Painkiller (6 page)

“Good morning,” said the chipper woman behind the desk. “How can I help you today?”

“Who’s in charge here?” I asked, leaning an elbow against the desk.

“Of the reception area?” she asked, still bright, blue eyes shining. “Me! How can I help you?”

“I need to speak to the person in charge of the campus,” I said.

Here I saw the first trace of gatekeeper resistance start to show itself. “I’m afraid President Breedlowe has appointments all day—”

I flipped my badge out and saw her smile flicker then fade. “Tell the president to start cancelling. This might take a while.”

The lady looked from my badge to me, and her gatekeeper instincts were fighting back hard. “Can I tell her what this is about?”

“Sure,” I said, feeling just the tiniest bit of relish at ruining this lady’s day, and by extension, her boss’s. “One of your professors, Dr. Carlton Jacobs, was murdered last night.” I didn’t smile. I’m not that ghastly.

“Oh.” The receptionist faltered, standing up and almost tripping over her chair. “Oh … oh my.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Oh,
you
, indeed. It’s all about you. So … when can we speak with this … President Breedlowe?”

“I’ll …” She pointed behind her, to the warren of corridors I could see extending back behind the open administration area. “I’ll just … go … talk to her secretary and …”

“Yeah, you do that,” I said, nodding as she ran off down the hall.

Reed sauntered up behind me. He’d kept his distance during my exchange with the receptionist, but I could see the disapproval on his face. “You are like a contagion of negativity, you know that, right?”

“I just can’t help myself,” I said, staring down the corridor where the receptionist had disappeared. “I see these happy, peppy people, and I just want to pee all up in their Corn Flakes.” I looked right at him. “I’m working on it with Dr. Zollers, but frankly, it’s down the list a ways.”

“Why?”

“Why am I working on it or why is it down the list?”

“Why do you do it?” Reed asked.

“Because misery loves company like you love snarky, mean-spirited Italian doctors,” I said.

“I only love the one,” he said, a tower of disapproval. “Is it really so bad to be a happy person?”

“Not if you keep it to yourself,” I said. “But the minute you try and move me out of misanthropy, I view it as a little act of war, your positive energy versus my negative. And you know how competitive I get on these things.”

“Yeah, you’ll ruin a day for someone in a jiffy,” Reed said, sounding more dour than surprised. “Have you ever thought about maybe embracing a more positive outlook on life? See if it changes things for you?”

“I did think about it,” I said, “but the minute I tried, my brother decided to rain on my parade by saying that the only legitimate job offer I had was clearly some sort of scam or scheme designed to entrap me. I mean, I bring all this positive thinking and optimism to the equation and he just goes and—”

“Whatever,” Reed said, going from older brother to teen sister in a second, his expression growing darker as I grew more amused. “Fine. You’ve got a healthy skepticism most of the time. Why not on this one thing?”

“Give me a little time, maybe I’ll get there,” I said. “You are talking way more about this thing than I am, by the way, and assuming lots of feelings and thoughts from me that I haven’t voiced to you. I could be super skeptical and you wouldn’t know because you’re too busy badgering me about this to give me enough space to think it over before I really start steering in one direction or another.”

Reed grunted in a way that made me think he needed a bathroom imminently. “You’re a weird contradiction.”

“Thank you,” I said sweetly as the receptionist emerged from the corridor behind the desk, arms folded in front of her like a shield and a stunned look on her face. I wondered if the news of Dr. Jacobs’s demise had finally made it through to her or if she’d received even worse news on her journey through the labyrinth. “I’m feeling really optimistic all of a sudden,” I said to Reed.

“You’re not just a vampire of souls,” Reed said under his breath, “you’re also an emotional one, draining peoples’ positive emotions in order to sustain yourself.”

“Even you telling me I suck isn’t going to bring me down right now,” I said brightly as the receptionist came back to the desk. “Will the president see us now?”

“Yes,” she said, deflated. “She’s just … follow me.” She said the last bit like she’d been utterly defeated and turned to lead us back. I had crashed the gate. BOOM.

I followed her back into the hallway, Reed a few steps behind me. We made about fifty turns that I couldn’t keep track of, and went up a flight of stairs. I hummed as we went, and the receptionist turned around to give me a funny look. “I’m having a good morning,” I told her, and she scowled at me, “like you told me to, remember?”

Needless to say, we did not speak again. She ushered us to President Breedlowe’s office, where the president’s secretary, a man in his thirties, wordlessly gestured that we should go through the open door to his left. I entered President Breedlowe’s office to find a middle-aged woman with greying hair sitting behind her desk with a stunned look on her face, staring out the window behind her across the pretty, expansive campus.

“President Breedlowe?” I asked, and the woman jerked her head as she came out of her grief coma or whatever. “I’m Sienna Nealon. This is Reed Treston—”

“I know who you are,” she said, coming to her feet. She offered a hand and I took it. I couldn’t tell if she always shook hands like her wrist was broken or if it was just the surprise, but it was a weak grip, even for a human. “Anna told me that you’re here about Carlton. I’m Corinne Breedlowe.”

She shook hands with Reed, and it looked much more like an even match. My brother, so compassionate … it was like they were holding a contest to see who could grasp each other more delicately. He put on his best sympathetic face (I must have left mine at home, with the suitcase and all my clothes) and said, “I’m so sorry for your loss, Ms. Breedlowe. Were you close to Dr. Jacobs?”

“No,” President Breedlowe said, shaking her head. “He was one of our premiere … acquisitions, I say somewhat crudely. Dr. Jacobs came to us from a short stint at CalTech after a longer tenure at Lawrence Livermore labs. He was quite a brilliant man and had published several papers on a variety of subjects that had brought us scads of much-needed attention following our founding only a few years ago.”

“You’re a new institution?” Reed asked, cutting me instantly out of the conversation. I let him, because I figured he’d ask delicate questions and I wouldn’t, and indelicate questions tended to end conversations, so it was best to save them for last.

“Yes,” President Breedlowe said, nodding. “Only a few years old but we’re already establishing a reputation in the engineering and science worlds. Carlton was such a fixture in our faculty. To lose him now is …” She blinked, and I could see tears lingering in the corners. “Well, it’s quite a blow.”

“But you didn’t know him well on a personal basis?” Reed asked, probing gently. Such a sweetheart, my bro. Must have all been used up by the time I came around. Or maybe I’m just my mother’s daughter.

“No,” President Breedlowe said with another shake of her head. “We certainly dealt with each other at any number of school functions, but I don’t believe he ever even attended the yearly Christmas party at my home.”

“Was he invited?” I asked, throwing a cup of cold water on the proceedings.

“Of course,” President Breedlowe said, stiffening like I’d insulted her. I was bad cop; this was my jam. “The whole faculty was invited.”

“Did you know of any professional rivalries that Dr. Jacobs might have cultivated?” Reed asked, the delicate surgeon to my … well, to my Sienna Nealon, master of disaster.

Breedlowe blinked in utter surprise. “You must be joking.”

“Often, but not right now,” I said. “I know it doesn’t seem like it with that simpering expression on his face, but he’s being serious.” Reed shot me a dirty look that wiped the simpering one right off. Mission accomplished.

“You think a professional rivalry could lead to this man’s murder?” Breedlowe asked incredulously, ignoring our adorable sibling interplay.

“Well, it wasn’t robbery,” I said, “so, unless a metahuman was lying in wait for a random person and happened to kill him by chance, there was some personal motive at work here, yes.”

Reed softened it up. “Unfortunately, we can’t rule out any possibility, no matter how unlikely, at least not yet. Dr. Jacobs died under extremely odd circumstances.”

“Oh, goodness,” Professor Breedlowe said, sitting back down in her chair heavily. “I … I don’t … I mean, I’ve never heard so much as a whispered rumor against the man.” She looked up at us. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I can be of much help. His record was spotless, and I’m afraid I don’t know of any—” She paused, thinking about it. “Now, hold on. I suppose there was one critique of his work of late that comes to mind, but …” She laughed, way fake. “I’m sorry. The thought of someone disagreeing academically and it spiraling into murder is simply unfathomable to me.”

“It’s true,” I said, nodding along, “human beings never kill each other for anything less than perfectly solid, logical reasons. Never petty, vain, selfish, stupid ones. Not ever—”

“What my sister means to say,” Reed came in behind me and wallpapered over my attempt to be a sarcastic asshole, “is that we can’t rule anything out at all, even something so small as what I’m sure is a very professional argument. No stone unturned,” he said, almost apologetically, smiling pleasantly at President Breedlowe. “As an educator, surely you understand the need to pursue truth at all costs.”

I thought he was laying it on a little thick, but I watched President Breedlowe eat it up like puppy chow right out of his hand. For my part, I kept from making a fake vomiting motion.

“Of course,” she said, nodding, the wall down. “Dr. Jacobs had a disagreement across several academic journals with a—yes, a professional rival by the name of Dr. Marabella Stanley.”

“What was the nature of their disagreement?” Reed asked, with a little pen and paper out and everything, like a real detective. I was sitting picking my nails, trusting my pretty decent memory to hold this probably irrelevant nugget, and he was all Columbo over there, sweet and unassuming.

“Oh, it was very technical,” Breedlowe said. “I’m not sure I can adequately explain. Dr. Jacobs had written a paper about encoding of DNA—”

“Yeah,” I said, cutting her off. “You know what? You might have to forward that one to us for later reading.” With an expert providing layman’s commentary, and another expert distilling it down even further, since I had topped out at home-taught high school chemistry and Reed was way more of a language arts and social studies guy than a science whiz.

Breedlowe nodded. “Of course. If you’ll leave your contact details, I’ll have the full text of both Dr. Jacobs’s paper and Dr. Stanley’s rebuttal sent to you immediately.”

“About Dr. Jacobs,” I said, elbowing in to ask my questions. I glanced at Reed, but he seemed done. “Who here would know him better? Maybe on a personal level?”

“His department head,” Breedlowe answered. “Dr.—oh.” She looked past me at the open door, which I had not closed on my way in, for whatever reason. “Well, he’s right here. Dr. Gustafson?”

I turned to see a middle-aged guy with big black glasses, a diminutive stature, and a face that looked like someone—maybe me—had punched him in the stomach. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said, about two steps shy of tears, sad-looking enough that even I felt sorry for him, “but I just heard … is it true?”

“I’m afraid it is,” President Breedlowe said. “Ms. Nealon, Mr. Treston … this Dr. Art Gustafson, the head of Dr. Jacobs’s department.”

“I wasn’t just his department head,” Dr. Gustafson said, running a hand over his curly black hair, “he was my friend. And if there’s anything I can do to help you catch the person responsible for this …” his eyes hardened, “… I’ll do it.”

“The thing you need to understand about Carlton,” Art Gustafson (“Call me Art,” he’d told us on the walk back to his cluttered office) said, “is that he was a genius among geniuses in the academic world. It’s not normal for someone to cross disciplines. At a certain point, you buckle down and really work hard to become an absolute expert in one arena.” He leaned against the top of a cluttered desk that would have put Jacobs’s coffee table back at his apartment to shame. “The scientists of the movies, the ones that are—you know, Tony Stark, expert in thermonuclear astrophysics overnight—that’s a myth. That’s purest fiction. At the top level, science becomes so complicated that in order to become a foremost expert of the sort that does groundbreaking research, you have devote your life to that area of study and it alone. You don’t pop in and out from DNA coding to astrophysics and back again, not at the expert level.”

“But you’re saying that Dr. Jacobs did?” Reed asked. Gustafson had yet to hit us with any dense, techno-gobbledygook, which was to his credit. I was sitting across from him in a chair I suspected was usually occupied by either his students or other faculty members, padded along the armrests, back and seat rather nicely. The office smelled of stale coffee.

“He did it more than anyone else,” Gustafson said. “He was conversant—which, I mean a lot of us do this, you know, watch other fields with a casual eye. But his heart, his expertise was in his research, the science of DNA, with a little … call it extracurricular focus on engineering, on creating mechanical interaction.”

There was the techno-gobbledygook. “In practical terms,” Reed said, asking so I didn’t have to, “what was Dr. Jacobs looking to do?”

“Nothing, yet,” Gustafson said, a little forlornly. “He hadn’t moved into practical applications. He was still experimenting with … you know, I don’t think I can adequately explain it. He was dealing with DNA markers of a sort that most people don’t … it was an area of research most people didn’t touch because it doesn’t have any immediate practical application. It was really oriented toward helping us understand ourselves better.”