Cold Dark Matter

A Morgan O'Brien Mystery

Chapter 1

In the world of science to see is to believe. To observe is to know. That which is tangible, which can be recorded and measured, is defined as the truth. Yet over 90 percent of the universe is completely invisible to us. Astronomers know that this dark matter exists because they observe its effect on all visible objects, but where the dark matter resides, and what it might be made of, remains a mystery.

Yves Grenier had been working on dark matter.

I remember thinking, as I glanced through the reprints, that this must somehow connect, it must be important, but the drone of the jet engines, the Merlot served with dinner, and the stress of my hasty departure from Ottawa had all taken their toll. I could no longer concentrate on anything but sleep. I closed the folder, tucked it into the pocket under my tray table, and extended my seat back the few centimeters that it was willing to go. If I was lucky I might get a few hours of cramped, stale slumber before the plane landed in Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii. I closed my eyes and tried to relax, but instead of falling into dreams my mind moved inexorably back to Ottawa and the gruesome image of Yves Grenier that had put me on this plane.

Chapter 2

The body was not celestial. There was no flicker of ancient light, no rings or orbiting moons, just a dark, lifeless form dangling from a cable high in the telescope’s struts. From this angle, from the observing floor some twenty meters below, it looked like the corpse was bowing its head in a final tribute to the giant mirror at its feet. I pushed the photograph back across the table.

“I take it he’s one of ours.”

Duncan took the picture and, studiously avoiding the image, slipped it back into a plain brown envelope. I’d forgotten he was squeamish. When it was safely back inside he slouched forward, wrapped his hands around his coffee cup, and stared into the black liquid. The deep lines and dark bags beneath his eyes were thrown into high relief.

A customer squeezed by our table making for the door. It was an odd place for a meeting, a rundown café on the wrong end of Wellington Street, but it was also far from the hustle and prying ears of Parliament Hill, which was, I assumed, why Duncan had chosen it. Finally he looked up.

“He was one of ours. That,” he motioned to the envelope, “happened yesterday. Dr. Yves Grenier, resident astronomer at one of our telescopes in Hawaii. Bright, young, and talented. What an unbelievable waste.” He shook his head and, with a weariness I don’t remember ever seeing before, slowly lifted his cup. This was not a social call. Duncan had phoned me just around noon with an urgent request to meet him at this out-of-the-way location. He’d arrived at our rendezvous looking shockingly rattled for a guy who approached all drama with analytical calm.

“At Gemini?” I asked, referring to the jewel in our astronomy crown.

Duncan shook his head vaguely. “FCT — the FrancoCanadian Telescope.” Then he seemed to pull himself together. “The day before yesterday Grenier goes to work as usual. He arrives at the telescope in the early evening, then spends the night working with one of the French astronomers and the telescope operator on duty that night. By all accounts they have a stellar night of observing, if you’ll forgive the pun, and neither Mellier, the French astronomer, nor Aimes, the telescope operator, notice anything amiss. Mellier leaves first, around 3:00 a.m., with a massive high-altitude headache. Grenier and Aimes finish up around 4:30 a.m. and leave together, but in separate vehicles. Aimes checks in at the Astronomy Centre halfway down from the summit but is off the next night so decides to continue on home instead of sleeping at the Centre. Grenier never arrives. Half an hour later he sends a farewell note by e-mail to all the staff, takes the maintenance lift up to the peak of the dome, puts a loop of cable around his neck, and takes a dive.”

“A suicide.”

“So it would seem.” At this point Duncan lifted his coffee again and took another painfully slow sip. The stuff was grey slosh, so I knew the goal of the drinking was to buy time, give him space to formulate. He took a few more moments then carefully placed the cup back in its saucer and looked at me directly. He searched my face then said, “We need your help.”

Duncan and I used to work together investigating research fraud for the National Council for Science and Technology. That is, until he bailed for a job as special advisor to the powerful Minister of Industry and Science, something I hadn’t quite forgiven him for. “We?”

“The minister’s office.”

Jobs for them usually involved endless hours of paperwork and mountains of bureaucratic crap, so I kept my voice non-committal. “What’s the problem?”

Duncan leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Grenier kept research diaries, and they’re gone.”

If that was supposed to impress me, it didn’t. “Who cares? The dead guy’s an astronomer. It’s in the public domain.”

Duncan leaned over and extracted a file from his briefcase, which he pushed across the table. It was stuffed with reprints from the Astronomical Journal, Astronomy and Astrophysics, Proceedings from the American Astronomical Society, in short, from the most prestigious astronomy publications in the world. I glanced through it while he spoke in a low voice. His gaze kept shifting to the window every time someone walked by, but being Duncan it didn’t break his concentration.

“Grenier was a genius at image reconstruction, where they take the electronic data from these huge light-sensor arrays and use it to build a detailed image. That’s what he’s been doing with the FrancoCanadian Telescope, developing software to handle a new wide-field imaging camera.” He nodded to the file. “It’s all in there. Grenier’s team was using the camera to detect gravitational lenses and map dark matter, but the point is it has other applications.”

I looked up from the file. “You mean military applications.”

He nodded. “High-end satellite surveillance. You see the problem.”

Actually, I didn’t. Military research is always at least ten years ahead of academia, what with all the money, no publishing, and no teaching. Duncan knew this, but I said it anyway. His response caught me off guard.

“We have reason to believe that Grenier was extremely advanced in this area, and much of his work was unpublished. Those diaries may contain algorithms, flow charts, even snatches of code. The fact that they’re missing concerns us. We funded the research. It belongs to us, and we want it back.”

I looked at him for a second then pushed my chair back and turned to stare out the dirty window. Outside, needles of freezing rain slashed against the glass and pedestrians scurried by with collars gripped tight against the wind. Welcome to Ottawa’s spring. Something didn’t add up. For starters Duncan — or at least the Duncan I knew — had disappeared. We need your help? We are concerned? We have reason to believe? Where was the critical, questioning, intelligent Duncan I’d grown to cherish and respect? The Duncan who believed in nothing and trusted no one? The Duncan who was my friend? A year ago I would have trusted him with my life, now I wasn’t even sure I knew him. Anyway, this sounded like a spook job, and that didn’t turn my crank. I deal with good clean science fraud for good clean reasons, like jealousy, greed, and egomania. I turned back to Duncan and gave him the answer he should have known he’d get if his brain hadn’t turned to bureaucratic mush.

“No thank you.”

He lifted his head and circled the cup with his hands. He clear hazel eyes looked into mine. “No is not an option.”

I could feel the heat rise from my gut. “No is always an option. There may be consequences attached, but it’s always an option.”

He stared at me for a moment, then his face collapsed, dropped, as if the skin had suddenly detached from the bone. He leaned forward and covered it with his hands. His voice came out in a hoarse whisper. “For Christ’s sake, Morgan, do this one for me. There’s no one else I can trust.”

Duncan had never, in all our years of working together, made a personal appeal. I took a deep breath. “Look, Duncan, if your theory is correct and someone did steal the diaries they’re gone. They’re in Washington, or Moscow, or Baghdad, or wherever the hell else you’re worried about.”

“They’re in Hawaii.”

“How do you know?”

I could see him struggle with that one for a minute. He laid his hands flat on the table. “Look, I need someone who can get inside, ask the right questions, recognize any discrepancies. Someone who understands the culture.”

I thought about that for a minute. Not what he was saying: what he wasn’t saying. “You think it was an inside job. Someone on staff.”

He gave a noncommittal shrug. “Or an astronomer from another telescope, or a visiting observer, or an engineer, or a technician. There are lots of candidates. The point is, I need someone who understands the connections.” He leaned forward again. “And someone who isn’t afraid of what they might find.”

That, of course, meant politics.

“Has it been called?” I nodded to the envelope.

I saw just the slightest wince and did a rapid calculation based on a five-hour time difference between Hawaii and Ottawa. When I came up with the number I sat back and laughed. “It hasn’t been called, has it? Yves Grenier isn’t even cold.”

“It’s open and shut, a suicide.”

“Except that it’s not shut, and until it is I’m obstructing a police investigation. People go to jail for that, Duncan, unless you’ve got a diplomatic passport filed away in my travel papers.” He had the grace to look chagrined. “I didn’t think so.”

The door to the café opened with a blast of icy wind, and Duncan’s eyes followed the elderly man as he shuffled to a booth. As far as I was concerned this meeting was over. I gulped down my coffee and started to pull on my coat.

“My ex-wife called,” he said suddenly. “She wants custody of Alyssa and Peter.”

I stopped with my arm halfway in the sleeve. “When did this happen?”

“Yesterday.” His lips trembled, and he clamped them shut.

I slumped back in my chair too stunned to say a word. I was suddenly painfully aware of how little I knew about Duncan’s past. He’d been married, I knew that, and rumor had it that his wife had left him suddenly, just more or less disappeared after their second child, Peter, was born four years ago. Duncan had just started his new job as an investigator at the National Council for Science and Technology, and none of us knew him well enough to know what was going on. As I got to know him better, as he went from being a colleague to an acquaintance to a close friend, he never spoke of his ex-wife, and I didn’t want to probe. As far as I knew they hadn’t been in contact since her departure. Duncan had done some dating — I’d even set him up with a couple of my friends — but for the most part he seemed content to divide his time between his job and the two children. Suddenly, I felt ashamed at my lack of attention to such an important part of his life.

“Is that why you’re not going to Hawaii yourself?”

“I can’t leave right now, and if you don’t go I’ll have to.” He leaned forward again. “It’s my kids, Morgan. Please. Do this one for me.”

I looked at his gaunt face, and despite the mental sirens wailing in my head I gave a reluctant, “Fine.”

“Thank you,” he said. He took a moment to collect himself, then he switched back to business mode. He pulled one more file from his briefcase and pushed it across to me. I flipped it open. There was a pile of paperwork telling me that I’d been temporarily assigned from my normal job in Investigations to the minister’s office, and there was a travel itinerary and tickets. I closed it, gave myself a mental kick for saying yes, and tucked it into my briefcase.

Once outside, we stood for a moment on the sidewalk. It was still grey and dark, the freezing rain driven by blasts of wind.

“Do the kids know about their mom?” I asked.

He shook his head. “They were too young when she left. What do you tell them? Sorry kids, but your mom preferred a job to having you so she took off without a word? I don’t think so.” He put his hand on my arm. “If you need to get in touch, land lines only. And don’t call me at home.”

I stood for a minute trying to work out what this all meant, but he’d turned and was now at his car. I watched as he pulled the keys from his pocket, unlocked the door. He was just climbing in when he caught sight of me observing him. We locked eyes, his slender hand resting on the roof of the car. “Morgan …” He hesitated then said, “Watch your back.”

A moment later he’d pulled into the traffic and was headed to Parliament Hill.

The first thing I did when I got home was pick up the phone and call Lydia. I caught her just before she was leaving for class.

“I have your first assignment. You interested?”

Lydia had recently left the Council on early retirement and, at my suggestion, had gone back to school to get a diploma in policing and public safety. From there she would write her PI exams. Even over the phone I could feel her BS sensors homing in on me. She’d be a good investigator. She answered carefully.

“That would depend on the nature of the work. I am not yet licensed, as you know, and the examiners look unkindly upon an applicant with a criminal record.”

“It’s completely aboveboard. Some searching of public records, maybe making some use of your old friends in the minister’s office. Good practice really.”

I could hear the smile in her voice. “What, pray tell, are you up to now?”

This was the hard part. “I need information,” I paused briefly, “on Duncan.”

Her voice sagged with disappointment. “Morgan. How could you?”

“It’s not what you think. His ex-wife. Do you know anything about her?”

“He never spoke of her to me. And frankly, Morgan, I didn’t ask.”

“Well, it’s too bad we didn’t, because now she’s back in the picture and she’s suing him for custody.” I hurled that like a barb.

“Oh,” was her only response.

“So we have to help him out, whether he wants it or not.”

“And how do you propose to do that?”

“By hiring you. I want to know who she is, where she’s living, and what she’s been doing for the past four years, and if any of it doesn’t feel right — if any of it could be used against her in a custody hearing — then we decide, both of us together, what to do with the information.”

She was silent for a minute, obviously mulling it over. Then she said quietly, “Are you sure you’ve thought this through? Duncan’s life is none of your business, not unless he wants it to be. I’m wondering if, perhaps, your interest in the situation is more … personal.”

Of course it was personal. Duncan was my friend, and his kids were a gas. I even had their picture in my wallet, a goofy portrait of the three of us taken at the Children’s Museum. Then the implied meaning caught me. “You mean am I interested in Duncan, as in romantically interested in Duncan? Lydia! Of course not.”

Her voice was still quiet. “And the children? You’re awfully fond of them, I know. Are you sure — ”

“I’m worried about Duncan. End of story.”

“And I suppose if I don’t do it you’ll find another way.”

“I suppose I will.”

She sighed. “All right then, I’ll do it, but on one condition. You hold to your promise that we decide together how best to use any information I obtain.”

“Agreed.” I was a little miffed that she’d question my integrity, but the tone of my voice was lost on her.

“One more question, Morgan. Have you stopped to consider what might be in the best interests of the children? My ex-husband Ralph was, in my opinion, a worthless husband and a useless father, but the girls love him and I have no business intruding on their relationship with him. Think about that.”

I promised I would, mumbled something about missing my plane to Hawaii, and promised to give her a call in a couple of days to see what she’d dug up. We’d almost completed our goodbyes when I remembered the other thing.

“Do you still have contacts in the minister’s office?”

“His executive assistant and I are still on excellent terms.”

“Could you take her out for lunch? Find out what’s going on with the FrancoCanadian Telescope? Just the general scuttlebutt.”

“Do I bill you for that one separately?”

“Ingrate.”

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