Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (16 page)

She had begun dating Jonathan Blair nine months earlier, and through most of the winter, the two had been inseparable. She shared his enthusiasm for skating and cross-country skiing, and
they had spent much of their free time together. In temperament too, they had seemed well-suited. Both quiet, private people, they were discreet in their passion, but no one doubted they were deeply attached. There were no fights, no scenes.

Unlike Sharon and me, thought Green wryly, recalling the numerous times Sharon had walked out on him amid screaming and tears in the three years of their marriage. Only to find that being apart was worse than being together.

On the evening of Jonathan Blair’s murder, Vanessa Weeks had been at the university gym, working off her bitterness with laps in the indoor pool. Following a sauna and a shower, she had been seen leaving the facility by the pool attendant at closing a few minutes after eleven. She was a regular evening swimmer, and the attendants knew her by sight.

Green sat back, scanning the reports spread out on his desk. Somewhere in this compilation of facts lay the key to the killer. Rarely had he encountered a killer so subtle and elusive. Not everyone had those qualities, and this murderer, by the very method he had chosen, had left a unique signature on the crime. Match the signature, and the murderer’s identity might leap out at him.

Taking a fresh white pad of paper, he pushed the reports aside and began to write.

Profile of the killer:

—Clever, some knowledge of forensics

—Thorough and prepared, careful with planning

—Quick and agile, maybe some training in fighting?

—Cold-blooded, nerves of steel, capable of closerange killing without panicking

—Passionate about work? Or psychopathic—kill those who get in way?

He studied his suspects. All of them were clever, and all had enough scientific background to be a quick study in forensics. Hell, the books they would need were probably right in the library where Blair was killed! All were thorough and capable of planning—scientific research demanded it. Perhaps Difalco was less so, but Green was not about to underestimate him. He suspected Difalco let people see what he wanted them to see but kept a large part of himself under wraps.

Agile. Now here…

His phone buzzed at his elbow, startling him. Swearing, he pounced on it, and Jules’ dry voice came through.

“Michael, Peter Weiss is in my office.”

“Lucky you.”

Silence greeted him through the wires. It’s that bad, he thought. “Adam, I’m up to my ears in reports. I’ve got to have some time to piece things together.”

“I need something he can take back to Marianne Blair.”

“And then Marianne Blair will take it back to Myles Halton. Absolutely no way.”

He could almost hear Jules processing the implications. Finally, he spoke. “I’m coming down.”

Green hung up, fuming. Why couldn’t everyone just leave him alone to do his job? Now, with Jules’ deadline hanging over his head, he’d never be able to free his mind for thought. On impulse. he scooped up his reports and headed for the door, catching sight of Sullivan still on the phone. He approached and lowered his voice.

“I’m going home to work and don’t tell a damn soul where I am.”

Over the years, Green had often retreated to the peace and solitude of his own apartment when he needed to think. The drive home took five minutes but he was already beginning to
unwind by the time he unlocked the door to his apartment. Until he heard the all-too-familiar sound of the baby whining. He had forgotten all about them! How much simpler life had been before…

He stomped into the kitchen to find Tony banging pots together and Sharon on her knees, wiping up the puréed peas beneath the high chair. Seeing him, Tony crowed in delight. Green gave him a distracted pat on the head and tossed his reports on the kitchen table.

“Sharon, could you take the baby for a walk? I’ve got to have some peace and quiet.”

She rose slowly to her feet, pushing her black curls out of her eyes with the back of her hand. She was dressed in her usual baggy shorts and shapeless T-shirt, and she fixed him with a cold, level glare.

“Excuse me? You have an office to work in.”

“And a million people on my ass. Honey, I haven’t got time to explain. Just please bear with me, okay?”

“If we’d bought that house in Barrhaven, there’d be room for all of us, you know. But no, Barrhaven didn’t have enough character. It had plumbing that worked, nice quiet streets, but God forbid you should join the grey suits in suburbia.”

It was a refrain she dredged up every time they felt the pressure of their tiny home, and his own response had become automatic. “Barrhaven isn’t suburbia, it’s the end of the earth.”

She set her jaw as if preparing to defend the sprawling suburb that had sprung up in the cow pastures southwest of the city, but then seemed to sense the futility of it. She tossed the sponge into the sink, scooped up the baby and stalked by him out of the room. “I’ll take your son out for a walk, Green, but don’t be surprised if we’re mowed down in the streets the minute we step out the door.”

Fuck, he thought. Just what I need. I’ve got two hours— tops—before Jules tracks me down, even if I take the phone off the hook, and I’ve got so much adrenaline coursing through me I’ll never be able to think. Why can’t she realize that the murder of Jonathan Blair is not just another day at the office? It’s always her and her needs! Hers, and now the baby’s. She has a new weapon to brandish over me now. Tony needs a father, Green. Tony needs a home. Get your priorities straight, Green. Green, Green, Green... Whatever happened to Mike? Or darling? What happened to the tender look in those sparkling black eyes? What happened to the wide, sexy smile?

He heard the front door slam behind her, and he plunged his face into his hands wearily. I’m getting nowhere this way, he thought. I can’t deal with this now. I can’t afford to wonder if my marriage is falling apart.

Clear your mind, Green. Focus on Jonathan Blair and on the facts of this case. Logic, Green. Means, motive and opportunity—focus on these, and the answer will come.

He fixed himself an ice cold coke and slipped a CD of instrumental blues into his player. Music to think by. Clearing the kitchen table of all its debris, he put his pad of paper in the centre. In a column down the left-hand side, he listed the major players in the drama. Using the basics tenets of police deduction, he began to fill in the right side of the page.

Of these four, Difalco had the most promising behavioural profile for the killing, but he had a strong alibi and a weak motive. David Miller had no alibi and the strongest motive, but…quick and agile?

There was, however, one more name. Thoughtfully, Green put it down.

Myles Halton: Motive…

At this point, Green laid down his pen. Heat was seeping into the airless little room, and he wiped a trickle of sweat from his temple. Taking a sip of lukewarm cola, he pondered the character of Myles Halton. Halton was a brilliant scientist, no one disputed that, and no one seemed to question the integrity of his rise to prominence. In the interview, Halton
had come across as an intense, no-nonsense, ambitious man committed to the pursuit of his research. He had not seemed self-serving or unethical, and if he was determined to protect his research effort, it was only because he had fought so hard for it, and it was just beginning to pay dividends.

Green felt his antennae quiver. How hard had the man fought, and just what was he willing to sacrifice in order to preserve his status? He was uncompromising. Was he also ruthless? He was ambitious. Was he also unethical? Henry Blair had said Halton didn’t care whom he stepped on to achieve his goal. And one of his goals right now was a three million dollar magnetic resonance imager and the competitive research it promised.

Powerful men were rarely lily-white, but would Halton go as far as murder? Particularly the murder of a wealthy scion, which he knew would make his operation the focus of an intense, highly publicized police investigation? He would only have done so if he had no choice. What possible scenario would give him no choice?

Normally, the power balance between a graduate student and a prominent professor is highly weighted in the latter’s favour. If conflicts arose, the student would simply be failed. This would be more difficult in the case of a potential backer’s son, but the alternative, killing the student, hardly seemed designed to maintain friends in high places.

The balance of power shifts in the student’s favour only if the student has some leverage, perhaps something on the professor that could destroy his career. A politician had once said that only two things could ruin his reputation—being caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl. What could ruin Halton’s reputation? A sex-related charge? Fairly iffy. Professors were not politicians. Universities and granting
agencies were probably much more tolerant of the sexual perversities of their errant geniuses than the general public was of its elected officials. If Halton had been accused of sleeping with a student, particularly the likes of Raquel Haddad, he would have endured a slap on the wrist, some unpleasant publicity, some hisses and boos from the feminist community, and then it would be business as usual. A sex scandal involving a male student might prove stickier and more humiliating, but was it worth the risk of murder?

It was possible that an old skeleton, which Halton had thought safely buried in his closet, had come to light and was threatening his career. An old research fraud, a suspicious death, a serious crime. If Jonathan had unearthed it, what would he do with it? He was not the blackmailing kind. Everyone said his moral standards were unassailable. He would not use information against his professor for personal gain. But those same standards would not allow him to turn a blind eye to a crime. If he had uncovered a major breach of ethics or law on Halton’s part, he would have agonized, but he would have turned him in.

Yes, Green thought, in this remote scenario the dynamics for murder were there. The personalities fit—Halton’s ambition pitted against Blair’s moral rectitude. Now it was time to speculate on what might have happened.

The timing of Blair’s murder was crucial. He had been murdered just as he completed his investigation into the research fraud. The statistical analysis was done. On the morning of his murder, in fact, he had asked for an urgent appointment with Halton, probably to discuss those very results. But Blair had not been relieved or triumphant, he had been upset, as if he had uncovered something unexpected in his study of Difalco’s work. Yet the activities of Miller and
Difalco, no matter how nefarious, would hardly have upset him that much. He had been disillusioned to the point of considering a transfer to another university. Disillusioned with Halton? What might he have discovered? That Halton had been party to the fraud? If so, why ask Blair to investigate in the first place?

Green stood up, stretched his stiff legs and unglued his sweaty shirt from his back. Leaning on the kitchen counter, he frowned down at his notes. Was he clutching at straws? Winging out into the wild blue yonder, as Sullivan called it when his deductive fantasies took flight? Possibly, but over the years he had learned to trust his fantasies. Halton, with his ambition and his reputation to protect, was as good a murder suspect as the rest. Maybe even better.

But to uncover the motive, Green had to put Halton’s research, and that of Miller, Difalco and Blair, under a microscope to determine who was lying. He had only Halton’s word that Blair’s results supported Difalco. He needed an impartial expert in neuropsychology and a search warrant to seize all the files in the four offices. A sense of urgency gripped him; search warrants took hours to write up, but if he didn’t act fast, Halton and the others might get to the files first.