‘What were some of those hobbyhorses?’
She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her breasts. ‘For a while, he was determined to find a drug therapy that would combat nicotine addiction. Does that sound sensible to you? Help smokers get off cigarettes — by getting them onto drugs? Hell’s bells. Then for a while, he claimed to be convinced that subliminal suggestion, subconscious programming, could enable us to set aside our prejudices against a belief in the supernatural and help us open our minds to psychic experiences, so we’d be able to see spirits as easily as we see one another.’
‘Spirits? Are you talking about ghosts?’
‘I am. Or, rather, he was.’
‘I wouldn’t think psychologists would believe in ghosts.’
‘You’re looking at one who doesn’t. McCaffrey was one who did.’
‘I’m remembering the books we found in his house. Some of them were about the occult.’
‘Probably half his hobbyhorses dealt with that,’ she said. ‘One occult phenomenon or another.’
‘Who would pay for this kind of research?’
‘I’d have to look at the files. I imagine the occult stuff was done on his own, without funds, or by cleverly misusing funds meant for other work.’
‘It’s possible to misuse funds that blatantly? Isn’t there some accounting required?’
‘The government’s relatively easy to dupe if you’re dishonest. Sometimes thieves make the easiest target for another thief, because they never see themselves as being the victims, only perpetrators.’
‘Who financed his primary research?’
‘He got some of his money from trust funds set up by alumni for research purposes. And corporate grants, of course. And as I said, the government.’
‘Mostly the government?’
‘I’d say mostly.’
He frowned. ‘Well, if Dylan McCaffrey was a nut, why would the government want to deal with him?’
‘Oh, well, he was a nut, and his interest in the occult was as peculiar as it was exasperating, but he was brilliant. I’ll give him that. With a more stable personality, his intellect would’ve taken him all the way. He’d have been famous in his field and maybe even to the general public.’
‘Did he get Pentagon funding?’
‘Yes.’
‘What would he have been working on for the Pentagon?’
‘Can’t say. For one thing, I don’t know. I could check the files, but even if I knew, I couldn’t say. You don’t have security clearance.’
‘Fair enough. What can you tell me about Wilhelm Hoffritz?’
‘He was slime.’
Dan laughed. ‘Doctor… Marge, you certainly don’t mince words.’
‘It’s only the truth. Hoffritz was an elitist son of a bitch. He wanted in the worst way to be chairman of this department. Never had a chance. Everyone knew what he’d be like if he had power over us. Vicious. Abusive. He’d have run the entire department right into the ground.’
‘He was doing Defense research too?’
‘Almost exclusively. Can’t tell you about that, either.’
‘Rumor has it that he was forced out of the university.’
‘That was a banner day for UCLA.’
‘Why was he gotten rid of?’
‘There was this young girl, a student—’
‘Ah.’
‘Much worse than you think,’ Marge said. ‘It wasn’t just moral turpitude. He wasn’t the first professor to sleep with a student. Half the men on the faculty would be dismissed, and maybe as much as a fifth of the women, if that rule was well enforced. He was having sex with her, yes, but he also beat her up and put her in hospital. Their relationship was … Kinky, is a kind word for it. One night, it got out of hand.’
‘Are you talking about bondage games or something?’ Dan asked.
‘Yes. Hoffritz was a sadist.’
‘And the girl cooperated? She was a masochist?’
‘Yes. But she got more than she bargained for. One night Hoffritz lost control, broke her nose, three fingers, her left arm. I went to hospital, saw her. Both eyes blackened, split lip, badly bruised.’
* * *
Laura and Earl stood at the window, watching Flash and the tall man move down the walk in the deepening twilight. The telephone-company van was only a lumpish shape, all details obscured, as the oncoming night knitted together with the shadows under the curbside jacarandas.