The Helium Murder(11)

“I’ll need to take copies of these technical papers with me,” I said. “I’ll write out a summary of each one and we can go from there.”

“Sounds good.”

“Is this everything you have?” I asked, gesturing toward the large brown briefcase dominating the small space between Matt’s desk and the wall.

“That’s everything,” he said.

“While you were out, I looked at these contracts with CompTech,” I said, thumbing the edge of the sheaf of papers as if it were a flip book. “I knew that the CEO, William Carey, has been giving testimony in favor of keeping the helium facility going. Now I see why—the operation has been his bread and butter for several years. Suppose Hurley were going to vote to close it. He might have been desperate enough to ...”

Matt stood up, both palms up like a stop signal for a jumbo jet at Logan Airport. He shook his head and came out with the laugh I liked best, the one that sounded like “whoa.”

“Why am I not surprised?” he asked.

“Now that we’ve opened the subject,” I said, “Frank mentioned that Hurley’s brother, Brendan, is a heavy gambler and was cut out of his father’s will. Evidently he blames Margaret and has been trying to contest it for the past ten years.”

There must be something about Matt’s office, I thought, that releases my inhibitions and turns me into the assertive woman that I’m just getting to know. For better or worse, it didn’t carry over into our personal relationship, but I took advantage of the feeling of the moment.

“It just doesn’t seem likely that a car would be driving full speed ahead like that down Oxford Park, fast enough to ram into someone and kill her. It’s practically a cul-de-sac. The only thing you can do at the end of that street is circle around and come back on Revere Street or dead-end at Folsom.”

“I know,” Matt said. “I know. And that’s why we’re not ruling out a deliberate attack. But that doesn’t mean you should be involved. This was a politician, not a scientist.”

“Except for this.” I waved the papers in the air again, moving in on the little opening Matt had given me. I found myself remembering all the times I’d heard that on courtroom TV dramas—“he’s opened the door on that,” they’d say. I must really be lowering my standards, I thought, if I’m taking my cues from prime-time television.

“Hurley was on the Science and Technology Committee and about to vote on something with very high stakes,” I said to Matt, shaking my head a bit to get rid of the images of actors in my head. “I’m just saying that I’ll keep that in mind as I read these papers.”

I gave him a “not to worry” smile and heard what I took to be a sigh of resignation. I knew that Matt worried about my safety, so I was all the more pleased that he would trust me to work on this case in the first place. I hadn’t exactly behaved myself the last time.

Matt looked at his watch. “Do you have anything to do around town for now?” he asked. “I have a few things to take care of, then I’ll meet you at Russo’s at eleven-thirty.”

“That’ll be fine,” I said. “Maybe I’ll go to the library and start my limited duties.”

I’m not sure I ever had any intention of going to the library, but I ended up only a few doors away from the police station, at the office of the Revere Journal, the city’s primary newspaper. I told myself that it was too cold to walk all the way down Pleasant Street and over to Beach where the library was. The digital display on the bank across the street supported my reasoning—it was ten-thirty in the morning and twenty-nine degrees.

John Galigani, Rose and Frank’s second son, had been editor of the newspaper for about three years. The receptionist called back to him and less than ten minutes after leaving Matt’s office, I’d been set up in the Journal’s musty, little-used basement with microfiche files for the year 1962. It wasn’t a coincidence that I had Al’s notebook with me, though I wasn’t exactly certain how I would use it.

“No problem, Gloria,” John had said, tossing back his extra-long brown hair, a source of contention between him and his perfectly groomed father. John had rubbed his hands together when I told him what I needed, as if this would be the easiest thing he’d do all day. All of Rose and Frank’s children treated me like royalty, confirming my view that other people’s offspring are much better companions for me than my own would have been.

I inserted a blue plastic card into the microfiche reader and breathed in deeply, acquiring an uncomfortable dose of dust. I wrinkled my nose and scrolled to December.