Too late I’d realized this was the room Jean had always used when she visited, and she was now relegated to the smaller downstairs bedroom at the back of the house. Another reason for her to resent me, I figured. Matt had shrugged and said, “It’s your house,” when I asked why he hadn’t advised me against the choice. My house—I wondered why that hadn’t immediately leapt to my mind.
I set a mug of fresh coffee on the little table next to a high-back wooden rocker and piled the stack of papers on my lap. I’d started in the same way several times since Andrea had given me the reports, and each time I’d been distracted by one of Matt’s many brochures on his cancer. I slid easily from science to medicine lately. Last night he’d placed a new leaflet on my desk since I was the keeper of the files, and I glanced through a tri-fold on male sex hormones and a new agent, ketoconazole, that blocks their production. I tried to adjust my mind to the idea that blockage was a desirable outcome in this case—we did not want cells in a cancer patient to grow, but to be inhibited. It was a technology pharmaceutical companies were working on, but not quickly enough to suit me.
I filed the pamphlet, and focused on the nanotechnology group reports and grant proposals. I’d written my share of funding documents, and recognized the forms and summary charts. Project name, principal investigator, action items, delivery schedule, contacts. The government usually awarded researchers money based on a record of research and development activity and tangible signs of progress in a certain direction.
Trying to make sense of Wayne Gallen’s comment about a diversion of funds got me nowhere. I was hopeless at financial auditing; reports of income and spending were meaningless to me.
The Charger Street scientists were promoting their ongoing work in nanoropes, bundles of nanotubes that would be valuable in HIV studies. Nanoropes could be used as probes to explore the core structure of the HIV virus.
I enjoyed reviewing an image gallery of beautiful graphics that made up an appendix of one report. A small, bright green rope of buckytubes. Vials of buckytubes in colorful solutions, three shades of red. A green buckytube with four red peptide rings wrapped around it like a Christmas garland. Who needed a museum?
A half hour of my allotted two hours had passed and I had nothing that would be useful in the upcoming interview with Lorna Frederick. I realized the reason for my failure was that I had no clear idea what I was looking for; I knew only my primary mission—determine why MC was being stalked, warned, and cajoled into leaving Revere.
I abandoned my star method of a few days before and went into a linear organizing mode, writing down what I had, what was missing.
Q.: Why was private investigator Nina Martin murdered in Revere?
A.: 1. She was on a job in Revere and her death was related to that job.
2. She happened to be in Revere when she was murdered, but the killing was random, or related to another assignment.
I wrote NO next to number two. No coincidences allowed at this point.
So, given that her murder was related to an assignment that took her to Revere, the surrounding facts must all be connected. I wrote them down.
The job Nina Martin was working on had something to do with:
1. her enrollment in MC’s chemistry class.
2. the Houston Poly buckyball team (since she used the class to instigate contact with them through a pretend term paper).
3. the Charger Street lab buckyball team (since she was in Revere with Lorna Frederick’s card in her pocket).
4. the FDA (since she had their card in her pocket also).
5. (possibly) the email matter Wayne Gallen was keeping to himself, but which should force MC to run away with him, like some Romeo and Juliet escaping their feuding families.
Brilliant, I thought. I still had no clue what tied all these together.
From Matt, I knew that the Texas agencies had shared very little information. I assumed that was because Nina Martin’s murder was essentially solved and they might see no further need to investigate. Rusty shoots Nina; Nina shoots Rusty; both die.
I made a note to ask Matt if there were any chance Houston police would question Alex Simpson, based only on Wayne’s ravings and an admittedly innocuous, possibly misdelivered email. I doubted it.
Dejected, I straightened the papers and shoved them into my briefcase, catching them on the yellow-lined pad I kept in it. I pulled out the pad and scanned the notes I’d made while Andrea and I talked about the reports. I’d generated a checklist, and forgotten to follow through. Reading down the items, I saw that I’d done everything except check the contacts, to see if I recognized the names of any of the researchers on the payroll. I still had another ten minutes before I had to leave, so I pulled out the contact list and read down.