The Green Trap by Ben Bova Page B

Cochrane realized. And he didn’t tell me where his goddamned safe-deposit box is!
    He went to his desk and phoned Irene. No answer, just that damned voice-mail message of hers. He booted up his computer and started lookingup the locations of banks near Mike’s home and near the Calvin lab. Six of them. He started phoning.
    â€œHello, I’m trying to determine if my brother kept a safe-deposit box in your bank.”
    â€œI’m sorry, sir, we can’t divulge that information on the phone.”
    â€œLook, I’m in Tucson. My brother died last week and he left me the key to a safe-deposit box but he forgot to tell me which bank it’s from.”
    â€œThat’s very unusual, sir.”
    â€œHis name is… was Michael Cochrane.”
    â€œWe can’t confirm—”
    â€œCan you at least tell me if Michael Cochrane was a customer of yours? Did he have an account with you? Please, it’s important.”
    â€œJust a moment, sir. I’ll connect you with the bank manager.”
    And Cochrane repeated the same routine with the bank manager. Six times, each with a different bank. The best he could get was:
    â€œWe have no accounts with a Michael Cochrane.”
    â€œNone? No checking account? Nothing?”
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œHow about his widow, Irene Cochrane?”
    â€œSir, the information you’re asking for is private. We can’t divulge such information over the telephone.”
    â€œI see. I understand. Thank you.”
    Cochrane thought about phoning Purvis and asking him to find out which bank Mike used. Not McLain. He realized the two detectives were using a good-cop, bad-cop routine on him, but he still didn’t like McLain. He found the card Purvis had given him, picked up the phone again, and hesitated.
    Do I want to tell the police about this? They’ll be all over me, worse than ever. Can’t I find which bank Mike used by myself?
    He put the phone down, leaned back in his desk chair, and tried to think. Okay, all those banks claim Mike didn’t have an account with them. No reason to think they’re lying. It’s one thing to say they won’t tell me, but if they say Mike wasn’t a customer of theirs, I guess they’re telling the truth.
    Cochrane closed his eyes, tried to picture his brother alive, that wiseass grin of his. If Mike wanted to hide his papers, Cochrane told himself, he wouldn’t have gone to a bank in his own neighborhood. Great. That leaves about six zillion other banks in the region.
    Why didn’t he tell me which bank the damned key is from? And the answer rose in Cochrane’s mind: Because he thought I’m smart enough tofigure it out for myself. Another one of his little practical jokes.
Here you are, Paulie. You’re so frigging smart, find the answer to this one.
    Not a bank in his neighborhood, Cochrane mused to himself. Then where?
    Trip reports! Buried in Tulius’s files were reports that Mike sent to his boss after every trip he took for the company.
    He inserted the first of the CDs that Arashi had given him and started searching for Mike’s trip reports. The sun was setting when he finally pushed himself from the desk, bleary-eyed, and shambled to the refrigerator for a glass of fruit juice. Mike had traveled a lot: scientific conferences, consulting meetings, visits to other laboratories around the nation. Sipping at the grapefruit juice he’d poured for himself, Cochrane went back to the computer and listed Mike’s trips in chronological order.
    Almost all Mike’s trips had been to different places: Denver, New Haven, Ann Arbor, Albuquerque, he’d even visited Tucson three months earlier. And he never told me. Never looked me up or let me know he was in town, Cochrane grumbled to himself.
    There were only two destinations that Mike had visited more than once: NASA’s Johnson Space Center near Houston three times, and MIT in Massachusetts