Linda Fairstein - The DeadHouse

Foote turned to walk out of the room. I had one more question for her, which I wanted both of the men to hear. "Before you go, Sylvia, I was wondering if you had any recent contact with Charlotte Voight?"

"What?"

"A call that she wanted to register for class in the new semester, perhaps? Have any of the faculty or students heard from her, that she's back in town?"

Foote and Recantati exchanged glances. "Not a word. Why do you ask?"

"Her name came up in an interview we did yesterday. I just wondered whether anyone mentioned to you that they had seen her recently."

"I told you I'd let you know if I did. It's almost five o'clock, Alex. If you don't need me here, I'm going home." She pulled the door shut behind her and left the three of us standing in Recantati's office. He asked Grenier to step out into the anteroom while he had a few words alone with me, and I sat in the chair facing his large desk.

"Ms. Cooper, first I'd like to apologize for my walking out on you during our interview the other day. It must have created a terrible impression of me and I'm simply mortified-"

His voice broke off and he stopped talking.

"Nobody enjoys talking to the police, Professor."

"I don't really understand all about DNA and what kind of evidence it leaves behind. Thomas knows a lot more than I do. I learned from talking to him that a person can simply touch things-doorknobs and drinking glasses-and it can leave enough skin cells behind to develop a DNA pattern."

"That's quite true." There was enough genetic material in the skin cells that were sloughed off in just minutes of normal contact that it was becoming possible to solve even nonviolent crimes, like burglary, with the use of this technology.

I tried to put Recantati more at ease. "In England, they use DNA to solve property crimes, like car thefts. Detectives figured out that in order to jump-start a car, the thief usually touches some place on the steering column. So the Brits just wipe that part of the car down once they've recovered it, and put the profile in their computers. They solve cases they never used to be able to any other way. No blood or semen necessary."

He wasn't listening to my evidence-collection lecture. He was trying to find a way to convince me that he had never had a sexual relationship with Lola Dakota. "I don't want to deal with Detective Chapman anymore. But I'd like you to believe me, Ms. Cooper. I was not-I was never involved with Professor Dakota. She was a friend, she was a colleague"-he hesitated before he went on-"and she was also guaranteed to be trouble. I don't look for trouble."

"But you had spent time in her apartment, right? That's why you think we might have something with your DNA on it."

"I, uh-no, never alone. I had been to Lola's apartment, but only for coffee, or when she had a few of us in for cocktails. That's not what I'm concerned about.

"My position here is tentative. I'm just here in the role of acting president. And if I don't get the permanent appointment, then I'd like to be able to go back to my job at Princeton. Without a scandal. They won't take me back if there's any scandal."

"Then, I don't understand your concern." "Ms. Cooper, I saw your Crime Scene Unit men when they came to Lola's office the day after the murder. I don't know what they're capable of determining with DNA, but they were processing the room for fingerprints, too. I've been a nervous wreck, that's why I walked out on you and the detective." "Why? What are you afraid of?"

"The morning after Professor Dakota was killed I, uh-I went into her office. I didn't take anything, I swear to you. But I went in there quite early, before anyone else was in the building." "How did you get in? Why-"

"I'm the president of the college, for the time being. When I asked the janitor to open her door for me, he would never have refused. I… um, I touched everything. I was a bit frantic. And then your policeman noticed that things seemed out of place, and the other men were called in to do all that scientific processing. I've just been beside myself." "But why did you go in?"

He lowered his voice even more and bent his head in the direction of the door. "That's just it. I had been reluctant to tell you until I could talk to Thomas face-to-face. He's just back from the West Coast this morning, on the red-eye." Why was he being so evasive?

"My wife called me from our home in Princeton at about one o'clock in the morning. I'm talking about the night after Lola was killed. She said that Thomas Grenier had called there from California, looking for me. Said he didn't have my number at the apartment in the city, which is just a sublet, so the phone isn't listed in my name. It all sounded so logical, I-I-I…" "What did he tell her?"

"Thomas told her that it was urgent that she get a message to me. That I must get into Lola's office before the police did. That there was something in her desk that would, um, well-that it could prove to be an embarrassment to the college if anyone found it.

"Not illegal. Not anything that would be a crime for me to remove. I would never, never have participated in any such thing. But to avoid a scandal-"

"What kind of scandal?"

"We had several going already, Ms. Cooper. I didn't know what he was referring to at the time. He just told Elena-that's my wife-Grenier told her that he'd explain it all to me when he got back to New York. That I was just to take the envelope and slip it under his door."

"And that's what you did?"

"That's what I tried to do." He shook his head from side to side. "I stayed up half the night worrying about it, then got here at the crack of dawn. Actually, and perhaps this just goes to my own naiveté-or, well, ignorance-it never occurred to me that the police would have any need to come to see Lola's office. I, uh, I've never had anything to do with a murder investigation. When I got that call from Elena, we all assumed that Ivan had killed Lola, and the school would have no reason to be involved."

Recantati was talking so quickly I thought he was going to run out of breath.

"I must have been in there for an hour. I started looking over her desk, neatly and calmly. When I couldn't find the envelope that Thomas had referred to, I practically panicked. I went through everything I could think of until I began to hear voices and footsteps in the corridor. I slipped out and went back up to my office."

Recantati rocked back and forth in his swiveling desk chair. "This will be the end of me with Sylvia Foote. She's so nauseatingly sanctimonious. And I was just doing what Thomas Grenier suggested to hold on to my job. It seemed perfectly harmless at the time. Besides that, I never found the damn thing."

"What kind of envelope was it?"

"A small one, very small. It had something to do with the project they were working on. The word 'Blackwells' was written on the front of it."

With the help of Mike's good instincts and a valid search warrant, I hoped that little envelope would be on my desk by the time I got there in the morning. When Recantati and Grenier were arguing before I arrived, it must have been about this.

"Did you and Grenier speak again during the week?"

"No, no. Not until today. He never called back, and I had no idea where in California he was staying. Since I 'failed' at his mission," Recantati said sarcastically, "I thought I'd just wait and tell him about it when I saw him. After I met you people last Friday, I knew I wasn't going back into Lola's office for a second try."

"I assume you were talking to Professor Grenier before I came in just now." I wanted to hear what the biologist had told Recantati before I interviewed him myself. "Did he explain to you why he wanted you to get the envelope, and what was in it that might possibly cause trouble for the school?"