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And while I remain concerned for Corny’s safety, I have a gut feeling that the man would survive almost anything. There’s no point in going, after all, unless you can get back to tell the story. I am convinced that the actual doing of something is merely preparation for what is really important in life, which is talking about it afterward.

10

I have received another e-mail from Worried. Again, I will reproduce it in its entirety. I have also redirected it over a secure line to Lieutenant Tracy.

Dear Mr. Ratour:

I think maybe you’re right. I think there is something very very fishy going on over here again. Don’t ask me what it is, but I get a feeling someone’s discovered something and doesn’t want anyone to know about it. I don’t think it’s anything like trying to come up with a new human model like the last time, but something sure is happening. Also, I don’t know if this has anything to do with it, but there’s a lab assistant here named Celeste. She’s got all the straight guys drooling. I mean, you know, long blond hair and hooters big time. It may be she and Dr. Penrood are an item. One of the security guys who works on electronic surveillance showed me this tape of Penrood and Celeste hanging around in one of the offices after hours. Not much happens, but it’s pretty clear she’s coming on to him and then the body language. Anyway, after a while they get up and leave together. But get this. The security guy tells me it isn’t one of the cams they’ve got hooked into the monitors. So he’s put a cam on the cam, trying to figure out who put it there. The whole thing sounds like a setup to me, but I ain’t no expert. I’ll let you know if anything turns up. Also, the guy that’s working on the threeway tape says it’s going to take a while because the guy who has the program he needs is out of town.

Worried

Worried’s little missive has revived in me that inexplicable sleuthing instinct, that not-altogether-admirable indulgence in the blood sport of human hunting, even if the prey is a murderer. What, I wondered, is a gorgeous woman doing as a lab assistant? Not that lab assistants are not worthy in their own right. It’s simply not an occupation that attracts glamour.

Perhaps I ought to have the security personnel in the lab discreetly interrogated by Lieutenant Tracy. It might also be useful to have Human Resources send me the résumé of this Celeste creature. Of course, it’s not that straightforward. Nothing ever is. As an employee of the Ponce, she’s not really in our files, though there is an agreement that we can review their personnel files when we want to. But I have to go through the proper channels.

To keep things rolling I made a copy of Dr. Cutler’s latest results on the autopsies and gave it, in strictest confidence, of course, to Nicole Stone-Lee, the young graduate student I hired to review the research files of both Professor Ossmann and Dr. Woodley. We met in Ossmann’s office and briefly discussed its import. I found talking about erections to a very appealing young lady somewhat disconcerting. It didn’t make it easier that she’s the kind of young woman to make an older man wish he had it to do all over again. In any event, she took it all with an admirable sangfroid and pointed out that, given the nature of Professor Ossmann’s specialty, almost any of it could apply to research on what she termed “erectile enhancement.” She did ask to hire a specialist in retrieving deleted hard-drive files, and I told her to go ahead and have the bills forwarded to my office.

The fact is I’m starting to feel some pressure quite apart from anything generated by our immediate circumstances. As I foresaw, the announcement by the Seaboard Police Department that it is treating the Ossmann-Woodley case as a murder has stirred things up again. Robert Remick called this morning. He was, as usual, the impeccable gentleman. But he did say that several Board members had voiced to him concerns about “the adverse publicity” that events at the museum have generated of late. With time