Steve Martini - The Jury

“What’s that?”

“Field of engineering,” says Harry. “Involves small robots. We’re talking microscopic here. Riverdancers doing their fling on the head of a pin.”

“What are these robots used for?”

“Got me. I’m told one application could be medicine.”

“Well, there you go. There’s the link,” I say.

“Right.”

“And what does Crone say?”

“What he always says. Fell back on the old ‘My lips are sealed’ crap. Like the highest calling of the scientist is to keep his mouth shut. They ought to put this asshole in charge of Los Alamos. He gets my vote. With a client like Crone, who needs a prosecutor? He’ll screw himself to the wall before he’s finished, and us, too. He’s already doing a good job of it.” Harry on a roll.

“What are the other people at the lab saying?”

“The same sorry mantra. Almost makes you think somebody got to them,” he says.

“Does, doesn’t it?”

“The only thing they would say was in reference to some old sci-fi flick, Fantastic Voyage. Ever see it?”

I shake my head. “Must have missed that one.”

“They shoot this miniature submarine up some guy’s nose or something. Inject it through a needle. Inside are people all shrunk down,” says Harry.

“I knew I missed it for a reason.”

“Anyway the plotline. .” Harry ignores me. “They’re going on a voyage through this guy’s body to cure some disease or other. If I could remember what he was dying of, I could replace Siskel and Ebert.”

“Siskel’s dead,” I tell him.

“Yeah, well, this tiny sub. It seems we’re there.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean this nanorobotics shit.”

“Shrinking people?”

“No. I don’t think so. Just the submarine,” says Harry.

“Really?”

“I don’t know. Hell. They would talk and look over their shoulders. A couple of the lab techs. Probably laughing their asses off after I left. I had to pick my time carefully, when the guy Tash wasn’t around.”

“Were they afraid of him? These lab techs?”

“I don’t know if afraid is the word. But he has a certain chilling affect on conversation,” says Harry. “It’s like all these people took a vow of silence. And when Tash is around, you can’t even get ’em to do sign language.”

“People I talked to were lab assistants. I got one of ’em to go on coffee break with me. Guy said he was speaking only in general terms. And if anybody asked, he wasn’t speaking at all. All he would say about this nanorobotics was a reference to this movie.”

“Tiny submarines?”

“That’s the one. On a crash dive through some sorry guy’s bowels. I don’t wanna even know where they come out. I’m feeling like I’ve already been on that trip with Crone. When I pressed each of the lab techs, they all ended up singing the same old chorus. Trade secrets, in four-part harmony,” says Harry.

“Well, at least he’s telling us something that’s true.” I’m talking about Crone.

“Only if you want to take the time to pick through the lies,” says Harry.

“What do you mean?”

“Remember I told you that I asked Crone whether Jordan and Epperson knew each other before Epperson came to the lab? He told me he didn’t think so?”

I nod.

“I wouldn’t take it to the bank,” says Harry.

“This company, Cybergenomics. The one Epperson worked for before he joined the lab. I come to find out they’re one of the companies underwriting Crone’s work at the lab.”

“Really?”

“Corporate grant,” says Harry. “A big one. And there’s more. This same company made a job offer to Jordan about a month before she was killed.”

My eyebrows arch.

“Word around the lab was that it was a point of friction between her and Crone. The offer was for big bucks. I don’t know the details. We’re looking for documents. I’ve got a subpoena out to the company to get what I can. According to one of the lab techs, Jordan was letting it be known that they’d offered her multiple six figures to jump from the lab and come on board with the company.”

“Maybe they made overtures to Crone as well?”

“That was the problem. They didn’t.”

Pieces are starting to snap into place.

“If we know about this, you can be sure Tannery knows as well.”

“You think he’s plying this road, job jealousy?” asks Harry.

“You heard what he told us when we visited him at his office. They were checking out some other angle as to motive.”

“You think that’s it? The job offer to Jordan?”

“That, and perhaps she was taking some items of value with her.”

“Like what?”

“Like the papers Crone says she stole, and the grant money that Cybergenomics was pouring into Crone’s center.”

“Holy shit,” says Harry. “You think so?”

“Think about it. She takes working papers from his office. He goes ballistic. She does everything to get him off her back. She doesn’t need him anymore. She knows what he knows about the project. If she goes to work for Cybergenomics, why would they pay twice for the same research? His funds are going to dry up overnight.”

“There’s a motive for murder,” says Harry.

I nod.

“You think Tannery knows what’s in those papers?”

“I know one thing. We don’t.”

“Maybe it’s just what Crone’s been saying all along,” says Harry. “Maybe they did have professional differences.”

“Where does Epperson fit into all this?”

“I was getting to that,” says Harry. “It’s only surmise, and it only comes from one of the assistants, the guy I talked to over coffee. But according to him, Epperson may have joined Crone’s group as part of a package along with the Cybergenomics grant. Nobody seems to know for sure, but he came on board about the same time.”

“A consultant?”

“Not that I can tell. He seems to have been a salaried employee of the university from the time he went to work there. More like a corporate mole, if the guy I talked to is right.”

“Do we know Epperson’s salary, at the U?”

Harry looks up from his papers, quickly getting to the same place I am. “If he took a big cut in pay to go to the university, you think there might be a reason?”

“Possibly. Maybe stock options. If Crone’s team is developing something hot, and this company, Cybergenomics, has a vested interest, they might send Epperson over to mind the store. To make sure that the research takes the right direction.”

“And make sure nobody else horns in,” says Harry.

“If he was their man in Crone’s shop, stock options would ease a cut in pay, and ensure his loyalty.”

Harry mulls this over. “Interesting you should say that.”

“Why?”

“Epperson has this passion. The only thing anybody seems to know about him. He has an addiction.”

“What’s that?”

“Stays up nights researching. Comes to work bleary-eyed and takes frequent breaks to get to his laptop. Seems he lives to trade on-line.”

Saturday morning and its bright and sunny. I can think of a thousand places I would rather be. Instead, Harry and I are planted next to a musty set of code books in our library at the office. We are here to meet with Robert Tucci who has flown in from San Jose up in Silicon Valley for a conference.

For months Tucci has been just a voice on the phone. Today, for the first time, I have the benefit of seeing a face as we speak, judging what kind of a witness he might make if I have to use him at trial.

He is bald. A ragged fringe of black hair droops over his ears. Tucci has the look of some seventeenth-century notable, short and fat with chubby little fingers. There is a shadow of dark beard submerged just beneath the surface of his face that gives it the kind of bluish pallor you would expect to see on some ancient oil portrait hanging in a European gallery. This is appropriate, for some consider Tucci to be the Galileo of modern electronics.