The Green Trap (11 page)

“Technology is the ticket,” he said. “It's time to turn the genius of American scientists and engineers to solving our energy problems.”

—
A
RIZONA
D
AILY
S
TAR

May 14, 2005

A
ll that Cochrane had ever seen of police stations had been in movies and television shows, where they always looked grungy, hard-used. He imagined they smelled of sweat and fear and urine.

Tucson police headquarters, though, was clean and modern and new-looking. Even the slats of the window blinds pulled down against the morning sun looked as if they'd recently been thoroughly sponged down. Cochrane smelled coffee perking somewhere. The squad room buzzed quietly with men and women in street clothes talking intently on telephones or leaning across their desks to ask questions of suspects and witnesses.

The two officers showed Cochrane to what looked more like a small conference room than an interrogation cell: blinds on the windows, an oblong table with molded plastic chairs, a TV screen built into the back wall.

“Lieutenant Danvers will be with you in a minute, sir,” said the female officer.

Cochrane looked around as the officers left and closed the door. No one-way mirror, as far as he could tell. No surveillance camera up in the ceiling or anywhere else in view. He pulled up a chair and sat where he could see the door, thinking, Lieutenant Danvers. In Palo Alto it was two sergeants. I'm coming up in the world.

The door opened and Lieutenant Danvers stepped in. She was a small African-American woman, almost petite except for being obviously overweight. Too many doughnuts, Cochrane found himself thinking. Her skin was the color of dark chocolate. She wore a starched white blouse and a knee-length navy blue skirt. Her hair was iron-gray, but her face looked more like a kindly aunt or youngish grandmother than a police officer.

“I'm sorry to keep you waiting, Dr. Cochrane,” she began, walking past him and taking the chair at the head of the table. She placed a black notebook and a television remote control wand on the tabletop. Cochrane noted that she carried a pistol in a holster tucked into the waistband of her skirt. “We had to set up a videophone connection with the Palo Alto police.”

Before Cochrane could say anything, the TV screen came to life and Sergeant McLain's puffy-eyed face stared out at him.

“Sergeant McLain,” Cochrane said.

“You've got another dead body on your hands,” McLain said, smiling sardonically.

Lieutenant Danvers said, “We're here to determine if there's a connection between the murder of Mitsuo Arashi and”—she glanced down at her notebook—”Dr. Michael Cochrane.”

She looked up at Cochrane. “Your brother?”

He nodded.

“What can you tell us about Mr. Arashi?” Danvers asked.

“Not much. I didn't really know him.”

“We have information that says otherwise.”

“Information? From who?”

“You had dinner two nights ago with him and a third person, a woman.”

McLain jumped in. “Was that the same woman you were with when you talked to Dr. Tulius at the Calvin labs?”

Cochrane started to answer, then hesitated.

“You're not under arrest, Dr. Cochrane,” said Danvers gently. “We would appreciate any help you can give us.”

“I only met Arashi a few nights ago,” he said. “I had dinner with him.”

“We already know that,” McLain said.

“And that's it.” Cochrane spread his hands, palms up. “That's all I know about him. He was interested in the research my brother was doing. He asked me what I knew about it and I told him I didn't know a damned thing. Which is the truth.”

“Is it?” McLain snapped.

“Dr. Cochrane,” Danvers asked more reasonably, “do you think there's a connection between your brother's murder and Mr. Arashi's?”

“They were both beaten to death,” McLain said.

The picture of Mike's battered face flashed into Cochrane's mind again. He shook his head. “I don't know if there's a connection,” he said to Danvers.

“But you said Mr. Arashi asked you about your brother's work.”

“Yes, that's right.”

McLain said, “So the chances are that whoever killed your brother offed Arashi, too.”

“I suppose so.”

Danvers glanced down at her notebook again. “Now, about this woman who was with you and Mr. Arashi—”

“I'm sorry,” said Cochrane, “but I don't want to talk about her.”

“Why not?”

“It's personal.”

“But you can tell us her name, at least.”

“I'd rather not,” Cochrane said, wondering as he spoke why he was protecting Sandoval. Because she slept with me? That meant as much to her as brushing her teeth, he thought. Still, he balked at bringing her name into the police investigation.

“We could place you under arrest,” McLain threatened.

“Then I'd have to get myself a lawyer,” Cochrane countered.

Danvers sighed. “Dr. Cochrane, we don't want this to get messy. But there have been two murders and they appear to be connected. We need your help.”

“I've told you what I know.”

“Not the name of the woman involved in this,” said McLain.

Cochrane decided that if he wanted to keep Sandoval's name from them, he'd better stop talking to them altogether. He pushed his plastic chair away from the table; it made a nerve-grating screech on the tile floor.

“I want to leave now,” he said, getting to his feet.

Danvers looked disappointed. “Dr. Cochrane, do you think you're following the wisest course of action here?”

“They've already killed two men.” McLain practically snarled from the TV screen. “You might be next.”

Cochrane slowly shook his head. “I doubt it. I don't know anything that they'd be interested in—whoever they are.”

“Maybe they think otherwise.”

He could feel Danvers's eyes on him as he went to the door and opened it, thinking, If she's going to arrest me, she'll do it now. But Danvers said nothing and Cochrane walked through the subdued intensity of the squad room and out into the hot, glaring sunlight.

It wasn't until then that he realized he didn't have his car here. The police had driven him to the headquarters building. Squinting in the heat, he saw a pair of taxicabs parked at the corner. He thought for a moment about going back inside and demanding that Danvers provide him transportation back to his apartment. But only for a moment. Fuck that, he told himself. Take a taxi.

During the ride across town he sat in the back of the poorly air-conditioned taxi, wondering why he refused to name Sandoval to the police. They're trying to find out who murdered Mike, he said to himself. You ought to be helping them, not holding back information.

But there's something going on here, he argued within his mind, something deeper than finding out who killed Mike. Or Arashi, for that matter.
Why
were they killed? What was so important about Mike's work that it cost him his life? Sandoval knows. She knows a part of it, at least. And she can't tell me what she knows if she's locked up in jail.

The taxi pulled up in front of the Sunrise Apartments. Cochrane got out, paid the driver, and gave him a small tip, then limped through the broiling sun to the building's lobby.

It was blessedly cool inside the lobby. As he headed for the elevators, Cochrane saw out of the corner of his eye that several magazines and journals lay strewn haphazardly on the shelf by the mailboxes. Christ, I haven't even looked at my mail in almost a week.

Sure enough, the journals were for him. They shouldn't be out here, where anybody could pick them up, he thought irritably. Then he almost laughed at himself. Who the hell in this building would pick up the latest
Astrophysical Journal?
Well, you never know, he thought; I might have an astronomy student for a neighbor. He fished his mailbox key from the pocket of his jeans and opened his mailbox. Sure enough, it was stuffed full.

Cochrane tugged the bent and folded mail out of the little box, went
to the wastebasket at the end of the row, and started discarding the junk mail. Credit card offers. Discounts from local retailers. Catalogs.

And a letter bearing the return address of the Calvin Research Center, with a scrawled
MSC
beneath. Mike's initials.

C
ochrane dropped his other mail on the table by his front door, neither noticing nor caring that most of it slid to the floor. He nudged the door shut with his foot, then tore open Mike's letter. It had been typed on a computer: Mike's laptop, Cochrane thought.

P
AUL:
I'm playing with the big guys now. And I've had it with Irene. So I'm going away for a while. Please take care of the papers in my safe-deposit box. They're worth a lot. M
IKE
.

A small flat key was Scotch-taped to the bottom of the letter. He didn't even sign it, Cochrane realized. And he didn't tell me where his goddamned safe-deposit box is!

He went to his desk and phoned Irene. No answer, just that damned voice-mail message of hers. He booted up his computer and started looking
up the locations of banks near Mike's home and near the Calvin lab. Six of them. He started phoning.

“Hello, I'm trying to determine if my brother kept a safe-deposit box in your bank.”

“I'm sorry, sir, we can't divulge that information on the phone.”

“Look, I'm in Tucson. My brother died last week and he left me the key to a safe-deposit box but he forgot to tell me which bank it's from.”

“That's very unusual, sir.”

“His name is… was Michael Cochrane.”

“We can't confirm—”

“Can you at least tell me if Michael Cochrane was a customer of yours? Did he have an account with you? Please, it's important.”

“Just a moment, sir. I'll connect you with the bank manager.”

And Cochrane repeated the same routine with the bank manager. Six times, each with a different bank. The best he could get was:

“We have no accounts with a Michael Cochrane.”

“None? No checking account? Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“How about his widow, Irene Cochrane?”

“Sir, the information you're asking for is private. We can't divulge such information over the telephone.”

“I see. I understand. Thank you.”

Cochrane thought about phoning Purvis and asking him to find out which bank Mike used. Not McLain. He realized the two detectives were using a good-cop, bad-cop routine on him, but he still didn't like McLain. He found the card Purvis had given him, picked up the phone again, and hesitated.

Do I want to tell the police about this? They'll be all over me, worse than ever. Can't I find which bank Mike used by myself?

He put the phone down, leaned back in his desk chair, and tried to think. Okay, all those banks claim Mike didn't have an account with them. No reason to think they're lying. It's one thing to say they won't tell me, but if they say Mike wasn't a customer of theirs, I guess they're telling the truth.

Cochrane closed his eyes, tried to picture his brother alive, that wiseass grin of his. If Mike wanted to hide his papers, Cochrane told himself, he wouldn't have gone to a bank in his own neighborhood. Great. That leaves about six zillion other banks in the region.

Why didn't he tell me which bank the damned key is from? And the answer rose in Cochrane's mind: Because he thought I'm smart enough to
figure it out for myself. Another one of his little practical jokes.
Here you are, Paulie. You're so frigging smart, find the answer to this one.

Not a bank in his neighborhood, Cochrane mused to himself. Then where?

Trip reports! Buried in Tulius's files were reports that Mike sent to his boss after every trip he took for the company.

He inserted the first of the CDs that Arashi had given him and started searching for Mike's trip reports. The sun was setting when he finally pushed himself from the desk, bleary-eyed, and shambled to the refrigerator for a glass of fruit juice. Mike had traveled a lot: scientific conferences, consulting meetings, visits to other laboratories around the nation. Sipping at the grapefruit juice he'd poured for himself, Cochrane went back to the computer and listed Mike's trips in chronological order.

Almost all Mike's trips had been to different places: Denver, New Haven, Ann Arbor, Albuquerque, he'd even visited Tucson three months earlier. And he never told me. Never looked me up or let me know he was in town, Cochrane grumbled to himself.

There were only two destinations that Mike had visited more than once: NASA's Johnson Space Center near Houston three times, and MIT in Massachusetts six times. Cochrane remembered that Mike was working under a contract from NASA Ames; he must have gone there plenty of times. But Ames was only a short drive from the Calvin Center; traveling there wouldn't be considered a trip, necessitating a report that detailed expenses and told what results had been accomplished.

Maybe I should find out who he was working with at Ames, Cochrane said to himself. Then he realized that the police would already have covered that base. McLain and Purvis must have been there.

MIT. Near Boston, where we grew up. A rush of memories flooded through Cochrane's mind. Massachusetts. Playing in the snowbanks after a blizzard. Sailing Sunfishes on the pond down at the end of our street. The leaves in autumn. Going down to Fenway to see the Red Sox.

His door buzzer jarred Cochrane out of his reverie. With something of a jolt he saw that it was fully night. And his stomach was growling with hunger. He hadn't eaten since breakfast with Sandoval.

The thought of her soured him. She's in Palo Alto, probably climbing into bed with Tulius right about now. Cochrane remembered the way Tulius had looked at her, his smiling comment about his two vices.