“That’s right, Miss Cooper. It’s a disturbance of the central nervous system and it’s characterized by progressive intellectual deterioration and involuntary motor movements. Spector’s devoted a lot of attention to the disease, and, well, he’s the big cheese around here so-”

“Dogen was the chief though, wasn’t she?” Chapman asked.

“Yes, but rumor had it that she was moving back to England at the end of this academic semester. So quite frankly,” DuPre said, pulling one side of his mouth up into a smile, “a lot of us have figured that Spector’s ass is the one to kiss. Forgive my bluntness, Miss Cooper. A lot of us have been trying to hitch our wagons to Bob Spector. I think he’ll be our next chief.”

“What kind of relationship did you have with Gemma Dogen?”

“The ice maiden? A very distant one. Mind y’all, we got along fine when we had to. But I didn’t know her very well and-I know you’ll hear this from other people-she really didn’t have very much use for me.”

“Because?”

“No idea, no idea at all. I don’t want to play the race card, as y’all say. Could just as easily have been that she was a snob-didn’t think it worth her time to talk to me because I wasn’t a surgeon. She kept to herself quite a bit. Every now and then I’d catch up and run with her in the morning-we both jogged on the walkway along the river-but I think she was happiest when she was alone.”

“Were you one of the doctors who assisted Spector in place of Gemma Dogen the morning she was killed?”

“No, no. I don’t know anything about that, detective. I wasn’t even in the hospital Wednesday morning. As a neurologist, I can’t do surgical procedures, y’see. I can treat patients with brain disease, but not in the operating room.”

“What prompted you to go down to the radiology department when you did, doctor?”

“It wasn’t my idea, actually. The credit goes to Dr. Harper, Coleman Harper. Spector had some X rays done of a patient with Huntington ’s that he’s been following for several years. We were talking about the project and Coleman suggested that he and I go down to look, to compare them to the set taken last year.

“We got down to the second floor. Quite surprised to find the door to the room unlocked. But, then, you know the problem we have here with security. It’s not unique to us, mind you. I’ve seen it at all the large medical centers. I even remember hearing about a murder like this one at Bellevue before I ever came up here to New York.”

“What happened, I mean,exactly what happened when you went into the room?”

“The gentleman you’ve got in custody, he was just curled up on the floor sound asleep. Coleman had flipped the light switch on and there he was. You couldn’t help but notice the stains on his pants. I knew it was blood. I told Coleman to go out and call someone immediately, that I’d wait to make sure the guy didn’t go anywhere.”

“Did you wake him?”

“Not ‘til Coleman got back. I mean, I couldn’t see any weapon, but I couldn’t be sure he wasn’t sitting on top of it. We just sort of nudged him with our feet. Opened his eyes and started mumbling. Just kept saying, ’Sorry. Sorry.‘ I have absolutelyno idea whether he was talking about bein’ sorry about bein‘ somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be, or for what he did to Gemma.”

“Then?”

“Then the detective we beeped was over there in less than ten minutes. Took the gentleman away with him.”

Chapman asked DuPre a few more questions while I recorded some details on my pad. We thanked him and asked him to stick with us a bit longer while we spoke to other witnesses, reminding him not to discuss his statement with anyone else.

Peterson ushered him out of the room and Chapman went to get Coleman Harper.

Dr. Harper was still in a white lab coat when he walked into the office more than three hours after he had been brought from the hospital to the station house to retell the story of the discovery he and DuPre had made. He was a little shorter than DuPre-about my height-with flecks of premature gray in his dark brown hair. He was stocky and solidly built, and his left leg jiggled nervously as he sat in the chair opposite me at the desk.

We shook hands as I explained to him why I needed to question him and told him to relax.

“It’s really weird, Miss Cooper. I’ve never been involved in anything like this before. Where do I start?”

“Don’t worry. Most witnesses we meet have never been through anything like this. Mike and I have some questions to ask you.”

Chapman started with the usual background information. He got Harper talking about himself and his credentials.

“I first affiliated with Mid-Manhattan about ten years ago. But I left, it was a year or so after Dr. Dogen arrived here, so I wasn’t around for much of her tenure. I moved back down to Nashville, where my wife’s family lived, to continue my neurological practice there.

“Then, when my marriage broke up, I just thought it was time to try to come back to a great teaching hospital and do some of the things I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve been here since last September.”

“And you’re here on a fellowship?” I asked, looking at Chapman’s briefing notes.

“Well, yes. It’s a bit of a trade-off, actually, but once my wife left me I decided to try and do things that would makeme happy for a change. I’ve always been interested in neurosurgery. So I took a healthy pay cut for this position-I’m a little older than most of the men and women in the program-but the upside is now I can assist in the operating room. I may actually go ahead and try to get into a neurosurgical program here. Something I should have done a long time ago.”

I exchanged glances with Chapman and looked down at Harper’s twitching leg. I assumed Mike was thinking like I was and was thankful he didn’t make a crack about how steady Harper’s hands must be for brain surgery. A friendly interview with the local constabulary and the doctor was completely aflutter. It was the kind of effect Mike and I had on lots of people.

“So you were in the OR when Dr. Dogen was a no-show yesterday morning, am I right?”

“Yes, yes, I was. Dr. Spector was doing a procedure on a stroke victim. The patient had suffered a stroke on the right side of his brain, actually. I try to watch Spector whenever I can. He’s really a genius.”

“And he picked you out of the crowd to assist?”

“Yes, well, so to speak. There were only a dozen or so of us present and only a smaller handful who’d even worked with him on this kind of thing before. It’s quite an honor.”

“With a good result for the patient, we understand.”

“Not quite out of the woods yet but looking pretty safe at this point.”

“Are you involved in this Huntington’s disease program with Spector as well?”

“Not officially. But I’m certainly counting on his support to get into the neurosurgical program. And, of course, my years of experience as a neurologist have given me an opportunity to study the disorder. You could certainly say I’m following his work closely.”

“So how did you come to be with Dr. DuPre this evening?”

“I had gone to the library to find a volume I needed. When I got there, a bunch of my colleagues were talking about Spector’s new X rays of a patient he’s been studying and DuPre suggested we go take a look. The X rays were mounted down in radiology. I wanted to wait and finish my research but-”

“Excuse me,” I interrupted, “but whose idea was it?”

“John DuPre. He told me he couldn’t wait for me because he had to get home for dinner and asked me to go along with him right then.”

Great. Half an hour into the case and I’ve already got conflicting facts, just on the minor stuff. DuPre says it was Harper’s idea to go to radiology, Harper says DuPre pushed him to do it.

Inconsistencies, Rod Squires used to lecture me in our training sessions, the hallmarks of truth. A pain in the ass, if you asked me. It’s natural for different people to see the same events from different perspectives, we were encouraged to believe, but it sure could foul up a good case.