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  “That sounds right,” I said. “I’m sure we have her phone number on file. I’ll ask Kristy to get it.”

  “I already have it.” She handed me a piece of paper. Efficient for sure.

  Then she surprised me. “I think you should make the call. Just tell her that you heard what happened, and you’re very sorry. Her text suggests that she’s terribly upset, so you need to be as comforting and reassuring as possible. Put me on speaker, and you can introduce me as a representative from the dean’s office who deals with these cases. Then see if we can set a time to meet with her tomorrow.”

  “Why me? You know what to say. Shouldn’t you be the one to call her? Or I can get her on the phone and then turn it over to you.”

  She shook her head. “No, that’s why I need you working with me on this. She knows you—at least as the chair of her department if not personally. Either way, she’s going to be far more comfortable talking with you than with me, a total stranger. Sorry, but this one falls in your court.”

  I sighed. “Okay, got it.” I started to pick up the phone when something else occurred to me. “How do I explain what I know to her? I mean, do I tell her about Singer coming to me with the text? She asked her friend Carol not to share it with anyone, so it seems like I’m breaking a confidence if I tell her what happened.”

  Karen took a minute to consider that. “You’re right. We should try to keep Carol’s name out of it. If she asks, I think you have to say that you heard about it secondhand, but you can’t reveal the source because of confidentiality. If you present us as concerned and sympathetic, she may just be grateful that someone in a position of authority is willing to step up and help, without caring about how you found out.”

  I was dubious. After all, she hadn’t come forward to get help and had told Carol not to tell anyone. But Karen was the expert. “Okay,” I said. “Here goes.”

  I placed the call, and she picked up on the second ring. “Hi, this is Emily.” Her voice was strong and confident.

  “Hi Emily, this is Brad Parker.”

  “Oh, Professor Parker!” She giggled. “You surprised me by saying ‘Brad.’ What’s up? Is there some kind of problem?”

  This didn’t sound like a victim of assault. I raised an eyebrow and looked at Karen, but she shrugged and motioned that I should go ahead. So I did.

  “Emily, I first want to say how very, very sorry I am for what happened to you Tuesday night. Most important, I want to see if you’re doing okay. And I want to assure you that we’re going to do everything possible to bring whoever hurt you to justice and make sure he never harms another student. I have Karen Richmond from the dean’s office with us on speakerphone. She’s an expert at handling sexual assault cases and will be working with me to help you.”

  Karen gave me a thumbs-up. So far, so good.

  Then Emily said, “What in the world are you talking about? Have you called the right person?”

  I looked up in shock. This was the last thing I’d expected. Karen’s open-mouthed stare suggested a similar reaction.

  I gathered my wits and used my most soothing voice. “I understand why you didn’t want to tell anyone, believe me. Something as horrible as what happened to you, sometimes we just want to keep things like that to ourselves and bottle them up. But it doesn’t work. It just keeps festering inside. Please let us help you.”

  Karen jumped in and said, “Professor Parker’s right, Emily. I’ve dealt with a lot of cases like this, and I can promise that you’ll feel much better after you talk to us.”

  “Guys, that’s all really nice of you, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. Nothing has happened to me. I’m just here in Chicago to help my mom for a few days. She’s in the hospital after falling down some stairs. But she’s okay, and I’ll be back in the lab on Monday.”

  Karen said, “You went out to dinner Tuesday night with another student and two of your professors, right?”

  “That’s right. The professors took us out to celebrate our paper getting accepted. It’s going to be in Nature, so it’s a big deal.”

  “And the next morning, you sent a text to your friend saying that you couldn’t remember what happened, but you woke up on the couch with your clothes off.”

  Silence. “I guess you saw my text. I’m sorry—I was just trying to spoof Carol a bit. She’s always such a busybody. Really, nothing happened.”

  Karen sighed. “Well, I’m glad you’re all right. But since allegations have been made, we still need to investigate. Professor Parker and I would like to fly out to Chicago tomorrow to talk with you. Is there a good time for you to meet?”

  Now Emily sounded annoyed. “For Pete’s sake, let it go! How many times do I have to tell you nothing happened? I just have a couple of days here with my mom, and I don’t want to waste time on this. I’ll talk to you when I get back to Boston, if I have to.” She hung up.

  I put down the phone and looked at Karen. She looked as baffled as I felt.

  “What the hell do you make of that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Something’s really weird. Her text didn’t sound like a joke to me, and Singer obviously took it seriously. As did her friend Carol.”

  “Obviously. But if she wanted to play a trick on them, she succeeded.”

  “It’s possible,” Karen said. “Although it’d be a pretty crappy trick. Alternatively, though, maybe she’s afraid of pursuing accusations against her advisor. After all, Upton has essentially complete power over her, doesn’t he?”

  “For better or worse, that’s how science education works, especially for graduate students,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean she has to let him get away with harassment or assault. We can help her with that.”

  Karen nodded. “We can indeed, but only if she pulls together enough courage to talk to us. In any case, we need to get to the bottom of this. Can you have your assistant get her in to meet with us on Monday? I want to see her in person.”

  “Sure,” I said. “In the meantime, do you think we should go ahead and talk to Singer and Carol? See what they have to say about Emily’s response?”

  “Yes, I’d like to hear their reactions. See if you can set up times for us to meet with them later today or tomorrow. Let’s talk to Singer first and then Carol. I’ll make myself available whenever you can get them in here. If Emily’s text was a joke, we need to have a serious talk with her about inappropriate behavior. But more likely, I think it’s real, and she’s reluctant to bring charges. Which I’m afraid is pretty common among victims of sexual assault. We’re just going to have to work a little harder to get her to talk to us.”

  4

  Kristy was able to get Singer scheduled for two that afternoon, with his student Carol then coming in at four. My new coinvestigator was available, so our next step was in place, and I was free to attend the weekly department seminar at noon. All of the graduate students presented a seminar on their work annually, and by a happy coincidence, Carol was on today. It’d be a good chance for me to get updated on the research before becoming immersed in trying to get to the bottom of the assault charges. After all, I reminded myself, protecting the integrity of the research was one of the things I wanted to accomplish in this investigation.

  Seminars were held in the first-floor lecture hall of our new Interdisciplinary Research Building, a block down from my chair’s office, which was in an older and grungier building that housed classrooms and the department administrative offices. I left ten minutes early and stopped by one of my favorite lunch trucks to pick up a grilled lamb gyro and a Diet Coke. It was just noon when I got to the auditorium and took a seat near the back. There was a good crowd. The 110-seat room was about two-thirds filled with department faculty and students. Singer was sitting in the front row, next to Carol, ready to perform the ritual of introducing his student to the audience. Steve Upton was there, too, sitting three rows back. All the players except one—our victim. If that’s what Emily was.

  At two
minutes after twelve, Singer strode to the podium. He introduced Carol as a fourth-year student who was one of the most outstanding young researchers he’d had the pleasure of working with. He described the work she’d be presenting as the results of a close collaboration with his colleague Steve Upton and Steve’s student Emily Jackson, noting that their paper had just been accepted by Nature, needing just a couple of minor tweaks to finish up. Then he led a round of welcoming applause for Carol as she took her place at the podium.

  Most students were visibly nervous at the start of their presentations, but not Carol. Seeming as calm and smooth as if she’d done this for years, she thanked Professor Singer for all his support and launched into her story. She gave an excellent talk, polished and professional. First, she described the successes and limitations of what had become the two most promising new approaches to cancer treatment—gene-targeted drugs and immunotherapy. They both worked, sometimes dramatically. But in most cases, they were only effective for a fraction of patients and often worked for only a few months before cancers became resistant and no longer responded to treatment.

  Carol explained that the idea behind her work was to combine these two approaches and hit cancers with a double whammy. She and her collaborator, Emily Jackson, had developed a drug cocktail that specifically made cancer cells more sensitive to attack by the immune system. Then she started showing the results of their experiments. In three different kinds of mouse cancer models, the combination of immunotherapy and their drug cocktail—Immunoboost, they called it—completely eradicated the cancer. The response compared with the partial effect of immunotherapy alone was striking.

  This would be a spectacular advance if it worked in people. And they were going to find out. Carol concluded her talk by explaining that the work was patented and that they were in negotiations with one of the major pharmaceutical companies to begin clinical trials. The drugs in the cocktail were already approved for human use, and rapid progress to the clinic was possible.

  The audience responded with loud and lengthy applause. And it was well deserved. No question that this was big—maybe a major breakthrough. Nobel Prize stuff with the potential of helping a lot of people.

  Whatever the outcome of the sexual assault case, I couldn’t let it tarnish these findings.

  A couple of faculty members grabbed me to talk after the lecture, and it was one forty-five when I got back to my office. Karen was already there, ready for our planned pre-meeting before interviewing Mike Singer, sitting in the waiting room, nibbling on another scone.

  “Do you just come here for the scones?” I asked. “I’m not sure they contain all the nutritional stuff you’re supposed to eat.”

  She smiled. “They’re good. And they have raspberries in them, right? What more could a girl need. Besides, I didn’t have time for lunch.”

  “Oh, another urgent case?”

  “You don’t want to know. And I couldn’t tell you anyway.” She got up from the couch. “Ready to plan our next meeting?”

  I led her into my office and sat down at my desk. But she shook her head and went over to the conference table. “I think we should sit here to give these interviews a clear sense of formality,” she said. “You sit at the head of the table, I’ll sit at your right, and we’ll have the subject sit across from me. We can record on my phone, which I’ll put in the center, and we’ll both take notes.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Glad to see you have this planned out. One might think you’ve done it before.”

  She ignored my levity. “It’s important to set things up right. We’re not here to have a pleasant chat with these folks. We want them to know that it’s a serious interrogation, and what they say is on the record.”

  “Got it. Do you want to lead off?”

  “No,” she said. “You take the lead and introduce me as a representative from the dean’s office, like you did on the phone with Emily. Get them talking, and I’ll chime in as necessary. With Singer, I think you want to tell him that we followed up by talking with Emily, and she denies anything happened. Let’s see what he makes of that.”

  I said okay just as Kristy knocked on the door and Mike Singer came into the office. Showtime.

  I directed Singer to his assigned place across from Karen. Following her script, I introduced her and told him we’d be recording the session. Then I told him about our conversation with Emily.

  He sat bolt upright. “You’re kidding. She denied that anything happened?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “She says her text to Carol was just a joke. And she was annoyed that we’re looking into it, although she’s at least agreed to talk with us when she’s back on Monday. What do you make of that?”

  “I think she’s afraid to bring accusations against her boss. Upton could ruin her career, and she’d rather sweep things under the rug than take that chance.” He looked over at Karen. “You’ve dealt with these cases. What do you think?”

  “That’s certainly a possibility,” she said, “but we’re interested in why you think that. It could also be that nothing really happened.”

  “I doubt that. I was worried that something happened even before Carol showed me the text. There was something about the way Upton acted that made me suspicious. He was insistent that I wait in the car while he took her up to her apartment by himself, and then he seemed somehow relieved and in a good mood when he came back down.”

  “So that made you think that something had happened? Were you going to pursue it?”

  “I was anxious to talk to Emily the next day, but she didn’t show up for our scheduled meeting, and Carol showed me the text instead. It didn’t sound phony to me. Plus, Upton’s always been too friendly with his students, if you know what I mean. All hugs and having them over to his house and shit. I’m surprised none of them have complained. I guess this is the first time things went as far as they did with Emily.” He shrugged. “Or maybe not. I suppose we don’t really know.”

  “Tell us more,” I said. “What’s the gossip about Upton being too friendly with his students, and who have you heard it from?”

  “Just what I said. He’s too forward and touchy-feely with the women in his lab. It’s all over the department. Carol didn’t even want to work on a collaborative project with him at first.”

  “Okay, we’ll ask her about that. We’re going to be talking to her later.” I looked over to Karen.

  She picked up the cue. “I’d just like to go over a few of the things you told Brad and get some details pinned down, so we’re clear on the record,” she said. “You mentioned that all four of you went to the restaurant in your car, and you got there around six, right?”

  Singer nodded.

  “And when did you leave?”

  “About eight fifteen. The time’s on my credit card receipt.” He pulled a credit card receipt out of his wallet and passed it over to her.

  “Excellent. Now, you told Brad that you had a couple of pitchers of margaritas, and Emily got pretty tipsy.” She looked at the receipt. “Three pitchers, as a matter of fact, according to this. Do you remember when she started feeling the liquor?”

  “It was odd. It seemed to hit her all of a sudden at the end of the meal. She’d been fine, enjoying herself like the rest of us, and then something seemed to knock her for a loop. As if she’d been drugged.”

  “Are you suggesting that Upton put something in her drink? Did you see anything like that happen?”

  “I think that’s what happened. But no, obviously I didn’t see him do it, or I’d have stopped him.”

  “Okay,” Karen said. “So after dinner, you got everyone back in your car.” She consulted her notes. “Dropped Carol off at her apartment and then went to Emily’s. What kind of shape was Emily in then?”

  “Out of it. She and Upton were in the back seat. She couldn’t even sit up straight and was leaning into him.”

  “Did he touch her inappropriately?”

  “I don’t know. I was driving.” Singer shrug
ged again. “Maybe.”

  “And when did you get to her apartment?”

  “I’m not sure, probably a quarter to nine or so. I parked across the street, and Upton took her upstairs.”

  “Her apartment’s on the second floor, right? Could you see anything from where you were parked?”

  “A bit. I saw him get her in the door, and pretty soon the lights went on upstairs. The shades were open, and I could see them inside. Then the lights went off again, and Upton came back.”

  “Could you see what they were doing?”

  “A little. I could just see their heads and shoulders. It looked like he helped her lie down on something, maybe a couch. After that, they were outside my line of sight.”

  “How long was he upstairs with her?”

  “I’m not sure exactly. Ten minutes or so.”

  “Did he say anything when he got back in the car?”

  “Something to the effect that the girl sure couldn’t hold her liquor. And that he’d gotten her onto her couch and left her there, dead to the world.”

  Karen nodded. “And then you drove him back to the parking lot to get his car. What did you do then?”

  “I went up to my office and finished up some stuff I hadn’t gotten to during the day. Then I went home.”

  “How long were you in your office?”

  “About an hour and a half. Why?”

  “I just want to get a full picture for the record. Did anyone see you there?”

  Singer raised his eyebrows. “You’re asking if I have an alibi for later that evening? I’m the one who reported this!”

  I stepped in. Maybe moderating these interviews was something I could do to help. “Don’t be concerned, Mike. Like she said, we just need to get everything straight for the record. If Upton says he didn’t do it, the only other possibility is that someone got into the apartment and assaulted her later that night. So we want to pin everything down as much as possible.”

  “Okay, fine. Yes, I stopped in the lab when I got there. Two of my students, Fred McElroy and Jane Watkins, were at their desks. Fred always works late, and I teased him about being a night owl. I stuck my head in again when I was leaving, and he was still there, working away.”