I followed him into his office. He was a psychiatry vice-chairman and a respected neurochemistry researcher, but his space wasn't much more generous than the secretary's. Haphazardly furnished with what looked like castoffs, it sported another collection of file cases, brown metal furniture, a storm of books. An attempt to freshen things up with a faux-Navajo rug had failed long ago; the rug's threads were unraveling, its color bands fading. The desk supported a turbulent swirl of paperwork.

Theobold squeezed behind the desk and I took one of the two metal chairs wrinkling the fake Navajo.

"So," he said. "It's been a while. You're still officially faculty, aren't you?"

"Courtesy faculty," I said. "No salary."

"How long since you've been down here?"

"Couple of years," I said. His attempts at cordiality were deepening the lines on his face. "I appreciate your seeing me."

"No problem." He cleared the area around the phone. Papers flew. "I had no idea you led such an interesting life- police consultant. Do they pay well?"

"About the same as Medi-Cal."

He managed a chuckle. "So what have you been up to, otherwise? Still at Western Peds?"

"Occasionally. I do some consulting, mostly legal work. A few short-term treatment cases."

"Able to deal with the HMO's?"

"I avoid them when I can."

He nodded. "So… you're here about poor Claire. I suppose that detective thought I'd confide secrets to you that I withheld from him, but thereTs really nothing more to tell."

"I think he felt it was more a matter of knowing the right questions to ask."

"I see," he said. "Persistent type, Sturgis. Smarter than he lets on. He tried to disarm me by playing to class consciousness-'I'm the humble working-class cop, you're the big smart doctor.' Interesting approach. Does it work?"

"He's got a good solve rate."

"Good for him… The problem is, he was wasting his acting talents on me. I wasn't holding back. I have no inside information about Claire. I knew her as a researcher, not as a person."

"Everyone seems to say that about her."

"Well, then," he said, "at least I'm consistent. So no one has much to offer about her?"

I nodded.

"And here I thought it was me-the way I run my projects."

"What do you mean?"

"I like to think of myself as a humane administrator. Hire good people, trust them to do their jobs, for the most part keep my hands off. I don't get involved in their personal lives. I'm not out to parent anyone."

He stopped, as if expecting me to pass judgment on that.

I said, "Claire worked for you for six years. She must have liked that."

"I suppose."

"How'd you find her?"

"I'd put in for my grant and she applied for the neuropsych position. She was completing a postdoc at Case Western, had published two papers as a grad student, sole author. Nothing earth-shattering, but encouraging. Her interest-alcoholism and reaction times-meshed with mine. No shortage of alcoholics here. I thought she'd be able to attract her own funding, and she did."

All facts I'd read in Claire's resume.

"So she worked with you and on her own research."

"Twenty-five percent of her time was her research; the rest she spent on my longitudinal study of neuroleptic outcomes- NIMH grant, three experimental drugs plus placebo, double-blind. She tested the patients, helped organize the data. We just got renewed for five more years. I just hired her replacement-bright kid from Stanford, Walter Yee."

"Who else worked on the study?" I said.

"Three research fellows besides Claire-two M.D.'s, one Ph.D. pharmacologist."

"Was she friendly with any of them?"

"I wouldn't know. As I said, I don't meddle. It's not one of those situations where we fraternize after hours."

"Five-year renewal," I said. "So there was no financial reason for her to leave."

"Not in the least. She probably could've renewed her own study, too. She had substance-abuse money from NIH, completed the final study before she left. Inconclusive results, but well run, very decent chance. But she never applied." He glanced upward. "Never even told me she was allowing the grant to lapse."

"So she must have been intending to leave for some time."

"Looks that way. I was pretty irritated at her. For not wanting to follow through. For not communicating. Irked at myself, too, for not staying in touch. If she'd come to me, most likely I'd have been able to raise her to full-time, or to find her something else. She was very good at what she did. Dependable, no complaints. I managed to get Dr. Yee on full-time. But she never bothered to- I suppose you're right. She wanted to leave. I have no idea why."

"So she never complained."

"Not once. Even the way she told me she was leaving-no personal meeting; she just sent in a summary of her data with a note that the grant was finished and so was she."

That reminded me of the way she'd divorced Joe Stargill.

"Who'd she work with on her own grant?"

"She got part-time secretarial help from the main pool, ran all her own studies, analyzed her own data. That was also irksome. I'm sure she could've applied for ancillary funding, brought more money into the department, but she always wanted to work by herself. I suppose I should be grateful. She took care of herself, never bothered me for anything. The last thing I need is someone who requires hand-holding. Still… I suppose I should've paid more attention."

"A loner," I said.

"But all of us are. In my group. I didn't think I'd been hiring antisocial types, but perhaps on some level…" Wide smile. "Did you know I started as an analyst?"

"Really."

"You bet, classical Freudian, couch and all. This"-he touched the beard-"used to be a very analytic goatee. I attended the institute right after residency, got halfway through-hundreds of hours cultivating the proper 'hmm'- before I realized it wasn't for me. Wasn't for anyone, in my estimation, except possibly Woody Alien. And look at the shape he's in. I quit, enrolled in the biochem Ph.D. program at USC. I'm sure those choices mean something psychodynam-ically, but I'd rather not waste time trying to figure out what. Claire seemed to me the same way-scientific, focused on reality, self-possessed. Still, she must have been terribly unhappy here."

"Why do you say that?"

"Leaving for a place like that. Have you been there?"

"Yesterday."

"What's it like?"

"Highly structured. Lots of high-dose medication."

"Brave new world," he said. "I can't see why Claire would have wanted that."

"Maybe she craved clinical work."

"Nonsense," he said sharply. Then he smiled apologetically. "What I mean is, she could've had all the clinical work she wanted right here. No, I must have missed something."

"Could I talk to the other fellows?" I said.

"Why not? Walt Yee didn't know her, of course, and I don't believe Shashi Lakshman did, either-he's the pharmacologist, has his own lab in a separate building. But maybe she interfaced with the M.D.'s-Mary Hertzlinger and Andy Vel-man. Let me call Shashi first."

A few seconds on the phone confirmed that Dr. Lakshman had never met Claire. We took the stairs down to a second-floor lab and found Doctors Hertzlinger and Velman typing at personal computers.

Both psychiatric fellows were in their thirties and had on white coats. Mary Hertzlinger wore a short brown dress under hers. She was thin, with cropped platinum-blond hair, ivory skin, well-formed but chapped lips. Andrew Velman's coat was buttoned up high, revealing a black shirt collar and the tight knot of a lemon-yellow tie. He was short, broad, with black wavy hair, a gold stud hi his left ear.

I asked them about Claire.

Velman spoke first, in a clipped voice. "Virtual stranger. I've been here two years and maybe we exchanged twenty sentences. She always seemed too busy to hang out. Also, I do the structured clinical interviews on the study and she did the neuropsych testing, so at any given time, we'd be with different patients."