could watch my every move?”
“He probably would have if he thought he could get away with it.”
She moved to the chest of drawers behind me and checked the first and second drawers. The first was empty. From the second drawer she removed a stack of neatly folded T-shirts that she placed in the left side of her suitcase. “Why are you so interested?”
“I’m distantly related to Terrence Dace.”
She fixed a look on me. “I’m sorry. I forget sometimes that life is about more than just me.”
“Do you believe Dr. Reed was responsible for what happened to Terrence?”
“Are you asking if I believe it or if I can prove it?”
“Either one.”
“I don’t think Dr. Reed’s responsible in the same way a drunk driver’s responsible in a hit-and-run fatality. All he was doing was protecting his own interests. Terrence Dace was collateral damage.”
“You know he stole three medical charts. His own, Charles Farmer’s, and Sebastian Glenn’s,” I said.
“I wasn’t aware of it, but good for him. Sebastian Glenn was the first death. Linton thought it was a fluke.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“One is a fluke. Three is a pattern.”
“Did they have something in common? A condition or a disease that put them at risk?”
“It’s possible they had health issues. Prediabetic or undiagnosed diabetes. Heart problems. I really have no idea. Most patients did fine on Glucotace. I had no access to the medical clinic where they were seen. I worked in the same lab with Linton, but not on the clinical trials he ran.”
“You told Owen Pensky that Dr. Reed shredded something. I’m not sure what it was. I only heard your half of the conversation.”
“Raw data. The printout was sitting on his desk. I caught a glimpse of the graph he’d done, which was a duplicate of one he’d used in an earlier trial. How stupid is that? You’d think if he was going to cheat, he’d be more imaginative.”
“So he was, what, misrepresenting his results?”
“It’s called trimming. If any values were too far out of line, he made adjustments.”
“Did you report it to anyone above him in the chain of command?”
“I couldn’t see the point. The director of the grants program is the one who hired him in the first place. He thinks Linton is a star, especially since he’s bringing money in.”
“Actually, I talked to Dr. Reed yesterday.”
“And how did he strike you? Is he a buffoon?”
“No.”
“Did he sweat? Did his hands shake? Did he hesitate?”
“Once. At the end of our conversation.”
“Well, trust me. He was either doing it for effect or trying to figure out an angle before he opened his mouth.”
“When we shook hands at the end of the interview, his were like ice.”
Her brows went up. “What the hell did you say to him?”
“I was asking questions about Dace. I thought he was being candid. He didn’t seem tense or guarded. I know he was bullshitting on one point, but it was minor and I didn’t want to press.”
She laughed. “That’s our boy. Mr. Slick. I’m surprised you picked up on it.”
“There has to be a way to shut him down.”
“Don’t look at me.”
“Who better?”
“Not to sound too cynical, but what makes you think anyone would listen to me? I’m the one he jilted. That’s according to the rumor he’s been spreading around. The first day I showed up for work, word was already out. His claim was we had an affair as undergraduates. That much was true. The way he tells it, I was needy and neurotic. I was jealous of his success, so he broke off the relationship. Now if I say anything at all derogatory, it looks like sour grapes. A woman scorned.”
“What’s the real story?”
“I broke up with him. He cribbed a paper. He stole my work. That’s the kind of guy he is. He diddled with the title, added five coauthors, two of whom I swear to god he made up out of whole cloth. Then he sent it off to a scientific journal. When it appeared months later, I confronted him. Big mistake. You know how many papers I have to my name? Six. He’s probably had fifty published in this year alone. That should be another little clue to the higher-ups. With that many, how does he have time to do his work?”
“Why did you apply for the job?”
“I screwed up. Big time. I knew it was his lab, but I’d forgotten how crazy he is.”
“But he’s a bright guy. Why’s he doing this?”
“Why does he do anything? Because he’s high ego and he’s a narcissist. Dangerous combination. He’s not a man who deals well with stress. Something happened in Arkansas a few years ago. I don’t have all the details, but a patient died and the error was traced to him. He couldn’t face it. He suffered a total nervous breakdown and had to be carted off to the funny farm.”