Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (28 page)

In that moment of outrage, Difalco’s eyes were clear and his face without a mask. For the first time, Green felt he was meeting the real Joe Difalco, a bright, passionate, deeply insecure young man with a lot to prove and an onerous image to maintain. Deep beneath the layered personae, there was a decent core. Joe’s story had the unmistakable ring of truth; it was so bizarre and off the wall that he could never have pulled it out of a hat on the spur of the moment. But once again, it sent the mystery spinning in an entirely new direction.

“You’re saying someone wanted you to steal those files?”

“Someone? That fucking Miller! He gets me to get rid of the files for him and take the heat if I got caught! Fuck, the guy’s good! He was at the lab just a couple of hours ago, trying to pump us all for information about our research. Said he’d found a new book, and he was trying to track down how he’d been set up. But I bet he was looking to see how far he needs to cover his tracks, who else’s research data he needs to erase.”

Warning bells shrilled in Green’s head. “Who’d he talk to?”

“Most of us. We’ve all fallen a bit behind with Blair’s death,
so we had extra work to do. Fuck that bastard!”

Green’s eyes willed Difalco to focus. The young man was flushed deep red with outrage at being outsmarted.

“Joe, think carefully. Did anyone act strangely when he asked? Did anyone do anything unusual after he left?”

Difalco had been shaking his head. “No one except Miller himself. He was drooling over Rosalind Simmons, and he asked her to go with him. That’s a first.”

Fourteen

Green urged the
Corolla on as they raced across town towards Rosalind Simmons’ apartment building. Beside him, Sullivan was punching numbers on Green’s cellular phone. Rocking to the movement of the car, he listened, then shook his head.

“No answer. Miller’s not home.”

“Damn!” Green pressed the accelerator closer to the floor. Sullivan hung on to the armrest.

“Don’t kill us, Green. I’m sure Lynch will extend the deadline to one a.m.”

Green shook his head impatiently. “This killer’s cleaning up, and Miller’s blundering around out there turning over rocks. I’ve got a very bad feeling about this.”

“You still don’t believe he’s guilty? Even after this e-mail business? That was pretty clever, and Miller’s the one who’d benefit most.”

“I don’t know any more, Brian. It’s like a goddamn maze. All I know is that with all these people playing amateur detective, someone is going to get killed. Whether it’s Miller or—”

A vague memory was tugging at his mind, a pencilled vision of frizzy hair and sharp, deep-set eyes. Suddenly it came loose. If he added colour to the hair and eyes…

“Rosalind Simmons!” he gasped. “That’s who Carrie saw!”

The frizzy hair was pulled severely back into a ponytail when Rosalind opened her door, but the sharp eyes were the same as in Carrie’s sketch. She didn’t look surprised to see them, but not pleased either.

“With all the intrigue swirling around, I figured you’d get back to me eventually.”

Green pushed past her into the room angrily. God, he was tired of fencing with this bunch! “What intrigue?”

“Who screwed up whose data, who fooled Jonathan Blair—?”

“I haven’t time for riddles, Miss Simmons. What did David Miller want with you this evening?”

She moved in front of him as if to block his progress. “What business is that of yours?”

“The business of life and death,” he shot back. “Now tell me.”

She folded her arms over her chest. Behind her, he could see a small bachelor flat almost devoid of furniture. Nothing hung on the off-white walls, and the only hint of her own personality was the rowing machine in the corner.

“I’m not going to help you arrest him,” she said. “He’s a good man.”

“He probably is. Just tell me what he wanted.”

“Nothing. Just to talk. He’s very depressed about what happened. I cooked him some dinner and he left.”

“Talk about what?”

Her gaze strayed past him across the room and for a moment she seemed to waver. Then she shook her head. “It’s private.”

He knew she was hiding something, but was too tired and frayed to outmanoeuvre her, so he tried a more indirect
approach. Walking around her, he settled into the corner of the shabby couch, which sat alone against one wall in a poor attempt to create a living room. It probably doubled as her bed at night. Sullivan remained leaning against the wall near the door, taking notes.

Green fixed his eyes on her. “What were you doing at the Morisset Library on the night Blair was murdered?”

She blinked, first at the abrupt change of topic and then rapidly as she absorbed the shock. She turned her back and busied herself straightening dishes on her makeshift shelf. “What are you talking about?”

“The question was plain enough. A witness saw you.” It was a bluff, but he hoped his tone was convincing. Carrie MacDonald was no longer around to support him. “I’d also like to know why you didn’t mention it to the first detective. It sounds suspiciously like withholding information from the police.”

She fumbled a cup, almost dropping it. “I was so shocked—I mean, when I heard about Jonathan’s death—I guess it just went right out of my head. We were all shocked, Inspector.”

“Give me a break, Miss Simmons. I know you’re far from helpless. You can take care of yourself pretty well, can’t you?”

“I’ve learned to.” She set her jaw and faced him defiantly. A woman who reacts to threat with anger. “What do you want?”

“The truth. What were you doing in the library that night?”

“Studying. Students do that.”

“What time?”

“From nine till closing. Exactly the time Jonathan was killed.”

“Did you see anything unusual? Hear anything?”

“No.”

“Did you recognize anyone else there?”

She hesitated a fraction of a second. “No.”

“Who?”

“No one.”

“Bullshit.” He took a guess. Another bluff. “You saw Dave Miller there, didn’t you?” Her flinch told him he’d hit the mark. “He was there at that time and when you heard Jonathan was murdered, you panicked and decided not to mention you’d even been there. Isn’t that how it happened?”

She was shaking her head fiercely. “Dave would never do anything! He’s been set up!”

“But he was there.”

“You’re putting words in my mouth!”

“Miss Simmons, I understand your loyalty to Dave—”

“He’s a gentle, honest man.”

“So was Jonathan Blair!” Green retorted. “He didn’t deserve to be murdered. If Dave Miller didn’t kill him, trust me to uncover that. But if he did kill him, who deserves your loyalty more?”

She roamed around her barren room, straightening covers and wiping up imaginary dust. Finally, she began to speak. “Dave told me he was going to the library to meet Jonathan.”

“When did he tell you this?”

“About nine o’clock that evening. I was just leaving, and I dropped into his office to ask if he wanted a bite. He said no, because Jonathan had asked him to meet him at the library later.”

Green frowned. “You’re sure he said Jonathan asked him?”

“Yes.”

“Where in the library?”

“Just…” she shrugged, “just in the library, I think.”

“So Jonathan was in his office that evening?”

She shook her head. “He’d been around earlier. He sent Dave an e-mail.”

The e-mail trick again! “You mean from his computer to Dave’s?”

“Yes. We did that to each other all the time. Silly little things half the time. Like ‘Hi, you lonely in there?’”

“Did Miller ever verify the message really came from Jonathan?”

“I have no idea.” Comprehension widened her eyes. “You think someone else sent him that message!” she gasped. “To get him over there, so he’d get blamed?”

Green’s mind was racing. Pieces were falling into place, but the picture didn’t make any sense! Groping for logic, he asked her to continue her account of the evening. Now that she knew he was considering Miller’s side, she softened and came to sit by his side.

“I did go over to the library and hang around, but I didn’t see anything. I was hoping…” She flushed, awkward with feminine wiles. “I was hoping to catch Dave when the library closed, maybe get him to go out for a beer afterwards. I saw him studying on the fourth floor.”

“What time was that?”

“About ten-thirty. I saw Jonathan too, his nose buried in a book, scribbling furiously.”

“When and where?”

She flinched at his sharp tone and twisted her hands in her lap. “Uh—after that. Maybe twenty to eleven? He was in a corner of the library, a place we’d never normally go.”

“The Medieval Literature section?”

Surprised, she nodded. “He was so intent that he didn’t see me.”

The insight came to Green in a flash. Blair was hiding!
Trying to avoid all the colleagues who had suddenly turned up at the library. The question was—who else besides Dave Miller and Rosalind had he seen? “Did you see anybody else from your group?”

“Well, I didn’t stay around. Soon the intercom announced ten minutes to closing, and I started trying to find Dave, but he wasn’t in his carrel anymore. I realized I must have missed him, so I hurried to try to catch him downstairs.” She flushed again, knotting her fingers. “I…I feel sorry for the guy.”

Green had no time for sentiment. “And did you find him downstairs?”

“Well, there was a lot of confusion. The fire alarm went off and—”

“Did you find him?”

Reluctantly she shook her head. “But he said he left when the fire alarm rang. And I believe him. Dave is not like other men, Inspector. He’s not capable of deceit. He’s been trying to figure out himself how he was set up, and he says he’s very close. He found a book in the library yesterday describing some recent research in Denmark on localizing functions in the brain.”

Some vague memories stirred. Something Stan Baker had said in his wild speculations about Miller. And something Carrie MacDonald had mentioned when she first described her discovery of the body. Both had talked about a book. “Where is this book?”

She hesitated, avoiding his sharp gaze. “Miss Simmons!”

Without a word she rose and went to her bookshelf, where she pulled out a thick, shiny volume. “Dave told me to hold it for him and not to let it out of my sight for anyone.”

Green flipped through it, recognizing words like perception, sensory input and cerebral cortex, but little else. He was going
to need Dr. Baker’s services again in a hurry.

“He said it was that important?”

She nodded. “He certainly got very excited. He was looking at the section on auditory processing, and he said he found exactly what the culprit did to the numbers. He said he just had one more person to talk to and I should keep the book just in case.”

Green felt a chill. Had Miller known he was heading off to meet a killer? “In case what?”

She obviously had not sensed the same threat, for she shrugged with disinterest. “In case he got arrested, I assumed.”

Green was just about to close the book and call Baker when a smudge of dirt caught his eye. Flipping on a stronger light, he took out his magnifying glass. On closer scrutiny it was far more than a smudge of dirt. Near the edge of the page, barely visible to the naked eye, were the clear lines of a fingerprint etched in blood.

Green paced the little fingerprint lab, tripping over Lou Paquette at every turn. Paquette sat at his microscope surrounded by fingerprint sheets and, in his utter concentration, not a sound could be heard beyond the faint wheeze of his breath. His hair was rumpled, and there was a smell of stale whisky about him, but he had dragged himself out of bed without complaint when Green had called.

“It’s still going to be hard to connect the print to the scene,” Sullivan pointed out on one of Green’s passes. “The defence will claim that hundreds of students with hangnails could have touched that book.”

“Not if the blood is Jonathan Blair’s and the print is our
killer’s.” Green threw his hands up. “Lou, what the hell’s taking so long! I thought you said it was a good print.”

Paquette raised his head from the lens, his face ruddy from concentration. “It is. It’s beautiful. I just can’t match it to anyone. Not Miller, not Difalco, not the Haddads or Halton. It’s not even Jonathan Blair’s.”

“Maybe it is just some student with a hangnail,” Sullivan replied, rubbing his eyes wearily.

“Not that kind of coincidence.” Green snatched the book off the table. “Not on the book both Jonathan Blair and David Miller found crucial to the research fraud. You two guys can go home, but I’m taking it over to the RCMP lab to see if Serology can tie the blood to Blair.”

Green had to rant a little and threaten the wrath of the Police Chief, but he was finally able to cajole one junior serologist back into his lab to look at the bloodstained print. He gritted his teeth as the young man fiddled and measured and peered through his microscope before finally coming up with his verdict. Type A—Jonathan Blair’s blood type.

“I could go further,” the technician added nervously. “I mean, if you want. It’s a pretty small amount, but I can get you some other factors. If you want.”

“If I want?” Green shook his head in exasperation. “Of course I want. And I want DNA too. The killer’s ID, and our whole case, hinges on this print. I need every piece of physical ammunition I can get.”

Green glanced at his watch as he headed back out to the parking lot. Eleven-thirty. Half an hour to judgment day, and he was at a loss. Whose bloody thumb print had been on the book? Who had picked up the book as it fell from Jonathan’s hand, and who had shoved it hastily onto a bookshelf on his escape route? And where was Dave Miller? Sullivan had checked
out his apartment and had come up empty. Who was the one final person he said he had to talk to? And why? Was he just asking naïvely around trying to figure out the mystery of the vanished data, or had he seen the thumb print and put the pieces together? Had he gone off knowingly to a rendezvous with a killer, hoping to flush him out and so clear his name?

Green shuddered at the thought. This killer was far too clever and cold-blooded to fall for that, and in the ensuing battle of cunning, Green had no doubt what the outcome would be. But could he stop it? Yanking open his car door, he seized his police radio. He reached a weary Brian Sullivan just locking up his house for the night and ordered him to put out an APB on Dave Miller. Not to pick him up but to find him and keep him under surveillance.