Do or Die by Barbara Fradkin Page B

did enjoy mysteries as an escape.”
    Mysteries were hardly Shakespeare, Green observed privately, but he left the topic to probe her views closer to the case, unearthing little of interest. She could think of no one else with the remotest reason for wanting him dead and no situation that might put him in danger.
    â€œHe studied the brains of cats, for heaven’s sake!” she exclaimed. “Most of his days were spent in the animal room, the EEG lab, or at his computer. He didn’t even help to teach a course. So there isn’t even the motive of a student driven berserk by a poor mark.”
    â€œWhat did he do with the cats?”
    â€œYou don’t really want to know.” She eyed him balefully. “He drilled holes in their heads and inserted probes to stimulate electrical activity in the hippocampal region. Which is part of the limbic system and crucial for new memory.” Seeing hisblank look, she waved an impatient hand. “He trains his cats on different listening tasks and measures brain responses.”
    Green winced. “I get the picture. What about the anti-vivisectionists? That’s a pretty fanatical bunch. Did he receive any threats or complaints from them?”
    She rolled her eyes. “That’s clutching at straws, I’d say. He never mentioned complaints.”
    â€œWell, I am clutching at straws,” he replied, allowing a plaintive edge in his voice. Appeal to her maternal side; he’d often found that worked with women. “I don’t have any real motives for murder here, and everyone I talk to describes him as Mr. Perfect.”
    â€œWell, if I were you, I’d check into the dark-haired bitch he’s had on his arm for the past two months. Raquel’s Arabic, and you know how protective those guys can be about their women.”
    As a Jew, Green had a finely tuned radar for prejudice and was no longer surprised when it cropped up in the most unexpected places. In some ways, the subtle bigotry of the educated white elite was more deadly than the crude ignorance of the streets. Vanessa Weeks probably didn’t even think of her remark as racist, merely factual. But prejudice aside, in this case she had a point, he realized, particularly when he considered the murder weapon MacPhail had described. An eight-inch, smooth-bladed knife. If folklore was to be believed, the weapon of choice among Arab desert tribes.
    He excused himself and slipped into the hall to call the station. He reached Sullivan at his own phone.
    â€œAny breaks yet?” “The guys are collecting a lot of stuff, Mike, but we don’t have a clear-cut motive or an obvious suspect yet. No sign of our mystery student in the plaid shirt. Paquette has come upempty on the fingerprint analysis so far. MacPhail says the body has no defensive wounds on it, so Blair didn’t try to block the blow. Looks like he was taken by surprise. “
    â€œThat suggests somebody smooth and quick with a knife.”
    â€œRuthless, too. The guy couldn’t afford to hesitate.”
    â€œDid MacPhail speculate on how much strength it would take? Could it have been a woman?”
    â€œIt was a hell of a sharp knife. Double edge and pointed tip. A woman could slip it in without trouble.”
    â€œHave the guys got anything on the dark-haired girlfriend yet? Her name’s Raquel Haddad.”
    â€œYup. Jackson’s already heading out to her home as we speak.”
    *    *    *
    The University of Ottawa was scattered through the aging downtown district of Sandy Hill, once the elegant home of the lumber barons, entrepreneurs and founding politicians of the fledgling town. Some of the stately mansions of a hundred years ago were now embassies, but many had been subdivided into cheap tenements filled with immigrants and the transient poor. Green dodged swaddled Somali women pushing strollers as well as the usual throngs of scruffy students as he raced