The Jury

chapter nine

We are headed north on I-5, Harry at the wheel of his new Camry, the air conditioner humming. My partner is beginning to draw the line at riding in “Leaping Lena,” my ragtop Jeep with its isinglass windows pulled out in good weather.

But the quiet hum of the tires on the road is not enough to dispel the growing sense of dissatisfaction I feel from Harry. Warnake’s testimony put a hole in our boat. The only question is whether it’s below the waterline.

As we work our way up toward La Jolla and the university, Harry finally breaks the silence.

“You realize we dodged a bullet on the tensioning tool? We owe the gods of evidence on that one.”

According to Harry, if Warnake had been able to link the tool, the one from Crone’s garage, to the killer tie around Jordan’s neck, Crone might as well start packing for the trip to Folsom.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” I say. “If he did it, why leave the cable ties in his coat pocket for the cops to find?”

“Maybe he forgot them. People tend to panic,” says Harry. “Especially if they’ve been busy cutting off arms and legs. And he is forgetful. Remember, he’s the one who couldn’t remember arguing with the victim the night she disappeared.” This is still sticking in Harry’s craw. “You can chalk up the cable ties in his pocket with the other things he forgot.”

According to Crone, the cable ties in his coat pocket were probably there from trash night the week before. It was a ritual. He would come home from work, don a pair of work gloves he kept in the garage, gather up the trash from the house and dump it in the can, then take the can out to the curb. Newspapers and cardboard he would bundle and tie up with the cables using the tensioning tool he kept under the workbench. According to Crone, there was no intention to hide the tool. It must have gotten pushed under an old piece of carpet when he put it away the last time he’d used it. It is a plausible story. Whether the jury will buy it may depend on how many people on the panel put out their own garbage.

“I’ll admit it defies common sense,” says Harry. “But then the man’s a little frizzy. University type. You know what I mean. A lot of aptitude and not much judgment.” Harry’s looking at me from the driver’s seat offering a sideways glance. “He’s stuck with the evidence, and so are we.”

“Still begs the question why the cops didn’t find his prints on the ties or the tool,” I say.

Harry has thought about this. “The ties were too small, too narrow to take an identifiable print,” he says. “And remember, they did find smudges.”

“And the tool?”

“He wore gloves?”

“Did you ever try to put one of those cable ties together wearing gloves?”

Harry shakes his head.

“I did. It’s not easy. If he took his gloves off to work the tie, why did he put them back on just to use the tool to tighten it?”

“He’s eccentric? I don’t know. It’s a hole we’re gonna have to plug,” says Harry.

“It’s possible he wiped the tool clean after he used it to kill Jordan. But if he did, if he thought about it enough to wipe off prints, why didn’t he go the extra step and just get rid of it? Drop it off some dock, or better yet put it in the bag with the body, weigh it down and deep-six the whole bundle?”

“Maybe he didn’t have time,” says Harry.

“Maybe he didn’t do it,” I say.

He smiles, never one to commit himself.

Before Tannery finished with Warnake on the stand, he had him testify regarding the tensioning tool found in Crone’s garage. But his strategy here was not to link Crone to the tool. Instead he wanted to shore up a weakness in his own case. Tannery couldn’t link the death tie to the tensioning tool found in the garage based on tool marks. He wanted to tell the jury why.

It seems whoever killed Jordan pulled so hard on the tool that the cable tie got twisted in the process, deforming the edges and stretching the nylon before it was cut. Successive tests performed by Warnake were unable to replicate the precise toolmarks left along the edge of the cut tie. Tannery explained this to the jury, distilling this imperfection from his own case before we could exploit it.

He left me only one thing to talk about on cross: the fact that the heavy-duty cable ties used in this case marked them as unique. His survey of manufacturers limited the number of producers of that particular tie to fewer than a half-dozen nationwide. Consequently, anyone who purchased these particular kinds of ties would be limited to those same sources.

My point: There was a good chance that anyone purchasing the ties in San Diego would likely obtain them from the same point of manufacture, with the same toolmarks as those found in Crone’s pocket. After I flogged him with this thought several times on the stand, Warnake finally threw up his hands and gave me the great concession-“Anything’s possible.” This was as good as it got, and according to Harry it wasn’t good enough.

“I was looking at their faces,” he tells me.

“Who?”

“The lawyer’s dozen. Who else? Jury in the panel,” he says. “And they weren’t buyin’ it. There was only one thing moved ’em,” says Harry. “Tannery’s question about the tie that killed Jordan. His inference that it came from the same package as the ones in Crone’s pocket.”

Harry is right. The judge may have kept Warnake from answering it, but the fact that the witness started to, and wanted to, was palpable in the courtroom. The jury could sense it.

“Tannery can take that to the bank,” says Harry.

I have a sinking feeling this morning as we trek to the genetics lab at the university for a meeting with Aaron Tash. We are being forced to spend valuable time trying to get inside our own case, to discover the facts that our client won’t tell us, mostly about relationships; and in particular the one between himself and Kalista Jordan.

University medical facilities abound in this county. There are two hospitals, both teaching institutions, and a list of research and graduate programs that would be the envy of any city in the country. But unlike the Salk Institute and Scripps, the University Genetics Center, known to all who frequent it merely as the Center, is not funded by any perpetual endowment or foundation. In fact, it exists in rented quarters, a four-story office complex just off campus, a measure of its precarious existence that is reviewed every year.

It is left to its own devices when it comes to funding. We are told that Crone has had run-ins with university administrators and a few regents who have tried to monitor his largely private fund-raising efforts. The fear is that because of the center’s ties, the university could get a public black eye if Crone were to take funds from the wrong people, entities that might be political lepers. Crone took offense at this questioning of his judgment. According to observers, Crone is jealous of his independence, the freedom to pursue research and its funding as he sees fit. This has been a continuing source of friction between Crone and the university. This may answer the question of why it was that Kalista Jordan received offers of employment with lavish salary increases from other universities while David Crone was passed over. He has a reputation for being difficult to deal with. There is even a rumor that some in the university hierarchy were eyeing her as a possible replacement to head up the center. We have done everything possible to hunt this story down and drive a stake through its heart. If true, it could supply a damaging motive for murder.

Harry parks on the street, at one of the two-hour meters. Whatever the reticent Dr. Tash has to tell us, it can no doubt be covered in that time.

Tash has been excluded from the courtroom since he appears on our witness list, and though we have interviewed him twice, Harry and I both sense that he is holding back. Getting information from Tash is like distilling water from an iceberg in a blizzard. He is cagey. Get your tongue too close and it may stick like a kid licking a water fountain in winter. If I were preparing him for a deposition, I would tell him only one thing: Act normal. As Crone’s number two, he is keeper of the office flame, the man to whom all secrets are most probably known.

We take the elevator to the fourth floor. When the doors open we are standing in a small reception area, nothing fancy, antiseptic white walls and an industrial carpet to absorb the sound of heels that would otherwise be clicking on concrete. There are six chairs, black plastic institutional seats with chrome arms and legs. These grace the otherwise-bare walls, three on each side of the room. A stack of old magazines, what look like science journals, is spread on a low table next to one of the empty chairs. Straight ahead is a desk, a clean surface with nothing behind it except an open door, hallway to the inner sanctum. There is no receptionist, simply the barricade offered by the desk. Harry’s first instinct is to go around it, just walk right in.

“You did make an appointment?” he says.

“On my calendar for ten o’clock.”

Harry glances at his watch. “On the dot.” He waltzes up to the desk. “Hello. Anybody home?” Harry knocks on the Formica surface.

Like a tomb, all I can hear is Harry’s echo. We wait a couple of seconds, and Harry does it again. Nothing.

“What say we go in?” he says.

Then, before we can move, there’s a slow shadow in the hall, followed an instant later by a tall, lean figure. Tash appears in the open doorway behind the desk. Slender and bald, he gives us an expressionless look from over the top of a file he is holding. I can’t tell whether he is expecting us, or has forgotten about the meeting. With Tash, you can never tell much, a stone face, expressions that never seem to change. You are left to wonder if it is academic reserve, or arrogance, or whether Harry is right and the two are the same.

Tash is wearing a black cotton turtleneck top under a dark herringbone sport coat and dark slacks, so that he looks like a character from a sci-fi flick with undersized production values. Thin is not the word. The turtleneck hangs on him with wrinkles like ribs on a skeleton.

He looks at his watch. “You’re on time.”

“Guess that’s why we’re lawyers and not professors,” says Harry.

Tash gives him a look, sly, off-centered, everything dead from the eyes to the mouth, John Malkovich.

“Come in,” he says. No greeting or handshake. He is not a social animal. Tash would not think to offer coffee, or small talk. He lacks the social grace of his boss. There is not the slightest hint of warmth from the man. From our few meetings, his most admirable quality appears to be loyalty. He reports dutifully to Crone at least once a week. This to a man who is under indictment for murder and who has been suspended without pay by the university. If Tash feels threatened by fidelity to his mentor, he shows no sign of it.

He’s had easy access to Crone at the jail since our earlier meeting, traveling there twice, once with Harry and the second time with me. On both occasions Tash was silent to a fault, all the way up in the elevator and into the small cubicle with its inch-thick acrylic partition they use for attorney-client consultation in the slammer. I had to assure Tash that it was safe to talk on the receiver hanging from the wall, that no one would monitor this during meetings with counsel.

On each trip, Tash treated Harry and me as if we were furniture. Even with his antennae up, Harry was unable to pick up anything. He told me that Crone and Tash perused more numbers, scientific mumbo jumbo, according to Harry. Tash pressed a single sheet of paper up against the acrylic so that Crone could read it. Then Crone wrote a few formulas on a sheet of paper on the other side and held it up while Tash made notes. It was a repeat of the session I’d had a week earlier with the two of them. Tash would then leave, as silent as a six-foot mouse, while Harry or I spoke to our client.

We follow Tash down the long, narrow hallway, past a door with a small plate-glass window in it. Inside I can see stainless-steel tables, glass beakers and electronic equipment. This, I assume, is one of the laboratories.

“We’ll use Dr. Crone’s office,” he tells us.

The university has not yet tried to replace Crone. Caught in a pickle, wondering which way to run, university administrators take a wait-and-see attitude. The official word is “no comment while the case is in the courts,” though they have engaged in some fast footwork over Jordan’s sexual harassment claim. “Maybe we should have looked into it sooner.” This was one of the comments reported in the press from an unnamed source close to the administration. Defending Crone has definite downsides. Abandoning him publicly might push the case toward a conviction, leaving the university facing wrongful-death, or some other civil crisis. Love him or leave him, they are caught in the middle.

Tash unlocks the office door with a key from his pocket, and flips on the lights. Inside, Crone’s office has the look of a museum. There is dust on the desk thick enough to plant potatoes, along with a few scraps of paper that haven’t been moved since the day the cops searched the place. They would have swept everything into plastic garbage bags and rolled all the filing cabinets into a waiting van, except for the fact that I and two lawyers from the university rode herd, forcing them to adhere to the particulars of their warrant. The search took four hours and was not pleasant. Several torrid arguments erupted along the way. I recognize the notes on a yellow tablet in the center of the desk, the same pad that was there that afternoon. Now it has dust around it to mark its footprint on the wooden surface.

Tash looks at me staring at the pad on the desk and reads my mind. “We have orders from the chancellor’s office not to touch anything. Just in case the police want to come back and look again. The university seems to be treating this place like the scene of the crime. You would think they would have more confidence in their own people.”

“You would, wouldn’t you?” says Harry. “Just the same, maybe we shouldn’t be in here.” As he says the words, Harry starts picking through some books left on a stand on the other side of the room.

“I figure to hell with the cops,” says Tash. “If they can’t do a good search the first time, they shouldn’t be in the business.”

As soon as the words clear Tash’s lips, I notice Harry smiling. A university man he can finally agree with.

“The chancellor’s lawyers can talk to the D.A. if they like. None of my concern,” says Tash. “Besides, my office is far too cramped for meetings like this.”

He takes out a handkerchief and wipes the dust from the executive swivel-back chair behind the desk, then takes a seat and leans back. The high top with its black leather makes a stark contrast to the white baldness of Tash’s head, like an inverted exclamation point.

Harry takes one of the chairs across from him and I slide into the other.

“So what is it you want to know?” asks Tash. “You do understand that if it has to do with our work here, I can tell you nothing.”

“What is it with you guys?” asks Harry. “Sooner or later you’re gonna be called to testify. If not by us, by Evan Tannery. What are you going to tell him when he asks you what you do here all day long?”

“We do genetics research,” says Tash.

“And what if he wants particulars?”

“Then he will be dealing with an army of university lawyers. I would imagine in conference in the judge’s chambers. That is what they call it? Chambers?” Tash looks at me.

I nod.

“They’re prepared to obtain court orders, from other judges, to protect the substance of our work if that becomes necessary. I believe that Mr. Tannery will ultimately be persuaded that the specific nature of our work is irrelevant to anything in this trial. If he persists, all that will happen is that he will delay a verdict.”

“The way you say that, it sounds like you don’t believe Dr. Crone is going to be acquitted,” I tell him.

“On the contrary. I don’t think they have a thing on him.”

“You haven’t been in court,” says Harry.

“You don’t sound terribly confident yourself,” says Tash.

“My confidence level when it comes to clients,” says Harry, “is in direct relation to the truths they tell us.”

“And you think Dr. Crone is lying to you?”

Harry doesn’t answer, except with his expression that says it all.

“Why don’t you start by telling us about Kalista Jordan and your boss? What kind of working relationship did they have?” I ask.

“Is that what you came here for?” says Tash. “You could have saved yourself the trip. I would have told you that over the phone. What do you think went on?”

“Why don’t you tell us?” I say.

“Actually it’s a very dull story. It was the typical problem you have in any organization. David Crone is brilliant. Kalista was ambitious.” He reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out an apple, shines it on the sleeve of his coat, and from the pocket on the other side takes a small Swiss Army penknife.

“What about the complaint?” I ask

“You mean the sexual harassment thing?”

I nod.

“I saw it. Reads like a fairy tale. The woman would have said anything to get ahead. She was claiming a hostile work environment. If there was any hostility in the office, she brought it with her when she came. Unless, of course, you think they were having an affair.” He looks up at me and smiles at the very thought. “Trust me, the only part of her David ever saw that was naked was her ambition, and he only saw that when it was too late.”

Methodically he opens the razor-sharp blade on the knife and just as quickly cuts the apple in half, then quarters it deftly with all the pieces in one hand.

“Was she after his job?” I ask.

“That and other things.”

“Other things?”

“The product of his work. The fruits of his labor.” He slices the skin off the apple with thin precision so that you can see the reflection of light through it as it lands on the desktop in front of him in curling sinews.

“The papers she took from his office?” I ask.

“That was part of it. And don’t ask me what they were, because I won’t tell you.” He hasn’t been looking at us for over a minute, concentrating on the apple.

“Of course not. We wouldn’t think of it,” says Harry.

“It’s not that she was above using sex to get ahead,” says Tash. “It’s just that she was an icicle. If she touched you, you’d get frostbite.” Listening to Tash describe her is like hearing an iceberg describing a cube. “And she knew how to manipulate the system.”

“What system is that?” asks Harry.

“The thought-control process that now passes for liberalism in higher education. And I’m not talking open-mindedness,” says Tash. “In the sciences you live in a political bunker. You constantly measure your words for fear that you might utter some political blasphemy that can end your career. Undergraduate courses are the worst. Fortunately for us, we don’t do any of that. Some of the students are like the Red Guard: ready to report you to the administration at the first sign that you’re not sufficiently inclined toward proper dogma. You can find yourself enrolled in a mandatory course of thought correction just to keep your job. Of course they call it ‘sexual harassment guidance’ or ‘minority sensitivity training.’ And they can never get too much women’s studies,” he says. “Today if you want to take a survey course in biology, you’re required to take Women’s Political Thought and Marxist Ideology as prerequisites. Jordan was into all that crap. She used it whenever it suited her needs. When David gave her a subpar evaluation after her first six months at the center, she had the regular roster of feminists calling the chancellor’s office to complain. She played the gender thing like a harp, and when the tune went sour she tried sexual harassment. You want my guess, she was working her way up the chain toward race discrimination when somebody did us all a favor.”

“Sounds like you didn’t like her,” says Harry.

“I didn’t. I told the police that when they asked me.”

Harry and I have seen this in the police reports, Tash’s statement the day after they arrested Crone.

“In some ways she was like many young women today. Focused on what she wanted.”

“Sounds like a lot of the men I know,” I tell him.

“Hardly,” says Tash. “The young men we see, even the best ones, are constantly distracted by the pursuit of sex. No, no. Most women of Ms. Jordan’s generation view that as simply one more gift, like brains, or grades or a good degree from a name university, just another arrow in their quiver. And they know how to use it.”

“Are you saying Jordan was loose around the office?” says Harry.

“I’m saying she was ambitious, to a fault.”

“Did she ever try to come on to you?”

Tash gives Harry a look as if this doesn’t merit an answer. “No. She was self-absorbed, arrogant and dishonest, and absolutely shameless in the pursuit of publicity. The university would hype her to the alumni in their publications. Dr. Crone was never mentioned, nor was anyone else at the center. You would think she worked here alone. I remember the blazing headline, DR. KALISTA JORDAN ON THE CUTTING EDGE OF THE HUMAN CELL. Her picture on the cover. She was not the slightest bit embarrassed or apologetic. As far as she was concerned, it was her due. She got the cover photo framed and hung it in her office. You would have thought it was the cover of Time.”

“We want you to be candid,” says Harry. “We wouldn’t want you to sugarcoat it.”

Tash grimaces at him. “You wanted to know what I thought, so I’m telling you. The fact is, I told David, Dr. Crone, not to hire her. He wouldn’t listen to me.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask him.”

“No, I mean why did you tell him not to hire her?”

“Call it instinct. I sat in on the interview. There was just something that wasn’t right about her. Besides, I felt we could have had someone more qualified.”

“In her field?”

“That’s right.”

“And what was her field?” I ask.

“You know very well.” Tash looks at me for the first time. “Molecular electronics.”

“Which is?” says Harry.

“If I’m going to do all your homework, I’m going to want a consulting fee,” says Tash.

“How about we just put you on the stand as a percipient witness and ask you?” says Harry.

Tash gives him a look, nothing you could call friendly. “It’s a new field. Basically, it involves the use of atoms and molecules to replace more conventional transistors in electronics.”

“And how does that fit into genetics?”

“It holds promise for medical science,” says Tash. “And that’s all I’m going to say on the subject.”

“Fine. Tell us about Jordan and Dr. Crone?” I ask.

“What do you want to know?”

“What was she like when she first came to work here?”

“She was personable. She seemed eager to get along. Worked long hours. She was often here when I closed up.”

“By herself?”

“Sometimes.”

“How well do you know David Crone?” says Harry.

“As well as anyone here at the Center. We’ve worked together, let’s see”-he looks up at the ceiling tiles-“I guess it’s going on fifteen years now.”

“Did he and Dr. Jordan socialize at all, outside the office?”

“No.”

“You seem pretty sure,” says Harry.

“I am. Outside of work they had nothing in common. Different types completely.”

“In what way?” I ask.

“She was a social climber, into cultivating friends who could do her some good, move her career forward. David hated that crap. You couldn’t get him to attend a chancellor’s function, a dinner or cocktail party if his life depended on it.”

“Maybe he had a secret side? A life you didn’t know about?”

“If he did, it didn’t involve Kalista Jordan. As far as I know, all their contacts were here at the Center. I don’t think either of them even knew where the other lived.”

“Still, there must have been some social interaction between the people who worked here,” says Harry. “I mean, a drink after work? Christmas parties? Beer and pizza? Something to celebrate, a birthday party, new breakthrough in whatever it is you do here?”

“Oh, sure.”

“But you never saw Dr. Jordan or Dr. Crone socializing?” I ask.

“Not in the way you mean,” says Tash. “They were sociable, at least in the beginning. What you would expect of professional people. They would talk, chat.”

“About what?”

“Who knows what people talk about? Hobbies. Work.”

“What kind of hobbies?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t pay that much attention. David played tennis. I don’t think she did.”

“But at some point the relationship deteriorated?” I say.

“Yes.”

“And when was that?”

Tash thinks for a moment, scans the ceiling with his eyes as if the answer is printed there. “I think it was about a year ago last May.” He is now nibbling at the edges of a quartered and peeled apple.

“David told me that he’d had a problem with Kali. He called her Kali.”

“Was that usual? Did he call other people by their first names or use nicknames?”

“Sometimes.”

“Who?” says Harry.

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 sexual harassment 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 competition, 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 passwords 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 passed 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.