Do or Die (10 page)

“Does he know anything useful?”

“He says no. Lives in Vancouver, only sees Jonathan every few months.”

“Find out where he's staying and tell him I'll see him there at—” Green glanced at his watch and swore. One hour to see Halton, another to see Difalco, minimum. If he added Mr. Blair Senior to the list, he'd be lucky even to tuck Tony in. Sharon would kill him. “Tell him eight o'clock.”

“He won't like that. He's pretty upset. Only learnt the news from the TV.”

“Huh. That tells us where Mrs. Blair's priorities lie, doesn't it,” Green noted drily. “She gave me the impression she was still fond of the guy, they just couldn't work things out.” He shrugged. “Well, you don't get rich by being nice, do you? Tell the guy I'm sorry, but I'll give him a personal report at eight o'clock. By then, once I've seen Professor Halton and his hot-tempered golden boy, I hope I'll have something to report.”

Green had intended
to pay a surprise visit to Myles Halton at his home, a tactic which he liked because witnesses had no time to mount a defence. But as he steered the Corolla onto the Queensway towards Constance Bay, where the renowned and wealthy professor had his waterfront getaway, an alternative struck him. He could kill two birds with one stone if Halton met him at the University. In order not to lose the element of surprise entirely, he dispatched a police cruiser to pick Halton up.

At seven in the evening, the offices of Halton's team were even more deserted than they had been that morning. The secretary had gone home, and most of the lights in the hall and reception area had been turned off, leaving only hazy yellow splashes at intervals down the hall to guide the cleaning staff. The chatter of Green's police radio was deafening in the silence. He was just reaching for the light switch by the secretary's desk when he heard a distant crash. He paused, straining his eyes to see down the hall. The security guard downstairs had told him everyone from Halton's floor had gone home. All the doors were shut and dark. From down the hall came a screech of metal, like an unoiled wheel. Then a soft rustling, barely audible even in the tomb-like silence of the building.

Green dropped down behind the desk, turned his radio
down and fumbled beneath his jacket for his gun. He hated it. Hated carrying it and hoped he never had to fire it except on the range, but the rule book and every instructor he'd ever had said that one day he'd be grateful he had it. Clairvoyant bastards. Green stared at the gun lying cold and alien in his hand, then cautiously lifted it in front of him. For a moment he crouched behind the desk, his heart thumping and his mind racing as he tried to organize his thoughts. He had always been a lousy policeman. A good detective, but useless on the front lines. If Jules had not yanked him off the street into CID fourteen years ago, he would have been kicked off the Force within a year. He never followed procedure and rarely worked within the team.

Now, as he crouched low and took deep breaths to slow his heart, he tried to remember those basic procedures. He had surprised an intruder in a deserted office complex after hours. An office where a recent murder victim had worked and where a lot of questions remained unanswered. He could not tell from the muffled sounds how many intruders there were nor in which office they were working. Procedure dictated that he call for back-up. Otherwise he would be crucified by the Professional Standards Unit if things went wrong. If he were still alive to be crucified.

On the other hand, the intruder might hear his voice if he used his radio to call for back-up. It was also possible that the intruder was merely a researcher working late, in which case he would be a laughingstock. Among the muffled sounds, he could hear nothing resembling voices, so it was possible there was only one intruder. With only one intruder and the element of surprise on his side, surely he could gain the upper hand in a confrontation.

On the other hand, I don't know where the bastard is, he
thought, so who's going to surprise whom? I could sneak down the hall listening at every door until…but the guy could suddenly decide to come out and…

Jeez, Green, what a cop you make!

Leaning his head against the secretary's desk, he took several slow, deep breaths. Then he rose, gun ready, and began slowly down the hall toward the sounds. Outside Jonathan Blair's office, he stopped. A thin shaft of light leaked under the door and the sounds of rustling were sharp and near. Gingerly, he touched the knob and felt it give beneath his fingers. Levelling his gun, he took a deep breath, flung the door back and leaped into the doorway.

“Police, freeze!”

Difalco dropped the sheaf of papers he was holding and staggered back, jaw gaping.

“What the—! Inspec...what—!” He stammered incoherently.

“Turn around! Hands on the wall!”

“I—I—”

“Against the wall!”

Ashen-faced, Difalco stumbled against the wall and remained immobile while Green frisked him. There were no hidden weapons.

“Sit down.” With the gun, Green gestured to the chair in front of the computer. Difalco bent to pick up the scattered files and a handful of CDs fell out of his jacket pocket.

“Don't touch a fucking thing!”

Difalco scrambled into the chair and stared at him.

“What the hell's going on here?” Green demanded.

“Nothing! My office is next door. I—I was just getting some of my files that were in Jonathan's room.”

“What files?”

“Computer print-outs. Just raw data.” Some colour was
returning to Difalco's cheeks. “It wouldn't mean anything to you, it's just brain wave patterns and stuff. Jonathan and I were working on similar questions, and we often checked how each other's data were coming along.”

“So you're saying these are your files?” “Well, they're not exactly my—I mean, no, they're Jonathan's files. But—”

“So you were removing Jonathan's files from his office.”

“Yes, but he was going to give them to me anyway. We had arranged it a couple of days ago.”

“And you figured why let a small thing like his murder interfere with your day's work, right? The same reason you didn't stick around this morning when I asked you to wait.”

Difalco scrounged for some bluster. “I did wait! Almost fifteen minutes! But I had things to do—a subject was due to meet me in the lab.”

Without a word, Green turned up his radio and paged the Ident Unit at the police station. Lou Paquette was just logging the last of his analyses and was looking forward to a warm meal and bed. He suppressed a groan when he heard Green's request, but he agreed to be there within fifteen minutes.

“Fingerprints!” Difalco sputtered, but Green held up a brusque hand and rang dispatch. This time he ordered a squad car to take Difalco down to the station and hold him for questioning. When he hung up, Difalco was staring at him, ashen again.

“What are you doing?”

“Bringing you down for questioning on break and enter, attempted robbery.”

“But I told you—”

“You told me you were removing Jonathan Blair's files from his office!” Green retorted. “That's attempted robbery. The
fingerprinting will tell us what else you touched in here. Now let's move!”

Difalco's eyes darted from the gun to the open door, but in the end he seemed to deflate. A sullen look stole over his face as he slumped towards the door. Green herded him briskly; he was anxious to have Difalco out of the building before Halton arrived. He wanted Halton ignorant of Difalco's misdeeds until he himself chose the crucial moment to deliver the news.

Besides, an hour or two sitting alone in an interrogation room might do Difalco some good. Green smiled as he watched the squad car pull away, the handcuffed Difalco scowling in the back seat. Now we're getting somewhere.

The squad car had barely turned the corner, and the smile was still on Green's face when a second squad car pulled up to the curb. A huge, bearded man hauled himself from the back seat, visibly perturbed.

“I hardly think this was necessary, Detective. Having this man pull up in full view of the neighbours! You've embarrassed my wife, you've embarrassed me! I'm not a criminal, I pay plenty of taxes and I think a little consideration is in order.”

The devaluation of his rank may not have been intentional, but Green suspected it was. He pretended to be oblivious. “This is common procedure, Professor. No disrespect intended. I need you to help me examine the contents of Jonathan Blair's office, and I was anxious to expedite matters as much as I could. Homicide trails grow stale very quickly.”

Ice blue eyes appraised him from behind shaggy white brows, then Halton bobbed his massive head. “Very well, let's get on with it. I want to visit Marianne Blair tonight.”

It was very smoothly done, the delivery beyond reproach, but this time the message was unequivocal: “I move in the same circles as the country's elite, sonny, you remember that.”
I'll be the picture of respect, asshole, Green replied inwardly and put on his breeziest smile. “I shouldn't keep you more than an hour, sir. Shall we start in your office?”

Inside his office, Halton chose to sit behind his mammoth mahogany desk, flanked by his degrees, which left Green the hard-backed student's chair opposite. Looking up at the icy eyes across the desk, Green realized he had made a tactical error. To regain control of the interview, he had to alter the power balance. Rising, he walked to the window to study the view of the canal and the Château Laurier which glistened in the rain-slicked evening light. Halton was forced to swivel his chair and look up at him.

From his vantage point, Green tried for the grave and humble look. “To minimize the inconvenience to you, sir, I won't go over the routine ground which my detectives covered earlier. Instead, I'd like to clarify some inconsistencies which have emerged in the investigation. First of all, what was Jonathan Blair working on?”

“It's highly technical, Detective. And hardly relevant, I can assure you.”

The grave and humble tone never wavered. “I'm sure you're right, but I'm trying to fill in his last few weeks. He seemed to be working very hard, and a few people thought he had run into a snag in his research.”

“Snags are commonplace in technical research. In fact, ironing out the kinks in the methodology is often the major part of original research. Jonathan was a hard worker, and when it came to problems he was like a dog with a bone. He would forget all else.”

“Did he seem upset or preoccupied to you?”

“I hadn't seen him in a few days, and I don't babysit my graduate students.”

“He tried to make an appointment with you yesterday morning. He seemed upset then.”

Halton shrugged. “Then you know more than me, Detective. I wish I could be of more help.”

Green pretended to study his notes while he let the silence lengthen. “Was he working with cats or humans?”

“Cats.”

“What were Joe Difalco and Dave Miller working with? Animals or humans?”

Halton seemed to pause, and a frown flickered across his face. “Humans.”

“Did their research have anything to do with Blair's?”

“Well, it all fit together. We were all checking out facets of language or auditory processing.”

“Would Blair have reason to share his data with the other two? Would his data on cats be of any use to—say, Difalco?”

Halton scrutinized Green with a long, level gaze. “What are you getting at, detective?”

Green left the window to return to his student's chair. The power shift had been achieved, and now it was time to enlist the professor's help. He spoke softly.

“Professor, I don't mean to imply one of your students killed Jonathan Blair, but I believe something unusual was going on. I know police investigations are very intrusive, and it's uncomfortable to have your whole operation under a microscope. But everything I learn will go no further than my own notebook, not into the file or into my reports to superiors, unless it is relevant to the murder. And I will never be able to distinguish what is relevant from what isn't if I don't have the whole picture. So please bear with me on this.”

Halton had been watching him carefully, but now he lowered his gaze. “What have you been told so far?”

“That Difalco's data disappeared. Difalco accused Miller of erasing it from the computer and Miller accused Difalco of falsifying his results. At one point, it came to blows.”

Halton nodded, his gaze still lowered. “That is the official version. I'm going to hold you to your word, detective. Not one word of what I'm about to tell you must leak beyond these walls, or the cause of my brain research will be set back years.”

Green said nothing. From his desk, Halton picked up a polished wooden brain that resembled a shelled walnut, stained different hues. He cradled it in his large hands reverently. “Back in the 60's, this was called the black box. After centuries of ludicrous theories trying to guess its inner workings, behavioural psychologists said ‘Don't even try'. Concentrate on what goes in and what comes out. Stimulus and response. But that's like buying a twelve-cylinder Lamborghini and never looking under the hood. From medical and biological research, we knew the basics of how functions are located in the brain.” He turned the brain and pointed as he talked. “Visual cortex in the back here, motor cortex, language in the left temporal lobe. We knew if the occipital lobe was damaged the person wouldn't be able to see. Cut out his prefrontal lobe—like in a lobotomy—and you not only disconnect his emotions but he can't plan or organize.”

Halton split the wooden sphere in two and held each out dramatically. “There are two to three billion brain cells in here in the cortex alone. At least some are firing all the time, reacting to all the sights and sounds in this room, to the feel of my own body and the smell of the stale air conditioning. Put electrodes all over the scalp to record this electrical activity and they generate brain wave tracings called an EEG. Put enough electrodes, make them sensitive enough, filter
the waves through the proper computer program and you can detect the activity of a very small group of neurons. If you say a word, a tiny EEG spike shows up in this little section of the temporal lobe. That tiny spike is called an event-related potential, and it's how we can map the functions of any part of the brain we want. We can see what parts of the brain become engaged when we ask it to do a particular task.