“Quite right.” She nodded and sighed dramatically. “Well, I really have no choice, do I?”
“In that case…” then she went back to deadly serious, “… let me say first that I am reassured by the fact that you think I did not lose the file. That is precisely why I have been waiting to see who the investigating officer would be. If you should decide to call Patricia for an explanation, she will tell you that I did lose it.”
“But you didn’t.” She shook her head. “Someone on your staff then?”
“One of my girls? Absolutely not.”
I waited, and she paused as if gathering her thoughts. Her hands were settled in her lap, her legs crossed at the ankle and tucked under the bench. I had one leg crossed over the other, at the knee not the ankle, and an arm flung over the back of the bench. I felt like a bohunk sitting with a duchess. She continued. “I’ll tell you what happened from my perspective. It will not answer your primary question, mainly, the location of the file from September through to June, but it may give you some avenues of inquiry.”
She spoke, then, as if reading from a script; as though she’d run over the story so many times in her mind that it was now memorized and distanced from emotion. “When the first letter arrived I logged it. That means I opened a file for the project, gave it a code number, and entered it in my master database. Once in the master database, every time a file moves across my desk its destination is tracked. That way I know where all the files are at any given moment in time. I followed this procedure for the salmon file. However, I did not send the file directly to Bob, as I would have for a more minor investigation. Given the nature of the complaint and the political implications I stapled an urgent tag to the folder and placed it directly on Patricia’s desk. I didn’t see it again, which was unusual, but I assumed that it had gone to the president and was being handled at a higher level. Then the second letter came. That was ten months later. I was alarmed and took it personally into Patricia. When I asked her where the file was in the process, so that I could add the letter, she said, ‘How should I know? I gave it back to you three days after I received it.’ I was shocked, but I said nothing, and I went to check my log. If I had received the file and forgotten, it would appear there.”
At this point Lydia turned to look me in the eye, as if defying me to believe her. “When I called up that entry, it was no longer there. The complete log of that file had disappeared. Patricia was furious.”
“Was it just that entry and nothing else?”
She nodded. “Needless to say, I was very concerned, so I decided to investigate further. In addition to the system backups, I personally back up all our files on disk every three months: at the beginning of January, April, July, and October.” She reached into the pocket of her suit jacket and pulled out a computer disk. “This backup was done in April, eight months after we received the initial letter from Dr. Edwards. The file exists on this backup, and there is no record of it ever coming back to me.”
“Does Patsy know about this?” I nodded to the disk. “Actually, no. When I tried to discuss it with her she made it very clear that, as far as she was concerned, she had her answer and the subject was closed.”
I reached out and took the disk. “Mind if I keep this for you?”
“Thank you. I would be most grateful if you would.” I slipped it into my jacket pocket. “But somewhere along the line the file was obviously recovered.”
“Yes. Another curious event. I was not happy at being accused of losing the file. I have never, in my life, misplaced so much as a sheet of paper. However, I am eight months away from early retirement. I cannot afford to make any significant waves.”
That was the understatement of the year. Patsy is a card-carrying member of the “off with her head” school of personnel management. Insubordination is not tolerated, and that includes defending yourself against false accusations, particularly if she’s the one accusing. In Lydia’s position she was better to eat the crap and retire happy eight months from now with a plump little buy-out package. If she so much as squeaked about this file she risked being fired and out on the streets with no bucks and no job. The Red Queen had done it before.
She continued. “The best I could do was suggest that we mount an all-out search of the files the following day. The girls and I would put everything else aside and comb the filing cabinets, since some sort of misfiling was the most likely explanation. It took us two days to locate the folder. It had been placed under optoelectronics.”
I must admit, I felt a stab of regret. P for Pacific and O for optoelectronics. That sounded to me like an honest mistake. “So it was misfiled.”
“That would be the obvious conclusion, yes. However, engineering and life sciences are filed in different cabinets. In fact, they are filed in different rooms. No one on my staff would make such an error.”
At this point my intellect piped up and chirped principle of parsimony, principle of parsimony like some hormone-crazed male warbler. It was true: good scientific practice demanded that I accept the simplest and most likely explanation to fit the existing facts, and, although the idea of a conspiracy was tempting, the most plausible explanation was that someone, somewhere, had simply forgotten that they had the file. When they realized that they were holding a hot potato they panicked and tried to cover their tracks. Personally, I hoped that unfortunate someone was Bob. I smiled. It certainly merited further investigation.
Lydia continued. “You know, Morgan, I would prefer to have this removed from my permanent record before I leave the Council.”
“She put a reprimand on file?”
Lydia nodded slightly. “And suggested that I not discuss the situation with any of my colleagues.”
I let that sink in for a minute. “Could Patsy herself access your master database? Could she get in there and erase a log?”
She smiled vaguely. “I’m afraid the answer to that question is no. Ms. Middlemass is not what you would term computer literate. I’m not sure she could even find the power switch.”
“Who else then?” “I don’t know, really. The file is password protected, but all the girls in the office know the password.”
I took a moment to organize the information in my head and plan out a strategy that kept Lydia at arm’s length from my inquiries, then I touched her sleeve. “I will need your help. Names and information mainly.”
She gave an almost imperceptible nod, both of us knowing that she’d lose her job if she, or I, were caught looking into this.
“But, Morgan, if you wish to keep the project, may I suggest that you leave work early today, preferably before one o’clock, when Ms. Middlemass will be returning from a lunchtime meeting. The file was not to land in your hands.”
On our stroll back to the trailhead we chatted, mainly about Lydia’s New Age daughter who spent inordinate amounts of time mumbling over little piles of crystals. It was supposed to help her find a job. Lydia had suggested reading the want ads of the local newspaper, but apparently this was not how jobs “come to us.” When we reached the end of the path I agreed to wait five minutes before leaving the woods and returning to the office, mainly to protect Lydia from Patsy’s spies. Just as she was walking away I thought of something.
“Lydia?” She turned back. “Are you sure Patsy said three days later. Not three or four, or several, or a week. Something less defined?”
Lydia shook her head. “She said it quite distinctly. ‘I gave it back to you three days after I received it.’ That’s exactly what she said.”
As Lydia disappeared around the building I thought back to Patsy’s post-it note directive. Keep my nose out of the science? I don’t think so. After all, my first responsibility was to discover the truth, not toady up to the needs and desires of a fifth-floor megalomaniac who had never conducted an investigation. And if I managed in the