Sam looked at her as she opened the third zipper. “What are you looking for?”
“Their personal effects.”
“Why?”
“In a world made unsecure by digital thieves, most of these people kept their most private discoveries in paper journals.”
Sam grinned. “Any luck?”
“Not yet.”
Sam gathered the laptops. “If you don’t get lucky, we’ll take these back to the Maria Helena. Elise might still be able to access the hard drives for us.”
Alexis started to flick through Pier’s journal. She stopped after a few minutes, feeling guilty, like she was somehow intruding on the dead man’s most private thoughts. She dismissed the guilt and continued reading — if there were clues about what they had found that brought this entire disaster it would be worth prying.
She picked a section two thirds of the way through and started skimming. The date at the top of the page was nearly a year old and she was about to skip further when something caught her attention.
What does Professor Alexis Schultz see in her fiancé? There’s something I don’t like about him. He’s intelligent enough — nowhere near as bright as she is, but definitely smart enough to work at CERN without her recommendations.
So then, what is it that I don’t like? Because his IQ, which must range somewhere above the top percentile is the only good thing he shares with her. The guy’s a loser. He’s slimy and unctuous and although I can’t put my finger on why, I know he’s just plain wrong for her. She deserves much better.
The next section of the journal seemed to return to a project that he was working on. Alexis quickly skimmed through the next sections to see if there was anything else Pier had written about her husband. His comments had made her curious. Why would Pier have thought Daniel was wrong for me? He was a very effective scientist — by no means naturally brilliant, but definitely good at what he did. She thought about it some more and decided it wasn’t important. Nothing more than the passing thought of a new Doctorial graduate who she’d recommended for a permanent position at CERN.
She shook her head at his comment. It was silly and ridiculous. The kid barely even knew her or Daniel — even if he’d been right, Daniel was a loser and he’d been having an affair. She continued flicking through pages of the journal. Berating herself for not moving to the end of the journal and working backwards. Naturally if they’d found anything it would be documented close to the end of the journal. Just before he died.
For some reason, she couldn’t shake her curiosity — what did Pier know about my fiancé that I didn’t? She skimmed three more pages before finding it.
I found Alexis’s fiancé in her office again today. He was searching for something and I interrupted him. He was quick to give an explanation that he was finding something for Alexis, but he looked guilty as all hell. It wasn’t until he left that I noticed he’d been taking photographs of her notes with his phone.
Should I tell her that her fiancé’s a schmuck?
Even if I did — would I be doing so for her, or for me? No. Better to let her make her own mistakes. Who am I to advise her what she wants? If you love someone let her go free; if she returns she loves you. If not, she was never yours to begin with.
Alexis flicked through several more pages without finding another note regarding her fiancé. What the hell was he looking for? There’s no reason for Daniel to be combing through my stuff. None of it made any sense. His work was completely different than hers. It was one of the reasons they worked as a couple. Most academics were possessive about ownership of research papers.
Two senior academics would never get married because they’d fight about their work. With Daniel and Alexis the two focused on entirely different areas of particle physics. Daniel studied new technologies to collide particles together, which further improved on the basic concepts of the Large Hadron Collider, while she focused specifically on new subatomic particles.
She shook her head. It was another mystery she’d never understand. She turned one more page and promised herself she’d start at the end and forget the nonsense about Daniel. Only on the next page there was another note that she should have ignored but couldn’t.
I accepted a job in Antarctica today. I think it’s for the best. If I stay here the situation with Professor Alexis Schultz and her fiancé will drive me crazy and I’ll be forced to tell her the truth. That her fiancé is a schmuck who doesn’t deserve to spend one minute with her, let alone a lifetime — and that I’m in love with her.
Alexis stopped. There were tears in her eyes.
“What is it?” Sam asked.
“Pier was in love with me — and that’s what got him killed.”
Chapter Fifty
Sam felt helpless as he watched Alexis cry. After everything she’d been through, it was only this instant that she finally let go and burst into tears. He’d tried to comfort her, but she made it abundantly clear there was nothing he could do for her or Pier, or any of them. She just needed to let herself grieve and then she could get back to work. That much he could understand. Sam had known grief when his brother died. It took time to grieve, and a certain part of it never stopped. But grieving was good — so long as you didn’t let it overcome your life.
Somehow he was confident Alexis would be strong enough to understand that. He continued searching through the debris for any clue that could be used to discover why the scientists from Pegasus were killed. He checked each of the deceased for notes or anything that could explain the bizarre scene.
His eyes glanced at Alexis. There were tear marks along the freckles of her cheeks, but they had stopped flowing and were now dry. Her green eyes, glossy as though the tears could start at any moment, were focused on the journal again.
“There’s one thing I don’t understand, Alexis.”
She put the journal down and looked up at him. “Really, because I’ve got at least a dozen questions with no possible answers.”
He didn’t take the bait and instead asked her directly. “Why didn’t they hide their crimes?”
“What do you mean? Hide their crimes from whom?” she asked.
“If you killed five leading scientists because of what they’d discovered, what’s the last thing you’d want to do?”
“Get caught.”
“Yeah I wouldn’t want to get caught either. But no. Instead I was thinking I wouldn’t want anyone to find out a crime had been committed because that would start people investigating — and that would lead to someone discovering what I killed to keep hidden in the first place!” Sam took a deep breath. “So then, why didn’t they bury the bodies so they were simply presumed lost?”
“You’re right. They could have easily buried them in the snow and no one would ever find the bodies. Not in a hundred years. By which time, it would be irrelevant.”
“That’s it!” Sam screamed the words.
“What is?”
“They didn’t bother because it was the end of the summer. A search for the missing scientists wouldn’t be possible until next summer, by which time their secret would be irrelevant. Whatever it is, they must be confident it will be over before next summer.” Sam looked at bodies lying where they had been killed. “You have to get back to reading. We need to find out exactly what these people discovered before it’s too late.”