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discovered the damage? Did he know anyone who might have a grudge against him?
"My only enemy is dead," he had told them, and referred them back to Puckett
for the details. David couldn't stand talking to them, could barely stand even
to look at them. It was all he could do to keep from throwing them bodily from
his lab. But the police, of course, were not the real targets of his anger.
When first confronted with Big Otto's death, he'd been stunned that anyone
might think him responsible for it. But now he knew better: murder was well
within his capability. If the destroyer of his lab were here right now, David
would crush the life from him with his bare hands, squeeze the bastard's neck
until his fingers punched through the flesh to the red pulp beneath. He
understood this as a matter of simple fact, as he understood the pull of
Earth's gravity.
"You're not being fair." Bowser's voice drifted in from the hallway. He and
Marian were having some sort of argument out there. "There's nothing
inherently political about a police force. Society needs to enforce its laws
somehow."
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"But where do they get off questioning David?" asked Marian. "Stormtroopers!
What does he need an alibi for? Nobody could believe he'd do something like
this to himself, destroy his own work."
"They're supposed to be suspicious, budette; they're the police. You want to
get mad, get mad at the city council."
"Republicans and Grays," she muttered.
Bowser snorted. "Humanitarians versus everyone else, right? That's how you see
the world. Listen, budette, nobody can punish the innocent like a humane,
statist social engineer with a lock on the police. The effect is random at the
user level."
"You're full of shit," Marian said. "You always act like you know more than
the rest of us, but where
does all this privileged information come from? Huh? Name your source."
"Well hello, Professor," said Bowser. "What brings you here this evening?"
There was silence for a moment, and then a new voice. "Hello, Mr. Jones, Ms.
Fouts. Special Agent
Puckett called me; I. . . heard what happened."
Henry Chong? David looked to the doorway, saw his mentor there. They made eye
contact, gaze locking into gaze, the subtle twitching of facial muscles
sending high-bandwidth signals between them.
Henry:
Look at all this damage! Are you all right?
David:
No, of course I'm not. Just think how you would feel.
Henry:
Your point is taken. I am so sorry for you, my pupil.
David:
That doesn't help much.
Henry stepped forward, gingerly avoiding the broken glass on the floor.
"David," he said.
"It's all gone " David explained flatly. "Every bit of it, five years. Please
tell me you have my off-site backups."
Henry looked troubled. "I keep them in my filing cabinet at home. I couldn't
find them, David. Nothing is missing; there is no damage. . . But I cannot
find your tapes."
Somehow, this final, total outrage did not seem at all surprising. It seemed
logical, almost anticlimactic.
David simply grunted. "I really am sunk, then."
"I will do what I can to help you," Henry said. "I am so sorry."
"Yeah, well. Thanks." He'd been fidgeting with the cord from his broken
telephone, but now he threw it down on the counter and looked away.
Henry cleared his throat. "David. It's understandable that you should be
upset, but I see you are torturing yourself by watching this procedure. I see
no point in that. Maybe you had better go home."
"I can't," David said. "I have to know who did this to me. I have to know
why."
Henry's face darkened. "I should have been more clear: you are not helping
anyone, least of all yourself.
I am telling you now to leave. Let these people do their jobs."
"Yes, sir," David snapped.
The scowl deepened. "I will speak with your friends, and they will take you
home. The authorities believe this matter is related to Otto Vandegroot's
death, and that seems like a good theory to me. But you will not test it by
sulking here."
"Did you come all the way down here just to tell me that?" David asked. "No
backups, go home?"
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"I am the department head," Henry replied. "I will have to explain all this to
the dean tomorrow morning.
And about Otto, and everything that's happened. But yes, I would have come
down here anyway, out of concern for you. And out of concern for you, I am now
throwing you out."
"Fine," David said, sliding down off the countertop he'd been using as a seat.
"I'm leaving. Thank you for your help."
"You're welcome," Henry said, choosing to ignore the irony in David's tone.
"It'll be OK," Marian said for the thousandth time as David chained and bolted
his apartment door, sealing them away from the evils of the night.
"It will not," David said. "Please stop telling me that."
"What I mean is, you'll survive this."
"Probably," he agreed, meeting her ice-blue gaze. "Is that supposed to make me
feel better?" He turned away, grabbed his stack of mail and rifled through it
as if something important might be hidden there.
Nothing ever was, of course, nothing but bills and ads.
"Come on, David," Marian said, "let it go for now. Try to relax. It doesn't
help you to get all twisted up right now."
"Something's happening," he said, his attention still on the mail. "I'm caught
in something, and I don't know what it is. There's been a murder."
Marian absorbed this thought in silence.
"I'm scared," he said, only just realizing this himself. He felt hollow,
ringing with loss and confusion and pain, and part of the pain was simple
fear, the sharp, glittery edges of it cutting him up inside like bits of cold
glass.
Again, Marian said nothing, but she moved in closer, pressing lightly against
his back. Where they touched it was instantly warm. Her arm came around his
chest, enfolding rather than squeezing. He felt the familiar sparks inside.
Turning, he dropped the mail and kissed her. His urgency surprised them both,
and in another minute they were falling out of their clothes, trying to unfold
the bed without breaking their mutual contact. The sheets formed an envelope
of cool satin, warming rapidly as they slipped inside.
"Command: lights out," he managed to tell the computer before his brain
switched off.
In the darkness their lovemaking was fluid and passionate, their bodies
blending together in a single warm fog.
CHAPTER TEN
he phone was ringing, a limp electronic bleating that sounded twice, paused,
then sounded twice more.
T
"Command: no picture; answer," David said, sitting up, opening his eyes to the
blankness of his sleep mask.
Then, "Hello?"
"Sanger." The disembodied voice came out of David's stereo speakers. "I need
to ask you some questions. It's urgent."
David slipped off the mask and rubbed his eyes. "Puckett?"
"That's right. Are you awake?" Seven-oh-eight a.m., the clock said, sitting in
a little pool of fresh, glaring sunlight that made him squint. "No. What's
going on?"
"We have a suspect. We need to know if you've seen him."
Now David was awake. "Suspect? You mean for my lab?"
"Maybe for everything," Puckett said. "I think you know him. It's a young guy,
name of Jacobs."
"Dov
Jacobs? That's impossible," David said, reaching for yesterday's shirt.
"Not impossible. He checked out of your AMFRI conference about half an hour
after the murder, and he came straight back to U of Phil, by car. He was on
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campus at the time your laboratory was trashed.
Credit reports show he's still in the area."
"I haven't seen him. Listen, this is impossible. Dov Jacobs wouldn't hurt
anybody; he's a . . ."A classic nerd. Smart, small-framed. Gets bloody noses
running down stairs too fast. "He's a pussycat."
"Otto Vandegroot sued him and won," Puckett said.
That was true, but. . . Dov?
"This doesn't make any sense."
"Has he ever been in your lab?"
"Sure," David said, "lots of times."
"How recently?"
"I. . . I don't know. A few months ago, maybe."
"His fingerprints are all over the place. It's not conclusive, but we're
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