Page 140 - Labelle Gramercy, Detective

Airtight

say about my personality is irrelevant, doc. The fact is that I have a
problem that won’t go away. It’s gotten me in trouble at other places.
The best spin I can put on it is to say that, like Laurel Reath, I am a
perfectionist. It keeps my nose to the grindstone and makes me a
good scientist—most of the time. But when reality and my
expectations don’t agree, I have trouble resisting the urge to make
test results conform to my theories.”
“Oh, no, Ray!” Blanche was going to take her headache to a whole
new level. “How could you do that to us?”
“How? I just told you. I had to make these trials turn out right.
The extrapolated yield per acre was not looking good after three
months. So I started to reduce on paper the acreage in the formula to
make the yield higher. But I changed it back after we adjusted the
lights and the circadian cycle, and things started growing faster.”
Toro shook his head. “So everything is all right?”
“Yes. But that detective somehow noticed the changes and called
me on it. I finally convinced her—at least I hope I did—that the final
data is good, that circumstances enabled me to put the correct
numbers back in place. But she thought she had found a motive for
me to silence Dr. Reath. That really put me under the gun. How
could I prove that Laurel knew about my problem, knew I had
changed the figures and then had changed them back? Because that’s
what happened. I’m sorry, but I came out of there with the idea that
one of you had fingered me. She found those erasures awfully
quickly.”
“She doesn’t miss much,” said Larry. “If anybody is at fault in this
sorry episode, I think she will dig it out. As for who might seriously
be under suspicion, it’s anybody’s guess.”
“Wait a minute,” said Blanche. Perhaps her reportorial instincts
had regained ascendance. “The fact is that Laurel died, and the
project is in jeopardy as a result. You said ‘conspiracy’ when you
came in here, Ray. That means more than one person could be
involved. Either more than one of us, or one of us and someone on
the outside. That’s why she was so keen on exposing my ties to
Semotech, an obvious co-conspirator. Who else here could benefit
from sabotaging the trials?”
I glanced from one team member to another, but none seemed
ready to answer that very interesting question. Toro was looking at

139