“I don’t think forging a few notes, especially when he is doing okay in school, means the boy is going to grow up to a life of crime. He’s a prodigy, for God’s sake. He skips school to be in a lab. The way you’re acting, you’d think we’d discovered he was on crack.”
“I wouldn’t be concerned if it were just this. But there’s a whole complex of qualities that are just not right about our son. I can’t believe you don’t see—”
A crashing sound from outside froze Marsha in mid-sentence.
“Now what?” said Victor.
“It sounded like it came from near the garage,” Marsha answered.
Victor ran into the family room and switched off the light. He got a battery-driven spotlight from the closet and went to the window that looked onto the courtyard. Marsha followed.
“Can you see anything?” Marsha asked.
“Not from in here,” Victor said, starting for the door.
“You’re not going outside?”
“I’m going to see who’s out there,” Victor said over his shoulder.
“Victor, I don’t want you going out there by yourself.”
Ignoring her, Victor tiptoed onto the stoop. He felt Marsha right behind him, holding on to his shirt back. There was a scraping sound coming from near the garage door. Victor pointed the spotlight in the direction and turned it on.
Within the bright beam of light, two ringed eyes looked back at Victor and Marsha, then scampered off into the night.
“A raccoon,” said Victor with relief.
9
Friday Morning
BY the time Victor got to work, he had himself worked up to a minor fury over the killing of the family cat. With Marsha’s concern for VJ deepening, all they needed was the added problem of harassment. Victor knew that he had to act, and quickly, to prevent another attack, especially since they were progressively worsening. After killing the cat, what was next? Victor shuddered as he considered the possibilities.
He pulled into his parking place and killed the engine. VJ
and Philip, who had been riding in the back seat, piled out of the car and took off toward the cafeteria. Victor watched them go, wondering if Marsha was right about VJ fitting a potentially dangerous psychiatric pattern. Last night after they’d gotten into bed, Marsha had told him that Mr.
Remington said that VJ had been involved in a number of fights at school. Victor had been more shocked by that news than by anything else. It seemed so unlike VJ. He could not imagine it was true. And if it was, he didn’t know how he felt about it. In some ways he was proud of VJ. Was it really so bad to defend yourself? Even Remington seemed to have some admiration for the way the boy handled himself.
“Who the hell knows?” Victor said aloud as he got out of the car and started for the front door. But he didn’t get far. Out of nowhere a man dressed in a policeman’s uniform appeared.
“Dr. Victor Frank?” the man questioned.
“Yes,” Victor responded.
The man handed Victor a packet. “Something for you from the sheriff’s office,” he said. “Have a good day.”
Victor opened up the envelope and saw that he was being summoned to respond to the attached complaint. The first page read: “Sharon Carver vs. Victor Frank and Chimera, Inc.”
Victor didn’t have to read any further. He knew what he was holding. So Sharon was moving ahead with her threatened sex-discrimination suit. He felt like throwing the papers to the wind. It just made him fume all the more as he climbed the front steps and entered the building.
The office was alive with an almost electric intensity. He noticed that people eyed him as he approached, then murmured among themselves after he passed. When he got into his office and as he was removing his coat, he asked Colleen what was going on.
“You’ve become a celebrity,” she said. “It was on the news that you were the one to discover the Gephardt family murder.”
“Just what I need,” Victor said. He went over to his desk.
Before he sat down he handed the Carver summons over to Colleen and told her to send it to the legal department. Then he sat down. “So what’s the good word?”
“Lots of things,” Colleen said. She handed a sheet of paper to Victor. “That’s a preliminary report concerning Hurst’s research. They just started and have already found serious irregularities. They thought you should know.”
“You are ever a bearer of good news,” Victor said. He fingered the report. Based on Hurst’s reaction to his decision to look into the matter, he wasn’t surprised, though he hadn’t thought the irregularities would show up so quickly. He would have guessed Hurst to be a bit more subtle than that.
“What else?” Victor asked, putting the report aside.
“A board meeting has been scheduled for next Wednesday to vote on the stock offering,” Colleen said, handing over a reminder slip for Victor to put in his calendar.
“That’s like getting invited to play Russian roulette,”
Victor said, taking the paper. “What else?”
Colleen went down her list, ticking off myriad problems—mostly minor ones, but ones that had to be dealt with nonetheless. She made notes, depending on Victor’s reaction. It took them about half an hour to get through.
“Now it’s my turn,” Victor said. “Have I gotten any calls from security firms?”
Colleen shook her head.
“All right, next I want you to get on the phone and use your considerable charms to find out where Ronald Beekman, William Hurst, and Sharon Carver were around noon yesterday.”
Colleen made a note for herself and waited for more instructions. When she saw that was it, she nodded good-bye and slipped out of the office back to her desk.
Victor started to work through the pile of papers in his in-box.
Thirty minutes later, Colleen returned with her steno pad from which she read: “Both Dr. Beekman and Dr. Hurst were here in Chimera all day, although Dr. Hurst did disappear for lunch. No one saw him at the cafeteria. Heaven only knowns where he went. As for Miss Carver, I couldn’t find out a thing.”
Victor nodded and thanked her. He picked up the phone and tried one of the numbers of the security firms, one called Able Protection. A woman answered. After he had been put briefly on hold, a deep-voiced man got on the line, and Victor made arrangements to have his home watched from 6 P.M.
to 6 A.M.
Colleen returned with a sheet of paper which she slipped under Victor’s nose. “Here’s an update on the equipment that Gephardt managed to have disappear.”
Victor ran down the list: polypeptide synthesizers, scintillation counters, centrifuges, electron microscope . .
.
“Electron microscope!” Victor yelled. “How the hell did that vanish? How did this guy get the equipment off- site, much less fence it? I mean the market for a hot electron microscope has to be small.” Victor looked at Colleen questioningly. In his mind’s eye he saw the van parked in Gephardt’s driveway.
“You’ve got me,” was all she could offer.
“It’s a disgrace that he was able to get away with it for so long. It certainly says something about our accounting methods and our security.”
By eleven-thirty Victor was finally able to slip out the back of his office and walk over to his lab. The morning’s administrative work had only agitated him to an even more exasperated state. But, stepping into his lab,
