Tash thinks for a moment. He can't come up with anyone else off the top of his head. It's an issue to stay away from if we can when he's on the stand.

"And the problem?" says Harry.

"She had taken some papers from David's office, without his knowledge. He knew she had taken them because someone saw her do it."

"Who?"

"I don't remember, but it wasn't important, because Jordan admitted it. She told David that she needed the papers to complete some of her work. He was furious. He told her that if she wanted something from his office, she should have asked him for it. They had an argument, here in his office."

"Were you present?" says Harry.

"No."

"Did anybody else see or hear this argument?"

"See it, no. Hearing is another matter," says Tash.

I look at him from the corner of one eye.

"Voices travel," he says. "Walls are thin."

"And what did you hear?"

"Bits and pieces," he says. "Snarling and snapping. Mostly from Kalista. Dr. Jordan. We all knew there had been a problem between them, but I didn't know the precise nature until Dr. Crone told me."

"And what did he tell you?" I ask.

"That she'd taken papers from his office." We are now back to where he started. Tash has a satisfied look, as if pleased by the fact that he's given nothing we didn't already know.

"Did he threaten her?" says Harry.

"Excuse me?"

"During this argument, did Dr. Crone threaten Dr. Jordan?"

"Did somebody tell you that?"

"Just answer the question," says Harry.

"You mean threaten with violence?"

Harry nods.

Tash finds the question humorous. "Oh, I'm sure she often felt threatened, but it wasn't by violence."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Let's put it this way. If there were two people at any meeting and Kalista was one of them, she usually wasn't the most competent person in the room. Her problems with Dr. Crone came down to insecurity."

"How so?"

"David wanted to get rid of her. Dismiss her. It took him about a month to realize she was in over her head. She knew it. That's what the s.e.xual hara.s.sment thing was all about. She figured if she filed the complaint, it would be more difficult to fire her. But the fact is, she couldn't do the job. Her work had been substandard almost from the day she joined us. She'd come to work late and go home early. Wouldn't show up for meetings. There's no doubt in my mind she felt threatened by the people around her. Their quickness and superior intelligence. She simply didn't fit in."

This doesn't jibe with what we have been told of her work ethic by others.

"Well, one thing's for sure," I tell him.

"What's that?" says Tash.

"Kalista Jordan's arms and legs weren't severed by a sharp wit or piercing intellect."

This only draws a stone-cold look.

"He would have never threatened her. David doesn't operate that way. He is very controlled. Everyone will tell you this. The fact is, I've never seen him lose his temper. He may have been upset. But even when he's upset, David tends to be understated."

"And you heard all this understatement," says Harry, "from behind a closed door?"

"Mostly her voice," says Tash. "Some people have that irritating nasal thing. You know what I mean? She had a voice that tended to carry."

"So you only heard one side of the argument?" says Harry.

Tash concedes the point.

"Without divulging the contents or precise nature of these papers, how important were they?" I ask.

Tash thinks about this for a moment, and measures his answer. "What I can tell you is that our work here is quite compartmentalized. Different members of the staff work on different aspects of any project. It is designed so that their knowledge and responsibility are limited. Only the project director would be in a position to know how all the elements fit together."

"And that would be Dr. Crone?"

"Correct."

"So what you're telling us is that these papers taken from Dr. Crone's office allowed Dr. Jordan to know more about how all the pieces of the project fit together than she was authorized to know?"

Tash snaps his fingers, still moist with apple juice. "You got it."

"And this created a big problem?" I ask.

"In a word, yes. How big it was I will leave for others to determine. You have to understand that confidentiality in our work is paramount. There's a great deal of compet.i.tion, patent rights and sizeable sums of money at stake. It's the reason for all the security."

"Yeah, we noticed it at the door," says Harry.

"First impressions can be deceiving," says Tash. "If you tried to get into any of our computers, you would find it more difficult than invading the Pentagon. There are multiple pa.s.swords for every level of access and a firewall guarding the entire system from the outside."

"And yet Kalista Jordan was able to walk out of Dr. Crone's office with sensitive materials."

"He didn't think she would steal things."

"Do you know whether Dr. Jordan pa.s.sed these papers or the information on them to anyone else?"

"How would I know? She could have sold the information to a competing lab for all I know."

"Do you have reason to believe that's what happened?"

"As I said, I don't know. And I really shouldn't be discussing this stuff with you." He's talking about the center's work product.

"One last question," I say. "If Dr. Crone was the genetics expert and Dr. Jordan was in charge of molecular electronics, who was in charge of the other aspects of the project?"

He considers for a moment, weighs whether he will answer a question that can easily be sorted out by reference to an organizational chart. Tash knows this and so he answers: "That would be Bill Epperson."

"Nanorobotics, right?"

Tash doesn't say a word.

chapter.

ten.

harry and I are alone, mired in our differing a.s.sessments of Tash and his story of the moment as the elevator doors slide closed behind us.

It is difficult to get a clear picture of Kalista Jordan. Everyone seems to have a different take, perceptions being what they are. According to Tash, she was a self-serving viper lying in wait.

Harry's view is that Tash might be useful. "It may be our best defense. Putting the woman herself on trial." Harry is talking about Kalista Jordan.

This is not a novel approach in criminal cases where defamation of the dead seems to thrive. Raise enough eyebrows in the jury box, and murder can become a victimless crime.

"The question is whether Tash's take on her is accurate. An African-American woman and a high achiever, someone with the t.i.tle of doctor in front of her name. There's certainly nothing in her background that looks bad on paper," I remind him.

"You're thinking there was some jealousy on Tash's part?"

"There is that possibility. She may have been ambitious, but that's not a crime. We take off after her, and we're going to alienate every woman on the jury. That's just for starters. We haven't even begun to consider the issue of race."

"You think our friend Tash was troubled by the color of the woman's skin?"

"I don't know. But the way he talked, I think Tannery could make it sound that way. According to Tash, Jordan was predatory, but she's the one who ended up dead. He tells us she was incompetent, but doesn't give us any specifics. If we put him on the stand, Tannery is going to make it look as if Tash felt threatened, jealous of her position and access to Crone."

"Maybe that's not so bad," says Harry.

I look at him, a question mark.

"We could put Tash on the stand and let him twist. The other man," says Harry.

"You think Tash had something going with her?"

"Doesn't matter what I think," says Harry. "Question is whether we can sell it to the jury."

"The man has the metabolism of a reptile," I tell him.

"Maybe they got it on."

"What? And Crone got between them? Tash got jealous?"

"Maybe," says Harry. "Stuck his fangs in her. It's better than what we have right now. Listen. Tash is an angry man. Angry with the system. Angry with Kalista Jordan. That anger is rooted in something besides mere loyalty to his boss."

"And your point is?"

"Maybe he's the proverbial angry white male. Maybe he can't deal with a woman. Particularly a black woman. He sees her undercutting him with Crone."

"So he kills her."

"Stranger things have happened," says Harry. "And who would have better access to Crone's garage for the tensioning tool, or to his coat pocket for the cable ties?"

"It's all good except for one thing: Tash has an ironclad alibi for the night Jordan disappeared." According to police reports, Tash was at a meeting, a homeowners' a.s.sociation gathering until close to midnight. After that, he went to a local coffee shop with two neighbors where they talked until nearly one in the morning."

"That's just it," says Harry. "We don't know exactly when she was killed. We only know when she was seen last."

"Without something more, it would be a tough sell to a jury."

From Harry's look, he is chewing on this in silence as the elevator slows to a stop. He takes a step toward the door before I can grab his arm. The light overhead has stopped at two.

The doors slide apart, and Harry's way is blocked by a soaring figure standing in the hall waiting to enter.

Harry looks up at the man with an expression one might use to estimate the alt.i.tude of a mountain, smiles and steps back out of the guy's way. The man has to actually cant his head, just a little, off to one side in order to clear the header over the door.

When he looks up he is again smiling under the canister lights of the elevator car. Silent, he looks both of us in the eye, first Harry and then me. His expression is pleasant, pa.s.sing the time. If I had to guess, I would say that William Epperson doesn't place us.

We have been chasing him for more than six weeks, Harry specifically, trying to get a statement from him, some clue as to what he will say if he is put on the stand. Now fate has placed him in the elevator with us, and I can read it in Harry's eyes, the look of opportunity.

Epperson is barred from the courtroom as a prospective witness, since his name appears on the prosecution's list. In the weeks before trial Harry made several attempts to talk to the man, once at his apartment and two more times outside the D.A.'s office, all to no avail. Epperson had been shielded by investigators from the D.A.'s staff, and while they couldn't order him not to talk to us, they made it clear that he was under no compulsion to do so.

Under these circ.u.mstances, most witnesses decide that the prudent course is silence. And so it is with Epperson. Several months have now pa.s.sed. If he remembers us, he shows no sign of it.

Once inside the elevator, Epperson works his way to the left side of the car and leans against the wall, his head nearly touching the ceiling. I can see his reflection dancing in the gleaming bra.s.s plate that covers the inside of the elevator doors as they close. Harry and I stand there in silence, elevator etiquette, pretending to ignore the giant standing next to us.

Under the canister lights I finally look over and up, studying him, as he looks at me in the reflective doors. We descend.

Epperson is not what you would envision from the hurly-burly of basketball. He is big, a sinuous athletic build, his hair closely cropped. There most of the similarities of size end. He wears his clothes, shirt, tie and neatly pressed suit with a quiet dignity. You would have a difficult time seeing him in the key, jostling with the bad boys of the NBA.