Failure is Fatal

by Lesley A. Diehl

  “You really shouldn’t have bothered to come over. Everything’s just fine here. But so good of you to be concerned,” I said.

  Rodgers scowled. “You may think this is your lab, but it’s college property, and that makes it my business. Next time you forget your keys, you won’t get in here. We can’t open doors for just anybody.”

  “I’m not just anybody…” I began, but Der interrupted me.

  “Absolutely, Captain Rodgers. We know you have a job to do here, protecting the property of the campus. But we’re worried that the lab was broken into earlier this evening.” Der went on to explain to Rodgers what I found, but didn’t include the information about the note.

  After listening to Der’s description of the room when I entered it, Rodgers crossed his beefy arms and shook his head. “So you only guess that you closed the window and turned off the lights. Now let’s see here, Ms. Murphy. The intruder came in through the window, which you locked and latched. That’s very tricky, isn’t it? Unless he was a ghost. And if the intruder didn’t get in that way, he came in how? What’s your story now? He came in through the window, or you are certain you locked the window? I’m confused. I’m also confused as to why you think there was an intruder at all. Ms. Murphy, I really do wonder about you. Harmless graffiti on your door, which you raise a fuss about, an alleged note about murder in your research, now an intruder or not in your lab. Looks to me as if you need a whole lot of attention you’re not getting otherwise.” With this final comment, he looked at Guy. “Should take care of this little gal, if you know what I mean. And, Mr. Detective, you should watch your step on my campus if you don’t want your professional reputation to suffer.” He hitched up his pants and settled them firmly under his belly, then turned on his heel and left without a good-bye. The young officer hurried to catch up with him.

  I gave a look at Guy and then at Der. They both appeared composed and a bit amused.

  “That his mean old sheriff act?” asked Der.

  “C’mere, li'l gal. I’ve got orders from the police to take you home and take care of you. Know what I mean?” Guy grabbed me around the waist.

  “Yeah, well, he’s surely one mean son-of-a-gun, and he’s particularly partial to you, Laura. Stay out of his way.” Der appeared to be taking Rodgers’ warnings seriously.

  *

  The ride home to the lake on the back of Guy’s bike was a cold one, not only because of the weather, but because I could tell there was going to be some discussion about my antics getting to the campus tonight. To be truthful, I rarely thought about the consequences of my impulsive actions. Sometimes I worried myself—after the fact, of course. Besides, there was something so satisfying in taking action rather than thinking how to proceed.

  After we got home, Guy poured us both a glass of wine and, in his “parent” voice, told me to sit down. I considered pushing back, pointing out to him that I was, after all, an adult, but then I remembered the earlier promise I made to myself to pay some penance for my impulsive acts, so I meekly sank onto the couch.

  He began the discussion with his usual, “I love you and worry about you, but you go off on your escapades without thinking, blah, blah, blah….”

  “Laura!”

  “Don’t yell at me,” I said.

  “You’re spilling your wine. You fell asleep.”

  “Did I? I’m sorry. Can I just go to bed now? I’m so tired. You can finish punishing me tomorrow when I’m fully alert.”

  “I’m not punishing you. I’m trying to talk sense to you. Oh, I give up. Let’s go to bed then.”

  “Oh, goody. We can continue where we left off earlier.”

  “I thought you said you were tired.”

  “I’m not that kind of tired.”

  *

  After the threat of continued cold and snow for most of the weekend, Sunday dawned sunny and warm. The weather forecast for upstate New York and southern Canada promised warmth over the next week, so Guy decided to ride his bike back north instead of storing it in my garage. Since he was spending the next weekend with his children and would not make the trip back here for two weeks, I feared that the weather would turn on us by the end of that time and he wouldn’t be able to return on the bike to store it in my garage as he wanted. He remained optimistic that the weather would hold, that we would have a repeat of the earlier Indian summer and he would regret not getting in some last riding days if he left the bike in the garage now.

  We spent the rest of the weekend running between the bed and the kitchen for snacks. No more was heard from Der on Saturday, and only a brief phone call from him on Sunday informed us that there were no fingerprints on the piece of paper declaring the intruder’s presence in the lab; the murder description itself contained numerous sets of fingerprints including those of all my assistants. The murder investigation and the break-in were both at a standstill. As we sat on my bed eating popcorn and watching a Netflix movie, Guy spent more time looking at me with concern written on his face than he did following the story line.

  “This murderer or intruder seems to have a thing about you. Maybe you should write down the names of those who have it in for you.”

  I laughed and saw Guy’s face go steel gray with anger.

  “I’m not laughing at you, honey. It’s just that the list you’re suggesting would be too long to generate in my lifetime. When you’re in the education business, you draw the ire of a lot of people—students angry over grades, parents angry over their children’s grades, administrators angry that you’re not volunteering more time for committee work, other faculty angry because you got a grant they didn’t. It goes on and on. You must run into it at the high school level too.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. But someone furious enough to commit murder, or even to break into someone’s lab and interfere with an ongoing research investigation?”

  “The more I think about it, the more I believe the link between the person who is messing around in my research and the murderer of Marie Becca is tenuous at best.”

  I am sometimes so naïve.

  *

  The following week Der began interviewing the students who signed up for the research to see if they remembered anything in the testing session that would help the investigation. In addition, he talked with my research assistants on several occasions and with me daily. By the end of the week, the dearth of leads stymied and frustrated him. As for me, that creepy feeling lifted, and I felt eager to get on with the research. Der agreed to let me go ahead, and informed the president that he was encouraging me to continue with the project. President Evans agreed, but argued that the Committee on Research with Human Subjects should be involved. Der said no to that; he didn’t want the description of the murder and how it was found to be public knowledge.

  Der spoke with the college attorney and he and the attorney worked out procedures that would insure everyone’s safety, or so we believed.

  *

  “We won, you know,” I said. It was the next weekend, and Der, Guy and I sat in front of the woodstove enjoying some of Der’s brandy. Although Guy wasn’t planning to come for the weekend, his ex-wife asked if she could take his kids off to Montreal for a few days to visit their grandparents. Guy agreed, realizing that the weather was turning and this might be the last chance he had to get his bike into my garage for storage.

  “I’m going ahead with the research, and you’re hoping we will pick up additional clues when I do. It’s the best we can do.” I patted Sam’s head with one hand while Guy held the other.

  It was now late in October, and the skies threatened snow. I knew Guy had a cold ride down, although he hadn’t complained, but I was glad he could come for the weekend. The return trip would be far warmer. One of his friends was in the area visiting relatives and would give Guy a ride back north.

  I was eager to resume the research project, as were my assistants. In the testing sessions coming up the research team decided that students could only enter the sessions by showing their stude
nt I.D.s and the names on the I.D.s had to correspond to those on the sign-up sheet. If the murderer took the name of Charles Darwin in the earlier session to gain access to the testing materials, he surely would not appear again in a later session for fear one of the assistants would recognize him. We assumed he would want to be cautious. I did not point out that it was audacity not caution he demonstrated by coming into the lab and leaving a note.

  In the time between the discovery of the murder description and the upcoming testing sessions, the assistants and I talked less and less about the murder. Most of them shoved it to the edge of awareness. Karen admitted to me that she sometimes found it difficult to get to sleep and had nightmares. When I suggested she might want to see someone at the counseling center, she shrugged off the suggestion with a “maybe, not just now.” She was keeping up with her work and began attending some social events.

  The immediate horror of the murder itself and the description dimmed somewhat as assistants and I got caught up in the preparations for another round of testing. Shortly before the next testing session, we gathered in the lab to review test strategy. No one mentioned a word about the murder, but everyone could tell it was once again taking on immediacy in our thoughts.

  Now, in the comfort of my house with the fire throwing comforting shadows on the walls of the room, Guy, Der and I turned our attention to the murder.

  “We’ll see how much we won when we see these new research results. I’m not going to hang over your heads, you know, but I want you to report anything, I mean anything that looks remotely suspicious,” Der said. I shared with Guy and Der the concerns that I encouraged my research assistants to verbalize earlier in the week.

  “No one feels in immediate danger, and they don’t think any of the students in the session are in danger. They just worry that they’ll come upon another ghastly description. I’m concerned about that too. It seems too much to ask undergraduate researchers to endure this much anxiety. This is going to be the last round of testing in this project, and I’m glad. We’ve got three sessions the week after next and that’s the end of testing for the semester. Next semester, we analyze the results, and next year I’m on sabbatical and can move on to another project.”

  “I can’t move on until I find the killer,” Der said.

  “I know. I’m the lucky one.” I patted Der’s hand.

  And for several weeks I was lucky.

  *

  The sessions went without incident. At the end of each of the three sessions, I gathered with my assistants to go over the results. I was not about to leave them alone with the possibility of a communication from the killer among the descriptions. I read each story generated by a subject before I handed the response over to the assistants to be sorted into the correct group pile for later scoring and analysis. The more results we read that were actual responses to the leads about harassment, the more relaxed each one of us got. Halfway through the results of the third session, I came upon a story that seemed a bit odd:

  The professor waits anxiously for Ann in the bar, but she doesn’t show up. Ann misses all her classes that week and her roommates report that she hasn’t been back to the room in several days. Her parents are worried, the college is worried. Should the authorities be worried? Why is she gone and how did she disappear?

  Although the story seemed innocuous by itself, coming on the heels of the description of a grisly murder, the tone of the story bothered me. It seemed to mimic the murder description with the questions posed at the end of the paragraph. I laid it to one side, casually telling my students that “this one looks like an unscorable response.” I wanted Der to see it.

  The next-to-the-last subject description I read made me certain that the one I declared unscorable was more than just a little odd—it was sinister. And the two stories were clearly connected. It read:

  Being hit on by a professor isn’t so bad. Just think of all the terrible things that could happen to a woman. Ann worries about these things and for good reason. She doesn’t make it to class the following day.

  Trying hard to keep my voice from shaking, I declared this one unscorable also and placed it face down on the pile with the others we would look at later. I picked up the final description and sighed with relief to find the usual story ending to the harassment lead.

  “Anything you want to discuss about the testing today?” This was a standard question I asked following the research sessions. Sometimes assistants had difficulty keeping students from talking with one another as they completed the stories, for example, and the research team would discuss ways to handle such problems.

  “Nothing much really,” Karen said, “except a couple of guys were talking about the research on the way out of the session and really yucking it up. I again cautioned them not to discuss the research outside of the session, but they kind of blew me off.”

  “Yeah,” Jeff, another assistant said, “they were the ones talking throughout the session. I walked by and told them several times not to confer with anyone. I thought I saw one of them with another sheet of paper at his desk, but when I got closer to check, it was gone.”

  Suddenly Paula jumped out of her chair and ran out of the lab. She returned a few minutes later with a metal wastebasket.

  “When you said ‘paper,’ I remembered I saw a guy in today’s testing session, maybe one of those you were talking about, tear up a paper and throw it into the wastebasket. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but it just now registered as something that might be interesting and, perhaps, important?” Her eyes moved to the pile of “unscorables.” Paula read me far too well.

  “Okay, let me level with all of you. Some of those unscorables look a bit suspicious. There’s no reason for any of you to see them before Investigator Der does. No, no,” I assured them as they looked concerned, “there are no descriptions of murders there, but some of them are ‘different’.”

  “I guess you don’t mean ‘different’ like we found earlier this year with all the sexual detail in the stories, do you?” Jeff said.

  “No, not that kind of unusual description. These are something else, something I want Investigator Der to look at. He should be here any minute. I told him we’d be in the lab this afternoon doing a preliminary run-through of the results.”

  As if waiting for his cue, Der stuck his head around the door and said, “How’s it going?” greeting each of my assistants by name.

  “We’ve got something for you.” Paula presented him with the wastebasket she removed from the testing room. He looked surprised, but accepted the metal container, peering into its depths.

  “There are fingerprints on those papers. That’s why I brought the whole can. Evidence, you know,” Paula said. She planned on law as a career and appeared to be pleased that she was following what she felt to be sound criminal procedure.

  “Maybe you can explain why the trash container to Investigator Der,” I said to Paula.

  “Oh, right.” She ran through what the assistants observed during the session, and I added that there were some descriptions Der might want to read.

  Der assured all the assistants that they did very well and told them he would get back in touch with them at some future date.

  “Again, let’s keep any information about the testing session to ourselves,” he said.

  After the assistants left, I showed the unusual stories to Der. He agreed with me that they appeared to be related and were odd enough, given recent events, to merit getting all the subjects tested this week together for a talk. If Der and I could get the students who wrote those stories to come forward so that Der could question them, we wouldn’t have to go through legal manipulations to connect names of subjects with particular stories. Possible violation of anonymity of subjects was serious business and neither the college attorney nor I was willing to risk this ethical principle without the intervention of a judge via a court order.

  “What about this wastebasket?” Der peered into its depths. “It’s filled with pap
ers of all kinds. We’ll have to extract the bits from the other sheets and sort through all the contents.”

  Der dumped the contents on the large worktable in the lab. He handed me a pair of latex gloves, “Just in case anything criminal comes of this,” he said, and we began to extract the bits of paper from the rest of the contents of the basket. Less than half an hour later we seemed to have all the scraps.

  “Now comes the hard part,” Der said. “They need to be put together. Call me when you’ve finished.”

  Chapter 7

  “Me! What about you?” I said. Der turned to leave the lab. I grabbed his coat to stop him.

  “I’ve got a meeting. Look, Murphy, this may be really important, and I know I can trust you to do it right.” He paused and, somewhat too dramatically for my taste, appeared to reconsider. “Or I could take the pieces back to the office and have someone there put them back together. We’re so understaffed now that I don’t know when I’d get the results back, but I hope I remember to call you then about the outcome, but with my busy schedule and all….”

  “Okay, you made your point. I’ll do it.”

  “Call me on my cell phone as soon as you have it done, and don’t leave this lab while the evidence is here.”

  I worked for the next hour matching the torn pieces to one another, laying them out on the tabletop. When I was finished, my back was aching from bending over the puzzle of scraps, and I desperately needed to use the ladies’ room. I called Der, but he wasn’t picking up his cell phone. Probably still in the meeting. I waited some more. And called again. And again. At the end of another hour, I knew I had to take action. I couldn’t leave the lab with the arranged bits of paper on the table or I’d be in real trouble with Der, even if I did lock the door. I’d just have to take the scraps with me to the bathroom. I divided the put-together message into four parts and scooped each one of the four quadrants’ pieces onto a different clean sheet of paper, which I folded and placed in my jean pockets. Each folded paper went into a different pocket. I turned, dashed out the lab door, locked it behind me and was running down the hall to the washroom when Der came up the stairs heading toward me.