‘Cool.’
And then the line went silent. It was the end of the conversation.
‘What the hell was that?’ The president was shocked at what he had just heard. He recognized the voice.
‘That’s the conversation between Michael Cardoza and James Deahl a few days before Richard’s tenure interview. That’s only Michael’s side of the conversation, though. You can make out that he was talking to James. The person who came in at the end was Richard.’
‘And how did you get it?’ Antonio didn’t know what to believe any more.
‘Richard was in a physical relationship with Michael. Emotional too? I can’t say. That night he was with Michael when Michael got a call from James. It was at 1 a.m. Richard heard Michael’s phone ring and was surprised to see that the call was from James at that time of the night. Michael and James wouldn’t speak to each other even if they were alone in a room. He suspected something fishy. When Michael went to the washroom to clean up after a session in bed, Richard dialled Xerxes’s telephone number, knowing very well that Xerxes was somewhere in eastern Africa at the time. The call went to Xerxes’s answering machine. Xerxes was a tech geek. His CallWave answering machine was wired to email the voice message to his preconfigured inbox. Richard left the call on and went to the washroom when Michael came out. The moment the bathroom door clicked shut, Michael returned James’s call. At 1.25 a.m., Michael’s side of the conversation got recorded on Xerxes’s answering machine, which Xerxes received as an email attachment in his inbox. He forwarded the message to Richard with a simple message from his side: “WTF?”’
‘No. This can’t be true.’ It was Antonio. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
‘Why would Richard call from Michael’s line and that too to Xerxes, knowing fully well that Xerxes would freak out on hearing such a message? Though there was nothing which would suggest a relationship between Michael and Richard in that conversation, the timing of the message would be enough to get him concerned.’ Windle’s investigative mind was at work.
‘Richard suspected that he was under surveillance. Had he called Xerxes’s line from his mobile and left it on, he ran the risk of it being intercepted. He was scared. He probably wouldn’t have wanted them to know that he suspected Michael and James had joined hands. Since the call went from Michael’s landline, it didn’t get intercepted. If we check Michael’s call records for this date, we will be able to confirm both these calls—from the mobile to James and from the landline to Xerxes.’
‘How do you know all this?’
Aditya turned the screen towards them to show the two emails in Richard’s draft folder. The email from Xerxes with the attached conversation was in Richard’s inbox. ‘See the link at the bottom of the email connecting to the CallWave homepage. It gives you details of how this answering machine works. I read that up on my way here.’
He then narrated everything that Richard had mentioned in his emails. Everything from Siddiqui’s murder, to the details of Deahl’s misdeeds in the research, to Cardoza’s successful attempt at seducing him, to his confession of trying to arm-twist the two of them to give him his tenure.
‘So, when cornered, Cardoza and Deahl conspired to get rid of Richard. The day of his interview, Cardoza took advantage of the isolated section and shot Richard and the three panellists dead. The forensic report is very clear in this regard,’ Nelius added.
‘The three other faculty were excellent cover for Cardoza. Everything logically pointed towards Richard and everyone assumed that it was a frustrated Richard who was the perpetrator of the carnage. A detailed investigation at that time would have revealed more, but we got carried away,’ Windle admitted.
‘Also, one must not forget that Michael was great with guns because of his experience in Vietnam but he made a big song and dance about his anti-gun stand because of the death and destruction that he saw first-hand at war. It suited us to believe that the carnage was the result of the failed career ambitions of a frustrated academician. We were blinded by all the sympathy,’ a crestfallen Antonio confessed.
‘James wiped out the data from Richard’s iMac. He knew Richard was not coming back. I am guessing that James and Michael would have assumed that the pictures and the research data would be traced if they were in Richard’s computer.’ Aditya continued the revelation.
‘Office records show that he had entered his office that morning around the time that the computer was wiped clean. Hence the assumption that since Richard had planned to kill everyone, he wiped out all the data from his iMac seems quite rational. Doesn’t it, lieutenant?’ Nelius stepped into the conversation.
‘No, he didn’t,’ Aditya countered. ‘I cannot prove this. But that morning, Cirisha met him as she was entering the block. He threw his card at her, requesting her to swipe it and sign him in. Cirisha told me this. He didn’t even get to his workstation that day.’
‘Wait,’ Windle stepped in. He opened his file and looked at a few papers. ‘The day he was killed, at the time he was swiped in, there were only two other people who had come in. Cirisha and James Deahl. In fact, the next swipe in was only after forty-five minutes and that was Louisa. No one else. Cirisha was on a lower floor. On the morning of the carnage, James was the only person on the second floor. So it has to be James who cleaned out Richard’s computer.’
‘Cirisha got stuck in the scheme of things because she figured out that the Boston prison data was fudged. Michael played her on till he realized that she was getting too close for comfort about the raw data.’ When Aditya said this, Windle looked around. Antonio had a blank look on his face. Quickly, he brought him up to speed with the research data saga.
‘But that still doesn’t explain why she was killed and who killed her. She didn’t know about the images either.’
‘It was Michael.’ Aditya was firm in his response. There was no doubt in his mind.
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Lieutenant Windle, the day Cirisha died, she entered the building at 5.10 a.m. That’s what your records show, right?’
‘Yes. For the first time that morning, she entered at 5.10 a.m. Presumably using Richard Avendon’s access card.’
‘Yes. She photocopied all the papers, around a thousand of them, on the high-speed Xerox photocopier from 5.14 a.m. to 6.50 a.m.’ He reached into his backpack and pulled out a hefty bundle of papers. ‘Here’—he extended the pages towards Windle and continued—‘these are the papers she photocopied. I extracted them from the hard disk. The time of printing is embedded at the bottom right-hand corner. The date is 5th June, 05:10 hours onwards. The last photocopy is around 06:53 hours.’
‘Hard disk?’ When Antonio asked him this question, Aditya requested that they continue their discussion in Cirisha’s room. By then, Meier had joined them. The five of them in two cars headed to the Academic Block, which was hardly half a mile away. En route, Antonio brought Meier up to speed with the developments.
‘We nearly made him the provost, Juan,’ Meier lamented.
Once they were in Cirisha’s room, Aditya walked up to the Xerox machine, tapped it and continued. ‘The Xerox machine that you have here is an advanced one. It has a built-in hard disk. An impression of everything that gets copied or printed on this machine gets embedded on the hard disk. This is the default option. One can manually modify it, but nobody does. Strangely, 80 per cent of photocopier users are not even aware of the risks this poses. I was hoping that MIT didn’t fall into the balance 20 per cent when I chanced upon this machine in the morning today. I got lucky. MIT hadn’t changed the default configuration.’ Seeing the amazed faces around him, he explained that he used to be a Xerox engineer at the very start of his career.
‘So these were the papers Shivinder found in the duPont Center locker,’ Windle remarked.
‘Yes, copies of those. Only Cirisha knew about the locker apart from me and the photocopies were found in the locker by Shivinder. So she must have kept them there. When she exited the
Academic Block the first time, she would have headed to the duPont Center to Richard’s locker.’
Windle took a deep breath and quickly explained to Antonio and the others who Shivinder was, then turned towards Aditya and said, ‘Let’s move on. I am still wondering why she entered the Academic Block twice after. At 7.14 and 7.39 a.m.’
‘Lieutenant,’ Aditya said, ‘remember what Shivinder told us? Apart from the photocopies, he found a USB drive in the locker.’
‘Yes.’
‘When Cirisha and I took the papers out of the locker, we didn’t see the pendrive. Perhaps we didn’t check the locker carefully enough. When Cirisha went there again to keep the photocopies, she would have found the USB drive and, curious to know what it contained, she would have come back to the Academic Block.’
‘That is an assumption,’ Nelius interrupted him.
‘Yes. It’s an educated guess. A guess corroborated by the fact that at 7.14 a.m. she re-entered the Academic Block. At 7.22 a.m. she printed these six images from the removable drive on her iMac … the pendrive.’ Aditya handed over six sheets to Windle. ‘Look at the bottom right-hand corner. It has the file name. It says /Volumes/Richardavendon/Michael one, Michael two and so on. Which can only mean that it got printed from a pendrive, named as Richardavendon.’
The expression on Antonio’s face changed completely when he saw the pictures. Meier’s hand went up and covered his mouth. ‘Oh my God!’ he exclaimed. ‘Jesus Christ!’
‘These were the pictures which Richard had taken of himself and Michael in bed. Remember, in the email I showed you just now, Richard says that he has left the pictures in a pendrive in the duPont Center locker. These could only have come from there.’
Antonio looked up. ‘Who all have seen this? Apart from the people who are dead, it’s me, now all of you and, of course, Michael Cardoza.’
‘You think Michael has seen this?’ Nelius interjected again.
‘Yes, he has. When Cirisha came back and saw these pictures, she printed a copy of these because she wanted to confront Michael with the images. She adored Michael. If there was anyone in academia who could have been God, it was Michael Cardoza. She had that much faith in him. I know she would have been devastated at this. She then called Michael.’
‘We had checked her mobile call records and even scanned her workstation extension for calls made. Neither indicated that she had called anyone that morning. We can recheck that,’ Windle said.
‘That may not be necessary, lieutenant,’ Aditya said as he walked to the Xerox machine. He picked up the phone on Cirisha’s colleague’s workstation, the one adjacent to the Xerox machine. With his left hand he pressed a button and started reading out from the instrument display.
‘Redial 1: dated this morning at 9.42 a.m. To Lieutenant Windle. I made this call. Disconnected before it could go through because I was not sure of what to do.’ He looked down towards the phone and pressed the button with the word ‘next’.
‘Redial 2: dated this morning at 9.41 a.m. To …’ and he stopped. He drew a deep breath and continued, ‘It was me. While trying to call Lieutenant Windle, I had pressed redial by mistake. By the time I could figure out a way to cancel the call, it connected. Thankfully, I disconnected before anyone answered the call.’ Carefully avoiding naming whom the redial had led to, he pressed the ‘next’ button again.
‘Redial 3: dated 5th June, 7.26 a.m.’ He pressed the speaker phone button.
The phone went into dial mode and started ringing. After four rings the phone was picked up. ‘Hello.’ Antonio’s eyes went round, he looked at Meier. ‘Hello.’ The voice crackled on the speaker phone. ‘Hello. Michael Cardoza. Hello … Can you hear me?’
Aditya disconnected the call. ‘She called him from the phone closest to the Xerox machine. The last of the printouts was printed at 7.25 in the morning. She picked up the printouts, was shocked by the images and, in an unstable frame of mind, called Michael. We only checked her extension and her mobile number for calls made. I figured out that Michael was involved in some manner when this morning I erroneously pressed the redial button while trying to call you and the call went to Michael. I hung up. Michael thought he had missed a call and called back. I fabricated a cock and bull story that I was a service executive for the Xerox machine and disconnected the line. Before the line went off, a lady asked, “Who was it, Michael?” That’s when I realized it was Michael and that he had been called from this line earlier. Just out of curiosity I checked. Michael had been called on the morning of the day Cirisha died. I had no clue why she called him, till I saw all this,’ Aditya reasoned, pointing towards the documents that Merissa had given him.
‘We need to take Michael into custody right away,’ Windle looked at Nelius and declared.
‘There is one last chapter to the story, lieutenant,’ Aditya stopped him.
‘At 7.29 a.m. Cirisha exits the Academic Block and heads to the duPont Center. She keeps the pendrive in the locker and comes back to her block. This explains the third entry. For some strange reason the Academic Block does not have CCTVs.’
‘Yes, James and Michael had led the crusade against CCTVs in the Academic Block. The only time I had seen them agree on something. In the interest of privacy, we had disconnected the Academic Block CCTVs,’ Antonio volunteered.
‘The duPont Center is a new building. I had seen the cameras myself. If we check the CCTVs there, we might be able to get a confirmation on what we have thus far assumed.’
‘Can you get that done, chief? Now?’ When Windle asked him, Nelius quietly walked out of the room and pulled out his phone. The next minute, he was back in the room. ‘Fifteen minutes. We will have it here.’
‘At 7.46 a.m., Michael Cardoza comes in. Swipe card records show that he came in at that time. He meets Cirisha. Cirisha confronts him. What transpired? No one knows. Only Michael can tell us.’
‘Correct.’
‘Cirisha exited the building one last time at 8.05 a.m. She must have been extremely disturbed. I am completely sure that she would have threatened to expose Michael. Not because she was against same-sex relationships. She must have realized that Richard left all this for her to see because he was probably being coerced into a relationship by somebody who had used his position to get leverage. In that very combustible state of mind, she must have driven towards Boston Public Garden at a high speed. The speeding ticket, which helped us get to the bottom of this, must have been a result of that. Our trail stops there. We don’t know what happened from there on.’
There was a knock on the door and Louisa walked in.
‘There’s a fax for you, Lieutenant Windle. It’s come from the president’s office.’ She had a curious look on her face.
‘Thank you.’ Windle stepped forward and took the fax from her. He looked at it intently, eyes screwed up, indicating that he was trying to read something in small font. ‘I think we have an answer here. Our trail does not end.’
‘Can you please be more specific, lieutenant?’ Meier said impatiently.
‘This is a list of all vehicles that were snapped for overspeeding by the pilot traffic cameras within five minutes of Cirisha’s car being flashed. The car which passes the spot fifteen seconds after Cirisha’s is owned by someone called Stephanie.’ He looked up and, after a pause, added, ‘Stephanie Cardoza.’
‘Michael’s wife!’ Antonio exclaimed. ‘Steffie.’
‘In all probability driven by Michael himself. Assuming that it was Michael driving it, our story becomes clear from here on. Michael followed Cirisha to the Boston Public Garden. He would probably have tried to explain his point of view. Cirisha, being bullheaded, would have refused to see reason.’ Aditya volunteered to complete the story. ‘Actually, could there have been a reasonable explanation for what Michael did? And when Cirisha didn’t listen to him, at an opportune moment, he must have killed her.’
‘The post-mortem report of Cirisha will tell us what happened. Initial reports suspect it to be cardiac arre
st.’ It was Nelius.
‘The toxicology tests which are expected tomorrow will give us a better picture. But what we know as of now is good enough to take Michael Cardoza and James Deahl into custody. We do have an airtight case against Cardoza for the killing of Richard Avendon and the others.’
‘If we take him into custody, he will sing like a canary,’ Nelius stepped in again. He was upset that something like this had happened under his watch.
‘Yes. This also explains the other murders,’ Aditya continued. ‘From Cirisha’s car, Michael finds the raw data and the printout of the images, but not the pendrive. He takes help from James to trace the images. The research papers he got from Cirisha would have given him enough leverage on James and, of course, the sponsors, the NRA.’
‘The same pendrive which Cirisha left in the locker, which Shivinder found. When Shivinder got killed, they got what they wanted. The only person who knew far more than what he should have known, was you, Aditya. Which is why they were coming after you.’ Windle completed the rest of the story.
Antonio finally picked up the document that Windle had given him and looked at it. He had already signed it. It had one name on it—Michael Cardoza. He pulled out a Mont Blanc from his pocket, wrote down something on the document and handed it over to Windle. ‘Please do it in a manner that does not impact the reputation of the university,’ he said. Windle looked at the document. The president had added Deahl’s name and authorized action against him too.
The same evening, Cardoza was taken into custody from his residence in Watertown, twenty miles from the university. Word spread like wildfire. MIT was agog with stories of how a man who almost became a provost had been arrested for multiple murders.
When Lucier heard about Cardoza’s arrest, he called Deahl. ‘We could be in a spot of bother here, James.’
‘Everything that Michael could have used against us is safely stashed away. The original research papers are with us. Michael had picked them up from Cirisha’s car.’
Bankerupt (Ravi Subramanian) Page 27
