his eyes on the screen. "But I'll lead you through it."
The video began from a small dirt parking area that faced the FrancoCanadian observatory dome. It was a mammoth structure, like a giant golf ball sitting on a squat tee, glistening white against a deep blue sky. Even more imposing than the dome, though, was the terrain around it. The camera panned slowly to the left through a landscape so desolate, so bereft of life, that it could have been an image relayed back to Earth from the Mars lander. We appeared to be standing on an island of red rubble poking through an endless sea of soft white cloud. The camera picked up several more domes in the distance, majestic on their contours of rock, then the image shuddered and the camera switched direction, this time moving to the right of FrancoCanadian observatory. On a hill just above it sat an even bigger dome, silver, with a rough track connecting the two. The road followed the narrow spine of a ridge, and it dropped on one side into the bowl of the ancient volcano, on the other into the clouds. That image held briefly, then the camera shuddered and jerked, as if the cameraman himself teetered on the edge of the cliff.
"That's the wind," said Benson. He glanced over at me. "Hope you brought those Canadian long johns."
Then he hit fast-forward, and the camera moved along into the observatory, picking up details of the entryway and first set of doors. We were now in a small foyer with two doors at its base, one leading to the right, one to the left.
"What time was this?" I asked.
"We got the 911 at around 5:00 a.m. By the time we got up there it was 6:00, and the Ident guys didn't arrive until 7:00." He hit the slow button as the camera came through the first set of doors into a narrow corridor. It panned to the left getting a full shot of an in/out board with all the staff members listed. Grenier's magnet was "out."
"And that's how you found it?" I asked.
"No. We pushed it to ‘out' when we knew he was dead."
I twisted around. His face was blank and his eyes were studying the screen. Just when I began to wonder if I'd actually heard him correctly, his glance slid from the screen to me; he raised an eyebrow, then went back to the screen. He was jerking my chain. "It tallies with what Aimes, the telescope operator, told us. Grenier left with him but must have returned alone. Since he was alone he didn't bother moving his magnet."
I watched carefully as the camera slowly made its way up a tiny, cramped elevator. Benson, too, was leaning forward as if hoping to catch some detail he'd missed.
"Who called in the 911?"
He kept his eyes on the screen. "A guy named Pexa. Native Hawaiian. Good guy. He's head of maintenance up there. He was at the Astronomy Centre halfway up the mountain getting ready to start his day when he got a call from an astronomer who'd seen the suicide note. Star Boy sent it by e-mail. Can you believe it? So Pexa goes right up and sure enough finds Grenier hanging from the telescope. Fortunately for us he's a sensible guy, ex-Navy. He didn't try to get him down, didn't tamper with the scene, just backed out and called us." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "This is where it gets interesting."
The camera had arrived at a set of swinging doors labelled "Observing Floor." They were pushed open by an unseen hand to reveal a vestibule painted flat black and another set of doors. These swung open onto a concrete floor. The camera stopped dead and began a slow and careful pan of the vast open space. It was like a cave, dim and lifeless, with unfamiliar shapes looming in the shadows. I moved forward to get a better look. "What's all that stuff?"
"Equipment. There's junk everywhere. You can't move without tripping over a cable or some piece of crap." I felt Benson turn and look at me. "You ever been up there? You know why there's no narration on this tape?" I shook my head. "Because the Ident guy didn't have the breath to walk, talk, and carry the camera all at the same time. It's a friggin' nightmare. There's not enough oxygen to keep you thinking straight, and it's so goddamned cold you start to shiver ten minutes after arriving. So I ask this Pexa to turn up the heat. I mean, how the hell are we supposed to work? And you know what he tells me? No can do. There is no heat. And the friggin' floor's refrigerated. No joke. Something about heat rising up and affecting their whatever." He shook his head. "It's a nightmare." Then he pointed again with the remote. "Here comes your boy."
The camera had arrived at a huge cylindrical mass suspended from the floor. I knew from the pictures in the file that this was the base of the telescope, and within that cylinder lay several tons of mirror, the pride of the observatory. The image climbed slowly upward, moving over a lattice of metal struts constructed around the mirror. At the top end of this open tube a large black box sat suspended in the centre, and below this hung Yves Grenier, lifeless as a sack of grain. The camera continued upward. Benson tapped the screen with the corner of the remote. "The lift is there."
I could see the vague shadow of a box in the peak of the dome. I leaned forward, trying to peer through the darkness. "If somebody else was with him —"
"We have no evidence of that."
"But if somebody was, could they get the lift back in position?"
"Easy. It can be controlled from inside or from the ground."
"And you dusted inside?"
He rolled his eyes then shook his head. "You think we're hicks? Everything and everywhere. We're still doing eliminations."
The camera now moved slowly down from the peak following the cable back to Grenier's body. When it got there Benson hit pause, letting the gruesome image hang in the middle of the screen. He turned to me. "It's real easy to fall up there. You walk up three steps and in that thin atmosphere your head starts to spin. If it hadn't been for the note I would have said death by misadventure. Still, I don't like the feel of it."
"There are no other leads?"
He clicked the machine back on and the camera continued its slow descent along the struts of the telescopes, down across its base, and around the floor once again. Then the image disappeared into a flat blue screen.
Benson laid the remote on the table and turned to face me. He adjusted his pant leg, maintaining the perfect crease. "I've shown you mine, now you show me yours."
"What about the ligature?"
"Inconclusive."
"No wife or girlfriend?"
"Not that we could find."
I paused and thought it over. "You could have a bad case of researcher envy."
He tilted his head with interest. "Go on."
I gave a shrug. "I'm not saying that's what happened, just that it's a possibility." I opened up my briefcase and extracted all the reprints Duncan had given me and thumped them onto the desk. "Yves Grenier was both talented and prolific. Maybe somebody didn't like that. Maybe someone thought he was stealing their ideas or trespassing on their research domain. Maybe someone needed to eliminate the competition for a big grant. Who knows. It's a cutthroat business."
"None of my witnesses mentioned anything like that."
"Because if they did the investigation might veer too close to home. You might even disrupt their work."
His eyes narrowed. "I'll follow up on it."
That's what I was hoping he'd say. This red herring would keep him busy for at least a few days. "If you want I can get you some names," I said helpfully. "Astronomers who would be in direct competition with Grenier
