Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 763 & 764, March/April 2005
- Автор: Dean David, Dempsey Timothy F.
- Год: 2005
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: ISSN 1054-8122
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 763 & 764, March/April 2005». Краткое содержание книги:
“So what do we do? I’m afraid Buckman’s going to try to settle things with Hayden, and that’s going to be more trouble.”
“Talk to Hayden. See if you can confirm he’s the bad guy. If he is, maybe we can come up with something to cool him down, cool both of them down.
“And Peter,” he added as I started to leave. “Give this one your best shot. First priority is, make sure the people involved come out all right. Second is preserving that Nanotech Lab. It’s a major university asset, and while Buckman’s got a deputy, he can’t replace his boss as either a grantsman or a scientist.”
I found Joe Hayden in his studio, a large, high room with a slanted ceiling made up of north-facing skylights, the result of a modest remodel of an old warehouse on land taken over by the expanding university. Like all painters’ ateliers on campuses, Hayden’s was cluttered with student works in progress and daubed, wall to wall, floor to skylight, with splatters, smears, and star-bursts of color, the result of generations of student painters and their collective carelessness and exuberance. Hayden himself was large and muscular, neck as wide as his head, and exceedingly neat. Not a drop of paint on his jeans or white T-shirt. His unsmeared palette hooked over his left thumb, he stood before a large canvas on an easel and poked gently at it with a tiny brush. I know little about painting, but I could see that the image before him was a stark, nonrepresentational flare of colors and he was picking at it with the precision of a pointillist.
He looked up, smiled, and slipped his brush into a cup on the easel. “Hey, Haas. Come to join my four-o’clock techniques class?”
I glanced at my watch. “We’ve got twenty minutes or so, can we talk a little?”
He read my face. “Something wrong?”
“Yeah. You and Harrison Buckman and Naomi Cordier.”
His face darkened. “You’re into private territory there, Dr. Haas. I don’t see that my relationship with my ex-wife is any business of the university administration.”
I nodded. “Of course, Joe.” Academics address each other variously by title, last name, or given name, more as indications of warmth — or lack of it — than recognition of rank. “We have no desire to pry into Naomi’s business or yours, but last night someone beat the crap out of Buckman.”
“No!” Hayden seemed genuinely surprised. “And you think it was me? Because Naomi and I were married once?”
I cocked an eyebrow and said nothing.
Hayden closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath as if to prepare himself for something. Then he sighed audibly and gave me a look of piercing honesty that was beyond pretense. “Look, Peter,” he said, “whatever Naomi and I had is long gone. She’s the best thing ever happened to me, but we just didn’t, you know, mesh. I loved her dearly and I still worry about her and want the very best for her, but we aren’t ever going to be partners, and if she’s got something good going with Buckman, I’m all for it. He seems like an okay guy, and if he can make her happy, well...” He ran out of gas and paused. “I guess I can see how someone might think it was me, but my God, I haven’t slugged anybody since the Rams game in ’eighty-five.”
“And last night?” I asked.
“You mean, do I have an alibi? You bet I do. Right there.” He pointed to a video camera mounted high on a wall bracket looking down at the painting on his easel. “I sleep in mornings, teach most afternoons, and do my own work evenings. I was working on this,” he said, pointing to the easel, “from just after supper until maybe midnight, and I do a time-lapse tape so I can show students how a painting is layered — you know, deeper pigments above brighter.”
“And you’re on the tape? With date and times?”
“Better be, or I’m gonna raise hell with Audio-Visual.” He scratched his chin. “I suppose someone could phony up the times on the tapes, but not me. I wouldn’t have any idea how to do it.”
I nodded. I didn’t think he would have any idea how to do it, either. “Thanks for telling me this, Joe. I think I can put this whole thing to rest now.”
“Yeah, well, apart from getting busted for something I sure as hell didn’t do, I really wouldn’t want Naomi to think I’d do such a thing.”
As I turned for the outside door, two chatting students ambled in through the hallway entrance. I lowered my voice. “One last thing. Do you have a brown canvas bag with the Raiders logo on it?”
“A ball bag? Sure. Used to use ’em like duffel bags when we were on the road. Got half a dozen of them one place or another. There’s one over there in the corner. I stick my folding easel and stuff in when we go out on campus to do landscape exercises.” He grinned a little self-consciously. “Kind of my trademark on campus, I guess. The beast who opted for beauty.” He walked past the entering students to a portable coatrack mostly hidden by the opened door, peered behind the door, looked back across the room at me with raised eyebrows, and shrugged. “Somebody must’ve borrowed it. Does it matter?”
I smiled and shook my head and left.
As I walked across campus through crowds of chattering students to the faculty parking lot, I found myself convinced of Joe Hayden’s innocence. After some years in my job, I have what I think is a finely-tuned crap filter, and I found it hard to believe that one man could be an NFL pro, a skilled painter, an effective teacher, and a consummate actor. And if Hayden wasn’t the attacker, Buckman had nothing to worry about so far as his reputation and its impact on his grant-getting. He and Naomi needed to know that right away, certainly before he felt well enough to begin stalking Hayden with his baseball bat.
In half an hour I was back with Harrison and Naomi on the Buckman patio, this time with an Anchor Steam in my hand. “I don’t think you have to worry about granting agencies and the NSF,” I said.
Harrison cocked his eyes toward Naomi and tried to hush me with a nearly imperceptible head shake. “It’s okay,” I said. “Naomi needs to know what’s worrying you.”
Naomi said, “What? What haven’t you told me, Harrison?”
Despite a glowering look from Harrison, I told her of our earlier suspicions about Joe Hayden, emphasizing “our” and “we” in every sentence to give Harrison a bit of cover. “But now I don’t think he had anything to do with the attack.”
“Of course not,” Naomi said. “My God, Joe’s about as fierce as old Lolly over there.” She nodded her head toward the hairy bundle panting in a patio corner.
“Then who...?” Harrison’s face displayed a twisted mixture of relief and renewed puzzlement.
“Let’s think about it,” I said. “Since you weren’t robbed and I don’t think the attack had anything to do with you and Naomi being an item, what’s left?”
Naomi said, “Not for love nor money...”
“Right,” I said. “Who would gain from damaging your arm, Harrison? Or from damaging your reputation, if the love triangle nonsense got out?”
Naomi and Harrison exchanged a glance.
“What?” I said.
“Harrison’s deputy at the lab,” said Naomi. “He would gain from both.”
Harrison said, “I can’t believe it was Charlie Bowen.”
“Who would take over,” I asked, “if you had to leave the lab?”
“Well... I guess it would be Charlie. At least for a while.”
“Tell me about him.”
“There’s not much to tell. Ph.D. at Cal Tech in ’ninety-seven, hired on here after a one-year postdoc at Livermore, came to work for me in the lab four years ago, took over as deputy last year.”
“And?”
Harrison waggled his left hand. “He’s so-so, I guess. Ambitious but not too good at grant preparation. He’s good at administrative detail and I like the way he keeps the lab humming along on schedule. In his own projects, he’s not very innovative and he’s maybe too careful. Sometimes you have to take chances in science, bet on possibilities. Bowen’s not a risk taker. But he can cook up a pretty productive research protocol. You know, take a hypothesis and look for ways to establish proof for it.”