He nodded. "So... you're here about poor Claire. I suppose that detective thought
I'd confide secrets to you that I withheld from him, but thereTs really nothing more to tell."
"I think he felt it was more a matter of knowing the right questions to ask."
"I see," he said. "Persistent type, Sturgis. Smarter than he lets on. He tried to disarm me by playing to class consciousness-'I'm the humble working-class cop, you're the big smart doctor.' Interesting approach. Does it work?"
"He's got a good solve rate."
"Good for him.... The problem is, he was wasting his acting talents on me. I wasn't holding back. I have no inside information about Claire. I knew her as a researcher, not as a person."
"Everyone seems to say that about her."
"Well, then," he said, "at least I'm consistent. So no one has much to offer about her?"
I nodded.
"And here I thought it was me-the way I run my projects."
"What do you mean?"
"I like to think of myself as a humane administrator. Hire good people, trust them to do their jobs, for the most part keep my hands off. I don't get involved in their personal lives. I'm not out to parent anyone."
He stopped, as if expecting me to pass judgment on that.
I said, "Claire worked for you for six years. She must have liked that."
"I suppose."
"How'd you find her?"
"I'd put in for my grant and she applied for the neuropsych position. She was completing a postdoc at Case Western, had published two papers as a grad student, sole author. Nothing earth-shattering, but encouraging. Her interest-alcoholism and reaction times-meshed with mine. No shortage of alcoholics here. I thought she'd be able to attract her own funding, and she did."
All facts I'd read in Claire's resume.
"So she worked with you and on her own research."
"Twenty-five percent of her time was her research; the rest she spent on my longitudinal study of neuroleptic outcomes- NIMH grant, three experimental drugs plus placebo, double-blind. She tested the patients, helped organize the data. We just got renewed for five more years. I just hired her replacement-bright kid from
Stanford, Walter Yee."
"Who else worked on the study?" I said.
"Three research fellows besides Claire-two M.D.'s, one Ph.D. pharmacologist."
"Was she friendly with any of them?"
"I wouldn't know. As I said, I don't meddle. It's not one of those situations where we fraternize after hours."
"Five-year renewal," I said. "So there was no financial reason for her to leave."
"Not in the least. She probably could've renewed her own study, too. She had substance-abuse money from NIH, completed the final study before she left.
Inconclusive results, but well run, very decent chance. But she never applied." He glanced upward. "Never even told me she was allowing the grant to lapse."
"So she must have been intending to leave for some time."
"Looks that way. I was pretty irritated at her. For not wanting to follow through.
For not communicating. Irked at myself, too, for not staying in touch. If she'd come to me, most likely I'd have been able to raise her to full-time, or to find her something else. She was very good at what she did. Dependable, no complaints. I managed to get Dr. Yee on full-time. But she never bothered to- I suppose you're right. She wanted to leave. I have no idea why."
"So she never complained."
"Not once. Even the way she told me she was leaving-no personal meeting; she just sent in a summary of her data with a note that the grant was finished and so was she."
That reminded me of the way she'd divorced Joe Stargill.
" Who'd she work with on her own grant?"
"She got part-time secretarial help from the main pool, ran all her own studies, analyzed her own data. That was also irksome. I'm sure she could've applied for ancillary funding, brought more money into the department, but she always wanted to work by herself. I suppose I should be grateful. She took care of herself, never bothered me for anything. The last thing I need is someone who requires hand-holding. Still... I suppose I should've paid more attention."
"A loner," I said.
"But all of us are. In my group. I didn't think I'd been hiring antisocial types, but perhaps on some level..." Wide smile. "Did you know I started as an analyst?"
"Really."
"You bet, classical Freudian, couch and all. This"-he touched the beard-"used to be a very analytic goatee. I attended the institute right after residency, got halfway through-hundreds of hours cultivating the proper 'hmm'- before I realized it wasn't for me. Wasn't for anyone, in my estimation, except possibly Woody Alien. And look at the shape he's in. I quit, enrolled in the biochem Ph.D. program at USC. I'm sure those choices mean something psychodynam-ically, but I'd rather not waste time trying to figure out what. Claire seemed to me the same way-scientific, focused on reality, self-possessed. Still, she must have been terribly unhappy here."
"Why do you say that?"
"Leaving for a place like that. Have you been there?"
"Yesterday."
"What's it like?"
"Highly structured. Lots of high-dose medication."
"Brave new world," he said. "I can't see why Claire would have wanted that."
"Maybe she craved clinical work."
"Nonsense," he said sharply. Then he smiled apologetically. "What I mean is, she could've had all the clinical work she wanted right here. No, I must have missed something."
"Could I talk to the other fellows?" I said.
"Why not? Walt Yee didn't know her, of course, and I don't believe Shashi Lakshman did, either-he's the pharmacologist, has his own lab in a separate building. But maybe she interfaced with the M.D.'s-Mary Hertzlinger and Andy Vel-man. Let me call
Shashi first."
A few seconds on the phone confirmed that Dr. Lakshman had never met Claire. We took the stairs down to a second-floor lab and found Doctors Hertzlinger and Velman typing at personal computers.
Both psychiatric fellows were in their thirties and had on white coats. Mary
Hertzlinger wore a short brown dress under hers. She was thin, with cropped platinum-blond hair, ivory skin, well-formed but chapped lips. Andrew Velman's coat was buttoned up high, revealing a black shirt collar and the tight knot of a lemon-yellow tie. He was short, broad, with black wavy hair, a gold stud hi his left ear.
I asked them about Claire.
Velman spoke first, in a clipped voice. "Virtual stranger. I've been here two years
and maybe we exchanged twenty sentences. She always seemed too busy to hang out.
Also, I do the structured clinical interviews on the study and she did the neuropsych testing, so at any given time, we'd be with different patients."
"Did she ever say why she was leaving to work at Starkweather?"
"No," he said. "I didn't even know about that until Mary told me." He glanced at
Hertzlinger. So didTheobold.
She held her coat closed with one hand and said, "She told me a few days before she left." Low, smooth voice. "I had a really small office on the floor below, and she asked me if I wanted hers. I went to look at it and said yes, helped her carry some boxes to her car. She said her grant had run out and she hadn't tried to renew it.
She'd just written a note informing Dr.Theobold."
Theobold said, "What reason did she give you, Mary?"
"None."
"What was her mood when she told you?" I said.
"Pretty calm. Not agitated or upset... I'd have to describe her as calm and deliberate. As if she'd planned it for a while, was at peace with it."
"Time to move on," said Velman.
"Did you socialize with her?" I asked Hertzlinger.
She shook her head. "Same thing as Andy-we had almost no contact. I've only been here a year. We saw each other in the cafeteria and had coffee. Maybe three, four times. Never lunch. I never saw her eat lunch. Sometimes when I was on my way out to the caf, I'd pass her office and her door would be open and she'd be at her desk working. I remember thinking, What a work ethic, she must be extremely productive."
"The times you did have coffee," I said, "what did you talk about?"
"Work, data. After I found out what happened to her, I realized how little I knew about her. It's so grotesque-do the police have any idea who did it?"
"Not yet."
"Terrible," she said.
Velman said, "Had to have something to do with Starkweather. Look at the patient population she got herself involved with."
I said, "Only problem is, the patients don't get out."
"Never?"
"So they claim."
He frowned.
"Did she tell either of you that she was going to Starkweather?"
Velman shook his head.
Mary Hertzlinger said, "She told me. The day we moved the boxes. It surprised me, but I didn't question her-she was like that. You didn't get personal with her."
"Did she give a reason?" I said.
"Not really a reason," she said. "But she did say something... uncharacteristically
flippant. We'd just loaded the car. She thanked me, wished me luck, and then she smiled. Almost smugly."
"What was funny?" said Theobold.
"Exactly," said Hertzlinger. "I said something to the effect that 'I'm glad you're pleased about your plans.' That's when she said it: 'It's not a matter of being pleased, Mary. So many madmen, so little time.' "
"SHE WAS IN a big damn hurry to work with psychotics?" saidMilo.
It was noon. We were standing next to the Seville, on Butler Avenue, across from the
West L.A. station.
"She had plenty of psychotics at County," I said. "She wanted madmen."
"Why? To squeeze a few more syllables out of them? To hell with all that, Alex, I'm concentrating on the boring stuff for now. Located a safe-deposit box at her bank, actually managed to finagle my way in with the death certificate. No cash, no dope, no B&D videos, no drooling letters from psycho pen pals. Stone empty. So if she did have some secret life going, she kept it very well wrapped."
"Maybe we should go back further-grad school, the years before she moved to L.A. I can try talking to someone at Case Western."
"Sure, but tomorrow you'll have a chance at something better. Her parents are arriving on the red-eye tonight. I have a date with them at eight A.M. down at the morgue. No need for them to view the body, tried to talk them out of it, but they insisted. After all that fun, I'll try to sit down with them. I'll give you a call where and when. Probably be late afternoon."
Several young officers walked by. He watched them for a while, stared at the roof of the Seville, flicked dirt off the vinyl. "Reviewing Richard's file was sobering. Not as much of a file as I remembered. The only people I spoke to were Richard's landlady and parents and the staff at the restaurant where he worked. No listings in the 'Known Associates' column. Sound familiar? I made another try at locating the film outfit that Richard might've auditioned for-Thin Line. Still can't find a trace of them. You'd think even a rinky-dink outfit would make a mark somewhere."
"Something about the movie bothers you?"
"They've got carpenters on movie sets, right? All sorts of tools, including saws."
"Plenty of knives in restaurants, too."
"Maybe I'll go back there."
"One possible angle on Thin Line," I said. "Even fly-by-nights need equipment. A small outfit would be likely to rent rather than own. Why not check some of the leasing companies?"
"Very good," he said. "Thank you, sir." He laughed. "Any other case I wouldn't consider the film thing half a lead. But these two-you don't wanna blame the victim,
Alex, but the least they could've done is relate to someone."
I wanted another look at Claire's resume, so the two of us crossed over to the station and walked upstairs to the detectives' room. Milo retrieved the box of material he'd taken from Claire's house. He hadn't booked it into the evidence room, meaning he'd planned some review himself. He left to get a cup of coffee while I searched.
I found the resume near the middle, neatly typed and stapled. The Wite-Out in the
"Marital Status" slot was a chalky lozenge. She'd been born in Pittsburgh, lived there through college before moving to Cleveland to attend Case Western.
