Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (23 page)

But if Eddie didn’t do it, what was the explanation for the knife and shirt found in the garage? The Haddad family said they must have been planted, an excuse he had heard a hundred times before. But what if this time it was true? Who would have framed them? Someone else with a motive for murder.

That idea brought him full circle back to the research data. To David Miller, Joe Difalco, Rosalind Simmons and even Myles Halton himself. Which one had wanted Blair silenced, and. more importantly, which one had the capacity to do it? The answers to these questions, he hoped, lay with Dr. Stan Baker and the computer files.

Aware of the tenuous thread by which his marriage hung, he searched about for some paper on which to leave Sharon a note of thanks. Earlier, she had reached out to him, however tentatively, and now it was his turn to reciprocate. It was then
that he noticed the local tabloid crammed into the garbage can in the corner. He fished it out, curious that Sharon would have allowed the sensationalist rag to cross the threshold and wondering if she had noticed more news about the murders. Worse, he discovered. The headline was sprawled across the front page: “No Progress in Blair Case.”

And underneath was a picture of himself with the caption: “Investigator’s tie found in nude victim’s hand.”

“Fuck,” he muttered, a sick feeling settling in the pit of his stomach. It grew as the story, upon reading, proved even worse than the headline. One of Carrie’s neighbours had spotted Green buttoning his shirt as he ran from the apartment, and the reporter had somehow managed to hint, while deftly skirting the libel laws, that he’d been having an affair with Carrie MacDonald and was now stalling the investigation to prevent this from coming to light.

“Fuck. Fuck,” he repeated, his head in his hands. What had Sharon thought? What had she done?

It took him thirty seconds to check through the apartment and confirm his fears. Tony’s favourite blanket and toys were gone from his crib, Sharon’s toothbrush was gone from its puddle, and her car was not in its parking space below.

“Bloody hell!” he exclaimed and headed across the hall to Mrs. Louks. But Tony was not there. Sharon had picked him up in a great hurry two hours earlier, and although she had not said where she was going, she had been juggling a suitcase and Tony’s baby seat.

Green took a deep breath to calm himself as he returned to the apartment. It could be nothing, he tried to tell himself. She had said earlier that she wanted to let him sleep in peace. It was a beautiful sunny day; maybe she had taken the baby to the beach or on a picnic, and she would be back in a few
hours, teasing him about his panic. In the meantime, worrying was not going to get Jules and Lynch and the whole damn press corps off his back. Solving the case would.

Trying to be an optimist, he wrote her a big note: “Darling, I’m at work. Please call me. Thanks and love always”, and left for the university to meet Dr. Baker, bypassing the police station and the clamour of the squad room. If no one saw him, no one could demand an explanation for the tie.

He found the little round professor hunched over a computer staring at an array of columns on the screen. His assistant Melanie sat cross-legged on the floor, poring over numbers. Baker’s eyes were bloodshot and his thinning hair stood on end. He gazed at Green as if he were an apparition from another galaxy.

“What have you got for us, professor?”

Baker shook his head slowly back and forth. “These numbers. It’s the damnedest thing.”

“Well, that’s your ballpark, not mine. Are you ready to give me a report?”

Baker stared at the screen, then flipped through a stack of computer print-outs, pausing now and then to peer at something. For a long while he said nothing. Green was beginning to think the man had forgotten his presence, when he suddenly slammed his books shut and stood up.

“Yes. Let’s get a cup of coffee.”

Leaving Melanie to her perusal of the numbers, they went down to the little sidewalk café.

“We’ll have to talk fast,” Green began. “The brass is hounding me.”

“Do you want the long answer or the short answer?” Baker asked, a large muffin poised at his lips.

“The short one for now.”

“David Miller is your culprit.”

Green whistled. “So the data does support Difalco’s work?”

Baker put the muffin down. “You want the long answer now?”

“Isn’t there a simple yes or no to that?”

“Yes, there is. It’s yes. The data does support Difalco’s work. All Jonathan Blair’s findings are consistent with Difalco’s. Blair had concluded the same thing the day before he died.”

“Then how come there’s a long answer?”

“Well…” Baker finally crammed the muffin into his mouth, and Green had to wait while he chewed. “You’ve got to admire Miller’s work. He’s a genius. He’s head and shoulders above most people. I couldn’t figure out how he generated the simulation of Difalco’s work and managed to make his numbers fit the way he wanted.” He licked crumbs from his fingers. “There’s a new book from a cognitive neuroscience conference in Denmark that I want to check, but I’ve had to order it up from McGill. The University of Ottawa library says their copy is signed out to: guess who? Our guy Miller.”

The professor looked as if he had single-handedly uncovered the key to the mystery. Green frowned warily. “What’s odd about that? Miller is doing research in the field.”

“But the timing! The coincidence—a new book out, and he’s got it. It’s highly suspicious, don’t you think? Plus, I’ve tried calling him to borrow the book, and he’s not returning my calls. I’ll bet he used that book to help with his simulations.”

Melanie and the thousand dollars a day notwithstanding, Professor Baker was clearly relishing his role as computer sleuth. His eyes danced as his imagination took flight. Green cast about for some gentle brakes. “I thought you said he faked them.”

“He must have, but how?” Reverence mixed with determination on Baker’s face. A man not unlike myself,
Green thought, fascinated by the mystery of facts. “It’s so damn clever, so well hidden. Just a couple of small changes in the algorithm, like a weighting factor here or a regression sequence there, and it throws Difalco’s data off completely. But the real beauty of it is that Miller’s own research data fit together properly too. He could have fooled Halton, me— hell, the whole scientific community! He would have been the one to go to Yale on a research fellowship, and no one would have known he was a fake. If Difalco hadn’t stuck up for himself, and if Halton hadn’t asked Blair to do an independent replication…”

“Blair wouldn’t be dead.”

Baker blinked. “Well, yes, there’s that. But evoked potential word processing research might have gone off in the wrong direction for years. That’s the point. Miller’s that convincing.” He shook his head ruefully. “I don’t envy Myles the job of cleaning up this mess.”

“He fired Miller already.”

“Well, yes, but Myles was supposed to present this research in Stockholm next month, and this is going to be a major blow to his credibility. Plus, Yale won’t want to touch him with a ten-foot pole now. It’s going to be a long while before his work is credible again.”

“Was it credible before?”

“Oh very. And potentially very useful too, which of course was what he wanted.”

“What do you mean?”

Baker seemed to hesitate as if he had overstepped his bounds, then reached for another muffin. “Well, you know we are often influenced in our choice of career by personal problems. Wilder Penfield, the great pioneer in brain surgery, had a sister with epilepsy. Halton has a son in an institution,
brain-damaged from birth. Myles was a graduate student at Berkeley at the time.”

Green masked his surprise. “I only knew about the two daughters.”

Baker shook his head as he chewed. “He never talks about it. Some deep dark secret, I gather. But it’s his driving force, so to speak. That and, let’s face it, he’s ambitious as hell.”

Twelve

Afterwards, Green was
so deep in thought as he arrived back at his office that he failed to see Marianne Blair’s executive assistant lying in wait outside his door. Peter Weiss seized him by the elbow and spun him around.

“You haven’t answered any of my calls.”

Green shook him off. Around the squad room, heads turned curiously. “Do you want the case solved or do you want me chatting on the phone?”

“From what I hear you’ve been busy sleeping with witnesses.” “Actually, I was up all night watching a suspect.”

Weiss wrinkled his nose as if smelling a foul odour. “An Arab. Yes, I know.”

Green hesitated. Weiss must be getting his information from somewhere else. He hoped it was Jules. “A Canadian, Mr. Weiss. Of Lebanese origin.”

“CSIS should be informed.”

Green rolled his eyes. “This has nothing to do with international terrorism, or with Mrs. Blair for that matter. This is about Jonathan’s girlfriend.”

“Then you’re naïve, Inspector,” Weiss retorted. “If it’s an Arab, it’s political. If it’s a Jew, it’s political, if it’s a black, it’s political—”

“That’s your problem,” Green snapped, pushing past Weiss into his office. “I’m just investigating a homicide, and so far,
the only politics involved are the ones I have to play with you guys. I don’t mean to be rude, and there’s no disrespect implied, but you’re wasting precious time. I’ll phone Mrs. Blair myself.” He picked up the phone as if to convey his sincerity. “I’ll tell her all I can. But I have several urgent leads to follow up, and that’s where I can help her the most.”

Weiss glowered in the doorway, searching for a toe-hold of authority. When Green began to dial, he spun on his heel and stalked out, flicking at the sleeves of his linen suit as if to rid himself of the taint of crime. Green’s tone with Marianne Blair was more diplomatic, but his message much the same. After dispensing with her as quickly as possible, he flipped hopefully through his stack of phone messages, but none was from Sharon. He called home but got the answering machine. It’s still early, he told himself. She could still be at the beach or at a friend’s, especially if she didn’t have to work until the evening. Full of hope, he called the ward where she worked, but the ward clerk told him Sharon had called in sick earlier in the day and requested a few days off. The woman was surprised he didn’t know and asked if Sharon was all right, because she had sounded strained and upset.

Green hung up, fighting a sense of foreboding. It was time for some serious damage control. He had to explain the necktie, but to do that he had to find her. That meant calling her friends, all smart, capable nurses like herself, who thought he was cute but entirely unreliable as a life partner. It meant calling his in-laws, who had been keeping their fingers crossed ever since their career-woman daughter had finally reeled in this rather unlikely marital prospect—Jewish at least, but a divorced policeman who’d forget to eat, sleep or change his clothes if no one was there to stand over him. His mother-inlaw’s screech would echo all the way from Mississauga, and his
father-in-law would have them both packed on the next plane up. Green shuddered. Could he face that? On top of Lynch, Weiss, Marianne Blair and all the other naysayers on his back right now?

Closer to home and easier to drop in on without inventing excuses was his father, whom Sharon adored. She knew he stayed alive only for the moments he could spend with his son and grandson. She would never leave town without visiting him to say good-bye, and no matter what excuse she gave, his father would know the truth. For a man who sat alone in his apartment all day watching TV, Sid Green had an uncanny knack for reading people. He would know if Sharon were leaving for good.

But Sid Green’s knack for seeing through people might prove tricky, Green realized as he knocked and breezed into his father’s living room, trying to look cheerful. Sid looked up from his chair, where he was watching some indeterminate soap opera. There were spikes of bristle on his chin which his razor had missed, but at least he was still trying to shave, Green thought.

“What’s going on?” his father demanded irritably. Any change to his routine, no matter how pleasant, seemed to irritate him.

Green held up a paper bag. “I brought you cheese bagels from Nate’s. You hungry?”

Sid said nothing, but watched his son suspiciously as he slipped into the tiny kitchenette to heat up the food. Sensing the heavy silence, Green stalled in the kitchen, looking for an oblique approach to his inquiry. But as it turned out, he didn’t need one. Returning to the living room, he found his father’s rheumy eyes fixed on him knowingly.

“Sharon was here.”

Green kept his expression neutral. “Oh, really? When?”

“She already bought me cheese bagels from Nate’s. She made some for her and me, but she didn’t touch her own.”

“Did she…say anything?”

Still Sid held his gaze balefully. “She brought me some new pictures. Mishka, don’t do this to me again.”

Green blinked. “Do what?”

“Chase her away. She will move to Toronto and take Tony away from me. When I am dead, that will be time enough to get a divorce.”

“Hey, Dad, she brought over some baby pictures. Who’s talking about divorce?”

Sid didn’t reply, and Green felt his heart turn to stone. “Was she?”

Sid took a deep breath. “She took a picture from the drawer when she put her pictures away. She doesn’t think I saw, but she took the picture of you with your mother at the river. That time you carried her down there just before she died.”

Our last family picnic, on my twenty-first birthday, Green thought. Sharon had always admired that picture, but surely she knew how his father cherished it! “God, Dad, I’m sorry.”

“I have copies. But why did she do that, Mishka? To have a memory of you together, for Tony, when she takes him to Toronto.”

Green felt sick, but he forced himself to laugh. “She’s not going to Toronto, Dad. I asked her to get that picture. I…well, I need it for something.”

He didn’t know how he was going to cover up that lie, but right now it was the least of his worries. He stayed a few minutes longer, filling the silence with chatter, but he knew his father was unconvinced. As Green left, he searched for a way to cheer him up. Depression and loss could be fatal.