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  She took a drink of wine. “So that was my day at the office. Now I’m ready to hear about something else. Like your meeting with President Houghton.”

  “It didn’t have the excitement of your day, although I do have some unexpected news. But should we do something about dinner first? Maybe go out?”

  “Nope, it’s all set. I told you I’d take care of dinner tonight.” She checked her watch. “It’ll be here in half an hour.”

  “Should I ask how you managed that?”

  “Sushi, with all the ones you like best. I had plenty of time to place an order while we were waiting for news to come in from the scene.”

  I inclined my head and gave her a mock salute. “Okay, then. On to my meeting?”

  She nodded. “I assume it was calmer than our last visit to the Presidential Palace.”

  I had to chuckle at that. “When you arrested Emerson and we hauled him out in handcuffs? Yes, it was definitely calmer than that. Though a bit of a surprise.”

  She listened while I filled her in on Claire Houghton’s request, taking occasional sips of wine but not interrupting until I finished. Then she gave me a wry smile.

  “I assume you’re going to do it. It’s not like you really have a choice anyway, right?”

  I shrugged. “It wouldn’t be easy to turn her down, but there’s always a choice. It’d be pretty disruptive, not just for my research, but also for us. How do you feel about it?”

  Before she could answer, Rosie jumped up and raced to the door. Dinner had arrived.

  By the time I’d paid the deliveryman, Karen had moved our drinks to the dining table and was putting out dinner plates with little dishes for soy sauce and wasabi. I started taking the sushi out of the bag while she went back to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of soy sauce from the fridge. She didn’t like dealing with the little packages the restaurant provided.

  “That’s quite a spread you got us,” I said, when we had everything arranged.

  She smiled. “I even got a couple pieces of your favorite. Octopus.”

  “So I see. But I thought you didn’t like them.”

  “I don’t, they’re all yours. But I made up for it and got some of the egg sushi for myself.”

  I clinked her wine glass with my scotch. “Fair enough, I can’t stand those. But everything else looks great.” I added wasabi to my soy sauce and took a piece of tuna maki to start. “So back to the idea of my being acting director of this place in Maine. What do you think?”

  “We can live with it if we have to. It’s temporary and it sounds like you’ll only need to be there a couple of days a week. And who could complain about a place on the beach in Wells for the summer? I’ll come visit whenever I can, maybe even manage a bit of a vacation. But how about the effect on your research? Can you handle that?”

  “Like you said at first, I don’t have a lot of choice. The lab’ll survive, and the president said she’d give me a senior research associate to help manage when I’m away.”

  “Okay then, sounds like we’re in. So tell me, what do you think about the claim the woman’s making about her work being sabotaged? Her name’s Carolyn, right?”

  “Yes, Carolyn Gelman. And those claims are the heart of the matter. She’s said that her competitor, Mark Heller, has criticized her work to students and colleagues, making it hard for her to even run her lab. And, more drastic, that he unplugged her freezer intending to destroy critical research material.”

  “Criticizing her work seems a little hard to pin down. After all, scientists are allowed to say what they want, right? But unplugging a freezer? You said he’s a much stronger candidate, so why would he do something like that? It seems stupid.”

  “You’re right. His tenure case couldn’t be stronger; he doesn’t need to sabotage hers. And if he was really guilty of doing something like that, it’d be the end of his career. It doesn’t make sense for him to risk it.”

  “But someone did it. Could Heller be more worried about the tenure business than you think he should be?”

  “No question that it was intentional sabotage. Not only was the freezer unplugged, but the alarm was turned off and the door was left open. If a student in a neighboring lab hadn’t caught it in time, it would have destroyed the blood samples from Gelman’s clinical trial and set her research back for months. But that doesn’t mean it was Heller.”

  “Did someone check the freezer for prints?”

  “Yes, they called in the local cops. The only prints belonged to Gelman and two of her students.”

  “But of course, Heller—or someone else—could have worn gloves. Are there other suspects?”

  I shrugged. “Nobody in particular, but it could be anyone with a grudge against her. Or for that matter, against one of her students or postdocs who had material in the freezer. Something similar happened to me a few years ago, and it turned out to be a disgruntled graduate student who’d failed her qualifying exam. I’d been on the committee and she blamed me for it.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it’ll be simple to sort out. How are you going to get to the bottom of it?”

  I took the last piece of sushi. The second octopus nigiri, which I’d been saving. The best for last.

  “I’ll start by going up to MTRI two weeks from now, on what will be the current director’s last day. I’ll talk to him before he fades away, and then start meeting some of the faculty members. Including our two tenure candidates.”

  “That’ll give you a sense of the players. Then what?”

  “Can’t tell you that yet. I guess I’ll just poke around until I get some insight into what’s happening.” I gave her a playful grin. “Sort of the way you handle your investigations, right?”

  She raised her glass with a smile. “Sounds like detective work to me.”

  4

  I spent the next several days talking to my students and postdocs about my new schedule and planning out their experiments far enough in advance that my absences wouldn’t be a problem. I promised to be back at least a couple of days a week and to be available by email or Zoom while I was away. They’d be fine. Or so I hoped.

  I also sent an email to Janet Klein, who’d worked with me as a senior research associate to help run my lab when I’d been department chair. She’d since taken a job with a biotech startup, but I knew she wasn’t happy with the corporate environment. So I took a chance and asked if she might just possibly be interested in coming back, adding that I had funding for her on a long-term basis, beyond the end of my tenure at MTRI. Her response was immediate and enthusiastic—she’d be thrilled to be back at BTI.

  With that stroke of luck, I felt reasonably confident when I headed off to MTRI. The lab would survive a period of my divided attention, especially with Janet’s help. Now I just had a messy tenure case to sort out. Nothing I hadn’t done before.

  The rain fell steadily, making the traffic getting out of Boston even worse than usual. It didn’t let up until I left Massachusetts behind and crossed into New Hampshire, at which point the traffic thinned and I made up for lost time on the final stretch north on I-95 into southern Maine. I got off at the Wells exit, from which it was less than two miles to College Drive. A short stretch through mostly open wooded land then led to York Community College and, a little farther down, MTRI.

  The building was not what I expected. Rather than sleek glass and steel construction, like contemporary lab buildings in Boston, MTRI was housed in a redbrick building that looked like it belonged to an older era. The style was similar to the York Community College buildings and was a much better fit to the open wooded area than more modern-looking construction would have been. I guessed that it also provided a homier setting for cancer patients wanting to explore their treatment options.

  I walked up a landscaped path from the parking lot to the front entrance, which was flanked by two climbing mandevilla vines. A hummingbird hovered over their fragrant pink flowers as if it had the job of welcoming visitors.

  There was
a building directory just inside, so I stopped to take in the layout. The institute’s administrative offices and patient care facilities—including waiting areas, rooms for exams and consultations, a pharmacy, and clinical laboratories—were located on the first two floors. The upper five floors housed faculty offices and research laboratories.

  I proceeded through a set of glass doors leading to the administrative office suite, where I was greeted by a studious-looking young woman seated at an oak reception desk. I identified myself and said I had an appointment with Director Lowell.

  “Oh, you’re our new director! I’m so happy to meet you. I’m Anna, let me take you right in.”

  She led me to a door behind her desk and knocked softly. It was opened by a heavy-set man with a balding head of gray hair. “Brad Parker, I presume? I’m Dan Lowell. Pleasure to meet you.”

  I shook his hand as I looked around the office, which was mostly packed up and filled with moving boxes.

  “Sorry about the mess. I’ll have this all cleaned out for you shortly,” he said. “Movers are coming this afternoon, and Anna can help you get settled in tomorrow morning. But I suspect you want to chat a bit first.”

  “Yes, I’d appreciate that.” I took a seat at a six-person conference table toward the front of the room. Lowell sat across from me, and I said, “Anything you want to tell me in terms of an entry debriefing would be most welcome.”

  “I think you’ll find the overall operations and budget pretty straightforward. And I have an excellent associate director, who’s thoroughly briefed and handles the routine kind of stuff. Jim Putnam. Keep him on and you shouldn’t have any problems.”

  “Great; having someone like that is an enormous help. I understand there’s a somewhat acute problem that needs attention, though.”

  He sighed. “The tenure cases. Yes, I’m afraid so. Goddamned mess, to tell you the truth.”

  “So I’ve gathered. I’ve read both candidates’ files, but I’d be grateful for your take on the situation.”

  “Sure. One of them, Mark Heller, is a no-brainer. The guy’s done everything right and the case is rock-solid, with full support from the senior faculty. Carolyn Gelman’s case, on the other hand, is borderline, and some of our influential faculty don’t like her. You probably also know that she’s made accusations to the effect that she’s been unfairly treated, even that Mark has sabotaged her work.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “Well, those kinds of complaints haven’t made her any more popular with her colleagues. It’s hard for me to see where her case has a positive outcome. I’ve tried to counsel her about looking for another job and leaving before she’s kicked out, but there’s no way she’ll listen.”

  “I’m surprised you’ve tried to counsel her out. The case doesn’t seem that bad to me. Not as strong as Heller’s, sure. But on her own merits, I’d consider her well above the bar for tenure. Well funded, good publications, an important clinical trial in progress. A clear majority of outside letters are positive, and the couple of negatives just complain that she doesn’t go to enough meetings.”

  He looked at me with a raised eyebrow. “But when her case is compared to Mark’s? I don’t see how it’ll fly.”

  That was indeed the crux of the problem, but I didn’t like the way he approached it. He sounded smug.

  “I understand your concern, but each candidate for tenure is supposed to be evaluated individually—not compared to others. There’s no reason why she and Heller shouldn’t both be granted tenure if their records merit it. Which I think they do, at least from what I’ve seen in the files.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be glad that her new director feels that way. But I’m afraid you’ll find yourself at odds with several of the senior faculty here. I suspect the addition of their views to the file will put the nail in the coffin.”

  “All right, tell me: What’s her problem with those faculty?”

  “Basically, she’s a bitch. A nasty woman who thinks she’s better than everyone else and doesn’t want to do the yeoman’s work needed to keep the place running.”

  It was obvious that Lowell was one of the faculty members opposed to tenure. No wonder she hadn’t been interested in his advice about looking for another job.

  “Can you give me some specifics? Just saying that she’s a bitch doesn’t help me much.”

  He grunted his displeasure. “No, I suppose not. Well, if I try to step back a bit, I guess the big problem is her attitude. She’s self-centered and refuses to spend time on anything that doesn’t directly forward her own research.”

  If that were true, it was indeed the kind of attitude that would get her into trouble. Any academic department was a community, in which faculty members had to do their share of the mundane tasks needed to keep things running. On the other hand, when I was a department chair, I’d always tried to protect junior faculty from routine chores so that they could focus on their research.

  I needed more information, but Lowell already looked defensive. Pushing him too hard would be counterproductive.

  “Okay, I see where an attitude like that would cause problems for her. What sort of things did she refuse to do?”

  “Like I said, anything that didn’t help her research. As you know, there’s lots of maintenance work and faculty committees needed to run an institute. Library committee, seminar committee, thesis committees for students, search committees for new faculty. Whenever she was asked to participate in something like that, she’d just say that she couldn’t do it. No real excuses, just that she didn’t have the time.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m sure her colleagues didn’t appreciate that.”

  “Exactly. It was like she thought she was better than everyone else and shouldn’t have to do her share. Not only that, she insists on leaving promptly at four thirty every afternoon. She won’t stay later than that for meetings, seminars, taking visitors out to dinner. Lots of things happen in the late afternoon or evening, but she’d just fade away.”

  “I noticed that she has two young children. Is it a child-care problem?”

  Lowell shrugged. “Maybe, but lots of young women have kids and still manage to fulfill their professional obligations. Her husband’s a big-shot lawyer with a firm in Portland. Plenty of money, a big house on the beach. She could afford to get help with child care.”

  I knew it wasn’t always that simple, but there was nothing to gain from arguing with him. He’d be gone tomorrow. Instead, I decided to move the conversation on to the next issue I needed to probe.

  “Okay, I can understand where she’s gotten some of her colleagues annoyed at her. Which certainly hasn’t been very smart on her part, although I don’t think it constitutes appropriate grounds for denying tenure. But she’s also claimed that some of the MTRI faculty have bad-mouthed her and even attempted to sabotage her work. What are your thoughts on that?”

  “I assume you know that she’s leveled those accusations specifically against Mark Heller. Her argument is that he’s trying to take her down to advance his own tenure case.”

  I nodded. “And what do you think?”

  “Why the hell would he do that, when she’s obviously no competition? Maybe he’s said some things that are critical of her work, I don’t know. I’m sure other faculty members have, too. Talking about each other’s work is something that scientists do all the time. It’s not like there’s some kind of conspiracy against her.”

  His dismissiveness annoyed me. “How about her freezer having been unplugged? Does that happen all the time, too?”

  He frowned and looked down at the table. “No, that really does seem to have been an intentional act of sabotage. But again, blaming Mark for it has pissed people off rather than getting any sympathy for her.”

  “I assume you’ve investigated. Do you have any idea of what happened?”

  “We can reconstruct some of it. A student in another lab went into the common equipment room and noticed that the freezer was unplugged and its door was
ajar. That was about two in the morning. He called Gelman, and she told him to plug it back in and close the door. Then she came into the lab herself to check. That was when she noticed the emergency alarm had been turned off. The temperature had only risen about twenty degrees at that point, so fortunately nothing was thawed.”

  “The fact that the emergency alarm was turned off obviously means it wasn’t an accident,” I said.

  He nodded. “Obviously. And from the temperature rise, we’re guessing that it probably happened between twelve thirty and one o’clock.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s any way of knowing who was in the building then?”

  “Not really. But there’s a security camera on the front door, so we know who goes in and out. And we probably have a picture of the guilty party doing just that.”

  I sat up straight in my chair. This was something new.

  “And? Can you identify them?”

  “Unfortunately not. Here, I’ll show you.”

  He got up and I followed him over to his desk. He clicked the mouse on his computer and said, “I can access the security video from here. Watch.”

  The video started at midnight the night of the incident. Lowell fast-forwarded to twelve fifteen. Then he slowed it and we watched someone enter the building. The face was completely covered by the hood of a black parka. Lowell fast-forwarded again to twenty minutes later, when the same figure left. Still completely shielded by the hood.

  “You’re assuming that’s who it was because of the time? Seems reasonable enough,” I said.

  “The cops thought so, too. But who it is remains a mystery.”

  “So the cops reviewed the tape as well as checking the freezer? I saw in the file that the only prints they found on the freezer belonged to Gelman and members of her lab.”

  “Correct. They couldn’t tell much more from the tape, either.”

  “There’s nothing that rules Heller out. He could have worn gloves, so the absence of prints doesn’t mean much.”

  “No, the tape doesn’t rule Mark out. But there’s another potential suspect who’s a better fit.”