Maybe two?”
Again I didn’t answer. I wanted him to sweat. When he finally spoke it was with forced joviality. “Because with Duncan gone those high-profile projects are just piling up, and really, you’re the only with the clearance to handle them.”
“You mean the investigation and the report, or just the investigation?”
“I’m sure we can reach an understanding on that.” I continued as though I hadn’t heard the last part of the conversation. “You know, Bob, I have my own concerns about this Network file, and I may need your help sorting it all out.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
Oh? Since when? But I kept that to myself. “I need to know where the file was when it disappeared from September to June.”
There was dead silence. “Bob? Are you still there?”
I heard a little hiccup, then a muffled sound at the other end. I hoped he wasn’t having a coronary. With a guy like Bob, who smoked, was out of shape, and turned such a livid colour under stress, it could happen in the blink of an eye. Still, I thought it best to continue while I had the advantage. “You see, the reason I need to know is that a reporter may now be involved, and that makes things messy. So any help you can give me from your end would really be appreciated. Oh, and should I refer the press to you, or would Patsy prefer to take it?” Then I added pointedly, “Maybe you should ask her.”
Another minute of silence passed, and by the time Bob gathered himself up to reply the jovial tone was gone. “No one speaks to the press,” he barked. “That’s number one. Number two: you use authorized channels to view the financial records. Authorized. When that’s done I want you out of there. Number three: you report all findings directly to me. And I want you back here and standing in my office Wednesday nine A.M. Got that? Any shenanigans, O’Brien, and you’re up for suspension.”
I let a few seconds pass then asked politely, “And when should I expect the information on those missing months?”
He banged the phone down in my ear.
Two out of two. Not bad.
With the worst of my evening over, I wandered to the balcony door, slid it open, and stepped outside. I was on the twenty-second floor of a narrow tower in a mixed commercial and residential neighbourhood. Beneath me I could see café diners through the glass roof of a trendy little mall across the street, but at eye level I had a panoramic view of downtown Vancouver. It was a spectacular sight, the high-rises jutting over the black water of English Bay, patches of brilliant neon flashing like beacons in the fading light, and behind this, a backdrop of mountains: massive dark forms, ghostlike with the faint glow of snow.
I sighed. It was too much beauty all at once. Overpowering and almost painful. I checked my watch, briefly debated a jog, then decided to go for it. I knew the area well enough to know a reasonable route that would take me through well-lit, safe streets. Not that I can’t take care of myself, but why push your luck.
I pulled on my jogging clothes and headed out the door. The hotel opens onto 12th Avenue, and even though it was 6:ffl P.M., rush hour showed no sign of abating. There was a bumper-to-bumper stream of traffic flowing in both directions, and Cambie, just to my right, was gridlock.
I turned west on 12th Avenue and headed for the next major artery — Oak Street. I knew I could jog up Oak to 33rd, then loop back around and jog downhill for the last bit of my run. Given the traffic, the damage to my lungs from pollution would far outweigh any benefits derived from the exercise, but that damage wouldn’t show up for years, and I tend to be a short-term girl.
The first couple blocks were tough, but then my body and brain began to loosen up and move into that altered state caused by lactic acid overload. By the time I reached Oak and had started the uphill climb, I was absorbed in the details of the case, moving through them in a process akin to free association. I started with Edwards. What did I know about him, other than he was a bit of a jerk with a tendency to interrupt? For one thing he was an American. That had interesting possibilities. Americans studying salmon in Canada would be, to some degree, persona non grata, given the volatility of the issue on the international stage. Maybe somebody wanted him to go back to where he came from.
Or maybe he was part of an American plot to discredit the Network. Someone in Washington was upset by the direction things were taking and Edwards was promised tenure and a big fat grant south of the border to cause a little trouble. We’d do it if our interests were at stake, so why not them? But whose interests were at stake? I’d have to find out.
Or maybe Edwards was just jealous. It wouldn’t be the first time that a junior researcher had accused an established scientist of fraud: a sort of sour grapes approach to career advancement.
But how did any of these possibilities tie in with the file disappearing? I couldn’t see the connection, which raised again the possibility that the disappearance was a random event, unrelated to the investigation itself. The problem was, every time I settled into that conclusion something didn’t feel right, as if I was overlooking an important fact that was sitting right before my eyes.
I had a brief stint with the RCMP, which is to say that I completed my training and was honourably discharged to spare certain people certain embarrassment if they tried to jerk me around. It didn’t matter. I’d realized long before the end of training that it wasn’t the life for me. While I had balked at the militaristic training, I did manage to come away with some critical skills that have saved my butt on more than one occasion. The most important, beaten into me by a brilliant and marginally sadistic crime-scene investigator, was to trust my intuition, so when this niggling uneasiness about the missing file kept reoccurring I paid close attention.
I had begun mentally prodding the little doubt, seeing if I could crack it open, when I was momentarily distracted by the aroma of quality cappuccino escaping from a little café. I filed the location away under caffeine then returned to my uneasiness, trying another tack. Why, for example, was I focused on Edwards? Nationalistic prejudice? I consider myself above that, especially since I know from experience that fraud, dishonesty, and deceit are pan-national characteristics. The unifying force is greed, and that is neither cultural nor hereditary.
So what had led me, perhaps unconsciously, to Edwards?
Maybe it was Riesler’s credentials. It was hard to believe that a gold-medallist from the University of Toronto, a Rhodes scholar in biochemistry, and a tenured professor two years after his dissertation would embezzle money. It’s not like he lacked research grants, and he had a good salary, so unless he was supporting an expensive mistress or had an ugly addiction it wasn’t about money.
By this time I was winded from the uphill climb, and starting to feel a stitch in my side. When I get to thinking and running at the same time, as the thinking speeds up so do the legs, but they don’t have the stamina of my neural tissue. I hit 25th and made a bad decision, because, God knows, I needed the exercise after all those hours on the plane. But, instead of continuing to 33rd, I turned left, cutting my run short a few blocks. I could always blame it on the pollution.
As I jogged along, rhythmically panting in time with my legs, my brain fell into a meditative chant of “Why Edwards, why Edwards, why Edwards,” timed with the intake and exhalation of my breath. After several blocks I wanted to change the channel, but as usual my brain resisted. Finally, in desperation, my unconscious cut in. Because of the reference search, you idiot.
Huh? What reference search? And then I remembered. Attached to the initial letter of complaint was, as I had noted at the time, a very inadequate reference
