The Prize

Copyright © 2017 by Geoffrey M. Cooper

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is merely coincidental.

Print ISBN: 978-1-54391-217-3
eBook ISBN: 978-1-54391-218-0

Table of Contents

- Acknowledgments

- Chapter 1 - September 26

- Chapter 2 - December 19

- Chapter 3 - January 8

- Chapter 4 - February 2

- Chapter 5 - March 7

- Chapter 6 - March 7

- Chapter 7 - March 8

- Chapter 8 - March 13

- Chapter 29 - April 29

- Chapter 10 - June 5

- Chapter 11 - June 5

- Chapter 12 - June 20

- Chapter 13 - June 21

- Chapter 14 - June 22-23

- Chapter 15 - June 24

- Chapter 16 - June 28

- Chapter 17 - August 19

- Chapter 18 - October 16

- Chapter 19 - November 4

- Chapter 20 - November 4

- Chapter 21 - November 4

- Chapter 22 - November 12

- Chapter 23 - November 14

- Chapter 24 - November 19

- Chapter 25 - November 23

- Chapter 26 - December 7

- Chapter 27 - December 8

- Chapter 28 - December 8

- Chapter 29 - December 9

- Chapter 30 - December 9-10

- Chapter 31 - December 11

- Chapter 32 - December 17

- Chapter 33 - December 19

- Chapter 34 - December 22

- Chapter 35 - January 4

- Chapter 36 - January 8-9

- Chapter 37 - January 9

- Chapter 38 - January 25

- Chapter 39 - January 26-27

- Chapter 40 - January 27

- Chapter 41 - February 9

- Chapter 42 - February 10

- Chapter 43 - February 14-15

- Chapter 44 - February 17-18

- Chapter 45 - February 19

- Chapter 46 - February 19

- Chapter 47 - February 20

- Chapter 48 - February 21-22

- Chapter 49 - February 23

- Chapter 50 - February 27-28

- Chapter 51 - February 28

- Chapter 52 - February 28

- Chapter 53 - February 28

- Epilogue

Many people were instrumental in bringing The Prize from an idea to a book. I had the good fortune to work with two outstanding editors, Caroline Leavitt and Amy Rogers, who played enormous roles in shaping and developing the manuscript. I also received a great deal of help and guidance from participation in the GrubStreet writing community, including feedback and advice from Ann Collette.

It’s a pleasure to thank my friends Alexandra Adams, Ken Adams and Ulla Hansen for reading and commenting on drafts of The Prize, especially Alexandra who read several versions as the book progressed.

Special thanks are also due to Helen Holcomb and Jack Cunha for their advice on the process of Federal fraud prosecution.

And finally, thanks to Audrey Capuano for her patience during endless discussions of this project. And for inspiring two of the characters.

Eric Prescott brushed a speck of dust from the lapel of his midnight blue dinner jacket and stepped back to survey the crowd. It was tough to keep a smug smile off his face. There had to be at least three hundred people milling around the grand ballroom of New York’s Pierre hotel, sipping champagne and munching hors d’oeuvres from trays circulated by tuxedo-clad waiters. All in his honor. The Lasker Award for “seminal research in elucidating the basis of Alzheimer’s disease” was his latest triumph. A fitting tribute to his accomplishments. And an important step toward his ultimate goal.

He excused himself from a small crowd of admirers and went to the bar for another glass of champagne. Then he spotted Donald Moore across the room and gave him a subtle nod. Moore returned the signal and headed toward him, bringing along a thin balding man with a neatly trimmed gray beard. Alfred Bergner, who Moore and Prescott had made sure was invited to the award ceremony, was a kingmaker. One of five Karolinska Institute professors on the Nobel Committee, he had a key voice in conferring the world’s highest honor in science and medicine.

Bergner shook his hand. “Congratulations, Eric. A well-deserved award. It’s a pleasure to see your work recognized in this way.”

Prescott inclined his head. “Thank you, I’m delighted you could be here.”

“I am too,” Bergner said. “A very pleasant way to conclude my trip to the States.”

“A wonderful evening, indeed,” Moore said. “But not as outstanding as the banquet we enjoyed in Stockholm thirteen years ago. Do you remember, Alfred?”

“Indeed I do,” Bergner said. “The night you received the prize was quite the occasion.” He laughed softly. “But now that you’ve become an administrator, do you still have time to do any research yourself? Or are you too busy managing your institute?”

Moore smiled. “Yes, I’m afraid that being director of an enterprise as large as the Institute for Advanced Neuroscience has taken its toll on my research. Especially in Cambridge, with Harvard and MIT for neighbors. But it brings other rewards, such as facilitating the work of colleagues like Eric and sharing in their success. In fact, I’m hoping to enjoy a repeat of that Nobel banquet, though not in my honor this time.”

Bergner inclined his head toward Prescott and winked. “You mean in recognition of our friend here?”

Prescott gave a self-deprecating shrug. “Oh, come now gentlemen, I’d never be so presumptuous.”

Bergner snagged a bacon-wrapped scallop from a passing waiter. “No need to be overly modest, Eric. You know you’re a strong candidate. And there’s absolutely no question that your work has illuminated the fundamental basis of Alzheimer’s disease. But before making an award in this area, I think some of my colleagues on the Committee are waiting for the next step. A treatment.”

“Which we’re working hard to find,” Prescott said.

“And even if he doesn’t find the drug himself, I assume the Committee realizes that any successful treatment would be based on Eric’s genetic engineering of mice that develop Alzheimer’s,” Moore added.

Bergner nodded. “I think you can feel confident that Eric would share in any award based on the discovery of a drug using his mice. But we can’t discount the possibility that a treatment might emerge from some other line of investigation.”

Prescott blinked. This isn’t where the conversation’s supposed to go.

Moore leaned forward and responded before Prescott had a chance to say anything. “I don’t see how that would be possible. Everything important in the field is based on Eric’s contributions.”

“Maybe, but anything can happen,” Bergner said. “I had lunch with Karl Meyers last week at the meeting in San Francisco and he introduced me to an interesting young woman.”

“Yes, I was there too,” Prescott interrupted. “But just to deliver my Kirkland Award Lecture, I had to take off again right after.” No reason to miss a chance at self-promotion.

“I heard your talk,” Bergner said. “Nice, as always. But anyway, this woman had been a postdoctoral research fellow in Karl’s lab. Now she’s a faculty member with a lab of her own. What’s interesting is that she’s worked out a new approach to look for a drug using the cell culture system she and Karl developed in Michigan. Quite independent of your mouse work and very impressive. I believe her name’s Pamela Weller, just across town from you, at Harvard’s Langmere Institute. Do either of you know her?”

“I know the work she did with Karl, but I’ve only met her casually at conferences,” Prescott said. “The work seems interesting, although I’ve heard there are a lot of problems reproducing her results.”

Moore snorted and waved a hand dismissively. “She’s not even tenured, just starting up her own lab. Not someone to take seriously.”

Bergner shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not so sure. I have a nose for young scientists. The good ones have a spark, hard to define but I can always tell when it’s there. And Pam Weller has it. Eric, maybe you should get to know her.”

Prescott was steaming. Did Bergner seriously think this woman was some kind of competition? Ridiculous.

“I’ll have to do that,” he said.

And keep a close eye on her.

Pam Weller’s hands were sweating as she approached Mary O’Connor’s office on the tenth floor of the Langmere Institute for Neurological Disease. The twenty-story glass-walled building in the heart of Boston’s Longwood Medical Area was Harvard’s premiere neuroscience institute. It was home to the offices and laboratories of some fifty faculty members, many recognized as being among the best neuroscientists in the world.

Pam was one of them. At least for the moment. Perhaps this morning’s meeting would determine how long that would last. A thirty minute evaluation of my career, complete with the judgment of the senior faculty. A group with the power to determine my future.

She hesitated outside O’Connor’s open door. Was she ready for this? Maybe she should have worn slacks and a suit jacket instead of her usual jeans and turtleneck. With her trim figure and long brown hair, jeans made her look more like a graduate student than a thirty-six-year-old faculty member. Stop being silly. This isn’t about looks. Let’s get it over with.

She knocked and went in.

The office was similar to Pam’s own, standard fare for a faculty member at the Langmere. Industrial gray carpet with a U-shaped desk under the window. Filing cabinets and bookshelves with a couple of family pictures along the side walls. A small round conference table toward the front and a whiteboard on the cream-colored wall behind it. A rubber plant in the corner.

O’Connor was roughly fifty and slightly overweight with short graying hair. She was the only woman to have reached the status of tenured full professor at the Langmere. Pam never failed to be impressed by that. It had been even harder for a woman to succeed when O’Connor had made it than it was now.

Saying that she wanted to support young women with the kind of advice she herself had never received, O’Connor had assumed the role of mentor to Pam and the two other women who were assistant professors at the Langmere. Pam met with her once or twice a year to talk about how things were going, usually over lunch or a cup of coffee. Those occasions were relaxed and friendly, and Pam appreciated her advice on navigating the complexities of being a faculty member and directing a research group. But today’s meeting was more formal, and O’Connor looked serious as she got up from her desk and moved to the conference table.

Pam took a seat across from her and O’Connor handed her some ten pages of single-spaced text. The title page said, Assistant Professor Pamela Weller: Mid-Tenure Review. The assessment of her performance that she’d been both anticipating and dreading for months. Pam’s heart started beating rapidly as she began to scan through it.

“You can keep that and read it later,” O’Connor said. “But first let’s talk about the highlights. As you know, the Langmere does a complete review of all junior faculty about halfway through the pre-tenure period. The goal is to be helpful. To give you an idea of where you stand and how best you can move forward with your career.”

“It sounds like a good idea,” Pam said, “but I have to admit it makes me nervous. It feels like being put under a microscope and picked apart. Like a mouse being dissected.”

O’Connor leaned forward. “I know this is tough, believe me. And it’s just a prelude to what the actual tenure evaluation will be like. But the purpose is to give you advice, not to make a decision about your future at this point.”

“I know, and I appreciate your going over it with me. I’d much rather hear where I stand from you than from any of the other senior faculty.”

“So take a breath and let’s go through it. Do you want some coffee or water first?”

Pam smiled. “Just some water, thanks.”

O’Connor got up and retrieved a bottle of water from the undercounter refrigerator next to her desk. She handed it to Pam and took her seat again.

“Okay, the way the process works is that a committee of three tenured professors, including me, have evaluated the progress you’ve made since you came here four and a half years ago, as well as reviewing your plans for future research. Based on that and talking to colleagues in your field, we’ve tried to assess your likelihood of getting tenure and advise you on how you can best direct your efforts.”

“Can we skip to the bottom line first? What did the committee think my chances are?” Pam asked.

O’Connor reached out and took her hand, squeezing it for a moment.

“We’re worried, Pam. Don’t take this wrong, we think you could make it, but it seems chancy. You know that only about twenty percent of junior faculty gets tenure here, and it takes a major discovery to do it. Your work seems to be going well, but you haven’t hit a home run yet. And you need one soon.”

Pam felt herself flush and start to tear up. She took a sip of water and looked out the window. Snowing already. December in Boston.

“Pam c’mon, it’s not all bad,” O’Connor said. “We know you’ve accomplished a lot. You’ve hired two postdoctoral fellows and now two new graduate students have joined your lab. You’ve gotten a sizable research grant, and you and your postdocs have published three papers in good journals. Plus you’re well known and respected by other researchers in your field. Everyone we asked said how good you are.”

Pam toyed with one of the leaves on the rubber plant next to her and forced a weak smile. “But you still think I have a problem.”

“If we were someplace else, like Tufts or BU, I’d tell you that everything looks great and you’ll be fine for tenure in a couple of years. But this is the Langmere Institute and Harvard Medical School. Getting tenure here means you have to be the absolute tops, not just good. And that means you have to score with some high-impact research.”

“Sure. But what could be more high impact than the experiments we’re doing to find a drug that prevents the development of Alzheimer’s?”

O’Connor rolled her eyes. “That would obviously blow everyone away. But only if you turn out to be successful. You’ve been working on that project for over four years now, and you’ve got zip so far. It’ll have been nothing but a waste of effort if you continue to come up empty-handed. We think it’s time to shift your effort to something that’s more likely to get results. While there’s still time to get a couple of the slam-bang publications you need for tenure.”

Pam felt the heat of anger begin to rise in her. This project had been her focus for over ten years, ever since her mother started showing signs of memory loss and Pam changed the direction of her research from infectious disease to neuroscience. The only way she knew how to fight back. Finding a treatment was the whole point, the reason she was in this business. And the committee’s advice was to do something else!

She sat up straight and kept her voice firm.

“You’ve got to believe that trying to find a drug against Alzheimer’s is important enough to be worth the effort. It’s been my goal ever since I developed the brain cell culture system, back when I was a postdoc with Karl Meyers. You know how excited everyone was when we were able to get cells in culture to produce Alzheimer’s plaque and die, just like in a patient’s brain. I realized immediately that it gave us a powerful new way to test for drugs. That was a big part of the research I proposed when I got the job here, and I think we have a good chance of succeeding. But it’s a long-term effort, not something that’s going to happen overnight.”

Could they really not want me to work on finding an Alzheimer’s drug? That’s crazy.

“It’s great that you’re optimistic about finding a drug, but you’ve only got two more years to make that a reality. Otherwise you’re going to be looking for a new job. And think of the competition you’re up against. Eric Prescott over at the Institute for Advanced Neuroscience must have dozens of postdocs trying to find the kind of drug you’re hoping for. If he succeeds before you do, you’re finished.”

“I understand. But you know perfectly well that the screening system we’ve developed is much better than what Prescott or anyone else has. It took my first postdoc more than two years to adapt my cell culture system to a format we can use for rapid drug screening, but he’s done it. Now I’ve got my second postdoc working with him and the two of them can test thousands of compounds in the time Prescott’s whole army can test only dozens.”

“I’ve met your first postdoc. George, right? He seems bright, always asks good questions at seminars. Who’s the second?” O’Connor asked.

“Holly Singer. She’s very good. She got her PhD in Ross Levin’s lab at Berkeley. George already had the screening system going when she joined us, so I asked her to work with him on testing candidate drugs.”

“I know Ross, he does nice stuff,” O’Connor said. “She should be a good addition to your group. But still, what if nothing comes from your drug screen? The committee thinks you should drop it and get your people working on something more solid.”

“I can’t do that! We’re in the middle of testing the whole collection of drugs the Langmere chemical library has available. That gives us over a hundred thousand possibilities. I’m not quitting now.”

O’Connor sighed and held up her hands in resignation. “Alright, I know how much this means to you. And of course the committee’s advice is just that. Advice. What you do with it is up to you. But at least think about it, okay? We’re worried that you’re risking your career on a project that’s not going to pay off.”

• • •

Pam took the stairs down two flights from O’Connor’s office, stopping at the kitchenette she shared with the four other faculty members on her floor to make a cup of tea.

What the hell is wrong with these people? I’m getting close and they just want me to quit. Or lose my job.

Once she was back in her own office, she sat at her desk and scanned through the report. It didn’t say anything more or less than what O’Connor had told her. And she couldn’t deny that she was upset. The possibility of being denied tenure was scary. She’d have to leave the Langmere and find another job, probably at some second-rate university. Or worse, she might be forced out of science entirely.

She took a sip of the hot tea and pondered her options. But there really weren’t any. She wasn’t going to let some stupid committee make her give up on finding an Alzheimer’s drug just because they thought it was too risky.

She put the report down and sat back in her chair, staring at it for a moment. Then she finished her tea, picked up the report, and threw it into the blue recycling container under her desk. She’d gone into research to make a difference, not to follow the crowd.

Eric Prescott sat back on the beige leather couch in his office, admiring the awards hanging on his wall. The Lasker Award, now nicely framed and mounted, was the newest addition to his collection. Only the Nobel was still missing. Damn their hesitation! He was the leading neuroscientist of his generation, with an endowed professorship at the Institute for Advanced Neuroscience, more than six million dollars a year in funding for his laboratory, a large research group of some three dozen graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, multiple publications in the most prestigious journals, and all of the other major awards he wanted. Not to mention the largest office in the Institute, except for the Director’s.

“The Lasker looks good up there, Eric.”

Prescott turned to see Donald Moore smiling at the door, wearing his signature red and blue bow tie and rumpled tweed jacket.

“Thanks, Don. And thanks again for your help in getting it. I know you pushed the committee for me.”

“No problem. What’s good for you is good for the Institute.”

Moore took a seat in one of the leather armchairs across from Prescott. “I actually wanted to touch base on the next one. I’m working on this year’s Nobel nomination.”

As a Nobel laureate, Moore was entitled to make nominations for the Prize, and Prescott knew that Moore had nominated him each year for the last five years.

“That certainly is the one I’d like to add to my collection,” Prescott said. “I appreciate your keeping my name in there. And the chance to work on Bergner in September.”

“It’ll come, we just have to keep pushing. Sometimes it can take several years.”

Prescott glanced at his wall full of awards. “What are they waiting for? Everyone else has come around.”

Moore shrugged. “You heard what Bergner said, they want to see a treatment. And sometimes the Swedes just take their time. You’re young and healthy, hang in there.”

Prescott laughed. He knew that his tall slender frame and jet-black hair made him look younger than his forty-seven years.

“Yes, I’m hopeful that I’ll last long enough for the Swedes to make up their minds.”

“Glad to hear it,” Moore said. “Seriously though, is there anything new I can add to this year’s nomination? Especially any progress toward a drug.”

“I wish, but unfortunately not yet,” Prescott said. “You know that I have most of my lab working on it. Several other labs are too, of course, using my mice for the same kind of drug testing we’re doing.”

Moore nodded. “That’s okay, you’ll share in the award if one of them should succeed. The only risk is if someone found a drug with an approach that didn’t involve your mouse model.”

Prescott furrowed his brow. Yes, that’s the worry. “I know, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. I don’t see anyone making progress in any system other than my mice.”

“How about Pam Weller, the woman Bergner mentioned?” Moore asked.

“Her system has been difficult for people to use and it hasn’t caught on. It’s really just Weller and Karl Meyers who have it working effectively.”

“Yes, but if Bergner’s right she’s doing a drug screen herself over at the Langmere. Could that be a problem?”

Prescott looked out his window at the Charles River, the separation between Cambridge and Boston. Frozen solid in the middle of a cold winter.

“Only if she succeeds,” he said.

“Sure, but what if she did get something? It wouldn’t make your work any less important, and you could wind up sharing the prize with her. But I can also imagine the committee giving it to her alone. Or maybe to her and Meyers,” Moore said.

“I don’t think we need to worry. I’m pretty sure she’s not getting anywhere.”

Moore raised his eyebrows. “Really? How do you know that?”

Prescott chuckled. “I’ve developed a source at the Langmere. Do you know Mary O’Connor?”

“I’ve met her. She’s pretty second rate, although she somehow managed to get tenure over there.”

“She’s also Pam Weller’s mentor. So I’ve cultivated her by making her think I’m interested in promoting Weller’s career, acting like a senior person in the field. And she’s all too happy to keep me posted on Weller’s progress. Talking to me makes her feel important.”

Moore smiled faintly. “I like it. And what does your friend O’Connor have to say?”

“I heard from her a week or so ago. They just completed Weller’s mid-tenure review and O’Connor is worried because her attempts to screen for a drug have come up empty. In fact, they advised Weller to drop the project and put her efforts into something else if she’s going to have any chance of tenure.”

“So no threat there?”

Prescott leaned back and grinned. “Doesn’t seem like it. I doubt if Pam Weller will even be around much longer.”

Pam entered the lab with a sense of resolve. As long as the experiments work, everything’ll be fine. Nobody’s going to think twice about tenure once we have a drug. It wasn’t quite eight thirty, but everyone was already at work. A good crew.

Vicky, Pam’s technician and lab manager, was working at the lab bench directly opposite the door. Her bench, one of six in the lab, was covered with the paraphernalia of doing science: bottles of chemicals, automatic pipettes, racks of test tubes, boxes of pipette tips, and a centrifuge. Vicky was wearing a lab coat, face mask, and purple latex gloves while she prepared cell cultures from mouse brains. Pam knew her daily routine. Earlier this morning, she’d sacrificed twenty mice and dissected out their brains, collecting the brains in a beaker she kept cold in an ice bucket. Now she was gently grinding the brains with a mortar and pestle to break them up into single cells. Once that was done, she’d transfer the cells to small plastic Petri dishes, generating the brain cultures that everyone in the lab used to do their experiments.

Pam never ceased to be amazed that it was possible to study brain cells in plastic dishes in an incubator, even though she’d worked on this since she was a postdoc. In a dish, a brain that could develop Alzheimer’s disease.

“Hi Vicky, how’re you doing?”

“All good,” Vicky said. “This batch of cultures is almost finished and I’m going to put together the weekly supplies order soon. But I did want to talk to you about that. The way George and Holly are going with the screening, and with Francisco and Janet starting their projects, I think we need to increase our orders for mice and cell culture supplies, maybe by fifty percent or so. And you know how much those things cost. Can we afford it?”

Pam wasn’t sure how, but she wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of lab work. She gave Vicky a reassuring smile. “We’ll have to, I don’t want to slow down our experiments. Especially, not the drug screening operation. Go ahead and order what you need. I’ll find a way to balance the budget.”

“Okay, will do,” Vicky said.

“By the way, how’s Stevie doing?” Pam asked. Vicky’s eight-year-old son had sprained his knee skiing a week ago. He was in a cast, which was driving both him and Vicky nuts.

Vicky gave an exaggerated sigh. “He’ll be fine, if I don’t kill him first! What a pain in the butt that kid can be. Sometimes I think he enjoys sitting on the couch and ordering me around: do this, get that. But we’ll survive, thanks for asking.”

Pam gave her a reassuring pat on the back and started over to where the newest additions to her lab, Francisco and Janet, were deep in conversation at Janet’s desk. As Pam approached, she saw three textbooks spread out in front of them. As second-year graduate students, they were taking courses in addition to getting started on their thesis research, so they must be studying for an upcoming exam. She could still remember the pressure of coursework when she was a graduate student, itching to spend time in the lab rather than in the classroom. But they had to make courses their priority right now, so she stopped to give them a few words of encouragement before going over to where George, her senior postdoctoral fellow, was working at one of the biosafety hoods on the opposite side of the lab.

The hood was a six-foot-long cabinet with a glass sash separating George from the brain cell cultures he manipulated inside it. Only his arms extended under the sash and into the interior of the hood, which was sterilized by ultraviolet light each night. Like Vicky, he was wearing a lab coat and gloves to make sure the sterile cultures were protected from the bacteria on his skin.

“Morning, George,” Pam said. “How’s it going?”

George looked up with the calm, pleasant expression he seemed to always have. “Plugging along, setting up to test another hundred and eighty compounds right now.” He indicated the culture dishes in front of him. “We don’t have a winner yet, but don’t worry, we will. Now that you’ve got Holly helping me, we’re moving right along. And I’m feeling like a hit’s just around the corner.” He gave her a thumbs-up sign and a grin.

Pam squeezed his shoulder. She appreciated his steady confidence. It seemed to bolster everyone in the lab, including herself.

“I’m betting on you, too,” she said. “Let’s keep our fingers crossed, maybe it’s one of these you’re about to test.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Pam noticed Holly, her other postdoc, at the back bench in the lab. Holly was focused on a dish of cells she was examining under the microscope, eyes wide and a big grin on her face.

“What’s up, Holly?” Pam called over to her. “Got something interesting?”

Holly looked up with a start, the smile vanishing. “No, I just realized I’m going to be late for the dentist.” She got up, put the culture dish back in the incubator next to Pam and George, and headed for the door. “Sorry I can’t talk now, but there’s nothing new anyway.”

• • •

When the elevator door opened on the ground floor, Holly made a quick right turn and scurried into the Starbucks off the Langmere lobby. There was no dental appointment. She just needed to get away to think.

As she’d hoped, the coffee shop was almost empty at this hour, with only four tables occupied. Two of her fellow postdocs sitting at one of them waved her over, but she held up her iPad to indicate she had to work. She ordered her usual caramel macchiato and took a booth by herself in the back corner, facing the wall.

What she’d seen under the microscope was the discovery of a lifetime. One of the compounds in her last experiment blocked Alzheimer’s plaque formation and kept the brain cells looking normal and healthy. She’d found the drug they were after!

Her first instinct had been to shout out her triumph, bring Pam and George over to the microscope to see what she had. But she had her own agenda. Knowledge was power, so she kept her mouth shut and got out of the lab to plan her next move instead.

What was I thinking? she asked herself for the umpteenth time. When I joined the project, I agreed that George would be first author on whatever papers we wrote.

What a stupid mistake.

Sure, it had seemed okay back when Pam first asked her. George had already done the hard part by developing the assay, so helping him screen candidate drugs looked like a good way to get a piece of the action.

But now she had discovered the winning compound, and being second wasn’t good enough.

Any paper about a treatment for Alzheimer’s would be a high profile publication in a leading journal, a paper that would catapult the first author to a faculty position at a top institution. Being second would be nice, but not nearly as big a deal.

She took a sip of her caramel macchiato, the sweet, strong taste reminding her of how she’d already been screwed like this once before. Brad Williams had introduced her to the drink when they were graduate students. They’d worked closely together on parallel projects and their experiments turned out to be a big success. They planned to publish two papers, with Brad first author on one and herself first on the other. But then their advisor, Ross Levin, decided that it was better to publish everything together. Just one big paper, with Brad as first author. And Brad threw her under the bus and agreed!

The betrayal was a major setback. When they applied for postdocs, Brad got into one of the best labs in the field. But the top labs all turned her down and she’d been forced to settle for working with Pam, who was just starting her own lab and wasn’t even tenured yet. Definitely second rate.

It’s not going to happen again. No more being a team player and sharing results. Maneuvering George to the sidelines and taking over the project was a better option. She’d get it all wrapped up on her own and only then present it to Pam as a complete story all set to publish.

Leaving Pam no choice other than making her first author.

• • •

Holly got back to the lab to find Vicky and George huddled together at his desk, beneath the pictures of his wife and kid tacked up on the corkboard. George called her over as soon as she came through the door.

“Hey Holly, do you have a minute? Vicky and I are trying to plan out what we need for next week’s experiments.”

Good timing, Holly thought. She knew what she needed. May as well get things going.

“Sure, now’s fine for me to talk,” she said.

“So did you have any luck with the compounds you screened last week?” George asked.

Holly kept her expression neutral. “No, not even a hint of activity. You?”

George shook his head. “No, nothing. So I figure I’ll just continue as usual and screen another 540 next week. Are you going to do the same?”

“Actually, I’ve been thinking about stepping up the pace. I think I can handle a bit more, say nine hundred a week. At least for the next few weeks.”

“You really think you can test that many?” George asked. “We’ve already been going as fast as I can manage.”

“I can push a little harder,” Holly said. “After all, I don’t have a family to worry about. It just means that I’ll set up a new screen of 180 compounds each day of the week instead of just Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, like we’ve been doing. I know it’ll be a ton of work, but I can do it.”

Turning to Vicky, she asked, “Can you get me enough brain cultures?”

“I guess,” Vicky said. “It’ll be a lot of work for me too, but I know Pam wants this to move as fast as possible. So if you’re up to testing that many compounds, I’ll manage. I’ll just wait to catch up on sleep when you’re finished!”

Holly laughed. “Thanks, Vicky. I appreciate the extra effort. And Pam will too.”

George shook his head. “The two of you are quite a pair. I’m afraid I’m already going as fast as I can. I’ll just stay with my regular pace for now.”

“Okay,” Holly said. “Then I’ll test compounds 40501 through 41400 next week, right?”

George made a note and nodded. “And I’ll continue in the sixty thousand series, 64505 through 65044.”

Holly got up. “I’m going to get to work and start prepping my samples. Vicky, thanks again for the extra push.”

The fools. She’d get all the cultures she needed, without either of them having a clue as to what she’d really be doing. Now just one more thing to take care of.

The freezer contained the set of candidate drugs from the chemical library. They were organized in trays of a thousand compounds each. Holly took the two trays containing compounds anonymously labeled 40001 through 42000 back to her lab bench.

It took almost three hours to prepare samples of the nine hundred drugs she’d told George she was going to test. Nothing but a waste of time, except she wanted him to see her samples all set up when he went into the freezer to get his own compounds. She’d throw them out next week when her supposed experiments were done.

Then she turned to the important thing. Compound 40492. The winning drug. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw there was plenty left to do everything she had planned. No need to risk tipping her hand by going back to the chemical library for more.

She transferred about half of the remaining sample of 40492 to a separate tube, which she labeled with just her initials, HS. Then she returned the chemical library trays to their proper place and put her nine hundred prepped samples on the shelf where she and George stored the compounds they were in the process of testing. He’d find them later.

Making sure nobody was watching, she put the tube labeled HS in a back corner of her personal freezer box. Her private stock. With the extra cultures she’d ordered from Vicky, she’d have a complete characterization of 40492 done in a few weeks.

And none of them would know what was going on until she was ready to spring the full story on Pam.

Pam lost her train of thought when someone knocked loudly on her office door. Now what? Writing a grant proposal was hard enough without interruptions.

But her annoyance faded when she turned to see Holly with a big smile, green eyes gleaming.

“You have to come see this. I think we’ve got something big!”

This wasn’t the usual calm and collected Holly. Pam followed her down the hall to the lab, where Holly took her straight to the microscope on the back bench. Several dishes of cultured brain cells were waiting and Holly put one under the scope.

“Look at these first. They’re cells that were triggered to start producing Alzheimer’s plaque. You can see the plaques have formed and the cells are beginning to die.”

Looking through the microscope, Pam saw the culture was filled with dark clumps of Alzheimer’s plaque surrounded by shriveled up, dying cells.

“Now look at these. They were treated with one of our test compounds, 40492.”

Holly handed Pam a second culture dish.

Pam looked through the microscope and did a double take. There were no plaques, no dying cells. Just healthy cells, like those in a normal brain. She felt a rush of excitement. This could be it! She tightened her grip on the microscope. Stay calm, professional.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “Could this be some kind of mistake?”

“It’s no mistake. I’ve repeated this five times now, and it gets even better. Look at this.”

Pam watched Holly reach for her laptop, surprised that she’d done so many repeats without sharing the results. She wondered what was coming next.

“The culture you just looked at shows what happens when I add the drug while the brain cells are still healthy, before they start to produce plaques,” Holly said. “Once I saw those results, I went on to see what would happen if I added the drug after plaques had already started to form, like in a patient with early stage Alzheimer’s.”

Holly turned on her computer and showed Pam a series of photos. “The series starts right when the cells have been triggered to start producing plaques. After that, I took pictures daily.”

The cells looked normal at first. But within three or four days, the photos showed plaques beginning to form and the cells starting to degenerate, resembling the early stages of Alzheimer’s when it might first be diagnosed.

Holly pointed to a picture taken on day four. “This is when I added the drug.”

The subsequent photos showed that the plaques stopped growing and gradually started to disappear. Within another few days, the plaques were gone and the cultures looked normal again.

Pam sat up with a start. “My God, Holly, this is amazing! If it works like this in people, this drug could reverse early stage Alzheimer’s. Although going from the culture dish to the clinic is a big step.”

Holly looked up with a smile. “We even have a break there. I checked it out and the drug you’re looking at has already been tried in humans as a cancer treatment. It didn’t work very well against cancer, but it’s all set to go for animal experiments and even clinical trials.”

Pam could hardly believe it. Got it! The drug I’ve been after for years. Her eyes filled with tears of joy as she jumped up and gave Holly a hug.

“This is fabulous! You’ve certainly followed things through. I can’t believe you kept your cool long enough to do all this before telling me. Does anyone else know? I assume you’ve got George involved in this too.”

“Actually, I’ve done it on my own. It seemed like such a great story that I kept wanting to flesh it out before I told everyone. I just couldn’t wait to do the next experiment!”

Pam was taken aback. This was supposed to be a joint project, and George didn’t even know what Holly was working on? Still, she didn’t want to argue with success.

“Well, you’ve certainly put it together,” she said. “Time to share, though. How about I call a special lab meeting for tomorrow morning at ten? You can present your results, and then we can talk about what we need to do to get this ready for publication. This is going to turn the world on its head!”

Pam watched her return the dishes to the incubator, feeling almost giddy with triumph. Except for the question nagging at the back of her mind.

Why had Holly waited so long to say anything?

Pam stopped at home to freshen up a bit before going to dinner. She’d bought the Beacon Street condo two years ago, when her divorce was finally settled. It was close to the lab, on the top floor of a Back Bay brownstone built in the 1890s. The renovations had preserved most of the original Victorian character, and Pam delighted in the high ceilings, her marble fireplace, and the French doors with their original moldings.

She poured a glass of wine and took it over to her favorite overstuffed chair in the living room, next to the bay window with its view of the Charles River. What a day. A drug with the potential to treat early stage Alzheimer’s changed everything. This would bring her not only tenure and a full professorship, but recognition as a leader in her field, maybe even a Nobel Prize.

She felt a warm glow imagining the paper they’d send to Nature, one of the world’s top journals. It would announce a groundbreaking discovery that could change millions of lives. George would be first author and Holly second, as they’d all agreed. It would be an enormous boost to both of their careers. And she’d be the last author, the senior position as head of the lab. Her years of work vindicated.

And now a special dinner with Jake to top it off. She remembered when her divorce attorney had introduced them. Jake Lawrence, the private investigator, who was going to track down her husband’s hidden assets. He had, but that had been just the beginning. There was something special about him, maybe a mix of tough mindedness and empathy that she hadn’t expected in an ex-FBI agent. They’d spent most nights together for the last year, either here or at his townhouse in Gloucester. Neither place was big enough for both of them on a permanent basis and she knew the time for buying a house was coming soon. But after years of suffering through a disastrous marriage, it felt good to have her own space for a while. No need to rush.

She grabbed her coat and went out into the cold but clear March evening, walking the ten minutes to their favorite restaurant, a cozy French bistro in an old Beacon Hill townhouse on Charles Street. She got there a little before seven and waited in the lounge, eager for Jake to arrive. She’d told him that tonight’s dinner was a special celebration, but not what it was about. Now she was anxious to share the news.

She watched with a small smile as he ducked his head and squeezed through the narrow below-street-level entrance. It was a tight fit for a six-foot, three-inch former football player, topped with close-cropped black hair just starting to turn gray at the temples.

He greeted her with a kiss and the hostess led them through a small dining room with dark paneled walls decorated by oil paintings hanging in gold frames. Pam did a double take when they reached a table in the back corner. A vase filled with multicolored roses was set up as the centerpiece, and a waiter stood ready to pour champagne from a bottle waiting in an ice bucket.

“Did you do this?” she gasped. “I mean, of course you did. Thank you!” She stretched to reach his face and give him a kiss.

Jake returned the kiss and stroked her hair. “Well, you said there was something to celebrate. So I thought we should go for it.”

They sat down and the waiter poured the champagne. Jake raised his glass in a toast. “Congratulations! On whatever it is.”

“Ah, you’d like to know why we’re here. Don’t worry, I really do have something worthy of your preparations.” She paused for effect. “We got a hit in my Alzheimer’s screen.”

Jake’s jaw dropped. “Pam, that’s terrific! You’ve been after this for years. No wonder we’re celebrating. It changes a lot, doesn’t it?”

Pam smiled and took a sip of champagne. “It’s what I’ve been trying to do for a long time. And yes, it changes a lot of things. With luck, it’s going to mean new hope for millions of people.”

“That’s great. And it’s important for you too, right? Like tossing out that stupid mid-tenure review for a start.”

“Yes, it’s certainly the end of my worries about tenure. This’ll put me at the top of my field.”

They were interrupted by the waiter coming over to recite the night’s specials and take their orders. Pam chose filet of sole while Jake went with his favorite, the lamb loin.

“So what’s next?” Jake asked. “I gather you just saw the results today?”

Pam nodded. “Holly had her experiments all lined up to show me. She’s apparently had the results for at least a couple of weeks and has already repeated it several times, so it looks solid.”

“Sounds good.”

“It is good. But it’s odd that she kept the results to herself until now, rather than telling me or the other postdoc working on the project. I can understand why she was excited and wanted to do it all herself, but it’s really been counterproductive. George has wasted time screening more drugs, instead of working with Holly to confirm her results and move the project forward. I wasn’t about to be angry at Holly when she showed me her experiments, but it’s irritating, like she’s gone rogue or something. Now I have to get everyone working together to get things finished up and ready for publication.”

“So are there more experiments that still have to be done?”

“Yes, I want to make this a high impact paper that nobody can question. It has to be as strong as possible when it comes out.”

“But you’re feeling confident the rest of the experiments will work out?”

“You can never be sure in science, but I think we’ve got a good shot. There’s still a lot to do, but the big thing’s nailed. Finding the drug.”

Jake raised his glass again. “To your years of hard work paying off. A lot more exciting than my day.”

“What’ve you been up to?” Pam asked.

“Nothing special. I was in court most of the day testifying in a divorce case.”

“You don’t like those much, do you? Do days like this make you miss being with the FBI?”

Jake smiled. “Well, I’m certainly glad I got to work your divorce. But seriously, being private is a mixed bag. There was a lot I liked about being with the Bureau. The work was interesting, and I felt like I was doing something important. But I wasn’t so good at dealing with all the bureaucracy. In some ways, it was like the hoops you’ve had to jump through at the Langmere.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, like your mid-tenure review. They wanted you to switch your research to publish more papers, rather than take the chance of pushing the envelope to do something important. Which you’ve now done, so they can shove it.”

Pam laughed. “Okay, thanks. But how is that like the Bureau?”

“Just that I sometimes bent the rules a bit too much. Like the time I roughed up a gang member to get the information we needed to pull an undercover cop out of a bad situation. The boss thought I went too far and jeopardized the case.”

“You mean following the rules was more important to them than saving your agent?”

Jake shrugged. “They’d never say it that way, but yes, that’s what it felt like. Being private gives me more flexibility, and I like having only myself to answer to.”

He paused and took a bite of lamb. “But tonight’s not about me. You said it seems odd that your postdoc kept her results from you and the others for a couple of weeks. Do you think something funny’s going on?”

“Is that detective’s intuition? I’m not sure. She said she just wanted to make sure of everything before she told me about it. But it was a strange thing for her to do. Anyway, I’m having a lab meeting tomorrow morning where she’ll present her results to the group and I’m going to get them all back on the same page again. I need them working as a team to verify her experiments and finish up everything we still have to do.”

“Is that going to be a problem?” Jake asked.

“I don’t know. It could be if she’s intent on doing this on her own. But nothing I can’t handle.” Pam reached across the table to take his hand. “Anyway, that’s tomorrow. In the meantime, how about continuing this party at my place?”

Holly put down her coffee and took the power seat at the head of the conference table. This is it. My chance to blow Pam and the rest of them away with a full set of results. All ready for publication. And all mine.

The other members of the lab were already there, just waiting for Pam to arrive and start the meeting. George was sitting three chairs down on Holly’s right, looking like a lumberjack in a red flannel shirt. The idiot, he has no idea what’s coming. And Francisco and Janet next to each other on the opposite side of the table, wearing matching New England Patriots sweatshirts. Couldn’t be more clueless if they tried.

Pam came in at 9:58, carrying a box of Dunkin’ Donuts. “Morning everyone,” she said. “Guess my asking for a special lab meeting got your attention.”

“Sure did,” George replied. “And you even have donuts—must be a real celebration.”

Pam put the box down in front of him and took her usual seat next to the head of the table, on Holly’s right. George grabbed a jelly donut before passing the box across to Francisco.

“You’ll soon find out,” Pam said. “Holly, why don’t you go ahead and let these guys see what you’ve been up to. Folks, let me tell you that you’ll seldom if ever hear anything this exciting again.”

Holly struggled to keep a smug look off her face. “Well, as you all know, George and I have been screening the Langmere chemical library, more than a hundred thousand compounds, hoping we could find a drug that blocks Alzheimer’s plaque formation.”

“It’s amazing you can test that many chemicals,” Janet interrupted.

“That was the big problem we had at the beginning,” George jumped in. “It took a long time for me to get the screening system set up, but now we can work through a thousand compounds a week. Between the two of us, we’ve screened nearly sixty thousand so far.”

“And now we can stop.” Holly dropped her bombshell. “I’ve got one that works!”

George had taken a bite of his donut, and now he almost choked on it, a big gob of jelly shooting out onto his beard and shirt. “You what! You’ve got a compound that works?”

“It looks like she does, George.” Pam laughed and handed him some of the napkins she’d brought in with the donuts.

“My God,” he exclaimed, trying to clean himself up. “After all this time, I can hardly believe it.”

“Holly, why don’t you go ahead and show us the results with your winning compound. Then we can all see what you’re talking about,” Pam said.

Holly took several minutes to run through her carefully prepared presentation. She’d put together several sets of photographs of brain cells treated with the drug. Plus, she’d compiled the results of all her experiments so they could be graphed and subjected to statistical analysis. It was a convincing, high-quality presentation that she knew was in perfect shape.

“As you can see, I’ve repeated these experiments a bunch of times now, and it’s no fluke,” she concluded. “This is the drug we’ve been looking for. It not only blocks plaque formation and brain cell death, but it can even reverse the damage after it’s started.”

George looked like he was about to burst. “So this really could be it! We could be sitting on a treatment for Alzheimer’s here. It’s great Holly, although I wish you’d let me in on it earlier. I could’ve helped with some of this.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” Holly said. “It was just so exciting that I wanted to follow it through and make sure it was right before I said anything.”

She’d worried about George’s reaction, but it seemed okay. He looked a little hurt, but not angry. Maybe he’s too stupid to realize what I’ve done.

“There’s still a lot to do, George, don’t worry,” Pam said. “Holly, you’ve done a great job. These are fabulous results. Let’s open it up for other questions and comments, and then we can talk about what to do next.”

Francisco spoke first. “Did either of you ever see anything like this before?”

“No, all the compounds I tested had no effect on plaque formation. Guess Holly got the lucky number,” George replied.

“What is this stuff?” asked Janet. “Has it been used for anything before?”

“It’s a protein kinase inhibitor that was tried as an anticancer drug,” Holly said. “It didn’t work very well against cancer, but it works for us.”

Pam looked around the table. “Any more questions? If not, I want to emphasize that we need to keep this quiet for now. I don’t want anyone to know what we have until it’s ready for publication, and that includes the chemical library folks. For now, we’ll just call it by its lab code name, 40492. This is a once in a lifetime finding, and we can’t take a chance on anyone stealing our work because word leaked out prematurely. This all has to stay just between us.”

“Really?” Janet asked. “You mean other people would try to steal our results?”

George and Holly both laughed. “You’re still young, Janet. You’ll learn,” Holly said.

“I’m afraid that’s right,” Pam said. “We may not like to think so, but scientists are just people. No better than businessmen, lawyers, or anyone else. If other labs knew what 40492 was, it would be easy for them to do the experiments and claim it was their discovery. Just imagine if a lab like Eric Prescott’s got hold of this. Does everyone understand?”

Everyone nodded.

“Okay, then let’s focus on what we need to do next.” Pam stood up and went to the whiteboard in the front of the room. Holly turned off the projector and notebooks opened.

“Holly’s done a super job documenting the activity of 40492 in the culture system, but we need to replicate her findings in a way that’ll convince everyone there’s no possible bias in the results. I want to nail it by setting up a double-blind experiment so nobody can say we fudged anything.”

Holly had expected something like this. It would be okay as long as it was just a repeat of the work she’d already done. She’d still be the one with the primary data for the paper.

Pam diagrammed her scheme on the board as she spoke. “Holly, I’d like you to give me samples of 40492 and five other compounds that don’t work. Just label them one through six and don’t let me or anyone else know which one is 40492. I’ll recode the samples and give them to George to test. That way, none of us can possibly know which of them is the real drug. Once the results are in, we’ll sort everything out and hopefully see that 40492 did the right thing. Does that make sense to everyone?”

“Nice,” George said, “that should satisfy the skeptics.”

Holly and the others nodded.

“Okay, that’ll do it for the cell culture work,” Pam said. “But I think we should also try to show that 40492 works in mice.”

Holly sat up with a start. This wasn’t good. Doing mouse experiments would add a whole new dimension to the paper. It wouldn’t be all hers anymore.

“Really? I have a whole story in the cell culture system, all ready to publish after the double-blind experiment. It could take a long time to do mouse work. Don’t you think it’d be better to publish what we’ve already got?”

Pam shook her head. “I’ve thought about that, but the paper will be much more powerful if we take it to the next step and show that 40492 works in mice, not just in cell culture. And you told me yesterday that it’s been tried in mice and humans as a cancer drug, so we already know what kind of doses to use. That’ll save a lot of time.”

Holly was about to object further, but George interrupted. “So what exactly are you thinking of doing in mice? And how long will it take?” he asked.

“We’ll use mouse models that have been genetically engineered to develop Alzheimer’s,” Pam said. “After a couple of months, these mice develop plaques in their brains and show cognitive deficiencies, like humans with Alzheimer’s. We’ll have to get a really large batch of mice so we can test several doses of 40492 and try injections at different times, but I think we can get it done in three months or so.”

George smiled. “That’s great. If we can get the mouse work done in just a few months, it’s definitely worth waiting for.”

Crap, Holly thought. Pam’s set on doing this. Somehow I have to regain control.

But Vicky spoke up before Holly had a chance to say more. She’d done a lot of mouse work in her previous job, and now she looked a bit skeptical.

“Genetically engineered mice are great, but they’re also expensive,” Vicky said. “A large-scale experiment with several different doses and injection times is going to take a ton of mice and cost a fortune. Can we afford this kind of thing?”

“You’re absolutely right,” Pam agreed. “I did some rough calculations earlier to figure out what the mice for these experiments will cost. We’re probably talking close to four hundred thousand dollars by the time everything’s said and done. And no, we don’t have that kind of money. But we have to get this done, so I’m prepared to go to Dr. DeSilva, Director of the Langmere, and ask for help. This discovery is as important for the Langmere as it is for us, and I’m sure DeSilva will be prepared to dig up the cash to let us do the work.”

“He’d better,” George added. “We’re going to really put the Langmere on the map with this!”

Pam smiled. “Vicky, I’d like you to be in charge of the mouse work, so please start figuring out the details of what we need and get the experiments planned out. Janet and Francisco, I think it would be a good idea if the two of you also joined in the mouse experiments.”

Francisco said, “Great, I’m delighted to be included.”

“Me, too!” Janet said. “This is really exciting.”

Okay, Holly thought. If this is happening, I need to get in on it.

She raised her hand. “Can I also join in on the mouse work? I haven’t done that kind of experiment before, and I’d like to learn.”

“Sure,” Pam said. “George, would you like to be involved with the mice too?”

“Thanks, but I’ll pass,” he said. “I’m allergic to the little critters. Having them around the lab doesn’t bother me, but I get in trouble if I start handling them.”

Holly smiled to herself. I’m in and George is out. There’ll be a way to take advantage of these mouse experiments.

Enrique DeSilva sighed and leaned back from his desk, wishing the burdensome file in front of him would just go away. Another tenure dossier, filled with a detailed accounting of the successes and failures of one of the Langmere’s junior faculty members. And however he looked at it, the successes were simply too thin. The process of tenure evaluation involved the work of several faculty committees. But the ultimate decision was in his hands and the burden of denying tenure, cutting off the career of a young scientist, was not something he enjoyed. But his duty was to the institution, and he only granted tenure to the very best. This candidate was a good scientist, but he hadn’t made the kind of major discoveries DeSilva wanted to see at the Langmere. He signed off his decision to deny tenure. Not without regret, but satisfied that it was the right thing to do.

The next major item on his agenda was preparing for a meeting with the Langmere Board of Directors that evening, when he wanted to convince the board to launch a major new fundraising campaign. But before that, his calendar said he had a meeting scheduled at three o’clock with Pamela Weller, who’d asked to meet with him about her research. She’d been at the Langmere for a little over four years and had just gone through her mid-tenure review. It didn’t look particularly promising and he wasn’t sure what he could do to help.

• • •

Pam was a nervous wreck as she got into the elevator and pressed the button for the twentieth floor, which was entirely occupied by administrative offices, including the Director’s. Perhaps she should have sent an email instead of asking for this meeting. She’d heard that DeSilva didn’t normally meet with junior faculty, except when he was considering their tenure cases. And those meetings weren’t often pleasant. DeSilva had the reputation of being a tough judge of those under him. Now that she was here, she wondered if requesting this meeting had been such a smart move.

The elevator door opened and she found herself facing an administrative assistant in the Director’s front office. “I have an appointment with Dr. DeSilva,” she said, wishing she were somewhere else.

Pam sat on one of the chairs in the reception area and several minutes passed before she was ushered into the Director’s office. She was struck by its size and opulence. It had to be at least a thousand square feet. Nearly as big as my whole lab. The two outside walls were floor-to-ceiling glass with breathtaking views of downtown Boston. The interior walls were covered with fine-grained oak paneling, with a built-in bookcase on one wall and a substantial piece of Impressionist art on the other. Pam didn’t know much about art, but she was pretty sure it was worth several years of her salary. Or all I need to pay for my mice. Next to it hung a family portrait, showing a much younger DeSilva with his wife and two children. And then there was a portrait of a young woman, probably mid-twenties, formally dressed and playing a cello. DeSilva’s daughter?

The Director sat at an inlaid mahogany desk in the corner between the windows. His silver gray hair was cut stylishly short and he was wearing an expensive-looking navy blue suit. Pam was glad she’d dressed in something besides jeans for the occasion. Wool slacks, silk blouse, and a charcoal blazer. Even the pearl necklace her mother had given her.

DeSilva was focused on a computer screen, so Pam took a deep breath and walked across the oversized oriental carpet, past a large conference table on her right, and a comfortable-looking seating area with an upholstered couch and armchairs on her left. When she reached his desk, DeSilva stood up to greet her and motioned her to a chair across from him.

“What can I do for you?” he asked. “I understand you made this appointment to talk about your research, so I took a look at your mid-tenure review for some background. Is there something in there that you’d like to discuss? I’m happy to help if I can.”

Pam was surprised. Despite what she’d heard, he seemed pleasant enough.

“No, that’s not it,” she said. “We’ve actually made a big jump since then that I wanted to tell you about.”

He looked at her quizzically. “I see.”

“It’s good news. It looks like we’ve found the Alzheimer’s drug we’ve been looking for.”

DeSilva gave her a half-smile but raised his eyebrows skeptically. “Really? That certainly would be big. Tell me about it.”

Pam held up her laptop. “Let me show you our results. It’ll be clearer that way.”

He got up and led Pam to the conference table. “Okay, let’s sit over here so we can both see your data.”

It took Pam only a few minutes to show him Holly’s results with 40492. She felt his skepticism evaporate and excitement mount with each experiment. When she finished, he sat back and smiled.

“This certainly is impressive, thank you for bringing it to me. I’m delighted to see data like this.”

Pam started to relax. “Thank you, Dr. DeSilva. I’m grateful for your interest.”

“Not at all, sharing your discovery is a great pleasure for me. Indeed, seeing something like this happen on my watch is the real reason to be director of an institution like this. And please, I’m Enrique. May I call you Pamela?”

“Oh, thank you, Enrique. My friends call me Pam.”

“Then so will I. Now, let’s talk about your next steps. As impressive as your results are, so far you’ve only shown that the drug works in culture. Are you planning to move on to animal experiments?”

“Yes, of course,” Pam said. “And that’s partly why I needed to talk to you. I’d like to do those experiments as quickly as possible in genetically engineered mice that develop Alzheimer’s. The drug’s already been used in mice, so we have the basic starting information to set it up. But the Alzheimer’s mice are expensive, over two hundred dollars each, and we need to test a lot of different drug doses and delivery schedules. If we bred the mice and did the experiments in several steps we could do the project for maybe forty or fifty thousand, but that would take at least a year, probably more. The alternative is to set up a really big experiment where we test all the variables at once. That would take a lot more mice, but we could probably get the answers in three months or less. The problem is the cost would be somewhere around four hundred thousand, and I can’t afford it. So I came here hoping you’d think this is important enough to go all out. And that you could help fund it.”

DeSilva hesitated before responding. “That’s a lot of money, not the kind of sum I usually pass out to help junior faculty with their research. But I have to agree, what you have could be big. And fortunately, I have the resources to do this. So yes, figure out how to proceed in the best possible way and go for it.”

Pam started to thank him, but DeSilva waved a hand and interrupted.

“No need to thank me. But let’s think further ahead. I’m confident that you’ll get these mouse experiments to work, right?”

“Yes,” Pam replied with a smile. “They’ll work. And as soon as they do, I’ll get a major paper submitted to Nature.”

“Good, that’s the right place for you to publish this. But you’re not forgetting the patent application, are you?”

Actually, Pam hadn’t thought about applying for a patent. She was totally focused on finishing her experiments and publishing the results.

“I’ve never done a patent application before. I was planning to work on that after we got the paper published,” she said.

“It has to be the other way around. In order to protect the Langmere’s rights to this, we need to file a patent application before you submit your paper or even talk about your work in a public lecture. And it’s important that we do this right. Your drug will bring a great deal of money to the Langmere, and a hefty share of that will come back to you as well. Does the compound belong to one of the companies that contributed to our library? Whoever gave it to us will share handsomely in the profit. In fact, if it’s from a pharmaceutical company, we should just ask them for the money you need to finish the project.”

Pam looked at the painting on his wall before answering. She didn’t want to get money from a drug company, and she wasn’t sure how to handle this without offending him.

DeSilva followed her gaze. “Nice, isn’t it?”

Pam smiled. “Beautiful, although I have to confess I don’t know much about art.”

He laughed. “No, I meant the portrait of my daughter. That’s her at a concert with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She’s a cellist.”

“Oh, that is nice!” Pam said.

“Yes, I’m quite proud of her. Anyway, about the compound?”

“Right,” Pam said. “It’s a failed cancer drug that belongs to a pharmaceutical company. But that’s all I know about it because I don’t want anyone to say that whoever owns the compound influenced our work. We have all the information we need for our experiments, and if we don’t identify the drug until the end, nobody can accuse us of bias. So I’ve wanted to be safe, but I’m happy to identify it now if you think we should.”

DeSilva pursed his lips and looked down at the table. Pam wondered if he was balancing the money with the ethics of drug company involvement. Finally he nodded. “Four hundred thousand is a hefty price for avoiding the drug company. But you’re right. It’s worth it to keep this clean.”

Pam smiled to herself at the look of respect in the Director’s eyes. “I’m glad you think we’ve done this right. I don’t have any funding from pharmaceutical companies either. All of my research is supported by government grants, so there aren’t any conflicts of interest. As long as you agree then, we’ll wait until we’re ready to publish before we see what the drug is.”

“Yes, I believe that’s a wise course to follow. So here’s what we’ll do. I’ll establish an open account to cover your mice. I’ll also have our lawyers draft the patent application so you won’t have to spend time on that. Once the paper’s ready, they can reach out to the pharmaceutical company and work with them on the filing. The company will already have patented the compound, but we can patent its new use as an Alzheimer’s drug.”

“Thank you, I hardly know what to say.”

“No need to thank me, this is important for the Langmere as well as for you. You realize this could well be Nobel Prize stuff, don’t you?”

“Well, I guess maybe,” Pam said.

DeSilva smiled at her. “No maybe about it, you know that. Is there any competition in your field that we need to worry about?”

Pam shook her head. “I don’t think so. We’re the only ones who’ve developed the cell culture system for large-scale screening, and that’s given us a huge advantage. Others labs, even the really big ones like Eric Prescott’s, can only test a few compounds at a time in mice.”

“Good,” DeSilva said. “And are you confident that everyone in your lab knows to keep this to themselves? It seems like the only danger would be if the identity of the drug leaked out and one of your competitors tried to steal it.”

“No worries,” Pam assured him. “I emphasized that at lab meeting and everyone’s on board. And anyway, nobody knows what the drug is except the postdoc who did the experiments I showed you.”

Holly hated working with the mice. They smelled disgusting. The mouse rooms were small and cramped, with no windows. And the behavioral tests to tell whether a mouse was developing Alzheimer’s were painfully tedious. She had to repeatedly put each mouse in a maze and measure how fast it learned the quickest way through, rewarded by a bit of food at the end. It took hours to test hundreds of mice and keep track of their individual times. The only good thing was that 40492 seemed to be working.

Fortunately, Janet and Francisco seemed to enjoy putting the mice through their paces. Or maybe they liked working together in the isolation of the testing rooms. Whatever the reason, Holly was happy to leave them to it, while she concentrated on working with Vicky to analyze the results and plan the next steps. More of a leadership role.

They were six weeks into the project when Holly came back to the lab after dinner and was surprised to find Vicky still at her desk. The postdocs and students often worked late, but Vicky usually went home by five or five thirty. Now it was almost seven and she was still here, focused on her computer.

Holly went over and said, “Hey Vicky, what’s up? I’m going downstairs for some coffee. Can I get you anything?”

Vicky looked up and sighed. “That’d be nice, thanks. Maybe a chai latte and a turkey sandwich?”

“Sure. Are you working through dinner?”

“I’m afraid so. Left my husband in charge of the kids tonight.”

“How come?” Holly asked. “You usually work regular hours. I’ve always been impressed with how you can get everything done in an eight-hour day.”

“I know, but I can barely keep up with all the data Janet and Francisco are collecting, even with the help you’ve been giving me. And it’s going to get worse next week, when I start sacrificing mice to look for the formation of Alzheimer’s plaque in their brains. It’ll take more of my time and generate even more results that’ll need to be correlated with the behavioral testing. So I’m trying to stay on top of things, before it gets totally hopeless.”

The perfect opening. Holly smiled sympathetically. “Can I do more to help out? I still owe you for all those extra brain cell cultures you made for me, and I’m pretty good at dealing with data. Would you like me to take over the data analysis? I could get that off your plate if you’d like.”

Vicky’s eyes widened. “Would you really do that? That’d be terrific!”

“No problem, I’d be happy to. Just send me Francisco and Janet’s data, as well as the results on the brains when you get them. I’ll compile everything, graph it all out, and do the statistics. That’ll leave you free to work with the mice and keep planning the next experiments. When the time comes, I’ll have the results all organized for publication. All in nice figures, like I did with my cell culture stuff.”

Vicky was beaming. “That’s the best offer I’ve had all year! I’ll send the files your way. Thanks Holly, I owe you big for this.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Holly said. “We’re a team, right?”

Holly gave herself a mental high five as she walked back to her desk. A team, huh? Now that I’ve got the mouse data, this project’s all mine.

Almost three months had passed since Pam had first seen Holly’s results, and work in the lab couldn’t have gone better. With the extra money DeSilva had provided, the mouse experiments had moved quickly. They weren’t quite finished, but enough of the results were in for Pam to feel confident that 40492 was just as effective in the brains of live animals as it was in the culture dish. Time to begin writing the manuscript.

She felt like opening a bottle of champagne as Holly and George came into her office, carrying pads of paper and their computers. Pam picked up a notebook from her desk and they sat around her conference table. Just like the one in Mary O’Connor’s office, where she’d listened to her mid-tenure review. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

“It looks to me like everything’s going great,” Pam said. “We’ve confirmed the cell culture results multiple times and the double-blind experiment worked perfectly, with an independent sample from the chemical library. And it’s working just as nicely in the mice. Do you guys agree?”

“Absolutely,” Holly said.

George grinned. “Yep, it all seems fine.”

“Okay then, I think we should start drafting the paper,” Pam said. “I see it as having three major sections. The first will describe the screening procedure. Then the second can detail the activity of 40492 in the cell culture system. And the third section will cover the mouse experiments.”

“Sounds great,” Holly said, jotting notes as she spoke.

“Good,” Pam said. “George, do you want to take first crack at writing up the screening procedure? That’s really the heart of the whole project.”

“Can’t wait,” he said.

“And Holly, do you want to write up the section on 40492 in cell culture?” Pam asked.

Holly nodded. “Will do.”

“And then I’ll get the data from Vicky and take care of writing up the mouse experiments,” Pam said.

“I can do that,” Holly said. “I have all the mouse data analyzed and ready for publication.”

“Really?” Pam was surprised. “I thought Vicky was managing those experiments.”

“She was,” Holly said. “But she was overwhelmed handling all the data, so I helped her out with it.”

“I see,” Pam said. “Well, I don’t want her to feel cut out. Let me talk to her and we can all work on that section together.” She sat back and closed her notebook. “This is a truly major advance, a paper you’ll both be proud of. But remember to keep it to yourselves. It’ll probably take another two or three months for the paper to get reviewed and published, so we still can’t let anyone else get wind of it.”

• • •

To Pam’s surprise, Holly knocked on her door just half an hour later. “I’m sorry to bother you, but there’s something further we need to discuss.”

“Of course,” Pam replied. “What’s on your mind?”

“We didn’t talk about authorship. We all know this paper is a big deal. It’ll get you tenure and maybe even a Nobel Prize. But it’s also important to me and George. Whoever gets credit for doing this as first author is going to get a super job offer as a junior faculty member and a big boost in getting their first grants.”

Pam saw where this was heading, and she didn’t like it. An argument between George and Holly about authorship could seriously screw things up. Which was why she’d been careful to address the question when Holly first joined the project.

She motioned Holly to a seat at the conference table and got up to close the door. This was a conversation that needed privacy.

“We talked about authorship when you first started working with George on the project, remember? The plan has always been for George to be first author and you to be second. Then I figured Vicky, Janet, and Francisco would also be co-authors to give them credit for their work on the mouse experiments. And obviously I’ll be last.”

Holly stiffened in her seat. “I’m sorry, but I should be first author on this, not George. Things are different from when we first talked about it. I discovered 40492, and I’m the one who characterized it, including showing that it even works to reverse the damage once it’s started. And I’ve also been the one to work on the mouse experiments, including all the data analysis. All George did was develop the assay, which is just a method, not the big result of the paper.”

Pam swallowed her anger and kept her tone calm and soothing. “It’s certainly true that you found and worked up 40492, and you did a great job of it. But remember, George was working on this project for over two years before you joined in, and his work in developing an assay to screen the chemical library is what made the whole thing possible. Once he had it working, the two of you divided up the compounds arbitrarily. He could just as easily have gotten 40492 in his list instead of you. That’s why I made the authorship order clear from the beginning, so it wouldn’t depend on which of you happened to get the winning compound.”

Holly’s lips tightened and she clenched her fists. “I know we discussed this before, but you can’t change the fact that I’m responsible for all the data with 40492. Sure, it was luck that I got the winning compound instead of George, but you know damn well that a lot of discoveries are based on luck. This is my drug and I deserve to be first author.”

Pam no longer hid her exasperation. “I know you did all the characterization of 40492, but that’s just because you kept the initial results to yourself instead of sharing them with George and me. All that did was slow things up and make him waste time continuing to screen other compounds when it was no longer necessary. And you joined in the mouse experiments only after I asked Vicky to lead the effort. The only reason George didn’t is that he’s allergic to mice. Preventing this kind of argument is exactly why we talked about authorship in the beginning.”

Holly turned red and started to raise her voice. “That just isn’t fair. I’ve done much more than George, and you’re trying to rob me of the credit!”

Pam sighed and hesitated before she responded, forcing herself to calm down. “Look, I know this is upsetting. But the issue is already decided. And don’t forget that being second author on a paper like this is going to give you a big boost. Plus when I write letters of recommendation for you, I’ll make your role perfectly clear. I can guarantee this is going to be a major step forward for your career.”

Holly jumped up and glowered at Pam. “That isn’t the point!” She was shouting now. “The only thing that matters is that I discovered the drug and I deserve credit for it. Not some lousy second authorship.”

She turned and stomped out of the office, slamming the door behind her.

Pam shook her head in disgust. Unbelievable. Maybe she’ll come to her senses if I give her some time.

• • •

Holly was shaking with anger when she got back to the lab. She scribbled a quick note saying she was going to be out for the rest of the day, dropped it on her desk, and left the building. There was no way she wanted to deal any further with Pam today. Pam was intent on stealing her discovery, giving it to George. And she wasn’t going to put up with it. Somehow she had to save the situation.

She headed to one of her favorite places, a small wildlife sanctuary in Brookline, about a mile from the Langmere. There were walking trails and a pond, filled in early June with Canada geese, mallards, and an occasional great blue heron trying to catch its dinner. It was a warm sunny day and this was usually a place where she could find some peace. But not today.

It was obvious that Pam’s mind was set and further argument wasn’t going to get her anywhere. So she had no choice other than taking matters into her own hands.

What Pam had said at lab meeting about other scientists being eager to steal the work was true. If the right person knew what 40492 was, they could jump in to do the experiments in mice and claim credit for the discovery. Especially, if she helped speed things up by telling them everything she knew about doses and timing.

And she knew just who the right person was.

Eric Prescott.

Prescott already had a big drug discovery program going in his lab. And conveniently enough, he was a featured speaker at a Gordon Conference she’d be attending in a couple of weeks.

What would he give to know about 40492? Maybe a well-funded position at the Institute for Advanced Neuroscience? The kind of job I’d get if I had the first authorship I deserve.

She abruptly got up from her bench and started stomping noisily around the pond. A heron got spooked and took flight with a splash.

Pam’s a loser, as bad as George. She doesn’t deserve credit for my work. And I’m not going to sit back and let her screw me over. Not like when I was a grad student.

Holly went back to the bench and used her cell phone to compose an email. She took her time, being careful to make sure it would get his attention without saying too much.

Dear Dr. Prescott,

I’m a postdoc in Pam Weller’s lab, and I’m writing to ask if it would be possible for us to meet at the upcoming Gordon Conference. I’ve recently done a series of promising drug discovery experiments that we’re writing up for Nature and I’d very much appreciate the chance to tell you about my work and get your feedback.

Thanks for considering,

Holly Singer

Eric Prescott lost his appetite for the grilled chicken sandwich he’d just ordered from a Vietnamese food truck near the river across from his lab. He held his cell phone closer to his face and read the email from Holly Singer again.

He was used to receiving requests from postdocs saying they had exciting results and asking to meet with him, more often than not hoping to get a job in his research group. Usually what they had wasn’t all that exciting. But a message like this from someone in Pam Weller’s lab was unsettling.

I’ve got to find out more.

He threw a ten dollar bill on the counter, left the chicken sandwich behind, and made a beeline back to his office. As soon as he was alone, he called Mary O’Connor at the Langmere. She answered on the third ring.

“Hi Mary, it’s Eric Prescott. I’m calling because we’re organizing our seminar series for next year, and I was wondering if you had anything exciting that you’d like to come over and give a talk about?”

He knew she’d be flattered by the invitation, even though there probably wasn’t anything going on in her lab that would be worth presenting.

“Well, we do have some interesting things cooking, but nothing ready for public unveiling at the moment,” O’Connor said. “But I have an idea for you. Why don’t you invite Pam Weller over? I’ve noticed a lot of recent activity in her lab, and she could use the exposure.”

Prescott smiled to himself. This was perfect. Instead of accepting, she’d decided to play the role of generous senior scientist and mentor. Manipulating O’Connor was even easier than he’d anticipated.

“That’s a great idea,” he said. “What’s going on with Pam?”

“I don’t know the details, but I think she’s on to something hot. There’s a whole bunch of mouse work going on in her lab, so our Director must have given her an infusion of additional resources. Smells like something big, although she hasn’t told me what.”

Prescott knew Enrique DeSilva, and he didn’t think the Langmere director would put resources into anyone’s lab unless they had a major hit. This wasn’t good news.

“Good suggestion. I’ll definitely have Pam invited over here for a talk. And let me know how things are going for her. It’s great for a young woman to have hit on an important result, and I’d be delighted to do anything I can to help her along.”

Prescott ended the call and slammed his fist down on the desk. Damn it, it sounds like Weller really is on to something. That idiot O’Connor didn’t know what, but given the main thrust of Weller’s research, it seemed all too likely that she might have stumbled onto an Alzheimer’s drug. A discovery that could leave him out in the cold.

He got up and starting pacing his office. I’m not going to let that woman beat me.

He had two options. He could work behind the scenes to discredit Weller’s work and interfere with publication of her results. He had the connections and the influence, and doing some of that was worthwhile. But it could only go so far. If she had an effective drug, it would eventually be recognized by the scientific community and his efforts to sabotage her work could backfire and make him look bad. So he had to be careful and the gain would be limited.

The other possibility, the way he could win, would be to find out what Weller had and steal it. If he could credibly pretend to have independently discovered an effective drug, he’d share in the glory. But to do that, he had to learn what the drug was.

He thought of calling Weller. He could tell her that he’d heard about her exciting breakthrough and try to get the details from her. Then he could tell her that he’d discovered a similar drug, quickly repeat the experiments, and publish it as his own work.

Timing was a problem, but he could pull it off. The postdoc had said that Weller’s lab was writing their paper now, so it would probably be two or three months before it was published. With his resources, especially his extensive mouse colony, two months would be enough time to get the experiments done. And Donald Moore would be happy to use his stature as a Nobel laureate to get the paper fast-tracked. Published in just a week or two. Close enough to Weller’s paper to get joint credit for the discovery.

But Weller wasn’t as stupid as O’Connor. If she had a drug, she wouldn’t tell him what it was, and trying to pump her for information would only succeed in tipping his hand.

The email from her postdoc offered an intriguing opportunity. Why had she written to him anyway? Weller surely would have told her people to keep something like this confidential. Did the postdoc have some hidden agenda? Something he could use to his advantage?

She’d asked to meet him at the Gordon Conference two weeks from now, and Prescott thought that was a fine idea. Being together with her at a conference would give him plenty of opportunity to explore and hopefully exploit whatever Holly Singer had to offer. He turned to his computer and replied to her email, saying that he was looking forward to meeting her and hearing about her work.

Prescott cruised north on I-93, the top of his sports car down, wind and sun in his face. He was looking forward to delivering his lecture that evening. His keynote address would be the highlight of this summer’s Gordon Conference on Neurodegenerative Disorders. Fitting recognition of his status in the field.

And then there was Holly Singer. Would she be the key to learning about Weller’s results?

He couldn’t ask for a better setting to find out. The Gordon Conferences featured a relaxed and informal atmosphere designed to promote an open exchange of ideas among colleagues. There were lecture sessions in the mornings and evenings, with afternoons left open for the participants to relax and mingle. The perfect opportunity for some discrete conversation.

He pulled off the interstate at the exit for Plymouth, New Hampshire, and drove past the private high school where the conference would take place. Although Gordon Conference participants were encouraged to stay in the student dorms, otherwise empty during the summer, Prescott had little interest in boarding school accommodations. He’d instead booked a room at a luxury country inn on Squam Lake, about a fifteen-minute drive from the conference site. Much more comfortable. And he’d have the flexibility to attend only those parts of the conference he was interested in, rather than being part of a captive audience.

Having separate accommodations at the inn would also give him some privacy for pursuing another of his interests. One of the benefits of being a leading scientist was that the young women at conferences like this were often responsive to his fame and fortune. And willing to make some small sacrifices for his help in advancing their careers. So he liked to have somewhere to go other than a dormitory in case the opportunity arose to pursue more intimate pleasures with some of his admirers. Unfortunately there would probably be little chance for fun and games this week. He had to focus his attention on Holly Singer and learning what Pam Weller was up to.

And finding a way to derail whatever it was.

• • •

Holly arrived at the conference site on a bus together with a couple dozen other participants. She checked in at the registration desk in the main hall and was assigned a double room in one of the dorms. She followed the signs to the right building and wound her way through dimly lit halls until she reached her room on the second floor, where she found her new roommate sitting on one of two uncomfortable-looking beds. The bed squeaked when the woman got up.

“Hi, I’m Jane. A grad student at the University of Chicago.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Holly Singer, a postdoc at the Langmere in Boston.”

“Oh, interesting! My boyfriend just found a job in Boston, and I’m looking for a postdoc there. Whose lab are you in? There are a couple of people at the Langmere I’ve been thinking about.”

May as well take the opportunity to bad-mouth Pam. “I’m in Pam Weller’s lab. But I wouldn’t recommend it. She hasn’t turned out to be much of a mentor. Seems to spend most of her time worrying about getting tenure, which she probably won’t even manage to do. If I were you, I’d find someone more established to work with. I can give you the names of some better people.”

“Thanks, that’d be great. I’ll cross Weller off my list.” Jane looked at her watch. “Do you want to get some dinner? We have about an hour before the lecture tonight.”

Holly followed Jane to the dining hall, where they joined a table that was occupied by several other young people. They turned out to be a mix of graduate students and postdocs from universities around the country, but Holly wasn’t interested in their idle chatter.

Is Prescott here?

Scanning the room, she noticed a table nearby that was taken by several older men. Probably some of the senior scientists attending the conference. One of them might be Prescott. She’d found his picture earlier on the web—yes, there he was. Laughing it up and acting like he enjoyed being the center of attention in a group of good old boys.

Will he be open to my plan? She’d soon find out. She planned to introduce herself after his lecture this evening.

• • •

From the edge of the stage, Prescott scanned the packed lecture hall while the conference organizer gave a flattering and effusive introduction. The second row was filled with young people, probably graduate students or postdocs eager to absorb his wisdom. One of the women, with fair skin and long blond hair, was staring at him intently. Just my type, he thought. Perhaps later.

He smoothed his white linen shirt as the organizer concluded, Prescott thought appropriately, that “Professor Prescott’s contributions have laid the foundation for all of our efforts to understand and eventually treat Alzheimer’s disease. Without Eric’s work, we would be far behind where we are now. His discoveries have set the stage for our conquest of this dread disease, and I believe will be ultimately responsible for its cure. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Eric Prescott!”

Prescott strode to the podium as the audience applauded, shook the organizer’s hand, and thanked him for his very kind invitation and generous introduction. He then held up his hand and grinned broadly at the audience, thanking them for the warm welcome.

He began with the usual joke expected at conferences on Alzheimer’s disease, saying that he was lucky to have remembered he was supposed to be here. The audience gave a half-hearted chuckle, as anticipated, and Prescott moved into his standard performance. He was known as an entertaining and dynamic speaker, and he was up to par this evening. He punctuated the science with humor and wit, keeping the audience entertained, while he summarized current progress in understanding the basis of Alzheimer’s disease. As appropriate for a leader of the field, he talked not only about the work of his own laboratory, but also gave credit to others. He even mentioned Pam Weller’s work, putting it in a context where it appeared to be derivative of his own studies. It was an impressive performance, designed to convince listeners that everything hinged on his discoveries. Just as the organizer had said, Prescott’s work was fundamental to the field, forming the basis for everything else being done in the world of Alzheimer’s research. He concluded to a standing ovation.

Nice. The kind of response I like.

Most of the audience headed off to the bar after Prescott’s talk, but a dozen or so people crowded around with congratulations or questions. He enjoyed the attention and chatted with the well-wishers, gradually working his way through the crowd. When he finished speaking with the last of the group, he saw that the young blond woman he’d noticed in the second row was waiting in the back of the room.

He went over to her and unnecessarily introduced himself. “Hi, I’m Eric Prescott.”

She smiled engagingly. “Yes, I know who you are. I just heard you give an absolutely fabulous talk!”

“Thank you.” He smiled in return. “But you have me at a disadvantage.”

“I’m Holly Singer, a postdoc in Pam Weller’s lab. I sent you an email.”

“Yes, of course. I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”

“I’m flattered that you remember, as busy as you must be.”

“Not at all. I’d love to hear about the work you’re doing with Pam. Why don’t we plan to get together during the afternoon break tomorrow? If you’re not busy after lunch, we could go for a walk and chat.”

“That’d be great,” Holly said.

“Excellent. Let’s meet outside the dining hall at two and we’ll go from there.”

He was pleased at this initial encounter. She was even attractive. Maybe there’d be some fun in this after all. Just as long as it didn’t interfere with using her to find out about Weller’s research.

Prescott decided none of the talks in the morning session were worth his time. The speakers were all young scientists, nobody of real importance. So he spent the morning hiking around Squam Lake, running through possible scenarios for his talk with Holly. The trick would be convincing her to turn on Pam Weller without making himself look unethical. He’d need a delicate hand.

He took the opportunity to avoid conference food and had a steak sandwich for lunch at the inn. Holly was waiting outside the dining hall when he got back to the conference a few minutes before two.

“You’re right on time,” he said.

“Of course, I wasn’t going to keep you waiting. Thanks again for meeting with me.”

“No problem at all. Like I said last night, I’m happy to have the chance to hear about your work. Let’s walk for a bit and find someplace comfortable to talk. I’m free until the poster session at four.”

They headed off along one of the trails leading from the center of the campus, enjoying the warm summer day as they strolled through a forest of pine trees. Prescott chatted lightly and asked her opinions about the lectures this morning. These young women loved it when he pretended they were equals. They wandered away from the other conferees and in about fifteen minutes came to a stream flowing down from the mountains. Prescott sat on a boulder and motioned Holly to sit next to him. Only then did he turn to the topic at hand.

“So, I was intrigued by your email. Tell me about your work.”

She paused for a minute as if she were thinking about her response. Then she gave him a half-smile. “Well, the bottom line is that I’ve found a drug that prevents the formation of Alzheimer’s plaque.”

His stomach knotted, but he kept his voice steady. “That’s pretty exciting alright. How’d you do it?”

“We used the cell culture system Pam developed when she was a postdoc to screen the compounds in the Langmere chemical library. And I found one that worked.”

“Great! But of course it’s a long way from that to a drug.”

“Yes, but this stuff can also reverse the early stages of plaque formation and brain cell death once the process has started. Plus, we’ve been able to show that it works in mice, not just in culture. And again, it works even once the disease has reached its early stages. It’s already been tested as a cancer drug, so it’s even ready to develop for clinical use.”

“That sounds amazing. Pam must be pretty excited, too.”

“Oh, she is. Once I showed her my data, Pam put the whole lab on it. Everything’s done now and we’re writing up the paper.”

Prescott’s heart sank. This was a paper that would bring Weller to unquestioned primacy in the field, with his own work shrinking in importance. I need to get the drug and move fast.

But why was Holly telling him this? She didn’t seem stupid and surely Weller would have told her lab group to keep quiet until the paper was published. Was she after something?

“Holly, this is terrific. You’ve discovered the Holy Grail of Alzheimer’s research. And for a young person like you to have made such a discovery is really super. You’re off to an amazing career, and I’m going to look forward to watching it develop.”

He was surprised to see her turn and look over at a small woodpecker working away on one of the nearby trees. When she looked back at him, her expression was serious.

“Thanks, I’m happy you feel that way. I just wish Pam did.”

“What do you mean? Pam’s got to be thrilled with this.”

“She is, but she’s screwing me on the paper. She’s making me second author, so the other postdoc in the lab is going to get the major credit.”

“What? Why would she do that?”

Holly’s face flushed. “I don’t know, it doesn’t make any sense. We worked together on the library screening, and Pam said I was just lucky to have found the active compound instead of him. Maybe that’s true, but I’m still the one who found it and did the experiments to prove it works. And now Pam’s robbing me of the credit for my discovery just because George, that’s his name, has been there longer.”

There has to be more to it than that, Prescott thought. Pam Weller’s no fool and there’s probably a good reason for whatever decision about authorship she made. But no matter, this was the crack in the armor he might be able to exploit. And it almost seemed as if Holly was setting him up to do just that. He wondered who was manipulating whom.

“That’s terrible. I mean, you’re right, you discovered this compound and the credit should be yours. This sounds totally unfair and you have every right to be furious. Maybe I can help you do something to fix it.”

Her eyes were moist as she smiled faintly at him. “Thank you, having your support would mean a lot.”

He reached out and took her hand. “I just hope I can help. Do the people who made the drug know this is actually your work? Maybe we can get them involved. If it’s from a pharmaceutical company, it’ll be important to them that there’s no dispute about the patent. What is this stuff, anyway?”

Her expression became guarded and he could tell she wasn’t ready to give that up. She’s definitely after something.

“We just know it by my code name, 40492. Pam didn’t want anyone to know what it was until all our experiments are finished. I looked up its properties earlier, but I’d have to go back to my spreadsheet to see what it really is.”

“You mean Pam doesn’t know either?”

“No, she told me to keep it to myself for now. She didn’t want anyone to be able to say she was influenced by the pharmaceutical company that made it.”

“I see, that’s interesting. Well, that leaves out going to whoever made the drug for the moment, but we can think about that when you identify it in order to write the paper.”

He looked at his watch. “It’s three thirty already. I have to be back at four because I’m supposed to judge the poster session, and then I have to chair the lecture session after dinner. But I need some time to think about this anyway. I’d like to figure out a way of fixing this for you, of getting you the credit you deserve. How about having dinner with me tomorrow night and we can put our heads together and see if we can come up with a plan?”

“I’d love to.”

“Great. I’m staying at an inn about fifteen minutes away. It’s a nice place to have dinner. We can go there and be able to talk privately. I could pick you up in the parking lot at six thirty, after the others have gone in to the dining hall. Would that work?”

“That sounds really nice.”

“Perfect, I’ll see you then. Now why don’t you head back first and I’ll follow in a few minutes. It’s probably best if we’re not seen together, just so word doesn’t get back to Pam.”

Prescott watched her walk down the trail, her shapely rear end accentuated by the light cotton shorts. He was excited by the prospect of being with her tomorrow night. She seemed grateful for his help, so maybe dinner would be followed by other pleasures. But more important, he was beginning to get a glimmer of an idea. A way to discredit Weller as well as steal her compound. He had until tomorrow to work this out.

Holly paced back and forth along the edge of the parking lot. He’d taken the bait yesterday, but tonight would be the real test. Were his ethics loose enough to trade a job at the Institute for Advanced Neuroscience for the identity of 40492? It was reassuring that Pam didn’t trust him. She’d specifically mentioned Prescott as someone she feared would steal their results. And it didn’t hurt that he seemed to be attracted to her. It would be easy to keep him interested. Not even a painful task. He was a good-looking guy, and she’d been on her own since breaking up with Dave almost a year ago. She carried a small bag with her, containing her laptop as well as a change of clothes, her toothbrush, and a few other personal items. She planned for their evening together to extend well beyond dinner.

An expensive-looking sports car pulled into the lot and stopped in front of her. Prescott said, “Hello there, it’s good to see you again.”

She got in. “It’s good to see you too. I’ve been looking forward to this all day.”

“Me, too. What’s in the bag? Do you always bring a suitcase to dinner?”

She laughed. “Well, not really a suitcase. I brought my laptop in case you wanted to have a look at some of my data, and just a couple of other things.”

“Ah, that sounds good. But let’s relax and have a nice dinner first. It’s been a long day of talking science and I could use a break.”

He pulled into the inn’s parking lot and they went directly to the main dining room, where they were seated at a window table with fresh flowers and a view of the spacious grounds. When the waiter came for their drink orders, Prescott suggested a glass of champagne to celebrate their new friendship.

He raised his glass in a toast. “To you, Holly. And to getting you the credit you deserve.”

They clinked glasses and perused the menu, deciding they’d both have the roast duck. He offered her the wine list and she selected an expensive Pinot Noir, realizing she didn’t have to worry about the cost.

“Good choice,” he agreed. “One of my favorites and perfect with the duck. Well, as I said yesterday, I’ve been thinking about your situation and what we can do to straighten this out. And I’ve come up with an idea that I’ll run by you later. But first, tell me where you’d like your career to go from here.”

Holly thought about her response while their dinners were served. This was her chance to let him know she wanted a job at his institute.

“It’s all gotten complicated because of the way Pam’s treated me. She’d like me to stay in her lab another year or two. George is going to look for a faculty position, so he’ll be leaving and I’ll have the lead role in figuring out how 40492 works and starting to see it through to clinical trials. And that’d be fine if she wasn’t screwing me on this paper. But now I want to get out and move on to a faculty position of my own, where I can do the follow-up work on 40492 myself. If I got the credit I deserve, I think I’d be a prime candidate for a job at a top place where I’d have the resources to really develop my career.”

“I can see why you want to move on after what Pam’s done. And you’re right, if you were recognized as first author, any neuroscience institution in the world would give you a job offer that’d make your head spin.”

“Even the Institute for Advanced Neuroscience? I’d love to be able to work with you on this. Pam wouldn’t have a chance against the two of us.”

Prescott’s eyes widened and his nose seemed to twitch.

Not the reaction she’d expected. Doesn’t he think I’m good enough?

But then he smiled and raised his glass. “That’d be fabulous. But first we have to get you the credit for your discovery.”

Holly felt a wave of relief and reached across the table to touch his hand. “Thank you for being willing to help. Especially since we hardly know each other.”

He held her hand for a moment. “I know we’ve just met, but I can’t sit by and let Pam treat you like this. As a senior person in the field, it wouldn’t be right for me to allow it. And I think I know how to deal with her.”

They finished the duck and declined coffee or dessert. Prescott signed for the meal.

“Do you want to go up to my suite? I have a conference area so you can show me the data on your laptop and I can tell you what I’m thinking.”

“Perfect.” She gave him her warmest smile.

The door to the suite led to a living area with a conference table in front of a large picture window. Prescott went over to open the curtains.

He was pretty close to where she wanted him. He’d even come up with a scheme on his own. But he hadn’t broached anything unethical. Better to have him fully hooked before talking plans.

She pulled off her blouse and moved into his arms.

• • •

Holly opened her eyes to sunlight streaming in through the window. Prescott was still asleep in the four-poster canopy bed, snoring lightly. He’ll be softened up now. Time for business.

She turned over to kiss him and Prescott stirred. “Mm,” he said, kissing her back. “I trust you found the accommodations here more comfortable than a bunk bed at the boarding school.”

“Yes.” She wriggled contentedly. “I like it here, thank you for inviting me.”

“My pleasure, madam. We didn’t get much work done last night, did we? Maybe we can spend some time talking this morning, unless you’re in a hurry to get back to the conference?”

“Nope, I’m happy right here.”

“Super. Why don’t I order us some coffee and pastries then? Do you need anything else? I’m sure they could come up with an extra toothbrush or a robe or whatever.”

She grinned. “That sounds perfect for breakfast, but I brought toiletries and a change of clothes along with my laptop.”

“So you came prepared.”

“Prepared and hopeful.” She rolled out of bed. “I’ll go freshen up a bit.”

Holly rehearsed her approach in the shower. Proposing the plan would be dangerous. There was always the risk of his turning against her and telling Pam. She’d have to bring him along slowly. Listen to his ideas first and be sure he was ready before saying too much.

She came out of the bathroom to find orange juice, a basket of pastries, and a pot of coffee already set out on the deck. Prescott was waiting for her, gazing at the mountains in the background, the sun still burning off the morning mist.

She sat close to him and poured a cup of coffee. “So what’s the plan you were going to tell me about last night? Before I got carried away and distracted you.”

He shifted to face her. “I think I have a way to deal with Pam to make things right. I have to warn you that this is going to sound a little dirty. I’ll understand if you don’t want to do it, but it’s the only way I can come up with to make sure you get full credit for your discovery. So let me talk through it and promise to think about it, okay?”

“I’m all ears,” she said. Dirty sounds like a good start.

“The key is something you told me the other day. If I understood correctly, you’re the only one who can identify the active compound. Everyone else just knows it by a code number in your lab notes. Even Pam, right?”

“That’s right,” Holly said. “She wanted to protect herself from any accusations of drug company involvement.”

Prescott snorted sarcastically. “Well, she’s outsmarted herself. What she’s actually done is give us the chance to take over the drug.”

Holly smiled coyly. “You mean if I tell you what it is, so you can do the experiments and claim you’ve discovered it on your own? Would that get me a job at the Institute for Advanced Neuroscience?”

He chuckled and reached out to take her hand. “Good, we’re on the same wavelength. Getting you a job at the Institute is definitely part of the plan, but I think we can do even better. You said you’re in the process of writing your paper with Pam, so I’ll have to hustle to catch up. But if you tell me what the drug is and how to do the key experiments, I’ll have time to get a paper out around the same time as Pam’s. That’ll be fine for me to claim that I discovered the drug independently. And I can certainly offer you a job afterward. But it still doesn’t get you the first authorship you deserve.”

He’s got it. And maybe he has something even better in mind.

“What are you thinking then?” she asked.

“Don’t you see, we can trick Pam into publishing the wrong drug! Then I can bring you over to my lab and we can rediscover the active compound together. And you’ll get full credit as first author.”

She sat bolt upright, spilling some of her coffee. “That sounds great. But can we really do it?”

He grinned. “Oh, I think so. And it’ll destroy Pam’s career, which is just what she deserves for the way she’s treated you.”

She hadn’t dared hope he’d be this ruthless. I like this guy.

“I won’t argue with that,” she said. “What do we need to do?”

“The first step is for you to tell me what the active compound is. But then I want you to change your records so that the compound identified as 40492 in your notes is something different, a compound with no activity in your screen. Then, when Pam asks you to identify 40492 for publication, you’ll give her the name of a compound that actually doesn’t work, instead of the good stuff.”

Holly frowned. Had he really thought this through? There were two problems. Big ones. May as well tackle the most obvious first.

“That’s not going to work,” she said. “The paper will be bullshit, and I’ll wind up being held responsible.”

“No, we’re not going to let that happen. When the paper turns out to be wrong, there’ll be an investigation. And we’ll plant a scenario that lays the blame on Pam for faking the results. You’ll look like an innocent victim of her wrongdoing.”

“But how could she be responsible? I did the experiments with 40492, not Pam. If the paper’s wrong, people are going to blame me for it.”

“The story will be that she faked the results by sneaking into the lab at night and substituting cultures of healthy cells for those that were supposed to have been treated with the drug. She sabotaged your experiments first, and then followed through on other experiments in the lab, including the mouse work.”

“That sounds awfully complicated. How are we going to make people believe that Pam snuck in and tampered with all those experiments? She’s just going to deny it, of course.”

“It’s no more complicated than several other famous cases of fraud. Do you remember the case at Cornell, where a student faked an intricate series of experiments with radioactive gels to make up a whole new theory of cancer? Or the stem cell scandal that led one of the researchers to commit suicide?”

“I guess you’re right, this wouldn’t be any crazier than those cases. But still, how are we going to prove that Pam did it? Since I did the experiments with 40492, I’m the logical one to blame.”

Prescott’s eyes were gleaming as he squeezed her hand. “You told me that she organized a double-blind experiment to make sure the results couldn’t be faked, right? We’re going to turn that against her. How exactly did it work?”

“I gave Pam coded samples of 40492 and five other compounds. Then she recoded them and gave them to George to test. We broke the code together at the end, when we saw the results.”

Prescott nodded. “Makes sense, that’s the way I would have set it up myself. But here’s the thing. When you tell your story during the investigation, you’re going to remember that it didn’t quite happen like that.”

Holly listened as he took her through the details, becoming convinced as he talked. Finally, she shook her head and smiled. “You’re right, I can make that story work. The double-blind experiment exonerates me, and we’ll use it to hang her. I like it!”

He gave her a satisfied smile. “It’ll look like she was trying to be too smart for her own good.”

She snickered. “It actually could have happened like that. You have quite an imagination.”

“Thanks. So here’s how it’ll play out. Pretty soon after the paper gets published people will find that they can’t repeat the results. When that starts to become public, I’ll make sure that rumors of fraud get planted over at the Langmere. There’ll be an investigation that winds up finding Pam guilty. It’ll be the end of her career, and that’s just what she deserves. After that, I’ll offer you a job, and then you and I will rediscover the real drug together.”

This was even better than she’d imagined. She’d get credit for her discovery as well as the job she wanted. But there was still problem number two.

How do I know he’ll keep his word?

“Why do we have to wait that long for you to offer me the job? I’m ready to get out of her lab as soon as possible.”

“I know, but you’ll have to be patient. We have to wait until you’re called to testify during the fraud investigation. Once that’s done, your work at the Langmere will be finished and Pam will be left holding the bag. My offering you a job at that point will tell the world that I agree with the investigation and believe your story. But it’ll look fishy if I do it before then.”

“Okay, that makes sense.” She sighed. “At least it’ll be worth waiting for.”

“Then let’s do it. Can you access your lab data and the chemical library from here?”

Holly paused and looked out at the mountains. This might be risky. But she had to make her play. “Sure,” she said. “But if I give you the name of the compound now, can you give me a letter with the job offer?”

Prescott scowled at her. “What do you mean? I just explained that the job offer needs to wait until you testify to Pam’s fraud.”

“Of course, and I don’t mean to be offensive. But without the job offer, what guarantee do I have that you’ll come through once I give you the name of the drug?”

Prescott rose up in his chair, his face turning red, and his nostrils flaring. She recoiled. This was a different Prescott. Had she gone too far?

But then he sat back and laughed. “I guess I can’t be offended and say you should trust me when we’re doing something like this, can I? Okay, let’s try it this way. Go ahead and swap the compounds so the fraud gets going, but keep the identity of the drug to yourself for now. You can wait and give me the name of the compound after you testify, and I’ll give you a letter with the job offer at the same time. After all, there won’t be any rush for us to rediscover the drug once Pam’s been dealt with.”

Holly let out her breath. “That’ll work, thanks for understanding. I’ll get my laptop and we can switch the compounds now.”

She got up and brought her computer out to the deck.

“I told Pam that 40492 was a failed cancer drug, so I’ll have to search the chemical library for another one to substitute.”

She let him watch while she logged into the library and scanned the drug descriptions.

“Okay, here’s one. TP735.3480.”

“Hang on, we still need to know a little more about the real drug,” Prescott said. “I don’t have Pam’s system for screening large numbers of compounds going. We can only test a small number of drugs that we consider likely candidates, so I’ll need some cover story for why I picked it in the first place.”

Holly winked at him. “I already thought about that. The real drug is a low-level protein kinase inhibitor and there are a couple of papers saying that it helps brain cells survive treatment with chemical toxins. It didn’t have very strong activity, but you could say that was enough to get you interested.”

“Not bad,” he said. “And how am I supposed to get it to test in the first place? I don’t have access to your chemical library.”

“No problem, it’s commercially available from the standard chemical companies.”

He smiled. “I’m impressed, you’ve thought this through. Okay, let’s do it.”

“Fine,” she said. “If you’ll give me some privacy, I’ll pull up my spreadsheet and substitute TP for the real 40492.”

He shook his head and laughed. “Alright, I’ll be inside.”

Holly watched him go. Then she pulled up the lab spreadsheet with the drug code numbers and searched for 40492. It corresponded to the library compound ZX891.345, which she carefully noted on a piece of paper. Then she deleted ZX891.345 from the spreadsheet and entered TP735.3480 in its place.

“Okay, you can come back out,” she called.

“Did you do it?”

“Yes, look.” She showed him the spreadsheet. “The chemical library names are complicated, so I just coded all the drugs by numbers. Here’s 40492. And you can see it now corresponds to TP735.3480, also known as aneurinide. Which is what Pam will publish. Only I know what the real stuff is. And you will too, soon enough.”

He nodded. “Step one accomplished.”

Holly sat back satisfied. And I’ve protected myself.

“So what do we do now?” she asked. “Lie low until the paper comes out?”

“Basically, yes. We’ll have to be careful for the next few months, until this breaks. There can’t be any trace of contact between us before the accusations of fraud surface and the investigation’s finished.”

That was a little unsettling. She was about to risk her career by feeding Pam the wrong compound. She needed to maintain contact and be sure he remained committed to her.

“You mean we can’t see each other at all?” she asked. “What if something comes up during the investigation?”

“No, we’ll need to keep in touch. We’ll just have to be careful. Do you have a private email address or do you use the Langmere email?”

“Langmere.”

“That’s one thing we need to change then. They have access to all emails coming through their server, so don’t send me anything more from that account. Hang on a second; I have a present for you.”

He went inside and came back with a cell phone. “Use this to communicate with me instead of email or your regular phone. It’s a prepaid phone so there won’t be any record of exchanges between us. I have one too, and I’ve already put my contact info into yours.”

She took the phone and smiled. “Sounds good.”

“We’ll also have to be careful not to be seen in public together, but I’ll be able to get to your place without being seen when we need to meet.”

“Okay, that’ll work. So what now?”

“Now we need to get you back to the conference. It ends tomorrow and you should be there acting like a normal participant for the rest of it. Let’s touch base back in Boston after you give Pam the wrong compound.”

Prescott got up and Holly watched him go back inside. She’d gotten what she was after, even more than she’d hoped for.

She just couldn’t quite get that glimpse of his anger out of her mind.

Pam got off the elevator at the twentieth floor stop for the Director’s office and smiled at his administrative assistant. This visit was very different from the first time she’d been here. Rather than having to ask for money, she was prepared to show him the product of her efforts. A semifinal draft of the manuscript, ready to submit for publication as soon as Holly got back from New Hampshire, and they identified the active drug from her lab notes.

The assistant showed her in and DeSilva got up from his desk to greet her. He led her to the couch in the informal area of his office and took a seat across from her in one of the upholstered chairs. A china tea service and a plate of cookies were waiting on the coffee table between them.

“Everything’s fallen into place beautifully,” Pam said. “The mouse experiments have given the same results as the cell culture system. We’ve repeated it all several times now and the data are clear.” She handed him the manuscript. “The paper is all written up and the lawyers say the patent application is ready to go. We’re just waiting for Holly to get back from a Gordon Conference to finish it off.”

He flipped through the manuscript, pausing to look carefully at the mouse results. “This is excellent, Pam. Very impressive data.”

“Thank you,” she said. “And thank you again for your generous support. We were only able to do this so quickly because of your help financing the mouse work.”

“My pleasure. Very much my pleasure to help both you and the Langmere with this. So when will you submit the paper?”

“Next week, as soon as Holly’s back.”

DeSilva nodded. “Good. Let me know as soon as you get the reviews back from the journal. I don’t expect any problems, but if anything does come up I’ll be happy to call the editor. He’s a good friend and he’ll be sure your paper is reviewed fairly and then published with appropriate fanfare. I’ll also arrange a press release on the day of publication, so we can be sure that everyone knows of your discovery. You should expect to receive a great many invitations to give lectures over the next few months, and you should accept as many as possible. It’s important for you to present your work widely, both in this country and abroad. I’ll also be sure that one of the invitations you receive will be to talk in Stockholm at the Karolinska Institute, and you know the importance of that.”

Pam sat bolt upright. Speaking at the Karolinska was like an audition for the Nobel. “I do, thank you.”

“There’s no need to thank me. We’re partners, and what’s good for you is good for the Langmere.”

“I understand,” she said. “But I still appreciate the support you’re giving me.”

DeSilva paused to take a sip of tea and reach for a cookie.

“There’s one more thing then,” he said. “You’ll receive many offers for jobs at other places, and I’m sure some will be very attractive. I want to be sure you feel that this is your home and don’t even consider moving. So please rest assured that I’ll provide anything you need or want. And I’ll immediately start the process to make you a tenured professor. You know the first stage is to appoint a committee of senior faculty to evaluate your case, so to make sure all goes smoothly I’ll ask Mary O’Connor to serve as chair. She’s your friend, right?”

Pam was stunned. Her tenure case wouldn’t normally be due to start for another two years. But her dream of a permanent position at the Langmere, a tenured professorship, was about to come true. With O’Connor as chair of her committee and DeSilva behind her, tenure would be in the bag.

Her heart swelled. “Yes, Mary is a mentor to me. She’d be perfect to chair my committee.”

“Excellent,” DeSilva said. “I’ll work closely with her to make sure nothing goes wrong. It’s a lot of work though, so I want to be sure you’re committed to staying here if we go ahead. Can I count on that?”

“Absolutely, I’d like nothing better.”

“Then I’ll get this all started.” He got up and shook her hand. “Congratulations, Pam, soon to be Professor Weller. You can be proud of a most noteworthy accomplishment. And you can rest assured that I’ll help you reap the rewards of your success.”

Holly’s throat tightened as she reached out to knock on Pam’s door. The point of no return. If things go wrong, my career’s over.

She gripped the laptop to keep her hands from shaking as she took a seat at Pam’s conference table. Can I really count on Prescott? Probably only as long as he needs me. But he wants this to work as much as I do. If not more.

Still, maybe it was worth giving Pam one last chance. Before crossing the line.

“I’m sorry I got so upset when we talked about the authorship before,” Holly said. “I know I got too emotional. But have you thought any more about it? I still feel like I should be first.”

Pam shook her head. “I’m sorry. I understand how you feel and I know you’re disappointed. But it was settled a long time ago.”

Holly nodded and forced herself to give Pam a half-smile. This is it then. Your own damn fault. “Alright, I get it. I won’t argue about it anymore.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” Pam said. “It’ll be better for everyone to put the authorship question behind us and move forward. So what do you think of the manuscript? Any problems?”

“No, it looks fine to me.”

“Great. Then all we need is to identify your compound 40492. Is the information on your computer?”

“Yes, everything is here.” Holly clenched her jaw as she moved her laptop so Pam could see what she was doing. Then she pulled up the spreadsheet and scrolled down to 40492. Her stomach fluttered, but she felt a sense of determination. Pam had left her no choice.

“Here it is. The library compound TP735.3480. Aneurinide.”

“That’s it, then,” Pam said. “We’ll just put the compound’s name and structure in the paper, and we’re good to go. I’ll send it off to Nature this afternoon.”

Holly’s heart was pounding as she left Pam’s office. She texted Prescott as soon as she got back to her desk.

Just met with Pam. It’s done!

His reply came quickly.

Congratulations! How about I come over for a drink tonight?

• • •

Prescott took a rideshare to within a few blocks of Holly’s apartment, then got out and walked the rest of the way, carrying a bottle of champagne for tonight’s celebration. Had she really pulled it off? He had to make sure. If she was telling the truth, she had no way out. Confessing to Pam would ruin her career. He just needed to keep the job in his lab dangling like a carrot in front of her until he had the real drug. After that she’d just be a liability. One he could do without.

He rang the doorbell and Holly buzzed him in. He climbed the stairs to her apartment on the third floor of a two-family house. A brightly patterned rug covered the hardwood floor in the living room, which boasted a comfortable looking white couch, two arm chairs, a coffee table, and a large screen TV. There was a small dining area off the kitchen, with the clutter of papers on the dining table indicating that it did double duty as her desk. A couple of Monet prints hung from the walls and exposed rafter ceilings made the living and dining areas look more spacious than a typical one-bedroom apartment. Not bad for a girl on a postdoc’s salary.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You’ve done it.”

“There was no problem at all. Pam fell for it without a second thought. She already submitted the paper this afternoon.”

“Do you have a copy?” he asked.

“Sure.” She opened a file on her laptop and moved the computer over to him. He scanned through it to find the name of the drug. Aneurinide.

He smiled. “Looks good. Now we just have to sit back and wait for the roof to fall in on her.”

“Yep. I almost feel a little sorry for her, even though I’m going to enjoy watching her get what she deserves.”

Prescott snorted. “She doesn’t deserve your sympathy. Not after what she tried to do to you.”

He opened the champagne and poured two glasses.

“To you. Today’s winner! Now we just have to get you ready for your testimony to the investigation committee.”

“And then my new job, right?”

He raised his glass again. “Right. And our joint discovery of the real 40492.”

Pam sat on the deck of her condo, the bright August sun bouncing off the Charles River, and scanned the final published version of her paper with a warm glow of satisfaction. Nature had been quick. Published online last night, less than two months after it was submitted. Her eyes teared up as she skimmed through it. It all looks good.

She turned to the journal’s editorial just as Jake came back from his foray to the corner bakery.

“Here we go,” he said. “Breakfast and some interesting newspapers.”

He sat down next to her and she moved the laptop over so he could see. “Look at this. The final published version.”

He leaned over and kissed her. “Wonderful! Does everything look okay?”

She squeezed his hand. “Perfect. Just what I’ve been waiting for.”

“You’re all over the newspapers too, you know. Here’s what I found at the newsstand.”

He put copies of USA Today, the Boston Globe, and the New York Times on the table. Pam recognized excerpts from the Langmere press release, run under headlines like “Revolutionary Progress in Alzheimer’s Disease” and “Treatment for Alzheimer’s on the Horizon.” At least most of what they wrote was reasonably accurate, if a bit overly dramatic. The Times reporter in particular had gone beyond the press release and asked several other scientists, identified as leaders in Alzheimer’s research, for their comments on the paper. Professor Eric Prescott of the Institute for Advanced Neuroscience was quoted as having said, “These findings look extremely promising. If the work is reproducible, it would represent a quantum leap forward in our fight against Alzheimer’s.”

Pam frowned. It was poor taste for Prescott to have raised the question of reproducibility in his comments, almost implying that he didn’t trust her work. But no matter. Now that the paper was published and aneurinide would be made available to others in the field, reproducing the results wouldn’t be a problem.

• • •

Holly struggled to maintain her balance as the train lurched and other hot and sweaty subway passengers jostled against her. She hated the subway. An inhuman mode of transportation, especially on a hot and humid August evening. But Prescott had insisted that she take public transportation so they wouldn’t be seen together when he suggested going out to dinner to celebrate the paper’s publication.

To avoid the risk of running into anyone they knew in town, he chose a historic restaurant in Sudbury, some twenty-five miles west of Boston. The Wayside Inn, famous as the setting for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.” She’d never been there, but Prescott said it would be a good place for a celebration dinner. And one that was unlikely to be visited by any of their Boston colleagues on a Wednesday night.

She finally got off the subway at the Riverside station in Newton and got a cab for the rest of the trip. She couldn’t believe it, but the damn cab’s air conditioning wasn’t working, at least not well enough to notice. The trip took almost three hours and it was after eight when she arrived at the restaurant, haggard and drenched with sweat.

She found Prescott waiting in the lounge. All cool and comfortable. No subway for him.

“You’re all flushed and sweaty,” he said. “Tough trip?”

“Long and hot, and the stupid cab wasn’t even air conditioned. I could use a drink.”

They went into the dining room and he looked around.

“Good,” he said. “Nobody that I recognize.”

They settled into a corner table near the unused fireplace and ordered gin and tonics from a waiter in Colonial dress. Holly sat back and stopped sweating as she sipped her drink.

“To your first paper in Nature.” Prescott raised his glass with a wry smile.

“Thanks. Too bad it’s a fake.”

“Well, not really a fake. It’s all true except for the name of the drug. And you’ll rediscover the real one soon enough.”

The waiter circled back and they decided to start with oysters on the half shell, with Holly then choosing a lobster casserole and Prescott opting for baked scrod, accompanied by a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.

Holly dipped an oyster in cocktail sauce. “I have to say, it’s really weird being in Pam’s lab now. And it’s going to get worse by the day now that this is published. I wish I could get out and move over to your group right away.”

“I’m sorry, I can imagine how hard this must be for you. But I’m afraid you’re going to have to be patient until everything blows up. Moving too early would make it look like you knew trouble was coming.”

Holly nodded. “I know, it’s just hard being around her and trying to behave normally when I know what’s going to happen.”

“You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”

Holly took a swallow of wine. “No, it’s not that. Don’t worry, no regrets on my part. She has it coming. It’s just that the playacting is tough.”

Prescott smiled. “Good, you had me worried there for a minute. Well, you should enjoy the fact that she’ll be spending a lot of time traveling. She’s going to be asked to give lectures all over the place and she’ll be on the road as much as she’ll be in Boston.”

“That’s interesting. I’ll have to keep track of her travel schedule so that experiments don’t work when she’s away.”

“Ah, good thinking. Will that be a problem?”

Holly grinned. “I don’t think so. All I’ll have to do is ask and she’ll be happy to brag about all the places she’s going, the stupid bitch.”

She finished her lobster and raised the last of her wine in a toast. “To conspirators.”

“To conspirators.” Prescott clinked her glass. “And you know, when you get her travel schedule, why don’t you pass it along to me as well. It’ll help me decide where it would be most effective to plant rumors about problems with her data.”

He looked at his watch. “It’s after ten and I hate to make you sneak around in another cab and the subway to get home at this hour. It’ll be getting on to eleven before we get you home, even if I drive you to Brookline. The streets should be clear by then, don’t you think?”

“Yes, thanks. A ride sounds good. My neighbors will be in bed by then, and I’ve had enough of trains and cabs for one day.”

The ride in Prescott’s sports car, with the top down and air conditioner on, was lots better than the subway trip. The street was deserted when he pulled over to the curb opposite her apartment and Holly got out. The only sign of life was a dog barking in a yard a few houses down.

Prescott fidgeted with the antique glass paperweight on his desk as he scanned the text that had just come in from Holly. Pam’s travel schedule. The woman hasn’t stopped running around for two months now. Like she’s some kind of rock star. Lectures, international conferences. Invitations that should have gone to me. Knowing this would happen didn’t make it any easier.

At least Holly’s lists provided a handy guide to where it would be useful for him to sow the seeds of doubt. Especially when combined with the information he’d fed Mary O’Connor. She’d asked him to suggest people to serve as reviewers for Pam’s tenure case. He’d been happy to oblige with the names of half a dozen of his friends who were leaders in the field. And who he’d be able to contact to make sure they heard rumors that Pam’s work wasn’t reproducible.

He got up and made an espresso at the machine next to his desk. Then he closed his office door, sat back down, and called his friend Henry Strickland at Princeton. Time to seed the rumor mill. He explained that he was organizing next year’s International Alzheimer’s Conference in Berlin and invited Strickland to be on the program committee.

“Of course,” Strickland replied. “I’d love to do that. Happy to accept.”

“Excellent, having you involved will be a big help. Do you have any immediate thoughts on who would be good for the major speaking slots? I apologize for pressuring you, but I’m working on a grant to get funding for the conference and I need to put down some preliminary ideas for the program.”

Strickland laughed. “Right, nothing like short notice. Well, the obvious person for the keynote is Pam Weller. In fact, she’s giving a seminar here next week so I could ask her about it. She’s doing a ton of traveling, so it might be good to get it on her schedule.”

Prescott let a trace of concern show in his voice. “She is the obvious person, you’re right. But you know, I’ve started to hear rumors that there are problems with her paper.”

Strickland sounded surprised. “Really! What problems?”

“Well, I’ve heard a few people say they haven’t been able to confirm her experiments. Have you tried aneurinide in your lab yet?”

“Sure, hasn’t everybody. We didn’t see anything when we tried it in her cell culture system. But we don’t have that working very well so I don’t think a failure in those experiments means much. Of course we’re also trying it in mice, but it’ll still be a little while before those results are in.”

“Yes, that sounds like our experience too,” Prescott said. “I don’t know, maybe there are just technical problems at this point, but it seems like several labs have been unable to reproduce her results. Enough to make you wonder.”

“That’s awful,” Strickland said. “Well, it should all be clear when there’s been enough time for people to see the results in mice. The cell culture system is tricky and there could just be problems getting it to work properly.”

“Sure, it could all be fine,” Prescott agreed.

“Still, it’s concerning. I’ll see what she has to say when she’s here next week. Let me know what else you hear, okay? I’m supposed to write a letter for her tenure case, but I think I’ll hold off for a bit and see if this gets cleared up first.”

Prescott ended the call and finished his espresso as he looked out the window. A crisp fall day, his favorite time of the year. His next call was to California, but he’d have to wait an hour or so before his friend at Stanford would be in the office. Time for a nice walk along the Charles before lunch.

Mary O’Connor was spending the morning working at home, savoring the peace and quiet of her house in Lexington, an affluent suburb about fifteen miles west of Boston. With her husband already off to his law firm downtown and their daughter in school, she had the house to herself and could work without distraction. By late morning she’d miss the worst of the commuter traffic, something she gladly traded for the view of conservation land from her second-floor study, the trees still showing fall colors of red and gold.

But the morning’s peace was shattered when she looked at her email and saw a message from Henry Strickland. Another letter about Pam’s tenure case. She opened it with a sense of foreboding. This whole thing wasn’t turning out right.

Chairing Pam’s tenure committee should be a snap. After all, what can go wrong with a case where the candidate’s found the first drug against Alzheimer’s disease? She and the two other committee members carefully chose ten senior scientists to ask for evaluations of Pam’s work. Knowing that the choice of evaluators was key to the outcome, they did their homework to identify reviewers who would be favorable. One of her colleagues was a good friend of Karl Meyers, so he asked Meyers for suggestions. More than happy to oblige, Meyers gave him the names of four distinguished colleagues he knew were supportive of Pam. O’Connor got some suggestions from Eric Prescott, and the other member of the committee reached out to senior neuroscientists at the most prestigious of the institutions Pam had visited to give lectures on her work. Between them, they identified a good list of reviewers who they were sure would write enthusiastic letters in favor of tenure.

But it wasn’t happening that way. Her head started to throb as she scanned the letter from Strickland. He concluded his evaluation by saying that Pam would not get tenure at Princeton, his home institution. Like the other reviewers, Strickland spoke of the importance of her work and acknowledged that the discovery of aneurinide potentially put Pam at the top of the field. But he went on to say that a positive recommendation depended on the validity of her work and there were serious questions as to its reproducibility. Granting tenure was premature until it was known whether her results could be confirmed.

Three of the other letters reached a similar conclusion, and having four referees say that tenure was premature was a big problem. Even if the committee made a positive recommendation and DeSilva wanted to proceed, tenure ultimately had to be approved by Harvard University. These letters would be part of the package that went to the Dean of Harvard Medical School and eventually to the President of the University. And with these letters as part of the case, O’Connor doubted tenure would be granted.

She was stuck. Now that the outside letters were in, her duty as chair was to call a meeting of the committee to make their recommendation on the case. But to do so would be lethal. Just discarding the four problematic letters wouldn’t work either. The other committee members knew that requests had gone out to these four and would want to know what happened to their responses.

She picked up the phone to call DeSilva’s office. He’d told her to let him know if there was any kind of problem, and now seemed like the time.

• • •

DeSilva cancelled an early afternoon appointment to see O’Connor as soon as possible. He made no effort to hide his concern as she sat across from his desk.

“So what’s going on? How can there be a problem with Pam’s case?”

“Four of the letters came back saying that granting her tenure is premature. And I don’t see how we can go forward with a positive recommendation under these circumstances.”

DeSilva fought to control his temper. How could O’Connor have let this happen? “I don’t understand how we can be in this kind of mess. Didn’t you check on what the evaluators would say before you wrote to them?”

The color drained from her face and she took a minute to respond. “Yes, of course, and they all were very positive when we first asked them. But that was a couple of months ago and apparently there are now rumors circulating that her work is not reproducible. So these four wound up saying that tenure should wait until it was clear her experiments could be verified.”

“And you didn’t see this coming?”

O’Connor shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. Everything looked fine at first.”

“Okay, okay.” DeSilva took a deep breath. “You’re right, we can’t just go ahead. We need to figure out how to deal with these rumors. What’s Pam have to say?”

“She’s upset but she thinks it’ll take care of itself. The cell culture system is tricky, and she thinks people who aren’t routinely using it are having trouble getting it to work. She’s sure it’ll all get resolved once people have time to do the experiments in mice, but that may take a bit longer.”

DeSilva looked out at the rain that had started pouring down. Like any scientific conflict, the questions about Pam’s paper would be answered in time. Scientists in her field were obviously concerned about verifying her results and he could simply put the tenure case on hold until the status of her work was clear.

But I’ll look like a fool if I just sit back and she turns out to be wrong. Especially after all the support we’ve given her. Seminar invitations, the press release, four hundred thousand dollars for mice. The board of directors’ll love that one. No, better to be more aggressive. Take the lead in solving the problem.

“We can’t wait for that,” he said. “This kind of suspicion in the community reflects badly on the entire institution, not just on Pam. It’s not an issue I can leave for others to resolve. How long do the cell culture experiments take to do?”

“Only a couple of weeks, if they work.”

“Alright, then this is what we’re going to do. We’ll repeat those experiments ourselves, under my direct authority. Once it’s done, I’ll be able to say definitively that we’ve verified her work. Or not.”

“But how are you going to do the experiments?”

DeSilva gave a mocking laugh. “You don’t think I’m planning to go into the lab and do them myself? No, of course not. Actually, I’d like you to direct the experiments for me.”

“But I don’t know how to do them. I’ve never done the cell culture work and it would take months for me to get it set up in my lab.” She looked flustered.

DeSilva held up his hand. “Don’t worry, I understand. I don’t expect you to do them yourself any more than I would. But you can supervise a rigorously controlled repetition. Do you remember the double-blind experiment Pam did for the paper?”

“Of course.”

“So you can do a similar thing, except Pam will play no part in it. Get your own sample of aneurinide from the chemical library. Give it a code name, and then give it and some dummy samples to the people in Pam’s lab to test. They have the system going, so there won’t be any technical problems and we’ll get an answer quickly.”

“Yes, that would work,” she agreed. “But I’m concerned about my role in this. As chair of her tenure committee, shouldn’t I be going ahead and having a meeting to evaluate the letters? Isn’t it a conflict of interest for me to be trying to confirm her experiments at the same time?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be sure there are no concerns about your involvement. And I appreciate that this is a lot of extra work for you. I’ll supply your lab with additional funding to make it worthwhile. I’ve also been thinking that we need a new Associate Director for Research, and you’d be perfect for that position.”

O’Connor’s eyes widened and she smiled. “Thank you, I’m honored.”

“Then let’s proceed. How fast can you get these experiments done?”

“As long as I can use Pam’s people, two weeks should do it. I’ll give separate sets of coded samples to each of her two postdocs, so we’ll get it done in duplicate.”

“That sounds good,” DeSilva agreed. “I’ll let Pam know we’re going to do this and she can give the postdocs directions to work with you. I’ll try to see her this afternoon. In the meantime, get the aneurinide from the chemical library and set up the dummy samples so we can start immediately. I want this done as fast as possible. However it turns out, we have to take responsibility for dealing with this situation.”

• • •

Pam paced outside DeSilva’s office, nervously fiddling with her hair. Thirty minutes ago, she’d been unexpectedly summoned to a mysterious meeting with the director. Spontaneity wasn’t his style. Something was up.

Yesterday I felt so comfortable around him. Now, when he motioned her to a seat across from his desk, she broke into a sweat.

No tea and cookies today.

He wasted no time on preliminaries. “I’ve asked you here with some urgency to talk about a problem Mary O’Connor brought to my attention earlier this afternoon. I understand there are rumors circulating to the effect that your experiments with aneurinide can’t be reproduced. Are you aware of this?”

Her stomach knotted. DeSilva had nearly complete power over her, and the usual warmth in his voice was missing. Has he lost confidence in my work?

“I’ve heard some such rumors, but I’m confident in our results and I’m sure this will all straighten itself out. Working with the brain cell cultures is tricky and that’s the only kind of experiment people have had time to do so far. So I think the difficulties are just technical. However, the mouse experiments are straightforward and once there’s time for those results to come in, I’m sure there’ll be no question about our findings.”

He shrugged noncommittally. “I see. Well, I’m glad you trust your results. But how long will it take for other labs to confirm the mouse experiments?”

“I guess it could be another month or so, depending on how quickly the relevant labs got aneurinide.”

DeSilva frowned and waved his hand impatiently. “That’s not good enough. We can’t have questions floating in the air about such important work. It’s not acceptable for either you or the Langmere. As you know, I’m going ahead with your tenure case and this has to be resolved immediately. We can’t think about granting tenure to a faculty member with a dark cloud hanging over her head.”

She felt herself flush. Was this the end of her hopes for tenure and promotion?

“But, I don’t know what to say. How can I resolve this before others have time to do the experiments?”

He smiled, but his eyes were cold. “Don’t worry, I’ve thought of a way to fix this for you. Remember that I’m on your side. You’re lucky to have me for a friend.”

She tried to respond gratefully. “I know that. Thank you.”

He nodded and continued. “So this is what I’d like to do. We’ll repeat your experiments here, directly under my auspices, with no involvement from you. We’ll use your cell culture system as it’s all set up and we’ll have an answer in two weeks. Mary O’Connor has agreed to supervise the experiment. She’ll obtain aneurinide from the chemical library and give coded samples to each of your postdocs to test. If it works, and I certainly hope it will, I’ll report the results as a letter to Nature under my own name. That’ll silence any doubters and put an end to these destructive rumors. Does that sound agreeable to you?”

Pam had mixed feelings. There was no reason to think this wouldn’t be an easy confirmation of her results. But it seemed absurd for DeSilva to step in like this. If rumors of his involvement started to circulate, the community would assume the worst. Fraud was an offense of which the accused was automatically found guilty in the scientific rumor mill. Her reputation would be forever tainted, whatever the outcome.

“It seems like an awful lot of work for you and Mary. Do you really think this is necessary?”

He scowled at her. “I’m afraid so. I wouldn’t suggest something like this if I didn’t think it was absolutely critical. It will take a great deal of time and resources. Of course, we’ll only do it with your permission. If you don’t want us to proceed, we’ll leave it to other labs to eventually verify your results. But you should realize that your tenure case can’t have a positive outcome under the current conditions.”

She felt sick to her stomach. There was no choice.

“Yes, I understand. And of course, I’m very grateful to you and Mary for being willing to do all this for me. How can I help?”

“Good, I’m glad you appreciate the situation. Then with your agreement we’ll go ahead. I think we should now meet with your postdocs and tell them they’ll need to work with Mary O’Connor on this. I believe it would be best if we told them together so they don’t feel threatened. Can you have them join us so we can get started?”

This is going to be awful. The idea of the director telling George and Holly that their work wasn’t trusted and had to be specially repeated under the supervision of another faculty member would be devastating to them, as it was to her. She was frustrated and angry at the way DeSilva had taken charge and was manipulating the situation. But there was no way out and she had to appear cooperative.

“Yes,” she replied. “They’re both in the lab. I’ll go get them.”

Jake watched Special Agent Rob Harlow’s eyes narrow as he skimmed through the file Jake had handed him. Harlow looked pretty much the same as when Jake met him working on a sex trafficking case nine years ago. But his office in the new FBI headquarters in Chelsea was a big step up from the old building in downtown Boston that housed the Bureau when Jake had been an agent. Just as well, Jake thought. Coming here didn’t make him feel the awkwardness of returning to his old quarters as an outsider.

“Pretty interesting stuff,” Harlow said. “Some nice photos, too.”

“Thought you’d be interested. The guy’s convenience store is nothing more than a cover for a big time drug operation.”

“Looks like. How’d you get onto this again?”

“It started out as the usual divorce case. My client couldn’t figure out where all her husband’s money went, so she suspected he had something going on the side. Turned out he has not one but two mistresses set up in fancy downtown apartments. Way more than the income from his store can support, so I checked into his business dealings.”

Harlow nodded. “Most convenience stores don’t need offshore accounts.”

“Right. So I started tailing him for a bit. Made some interesting jaunts to Vermont and New Hampshire, meetings with players you know all too well. And you’ll see the dates of those meetings correlate with substantial deposits to his banks in the Cayman Islands.”

Jake felt his phone vibrate and took a look as Harlow continued flipping through the file. A text from Pam.

Had to leave work, there’s a problem. Can you talk?

A problem she’s texting about in the middle of the afternoon? Not like Pam. Something’s wrong.

He held up the phone. “Sorry, something just came in that I need to deal with. Everything’s detailed in the report and those pics’ll give you plenty of backup. Do you need anything else now?”

Harlow shook his head. “No, it looks pretty clear. This asshole’s dealing with some of the major drug distributors in New England. I’ll be happy to take it from here, go do what you have to do. And thanks, Jake.”

“Always happy to help an old pal,” Jake said. He gave a mock salute as he left the office. Then he texted Pam.

At FBI HQ in Chelsea, leaving now. Are you home?

She answered without delay.

Went for a walk. Meet me at Frog Pond.

• • •

The Frog Pond was a focal point for visitors to the Boston Common, the central park in downtown Boston. It took Jake fifteen minutes to get there and find Pam sitting on a bench by the pond. A touristy-looking couple with three toddlers in tow was strolling nearby, a homeless man was lying on a bench, and a guy who looked like a drug dealer was hanging out under a tree. The usual afternoon crowd.

He sat next to Pam and took her hand. She looked pale and drawn, barely managing a welcoming smile. Like her text had sounded.

“I’m sorry to drag you out here in the middle of the afternoon,” she said.

“Don’t worry about it, I’m glad I could get away. What’s happened?”

“DeSilva called me into his office earlier this afternoon. He’s heard rumors that my work can’t be reproduced. He says my tenure case can’t go forward and he’s asked Mary O’Connor to supervise a special in-house repeat of my experiments. It seems crazy, but I don’t have any choice except to go along with it.”

Jake could hear the pain in her voice. “I’m sorry, that must have been an awful meeting. Have you heard about these rumors before?”

“I know some people have had problems, but I’m sure they’re just technical. We just have to be a little patient until more results come in.”

“So why is DeSilva pushing it now?”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure, it feels like he’s lost confidence in me and wants to take charge. The good thing is that George and Holly will be doing the experiments, so it should all work without any hitches. But in the meantime, if word of this gets out, everyone will assume something’s wrong.”

Jake squeezed her hand. She needs a boost. Some kind of reassurance that she’ll make it through. “I wish I could help, but it sounds like you’re just going to have to hang tough until this is finished. Once they confirm your results, it’ll be over, right? And whatever the rumors are, you know your work’s good, so it’ll be okay in the end.”

She sighed and leaned against him. “Thanks, Jake. It helps to have you here. You’re right, it’ll be fine once they do the experiment.”

But would it? He wasn’t a scientist, but he knew this wasn’t the way discoveries were normally vetted. Something smelled off. He wished he felt as confident as he was trying to sound.

Prescott followed his usual routine of a rideshare and a walk to Holly’s apartment. Her text that afternoon had been brief but to the point.

Can you come over for dinner? Exciting news!

Making sure no one was looking, he rang her doorbell and she buzzed him in. She greeted him with a cheery smile.

“You look happy,” he said. “Tell me what’s up.”

“Okay, pour us some wine and I’ll bring out dinner. I ordered Chinese. Then I’ll tell you today’s story.”

She served the food quickly, shoving the piles of books and papers to one end of the dining table to make room for plates, utensils, and half a dozen cardboard containers.

“Alright,” Holly said, “are you ready?”

Prescott used his chopsticks to choose a Peking ravioli and dip it into the ginger sauce. “Can’t wait,” he said.

“Then here goes. Pam came into the lab around three and told George and me that we needed to go to the Director’s office with her for a meeting. She wouldn’t say what it was about and neither of us had a clue what was going on. When we got there, Director DeSilva took over and told us there were rumors that our work with aneurinide couldn’t be reproduced. He said that he wanted to remove any doubts and clear our reputations, so he’d organized a special repeat of the experiments that Mary O’Connor would supervise. If it worked, DeSilva said that he himself would write a letter to Nature confirming our discovery.”

“That’s quite a plan. DeSilva’s trying to stage manage this so that he winds up looking good, whatever the outcome. He either exposes the fraud or he vindicates his faculty member. Not bad. What’d Pam have to say?”

“She didn’t say much during the meeting. Just interjected a couple of times that it was great that DeSilva was so supportive and ready to help confirm our work. But she looked really upset. George was too.”

“Well, whatever she thinks, this is perfect for us.” Prescott smiled. “Is O’Connor going to get the aneurinide directly from the chemical library people?”

Holly nodded. “That’s the plan.”

“Good. So all you have to do is go ahead and do the experiment. It won’t work for either you or George of course, and DeSilva’s plan for a simple confirmation will fall apart. And I can guarantee, he’s not going to be happy. In the meantime, I’ll give O’Connor a friendly but concerned call and let her know that people are beginning to talk about the possibility of fraud. Once DeSilva’s faced with that and the failure of his effort at a repetition, he’ll have no choice but to launch an investigation. When will the experiments be done, do you know?”

“O’Connor already has the drugs and wants us to start the experiments tomorrow. So we’ll have the results in about two weeks.”

“DeSilva’s certainly pushing this, isn’t he? Okay, I’ll call O’Connor in a week or so. That way she’ll get the suggestion of fraud first, and be all set up for when the experiment flops. In the meantime, I’ll make a couple of other calls and start circulating the rumor that DeSilva is running a special repeat of Pam’s experiments, since nobody else can reproduce the work. That’ll turn the heat up even more.”

“Sounds good,” Holly said. “I’m so ready to get out of there and move to your lab. Things are going to get really strange pretty quick.”

“I know, just hang tough a little longer. You have to speak with the investigation committee and leave Pam with the blame. Then it’ll all be done,” Prescott said.

Just not quite the way you think.

Mary O’Connor was at her desk in the Langmere, mindlessly flipping through the pages of a journal, unable to get her mind off the Pam Weller mess. She was growing more and more uncomfortable with the role she found herself playing. Not that she had any choice about it, but the responsibility of repeating Pam’s experiments weighed on her. On top of chairing her tenure committee, O’Connor now had to supervise the work of Pam’s postdocs. Holly was cooperative and appeared to welcome her efforts, but George was standoffish and viewed her with suspicion. It was aggravating and was taking more of her time than she wanted to spend on someone else’s problems. At least the new appointment as Associate Director of Research made it worthwhile. Fortunately, the experiments appeared to be proceeding on course. The results should start coming in within the next few days and one way or another, this would all be over and done with.

She sighed and put the journal aside. May as well go listen to this afternoon’s seminar. The speaker was an assistant professor from Yale whom she didn’t know but had heard was good. Maybe that and a cup of coffee would keep her awake.

She got as far as her office door when the phone rang and she turned back to pick it up, wondering if this was yet another call from either Pam or DeSilva asking about progress. Both of them were bugging her almost daily. But instead the call was from Eric Prescott.

“Mary, I’m afraid there’s something unpleasant I have to talk to you about. Do you have a few minutes?”

Great. More problems. “Sure, what’s up?”

“I’m worried about Pam Weller. I know you’re a mentor to her, so I hope I can speak freely to you about this. I don’t want to do anything to cause more trouble for her.”

O’Connor knew that she couldn’t keep anything back from DeSilva, given her role in all this. But she said, “Of course, I wouldn’t do anything that’s not in Pam’s best interest.”

“I don’t know if you’ve heard any of this,” Prescott said, “but there are rumors flying all over the place that Pam’s work on aneurinide can’t be reproduced. It seems like at least a dozen labs have tried it by now, all with negative results.”

This was getting worse and worse. “I’ve heard there are problems reproducing her work. But really, no one has been able to confirm it?”

“I’m afraid that’s right. That’s why I’m worried.”

“Well, Pam says the problems are just due to technical difficulties with the cell culture system.”

“Maybe,” Prescott said. “But other labs also have the system working, not just Pam’s. And some labs, including mine, are starting to see results coming in from mouse experiments. It’s early yet, but we’re not seeing any effect of aneurinide in those experiments either. Nor is anyone else.”

“I see,” O’Connor said slowly. “But you know Pam and how careful she is. I can’t believe her results aren’t right. What do you think can be going on?”

“I don’t know. I can’t imagine how this can be happening either. But I have to tell you, people are starting to say that the paper must be faked.”

Prescott’s words seemed to echo through the room. Could Pam’s paper really be a gigantic fake?

“Eric, you can’t mean fraud! Why would Pam do that? What could she possibly gain? Even if she got tenure before it was discovered, she’d eventually be exposed and her career destroyed.”

“I don’t have the answer to that either. But you know as well as I do there have been a number of big-time fraud cases in recent years. It’s hard to imagine how any of them thought they could get away with it. But for reasons of their own, they went ahead anyway.”

O’Connor trembled at the thought of finding herself in the middle of a major scandal. My career could depend on how I handle this. She had to distance herself from Pam and make sure she was viewed as an independent third party.

“I know, I suppose we have to consider the possibility. Look, I’ll tell you confidentially that DeSilva has already taken it upon himself to resolve this. He’s asked me to set up an independent repeat of her experiments. Pam’s postdocs are doing the work, so there won’t be any technical problems. But I’m the only one who knows which of the samples they’re testing is actually aneurinide. One way or another, we’ll get a definitive answer.”

“Excellent. I’m delighted to hear that.” Prescott sounded enthusiastic. “With you on top of this, it’ll get straightened out. I know you want it to succeed for Pam’s sake, but everyone also knows that you’re totally fair and objective. So once you have the data, whichever way it turns out, there’ll be an end to these destructive rumors.”

“Thanks, I appreciate your support. And yes, I’ll make sure we get to the bottom of this.”

“The whole field will be in your debt, Mary. This is much more important than any one scientist. We’re talking about what could be a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, for God’s sake. If it’s right, we have to know it. But if it’s not and Pam’s paper really is fraud, then we have to deal with that as quickly as possible. How soon will you get your results?”

“I think it should only be a few more days. Since we’ve talked about this, I’ll let you know what happens. And thanks again for your confidence in me.”

“DeSilva couldn’t have picked anyone better for the job. I just hope it all turns out right.”

Pam’s mouth tightened as she read the email from the chair of neuroscience at Yale.

With apologies for the late notice, I regret that we have to cancel your lecture scheduled for next week. We’ll be in touch again when we’re able to reschedule.

She got up and looked out her office window. Another slap in the face. The rumors about her work had become widespread and there were no more invitations to give talks or attend meetings. Just cancellations. Like I’m a suspected criminal.

To make things even worse, Mary O’Connor had backed away from their long-standing friendship and treated her like the subject of an investigation rather than a colleague. She refused to say anything about how the experiments were going, and had instructed George and Holly to do the same. Pam was kept totally in the dark, her career taken out of her hands.

The phone rang and Pam took the call.

“This is Sharon Dawson from Science magazine. We’ve heard that the Langmere Institute has initiated an independent attempt to repeat your experiments with aneurinide, given that others in the field have been unable to do so. Do you have any comments on the situation?”

Pam’s stomach turned over. “What? Who told you such a thing?”

“Our source doesn’t matter. Are you denying that’s the case?”

Pam tightened her grip on the phone. Keep cool. Talking to a reporter isn’t going to help. “I can’t comment on unverified rumors. All I can say is that I’m confident our work will be confirmed in time.”

She was sweating when she ended the call. An article coming out in Science was even more bad news. A public exposition of her disgrace. And how had they heard about O’Connor’s experiments? I’ve got to find out what’s going on.

Hoping to catch her, Pam took the stairs up to O’Connor’s office. Her jaw tensed when she found the door open and O’Connor reading something on the computer, a mug of coffee in her hand. Pam knocked and went in.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but could we talk for a few minutes?”

O’Connor turned to her with a cold stare. “I’m busy working on this paper. What can I do for you?”

“I was just hoping you could update me on how the experiments are going. Holly and George say they aren’t supposed to talk to me about it, which is fine. But I’d really like to know what the status is and when you think they’ll be finished.”

O’Connor put down her coffee and glowered at Pam. “Look, hunting me down like this isn’t helping matters. You know that you can have no involvement in this process, which is why I’ve told your postdocs not to discuss it with you. And I can’t discuss it with you either. The experiments are proceeding and I certainly hope we’ll be finished soon. But obviously that’ll depend on the results. In the meantime, I have my own work to do.”

Pam tried to keep the desperation out of her voice. “I understand, but can you at least tell me whether things are going well technically?”

“No, I cannot. I’ve been directed not to discuss the experiments with you or anyone else. Clearing up this mess is a high priority for the Director, and I intend to cooperate fully with him.”

“Mary, please. You’ve always been a friend to me and you must realize how hard this is. The rumors that DeSilva is doing a special investigation of my work have become widespread and lots of people seem to know that you’re doing these experiments. I even got a call from a reporter at Science writing an article about it for Christ’s sake! It’s incredibly destructive and I need to know what’s going on. How has this been leaked all over?”

“Are you insinuating that I’ve spread rumors of this? I’ve told no one, and that’s an insulting allegation. My instructions from the Director are to keep this confidential and report the results directly to him. Once that’s done, I’m sure he’ll inform you of our findings. But until then, there’s nothing for us to talk about. Now please leave and let me get on with my work.”

Pam was shaking with rage as she left. How can they treat me like this? My only sin has been, what, to discover an Alzheimer’s drug? She forced herself to breathe deeply and calm down. Hang in there, it’ll be alright in the end. Aneurinide will work. It always has.

Mary O’Connor sat back from hunching over the microscope, but the tension in her neck didn’t go away. How could anyone do something like this? George and Holly’s experiments were technically perfect, but aneurinide had no activity in either of their hands. Nothing even remotely like what Pam had published.

It had to be fraud.

She put the cultures back in the incubator, called the Director’s office, and told his administrative assistant she was on her way up. Whatever else he was doing would have to wait.

• • •

O’Connor sat with DeSilva at his conference table, watching his face drop as she summarized her results. He shook his head sadly when she finished. “Thank you, Mary. But this is not good news. Are you sure there’s no mistake?”

“I’m positive. I looked at all the cultures myself.”

DeSilva stared out the window. Then he asked, “Did you check the batch of aneurinide with the chemical library people? Is it the same as they used in the original experiments?”

“Yes. I thought of that too. It’s exactly the same.”

He sighed. “Well, you’ve done your job. I think we should talk to Pam together. Somehow this isn’t working and we need to hear what sort of explanation she can come up with.”

O’Connor hesitated, not sure how to say what had to come next. “I’m afraid there’s more. I received a call from Eric Prescott a few days ago. He’s always been a big supporter of Pam, but he called to tell me that nobody, absolutely nobody, has been able to repeat this work. Including experiments of his own that are underway in mice. He says people in the field are saying it must be fraud.”

DeSilva’s jaw fell and he turned away. Then he said slowly, “I see. And you, do you think it may be fraudulent?”

“I can’t imagine why Pam would do such a thing. But I can’t think of any other explanation.”

The color drained from his face, but he spoke calmly. “So between what you heard from Prescott and your own failure to repeat her experiments, you think we have a credible possibility of fraud. This changes the way we need to proceed. I’m afraid these allegations leave me with no choice but to start a misconduct investigation.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“It’s not your fault, you’ve done your job. Do you think we should be looking at Pam herself or one of the postdocs?”

“I think it had to have been both Pam and her postdoc, Holly Singer, working together. Neither one of them alone could have gotten around the double-blind experiment they published.”

DeSilva nodded, his face grim. “I agree. And it’s now my responsibility to take this to the next step. I’ll initiate an investigation targeting both Pam and Singer. And of course we’ll stop proceedings on Pam’s tenure case. We must take care of this without any hesitation in dealing with the guilty parties. The whole affair is tragic, but our priority now must be to show the world that we can clean up our own mess. The important thing is to minimize damage to the Langmere’s reputation.”

Pam squared her shoulders and took a deep breath as the administrator opened the door to DeSilva’s office. I’ll finally see the results. Neither Holly nor George had told her how the experiment had turned out. Holly said she couldn’t talk about it. George was a little more forthcoming and at least told her that everything was fine technically. But he didn’t know which samples were really aneurinide, so he couldn’t interpret the results.

Pam had tried twice more to contact O’Connor, to no avail. Not even the courtesy of a response. So this meeting was almost a relief. Presumably DeSilva would tell her the results and rationally she assumed they would verify her own. Aneurinide will work and the nightmare will be over. But that didn’t stop the churning in her gut.

DeSilva sat at his conference table with a woman Pam didn’t recognize. He made no attempt to greet her and motioned her to a seat with an unopened envelope in front of it. She felt the chill in his voice as he introduced the woman across the table as Caroline Rifkin, the Langmere’s Research Integrity Officer. Rifkin was fiftyish, with short black hair and a dark blue business suit that marked her as an administrator rather than a scientist. She stared at Pam without expression, her pale thin face and long hooked nose giving her a cold cruel look. Pam wondered if she cultivated the image.

DeSilva continued, “We’ve called you here to inform you that the Langmere Institute has initiated a formal investigation of research misconduct. Mary O’Connor’s attempt to repeat your published results was unsuccessful and we’ve received credible allegations of fraud. In accordance with the policies of the Institute, I’ve appointed an inquiry committee whose responsibility will be to review the evidence and determine whether a full investigation is warranted. Dr. Rifkin will work with the committee and be present at all meetings. Mary O’Connor will be an ad hoc member representing this office in her capacity as Associate Director of Research. The envelope in front of you contains a statement of the allegations and a summary of the procedures that will be followed. Do you have any questions or anything you’d like to say at this point?”

Pam mouth opened and the blood drained from her face. No! This can’t be real. She searched DeSilva’s face for some sign of sympathy. Nothing. “I don’t understand. Are you saying I faked the aneurinide results?” Her heart was pounding and she fought to breathe. “That’s absurd.”

“We’ve reached no conclusion yet. But your experiments can’t be reproduced and allegations of fraud have been made.”

“Aneurinide’s always worked in my lab.” She tightened her grip on the arms of her chair. “It doesn’t make sense that it didn’t work when Mary O’Connor supervised a repeat of the same experiments. Nobody’s told me what was done or what the results were. Can I see the data?”

Caroline Rifkin broke in. “Yes, you’re entitled to see the data.” She passed a thumb drive across the table to Pam. “The entire experiment is on here, including pictures of all the cultures. You can examine it at your leisure. But I’ll show you the main results now.”

Rifkin opened a file on her laptop, which she moved so that Pam and DeSilva could see the screen. It showed photographs of six brain cell cultures, all filled with Alzheimer’s plaque and dying cells. “Two of these were treated with aneurinide,” Rifkin said. “Can you tell me which?”

Pam stared at the screen. Impossible. They all looked the same.

“So you see what we mean. Contrary to what you published, aneurinide had no effect. And apparently, this is what all of your colleagues elsewhere who try to repeat your work also find. Can you explain this?”

Pam’s tongue felt thick. Her eyes were becoming moist. Something terrible’s gone wrong. “No, I can’t explain it. But remember, we did a double-blind experiment ourselves. How can our work be fraud after that?”

“That will be one goal of the investigation,” DeSilva said.

“But it doesn’t make any sense.”

Caroline Rifkin spoke again. “While we’ve been talking, my staff has moved to sequester your laboratory data so that all of your records will be available for our investigation. The research notebooks of your laboratory personnel will be held in my office until the investigation is concluded. You’ll be free to examine them upon request, under supervision of course. Your laboratory computers have been taken for forensic imaging, which will give us a complete copy of all the hard drives. They’ll be returned within a few days. You’ll also be hearing from the committee soon to arrange a time for an interview.”

This can’t be happening.

DeSilva asked, “Is there anything further you wish to discuss? If not, you may go.”

There was nothing left to say. She got up and left the office, going directly to her car in the garage. Only then did she let the tears come.

Pam was determined to be cool and professional for her meeting with the misconduct committee. She’d spent a considerable amount of time contacting other scientists to build her defense, hoping to find people who’d successfully repeated her results. But it had been a disappointing effort. Most people refused to take her phone calls or respond to her emails. Of those who did talk to her, none had been successful in their attempts to repeat her work. Nor did anyone have any sympathy for her situation. She was an outcast, shunned by her colleagues.

Thank God for Jake. He seemed to have a sixth sense for knowing when she needed encouragement and support. Although that seemed to be pretty much all the time these days, so maybe it wasn’t so hard.

Pam entered the meeting room on the twentieth floor of the Langmere Institute and Caroline Rifkin directed her to a seat at one end of a dark wood conference table. Portraits of former Institute directors hung on the paneled walls, apparently there to observe the proceedings. Mary O’Connor and the three members of the committee sat in leather chairs around the table, with a carafe of water and glasses in the middle, next to a voice recorder.

Rifkin introduced James Fuller as the chair of the committee. Pam didn’t know him well but recognized him as a senior member of the Langmere, one of the world’s experts on Parkinson’s disease. Fuller then introduced the other two committee members, whom Pam had never met. An older pudgy man, Craig Samuelson, who just looked at her stone-faced. And a red-haired woman, Laura Harrison, about Pam’s own age. Harrison gave her an encouraging nod and Pam thought she might have an ally on the committee. Or at least someone who would give her a fair hearing.

Fuller initiated the questioning. “Let me start by telling you that Drs. O’Connor and Rifkin have already briefed us on the case. The issue of course is that the results reported in your paper on aneurinide apparently cannot be reproduced by multiple other scientists and there is a strong suspicion that the paper is fraudulent. The responsibility of this committee is to determine whether there’s a reasonable likelihood that research misconduct, in this case fraud, has been committed by you or your laboratory personnel. Let me ask first if you have any views on the reproducibility of your results. Do you know of any laboratories that have been successful in confirming your findings?”

Pam forced herself to answer calmly. “No, I’m afraid that I don’t. I’ve contacted a number of colleagues and, much to my dismay, none of them have been able to see any activity of aneurinide. So I have to agree that the results we published have not been reproduced.”

Samuelson snapped at her. “When were you aware of this problem? And why haven’t you taken steps before now to clarify the situation and retract the paper? I hope you realize that you have a responsibility to the scientific community here.”

“I’m sorry, but the problem has really just become apparent in the last few weeks, not long before this committee was constituted.” Pam kept her composure with difficulty. “There were earlier rumors but it wasn’t clear that they were based on the work of laboratories that had the cell culture system working properly. The more significant failures in mouse models have been recent. At this point I thought that I should wait until this committee had done its work and a full clarification could be put forward.”

“Well,” Fuller said, “at least we’re in agreement that the published results aren’t reproducible. So the issue before this committee is to determine how this could have happened. Is there any explanation you can offer?”

“The only possibilities I can come up with are that there was either a mix-up in the chemical library or the aneurinide they’re sending out to other investigators is no longer active. We tested three different samples of aneurinide when we were doing the screening, so I’m confident there was no mistake in our identification of the compound we got from the library. I’ve also checked to be sure that the aneurinide being distributed by the chemical library is the same batch we used. But perhaps it’s decayed and no longer has full activity.”

Caroline Rifkin spoke up. “I’ve already taken it upon myself to investigate that possibility. As you say, the batch of aneurinide currently being dispensed by the chemical library is exactly the same as you used. Moreover, I’ve been able to verify that it’s still fully active. As you know, it was originally identified as a cancer drug. So I had it tested in those experiments, and the material now being dispensed by the library has full biological potency.”

“I see.” Pam was set back by this news. “Well, I’m afraid that I have to think about fraud then, too. I just find it hard to believe that my postdoc could have done this.”

“To be clear for the record, when you say ‘your postdoc,’ are you referring to Holly Singer or to George Montague?” Fuller asked.

“If anyone, it would have to be Holly. George developed the screening system, but Holly was the one who did the experiments with aneurinide.”

Now Laura Harrison stepped in. “I know how hard it must be for you to consider that possibility. But one of the things that impressed me when I read your paper is how thoughtful you were to do a double-blind experiment to protect yourself against just this eventuality. How could your postdoc have gotten around that?”

Pam poured a glass of water before answering. “I don’t understand that either. I can imagine how Holly could have tampered with other experiments, but she didn’t know which sample was aneurinide in the double-blind.”

“Unless you told her.” Samuelson glared at her as he put the direct accusation on the table. “Did you and your postdoc do this together?”

So that’s what they’re thinking. Not just Holly, me too.

“What! Absolutely not, why would I do something like that? That’s absurd.”

Samuelson turned red and looked like he was about to yell at her, but Fuller held up his hand. “We’re just after the truth here. But the double-blind experiment does become the crux of the matter. How do you think your postdoc could have cheated on that?”

“I don’t know.” Pam took a sip of water as she tried to recover her composure. “She somehow would have to have gotten hold of my code for the samples.”

“Okay, let’s try going through this in detail. Can you tell us exactly what happened when that experiment was set up?” Harrison asked.

Pam nodded. “Sure, I can reconstruct it. Holly brought me six numbered tubes, one of which contained aneurinide. Obviously, I didn’t know which. I transferred the contents to new tubes that I relabeled with letters. Then I gave those to George to run the experiment. And we all looked at the cultures together in the end to see the results and decode the samples.”

“So exactly where did Holly give you the samples?” Harrison pressed for details. “Did she have her code written down somewhere?”

“She brought the tubes to my office. She had her code written on a piece of paper that she consulted when we finished the experiment. But I never saw it before then, if that’s your next question.”

Harrison didn’t respond to that. Instead she asked, “Okay, so you had these six tubes that you then recoded. Where did you do that?”

“I went into the lab and did it that evening.”

“And do you remember who else was there?”

“Nobody. That’s why I waited until evening when the lab was empty.”

“Okay, that makes sense. And how about your own code? Could Holly somehow have gotten hold of it?”

Pam sighed. “I don’t see how. I purposely took it home and kept it in my desk there, so that no one in the lab could have access to it.”

“So is there any way you can imagine that Holly could have gotten the code?” Harrison asked. “There has to be some explanation.”

“I don’t see how she could have,” Pam said. “This whole thing just doesn’t make sense.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Samuelson said, his voice rising. “Unless you were responsible, together with your postdoc.”

“I didn’t do a damn thing!”

Fuller broke in again. “I think this is enough for now, and our time is almost up. Dr. Weller, we’ll undoubtedly call you back to meet with us again as we continue looking into this.”

Pam felt the room spinning as she got up. Like the committee, she didn’t see a way that Holly could have cheated on the double-blind experiment. And how could that leave them with any option except considering both Holly and herself as suspects?

Mary O’Connor watched impatiently as Craig Samuelson helped himself to coffee and lavishly spread cream cheese on a bagel from the breakfast assortment on the sidebar. Does he think we’re all here just to watch him stuff his face?

Finally, he took his seat and Fuller brought the meeting to order. “Let’s summarize where we stand after talking to Pam Weller yesterday. Are we agreed at this point that we’re dealing with a case of fraud?”

Both Harrison and Samuelson nodded. “I’m afraid so,” Harrison said.

“Okay,” Fuller said. “Then the question before us is to make a preliminary identification of the guilty party. Is it Weller, the postdoc, or both of them acting together?”

“Nobody, in particular the postdoc, could have gotten the code to the double-blind experiment from Weller unless they broke into her home. Weller had to be involved in this,” Samuelson said.

“I know, it’s hard to imagine how the postdoc could have done this alone,” Harrison agreed. “But why would Weller even have set up the double-blind experiment if she wanted to fake the results? Without that, we’d all just be blaming the postdoc. It’s like Weller intentionally tried to incriminate herself. And that doesn’t make sense either.”

“So are you saying we should believe her story?” Samuelson looked incredulous and turned to O’Connor. “Mary, you know her. What do you think?”

“It’s not really my place to comment. Remember I’m just here as an ad hoc member to observe the proceedings.”

Samuelson let out a disgruntled snort. “Oh, alright. But I don’t see how the postdoc could have done it without Weller.”

“No, but I thought Weller seemed credible yesterday. I just don’t think we’ve gotten to the bottom of this,” Harrison said.

Fuller looked at his watch. “Well, you both have reasonable points, although personally I think it had to be both of them acting together. Anyway, the postdoc, Holly Singer, is presumably waiting outside. Shall we bring her in and see where talking with her takes us? Let’s question her rigorously about the double-blind experiment and see if we can pull something out of her.”

O’Connor gave Fuller a silent nod of approval. He was moving this in the right direction.

• • •

Holly felt almost relieved when the heavy door opened and Mary O’Connor called her into the meeting room. Her anxiety had been growing by the minute while she was waiting in the hall. She’d carefully rehearsed everything with Prescott last night, but was still worried about whether her story would be believed and how she would respond to unanticipated questions. Prescott had assured her that everything would be fine. But it would be good to get this behind her.

O’Connor introduced the four others sitting around the big table. All of them looked grim, like the pictures of scowling old men hanging on the wall. Just staring at her as if she was some kind of lab specimen. She sat up straight in her chair. I’m ready for them.

Laura Harrison began the questioning. “Holly, I know how difficult this must be for you. As you know, the results your lab reported with aneurinide have not been reproducible and we need to investigate the possibility that someone faked the data. Let me assure you that all we’re after is the truth. We’re not trying to pin anything on you, but we do need to get to the bottom of this. I hope you can work with us toward that goal. Let me ask first whether there’s anything you want to tell us?”

Holly was prepared for this. “All I can say is that the whole thing is awful. I thought I made a major discovery and now it turns out that it was all a fake. I just feel totally betrayed.”

“It is awful. And that’s why we need to figure out what happened. And if you didn’t do it, we want to clear your name,” Harrison said.

“Of course I didn’t do it! My God, you don’t suspect me, do you?”

“I’m afraid that’s the obvious possibility,” Fuller interjected. “After all, they were your experiments. Who else could have done it?”

Holly remained cool. This was expected. “The only thing that could have happened is that Pam did it. She could have come in any time the lab was empty to switch aneurinide-treated cells for healthy ones.”

Harrison looked at her with raised eyebrows. “That’s quite an accusation. Why would she do such a thing?”

“I think all she cared about was what she’d get out of these experiments for herself. From the beginning, she went right to the Director with the results. And she started talking about getting tenure, lots of job offers, a Nobel Prize, all sorts of stuff like that.”

Holly felt a sense of satisfaction as she watched the committee members exchange glances.

“I see,” Samuelson said. “But as you know, one of the things highlighted in the paper was the double-blind experiment. If I remember correctly, you gave Weller coded samples and she then recoded them before giving them to George Montague to test. How could she have faked those results when she didn’t know which of the samples you gave her was aneurinide?”

Holly took a deep breath. This was it. Her chance to pin the blame on Pam. She’d rehearsed her answer to this question over and over again, ever since Prescott had come up with the scenario months ago in New Hampshire. And now the time had come.

She looked down at the table. “I guess that’s my fault,” she said softly. “When I gave Pam the samples, she started joking around and said something like ‘which one of these is the magic bullet?’ I didn’t even think about it, but I pointed to the tube with aneurinide. After all, she was my boss, so if she asked a question I answered. She just laughed and said something like ‘great stuff.’ It seemed natural enough and I didn’t pay any attention. But now that I realize what’s happened, I can see that I messed up by telling her.”

There were looks of astonishment around the table. “So you’re telling us that the double-blind experiment was compromised! Pam Weller actually knew which sample was aneurinide?” Harrison exclaimed.

“Yes, I’m afraid that’s what happened,” Holly said.

Samuelson leaned forward and raised his voice. “But why didn’t you say anything earlier? Surely you knew the way it was described in the paper was misleading.”

Holly did her best to look contrite. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time. It seemed like Pam was just kidding around and it wasn’t important. After all, nobody except Pam and I knew which tube was aneurinide, and I never imagined that Pam could be cheating. So it didn’t seem to matter. But now that all this has happened, I guess it did.”

Fuller glared at her, his eyes hard. “Do you understand how important this is? Are you sure that’s how it happened?”

“Yes, that’s what happened. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. I never dreamed anything could go wrong with the experiments.”

“Of course not,” Harrison said. “Nobody thinks that until it happens. But that certainly explains how the double-blind experiment broke down.”

Harrison looked like she was about to say more, but Samuelson interrupted. “Wait a minute, do you seriously expect us to believe that Weller snuck into the lab and manipulated the cultures in every experiment you and the others did? I find that hard to believe.”

Holly was taken aback by his hostility, but she stuck to her story. “Well, that’s what she must have done. There were always plenty of normal cell cultures around, it wouldn’t have been any big deal for her.”

Samuelson frowned and shook his head in disbelief. “And how often would she have to sneak in and make these swaps?”

“Every time we were running an experiment, I guess. But she lives close by and she always works late. It would have been easy for her to come in when nobody else was in the lab.”

Samuelson started to say something more, but Laura Harrison interrupted before he could get the words out. “So Weller would have to have come in and switched cultures during every experiment you did, right? I assume the experiments are dated when they’re recorded in your lab notebook?”

“Of course,” Holly said.

“And how often did you do experiments since you first identified aneurinide?”

“At least twice a week. Pam was really pushing us to get the paper out.”

Now Samuelson leaned forward and glared at her. “So she couldn’t have taken any trips of more than a few days while your experiments were going on, is that right?”

Holly suppressed a smile of satisfaction. Time to set the second hook. “No, she didn’t do any traveling. She was in the lab almost every day asking about the project until we got the paper out. She has taken a bunch of trips since it was published, but now that you mention it, there’ve been several experiments that haven’t worked recently.”

“That’s all well and good,” Samuelson said. “But I don’t find it credible that Weller did all this on her own. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Holly looked around the table at Mary O’Connor and the other members of the committee. Just blank faces. “All I can say is that’s what happened.”

Samuelson made a disgusted grunt and Fuller frowned at her.

“Well, the correlation of experiments with Weller’s travel schedule is at least something we can try to verify,” Fuller said. He turned to Caroline Rifkin. “Caroline, can you do some homework on this?”

“I have the lab notebooks,” Rifkin said. “But I don’t have Weller’s travel schedule.”

“I can get her travel schedule from accounting,” O’Connor said. “They’ll have records of all her travel reimbursements.”

“Excellent,” Fuller said. “Let’s adjourn for today and reconvene once the two of you have that analysis in hand. Will tomorrow afternoon give you enough time?”

Rifkin and O’Connor both nodded.

“Okay,” Fuller said. “We’ll meet here again at three tomorrow.” He turned to Holly and looked down his nose as he spoke sternly. “In the meantime, I hope you’ll think more about your story. Lying to us will only make things worse for you.”

• • •

Holly’s head was pounding when she left the room. They hadn’t bought it yet, but the follow up on Pam’s travels would help. If she stuck to her story it should be okay. And now was the time to collect that job offer.

As soon as she got back to her desk she texted Prescott.

It went okay, although they’re still skeptical. Checking Pam’s travel schedule and then at me again tomorrow. Can you come over tonight? Time to trade the drug for your job offer.

He replied immediately.

Sure. I have a dinner meeting but will be over right after, around 9. And yes, time to trade.

Holly sat back and read the text a second time. So he’s prepared to hold up his end of the bargain. Tonight’ll be big.

Prescott wasn’t surprised by Holly’s message. He’d assumed an investigation committee would be skeptical of Holly’s story, although it might hold up if she kept her cool. But no need to find out.

He packed a tote bag with preparations for his visit, including a letter on official Institute stationery offering her a job in his lab and a bottle of full-bodied red wine. The neighborhood was quiet when he left his condominium at nine and he took even more care than usual going to Holly’s apartment, walking the three miles from Cambridge to Brookline. He kept the hood of his jacket up and was confident that he hadn’t been observed when he arrived a little before ten.

Holly buzzed him in and he used a handkerchief to open the door. She was sitting on the couch with a glass of wine in front of her.

“How are you doing?” he asked. “Sounds like things went pretty much according to plan with the committee, although I’m sure it was a tough session for you.”

“It was a bit rough,” she said. “They don’t entirely believe me, but I can tell they’re intrigued by the story. It’ll help when they check Pam’s travel schedule, so I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to pull it off.”

“Good work. Well, the time’s finally come.” He reached into the tote bag and pulled out the letter. “Here’s your offer letter, with a start date the first of next month. You’ll get official administrative paperwork next week.”

She read it quickly and smiled. “Perfect. Institute for Advanced Neuroscience, here I come!”

Then she handed him a piece of paper. “And here’s what you’ve been waiting for. The real 40492. You can order some and get the experiments started even before I make the move across the river.”

He scanned the paper. A printout from a major chemical company with the compound’s structural formula, ordering information, and a summary of its activities as an anticancer drug. Finally. Everything I need.

“Excellent,” he said. “We’re good to go. Now how about a little celebration? I brought a special bottle of wine for the occasion. A hearty Spanish red.”

“Great, I’ll get us some glasses.”

“No, you just relax. You’ve had a tough day. I’ll take care of it.”

He took the wine into her kitchen, where he put on latex gloves he’d brought from the lab, opened the bottle, and poured two glasses. Then he added the contents of a vial in his pocket to one of them. Nembutal, the drug commonly used in labs for rodent euthanasia. And for capital punishment and physician-assisted suicide. The vial was a standard veterinary preparation from his lab supply, which he’d confirmed from Pam’s paper was the same as they used in her lab. So it would have been equally easy for Holly to take some home.

He took off the gloves, brought the glasses back to the couch, and sat next to Holly. “To my new favorite colleague.”

They clinked glasses and drank.

His head started pounding as he watched her take her first swallow. Murder. I can’t do this. She has to drink about half the glass, there’s still time to stop her.

Holly raised her glass again. “And to the real 40492.”

He started to grab her glass. But then he got control of himself. There’s no choice.

“I’ll drink to that,” he said.

They both drank deeply and Prescott raised his glass again. “And to the end of Pam Weller.”

“Amen to that,” Holly said as she took another long drink.

He started to tremble as he watched. Half the glass gone now. It was done. Maybe another fifteen minutes or so for it to act. Maybe less.

She turned to him. “Are you alright? You look pale.”

He had to catch his breath. “Sure, I’m fine. Just thinking about experiments with the drug.”

She raised her glass again, her hand starting to tremble. “To our drug.”

Her words began to slur.

Then she slumped back on the couch and seemed to go to sleep.

Prescott recoiled, eyes wide. It’s happening.

Her breathing slowed.

And stopped.

A chill came over him as he watched the life leave her body. The bile rose in his throat and he ran to the bathroom to vomit.

The room was reeling when he staggered back into the living room. Keep it together. She had to die. She was a weak link. Keeping her around would be too risky.

At least it was a peaceful death. Like the mice.

Time to finish up.

He put the gloves back on and started his cleanup. First he found her disposable phone in the kitchen and put it in his tote bag. Then he took the glass Holly had been using before he came, dumped out the wine that was in it, and replaced it with the remainder of her Nembutal-laced drink. Now there’d be nothing but her fingerprints on the lethal glass. The two glasses of wine he’d poured for them went into his tote bag for disposal with her phone, as did the job offer letter. Next he wiped down the wine bottle and the vial of Nembutal, using chlorine bleach to remove his DNA.

He stopped and looked at her body, slumped against the side of the couch. Clenching his jaw, he forced himself to pick up her hand and press her dead fingers onto the wine bottle and Nembutal vial. Another wave of nausea hit him but he choked it down. Done. He left the bottle and vial on the coffee table in front of her body.

Then he went over to her computer. He’d composed her suicide note earlier that evening and now he typed it into a new Word document, keeping his gloves on.

I’ve betrayed all my values and can no longer live with what I’ve done. Pam Weller forced me to fake the experiments with her. She said she would destroy my career if I didn’t do it. I didn’t think I had a choice but now I know I should have refused. The two of us made the whole thing up. I’m so sorry, I just need to end it. Forgive me please.

He left the suicide note open on her computer desktop and reviewed the scene again. Sure, his DNA would be in other places in the apartment, but it was unlikely that a full-scale CSI-type investigation would happen in the case of a suicide. And even if it did, they’d just find the DNA of an unknown male. No big deal for her to have had a visitor, he probably wouldn’t be the only one. He wasn’t in any DNA database, so there was no way they could match it to him anyway.

He took a last look around before he left. Then he walked home to his condo through the cold December night, pausing on the BU bridge to burn the offer letter and dump the incriminating contents of his tote bag into the Charles River. His head pounded as he leaned over the side of the bridge, watching her phone fade from sight and splash into the water. He’d killed her. A woman he’d had sex with, now cold and dead. Enough. He pushed back from the railing and forced himself to stand up straight. It had to be done.

He silently thanked Holly for her unknowing sacrifice. At least she’d be pleased by Pam’s coming destruction.

O’Connor spent most of the next day working with Rifkin to compile the relevant information from Holly’s notebooks and compare the times of her experiments with Pam’s travels. She was ambivalent about the findings. They were consistent with Holly’s story, but it wasn’t enough to convince her that Pam had acted alone.

The committee convened half an hour before Holly was due to appear and O’Connor passed out a summary spreadsheet.

“As you can see,” she said, “Weller’s travel schedule had her available for almost all of Holly’s experiments. And as Holly suggested yesterday, there were several experiments that didn’t work when Weller was out of town recently on extended trips. So it fits with Holly’s story, although I still find it a little hard to believe.”

Samuelson nodded. “I agree. It seems much more likely to me that they did it together and Holly made up her story to put all the blame on Pam.” He snorted sarcastically. “So much for honor among thieves.”

Fuller frowned and looked at his watch. “It’s three fifteen now. Let’s bring Holly back in and see what she has to say. Maybe we can get a confession out of her and be done with this. Isn’t she here yet?”

Rifkin opened the door and looked out at the waiting area. “No, she’s not. I’m going to start looking for her.”

Holly wasn’t in the lab, nor did she respond to emails, phone calls or texts. The committee adjourned and at four o’clock O’Connor called the Harvard University police to ask if they could check Holly’s apartment.

• • •

It was almost six and O’Connor was thinking about going home when two University officers and two Brookline police detectives showed up at her office.

“I’m afraid we have bad news,” one of the University officers said. “Holly Singer is dead, apparently from a suicide.”

O’Connor’s eyes widened and she leaned on the chair next to her. “Oh my God! What happened?”

“It looks like she took a lethal dose of Nembutal. She left a suicide note saying that she and Pam Weller committed some kind of fraud together. Is that what your committee was investigating when you called us earlier?”

“I can’t believe it, this is terrible. Yes, that’s what we were investigating. Holly failed to show up for her scheduled meeting with the committee. We’d interviewed her yesterday and most of us thought that she and Weller were both guilty, although Holly tried to claim it was Weller alone. But I guess this settles it.”

One of the Brookline detectives asked, “Would she have had Nembutal available to her in the lab?”

“Yes, it’s commonly used for rodent euthanasia. The lab would have kept a stock.”

“Can you show us?”

O’Connor took them to Pam’s lab and used her master key to let them in. They found a stock of Nembutal in the cabinet above Vicky’s lab bench. One of the detectives put a vial in a small plastic bag. “It looks the same as what we found in her apartment.”

O’Connor squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “This is awful. A young person killing herself. It’s just so sad, even if she was involved in this dreadful fraud.”

The Harvard officer nodded. “I’m sorry. There’ll be an autopsy and more follow up of course. But it looks like that’s what happened.”

• • •

DeSilva was home having a before-dinner glass of wine when O’Connor’s call came in. He was sickened by the story, but at least it brought things to the conclusion he’d come to expect. The cops might want to investigate further, but it was clear enough to him. Time to bring this sad affair to an end.

He personally called all three members of the investigation committee. All agreed that they’d been on the verge of concluding that Holly and Pam had acted jointly, and this sealed the case. DeSilva then directed James Fuller to call a meeting for six thirty the next morning and to have a final report of the committee’s findings on his desk by seven thirty. He had to be on top of this before it came out in the press.

The loud ringing from her phone startled Pam. She’d just talked to Jake, who was still out on a stakeout and was going to spend the night at his place in Gloucester. So who would be calling at nine o’clock?

“This is Mary O’Connor. I’m calling in my role as Associate Director of Research to ask if you can attend a meeting in Director DeSilva’s office at eight tomorrow morning. He regrets the short lead time for this, but I need to confirm that you’ll be there.”

Pam blinked. Now what? “Yes, I can be there. But can you tell me what this is about?”

“There have been some new developments. The Director wants to tell you himself tomorrow morning.”

• • •

Pam’s stomach churned as she waited outside of DeSilva’s office. Sleep had eluded her as the possibilities for this meeting kept running through her mind. Had Holly admitted the fraud? Or tried to implicate her further?

DeSilva opened the door, his face grave. “Come in and take a seat.” He motioned to the conference table, where Pam saw Mary O’Connor, Caroline Rifkin and a well-dressed bearded man she didn’t know. DeSilva introduced him as head legal counsel for the Langmere.

“I’ll get directly to the point,” DeSilva said. “Holly Singer has killed herself.”

Pam’s heart started to pound. “No! How could she? What happened?!”

“She took an overdose of Nembutal.” DeSilva looked at her coldly. “And left a note saying she could no longer live with the fact that you had driven her to falsify the aneurinide experiments. And that the two of you faked the experiments together.”

“That’s crazy! I did nothing of the sort!” She felt dizzy and about to pass out. Did Holly hate me so much that she lied in her own suicide note?

“You’re a good actress, Pam,” DeSilva said. “You had me fooled, along with everyone else. Perhaps there will be another career for you in the theater. The investigation committee was coming to the conclusion that the fraud was committed jointly by you and Singer. Her suicide note confirmed exactly that, and I’ve now received the committee’s final report with that conclusion. You are guilty of having perpetrated one of the most scandalous cases of fraud in American science. Not only that, your actions have driven a young woman, your own postdoc, to her death.”

Pam started trembling. “Please, I haven’t done anything like that.” She looked at O’Connor. “Mary, you know me. I don’t understand what’s happening.” Wouldn’t they even listen? Have I somehow ceased to exist?

“I think we’ve had more than enough protestations of your innocence,” DeSilva said. “Holly’s death has made everything clear. Your employment at the Langmere Institute is terminated immediately.”

DeSilva passed a letter across the table to her and nodded to the lawyer, who went to the door. Two men in the uniforms of security officers entered and DeSilva continued.

“These gentlemen will accompany you to your office where you may pack your personal effects. They will then escort you from the building. Anything you’re unable to take with you today will be shipped to your home address. You are no longer authorized to enter Langmere Institute property. I should add that we’ll also be forwarding a report of our investigation to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”

Pam started to say something but the words wouldn’t come. It doesn’t matter what I say. They’ve decided. As if I was never here.

She got up and half staggered out of the office, followed by the security guards. She went to her office for the last time, trembling and in tears as she filled a cardboard box with the photos on her shelves and the personal contents of her desk. Then she let herself be escorted to her car.

Sobs wracked her body as she sat behind the wheel. I’m innocent. They can’t do this to me. They can’t.

Finally she regained enough control to drive away from the Langmere. And from the career that had been her life.

Pam sat next to Jake on the tufted Victorian couch in front of her fireplace. It was snowing out, a good morning for a fire. But neither of them felt like building one. Instead, they were focused on the newspapers spread out on the marble coffee table in front of them, along with cold cups of coffee and a plate of uneaten toast.

Jake picked up the Globe. “This story’s disgusting. Was it planted by DeSilva?”

Pam leaned her head back on the couch. Her eyes were blurry, no sleep and too many tears. She felt lost, cut adrift from the only life she’d known.

At least Jake was here.

“Must have been,” she said. “It’s written to make him and the Langmere look good for having turned on me.”

Jake sighed. “Complete with purple prose. Look at this crap. ‘The Langmere Institute deserves credit for their prompt investigation to expose a devious and misguided rogue scientist.’ How the hell can they print garbage like this?”

He flung the paper on the floor.

“Dumping on me and making it look like he was on top of things is DeSilva’s best shot to come out of this looking good. They’ve decided I’m trash, so that’s all they care about.”

“So he’s totally turned on you?”

“Oh, he made that quite clear,” Pam said. No ambiguity there.

Jake sighed and took her hand. “I’m so sorry this is happening, Pam.”

“I know, thanks for being here.” She tried a smile. Without success. “Fraud and suicide, what could be more perfect for the newspapers. I already got an email from Nature saying they’d be publishing a retraction of my paper, together with an editorial on the case. DeSilva probably got to them even before he told me.”

“What’re you going to do? Is there an appeals process you can use to fight this?”

“The Langmere considers it finished, so I’m going to have to prove my innocence to make them listen. The note Holly left was an attempt to frame me, and I’ve somehow got to establish that. But I think the first thing I need is a good lawyer.”

“Are you thinking of suing them?”

“Maybe, I don’t know. I need to see if that’s a possibility. And I need someone to push them into giving me a full copy of their investigation report. I have to find out what Holly said and what other kind of evidence they think they have. But I’m also worried about criminal prosecution. DeSilva said they were going to contact the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”

Jake frowned. “Criminal prosecution? Does that happen in cases of scientific fraud?”

“Very rarely, usually the penalty is just destruction of someone’s career.”

Just. Her eyes filled with tears again. Everything I’ve always worked for, gone. And they still want more blood.

Jake held her for a minute. “I’m sorry, I know this is awful. But you’re innocent. There has to be a way to fix it.”

She squeezed his arm and took a deep breath. “There have been criminal prosecutions in a few high profile cases, so it could happen. Especially if DeSilva uses his political connections to push for it.”

“Crap,” Jake said. “Well, I can at least help you get a good lawyer. There’s someone I’ve worked with on a number of serious cases, including two murders. She’s first rate, used to be a criminal prosecutor before she went into private practice. Do you want me to give her a call?”

Pam was relieved to find Jake waiting for her when she entered the richly appointed reception area of the law offices of Hobbs and Gallagher, which occupied half of the seventeenth floor of one of Boston’s new downtown office buildings. Impressive quarters. A law office like this was new ground for her and she was glad Jake was here for support. At least she had her divorce settlement to cover the cost.

She barely had time to sit down before the receptionist greeted her. “Dr. Weller? Please come with me, Ms. Gallagher is expecting you.”

Pam and Jake followed the receptionist to an office in the northeast corner. The floor-to-ceiling glass windows reminded Pam of DeSilva’s domain, except the lavender walls and bright-colored furnishings gave it a warm cheery feeling rather than a sense of heavy formality.

Anita Gallagher got up from behind her desk, greeted Jake with a quick hug, and motioned them over to a glass conference table. A slender dark-haired woman in a light blue suit, she exuded an air of calm competence that Pam found reassuring.

“Thank you again for taking my case,” Pam said. “It’s nice to meet you in person after we talked on the phone last week.”

“Once Jake briefed me on the situation and we talked, I wanted to get on top of things as quickly as possible,” Anita said. “It’s horrible what they’ve done to you.”

Pam blinked, surprised by such an unequivocal statement of support. “You mean you believe me in spite of all the publicity?”

“I’ve been around long enough to know how publicity works. And I’ve known Jake a long time, so what he says about you is enough for me. But what we’ve got to figure out is how to prove it. I’ve started looking into this from a couple of angles and I’m afraid it’s going to be a tough haul.”

Pam bit her lower lip. “Tell me how you see things. Just the real picture, no sugar coating.”

Anita nodded. “Okay. The first thing I did was to contact the Langmere’s attorney and threaten to sue for unlawful termination. He just laughed at me and said they’d followed established procedures so we didn’t have a case. Somewhat to my surprise, he was even willing to provide me with the report of the misconduct committee and transcripts of their meetings. That of course speaks to his confidence in the way they handled things, and I have to admit I couldn’t find any obvious holes when I reviewed the documents.”

She passed copies of a thick file across the table.

“It looks like the committee thought from the beginning that the fraud was most likely perpetrated jointly by you and your postdoc. The postdoc tried to lay the blame on you when she testified, but the committee wasn’t convinced and her suicide note sealed the case for them.”

“Except I didn’t do it,” Pam protested. “Somehow she framed me.”

Anita held up a hand. “I know, I’m not arguing. But I can’t find anything actionable for us in the procedures that the Langmere followed.”

“How about Holly’s death?” Jake asked. “I assume the cops have further investigated. Is there anything there for us?”

“Right, I checked that out too,” Anita said. “The cops did their usual thing with forensic analysis and interviews with people who knew Holly. Bottom line is it looks like the suicide story holds up. The ME confirmed the cause of death was Nembutal, which was available to her in the lab. Nothing other than her DNA on the vial or the glass she drank it from. And the members of the committee thought their last session with her would have left her feeling like the prime suspect in their investigation.”

Pam nodded. “The detectives interviewed me too. But I had the feeling they weren’t even listening to what I said, it was all settled in their minds.”

Jake got up and started pacing the room. “That’s the way they work. Jump at the obvious conclusion and call it solved.” He turned to Anita. “What really must have happened is that Holly killed herself when she got caught as a fraud and left a note falsely implicating Pam. She was more than a little crazy and was furious with Pam about authorship on the paper.”

Anita raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Tell me about that.”

“Yes, she certainly had a screw loose about authorship,” Pam said. “She wanted to be first author, even though it was agreed from the start that she’d be second. We had a big fight about it and her behavior was really bizarre, although eventually she seemed to calm down and accept things.”

“That’s interesting,” Anita said. “Did you tell that to the cops when they interviewed you?”

“Sure, but they didn’t seem to pay much attention.”

“Which explains why it’s not in the police report,” Anita said. “Well, we can certainly argue that holding a grudge against you could be a motive for having made false accusations in her suicide note. But we’re still left with the problem that the misconduct committee thought there had to be collusion between the two of you to get the double-blind experiment to work.”

“Yes, but I know something they didn’t,” Pam said.

Anita and Jake both looked at her. Then Jake asked, “You mean that you’re innocent?”

“No,” Pam said. “I mean that whatever compound Holly gave me for that experiment actually worked. I didn’t cheat on it and there’s no way Holly could have gotten hold of my code, so there’s no other alternative.”

“Meaning she actually did have an effective drug at that point in time?” Jake asked.

“Exactly,” Pam said. “Whatever happened afterward.”

Jake nodded. “So I think our next step is to figure out what that drug was.”

“I don’t know how you’re going to pull that off, but it would certainly help,” Anita said. “Unfortunately, there’s one other thing I have to tell you.”

Her face was grave and Pam felt a new sense of foreboding. Now what?

“There’s a possibility the Feds will bring criminal charges,” Anita continued. “That doesn’t usually happen with scientific fraud, but DeSilva’s apparently contacted a congressman he knows to exert pressure on the U.S. Attorney. As a result, they’re considering your case to be extremely high profile. Similar in impact to the case of an HIV researcher who was prosecuted for faking vaccine data a few years ago.”

“What happened to him?” Pam asked.

“He was sentenced to almost five years in prison.”

Pam stiffened.

“I’m sorry,” Anita said. “They haven’t reached a decision yet, and it’ll probably take a while before they do. But I needed to let you know.”

Pam closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Could this get even worse? “Then I guess we’d better start trying to find a sample of the real drug.”

Pam strained to see the people scurrying into the apartment complex, the hoods of their jackets raised against the icy drizzle. It was already dark at five thirty in the afternoon and she was tired of sitting in her car. How did Jake manage to sit around like this on a stakeout? Time to give up for the day.

But then she spotted a familiar figure and looked closer.

George.

She shot out of the car and ran over before he could enter the building.

“George, wait. I have to talk to you.”

He spun around and his eyes widened. “Pam, what the hell! What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you and I didn’t want to just phone. Can you give me just a couple of minutes?”

“Look, I don’t have anything to say to you. You have some balls to show up here after what you’ve done.”

“I didn’t do what they say. George, you know me. I’d never do something like that.”

“Oh crap, just leave me alone.”

He started to turn away and she grabbed his arm. “Please. Just a few minutes.”

He pulled his arm away and started toward the apartment building. But then he turned back. “Alright, but make it quick. I don’t want to be seen with you.”

Pam breathed a sigh of relief. “C’mon, we can talk in my car.”

George got in and Pam turned on the engine so they’d have some heat.

“I know you’re not going to just accept my word, but at least consider the possibility that I didn’t cheat on the experiments with Holly.”

“Then why would she write a suicide note like she did?”

“Because she never got over not being first author on your paper and wanted to get back at me. You remember how crazy she was about that.”

George frowned and stroked his beard. “Yeah, she certainly behaved like a nut case. But you had to be in cahoots with her to fake the double-blind experiment.”

“That’s the thing, George. I didn’t fake that experiment with her. Meaning it had to have actually worked.”

He made a sound that was somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “Are you trying to tell me that there really is an active drug out there? That doesn’t seem possible.”

“It’s the only explanation. And I need to work back and figure out what that drug is. Will you help me?”

He stared at her wide-eyed before he answered. “I’d certainly like to believe you. This whole mess has derailed my career, too. But I can’t get involved any further. I’ve taken a job in biotech. Not what I wanted but I was lucky to get even that after the scandal. And I’m not going to do anything that would jeopardize it.”

“I understand and I won’t ask you to do anything that would compromise your situation. But do you still have the tube of the compound I gave you for the double-blind experiment? That tube had to contain an active drug.”

“No, I discarded the samples when the experiment was finished. There wasn’t any reason to hang on to them. And since you’re asking me, I don’t suppose you saved the samples you got from Holly either?”

Pam’s heart sank. Was the only active sample gone? “No, I tossed them out too. We’re both too damned efficient. Are there any other old samples of 40492 in the lab?”

They were both quiet for a minute. Then George smiled. “The sample trays we got from the chemical library at the very beginning of the project are still in the freezer. I can go back to those and get some of the original 40492.”

“That’s great! Are you still running experiments?”

“DeSilva let me stay in the lab to finish up a couple of the side projects we were doing before I start my new job. It’s another two weeks, just time enough for me to give it a try.” He turned and looked at Pam with a new, softer expression. Almost like the old George. “I hope it works.”

Pam reached over and touched his arm. It has to work. “Me too, George. Me too.”

Prescott was humming softly as he walked down the hall from his lab to his office. Good Day Sunshine, a Beatles song from the sixties. He couldn’t quite remember the lyrics, but the title was apt. The drug was working.

With the benefit of his huge mouse colony and the information on timing and doses in Weller’s paper, it had only taken two weeks to repeat the critical experiments that had taken months for Weller’s lab to do. If he pushed, he could have everything ready for a paper of his own soon.

But now that Weller was out of the way, there wasn’t any rush. And maybe there was a way to make it even better.

Prescott entered his office to find Satoshi Kimura, Neuchem’s head chemist, sitting on his couch. Kimura was in his mid-thirties, slightly overweight, sporting a thin black mustache and elegantly dressed in a gray pinstripe suit. He jumped to his feet and bowed his head in a deferential greeting. “Your administrator told me to wait in your office, I hope that’s okay.”

“Of course, it’s a pleasure to see you. Make yourself comfortable.” Prescott took a seat across from him. “I think I have an interesting project for you. Just the kind of thing I was thinking of when I founded Neuchem three years ago.”

“Excellent, I would be honored to help in your research.”

“It will of course require your complete discretion.”

“Naturally.”

Prescott got up and retrieved the structural formula for the compound from his desk. Kimura’s discretion wouldn’t be a problem. He’d been a chemistry postdoc who’d been fired for fudging data when Prescott saved his career by hiring him at Neuchem. Loyalty was his strong suit. Perfect for this kind of project.

He handed Kimura a copy of the formula. “This drug came to my attention because it was reported to help brain cells survive stress. I tried it in my Alzheimer’s mice, and it has some activity. I don’t think it’s potent enough to be useful, but I’m wondering if you could try making some derivatives that might be more effective.”

Kimura studied the formula. “I don’t know. It’s not possible to know which derivatives might work better and which might be the same or even worse. All we could do is blindly make compounds for you to test.”

“Of course, I understand that. I was thinking you could make substitutions in several different parts of the molecule, so we could see if any looked promising. Maybe give us some new leads to follow up.”

Kimura pursed his lips. “Well, there are several places in this structure where it would be easy to make some simple modifications.” He pointed to the formula. “For example, the addition of an azide group here or a hydroxyl group here. I’ll have to study it a bit more, but I think it should be possible to easily prepare a dozen or so derivatives that modify different parts of the molecule. Will that help?”

“Yes, that’s just the kind of thing I was thinking. How long will it take?”

Kimura shrugged his shoulders. “The chemistry is simple. I can get it done in a couple of weeks if you want me to push it.”

Prescott sat back in his chair. It would be worth the wait to see if Kimura could come up with a new compound. It didn’t have to be any better than the original. If there was some structural change that made it look different but still work, he’d be able to patent it as a novel compound. Far more lucrative than patenting a new use for an existing drug, a difference worth many millions.

And even more important, it would provide distance between his drug and Weller’s original compound. An abundance of caution never hurt.

“That sounds good,” Prescott said. “Please give this your highest priority.”

Pam was sipping a glass of wine, inhaling the aroma of tomatoes and garlic wafting from her kitchen. Jake was making his special lasagna. He’d been especially attentive the last couple of weeks, trying to keep her calm while they waited to hear from George. A good guy. Really there for me.

Then the ping of an incoming email interrupted her musing. She gasped when she read it. Oh my God, no!

Jake heard her and came running over. She handed him the iPad. It was from George.

The photographs attached show the effect of the original 40492. Or rather the lack of effect. It does nothing, it’s just crap. I don’t know why you asked me to do this, but I’m finished. Leave me alone.

Jake put his arm around her and she laid her head on his shoulder. “Shit. I’m sorry, Pam.”

She sniffled and looked up, her eyes moist. “I don’t understand how this is possible. Holly had to have a drug that worked at the beginning, and this was the initial sample we got from the library.”

“Do you trust George? Could he be lying about this?” Jake asked.

She sighed. “I don’t know who to trust anymore, but it would have been in George’s interest for this to have worked. I don’t see why he’d lie about it.”

“Let’s think more about Holly then. You know she had an active drug initially, but then what? She must have misidentified it as aneurinide.”

Pam sat up and took a gulp of wine. Focus. Sniveling isn’t going to help. “Crazy as it seems, that must be what happened. Maybe she wanted to steal the active compound and pretend she’d discovered it on her own somehow. Maybe it wasn’t even 40492 in the first place. That would certainly explain why the sample George tested didn’t work.”

“Maybe,” Jake said. “But I think it’s more likely that 40492 was the real thing at first and she switched it for something else later. My guess would be that she came up with a plan to discredit you and steal the real drug when you wouldn’t make her first author. And if I’m right, she probably destroyed the original sample.”

“Why would she do that?”

“In case anybody went back to test it, like you just did.”

“Christ Jake, I never imagined she’d do something like this.” Pam went over to the window and stared out at the frozen river. “But if that’s what happened, she must have had another sample of the active drug somewhere. She wouldn’t have destroyed it entirely.”

“So maybe there’s still some in your lab somewhere?” Jake asked.

Pam swung around to face him. Was this another chance? “There could be.”

“Then we have to get back into your lab and see if we can find it.”

“Yes, but I don’t have access to either my lab or the building anymore.”

Jake smiled. “I don’t think that’ll be a problem. Tell me what you know about the building security. Then give me a couple of days to check it out and we’ll go in.”

Jake entered through the front door of the Langmere a few minutes before five, carrying a book bag over his shoulder and wearing khakis, a blue button-down shirt and a tweed sports jacket. Standard academic dress that blended right in with the researchers and students heading for a lecture in the main auditorium. He took a seat in the back, fiddling with his phone and occasionally drifting off to sleep as the speaker droned on in a monotone. Same as the rest of the audience. When it was over, he followed the crowd into Starbucks and got coffee and a sandwich. From his seat in the corner, he could see the cleaning crew finish up in the auditorium and restrooms, then take the elevator up to the second floor to continue their nightly duties.

He got another cup of coffee and waited for the security detail to do their tour before the front door was locked at seven. When the security check was done on the first floor, he got up and went into the men’s room where he settled into a corner stall. Not the most comfortable place to pass the next several hours. But not the worst stakeout he’d sat through either.

• • •

The streets were dark and empty when Pam approached the Langmere at two in the morning. The hood of her jacket was pulled up over her head and she felt like a criminal sneaking through the night. Well, why not? That’s what everyone thinks I am anyway. And after tonight, they’ll be right.

Jake was waiting inside the entrance to let her in. He had latex gloves on when he opened the door.

“Did anyone see you?” he asked.

“No, all clear. Did everything go okay on your end?”

“No problems. It amazes me how loose security at academic labs can be.”

They took the elevator to the eighth floor and Pam led the way down the hallway.

“Here’s my lab.” She sighed. “Or what used to be my lab.”

“And will be again,” Jake said. He took out a set of lock picking tools and opened the door, seemingly without effort. “Okay, put your gloves on before you touch anything and use this sparingly.” He handed Pam a thin-beam flashlight. “I don’t think we’ll be interrupted, but try to get out of sight if there’s some kind of security check. I’ll be here if things go south.”

Pam went to the freezer in the back of the lab where people stored their chemicals. She opened the door and gave a sigh of relief. Nobody had emptied it out. It was still filled with materials from her lab.

The original trays of candidate compounds from the chemical library took up three shelves. No longer of interest. The top shelf held general supplies and three cardboard boxes labeled with George’s initials. More boxes labeled with Vicky’s initials on the bottom.

And two that were Holly’s.

She took those to a nearby bench and started going through the contents. Thirty or so plastic test tubes. Most were just standard solutions used for cell culture. Insulin, nerve growth factor, glucose, and so forth. But there were half a dozen or so tubes that looked more interesting. Not ordinary stock solutions, but personal samples that Holly had stored.

Pam put these aside and was about to return the box to the freezer when she heard the door open. Her heart jumped and she knelt behind the bench, out of sight from the entrance.

The lights came on and a man’s voice said. “Looks okay to me.”

A woman answered. “Let’s just do a quick walk through to be sure.”

Pam crawled out from behind the bench and squeezed into a gap between an incubator and the wall. Out of sight of the main aisle.

But no way they’d miss her if they looked in the back corner.

She held her breath.

The footsteps came closer.

Then she heard a door slam and running noise in the hall.

“Out there! Let’s go,” the man yelled.

The guards ran out of the lab, slamming the door behind them. Pam breathed a sigh of relief, but stayed scrunched down out of sight.

Several minutes later, she heard the door open and close. Footsteps in the aisle. Then Jake whispered, “Pam? It’s me.”

“Thank God! What happened?”

“I created a little diversion running down the hall. When I got around the corner, I ducked into another office I’d opened earlier and left them trying to find me. I took a laptop, so when they sort things out, they’ll think I was a thief after office stuff. But they’ll be checking the building now, so we should get out of here. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, but that was scary. I didn’t think they did patrols at this hour.”

“They probably saw a late night entrance to the building on video and decided to check it out. Did you find what you were after?”

“I hope so.” She showed him the tubes. “These were in Holly’s freezer boxes. They’re personal samples, so one of them could be what we want.”

“Good. Ready to go then?”

She put the tubes in her pocket and returned the boxes to the freezer. They used the stairs to cautiously make their way out of the building and walked the two blocks to Jake’s car.

Pam finally relaxed when they pulled away and turned onto Brookline Avenue, leaving the Langmere behind. They’d gotten what they wanted. If only one of these tubes is the real thing.

“It’s been a long day,” Jake said. “Ready to go back to your place and get some sleep?”

“Tempting, but no. Can you take me to Logan instead?”

“The airport? It’s four in the morning.”

“I know, but I’m not going to be able to sleep now.” Pam patted the tubes in her pocket. “I want to go get these tested. There’s a five-thirty flight to Detroit and I can grab a nap on the plane.”

It took Pam until late morning to get to the University of Michigan campus and find her former mentor’s office, which had moved to a new interdisciplinary neuroscience building since she’d been a postdoc. She was exhausted and red-eyed from lack of sleep. But no way was she going to slow down now.

She knocked on the door and Karl Meyers looked up from his computer. His eyes widened when he saw her. As if he was looking at a ghost. “My God, Pam! What are you doing here?”

“I have to talk to you, Karl. I need your help.”

“Why didn’t you call?” He sighed. “I wish I could do something to help you. But you know we tried aneurinide. It didn’t do anything.”

Pam started toward him and he shrank back into his chair with a frown. “Pam I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do. It’s hard to believe you did what they say, but I don’t know what else to think.”

He glanced at his phone and Pam wondered if he was thinking of calling security.

“C’mon Karl, it’s me.” She held up her hands in the universal gesture of surrender. “I know I look a mess, I was up all night and took an early morning flight to get here. But just listen to me for a minute. It’s not the way everyone thinks.”

He looked at her appraisingly. Finally he motioned her to a chair across from the desk and got up to close the door. “Alright, tell me what you think may have happened.”

Pam took a deep breath and sat down. I have to make this good.

Karl listened without interrupting as Pam told him the story. “So you’re saying that your postdoc was crazy and tried to steal your drug. Then she killed herself when she was about to get caught and tried to frame you in a suicide note. Could she really be that much of a nut?”

Pam shrugged. “I’m not a shrink, but I don’t see any other explanation. What I do know for sure is that she had a real drug. Whatever she gave me for the double-blind experiment worked.”

Karl was quiet for a minute. “I’d like to believe you. I certainly never had reason to doubt anything you did when we worked together. But I don’t know what to say. How do you think I can help?”

“I have some of her old samples and I think one of them might be the real drug. But I don’t have a lab anymore, so I can’t test them. Could I do it in your lab?”

“And if one worked, who do you think would believe you?”

Her stomach fell. He’s not going to help after all. “Please, just give me a chance. What else can I do?”

She was surprised to see him smile with a trace of his old warmth.

“No, you don’t understand. I’m going to help you, it just won’t be any good if you do the experiment. Give me samples of what you have, and then go back to Boston. I’ll get them tested when you’re nowhere near the lab. Then if one works, people will believe it. And I hope it does, Pam. I truly do.”

It had been reassuring to see that Karl was willing to help her. But now Pam dreaded the call she expected from him. Two weeks had passed since she’d given him the samples, so he’d be getting the results of the experiment any day now. And there was no guarantee that any of those samples were the real thing, not just junk from Holly’s freezer.

She was trying to make herself read a book when her phone rang. Her stomach knotted. It was Karl. She started to answer the call, but couldn’t do it. What if it’s more bad news?

The phone said there was a missed call. And yes, then a voicemail. Alright, let’s get it over with. Her grip on the phone tightened as she pressed the button to listen.

“Pam, call me back. I’ve got good news.”

Good news? Could this be it? She hastily returned the call.

Karl didn’t waste time on greetings. “Pam, you won’t believe it! One of the samples you gave me works just like you published. You have to come see for yourself. You’ve been right all along.”

An enormous sense of relief washed over her. “Are you sure?! I mean, this is wonderful but it almost seems too good to be true.”

“Yes, I’m sure.” He chuckled. “Do you think the old man has forgotten how to do experiments? I honestly didn’t know what to expect, but I wanted to be sure we got definitive results. So I set up two separate experiments and also included samples of the aneurinide we got from the Langmere, just to test it again too. There’s no question about the results. The aneurinide we had from the Langmere did nothing, but one of the compounds you gave me blocked plaque formation and the brain cells are perfectly healthy. But don’t take my word for it. You need to see this for yourself.”

“My God, Karl, this is great. Yes, I do want to come see the cultures. I’ll get a flight out this afternoon and be there tomorrow, okay?”

“Sure, that’d be great. Wait’ll you see these results. And then we’ll sit together and plan what to do next, how to bring this nightmare to an end.”

Finally, progress. Whatever was in that tube really was a drug against Alzheimer’s. A start to getting my life back. If we can just figure out what it is. And what went wrong.

She called Jake, who said he’d be right over to celebrate. Then she booked the first flight out.

As soon as Pam knocked on the office door, Karl Meyers jumped up from his desk and greeted her with a hug. What a difference from two weeks ago. This was the old Karl and she felt warm and comforted in his embrace.

Without delay he said, “Let’s go see your cultures,” and led her across the hall to his new lab. It was a model of contemporary lab design, similar to Pam’s lab at the Langmere and very different from the old quarters in which she’d worked years ago. But she recognized most of the equipment from her postdoc days. A comfortable feeling of déjà vu.

They spent almost two hours together at the microscope, studying and photographing the cultures from his experiment. As he’d said, the results were unambiguous. Like Pam had first seen a year ago, one of the compounds completely blocked plaque formation and cell death. She’d finally been vindicated.

Pam followed Karl back to his office, simultaneously feeling exhilarated and exhausted. The ordeal will soon be over.

Karl closed his office door and settled into the old-fashioned swivel chair behind his desk. Pam sat across from him in one of the wooden side chairs. The sun from the window behind the desk was bright in her eyes, but Karl noticed and got up to close the shades.

Then Pam asked the question that had been on her mind since he’d phoned. “Now that your experiment shows there really is an active drug, what do you see as the next move?”

Karl sat back and stroked his beard, as Pam remembered him doing whenever he was thinking about something. “That’s the question isn’t it. These results will restore your reputation, probably put you back in line for that Nobel Prize everyone was talking about. But first, I think we should try to identify the compound and make some sense out of what’s happened.”

“I agree,” Pam said. “We need to figure out what this stuff actually is.”

“At this point, all we know is that it’s not the aneurinide the Langmere is sending out. We just saw them side by side in the same experiment. One works like you said, the other does nothing. So what would you say to my calling a colleague in the Chemistry Department? There must be some analysis they can do to confirm that the active compound is different from aneurinide. And maybe start to identify it.”

“Good idea,” Pam said. “I’m pretty sure there are sensitive analytical methods that should be able to do just that.”

Karl reached for the phone. “Let me see when my friend can get together with us.”

• • •

Ed Coleman knocked on Karl’s door less than an hour later. He was a heavyset man, Pam guessed fortyish, with long red hair pulled back in a ponytail.

“Thanks for coming over so quickly,” she said when Karl introduced her.

“No problem,” Coleman responded cheerfully. “This got me out of grading exams for my Organic Chem class. I’ve taught the class for ten years, and this year I tried some of the new active learning techniques that are supposed to get the students more involved. But they don’t seem to be doing any better on the exam than they always have. So much for the latest educational fad.”

“Hopefully we have something more stimulating for you than grading exams,” Karl said. “We have a sample of a compound that’s supposed to be a drug called aneurinide. But our sample has an interesting biological activity that other batches of aneurinide don’t show. So we’re wondering if the stuff we have may actually be a different compound. Is there any kind of analysis you could do that would tell us whether it’s really aneurinide or not?”

Pam watched Coleman’s face as Karl talked. He didn’t seem to have recognized either her name or that of the drug.

“So basically what you want is to see whether your mystery compound, let’s call it an unknown so this sounds like chemistry, is the same as another compound you call aneurinide,” Coleman said. “That should be pretty straightforward. I assume you have the structural formula for aneurinide?”

“Sure, we can pull it up on Karl’s computer,” Pam said.

“Don’t bother doing that now, you can just send it to me later,” Coleman said. “Even better, do you have a sample of aneurinide here? What I can do is to run mass spectrometry on your unknown. That’ll give us an exact molecular mass, and we can see whether it’s the same as the molecular mass of aneurinide. If you have some aneurinide, I can also run it in parallel and we can see if the spectra of fragments produced during the analysis are the same. Or if you don’t have any, we can do some computational analysis to see whether the spectrum of your unknown is consistent with the aneurinide structure.”

“I have plenty of aneurinide in the lab, just give me a minute,” Karl said.

He went out briefly and returned with the compound.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have much of the unknown, though.” Karl held up what was left in the tube Pam had given him. It contained only a small amount of liquid, about a tenth of a teaspoon. “This is it, in a one millimolar solution. Pam, do you have more?”

“I have a bit more at home, but not a lot. I gave you about half of what I have.” This was scary. The tiny amounts left in those tubes were her last link to reality.

“No problem,” Coleman said. “Mass spectrometry is super sensitive. I’ll need only a small fraction of what you have. A microliter or two will be plenty.”

Karl had brought a pipette and a clean test tube in from the lab when he’d gone for the aneurinide. Now he transferred a tiny amount of liquid from the sample Pam had sent him to the test tube and handed it to Coleman.

“Here you go,” he said. “How long will it take for you to get the results?”

“Not long at all,” Coleman said. “It’ll just depend on when an instrument is available. I’ll shoot you an email as soon as I have something.”

• • •

Karl greeted her with a grin when Pam knocked on his office door the next morning. “I just got a message from Ed Coleman.”

Pam felt the adrenaline start to surge. “Is he going to get the results today?”

“He already has. No surprise, the drug that works is not aneurinide. He’s free until ten and says he’d be happy to show us the data. Want to pay him a visit?”

The door to Coleman’s office was closed when they got there. Karl started to knock, but they heard voices inside and he held up his hand to indicate they should wait. A few minutes later, the door opened and two students, a man and a woman, came out and walked away rapidly with their heads down. Coleman followed them out, an angry look on his face.

“I can’t believe it,” he said. “I just got the grades posted last night and here they are already, fighting with me about their scores. I love it when they tell me how hard they worked so they deserve an A, even if they got the answers wrong!”

Karl laughed and shrugged his shoulders. “I guess you can’t blame them for trying.”

“I suppose,” Coleman said. “Anyway, come on in. There’s no question about your results. The molecular mass of the sample of aneurinide you gave me was 354, which exactly matches the structural formula. But the molecular mass of your unknown was 388, not even close. And the spectra are totally different as well.”

He showed them two tracings with several peaks in each. Even to Pam’s untrained eyes, they were unrelated.

“This is great,” Karl said. “It certainly explains why our unknown behaves differently from aneurinide, even though that’s what it’s supposed to be. You’ve solved a mystery for us.”

Coleman smiled. “Just an everyday miracle of modern chemistry. I’m happy to have been able to help.”

“But now we of course have another question,” Karl continued. “Can you figure out what our unknown actually is?”

“I thought you’d ask that. I already ran your unknown’s spectrum against the National Institute of Standards and Technology database. It contains mass spectra for over two hundred thousand compounds, but unfortunately none was a match.”

Pam felt a surge of disappointment, but Coleman continued. “Don’t worry, that’s not a big surprise. But it does mean we have to do more analysis to determine the structure. And we need more material for that. Can you figure out where this stuff came from? You must have some idea of possible sources.”

Pam looked at Karl as she answered. “I suppose it must have come from the Langmere chemical library. I don’t see how else it could have appeared in the lab.”

“What’s the Langmere library?” Coleman asked.

“That’s the Langmere Institute in Boston,” Pam explained. “They have a chemical library of about a hundred thousand compounds that’s available for investigators to screen, and that’s what we were doing when we came upon the stuff we gave Karl. But when we tried to get more, we somehow got aneurinide instead, so we don’t know what the active compound really is.”

“That doesn’t sound too hard,” Coleman said. “Why don’t you just search the chemical library database for compounds with a molecular mass of 388, the same as your active material. That should whittle it down to a few dozen possibilities. The library folk may very well have the mass spectra of their compounds, in which case you could identify it directly. If not, we could either run mass spectra of the candidates or you could test them in your biological experiments, whichever is easier. Either way, problem solved.”

“That sounds great,” Karl said. He turned to Pam. “I’ll be more than happy to test whatever candidates you come up with.”

The end was in sight. Although it might not be so easy to access the Langmere database.

“Thank you both, you’ve been great,” she said. “I’ll need to go back to Boston to do the database search. I’ll get back to you with a list of candidates soon.”

• • •

Pam grabbed a cab to the airport in time to catch an afternoon flight. She was about to text Jake the good news when she saw there was an email from her lawyer. She recoiled in shock when she read it.

Please call me as soon as possible. They’ve decided to file criminal charges.

Pam went directly from the airport to the downtown Irish pub her lawyer had suggested for a six o’clock meeting. It was loud and bustling when she got there, with the bar two deep in office workers stopping off for a quick one before the commute home.

She took a dimly lit booth in the back and ordered a glass of wine while she waited for Anita Gallagher to arrive. The crowd at the bar was an interesting mix, including a smartly dressed couple who couldn’t seem to keep their hands off each other. They looked like lawyers or bankers, and Pam guessed an office romance was in the works.

An attractive business type, one of a group of three men at the bar, caught Pam’s eye and tilted his glass at her with an inviting smile. She had to suppress a laugh. Must be pretty hard up to find me attractive the way I’m feeling. She shook her head to decline his offer but, apparently unconvinced, he started over to her table just as Anita came through the door. Pam waved her over and the guy returned to his friends at the bar with a disappointed look.

Anita ordered a martini and they waited for her drink to come. Then she took a sip and broke the news. “I’m sorry Pam. I know the AUSA, assistant U.S. attorney, and I tried to talk him down from this. But he’s determined to pursue prosecution for criminal fraud. There seems to be political pressure so they’re playing it as a high profile case and planning to go to the grand jury for an indictment.”

Pam’s head started to pound. She took a deep breath and asked, “So what happens next?”

“The grand jury will issue an indictment and you’ll be arrested.”

“Arrested! Like a common criminal?”

“I’m sorry.” Anita said again. “I asked the AUSA if you could surrender yourself instead, but he refused. The bastards want the publicity of an arrest.”

Pam started to sweat. “Christ! What then?”

“They’ll probably come for you in the early morning. I’ll try to find out when, but I’m not sure they’ll tell me. The charge will be that you used falsified data in your federal grants applications, the same charge they used against that AIDS researcher. You’ll go before a judge magistrate later that morning and we’ll plead not guilty of course. Then you’ll be released on bail and we get to work on trial preparation.”

Pam looked down at the table and squeezed her eyes shut. Like a bank robber or something. And all I’ve done is discover a drug to treat Alzheimer’s.

“There’s been some progress since we last met,” she said. “Maybe it would help if you updated the prosecutor?”

“I’m happy to try. What’s happened?”

“I found some of Holly’s old samples and a colleague in Michigan tested them for me. One of them worked, meaning there really is an active drug and I have a sample of it. We also did some chemical analysis and it’s not the same as aneurinide. I still have to figure out what it is, but that should be doable.”

Anita’s face brightened. “That’s great! Where’d you find the sample?”

Pam hesitated a minute. “That might be a problem. Jake and I got into the Langmere and went through Holly’s things in my old lab.”

Anita raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean, got into the Langmere?”

Pam was quiet and Anita said, “You broke in, didn’t you? You can tell me, I’m your lawyer.”

“Jake snuck into the building and let me in when it was late at night. Then he picked the lock on my old lab.”

Anita snorted. “Sounds like Jake. Just the kind of thing that got him squeezed out of the FBI.” She finished her drink and motioned the waiter for a refill. “Well, given the seriousness of this whole affair, I’m not terribly worried about a little breaking and entering if it clears things up.”

“Great, so can we go talk to the prosecutor?” Pam asked. Maybe this was progress after all.

Anita toyed with her drink. “We could, but I don’t think it’s a good idea at this point. I’m afraid the AUSA will argue that the Langmere investigation was right about you and Holly acting together, except that you substituted an inactive compound in place of the real drug instead of just making up the data. That kind of conspiracy theory could make matters even worse.”

“That doesn’t make sense. Why would I have tried to hide the real drug?”

“If it wasn’t for the threat of criminal prosecution, all you’d suffer from this whole affair is the loss of your job at the Langmere. If you had a real drug, you could set up some kind of private company and rediscover it, with all of the royalties going to you—or to you and Holly—instead of to the Langmere. It would be a pretty strong motive.”

“Except that I’d never let my reputation be destroyed for money. My career means everything to me.”

“I understand,” Anita said. “And I can argue that to a jury later on. But it’s not going to budge the AUSA. I think the best strategy is to keep this to ourselves for now. I’m afraid you’ll have to go through the arrest and arraignment. After that we’ll start building our case.”

Pam was in the shower when she heard the buzzer ringing. Loud and without stopping. Her stomach fell. Was this it? Six thirty in the morning with no warning. Like Anita had said it might happen.

She threw a towel over herself and ran to the intercom. Be ready to let them in, Anita had said. “Yes?”

The voice was loud and demanding. “Federal agents. Open the door.”

She buzzed them in and waited at the door to her condo, dripping wet. Like Anita and Jake had both told her to do. Be cooperative and do what they say. But don’t tell them anything and ask for your lawyer.

Four of them came in, two with their guns drawn. One said “Pamela Weller? We have a warrant for your arrest. Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

She bit her lip. “Can I dry off and put some clothes on?”

“Alright, but make it quick.” The leader gestured to the two women in the group. “Go with her.”

They followed her to the bedroom with guns drawn. Pam couldn’t stop shaking as she dried herself and got into a shirt and pair of jeans. Then one of the women motioned Pam to the door. “Let’s go.”

They handcuffed her and roughly guided her out of her condo and down the stairs. The handcuffs were more painful than they looked. What had Jake said? Just pretend it’s a dream. A nightmare that’ll soon be over.

Two black SUVs were waiting on the street, blue lights flashing. And a news truck from one of the local TV stations, with a reporter shouting at her and a camera man filming as the agents walked her out. The perp walk. Anita had predicted this too. The Feds had notified the media to get publicity for her arrest.

One of the agents put his hand on her head and they pushed her into the back of one of the vehicles. Then the sirens came on and they made a quick trip to the Moakley Federal Courthouse. The winner of several architectural design awards, it was an impressive glass-walled building on the waterfront. And the site of some of Boston’s most infamous trials.

The Marathon bomber.

Whitey Bulger.

A place Pam never thought she’d see from the viewpoint of a prisoner.

More news media greeted them as she was pulled out of the back seat and marched into the building. Down to the basement. Photographed, fingerprinted, and locked in a six-by-eight foot cell with a metal bunk, a toilet and a sink.

There was no window and she had no idea what time it was. That was the worst of it, not knowing when her lawyer might come. When she might get out. Remember what Jake and Anita said. Keep calm.

It seemed like forever before Anita was finally brought back. But when she asked, it turned out to be only a little after ten.

“Just hang on,” Anita said. “The worst is over and we’ll have you out soon. You haven’t said anything to them, have you?”

“No, nothing. Like you advised.”

“Okay, good. Just remember, they’re not your friends. We’re scheduled to go before a judge magistrate at eleven thirty, so just keep it together for the next hour. They’ll bring you up to one of the courtrooms and I’ll meet you there.”

• • •

Waiting in the courtroom with a half dozen other prisoners was like being in a cattle car. Processed like some kind of animal, no longer a human being. Finally her case was called and she stood before the bench with Anita. Suddenly it was rapid fire.

A plea of not guilty.

Provisional trial date in six months.

Then the judge asked about bail.

“The defendant is an established member of the community, a Harvard professor,” Anita said. “She has no record and is not a flight risk. All she wants is the chance to establish her innocence of these unfounded charges. We ask that she be released on her own recognizance.”

“Your Honor, this is a major crime with a sentence of up to ten years in prison,” the AUSA said. “The defendant has already been investigated and found guilty of fraud by her scientific peers. She has the means and motive to flee. We ask that she be retained in custody until trial.”

Pam’s heart sank. She couldn’t survive being locked up for months.

Anita started to respond, but the judge raised a hand to stop her. He looked bored. “Alright, enough. Bail is set at ten thousand dollars and the defendant will surrender her passport.”

• • •

Jake and Anita were both there to meet her when they let her out half an hour later. She fell into Jake’s arms and broke down in tears.

He held her tight. “It’s alright. It’s over,” he said.

Anita gripped her shoulder. “We’ll fix it, Pam.”

Pam looked up, her face streaked with tears. “I can’t believe what this was like. Being processed and locked up like an animal.”

Jake pulled her head back down onto his chest.

“Let’s go get some lunch and a drink,” Anita said. “It’ll make you feel better.”

“Okay,” Pam said. “At least the drink sounds good.”

They walked around the corner to the restaurant, which Anita explained was a lawyers’ hangout. The host seated them at a window table, looking out over the water. Anita ordered her usual martini and a lobster roll. Jake asked for a Sam Adams and fried clams.

Pam felt blank when the waitress turned to her. “I could do with a martini today, too. I don’t think I can eat, maybe I’ll just steal a little of whatever he’s having.”

The waitress looked sympathetic and hustled off to get their drinks. She’d probably served people who’d just gotten out of jail before.

When the martini came, Pam took a big gulp and shook her head. “That was so awful.”

Jake squeezed her hand. “It’ll get better.”

“Yes,” Anita said. “Now we have time to prepare for trial.”

“How do you see our strategy?” Jake asked.

“Well, finding that there’s a real drug is an important step,” Anita said. “But we’re going to have to be careful with that information.”

“Pam still has to figure out what the drug really is,” Jake said. “But then couldn’t you use it to negotiate a plea bargain?”

“Maybe, but it’s risky,” Anita said. “The prosecution could very well argue that Pam conspired to steal the drug from the beginning.”

“But if I did that, why would Holly have committed suicide with a note saying that she and I were guilty of fraud?” Pam asked.

Anita sighed. “I didn’t mention this before, but I’m afraid the Feds would start looking at the possibility that Holly was murdered, with you as the prime suspect. The theory would be that the two of you were co-conspirators and you killed her because you were afraid she’d crack under the committee’s inquiry. Then you faked a suicide note that would ring true with the committee, but leave you free to rediscover the active drug later. You could find yourself under investigation for murder, not just fraud.”

Pam recoiled in horror. Murder. It seemed like there was no way out of this. “What can we do then? It sounds like it won’t even help to figure out what the real drug is.”

“It’s tough,” Anita said. “Identifying the active drug is important, but I’m afraid it won’t be enough. We’re going to have to figure out the full story of how and when Holly swapped the real drug for the fake. We need to prove it was her, not you.”

Pam kept telling herself to keep it together as she watched the winter storm drive the ocean to a fury. Huge waves brimming with white caps. She was grateful for Jake’s suggestion that she spend a few days at his townhouse in Gloucester instead of returning to her condo after the arrest. Located on the North Shore, about 45 miles from Boston, Gloucester was America’s oldest seaport and still an active center for commercial fishing. A whole different world from downtown Boston.

The glass slider leading to Jake’s deck offered a full view of the ocean, and Pam normally loved to sit here and imagine what it was like to go off on a fishing boat in the nineteenth century. Hunting Moby Dick, with DeSilva moonlighting as Captain Ahab. But not today. The horror of the arrest was too fresh in her mind. And the possibility of even worse to come.

Jake came out of the kitchen, balancing two mugs of coffee and a plate of muffins. “How about something for breakfast? You need to eat.”

She took a cup of coffee. “I know, thanks. I just can’t get the picture of those cops hauling me away out of my mind.”

“I can imagine. The whole process is designed to be intimidating.”

“Well, it works,” Pam said. “But okay, let’s try to move forward. We still want to figure out what the real drug is, right?”

“Yes, I think that’s a good next step. What do you need to do it?”

“Given the analysis I got from the chemist in Michigan, I can probably figure out what it is from the Langmere library database. But I no longer have access to it. They shut down my password when they kicked me out.”

“Is there anyone who would let you use their password?”

Pam shook her head. “I doubt it. I don’t think any of my former colleagues will even talk to me at this point. Especially after the arrest put me back in the news.”

“Well, we’ll just have to figure out another way to borrow someone’s password then. Does everyone at the Langmere have access with their regular email passwords?”

“No, you have to be registered with the library to get access to the database. Then you can login with your regular password.”

“So who do you know that’s a registered user?”

“I’m not sure. My lab was obviously, but I really don’t know who else was using the library. Mary O’Connor I suppose, while she was repeating my experiments. And I guess she’d have access in her new job as Associate Director for Research too.”

“Okay, we’ll use her password then.” Jake grinned. “There’s a certain poetic justice in that.”

Pam looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Oh? And how are we going to do that?”

“Hacking into computers is another little trick I learned when I was with the Bureau. I just need to install a keylogger. It’ll give us a record of all her keystrokes, so when she logs in to her email, we’ll see what her password is.”

“I don’t suppose that’s legal, is it?”

“Well, maybe not exactly. But it doesn’t matter, as long as we get what you need.”

Pam watched the storm brewing over the ocean. What difference did one more offense make? “Okay, I guess. How do you install this keylogger thing?”

“It’s a USB device. I just have to plug it into the back of her computer. It’ll only take a minute and she’ll never know.”

“And how are you going to do that? Another visit to the Langmere?”

“No, they’ve probably beefed up security after our last trip. I think I’ll make this a house call.”

The routine at the big house in Lexington seemed to be the same today as it had been the three preceding mornings. The silver Cadillac left at seven thirty, with a man in a suit driving a teenage girl. Then a woman, presumably O’Connor, left around eight in her Prius.

Jake finished his coffee and waited across the street for a few minutes after the Prius pulled out, just in case one of them had forgotten something. Then he pulled the nondescript white van, rented the night before, into the driveway. Wearing a dark shirt with a yellow vest and carrying a large Amazon box, he was just another delivery guy. Nobody the neighbors would pay any attention to. If they even noticed.

He rang the front doorbell just to be sure. No answer, so he went around back. Anyone watching would assume he was going to leave the package at the back door. But instead he put on gloves and picked the lock on the sliding door to the back deck.

A quick look upstairs revealed five bedrooms. The master suite, a room that had all the props of a teenage girl and one that looked unused, probably a guest room. The other two were used as home offices. One was cluttered with legal papers. The other had piles of scientific articles neatly arranged on the desk. He plugged the keylogger into the back of the computer in the science room and left.

Easy. Less than five minutes for the whole operation.

Except the doorbell rang just as he was about to go downstairs. He ran to the window. Two women with cleaning supplies at the front door. The housecleaners. Parked right behind his van.

He hurried downstairs and out the back door. Then he grabbed the Amazon package and ran back around to the front.

The women were still bringing their supplies into the house.

“Good morning,” he said. “I was going to leave this in the back, but then I heard you out here. Maybe you can take it instead. Can you sign for Miss Collins?”

“Collins? Nobody here by that name,” one of the women said. “This is the O’Connor’s.”

“Isn’t this twenty-two Clearfield Lane?” Jake asked.

“No, you have the wrong house. This is number two twenty-two.”

“Oh my goodness. I’m so sorry.”

Jake got back in the van and drove away. Another lost Amazon delivery driver.

• • •

“Is she online yet?” Pam sat looking over the ocean from Jake’s living room, knowing that she sounded like a kid on a road trip. Are we there yet? But it was the morning after Jake had planted the keylogger. And nothing. Didn’t O’Connor work at home?

But this time Jake came in from the kitchen with a smile. “She just logged in. We’ve got her password.”

Pam straightened up on the couch. “About time she got to work. So can I get into the chemical library now?”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

The adrenaline surged through her. Identifying the drug might be just keystrokes away. “Oh, I’m ready. I’ve waited long enough for this.”

Jake sat next to her as she picked up her laptop and went to the Langmere home page. There was a link to the chemical library and from there a link to the library intranet. She clicked on it and was asked for a user ID and password.

“Looks like here’s where we sign in.” She passed him the laptop and he logged in. A link to the compound database appeared.

He smiled and passed the computer back to her. “Your turn again. I’ll watch.”

“Okay, the first thing is to search for compounds with a molecular mass corresponding to what we got from the chemistry analysis in Michigan. It was 388.”

She did the search and a list of thirty-two compounds with that molecular mass appeared.

“Alright, these are the candidates. Now let’s see if the library has mass spectra for them.”

There were spectra for nineteen of the compounds. Pam went through them, comparing them to the printout Ed Coleman had given her. None matched. Not there yet.

“Well, I guess by elimination we have it down to one of the other thirteen,” she said. “Let’s see what more we can learn about those. I’ll have to check through all the references, so it’s going to take a while.”

“Should I go down to the village and get us some sandwiches?”

She nodded without looking up from the computer. One of these compounds is the drug I’ve spent years searching for. Maybe the key to restoring my life.

When he returned, she was still concentrating intently. She ate her sandwich without noticing what it was. Nearly two hours later she looked up.

“I think I’ve milked this as far as I can. Of the thirteen candidates, it turns out that eight were tried as cancer drugs, like Holly said aneurinide was. Those are probably the strongest candidates, but all thirteen are available from one chemical company or another, so I could just send the list to Karl and he could check them in his lab. And see if his friend Ed Coleman can run mass spectra on them.”

Jake nodded. “Sounds good. And you think one of these is the real thing?”

“I sure hope so. It pretty much has to be if the compound came from the Langmere library.”

“So how long will it take for your friends in Michigan to test them?”

“The chemical analysis is quick, it’ll probably just take a few days. But it’ll be a lot of work for Karl to do the biological experiments, especially to get all the data we need to convince everyone. What do you think of my going out there to help?”

“Didn’t Karl say it would be better if you weren’t there for the experiments?”

“When he did the first experiment, yes. But it doesn’t matter now that he’s confirmed there’s an active drug. And I’d like to be there when we get the definitive answer.”

Jake got up and kissed her forehead. “And you should be. Go ahead, I can handle things from here as far as looking into Holly goes.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to start by finding out more about her. We know that she tried to steal the real drug, and you’ll find out what it is. Somehow that will be important in unraveling what happened. But I want to tackle the question of how she died. One possibility is that she killed herself when things went south. But the alternative is that she was murdered by an accomplice who set it up as a fake suicide, the same way Anita suggested the cops might suspect you of having done. Do you think she could have killed herself?”

Pam shook her head. “I don’t know. She was certainly crazy and vindictive to do all this with the drug, but a suicide? Who can say?”

“Could there have been something else that pushed her over the edge? Do you know if she had any history of mental illness, maybe previous suicide attempts?”

“No, nothing that I know about.”

“How about drugs or alcohol abuse? Or any kind of personal crisis she might have been dealing with?”

“Again, not that I know of. Although we never talked about personal things.”

“Did she have family? Any friends that you know of?”

“She never spoke about her parents or other family, so I don’t think there was anyone she was close to. She did have a boyfriend who used to come to lab parties, but they broke up over a year ago. I don’t think there’s been anyone serious in her life since then, although I believe she socialized with some of the graduate students and other postdocs at the Langmere.”

“What was her boyfriend’s name, do you remember?”

“Dave something. I’m not sure.”

“No problem, it’ll surface when I start learning more about her. But I don’t see anything in her history or personal life that sounds like suicide, do you?”

“Being caught in a major fraud case could be reason enough,” Pam said. “Other scientists have killed themselves in similar situations. And the idea of someone murdering her sounds pretty far-fetched.”

Jake shrugged. “There have been plenty of murders set up to look like suicides before. I’ve worked cases like it myself. If she had an accomplice in stealing the drug, it would have made sense for them to kill her when it looked like the investigation committee wasn’t going to buy her story. And take the opportunity to lay the blame on you at the same time.”

Pam shook her head and sighed. “I guess it’s possible. But what a terrible thought. For someone to commit not just fraud but even murder for this.”

“I know,” Jake said. “But at this point, I think murder is at least as likely as suicide. And there’s another implication.”

“I don’t think I can take anymore, but go ahead.”

“If she was murdered, it means there’s a killer still out there. And you could become a loose end in their scheme.”

Pam shuddered. “So you think I’m in danger?”

Jake took her hand. “I just want to play it safe until we figure this out. How about staying here instead of going back to your place when you come home from Michigan?”

“Sure, that’s easy. Thanks for offering,” she said.

Jake smiled. “Good. And one more thing.” He reached into his pocket and handed her a black canister about the size of her hand. “Pepper spray. Just keep it handy as an extra precaution.”

Pam took it and examined it for a minute. “Okay, I will. But what are you going to do in terms of looking into Holly? The police already investigated her death and didn’t come up with anything suspicious.”

“I’m pretty good at this kind of thing. And I know a few things the cops didn’t.”

“Such as?”

“That you’re innocent for a start. And that Holly had a real drug. Plus I have you to help me unravel the science. In fact, you can start by putting together a list of key dates in the progression of all this. When did the experiments show the compound was first active, when did you do the double-blind experiment, when did the fight about authorship happen, when was the paper submitted, and so forth. You see what I’m after—pretty much a complete timeline so I can put things in context as I work.”

“Sure, that’ll be easy. And then what are you going to do?”

He squeezed her hand. “Same thing I always do when I don’t know what’s going on. Ask questions and see what shakes out.”

Jake dropped Pam off at the airport two days later. He’d cleared his calendar and was ready to make Holly Singer a full-time project. Starting with a look through her texts and emails. The cops would have gotten them when they investigated her supposed suicide, so what he needed was someone who could get him copies of the police records. An old friend in the Bureau.

He placed a call to Rob Harlow.

“Well, if it isn’t Jake Lawrence,” Harlow answered. “And to what do I owe the honor this time? Got another drug trafficker for me?”

Jake chuckled. “I’m the one who needs a favor this time. Do you remember the big fraud case about Alzheimer’s research at the Langmere Institute? And the young woman who killed herself?”

“Sure, it was all over the papers. Quite the high-profile academic scandal.”

“Well, what you read isn’t real. I’m good friends with the head of the lab, Pam Weller, who everyone thought was responsible along with the postdoc who committed suicide. The fact is, the fraud story isn’t true. Pam’s innocent and I’m trying to figure out what really happened. So I’d like to get copies of the postdoc’s emails and texts.”

“Which you want me to get for you? Shit Jake, you know that’s going too far.”

“I know, I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to. You remember that asshole we took down on Long Island, right?”

Harlow sighed. “Yeah, I know. You saved my ass that time. How often are you going to call in that marker?”

“Only as often as you make me use it.”

Harlow snickered. “Alright, alright. You said this Pam Weller’s a friend. Is this business or personal?”

“It’s as personal as it gets. She’s important to me.”

“Okay, I’ll get them for you. But if Weller’s innocent, are you thinking the postdoc’s death might not be a suicide after all? Maybe something like the murder cover-up in the industrial fraud mess we worked a few years back?”

“It’s possible,” Jake said. “I’m just going to have to see what I can dig up.”

“You’ll bring me in on it if something’s there, right?”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

• • •

A thumb drive with copies of Holly’s texts and emails for the last two years was delivered to Jake in Gloucester the next morning. For good measure, Harlow also sent him a copy of the Brookline police report.

It took Jake a full day to work through two years’ worth of texts and emails, and in the end the results were disappointing. There were clear boyfriend exchanges with a Dave Fitzgerald up until about a year and a half ago, when Holly had apparently terminated the relationship. There were a couple of messages after the breakup, which appeared amicable and gave Jake no reason to suspect the former boyfriend.

Since breaking up with Dave, Holly had had occasional dates but nothing that seemed to have developed into a significant relationship. Other than that, she seemed to go out to eat regularly with a half dozen or so people with Langmere or Harvard email addresses. Probably other students or postdocs. And of course there were a variety of emails to Pam and others in the lab talking about experiments and writing their paper. But nothing like what he was hoping to find. No new boyfriend or confidant to whom Holly revealed anything about her plans for the drug or spoke about her troubles with the misconduct committee. And no one she’d contacted the day of her death.

There was one exchange that looked interesting, though. Holly had written to an Eric Prescott several months ago about meeting at a Gordon Conference, right around the time she and Pam had the big argument about authorship. Prescott had said he’d be happy to see her there, although there were no further messages between them after that. Still, it might be worth talking to Prescott to see if they’d met at the conference.

Googling Eric Prescott showed he was a distinguished professor at the Institute for Advanced Neuroscience. The research summary on his lab website described him immodestly as “a leading researcher at the forefront of understanding Alzheimer’s disease,” and listed a series of honors and awards to back up the assertion. It also had links to several articles about him in newspapers and magazines like Newsweek and Time, which Jake knew was not a general feature of scientist’s websites. So Prescott liked talking to the popular press. Jake smiled to himself and called Prescott’s office.

A woman answered. “Professor Prescott’s office, who’s calling please?”

“My name is Steve Morgan. Is Professor Prescott available?” Jake asked.

“I’m sorry, he’s in a meeting. Can I help you?”

“I’m a journalist working on an article about research on Alzheimer’s disease and I was hoping to have the chance to interview Professor Prescott. After all, he’s the leading authority in the field. I’m sure he’s extremely busy, but I’m in Boston for just a few days and very much hope we can set something up. I’d hate to miss the chance to get his input.”

“I see. Well yes, I’m sure he’d be happy to help you with that. Let me see, I can make some time on his calendar tomorrow afternoon at three. Would that be possible for you?”

“That’s perfect, I’ll see you then. Thank you so much.”

Jake ended the call, amused at how easy it was to break through barriers when an ego was involved. Then he decided to call Pam. Maybe she knew something about Holly having met Prescott. And besides, she’d been in Michigan almost three days now. It’d be good to talk to her.

• • •

Pam was sitting on the only comfortable chair in her room at a Victorian bed and breakfast, her home for the next couple of weeks, looking over the list of nearby restaurants. She was trying to decide between pizza and Chinese when the phone rang. She was excited to see the call was from Jake and grabbed it before there was time for a second ring.

“Hi Jake, good to hear from you.”

“I’m glad I caught you. How’re things going?”

“The drugs will be in soon and we’re all set to do the chemistry analysis when they arrive. What’re you up to?”

“I’ve been working through Holly’s emails—”

“What! How in the world did you get those?”

He chuckled. “Another old FBI trick, or in this case an old friend. Anyway, I didn’t find any real smoking guns. But there was an exchange I’m curious about. Back at the beginning of June, she wrote to Eric Prescott saying she had some exciting new results and asking to meet with him at a Gordon Conference. Does that ring any bells?”

“No, I didn’t know anything about it. And it sounds kind of screwy. I’d been pretty forceful about telling everyone in the lab that the results with aneurinide had to be kept quiet.”

“She sent the email on June fifth. I checked the date list you gave me, and that’s the same day you had the authorship argument with her.”

Pam got up and started pacing the room. “I’ll bet she contacted him because she was pissed at that. I wonder what was on her mind. Are there any further exchanges between them? Her attitude seemed to improve once she got back from that meeting. Maybe Prescott knows something.”

“Yes, my thought too,” Jake said. “So I have a meeting with Prescott tomorrow to see if I can find out more about what went on at that conference.”

“How’d you swing that? Prescott only talks to people who can help him.”

“I could tell from his website that he liked seeing his name in the press, so I posed as a reporter wanting to interview him for a story.”

She laughed. “You certainly pegged him quickly.”

“Told you I’m good at this. But before I meet with him, give me a little more background. What’s he like?”

“Arrogant, as you already figured out. I don’t know him well. He’s more senior than I am and never had much time for me. He’s made some important contributions to Alzheimer’s research and is generally considered a candidate for a Nobel someday. Very much into political maneuvers as well as the science.”

“Your drug will make you a candidate for a Nobel, too. How would Prescott feel about that?”

“Royally pissed, I imagine. He’s a very competitive guy.”

“That’s what I figured,” Jake said. “Okay, that’ll help when I talk to him. Now tell me about the Gordon Conference he and Holly went to. I googled it and saw that Prescott was the keynote speaker.”

“Yes, and that’s quite an honor. Gordon Conferences are very prestigious.”

“I noticed it was held at a prep school in New Hampshire. Doesn’t seem like very comfortable accommodations for big name scientists.”

“No, that’s for sure. The Gordons are designed to promote lots of informal communication, not for luxury. People are assigned double rooms in the dorms with communal bathrooms. And sleeping in dorm room beds is definitely not for grownups. When I go to them, I usually find a room at a nearby hotel instead.”

“That makes sense. And probably what Prescott did too. Well, it’ll be interesting to talk to him tomorrow and see if he remembers anything about Holly. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

After some more background work on Eric Prescott, Jake had the day free before their three o’clock meeting. It was a pleasant morning, at least for a Boston winter, and he decided to pay a visit to the area around Holly’s apartment. The police report indicated that the cops had talked to several of her neighbors, but only to ask about the night of her death. Jake wanted to go back further and see if anyone had noticed visitors to her apartment during the last few months. He put on a coat and tie and slipped a fake Boston detective’s badge into his pocket. Then he drove into Brookline and parked on Kent Street.

His first stop was the apartment downstairs from Holly’s, where he found Pat Zarling, the woman who’d let the police in to find Holly’s body. An overweight woman in her fifties, wearing sweat pants and a red Boston University T-shirt, she looked annoyed at the interruption. He showed her the badge and introduced himself as Detective Morgan.

“We’re just doing a final follow-through on the death of your neighbor, Holly Singer. I know you found her body with the University police, a terrible thing. I’m sorry to trouble you further, but I wonder if you have time for just a few more questions?”

“Well, I’m sure I already told the other policemen everything, but come in if you want to.”

“Thank you. I understand you told the other officers that you didn’t notice anything unusual the night of her death. No visitors to her apartment?”

“No, I didn’t see or hear anyone. I was here all evening, fell asleep watching the nine o’clock news. My bedroom’s in the back on the first floor, so I probably wouldn’t have heard anything after that. Her apartment was up on the third.”

“How about more generally? Did she have any regular visitors during the months before her death? A boyfriend perhaps?”

“Not recently. She had a boyfriend, Dave, but they broke up over a year before she died. I used to see him a lot and he always said hello. A nice young man. But I never saw her with anyone else since then. Sometimes I heard people upstairs, so I guess she had visitors every once in a while, but nobody I ever met or really noticed.”

“Do you know if there was anything upsetting in her personal life that could have led to this? Was the breakup with Dave traumatic for her?”

“No, I don’t think so. I remember we talked about Dave. She said he was a nice guy, but just not right for her and things had cooled off between them. I don’t think either of them was particularly upset when they parted ways. But why are you asking? She said everything in her note. It was because of that dreadful scientist woman she worked for.”

Several other neighbors told the same story. Many of them had known Dave, who seemed to have been quite friendly when he and Holly were out together. But none of them had seen any regular visitors to her apartment after the breakup. A couple had even asked her about a new boyfriend, and she’d replied that she was too busy in the lab.

He was about to give up and go get some lunch when he saw a blond woman walking a black and white dog across the street. People out with their dogs often noticed things, so he went over to her for a last try. Besides, he liked dogs.

He smiled at her and petted the dog. “What a beauty! I couldn’t resist coming over to say hello to her. Is she a Portuguese water dog?”

“Oh, thanks! Yes, she is. Her name’s Fenway and she loves being petted. As you can see.” Fenway leaned up against him to prove the point.

“She’s great,” Jake said. “Since we’re talking, do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” He flashed the badge. “I’m Detective Morgan and I’m doing a final follow-up on Holly Singer’s death. Did you know her?”

“I’m Leah Frank. I didn’t really know her, just to say hi when we met on the street. I live about a block down from where her apartment was. Horrible thing, her dying like that.”

“Yes, a real tragedy. Did you see anything unusual the night of her death? Perhaps someone strange in the neighborhood?”

“No, I remember thinking about that when it happened. Nothing that I saw or heard.”

“Do you know if she had a boyfriend? Any regular visitors to her apartment?”

“She did have a boyfriend, Dave. But they broke up a while ago. He was a nice guy. We’d see them on walks and he always said hi to Fenway.”

“Nobody since then?”

“No, she seemed to be on her own after Dave. But I do remember one night last summer when I saw her coming home late and thought maybe she wasn’t so alone after all.”

“Oh?” Jake’s ears perked up. “Tell me about that.”

“Well, Fenway had a bad case of diarrhea and was getting me up late at night to go out. I think it was around midnight. Anyway, I just took her out in front and noticed this fancy sports car pull up across the street. They gave each other a kiss and then Holly got out and went up to her apartment. I remember thinking she must’ve had a good time that night.”

“Do you remember anything more about the car? I don’t suppose you noticed the license number?”

“No, I didn’t get the plate for you. But the car was a red Mercedes, a sports car like I said.”

“How could you tell it was a Mercedes?”

“Do you think I’m stupid? The hood emblem’s pretty distinctive.”

Jake laughed. “No, definitely not stupid! This is very helpful. You said it was sometime in the summer. Do you remember any more about when it might’ve been?”

“Well, I can tell you exactly if you want.”

“Really? That’d be great. How can you do that?”

She pulled out her iPhone. “Like I said, Fenway had bad diarrhea and I took her to the vet the next day. So I’ll have an email here with the receipt. Here it is, August twentieth. So I saw them the night of the nineteenth.”

Jake treated himself to a grilled Reuben for lunch at a deli in Coolidge Corner. Over his sandwich, he looked at the timeline of events Pam had given him. August nineteenth was the date the paper had been published in Nature. Maybe a coincidence. Or maybe Holly had been out celebrating with the driver of the red Mercedes.

Eric Prescott was at his computer, putting the final touches on his paper. All the data he needed were now in, and beautifully showed the efficacy of his new compound. The editor of Science, Nature’s leading competitor as the world’s most prestigious scientific journal, was expecting the manuscript. Donald Moore had called her a couple of weeks ago, and she’d been delighted at the opportunity to publish the paper. She’d been miffed that Pam Weller’s paper had gone to Nature, and was now thrilled at being able to publish a real version of a similar story in Science. She promised to bypass the normal review process and get it out quickly, in print within two weeks of receipt. Then the fun would begin. The work would be quickly confirmed, and his long-deserved Nobel would follow.

Prescott’s thoughts were interrupted as his admin knocked on the door and showed Jake in for their three o’clock meeting. She introduced him as Steve Morgan, the journalist who’d made an appointment yesterday, and Prescott rose to greet him. He didn’t welcome the interruption, but it was always important to be sure the press presented him in the most favorable light.

• • •

Jake had shed his tie for the meeting, leaving his shirt open at the neck to look more like a journalist than a detective. He immediately noted that the office was large and richly furnished, the walls covered with numerous awards and photos of Prescott giving what Jake assumed were prestigious lectures. It fit the arrogance of Prescott’s website.

He figured the best strategy would be to simply give Prescott the opportunity to talk about his accomplishments. Then Jake would bring the conversation around to the recent case of fraud in Pam Weller’s lab, and finally to the topic of Holly Singer and the Gordon Conference. He was confident Prescott would be talkative enough to make it an easy interview.

“Thank you for making the time, Professor,” Jake began. “I’m working on an article dealing with the latest advances in Alzheimer’s research and it’s obviously key that I give full coverage to your work.”

Prescott motioned him to an armchair and sat opposite Jake on a leather couch. “Yes, well I think it’s always important that the public be fully informed, so I’m happy to help. Who did you say you’re working for?”

“I’m freelance, but in the past I’ve published articles like this in outlets like the New York Times, Newsweek, Time—places with wide popular readerships.”

Prescott nodded. “So how can I help you?”

“Well, I’ve reviewed the material on your website and some of your most important papers. But it would be great if you could start by summarizing your thoughts on the current status of Alzheimer’s research and the role that your own work has played.”

That got Prescott launched on a fifteen-minute review of the critical importance of his contributions, during which Jake only needed to nod appreciatively and indicate how impressed he was at appropriate intervals. Then Prescott turned to the present.

“It’s fortuitous you’re here today, because I’m about to submit a paper that’s going to revolutionize the whole state of affairs. We’ve identified a drug that can cure mice with early stage Alzheimer’s. It’s the Holy Grail we and others have been hoping to find for years.”

“That’s fabulous, congratulations! Can you tell me more? What is this wonder drug?”

“I can’t tell you the details yet, not until the paper’s published. That’ll be another few weeks and of course I’ll hold a press conference at that time. But if you can delay release of your article, I’ll send you a copy of the paper once it’s set for publication. That way you can include it in your story and be ready to roll as soon as the paper comes out.”

“That sounds great. Yes, I definitely want to include this. I’ll be more than happy to hold my article. Here’s my email address.” Jake handed him a business card for Steve Morgan, freelance journalist. Then he decided it was time to get to the point of the interview.

“One of the stories I’ve of course come across is the crazy fraud that the woman at the Langmere Institute, Pamela Weller, perpetrated. I believe she claimed to have found the same kind of drug that you’ve now discovered for real. Did you know her?”

“Yes, she made up an intricate fraud that of course exploded. I don’t know what’s behind such a sick mind. I didn’t know her well, just casual professional contact. It’s terrible what she did.”

“Yes. And I understand she even got one of her people, a postdoc in her lab, to do it all with her. And the postdoc eventually committed suicide when they were about to be caught.”

“I’m afraid that’s right. Even more awful for her to have driven one of her own postdocs to her death.”

“Did you know the postdoc, Holly Singer? I did a little background work on her and noticed that she attended the Gordon Conference on Neurodegenerative Disorders this past summer, where you were a Keynote Speaker. I was wondering if you happened to run into her there, maybe had some idea of what she was like.”

“No, I never met her. There are always lots of junior people at those meetings, so maybe she spoke to me, but if so I don’t remember it. Sorry, I can’t help you with that angle. The whole thing was truly a tragic affair.”

• • •

Jake was thoughtful as he drove back to Gloucester. Something about Prescott rubbed him the wrong way. He poured himself a glass of Scotch and settled in to give Pam a call before fixing dinner. He knew she’d be waiting to hear from him, and he wanted to get her reactions to the interview.

She answered after the first ring. “Jake, hi. I was waiting for your call. How’d your meeting with Prescott go?”

“Well, he certainly confirmed that he’s an arrogant asshole. He said he never met Holly and didn’t remember her from the Gordon Conference. But he also said that he’s about to submit a paper reporting a new drug that will reverse early stage Alzheimer’s. It sounds just like what your drug does. Do you know anything about it?”

“No, I don’t. Do you know what his drug is? That seems like quite a coincidence.”

“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Jake said.

“Meaning you think he might be the one who was in this with Holly? He’s certainly ruthless professionally, but a murderer? I don’t know, that’s a whole different thing. And it’s oddly not uncommon in science for two people to independently discover something important.”

“Okay, I’ll keep an open mind for now. He wouldn’t tell me what his drug is yet. He said the paper was ready to submit and would be out in just a few weeks. But he did promise to send me a copy before then as long as I agreed to hold my article until it was published. So I’m hoping we’ll know more soon.”

“And by then we’ll know what my drug really is. Jesus, can we finally be getting to the end of this?”

“I hope so. And in the meantime maybe you can help me with something else. I’d like to find out more about what went on with Holly at that Gordon Conference. Can you think of anyone else who might have talked with her there?”

“I don’t know anyone in particular, but the young people at those meetings tend to hang out together. And she would’ve had a roommate. It’s amazing how often roommates at these meetings become friends, just like they were college girls in a dorm. Do you think there’s a way you can trace that back?”

“Maybe. I bet if she made friends with people at the meeting, there’ll be some email exchanges afterward. I’ll go back to her emails and see what I can find. Keep your chin up, I’ll talk to you soon.”

• • •

It didn’t take Jake long to find something interesting. It was a message written about two weeks after the Gordon Conference from a Jane Carlson at the University of Chicago.

Hey Holly,

Just wanted to say it was great rooming
with you! And thanks for the leads on postdocs. I have two interviews coming up at labs you suggested in Boston next month! How’d you
do talking to EP? Hope it worked out for you.

Jane

So Jane had been Holly’s roommate. And was “EP” Eric Prescott? He searched for Jane Carlson at the University of Chicago. A graduate student in neurobiology. He thought about emailing or calling her, but it was always better to talk in person. And this was an intriguing enough lead that a trip to Chicago was in order.

He went online to order some new business cards that would be available from a nearby office supply store first thing the next morning. The cards identified him as Steve Morgan, a Private Investigator with an address in downtown Boston. Then he booked a mid-morning flight to Chicago.

Jake got Jane Carlson’s lab address from the University website and reached the five-story red brick building in the early afternoon. There was no security and he went straight to the room listed in the directory. It was a small cramped office with four desks and no windows, apparently shared by Jane and three other graduate students. But the only occupant at the moment was a young red-haired woman who looked like the picture of Jane he’d found on the web.

She was intently concentrating on something, so he knocked on the door.

She turned and glared at him. “Damn it, are you another one of those frigging salesmen? Get the hell out of here before I call security!”

Jake tried a smile. “No, I’m not a salesman. And I apologize for interrupting. I can see this is a busy time. I’m actually a private investigator working for Holly Singer’s family. Do you remember her?”

Jane looked at the business card he handed her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that I’m trying to finish my thesis and, well look at this.” She held up a thick manuscript and showed him a page full of red ink corrections. “This was supposed to be the final draft, and look at all the crap my advisor scribbled over it. I hate her!”

Jake shook his head sympathetically. “That must be tough. But you’ll get through it. I can come back later if you’d prefer, but I’d really appreciate just a few minutes of your time. And I know it would mean a lot to Holly’s parents.”

“I’m being selfish, aren’t I? I’m sorry, I think this happens to us graduate students when we’re trying to finish up. Yes, of course I’ll be happy to talk to you. It was horrible what happened to Holly.”

“Yes, a real tragedy. How well did you know her?”

“Not well. Just from being roommates at the Gordon Conference last summer. But she was really nice and gave me some good tips about finding a postdoc after I finish here.”

“That’s great, it’s just the kind of thing her parents will like to hear. I’m looking into things that she did in her last year or so to try to assemble a full picture for them. Do you remember anything else from the Gordon Conference? Maybe things you and Holly did together?”

“Well, we went to some of the lecture sessions and had a few meals together, but nothing special. She was intent on meeting some of the senior people who were there, especially Eric Prescott. She said she’d sent him an email and they were going to meet at the conference.”

“Do you know if she got a chance to talk to him?”

“Oh, definitely. She was pretty pushy about it. He gave the keynote lecture the first night, and she went up to him right afterward. She was all excited when she got back to our room later because he asked her to meet him after lunch the next day. I saw them go off walking down a trail together that afternoon, so she must’ve had a good chance to talk to him.”

“How did it go for her? Was her meeting with him helpful?”

“I don’t know, she didn’t say any more about it that night. She might’ve met someone else, because the next night she didn’t come back to the room at all. So I think she must’ve found a playmate to spend the night with. You know, that happens a lot at these meetings.”

“Do you know who it might have been? I don’t want to pry into anything personal, but I’m just thinking that maybe I should try to talk to whomever it was.”

“No, I’m afraid I don’t know any more about it. She came back to the conference Wednesday afternoon, but didn’t say anything about either what happened with Prescott or where she spent Tuesday night. Then the meeting ended on Thursday and we haven’t kept in touch since.”

• • •

Jake got an early evening flight back to Boston and gave Pam a call. “Prescott lied to me about meeting Holly at the Gordon Conference.”

“What! The bastard. What’s the story?”

“I followed up your suggestion and looked for people who Holly might’ve been with at the conference. I found an email from her roommate, who’s a graduate student in Chicago. I flew out there this morning and talked to her.”

“About Prescott?” Pam asked.

“That’s where the conversation went. According to the roommate, Holly was intent on meeting Prescott during the conference. She went up to him the first night after his lecture, and then they went off on a walk together after lunch the second day. Too much for him to have forgotten.”

“I agree,” Pam said. “That certainly seems suspicious.”

“Plus I think there’s still more to the story. Holly never came back to her room the night after that.”

“And you’re thinking she may have spent the night with Prescott,” Pam said. “That might explain things in a different way—just plain sex. It used to be common for people to sleep around at these meetings, with a lot of senior men going after younger women, especially students or postdocs. Now it’s frowned upon and a couple of senior men have even gotten into big trouble for sexual harassment. But it still happens all the time, and Prescott has a reputation as a player at these things. If Holly was interested in talking to him, I can easily imagine that he took it as an opportunity to get her into bed. And if that’s what happened, I’m pretty sure the Institute for Advanced Neuroscience would frown on his being involved with a postdoc, even if she was from a different institution. He’d have good reason to want to keep it quiet.”

“So you think it might be sex that he’s trying to hide, not the theft of your drug? I guess it’s possible, but still a lot of coincidence for me. In any case, I’m going to check into Prescott’s activities at the conference a bit more. At least I’d like to see if it looks like he was Holly’s paramour that night or if we should be looking for someone else.”

“And how are you going to do that? Talk to Prescott again?”

“No, I don’t think that would get us anywhere. I’ll take a less direct approach.”

Googling luxury inns near Plymouth, New Hampshire yielded half a dozen likely candidates. Not bad, Jake thought. He started calling.

A cheery woman’s voice answered his first call and Jake said, “Good morning, this is Dr. Eric Prescott. I had a lovely stay with you back in June, but I have a problem I’m hoping you can help me with.”

“Of course, sir, I’ll be happy to try.”

“I’ve somehow misplaced my copy of the bill and I need it to claim my expenses. Could you send me a new copy?”

“Certainly, let me just pull it up. What dates were you here?”

“It was three or four days, around June twentieth.”

“Okay, let me put you on hold for just a minute.”

The woman sounded slightly less friendly when she came back on the line. “I’m sorry Dr. Prescott, but we don’t have any record of your having stayed with us.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Jake said. “I must have you mixed up with another inn.”

• • •

The fourth call was a success.

“Yes Dr. Prescott,” the clerk said. “I have your bill right here. Would you like me to send you a copy?”

“That would be great. Could you send it to my personal email account? It’s eprescott12 at Gmail.”

“No problem, I’ll get it out right away.”

Jake ended the call and logged into the eprescott12 Gmail account he’d established an hour earlier. The clerk’s email with a copy of the bill was already there. Prescott had stayed at the inn the nights of June twentieth through the twenty-third. He’d registered for a single room and the only charges were for breakfasts and lunch for one, except for Tuesday the twenty-second. That night he charged a dinner for two at the inn’s restaurant. And the next morning he ordered breakfast for two from room service.

Jake didn’t have to check his notes to remember that Tuesday was the night Jane had said Holly didn’t return to their room.

• • •

Prescott’s home address was a luxury condominium in Harvard Square, about two miles from the Institute for Advanced Neuroscience. Jake pulled up a little before seven the next morning, armed with a large cup of coffee and two blueberry scones. He parked a block down from the entrance to the building’s underground garage and waited.

There was still one scone left when a red Mercedes sports car pulled out of the garage at five after eight. Jake couldn’t see the driver, so he jotted down the plate number and followed the car. It took a winding course through the back streets of Cambridge, then turned into another parking garage. Right next door to the building Prescott’s lab was in. Gotcha. He’d check the plate with the DMV later, but it was clear enough.

He ran through it again on the drive back to Gloucester. Prescott had started a relationship with Holly at the Gordon Conference in June and kept it going at least long enough to be with her the night the paper was published, two months later. Despite that, there were no records of communications between them beyond her first email.

Burner phones?

Pam was working at one of the biosafety hoods in Karl’s lab, preparing brain cell cultures for drug testing as soon as they got Ed Coleman’s mass spec results. So far he’d analyzed nine of their thirteen candidates. None matched the real drug. What if none of them matched? She put that thought out of her mind. One of the remaining four had to be it.

She just had two more dishes to go when Karl came over to the hood. It was after one and she knew he’d be clamoring to go to lunch, which he almost religiously ate at noon.

“Hang on just another minute,” she said. “Let me finish this and I’ll buy you an extra sandwich.”

“No, it’s not lunch. I got a call from Ed Coleman. He has news.”

She whirled around on her lab stool to face him. “What?”

“He didn’t say. Just that we should come over.”

She put the dishes aside and got up to follow Karl out of the lab. This could be it. But it could also be another setback. Why didn’t Coleman say anything?

Karl had to struggle to keep up with her as she hurried across campus to the chemistry building. When they reached Coleman’s office, his door was open and several sheets of paper were spread out on his conference table.

“We’ve got a match,” he said.

Pam’s eyes started to tear up. This is it. The drug I’ve been after for all these years.

She sat down to steady herself as Coleman showed them two tracings. “This is the spectrum from the unknown compound you gave me earlier, and this is from one of the candidates you got from the chemical library.”

He lined them up and Pam could see they were identical. Coleman tapped the mass spec tracing. “There’s no question about it. This is your drug.”

Pam let out a deep breath. “Are you sure? Is it really the same compound?”

Karl answered with a chuckle. “You can see it is, Pam. This is your drug.”

She jumped up and managed to get her arms around both of them in a group hug.

• • •

Jake was surprised to get a mid-afternoon call from Pam.

“We’ve got it,” she said. “Ed Coleman identified the right drug by mass spec.”

“What!” Jake almost plowed into the car in front of him on Memorial Drive. He quickly pulled off the road. “My God Pam, that’s fabulous! Congratulations.”

She laughed. “It’s such an enormous relief, I can hardly believe it. After all this, I finally have a real Alzheimer’s drug.”

“It’s wonderful, it really is. So now what? Do you have more work to do there?”

“Karl and I are going to set up some big experiments over the next couple of days so that we’ll have biological data in the brain cell system. Once we get those started, I’m going to come home. It’ll take a couple of weeks before the cultures are ready to read, and I’ll come back here then to analyze the results.”

“Good, I miss you. And I also have some news about Prescott. I’ve confirmed that he was with Holly at the Gordon Conference and continued seeing her back in Boston.”

“So you were right. But still, that just means they were having an affair. Not that he was involved in trying to steal the drug.”

“True enough,” Jake said. “But I’ll bet what happened is that Prescott offered her a job in his lab if she sabotaged the work and pinned the fraud on you. Then the two of them could pretend to independently discover the real compound and get all the credit. Except he wound up killing her when he decided he didn’t trust her.”

Pam sighed. “I don’t know. He may be an asshole, but a killer? It’s hard to believe. Maybe Holly just killed herself when she was about to be exposed and laid the blame on me out of anger. Prescott didn’t have to have anything to do with her death.”

“Maybe. I agree that’s a possibility, but my gut tells me otherwise. I’m going to have to find out, for your own safety. If I’m right, we can’t leave him running around.”

“Yes, I can see that. So what are you going to do next?”

“Wait for one more piece of evidence. Prescott told me he was going to send me a copy of his paper claiming to have discovered his own Alzheimer’s drug. Let’s see how it compares to yours.”

Pam was enjoying a night in her own home. Between staying with Jake in Gloucester and then going out to Michigan, she hadn’t been here for weeks. But Jake had gone to New York to testify in a case this afternoon and he wouldn’t be back until late tonight. So they agreed it would be okay for her to spend the night here. The fridge needed a major cleanout, she needed to replenish clothing and toiletries and it felt good to be in her own space.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the ping of an incoming email and she was surprised to see it was from Jake. He usually called or texted.

This just came in from Prescott. Is it your drug?

The message he’d forwarded from Prescott was almost as brief, addressed to Steve Morgan. Presumably Jake’s journalist cover name.

Dear Mr. Morgan:

As promised, please find attached a copy of the paper we discussed. It’s scheduled for publication in next week’s issue of Science. Please remember that you agreed not to publish anything before then, but this will give you an opportunity to review the paper in advance. Feel free to contact me if there are any questions, or any further comments you would like from me concerning the importance of our findings.

Eric Prescott

Attached to the message was a copy of Prescott’s manuscript, which Pam eagerly opened. She immediately checked the structure of the drug Prescott was reporting and calculated its molecular mass. But the results were disappointing. It looked quite different from hers. And its molecular mass was 447. Not the same as Pam’s drug, which had a mass of 388.

So he’s discovered an effective drug independently. Not stolen it after all. And in that case, he probably had nothing to do with framing me. Maybe Holly decided to steal the drug on her own and killed herself when she was about to be exposed.

And then the spectre of criminal prosecution resurfaced. If Prescott had a different drug, would the prosecutors believe her story? Or would they think that she’d tried to steal the drug, like her lawyer had suggested? And even suspect that she was the one who’d killed Holly. She couldn’t get the image of being arrested again out of her head. This time for murder.

It was close to eleven when she emailed Jake the news. He’d get her message sometime tonight and they could talk about it in the morning. She thought about going to bed, but knew sleep would be impossible. Instead, she started reading Prescott’s paper in detail.

• • •

Jake had been trying to work through Prescott’s paper when Pam’s email came in. He hadn’t been able to get much out of the manuscript. It was too technical for him. And her message was a downer, so he decided to get a few hours of sleep.

He was awakened by someone knocking at his bedroom door and calling his name. He sat up with a start and looked at the clock. Not yet six in the morning. What the hell was going on! Then he saw Pam, looking excited and a bit frantic.

“Pam, what’s up? I didn’t expect you this early, but come on in.”

“I’m sorry, I guess I woke you. But I couldn’t keep this to myself any longer.”

“I know, I got your email last night. It is disappointing.”

“No, that’s not it! Forget my email. Look at this.”

She pulled out two sheets of paper and laid them on the bed next to him. There was a chemical structure written on each of them.

“This is the compound from Prescott’s paper on the left, and this is my drug on the right. Totally different, with a big difference in their molecular masses.”

Jake was puzzled. “Yes, that’s what you said in your email last night.”

She turned the paper with Prescott’s compound ninety degrees to the right. “Now look again, more carefully. They’re actually not so different after all. In fact, they’re the same basic structure, just modified in three places.”

She drew circles around three parts of each structure. “There’s a fluorine instead of a hydrogen here, an azide instead of a hydroxyl here, and a sulfur instead of an oxygen here. They’re not really different compounds, but closely related derivatives.”

“Damn! So you’re thinking that Prescott came up with his drug based on your compound after all? Why would he have gone to the trouble of making these changes instead of just stealing your drug?”

“To make sure it wasn’t an existing compound, especially not anything in the Langmere chemical library. This way he can patent it as a totally novel drug, worth lots more money and unrelated to anything I might have had.”

“Got it.”

“Plus, there’s something else weird about his paper. It doesn’t give any rationale for having tested the drug in the first place. We did a large-scale screen to find the drug in my lab, but Prescott couldn’t have done that because he didn’t have my cell culture system working. So his paper just reports the results of using the drug in his genetically engineered mice. That’s fine, but he never could have tested enough mice to have discovered it that way in the first place. And instead of saying how he found it, the paper reads like it dropped out of the sky. He doesn’t even say how it was synthesized, just gives a footnote saying the synthesis will be published separately.”

“How could he get away with that? I’m no scientist, but I do know that Science is a top journal. Wouldn’t they expect him to say how he discovered the drug he’s reporting?”

“They would. But there’s a lot of politics in this kind of publishing, and he probably gave them some cock and bull story about not wanting to go into the background. He has a lot of pull and I suspect they were so anxious to publish the paper that they let him get away with it. And once the paper is out and an effective treatment has been reported, nobody’s going to care where it came from.”

“So much for the objective purity of science. But this is great. Given this, my next move is to talk with Prescott and press him on how he came up with his drug. That would make sense for the story I’m supposedly writing.”

“Do you think that’ll work? He’ll probably just give you whatever cover story he gave Science.” She smiled. “I’m no investigator, but I have another idea. Prescott’s paper says that the main author of the paper that’s going to describe the synthesis of his compound is Satoshi Kimura. I googled him and he’s the lead chemist at a company called Neuchem, which Prescott founded.”

“Interesting. So you’re thinking that Prescott gave him the formula for your compound and asked him to make other things that were related? And then Prescott had a small number of possibles to test in his mice.”

“Exactly. And I think Kimura is the person we should talk to next. If we take him by surprise and press him on how he synthesized this stuff, I bet we can learn more than talking to Prescott.”

“Good idea, I like it. But what do you mean we?”

“I mean that I’m going with you for this. You may be a super detective, but you don’t know enough of the science to pull off an interview with a chemist on your own. You can introduce me as your technical assistant and we’ll do it together.”

Jake used his Steve Morgan journalist cover to make a one o’clock appointment with Kimura at Neuchem, which turned out to occupy a glass-walled two-story building in a western suburb just outside Route 128. Nice set up, Jake thought. He pulled into an adjacent parking lot, about half full with twenty or so cars, and parked in one of three spaces reserved for visitors. They followed a cement walkway across a manicured lawn to the main entrance and were escorted to Kimura’s office by a security guard stationed inside the lobby. A secretary informed Kimura they were there and ushered them into a spacious corner office.

Kimura greeted them warmly, seated them on his couch, and asked the secretary to bring in coffee. Jake introduced Pam as Nancy Sanders, his technical assistant who would help him understand the science for his article.

“I’m so pleased that you’ve come to talk to me,” Kimura began. “Often the chemistry behind the development of a new drug is neglected in the popular press, yet it’s really so important to the discovery. I would be honored to help you explain this in your article.”

“We’re grateful you could meet with us on such short notice,” Jake said. “I just received a copy of Dr. Prescott’s paper last night. Such an exciting discovery, it’s amazing. When I think of all the impact it’ll have, I want to be sure that I represent it correctly. Perhaps you could tell me some of the background that isn’t in the paper itself. How did you get the idea to synthesize the drug in the first place?”

“Dr. Prescott deserves the credit for that, not me. It’s all from his insight. He found a protein kinase inhibitor in the literature that was supposed to have some activity in promoting brain cell survival. He was always looking for drugs like that and he tested it in his mice that get Alzheimer’s disease. He said it had just a hint of an effect, nothing significant. But he wondered if I could synthesize some derivatives that might have more potency. So I did, and we now have this wonderful new drug! I think it shows Dr. Prescott’s brilliance of course, but also how important the collaboration between biology and chemistry can be.”

Pam jumped in. “It certainly does, Dr. Kimura. And it shows not just Dr. Prescott’s brilliance, but also the skill of your work as a chemist. How many derivatives of the original compound did you have to make?”

“I was surprised, it was not too many before we had what we were hoping for. I believe it was eight in total.”

“Interesting. How closely related is the final drug to the compound you started with? Do you have its structure that you could show us?” Pam asked.

“Of course, give me just a minute.” Kimura got up and looked through a stack of papers on his desk. He pulled one out and showed them a structural formula.

“Here’s the starting compound, different by a few substitutions from our new drug.”

Jake saw a look of recognition cross Pam’s face. And even he thought it looked like the structure Pam had shown him earlier, the active drug Holly had first discovered.

“That’s fascinating. May I take a photo for our article so we get it right?” Pam pulled out her phone and took a picture before Kimura could reply. It looked like he was about to object, but Jake quickly moved the conversation on.

“How long did it take you to do all this?” he asked. “It certainly shows the power of modern chemistry to go from a compound with just a hint of an activity to a cure for a horrible disease.”

“It was easy to do the chemistry. Only a few days to make derivatives by adding different groups to several places on the original compound, hoping for one that would give us a lead to what we wanted. And Dr. Prescott found that one of these was extremely powerful. The rest will soon be history.”

• • •

Neither of them spoke until they were back in the car. Then Jake turned to her.

“It was your drug he started with, right?”

Pam just nodded.

“That pretty well nails it,” he said. “I’m glad you were there. You got him to show you the structure in a way I probably couldn’t have pulled off.”

Pam shook her head. “I still can’t believe it. Prescott really did come up with this whole plot to discredit me and steal my work. But it still doesn’t prove he killed Holly.”

“No, it doesn’t prove it. But I can’t imagine that Holly was part of this deception and then killed herself when it started to go south. It just doesn’t fit the profile of a suicide. And leaving a note implicating you doesn’t make much sense either. At that point, she’d have blamed Prescott for getting her into all this, not been out to get you because of the authorship disagreement.”

Pam sighed. “I guess. But killing her to get the Nobel Prize? It’s just beyond what I can imagine.”

“Well, it’ll become clear soon enough. I’m going to take what we have to my friend in the Bureau. It’s plenty for him to reopen the case with Prescott as a suspect.”

“So what now? Do you want me to go talk to your friend with you?”

“No, I’ll drop you back at your condo and then I’ll go down to FBI headquarters. I’ll need to give a full statement for the record and then I suspect they’ll have Prescott brought in for questioning. They’ll probably want me to hang around and be available when they interview him, so it could take a while. I’ll keep you posted and come back to your place when we’re done.”

Prescott was in his office, happily reviewing his calendar as he planned the wave of publicity that would follow publication of his paper. He’d arranged a press conference for the day the paper was due to come out, followed by a seminar tour of key universities both here and abroad. Including of course a trip to Stockholm. He’d already figured out how to rearrange the awards on his wall to make room for the Nobel medal. It was all looking good when his secretary interrupted with a call from Satoshi Kimura.

“I’m calling with some good news,” Kimura said. “I had a visit earlier this afternoon from a reporter writing an article on your work. You must know him, a Steve Morgan, since he already had a copy of the paper. He wanted to know how we thought to synthesize the drug in the first place, so I explained your idea and how we went about it. I could tell they were impressed and it will be a great story of how your biological insight could combine with chemistry to make a groundbreaking discovery.”

Prescott’s hackles went up. This sounded odd. The one weak link in his paper, indeed in the whole story, was how he came up with the compound in the first place. He’d avoided saying anything about the rationale or how the drug was synthesized in the paper, having won an argument with the editor of Science about not including this information. Kimura was the only one who knew where it had come from, and now a journalist was asking him about it! And why would Morgan have gone to Kimura instead of to him? It took careful reading of the paper to figure out Kimura’s role.

“I see,” Prescott said. “So what did you tell him? And what do you mean by they? Did Morgan have someone else with him?”

“Yes, there was a woman with him. Nancy Sanders, his technical consultant. She was very good and understood chemical structures. So I was able to show them the formula of the compound you gave me initially and explain how I was able to modify it to make an active derivative. She understood how it worked and even took a photo of the structure of the starting compound so they’d be able to explain it properly.”

Prescott was shaken when he hung up. He told himself it was okay, that nobody would work back from the starting compound to the Langmere chemical library even if the structure did come out. But why had Morgan gone to Kimura and what kind of freelance writer had a technical assistant who sounded like a trained scientist in tow?

Finding out a bit more about Steve Morgan seemed like a good idea, so Prescott pulled out Morgan’s business card and went to his website. As he expected, there was Morgan’s bio and links to several popular science publications. Prescott clicked on a link to an article Morgan had done on Parkinson’s disease. But the link was dead. Then he tried another and another, with the same result. He began to feel disconcerted. Was this guy really a journalist? Or could something else be going on? And then a thought came to him that made his head start to spin.

What if Morgan’s a fake, an investigator trying to probe into the case?

And who was the woman who’d been with him? He had internet access to the security camera at the entrance to Neuchem, so he pulled it up on his computer and started viewing the footage from earlier in the afternoon. He stopped the playback for a closer look when he saw two people entering the building just before one o’clock.

One was the man he knew as Steve Morgan. And the other was Pam Weller.

He was stunned. This was his worst fear and his heart was pounding. He put his head in his hands and forced himself to think. Even if they knew something was up with the drugs, they couldn’t know that he’d killed Holly. Maybe there was still time.

He had to get to Weller and find out who Steve Morgan really was. How much they knew. And whether they’d talked to anyone.

Then he could deal with them.

• • •

Prescott told his secretary he’d be out for the rest of the afternoon and hurried home to his condominium. He took out a small case from the bottom drawer of his dresser and removed a gun. He’d bought the 9mm Glock in Vermont—no permit required—before he killed Holly. Just in case the Nembutal hadn’t worked. And now he was glad he had it. He could still win. He wasn’t sure how this evening was going to work out, there wasn’t time for careful planning. Maybe a suicide. Or a home invasion gone bad. Have to play it by ear.

Leaving the Mercedes in the condominium garage, he took the subway to Pam’s home address on Beacon Street. A five-story brownstone, typical for the neighborhood.

The entrance to the lobby was open so he went in. Access to the building interior was controlled by a security intercom. The directory listed ten units, with Pam Weller in 5B. Top floor. Good site for a suicide jump.

He left the building and checked it out from across the street. The lights were off in both top floor units. Pam was probably out. A little after five thirty, so she might be coming home soon.

He returned to the lobby and buzzed unit 2A on the intercom. A woman answered and Prescott said, “I have a certified letter requiring your signature, could you buzz me in please?”

“What is it? I’m not expecting anything.”

“I don’t know, ma’am. I just need to deliver it.”

“Alright.” The door unlocked with a clicking sound and Prescott held it open. Then he buzzed 2A on the intercom again. “I’m sorry, ma’am, I made a mistake. It’s actually for 4A. Sorry to have disturbed you.”

He went in and took the elevator up to the fifth floor. The doors to 5A and 5B were across the hall from one another. And at the end of the hall there was an alcove leading to the emergency exit. Out of the line of sight of someone getting off the elevator.

He settled in to wait.

Pam was just starting home from the market on Newbury Street, a couple of blocks from her condo, when Jake’s text came in.

Finishing up statement and should be home soon. They’re out looking for Prescott. Not at office or home, but his car’s there so he must be around somewhere. They’ve staked out his condo and they’ll get him when he comes back. Pretty much done here until then. Xoxo

She breathed a sigh of relief. It was just about over.

Great, just picked up steaks and stuff for dinner. Will be ready to celebrate when you get here.

The streets were crowded as she made her way home. Probably a mixture of people getting off work and going out for the evening. She wanted time to marinate the steaks and maybe have a quiet glass of wine, so she hustled through the crowd back to her building.

Took the elevator to the fifth floor.

Unlocked the door.

And then someone grabbed her from behind and pressed something hard against her.

“Get inside and keep quiet. This is a gun at your back.”

He pushed her inside the condo and she turned around.

Eric Prescott.

She started to scream, but Prescott pointed the gun at her. “Shut up or I’ll use it.”

She looked around frantically. He was between her and the door. No place to go. The gun made what had happened to Holly all too clear. And what he intended for her.

He waved the gun at a chair near the fireplace. “I don’t want to have to hurt you. Sit down, we need to talk.”

She couldn’t stop herself from trembling. Fear? Rage? Maybe both. She squeezed her fists together, trying to retain control. If he was going to shoot me, he’d have done it already. He must need something first. Stall.

She sat down. “Alright, put the gun away. You won’t need it.”

He kept it pointed at her. “We’ll see. Why don’t you start by telling me why you visited Neuchem this afternoon. And who Steve Morgan really is.”

“Okay, just give me a minute.”

He nodded and lowered the gun slightly. Her purse was next to her. With the pepper spray. Maybe I can surprise him.

She reached for it and felt the canister inside.

Yanked it out. Jumped at him.

But he knocked it out of her hand.

“What the fuck’s this, you bitch!” He slammed the gun across her face and she fell to the floor. Her head hit the side of the fireplace and she lay there, dazed and bleeding from her forehead.

• • •

Jake knocked lightly on Pam’s door and let himself in. What the hell! Pam lying on the floor, bleeding. He started over to her.

And then he saw Prescott. Pointing a gun at his chest.

Prescott smiled coldly. “Well, well. The famous journalist Steve Morgan. Come join us. I think Pam was about to tell me who you really are.”

Years of training kicked in as Jake assessed the situation. Prescott hadn’t killed Pam. Or him. He must want information first. Get him talking. Distract him. Get close enough to go for the gun.

He started moving toward Prescott.

“Stay where you are,” Prescott said. “We have some talking to do. Who the hell are you, anyway? What were you doing at Neuchem?”

Jake took a couple more steps. Maybe ten feet away now. “Sure, we can talk. I’m a private investigator.” He nodded toward Pam. “She hired me to figure out what happened to her drug. And courtesy of your Dr. Kimura, we now know that the drug you’re about to publish came from something at the Langmere. Kind of looks like you stole the drug with her postdoc. And maybe killed her?”

The gun shook in Prescott’s hand. “That’s quite a story. And just who have you told about this?”

Jake raised his hands and inched closer. Six feet away. Almost there. “Nobody yet. Although I have my notes written up and uploaded to iCloud, just in case anything should happen to me. But maybe we can make a deal. There’ll be lots of money in this for you. For, oh, let’s say a third, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

Prescott hesitated. “Interesting idea. But then how about Weller?”

Jake shrugged. “Whatever. Up to you.”

Another step closer.

Suddenly Pam grabbed the wrought iron fireplace poker on the floor next to her, rose up, and swung at the back of Prescott’s head.

Prescott ducked and blocked the blow.

But it was all the distraction Jake needed.

He leaped across the remaining gap to Prescott. Grabbed the gun and twisted with his left hand. Karate chopped Prescott’s wrist in a crisscross motion with his right.

Prescott yelled and let go.

Jake stepped back. “Disarmament 101. You’re not very good at this, are you Professor?” He held out the gun. “Want to try for it? Give me an excuse?”

Prescott stood frozen, eyes darting from side to side. Looking for some way out.

“You piece of shit,” Jake said. And slammed a right uppercut into Prescott’s jaw.

Prescott staggered backward and tumbled to the floor in a heap. Finished.

Jake took a deep breath. Then he went over to Pam and put his arms around her. “Are you okay?”

She melted into him, trembling softly.

“Nice move with the poker,” he said. “Just what I needed.”

She looked up, smiling through her tears. “The bastard never did think I was good for much. Maybe he’ll change his mind now.”

Jake kissed her. “He’ll have plenty of time to think about it.”

Then he took out his phone and placed a call. “Harlow? I’m at Pam’s place. We found Prescott. Could you send someone over to take out the trash?”

Jake made sure the Boston Globe got all the details, and the story ran on the front page the day after Prescott’s arrest. The news coverage following the Globe’s article was predictable and Pam was a little amused at how much more of a heroine she became with each rendition. Nature followed quickly with a new publication of her paper, this time with the correct drug in place of aneurinide. She was once again a star scientist. And an icon of popular culture.

Enrique DeSilva called within days to offer her old job back. Except it wasn’t exactly her old job. This time it would be a specially endowed professorship with a huge salary and all the research funds she could ever want. But it was hard to imagine returning to the old life. How could she go back to normal interactions with people who turned on her without a second thought when she was down? Without even listening to her side of the story.

Similar offers came from the country’s other top institutions, but she remained noncommittal.

Then she received a call from the President of the University of Michigan.

“I know you’re flooded with offers, but I’ve been talking with your old mentor, Karl Meyers, and we’d like you to consider the possibility of a position as director of a new neuroscience institute. Actually, our vision is that it would be a new kind of institute, where faculty would be encouraged to address innovative big picture problems without the normal restraints of funding and tenure. We want to build a place where people can undertake long-term high-risk research that will make a difference, without the constant pressures of getting grants and publishing the kind of trivial papers that plague academia. As director, you’d have complete authority over faculty hiring and promotion, as well as the operational resources needed to make this a reality.”

Pam’s interest was piqued. This could be something new and important. A different way to run science, not the kind of fighting for money, tenure, and awards that cheapened institutions like the Langmere. And that had produced a monster like Prescott.

“That certainly sounds intriguing,” she said. “But the resources needed for an undertaking like that would be enormous. Do you really think it’s feasible?”

“Karl and I have already run the idea by several of the larger private foundations, including Gates and Hughes. It’s all contingent on you being director, but if you were to accept the position the answer would be yes. I think you’d be surprised by the resources we could muster. Can I get you to make a trip out here and talk to us about it?”

It was exciting. And having Karl for a colleague would be a big plus. She discussed it with Jake and he liked the idea. Plenty of business for a private investigator in Detroit.

She took several weeks to consider it. But then she decided to take the plunge. The allure of building a model research institute that supported young scientists who wanted to do something new, not just dot the i’s and cross the t’s of academic success, was compelling.

And getting back to thinking about science was fun.

• • •

Jake was curled up in bed with Pam when the phone jolted them awake. He looked over at the clock. Just after five. The morning of October fifth.

Pam grabbed the phone and said, “Hello?”

She listened for a minute and said, “Oh my. Well, thank you. That’s quite a surprise.”

There was a longer pause and she said, “Yes, that’s great news. Thanks again. I guess I’ll see you in December.”

She ended the call and Jake asked, “What was that?”

“Stockholm. Nobel Prize.”

He jumped up and wrapped his arms around her. “No surprise, but congratulations! We should celebrate. How about I make omelets and Mimosas?”

Pam smiled and kissed him lightly. “Thanks, but it’s not a big deal. What’s a prize like that even mean when someone like Prescott almost got it by fraud? Let’s go back to sleep.”

The media coverage later that day noted how unusual it was for Pam to have been the sole recipient of this year’s Prize. Only the New York Times included a comment from Alfred Bergner of the Nobel Committee, suggesting that Eric Prescott would have shared it with her under normal circumstances.