“And soon,” Taki put in. “We’ve got the holiday weekend coming up right ahead. Nobody’s going to be around there then. It would be the perfect time.”
They stared fixedly at him, as if daring him to find an objection.
Corfe agonized. Kevin could read his mind: loath to shoot the proposition down, but at the same time, way out of his depth.
“Okay,” Corfe said finally. “So suppose you do get in there, and you’re into his computer. What, exactly, are you hoping to find?”
Kevin glanced uncertainly at Taki. Taki returned a look that was about as helpful as a write-only-memory chip. They had been too preoccupied with the technicalities to really give that question much thought. “Well, this codicil . . .” Kevin said finally, to Corfe. “Or something that talks about it maybe. I’m not sure. . . .”
“You haven’t got a clue, you mean,” Corfe said. “What does one look like? Where would you look for something that talks about it? You see—you don’t know. And neither do I.” He had made his point, and he knew it. So did Kevin. Corfe’s tone became stronger. “Okay, in principle I think you guys may have something. But I’m not the person to say if it has chances. We’ve got to bring Michelle in on this too. She’s the only one who has the knowledge. And I’ll contact her first thing tomorrow and go into town to put this to her if I can. That much I am willing to say I’ll do. But beyond that . . .” He looked from one to the other and shook his head gravely. “It’ll depend on what she says. Beyond that I can’t promise.”
Kevin nodded but looked away at the floor. The fervor had gone out of him. For a while he’d had visions of Corfe in a role as the leader who would cut through the morass of ifs and buts like Samson hacking a path through the hordes. He felt now as if they were on a circle that led back to Monday. As much as he liked Michelle, he just couldn’t see her going with the proposition. Worse still, once she had ruled the suggestion out, any possibility of Corfe acting further on his own initiative would automatically have been eliminated also.
With that, the subject was exhausted for the rest of the evening. Kevin and Taki showed Corfe their progress with the flying mecs. Kevin managed to steer one on a full circuit of the room. That was something of an accomplishment to show, anyway.
Corfe called Michelle’s office first thing the next morning—Thursday—as he had promised. Wendy, the receptionist, told him that Michelle was out until the afternoon, and had appointments scheduled then. Corfe left a message for Michelle to call him when she was free.
Vanessa went into the city again too. She told Eric it was to spend the day researching neurophysiological papers in the University Hospital library.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“You stick to organizing the finances,” Vanessa said. “That’s what you’re better at. Don’t worry about the scientific side. Leave that to me.”
“I was just curious.”
“There.” Fozworth aimed the remote and stopped the tape. It was so brief that Michelle had missed it, but the expression on Martin Payne’s face was not a happy one. Fozworth gestured toward the screen in a small conference room that they had found empty. “See the tightened jaw, narrowing of the eyes. . . . There’s anger there, but it can’t be expressed. Why not? Think where you’ve seen that look before: the lover rebuffed; the child ridiculed. It could be for all kinds of reasons.”
“But he recovers quickly,” Michelle said from a chair by the corner of the table.
“Oh yes, practically instantaneously. Masking his true self is reflex. Mark of a manipulator. We’ve got two of a kind here.” Fozworth touched a button, and the figures on the screen resumed moving, with Vanessa handing Payne a file.
“I think you might find this more interesting,” she said.
“What is it?”
“Open it and see. . . .”
Noah Fozworth was a behavioral psychologist at Washington State University. His specialty was profiling psychological types and identifying characteristic traits that matched lives of recognizable patterns. The police department, professional recruitment agencies, social welfare counselors, and others whose work involved betting on the fruit machines of human nature consulted him regularly. Michelle had met him a couple of years previously, through a private investigator who worked for one of her clients.