The Green Trap by Ben Bova Page A

help.”
    â€œI’ve told you what I know.”
    â€œNot the name of the woman involved in this,” said McLain.
    Cochrane decided that if he wanted to keep Sandoval’s name from them, he’d better stop talking to them altogether. He pushed his plastic chair away from the table; it made a nerve-grating screech on the tile floor.
    â€œI want to leave now,” he said, getting to his feet.
    Danvers looked disappointed. “Dr. Cochrane, do you think you’re following the wisest course of action here?”
    â€œThey’ve already killed two men.” McLain practically snarled from the TV screen. “You might be next.”
    Cochrane slowly shook his head. “I doubt it. I don’t know anything that they’d be interested in—whoever they are.”
    â€œMaybe they think otherwise.”
    He could feel Danvers’s eyes on him as he went to the door and opened it, thinking, If she’s going to arrest me, she’ll do it now. But Danvers said nothing and Cochrane walked through the subdued intensity of the squad room and out into the hot, glaring sunlight.
    It wasn’t until then that he realized he didn’t have his car here. The police had driven him to the headquarters building. Squinting in the heat, he saw a pair of taxicabs parked at the corner. He thought for a moment about going back inside and demanding that Danvers provide him transportation back to his apartment. But only for a moment. Fuck that, he told himself. Take a taxi.
    During the ride across town he sat in the back of the poorly air-conditioned taxi, wondering why he refused to name Sandoval to the police. They’re trying to find out who murdered Mike, he said to himself. You ought to be helping them, not holding back information.
    But there’s something going on here, he argued within his mind, something deeper than finding out who killed Mike. Or Arashi, for that matter.
Why
were they killed? What was so important about Mike’s work that it cost him his life? Sandoval knows. She knows a part of it, at least. And she can’t tell me what she knows if she’s locked up in jail.
    The taxi pulled up in front of the Sunrise Apartments. Cochrane got out, paid the driver, and gave him a small tip, then limped through the broiling sun to the building’s lobby.
    It was blessedly cool inside the lobby. As he headed for the elevators, Cochrane saw out of the corner of his eye that several magazines and journals lay strewn haphazardly on the shelf by the mailboxes. Christ, I haven’t even looked at my mail in almost a week.
    Sure enough, the journals were for him. They shouldn’t be out here, where anybody could pick them up, he thought irritably. Then he almost laughed at himself. Who the hell in this building would pick up the latest
Astrophysical Journal?
Well, you never know, he thought; I might have an astronomy student for a neighbor. He fished his mailbox key from the pocket of his jeans and opened his mailbox. Sure enough, it was stuffed full.
    Cochrane tugged the bent and folded mail out of the little box, wentto the wastebasket at the end of the row, and started discarding the junk mail. Credit card offers. Discounts from local retailers. Catalogs.
    And a letter bearing the return address of the Calvin Research Center, with a scrawled
MSC
beneath. Mike’s initials.

TUCSON:
SUNRISE  APARTMENTS
    C ochrane dropped his other mail on the table by his front door, neither noticing nor caring that most of it slid to the floor. He nudged the door shut with his foot, then tore open Mike’s letter. It had been typed on a computer: Mike’s laptop, Cochrane thought.
P AUL: I’m playing with the big guys now. And I’ve had it with Irene. So I’m going away for a while. Please take care of the papers in my safe-deposit box. They’re worth a lot. M IKE .
    A small flat key was Scotch-taped to the bottom of the letter. He didn’t even sign it,