“Jim mugged him? Carmine asked.
“I thought so because he came in that evening covered in blood that wasn’t his, showered, then took his clothes somewhere — I never saw them again. He wasn’t a suspect, there weren’t any.”
“Any other muggings?”
“A couple while we were at Columbia, but I never saw Jim covered in blood, or missed any more clothes. I just — wondered.”
“Did the muggings benefit him? Were they fatal too?”
“Yes, and yes.”
“How did John Hall change things? Did Jim confide in him?” Carmine asked.
“No, I did,” said Millie, eyes wide. “While John and I sat waiting for the surgery to be over, then sat by his bed — Jim took two days to come out of it. As soon as Jim was feeling well enough, John told him that he knew about the muggings.”
“That was imprudent,” Delia said.
“John didn’t think so, and Jim’s reaction bore him out. Jim felt like the head of a little club, I guess — he always loved anything to do with secret societies and — not the underworld, but nether worlds. Once John knew, he treated Jim like a god, a superman, you know what I mean.”
“Were there any suspicious deaths at Caltech?” Delia asked.
“Two. A shooting and a road accident. I only suspected because John was more transparent, he gave things away.”
“He was lucky to survive,” said Carmine.
“No, he was never in danger from Jim back then, but Jim did think it was time to sever the connection.”
“Did they keep in touch?”
“Occasionally, but they never saw each other until John came to visit the Tunbulls. Whatever conversation they had while Jim walked John to his car that night he came to see us on State Street I don’t know, but suddenly Jim couldn’t be sure his secrets were safe. I saw it coming, but the only thing I could do was report the missing tetrodotoxin. I would never have betrayed Jim, though subconsciously I must have known that reporting the loss would turn the police spotlight on Jim. Then his betrayal broke all the ties, from body to mind to soul.”
“Were the murders in Chicago?” Delia asked.
“I imagine so, but I wasn’t privy to them in any way.”
“Can you throw any light on John Hall’s breakdown after you and Jim left L.A.?” Delia asked.
“He was depressed, but some Frankenstein of a psychiatrist gave him ECT — electroshock therapy. Barbaric! It destroyed a lot of neurones,” said Millie the neuroscientist. “Years went by before he recovered enough to do more than cling to Wendover Hall. Though, as I’ve said, he and Jim corresponded sporadically.”
“So you knew your husband had stolen your poison to murder people,” Carmine said.
Again Millie twisted, shrank. “No, I didn’t think that at first! I thought he stole it to use in his own work — he was forever doing that to me.” Her eyes blazed blue fire. “That’s really why I decided to teach him a lesson by reporting the loss. Jim would be forced to admit he’d stolen from his own wife.” Her shoulders slumped. “Then John died, and the next day Tinkerman died. I understood that Jim had taken the tetrodotoxin to commit murder, and I was caught.”
“You’re contradicting yourself a little, Millie,” Delia said. “Did you report the loss of the poison to deter your husband from stealing your work or doing murder?”
“I’m not sure!” she cried. “How can I be sure? I haven’t been in my right mind since I saw that baby, I’m just a mass of conflicting feelings and — and — I don’t know, rage! He cheated on me! From my fifteenth birthday I gave him everything, and he couldn’t even keep it in his pants!”
“Let’s have a coffee break,” said Carmine.
He spent it pacing the courtyard, tormented by almost as many conflicting emotions as Millie Hunter said she suffered. Something was wrong, and he could at least put his finger on what it was: Millie as of unsound mind wasn’t ringing true. Or was that his own cynicism trying to cancel out family connections? Murder when of unsound mind did happen, even in a small city like Holloman, but its perpetrators in his experience were right out of it, no one could doubt disturbed sanity. With Millie, that wasn’t so. Most of what she said contained logic rather than disordered thought patterns, so what it boiled down to was ungovernable rage. And was ungovernable rage evidence of an unsound mind?
He returned to the interview room to take a different tack.
“Tell me everything you know or guess about the reasons why Dr. Tinkerman had to die,” he said to Millie.