to believe that people don’t change no matter how hard they try to convince you they have. My mother, for example, gave up drinking at least once a month with a solemn promise to never touch another drop. She died a raging alcoholic when I was sixteen. On the other hand, building a character profile based on a publication record was far from exact, especially since publication records are always out of date. The articles I was seeing in journals today were based on experiments that were run at least a year ago, and probably two to three years ago. If Riesler’s epiphany was recent it wouldn’t be reflected in his publishing record for at least another year. I made a mental note to go over his publications one more time. Maybe I’d see something telling: a hint of a new direction or a citation to a paper “in press.” What I really needed, though, was a contact; someone who had known Riesler over the years and seen the kind of change he must have undergone. It would have to be someone who could be trusted to keep the conversation secret. I filed that problem away. Finding the right person was a perfect job for Duncan.
Back at my hotel I zipped across the street, grabbed a take-out burger from the White Spot, and took it back to my room. The message light on the phone was flashing. It was probably Bob, so I ignored it. After finishing my burger I tried to read one of Edwards’s journal articles, but within minutes my eyes glazed over and my eyelids began to fall shut. I put everything aside, lay down on the bed, and was unconscious in less than a minute.
My power nap was rudely interrupted by the phone. I didn’t answer it, just let it ring, but when it stopped I called down to the desk. There were three messages from Bob, but the latest was from Sylvia. Call immediately. I looked at my watch. It was three-thirty, half an hour before our scheduled meeting. I dialed her office number and she picked up on the first ring.
“Hey babe, screening your calls?” “Trying to keep Bobbins a continent away. What’s up?”
“Your boy Connell didn’t come up clean, and I suggest you get yourself over here before you waste your time on other things.”
“Can you give me a snapshot?”
“Patience, my friend, is a virtue, and anticipation is everything. I wouldn’t want to ruin your fun. Anyway, you have to see it. It’s a visual thing. And it’s good.” She paused. “It’s very good.”
My run was short, fast, and brutal, but it woke me up. Forty minutes later I was back in my car heading west toward the university and the federal government lab complex that sits at the edge of the property. I showed my ID at the door. The guard scrutinized it, gave a curt nod, and handed it back. He buzzed Sylvia, and a minute later she was through the swinging doors and towing me back down the hall at a healthy clip. White coats were scuttling this way and that, and I could hear high-tech equipment clicking and whirring in the rooms on either side of the corridor. I seemed to remember that this section had something to do with engineering: friction and wear research, bearings, lubricants, that sort of thing.
Sylvia’s office was reclaimed lab space. A bench ran across one wall and a government-issue couch — lacquered birch upholstered in tangerine — was pressed up against the other. A large desk faced the window, but the blinds were closed. The only light in the office came from the three computer monitors sitting on the desk, each with a different screen saver. Cockroaches skittered across one. The middle screen scrolled “Resistance is Futile” in royal blue. On the third, a black kitten leapt after mice that popped out of thin air and whizzed across the screen. I found all the movement disorienting, particularly since it was the only source of light.
Sylvia crossed to her desk. She picked up two file folders and chucked them onto the coffee table in front of the couch. “Have a seat.” She nodded to the couch. “There’s a light behind. You want coffee?”
I nodded and sat down. She turned to the lab bench, where a small drip coffee machine sat between the gas outlets and a sink. I switched on the light and busied myself with the files. When the coffee was gurgling and the office infused with that sublime aroma, Sylvia came over and sat down by me. She shook her head with a “tsk, tsk” and gathered up the papers I’d spread across the coffee table.
“You have to do this in a specific order. It’s like a voyage of discovery; a story unravelling. First, take a look at this.”
She pulled out a reference search and slid it across to me. It was Graham Connell’s publication record. I read it over: six publications, all in reputable journals.
“It looks okay to me. He’s bright, Riesler’s wonder boy, so I’m not surprised.”
She was smiling like the Cheshire cat. “A young man with a brilliant future, but nothing to raise suspicion. So take a look at this.” She handed me another sheet.
The coffee had stopped brewing. Sylvia got up and crossed to the bench, giving me time to look at the second document. It was another reference search for Graham, but this one picked up Connell spelled with both one L and two. There were over twenty citations, way too many for a graduate student. I looked more closely. Sylvia had organized the list by date rather than by subject. Within a six-month period Connell had published in eight different journals, and none of the journal names were familiar. Not only that, he’d published in an astounding range of subjects, from salmon egg survival to bioinformatics. If I hadn’t actually met him (and none of the journal editors would have) I would assume that he was a principle researcher in a lab the size of a Wal Mart. Out of curiosity I skipped ahead to the next page. Sure enough, a year later he’d returned to the same journals to publish follow-up articles, and that took serious commitment and organization. This guy was a professional.
Sylvia came back with the mugs and slid in beside me. I glanced up at her. “Holy shit.”
She nodded. “He’s good, isn’t he. He’s so good I almost missed it, but they all get cocky when they think they have the system beat.” I could see a flush of excitement on Sylvia’s pale skin. For her, it was the thrill of the chase. The kill, which was my job, was trivial. A necessary but inconsequential act. She leaned forward, cradling her coffee.
“I didn’t like his record. It was too pristine, and that’s not how real people work, so I pulled some of his papers and checked the citations. There it was. Reference to an article by G. Connel, published in some obscure journal, with a glowing review of the paper in his introduction. The little jerk, laughing up his nose at everyone. It took me an hour to find a database that carried the journal, but once I did it was like opening Pandora’s box, the crap just spewed out. But you haven’t seen the best part yet.”
She pulled the other file from under the papers, and held it up. “The other search you requested.”
She pulled the top paper and handed me a page with the header “Okada, Elaine: search query for 1/89 to 10/02.” My stomach contracted. Elaine couldn’t be involved in this. I took a deep breath and scanned the entries on Elaine’s record, but nothing hopped off the page. I looked up at Sylvia.
“I don’t get it.”
“Maybe this will ring a bell.” She pulled two reprints from the file. The top one was entitled Odour-coding properties of Bufo boreas (western toad) olfac-tory cortical neurons, and Elaine was first author, followed by several of her colleagues at Berkeley. The second reprint — Olfactory neurons in Bufo cognatus (great plains toad): odour coding properties of cortical neurons — had only one author: Graham Connel.
“Damn.” I threw both reprints on the table. “So he’s not fabricating the work. He’s stealing it.”
“He could be doing both. By tomorrow I’ll be able to tell you the names of the people he’s ripping off and we can eliminate the plagiarisms
