Chương 4
The word hit harder than I expected.
“Why?”
“Because if your research materials are now part of a possible misconduct issue, there are procedural questions.”
“My dissertation is not misconduct.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
“You just said the committee might stop me from defending because Julian destroyed my backups.”
“I said there are questions.”
“That sounds like punishment.”
“It may feel like punishment.”
“That’s convenient.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
I regretted the words immediately.
Hale had spent four years defending my work when others called it too interdisciplinary, too expensive, too difficult to validate.
She had rewritten grant proposals with me at midnight.
She had once driven across town because I had locked myself out of the lab with a live test running inside.
None of that made her immune to my anger.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“No, you’re not.”
“That sounds more accurate.”
She rubbed both hands over her face.
“I want you to understand something before we walk into that auditorium.”
I waited.
“If those decoded records implicate someone connected to the vendor, the committee cannot pretend they are ordinary dissertation material.”
“I wasn’t planning to accuse anyone.”
“Intent won’t protect you.”
“I was going to present the anomaly.”
“With the account mapping?”
“Only if they asked how I validated the pattern.”
Hale stared at me.
“That is not the same thing as presenting an anomaly.”
“I know.”
“When did you identify the accounts?”
“Two days ago.”
“And you didn’t tell me.”
“I wanted to verify them first.”
“You verified them?”
“Enough to know Julian’s employee credentials appear in the access chain.”
Her shoulders went still.
The sentence sounded worse spoken aloud.
Not because it was new to me.
Because another person had now heard it.
Hale leaned back.
“Appear how?”
“His credentials authorized three exports from the vendor dataset before the files reached our lab.”
“That could be legitimate.”
“Yes.”
“But you don’t think it was.”
“I don’t know.”
That answer irritated me because it was honest.
My research dealt with fault prediction in distributed systems, not fraud.
I had spent years building a model designed to identify patterns of hidden dependency in large networks.
The vendor dataset had been useful because it contained millions of anonymized device interactions across multiple enterprise environments.
Six months earlier, my model began flagging a tiny cluster of data transfers as structurally improbable.
Not impossible.
Improbable.
I had assumed it was a normalization problem.
Then a timestamp discrepancy led to a separate metadata layer.
Then another.
Two days before my defense, after tracing a set of authorization tokens through old project documentation, I had found Julian’s employee identifier attached to three manual exports.
That still did not prove wrongdoing.
It proved he had touched data he had repeatedly told me he had never handled.
Hale tapped one finger against the desk.
“Does Julian work directly with that vendor?”
“His office manages institutional partnerships.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“He coordinates some of their contracts.”
“And he gave you the dataset?”
“He introduced me to their research liaison.”
“Who approved your access?”
“The liaison and university counsel.”
“Good.”
She exhaled.
“That matters.”
“I have the approval emails.”
“Also good.”
“They’re backed up.”
“Better.”
A knock sounded at the door.
Every muscle in my body locked.
Hale noticed.
She stood without speaking.
“Professor Hale?”
The voice belonged to a woman.
Hale opened the door two inches.
A uniformed campus police officer stood outside with a security supervisor I recognized from the engineering building.
The officer introduced herself as Sergeant Patel.
She was probably in her forties, with tired eyes and a coffee stain near one cuff.
“Ms. Mercer?”
I nodded.
“Can we speak privately?”
I looked at Hale.
The security supervisor said, “Your husband is no longer in the lobby.”
My pulse jumped.
“Where is he?”
“We don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“He left before officers arrived.”
Sergeant Patel glanced at me.
“He may have simply left campus.”
“He didn’t.”
It came out instantly.
Patel did not contradict me.
“Do you have location sharing enabled with him?”
I pulled out my phone.
We had used a family location app for years because Julian liked to know when I was leaving the lab.
He had framed it as safety.
I opened it.
His location was unavailable.
Mine was still active.
A wave of nausea rolled through me.
I turned it off.
Patel watched but said nothing.
“He knows which room the defense is in,” I said.
“Yes.”
“He knows the time.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re letting it happen?”
Hale interrupted before Patel could answer.
“No one is letting anything happen.”
The sergeant’s expression remained neutral.
“We can restrict access to the room.”
“It’s a public defense.”
“We can still remove someone creating a safety concern.”
“What if he doesn’t create one?”
Patel seemed to understand the question beneath the question.
What if he walked in smiling?
What if he sat quietly in the back row?
What if the only person terrified by his presence was me?
“We can tell him he’s not permitted to enter,” she said.
“On what basis?”
“On the basis of the report we’re taking from you.”
“I haven’t made one.”
“You can.”
There it was.
The choice I had avoided since the motel.
I looked at the clock.
Eight oh-three.
Fifty-seven minutes.
“I need to prepare.”
Patel nodded.
“I can take a preliminary statement in ten minutes.”
“There’s no ten-minute version.”
“No.”
Her answer surprised me.
“There usually isn’t.”
I looked at the portable drive again.
“I’ll do it after.”
Patel studied me for a moment, then reached into her pocket and handed me a card.
“My number is on the back.”
“Is that enough to keep him out?”
“No.”
At least she did not lie.
“But Professor Hale can restrict attendance for academic reasons, and security can enforce that.”
Hale said, “Then that’s what we’ll do.”
May you like
The defense had originally been scheduled in the department auditorium because my adviser expected a larger audience than usual.
Two industry collaborators were attending remotely.
