"Not afterward, Patton; during."
Something moved in the depths of Patton's eyes, and he narrowed them slightly. "If you were there while he was making the call, why couldn't you have stopped him from killing himself?"
Not being quite ready to go on the defensive with the skilled liar sitting across from me, I ignored his question. "What the fuck did you say to him that caused him to slit his throat?"
"This is terrible," Patton said hoarsely, apparently deciding that turnabout was fair play as he proceeded to ignore my question. "If this gets into the newspapers. . Mr. Blaisdel detests any kind of publicity about himself or his companies, even when it's good publicity."
"Your concern for Craig Valley is touching, Patton. But don't worry about me leaking anything to the media. I really don't give a damn why Valley called you, or what you talked about. Like I keep saying, the only thing I care about is finding the child I mentioned. To do that, I need to know where you're storing that dirt."
His tic had started up again, this time with a vengeance, and Patton pressed the tips of the index and middle fingers of his left hand tightly against it. "Please believe me, Dr. Frederickson. I can't help you. I don't know anything about the soil you're searching for. As far as the call from Dr. Valley is concerned, I can't even tell you what we talked about, because we didn't really talk about anything. He was incoherent; babbling, really. The few things I could make sense of sounded very abusive, to tell you the truth, and I took it that he was blaming me-or Nuvironment-for all of his personal difficulties. I think he blamed us for getting him fired from the Botanical Garden, but it wasn't true. I swear to you that I simply put him on hold almost immediately after he started to become abusive."
"On hold? Why didn't you hang up on him?"
Patton again shrugged, and smiled almost shyly. "I suppose I should have. But, after all, he was obviously very distressed. I guess maybe I was hoping he would calm down and that I'd be able to talk some sense to him. When I came back on the line, he wasn't there; I assumed he'd hung up. Now, to find out that he killed himself. . it's just very shocking, and I'm afraid that now I'm going to feel at least partly responsible for his death. Who knows? Maybe I could have saved him."
"I want to talk to your boss, Patton."
The other man blinked, frowned, shook his head slightly. "What?"
"You said you can't help me-or won't."
The frown deepened until it was pretty close to a scowl. "You're a very persistent man, Dr. Frederickson."
"That's only one of my many faults. One of my few virtues is that I can be very closemouthed, when it suits me, and I keep my word. I told you that I won't involve Nuvironment in any scandal, and I won't-if you tell me what I want to know. Now, another one of my faults is that I have this real nasty streak in me that comes out when I get disappointed. In this case, I just might take it into my head to talk to the newspapers about. . whatever. I know Blaisdel wouldn't want me to do that, so I figure maybe I'd better talk to him about the dirt, William Kenecky, and the little girl. You just put me in touch with him on the phone; I'll do the talking."
Patton snatched his hands off the top of the desk and stiffened in his chair. "You may carry out your threat, Dr. Frederickson, and it's possible that you could ruin my career-but it won't get you what you demand. It won't get you an appointment with Mr. Blaisdel, because he never sees anyone, and it won't get you the information you seek, since Nuvironment had nothing to do with any importation of soil. We've done nothing wrong, absolutely nothing, and if you try to make it appear that we have. . well, that will be on your conscience." He paused, touched the side of his nose. "Also, of course, there are libel laws."
Peter Patton himself was nothing if not persistent-so persistent, and adamant in his denials, that I was almost tempted to believe him. But if I did believe him-if Nuvironment had nothing to do with the importation of the rain forest soil, and if Craig Valley really had called Patton just to vent his spleen hysterically before slitting his throat-it meant that Garth and I would have to start all over again, from scratch, without the vaguest notion where scratch might be. That being the case, naturally, I decided not to believe a word he was saying-although it wasn't clear where that was going to get me, either.
"This business about the child bothers me a great deal, Frederickson," Patton continued.
"Yeah; I can see that."
"There could be one other explanation-and that bothers me a great deal, too."
"What would that explanation be?"
"The explanation would be that we have competition that I'm not aware of; such a competitor wouldn't be interested in long-range goals, but only in reaping the benefits of certain research findings. It now occurs to me that we may have a spy here, skimming off the cream of our research."
"Oh," I said, unable to think of anything else to say. Suddenly I felt very depressed.
"If that were the case," Patton said as he leaned forward slightly in his chair, "we would certainly want that person exposed." He paused for a few moments, continued carefully, "I certainly wish you were working for us, Dr. Frederickson."
"Jesus Christ, Patton, are you offering me a job?"
"Yes. And why not? I happen to know that you and your brother now deal almost exclusively with corporate clients. I understand that your fees are high, and Nuvironment would be more than willing to pay for the two of you to investigate the possibility of industrial espionage in our company. You could begin after New Year's."
It was an interesting proposition, inasmuch as it seemed to imply that Peter Patton was willing to give us the run of the place to search records and investigate personnel as we saw fit; that wouldn't seem to make much sense for the head of a company that was trying to hide something in addition to a hundred tons of dirt. The problem, of course, was that it was Patton who had come up with the idea; if he thought it was a good one, then it was difficult to see what Garth and I would gain. And we weren't about to put off our search until after New Year's.
"We already have a client who's taking up all our time," I said distantly, still pondering his offer and wondering why he had made it. "Vicky Brown; the child. Remember her?"
"Yes," the pale-eyed man with the tic replied evenly. "But you believe that I'm denying to you information that could lead you to her; in effect, you're accusing me and my company of abetting the sexual abuse of this child. I deeply resent that, Dr. Frederickson. If allowing you to investigate our operations will assuage your suspicions, I'm willing to pay you to do it."
"Then you really don't believe there's a competitor trying to steal your secrets?"
"It's always good to have a thorough security check once in a while."
"But you don't believe you have a spy."
"No."
"Then how would you explain the soil?"
"I think you've made a mistake; the people who analyzed the soil for you made a mistake. Or, some other concern-perhaps an agricultural lab at some university-brought in a small sample of the soil for their own purposes. I happen to like children very much, Frederickson, and I would do nothing to cause one to be harmed. I'm as interested in the welfare of this Vicky Brown as you are."
"And you're willing to give Garth and me complete access to all your operations here?"
"Not only here, but at any of our research facilities around the world."