Failure is Fatal

by Lesley A. Diehl

  “Okay,” Guy said, “truce for the time being. Der and I can build the fire and maybe you can whip up some goodies to munch on. How about it?” He hugged and gave me a peck on the cheek, so I nodded agreement.

  Der begged off on the fire building task, deferring to Guy’s superior skills and, with a warning glance in my direction, he added that he was “wearing his good clothes.”

  “Before your boys get busy in there, maybe you can explain to Guy why I’m now even more intimately involved in this recent murder.” Of course, I did know Guy was worried about me, and this would only increase his concern, but maybe Der could reassure him I’d be fine.

  “You mean you haven’t told him?” Der appeared incredulous that Guy and I would wish to spend our time in the bedroom romping around in the nude rather than talking murder.

  Guy turned to me with an accusing glint in his eye.

  I turned my back on the two of them and stuck my head in the refrigerator as if I had nesting and food-gathering things to do.

  My hunt yielded some cheddar cheese. I cut off the blue mold—cheddar doesn’t have blue veins running through it, does it? That’s blue cheese, right? As I rummaged through the cupboards to find crackers, I snatched quick peeks at Guy and Der in the living room, Der with his hands in his pockets watching Guy as he laid newspapers and kindling and placed the logs on top. Guy settled back on his boot heels before the stove while Der spoke quietly to him. I loved having both of them in my life, for different reasons, of course. Guy was my lover while Der had been a good friend for some time, almost a big brother to me As I watched the scene in the living room, I realized my only sadness was having my best friend, Annie, missing, and I looked forward to her return in December from her sabbatical in Sicily.

  I carried the cheese and crackers into the living room, returned for the wine and found some apple juice for Der. I sunk down into the couch in front of the fire with Samantha at my side.

  We chatted about the case for a while, and I was certain that Guy and Der thought I’d forgotten their cracks about my “Lone Ranger” approach to sleuthing, an approach I wasn’t about to give up.

  “Is it alright for me to use the lab? There’s something I need to check that might help in the case.” I continued petting Sam’s head.

  “What?” Der looked curious.

  “I told you I need to check something first.”

  “Tell you what. We’ll go to the lab together first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “What time tomorrow?”

  “Oh around six a.m. should do it.”

  Damn! He knew I wasn’t a morning person, especially on Saturday and particularly with Guy visiting.

  “Fine. Then I’m off to bed. You guys will have to go out for dinner. You just ate the last food in the house.”

  “But it’s only a little after nine,” Der said, “and I thought we might all go somewhere for a bite to eat. A snack of blue cheese and stale crackers doesn’t do it. I’m starved.”

  “Me too. Come on. Don’t be such a meanie,” Guy said.

  “No way. I really am exhausted. Go hit the diner.”

  “It’s Friday night. It’ll be busy,” Der said.

  I shook my head and refused to budge.

  “Okay, then. I’ll bring you home something to snack on. You don’t mind if I wake you when I come back, do you? I mean, it’ll take us a few hours to finish at the diner. That way you’ll get a nap and be rested for, um, whatever.” Guy gave me his most engaging smile, the one I never could resist.

  I saw the look in his eyes and knew exactly what he meant by “whatever.”

  “Fine, fine.” I handed Guy his jacket and steered Der toward the door.

  “See you soon.” I kissed Guy on the lips. “I’ll see you at the lab tomorrow at six.” I patted Der on the back.

  As soon as I heard Der’s car pull out of the drive, followed by the sound of the motorcycle starting up, I turned toward the stairs, only to be startled by the outside door opening. Guy entered, carrying his helmet.

  “Just wanted a little longer kiss goodbye.” He grabbed me in a hug and placed his lips passionately on mine. When we came up for air, I had trouble reminding myself that Guy should be leaving.

  “Actually, I also kind of wondered what you were up to.” He stepped back and searched my face.

  “Whatever do you mean?” I tried to look as innocent as possible.

  “Go to bed, and try to stay out of trouble. I’m worried about you. From what Der tells me about the description in your research, someone has targeted you for a lot of trouble, the kind of trouble you seem to thrive on.”

  “Whatever do you mean? And how can I get into trouble if I go to bed?”

  “You know damn well what I mean. Der thinks you’re up to something too. Just in case you are, I’ve got these.” He held up the keys to my car.

  “Okay, okay.” I began to ascend the stairs in a dejected manner. Once I heard the bike start, I sat down on the bed and reached for the phone.

  “Hello, Ready Taxi Service? How much do you charge for a fare from the lake?”

  The problem wasn’t the lack of transportation at all. It was the fact that the key ring Guy took held not only my car keys but the keys to the building, my office and lab. I’d have to work on that one once the cab arrived.

  *

  “Just pull up in front of the campus security building.” I dug around in my purse for the fare, a whopping thirty bucks from the lake. It did seem kind of silly for me to feel compelled to come to the lab under these circumstances, but I knew I wouldn’t sleep unless I confirmed my hunch. Now I had to get one of the security officers to unlock the lab and my office.

  “You say your car is in the shop and your keys are on the same key ring? It’s Friday night. Maybe they’re open late.” The officer wasn’t getting it.

  “No, I already called. I’ll have to wait until tomorrow to get them.”

  I showed him my campus I.D. and hoped this would go fast.

  “There’s a security car near your building. I’ll tell him to meet you at the back door.”

  “Thanks.”

  As I struggled across campus in the cold, I noticed few lights shone from the windows of faculty offices, and the classrooms were empty. The wind picked up as it blew from the far end of the library toward the Student Center. Dry leaves swirled at my feet. We just might be in for that early snow. I shivered at the thought and tried to pick up the pace. I was breathless by the time I reached the door of the building. No security officer. I huddled in the doorway trying to keep out of the wind. After several minutes, I began to think that this was not going to work and I’d be forced to call Campus Security and find another officer to let me in. As I was about to punch the number into my cell, the door opened from the inside and a student exited the building. He greeted me, and, with no hesitation, held the door open. Thanking him, I ducked inside, realizing only then that I was no farther ahead on my quest than before. No keys to either my office or the lab. No problem. I’d call someone from Campus Security, and this time I’d wait for him or her in the warmth of the hall.

  I hurried up the stairs and turned the corner toward my office and the lab, noticing that a light shone from under the lab door. I stood in front of the door and felt cold air on my feet. It seemed to come from inside the room. I tried the door, but it was locked, as it should be. I got down on my hands and knees and tried to look under the door. Impossible to see a thing.

  “Dr. Murphy?” a voice from above me said.

  I jumped to my feet, turning to face an officer in the brown uniform of Campus Security. “Gads, you scared the hell out of me!”

  “Sorry I took so long, but I had to check a report on a broken window in the Physical Sciences complex. Say, I thought you didn’t have your entry keys. How did you get in here?” The young man began to search through the keys on his belt, looking for the master that would unlock the lab.

  “A student was leaving and held the door for me. It w
as freezing out there. I was going to call you once I got in.”

  He turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open. The mystery of the cold air was solved immediately. The window on the far side of the room stood wide open allowing the frigid night wind to blow across the room. The research papers that I’d left on the table carefully arranged and untouched (almost) as Der directed me were now blown about the room.

  “What a mess!” the officer said. He bent to pick up the papers on the floor as I ran to close the window.

  “Never mind, I’ll do it. Thanks for all your help. I’ll take care of this now.” I began to steer him out the door.

  “Yes, ma’am. Don’t forget to lock up when you leave. And, in the future, remember to close your windows and turn off the lights too.”

  I smiled, nodded, and closed the door behind him, careful to lock the door behind me.

  I looked around the room puzzled by the scene. I remembered closing the window and shutting off the light when I left earlier this afternoon. Someone had been in here. I rushed to the file cabinets, which appeared to be undisturbed, and were locked as usual. The only papers not locked in the cabinets were those Der and I were examining this afternoon. Stupid me. Why hadn’t I locked those up too?

  Since I assumed that fingerprints were both unlikely and meaningless, I picked them up, but I kept my gloves on just in case. I sorted the papers into two piles, one containing the consent forms with the students’ names on them, the other pile the written responses from the subjects. Then I counted the papers in each pile. There were fifteen response forms and sixteen consent forms. Adding in the response form with the murder description, which I’d given to Der, that made an equal number, sixteen of each. From my purse I extracted the sign-up sheet that Der returned to me earlier. It contained a total of fifteen signatures. “Charles Darwin” did not appear on that sheet, not that I expected it would. But the real question now was, were sixteen individuals tested last Thursday in the research, including the mysterious Mr. Darwin or was that consent and response form inserted among the papers after the testing? Someone just demonstrated how terribly easy it was to enter the lab.

  “Laura? Are you in there?” Guy’s voice called from the hall outside the lab. “Open up, Murphy. You’re messing with my evidence.” I could tell from the tone of Der’s voice that he was very irritated.

  I unlocked the lab door and swung it open.

  “Wow, you guys must have eaten in record time. Diner not busy, or what? Well, good, then. I need a ride home anyway.” They were both about to say something, actually, a lot of somethings, I suspected, but I held up my finger and said, “Wait,” in my most commanding tone of voice.

  “Seriously, I’ll explain everything, but first there’s something I think you should know, Der. I think someone broke into my lab tonight just before I got here.”

  I explained how I got to campus. Guy shook his head back and forth, staring sadly at the lab floor. I suspected he wasn’t inspecting the dirt there, but reviewing how he had gotten himself into this relationship in the first place. I’d have to do some mea culpa time followed by profuse apologies later in the evening. I made a mental note to myself not to wear my old flannel nightie while accomplishing this. I continued with my account of how I entered the building and the condition of the lab when the officer opened the door.

  “Everything seems to be here, but I know someone was in here. Der, you and I left together this afternoon. The window was closed then, and the light wasn’t on. I didn’t come back here, and I left messages for all of my student assistants to stay out of the lab.”

  Der walked over to the window and examined it.

  “With the way these windows work, if the window weren’t latched, it could blow open with all of this wind.”

  Der was right, of course. There was a latch at the top of the window, which secured it to the frame, but if the latch were undone, the window would swing in and a strong enough wind could spring it open. In fact, just that happened several times last spring.

  “And, frankly, I don’t remember if the light was on or off or whether or not you turned it off when we left the lab. Since it was still daylight then, the light could have been on, and we wouldn’t have noticed it. I do remember there was writing on the chalkboard and it’s gone now, so the cleaners must have been in here.”

  I walked over to the trashcan and looked in.

  “The cleaners only come in during the week, and, if they were here, they would have emptied the trash. The can is still full of papers from today. Besides, they never touch the chalkboard in here.”

  “Okay, let’s assume someone came in here. How did they get in?” Der again examined the window. “A person would have to be skinny as a rail to get in through that window even if it was open.”

  “Maybe one of your assistants left the window unlatched, and the wind caught it,” Guy said.

  “Unlikely,” I said, “given that we all knew that window could be caught by the wind. We had a mess in here last spring when someone left it unlatched and rain and wind poured in overnight. It was a mess.”

  “So the hunch you mentioned, Murphy? Certainly it wasn’t that someone would enter your lab tonight and you wanted to be there just in case the intruder needed to confess to you, was it?” Der said, taking my focus off how and why someone entered the lab.

  “No, of course not. Come look at this.” I showed him all of the consent forms and the response sheets filled out by the subjects.

  “These were all blown around the room, but when I placed them back in order, you can see there are sixteen in each pile, if you also count the response sheet with the murder description on it which you have. When you look at the sign-up sheet, only fifteen students signed up to take part in the experiment.”

  “So there is always the same number participating who signed up?” Der asked.

  “Usually, but not always. Students forget they signed up, and they don’t show for the testing session, or a student may bring along a friend that needs credits or someone comes in at the last minute knowing there will be a testing session and they need credit. We’ll test as many or as few students as appear. We just need their names so that we can inform their instructors of their participation. That way they get their participation points.”

  “I don’t get it then. Why such a big deal about the number being different in this session of testing?”

  I was loathe to admit what I did earlier in the day, examining the consent form that appeared to go with the murder description, especially after I made such an ethical fuss about subject privacy and all. I shuffled through the consent forms and handed the one with the name “Charles Darwin” to Der. Guy looked over his shoulder at the name and smiled.

  “Didn’t your assistants notice this?” Guy said.

  “Karen and Paula just finished separating the forms and were reading the test results. They hadn’t begun getting the names off the consent forms yet.”

  “So there was an additional student at the testing session, Mr. Charles Darwin,” Der said.

  “Or someone inserted that form into the test results sometime after the testing,” I said. “Over a week has elapsed between testing and today when Karen and Paula began to work on the session results.”

  “And where were those consent forms and results during that time?”

  “Here in the lab locked up in one of these file cabinets, until tonight when I stupidly left them on the table in the two ordered piles.”

  “If someone came in here, they had an entire week to find an opportunity, and they found it tonight,” Der said.

  “Why would someone do this? As a mere prank or because the individual knew something about the murder?” I rechecked the file drawers to make certain they all were locked.

  “We’re forgetting something here,” Der said. “It’s what I was saying earlier today. This feels personal, Murphy. This individual, this possible intruder/killer, has selected your research for communication, and I wonder wh
y.”

  I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered as if the window were again open.

  “Since Paula discovered that description this afternoon, I’ve been getting that creepy feeling that someone’s out there watching me or following me, or worse yet, knows what I’m about to do. I guess that’s why I was so jumpy at the lake when you arrived, Guy.”

  “I noticed, and it’s so unlike you to get the creeps.” Guy reached out and put his arms around me. Suddenly I felt warm again. But just as suddenly, the chill returned as Guy dropped his arms and walked over to one of the file cabinets.

  “Looks like a paper blew under the cabinet.” He bent down and pointed to a corner of paper peeking out from under the file.

  “I’ll get that.” Der extracted a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and teased the sheet out from under the cabinet.

  “It’s one of your response forms, Murphy. This sure does mess up your count if it’s from this round of testing.”

  Der turned the paper so I could read what was written on it.

  “I don’t think so. I think it’s our first clear indication that someone was in here, and it may be a message from our killer. Read it,” I said.

  The writing on the response form read:

  I was here. Now you figure out how and when.

  Chapter 6

  Guy read the message. “Is this for you or Der?”

  “Or for both of us,” I said.

  “Both?”

  “Everyone knows we’re good friends.”

  Hearing footsteps in the hallway we all turned as the young officer who keyed me into the lab appeared in the doorway. Behind him stood the head of security, Captain Rodgers.

  “I heard through my man on the desk that there was some trouble here. Why am I not surprised to find you in the middle of it, Ms. Murphy?” He stood with his fingers hooked into his belt, legs spread, ready for anyone to defy him. His tiny eyes took in the three of us. Thin lips turned downward, a face shiny from too close a shave, and broken veins along reddened cheeks completed the unpleasant face he turned toward me. I decided to make nice.