Chương 10
The haircut was uneven.
One side was shorter.
There was no hiding that.
I wet my fingers and pushed the top back.
Then I left it alone.
When I returned to Hale’s office, she had two coffees waiting.
“I guessed cream, no sugar.”
“You’ve known me four years.”
“I know your research habits, not your coffee theology.”
I took the cup.
“My mother-in-law may have worked here.”
Hale stopped opening a packet of crackers.
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
I explained the initials.
The legacy credential.
The procurement archive note.
The missing pages.
Hale listened without interrupting.
When I finished, she sat very still.
Then she said, “Eleanor Mercer.”
“You know the name.”
“I know a name.”
My pulse accelerated.
“From where?”
Hale turned to her computer.
Then she stopped before touching the keyboard.
“No.”
“What?”
“If police are investigating records connected to your stolen notebook, we don’t start digging through systems casually.”
“You just told me you know her name.”
“I said I know a name.”
“Hale.”
She pushed her chair away from the desk.
“Years ago, before you joined the program, there was a procurement dispute involving one of the university’s technology partnerships.”
“What kind of dispute?”
“I don’t know all of it.”
“Who was involved?”
Her gaze shifted toward the closed office door.
“Martin Voss.”
Julian’s supervisor.
My coffee suddenly tasted metallic.
“And Eleanor?”
“I remember seeing Mercer on the committee documents.”
“Doing what?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Try.”
“Mara.”
“Please.”
Hale’s face tightened.
“She was not a random retiree.”
My hand closed around the paper cup.
“What was she?”
Hale looked at me for a long moment.
“Director of strategic procurement.”
The title seemed to enter the room before its meaning did.
Then the pieces began rearranging themselves.
Julian’s career.
Eleanor’s interest in his contracts.
Her contempt for my work.
The unexplained fury when my model found hidden data paths.
The initials in a legacy account that should have died seven years ago.
Hale stood.
“Do not decide what this means.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m trying not to.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
My phone buzzed again.
This time it was not Julian.
It was a university email.
The subject line contained three words.
RESEARCH ACCESS SUSPENDED.
I opened it.
My credentials had been temporarily restricted pending review of “potentially unauthorized exposure of vendor-linked confidential data.”
Hale read over my shoulder.
Her face hardened.
“Who initiated this?”
I scrolled down.
The request had been submitted at eleven forty-two that morning by the Office of Institutional Partnerships.
Julian’s office.
And beneath the automated notice was the approving administrator’s name.
Martin Voss.
Hale read the message twice.
Then she took the phone from my hand and read it a third time as if repetition might produce a less convenient name.
“This is not a routine access hold.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because routine holds come from research compliance or information security.”
She handed the phone back.
“Not Institutional Partnerships.”
“Maybe Voss forwarded it.”
“Maybe.”
She said the word carefully.
That was how Hale sounded when she did not believe her own explanation.
I opened the notice again and scrolled to the policy language.
The suspension covered my university account, laboratory storage, internal document repositories, and vendor-linked systems.
It did not revoke my student status.
It did not mention my dissertation.
It only severed me from almost every place where supporting records might exist.
“They moved fast.”
Hale stood and closed her office door.
“Too fast.”
“What should have happened?”
“A report, then review, then possibly a temporary restriction if someone identified an actual data-handling concern.”
“And this?”
“This looks like someone hit an administrative switch first and intends to justify it later.”
My heartbeat became annoyingly loud.
“Can Voss do that?”
“I don’t know exactly what authority his office has.”
“You worked here when Eleanor did.”
“That doesn’t mean I memorized procurement privileges.”
“You remembered her name.”
“I remembered a dispute.”
Hale’s irritation was not really directed at me.
She crossed the office and pulled the blind over the narrow window in the door.
I watched that small action and felt something in the day shift again.
Until then, people had been helping me because Julian had assaulted me.
Now Hale was behaving like a professor worried someone inside the university might be watching what we did next.
“I need the archived directory.”
“No.”
“I need to identify E.M.”
“You need to let the police preserve what they have.”
“The police are investigating my husband taking my notebook.”
“And assaulting you.”
“Yes.”
I hated that I still wanted to separate the two.
One problem belonged in a police report.
The other belonged to data.
Data felt cleaner.
Hale seemed to see the split happen on my face.
“You’re trying to turn this into research because research is where you feel competent.”
“That’s insulting.”
“It’s also true.”
“I passed my defense forty minutes ago.”
“Congratulations.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Use professor voice on me.”
“I am a professor.”
“You know what I mean.”
Her expression softened, which somehow made me angrier.
I set my coffee down hard enough that a little spilled through the lid.
“I’m not confused about what happened last night.”
“Good.”
“I know Julian hurt me.”
“Good.”
“I know Eleanor helped him.”
“Yes.”
“And I know somebody in Julian’s office just cut off my access after he failed to stop my defense.”
Hale leaned against the edge of her desk.
“That last clause is an inference.”
“You sound like Cho.”
“Cho is irritating because he’s usually careful.”
A knock came at the door.
We both stopped speaking.
Hale opened it without raising the blind.
Sergeant Patel stood outside with a second woman in a charcoal suit carrying a slim leather folder.
“This is Deputy General Counsel Renee Alvarez,” Patel said.
Alvarez offered her hand.
May you like
She looked about fifty, with silver threaded through dark hair and the alert expression of someone accustomed to hearing bad explanations from powerful people.
“I’m told your research access was suspended.”
