Chapter 3: Monday, Oct. 2

In which Worried sends a video of a well-fleshed blond and two gentlemen indulging in intimate calisthenics.

By Alfred Alcorn

Jun 29, 2001 |

Dear Mr. Ratour,

I got your message loud and clear. Maybe I should have told you this sooner, but nobody around here, not on the maintenance crews, anyway, thought that the Ossmann-Woodley thing was suspicious. I mean the researcher types get up to all kinds of things you wouldn't believe. Back in August one of the security guys was going over a tape from a camera no one knows about and he found footage of one of the research assistants, a really good looking babe, doing two guys at once. Anyway, he modified it and put it out on the Internet as one of those things you can e-mail to people. Home movies stuff if you know what I mean. You can click on the icon down below and watch it yourself though I don't think its evidence of anything. Anyway, everyone around here just thought the two professors that died got carried away and you know shit happens. But now that the newspapers are saying it's under investigation and all that stuff, I maybe ought to tell you that about a week before it happened, I heard Professor Ossmann arguing with another researcher. Ossmann kept saying things like the core discovery is mine and you know it. The other guy who sounded like he was from Minnesota kept answering something about how he figured out the experimentation and without that they wouldn't be where they were. Doctor Penrood, he's the English guy who complains about tea bags all the time, tried to act like the referee. I don't understand him that well because he sounds like he's talking through his nose but he kept saying something about it being a team effort. But I don't know what they were talking about. I'll let you know if I find out anything else.

--Worried

I confess it was at the expense of some qualms that I clicked on the icon and watched the nearly ten minutes of indistinct but quite graphic video footage that unrolled on my screen. I scrupled that the possibility of its being evidence in the Ossmann-Woodley case outweighed any invasion of the already violated privacy of the individuals involved.

I found it oddly moving, inasmuch as amateur erotica can be far more stimulating than the professional stuff Elsbeth, who has a weakness for the meretricious, occasionally finds on the so-called adult channels. The woman involved in this incident, a well-fleshed blonde, knelt away from the camera on all fours fellating a man whose face was obscured in shadow. The second gentleman, back to camera, copulated vigorously with the woman au chien, so to speak. I thought it would be interesting, for forensic purposes, to hear what they were saying, if anything. Perhaps the tape could be enhanced enough for us to learn who the three individuals are. I am not being prurient in this matter. For a sleuth the most seemingly incidental knowledge can be crucial. Nor am I interested in the morals of these individuals. Regarding affairs of consensual activity among adults I subscribe to the dictum of my friend Israel Landes: Keep it private and don't scare the horses.

I did venture another e-mail to Worried, asking if there was any possibility of an enhanced version of "the tape," perhaps with sound. I have to risk that he may think me interested for pornographic reasons.

I also called Dr. Rupert Penrood's office and arranged to meet with him Thursday morning after he gets back from London. Penrood is the director of the Institute, and I have yet to have a really good chat with him about the incident. It might be helpful to find out exactly what Professor Ossmann and the gentleman with the Minnesota accent were arguing about.

On my own initiative, I moved last week, with the backing of the Seaboard Police Department, to secure those offices and files Professor Ossmann and Dr. Woodley maintained in the Lab. Because it is not yet officially a murder case, the SPD balked at the cost of hiring a forensic biochemist to examine the lab notes, work in progress, computer files, and anything else of relevance to the case left behind by both researchers.

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