Do or Die (23 page)

Green took a deep breath to calm himself as he returned to the apartment. It could be nothing, he tried to tell himself. She had said earlier that she wanted to let him sleep in peace. It was a beautiful sunny day; maybe she had taken the baby to the beach or on a picnic, and she would be back in a few
hours, teasing him about his panic. In the meantime, worrying was not going to get Jules and Lynch and the whole damn press corps off his back. Solving the case would.

Trying to be an optimist, he wrote her a big note: “Darling, I'm at work. Please call me. Thanks and love always”, and left for the university to meet Dr. Baker, bypassing the police station and the clamour of the squad room. If no one saw him, no one could demand an explanation for the tie.

He found the little round professor hunched over a computer staring at an array of columns on the screen. His assistant Melanie sat cross-legged on the floor, poring over numbers. Baker's eyes were bloodshot and his thinning hair stood on end. He gazed at Green as if he were an apparition from another galaxy.

“What have you got for us, professor?”

Baker shook his head slowly back and forth. “These numbers. It's the damnedest thing.”

“Well, that's your ballpark, not mine. Are you ready to give me a report?”

Baker stared at the screen, then flipped through a stack of computer print-outs, pausing now and then to peer at something. For a long while he said nothing. Green was beginning to think the man had forgotten his presence, when he suddenly slammed his books shut and stood up.

“Yes. Let's get a cup of coffee.”

Leaving Melanie to her perusal of the numbers, they went down to the little sidewalk café.

“We'll have to talk fast,” Green began. “The brass is hounding me.”

“Do you want the long answer or the short answer?” Baker asked, a large muffin poised at his lips.

“The short one for now.”

“David Miller is your culprit.”

Green whistled. “So the data does support Difalco's work?”

Baker put the muffin down. “You want the long answer now?”

“Isn't there a simple yes or no to that?”

“Yes, there is. It's yes. The data does support Difalco's work. All Jonathan Blair's findings are consistent with Difalco's. Blair had concluded the same thing the day before he died.”

“Then how come there's a long answer?”

“Well…” Baker finally crammed the muffin into his mouth, and Green had to wait while he chewed. “You've got to admire Miller's work. He's a genius. He's head and shoulders above most people. I couldn't figure out how he generated the simulation of Difalco's work and managed to make his numbers fit the way he wanted.” He licked crumbs from his fingers. “There's a new book from a cognitive neuroscience conference in Denmark that I want to check, but I've had to order it up from McGill. The University of Ottawa library says their copy is signed out to: guess who? Our guy Miller.”

The professor looked as if he had single-handedly uncovered the key to the mystery. Green frowned warily. “What's odd about that? Miller is doing research in the field.”

“But the timing! The coincidence—a new book out, and he's got it. It's highly suspicious, don't you think? Plus, I've tried calling him to borrow the book, and he's not returning my calls. I'll bet he used that book to help with his simulations.”

Melanie and the thousand dollars a day notwithstanding, Professor Baker was clearly relishing his role as computer sleuth. His eyes danced as his imagination took flight. Green cast about for some gentle brakes. “I thought you said he faked them.”

“He must have, but how?” Reverence mixed with determination on Baker's face. A man not unlike myself,
Green thought, fascinated by the mystery of facts. “It's so damn clever, so well hidden. Just a couple of small changes in the algorithm, like a weighting factor here or a regression sequence there, and it throws Difalco's data off completely. But the real beauty of it is that Miller's own research data fit together properly too. He could have fooled Halton, me— hell, the whole scientific community! He would have been the one to go to Yale on a research fellowship, and no one would have known he was a fake. If Difalco hadn't stuck up for himself, and if Halton hadn't asked Blair to do an independent replication…”

“Blair wouldn't be dead.”

Baker blinked. “Well, yes, there's that. But evoked potential word processing research might have gone off in the wrong direction for years. That's the point. Miller's that convincing.” He shook his head ruefully. “I don't envy Myles the job of cleaning up this mess.”

“He fired Miller already.”

“Well, yes, but Myles was supposed to present this research in Stockholm next month, and this is going to be a major blow to his credibility. Plus, Yale won't want to touch him with a ten-foot pole now. It's going to be a long while before his work is credible again.”

“Was it credible before?”

“Oh very. And potentially very useful too, which of course was what he wanted.”

“What do you mean?”

Baker seemed to hesitate as if he had overstepped his bounds, then reached for another muffin. “Well, you know we are often influenced in our choice of career by personal problems. Wilder Penfield, the great pioneer in brain surgery, had a sister with epilepsy. Halton has a son in an institution,
brain-damaged from birth. Myles was a graduate student at Berkeley at the time.”

Green masked his surprise. “I only knew about the two daughters.”

Baker shook his head as he chewed. “He never talks about it. Some deep dark secret, I gather. But it's his driving force, so to speak. That and, let's face it, he's ambitious as hell.”

Afterwards, Green was
so deep in thought as he arrived back at his office that he failed to see Marianne Blair's executive assistant lying in wait outside his door. Peter Weiss seized him by the elbow and spun him around.

“You haven't answered any of my calls.”

Green shook him off. Around the squad room, heads turned curiously. “Do you want the case solved or do you want me chatting on the phone?”

“From what I hear you've been busy sleeping with witnesses.” “Actually, I was up all night watching a suspect.”

Weiss wrinkled his nose as if smelling a foul odour. “An Arab. Yes, I know.”

Green hesitated. Weiss must be getting his information from somewhere else. He hoped it was Jules. “A Canadian, Mr. Weiss. Of Lebanese origin.”

“CSIS should be informed.”

Green rolled his eyes. “This has nothing to do with international terrorism, or with Mrs. Blair for that matter. This is about Jonathan's girlfriend.”

“Then you're naïve, Inspector,” Weiss retorted. “If it's an Arab, it's political. If it's a Jew, it's political, if it's a black, it's political—”

“That's your problem,” Green snapped, pushing past Weiss into his office. “I'm just investigating a homicide, and so far,
the only politics involved are the ones I have to play with you guys. I don't mean to be rude, and there's no disrespect implied, but you're wasting precious time. I'll phone Mrs. Blair myself.” He picked up the phone as if to convey his sincerity. “I'll tell her all I can. But I have several urgent leads to follow up, and that's where I can help her the most.”

Weiss glowered in the doorway, searching for a toe-hold of authority. When Green began to dial, he spun on his heel and stalked out, flicking at the sleeves of his linen suit as if to rid himself of the taint of crime. Green's tone with Marianne Blair was more diplomatic, but his message much the same. After dispensing with her as quickly as possible, he flipped hopefully through his stack of phone messages, but none was from Sharon. He called home but got the answering machine. It's still early, he told himself. She could still be at the beach or at a friend's, especially if she didn't have to work until the evening. Full of hope, he called the ward where she worked, but the ward clerk told him Sharon had called in sick earlier in the day and requested a few days off. The woman was surprised he didn't know and asked if Sharon was all right, because she had sounded strained and upset.

Green hung up, fighting a sense of foreboding. It was time for some serious damage control. He had to explain the necktie, but to do that he had to find her. That meant calling her friends, all smart, capable nurses like herself, who thought he was cute but entirely unreliable as a life partner. It meant calling his in-laws, who had been keeping their fingers crossed ever since their career-woman daughter had finally reeled in this rather unlikely marital prospect—Jewish at least, but a divorced policeman who'd forget to eat, sleep or change his clothes if no one was there to stand over him. His mother-inlaw's screech would echo all the way from Mississauga, and his
father-in-law would have them both packed on the next plane up. Green shuddered. Could he face that? On top of Lynch, Weiss, Marianne Blair and all the other naysayers on his back right now?

Closer to home and easier to drop in on without inventing excuses was his father, whom Sharon adored. She knew he stayed alive only for the moments he could spend with his son and grandson. She would never leave town without visiting him to say good-bye, and no matter what excuse she gave, his father would know the truth. For a man who sat alone in his apartment all day watching TV, Sid Green had an uncanny knack for reading people. He would know if Sharon were leaving for good.

But Sid Green's knack for seeing through people might prove tricky, Green realized as he knocked and breezed into his father's living room, trying to look cheerful. Sid looked up from his chair, where he was watching some indeterminate soap opera. There were spikes of bristle on his chin which his razor had missed, but at least he was still trying to shave, Green thought.

“What's going on?” his father demanded irritably. Any change to his routine, no matter how pleasant, seemed to irritate him.

Green held up a paper bag. “I brought you cheese bagels from Nate's. You hungry?”

Sid said nothing, but watched his son suspiciously as he slipped into the tiny kitchenette to heat up the food. Sensing the heavy silence, Green stalled in the kitchen, looking for an oblique approach to his inquiry. But as it turned out, he didn't need one. Returning to the living room, he found his father's rheumy eyes fixed on him knowingly.

“Sharon was here.”

Green kept his expression neutral. “Oh, really? When?”

“She already bought me cheese bagels from Nate's. She made some for her and me, but she didn't touch her own.”

“Did she…say anything?”

Still Sid held his gaze balefully. “She brought me some new pictures. Mishka, don't do this to me again.”

Green blinked. “Do what?”

“Chase her away. She will move to Toronto and take Tony away from me. When I am dead, that will be time enough to get a divorce.”

“Hey, Dad, she brought over some baby pictures. Who's talking about divorce?”

Sid didn't reply, and Green felt his heart turn to stone. “Was she?”

Sid took a deep breath. “She took a picture from the drawer when she put her pictures away. She doesn't think I saw, but she took the picture of you with your mother at the river. That time you carried her down there just before she died.”

Our last family picnic, on my twenty-first birthday, Green thought. Sharon had always admired that picture, but surely she knew how his father cherished it! “God, Dad, I'm sorry.”

“I have copies. But why did she do that, Mishka? To have a memory of you together, for Tony, when she takes him to Toronto.”

Green felt sick, but he forced himself to laugh. “She's not going to Toronto, Dad. I asked her to get that picture. I…well, I need it for something.”

He didn't know how he was going to cover up that lie, but right now it was the least of his worries. He stayed a few minutes longer, filling the silence with chatter, but he knew his father was unconvinced. As Green left, he searched for a way to cheer him up. Depression and loss could be fatal.

Passing a pharmacy on his way back to the car, he saw a window display advertising gifts for Father's Day the next week. Some Father's Day, he thought grimly. My wife and son in Toronto and my father near his deathbed, full of reproach. It was then that he thought of how to explain the lie. Blown up and beautifully framed, the picture would make a perfect Father's Day gift. To a man mired in memories, it would be more touching than a hundred sweaters or dressing gowns. The problem was that if Sharon had indeed gone back to Toronto, he would have to steal yet another picture to make the gift.

Back in the office, there was still no message from her. Had she really left without a single word to him? Anger flared briefly. How dare she have so little faith! And so little appreciation of the pressures he was under? She'd seen him smeared in the press before, and she knew better than to believe a word they said! Surely when she calmed down in a few hours, even a day or two, she'd remember that. Reassured, he decided not to call anyone else, at least not just yet. If she still wasn't back tomorrow, he'd begin the search in earnest. But she'd be back. She'd stuck by him before, kicking and screaming but still there, through worse than this.

Having forced his worry into the back of his mind, he turned back to the phone messages that had collected. More than half were from the press, and he tossed them into the waste basket. Fat chance I'll call you bastards, he thought grimly. All you want is a juicy pound of flesh for the headlines. Carrie's murder and my tie had done nicely today, but what about tomorrow? In the absence of anything else, perhaps a nice little story about my collapsing marriage. Or my inability to protect witnesses and my failure to charge the suspect staring me in the face.