Dead Midnight by Marcia Muller Read Free Book Online

late teens.
    “Which one is Roger?” I asked.
    “The boy in the middle.”
    The middle child even in the family portrait. A difficult place in the birth order. I’d been the middle child in my adoptive family, and it had made me feel set apart from my older brothers and younger sisters, turned me into something of a loner. Of course, as I’d learned last fall, there were other reasons for those feelings… .
    I refocused my attention on Daniel Nagasawa. “How did that arrangement—Roger living at home—work out?”
    “Very well. He came and went as he pleased, and did his best not to make extra work for our housekeeper. Roger is … was the most independent and considerate of our boys. We’ve yet to persuade Harry, the oldest, to move out, and Eddie brings his laundry home from Palo Alto every other weekend.”
    “A pleasant home environment, then.”
    Dr. Nagasawa’s gaze muddied and he looked down at his clasped hands. “It was.”
    I waited, and when he didn’t elaborate, asked, “What did Roger tell you about his experience at
InSite
?”
    “Very little. He wasn’t secretive, but he didn’t share unpleasant things. We knew the job wasn’t going well, though. He was tense and irritable. Worked long hours and didn’t get enough sleep. Sometimes he’d be at the office all night, come home to shower and change clothes, and go straight back again. When I suggested they were working him too hard, he told me that was the way of the dot-com world. But he looked exhausted and was losing weight. After he moved out of the house we invited him for dinner frequently, hoping to make him eat a decent meal, but he rarely came.”
    “Did he seem depressed?”
    “No. As I said, mainly on edge.”
    “But didn’t he have a history of depression?”
    “Certainly not. He was a happy-go-lucky child.”
    Perhaps as a child, but not as a man. At least that was what my reading of his journal indicated. Like many parents, Daniel Nagasawa hadn’t really known his adult son.
    “Dr. Nagasawa, what made you decide the people at
InSite
were responsible for Roger’s suicide?”
    He flinched. It was a reaction I could empathize with; to a person whose loved one has killed himself, the word has the force of a violent physical blow, no matter how often you hear it.
    “The
karoshi
case in Tokyo was what turned my thinking in that direction. I read a very detailed account of it in a magazine, then searched out other articles in legal journals and the Japanese press. The conditions the victim was trying to cope with were so similar to those that some of Roger’s friends—you have their names on the list I gave Glenn—to what they described to me after the memorial service. I talked to more of his friends, heard the same thing. Then yesterday …” He looked down again, straightened the edges of the stack of papers.
    “Yes?”
    “This is something I haven’t even told Glenn yet. Yesterday evening a young woman called me. One who had been at the service. Jody Houston. She said she had heard we’d hired an investigator to look into the cause of Roger’s death.”
    “She heard that from me. We met yesterday morning at Roger’s building.”
    “That explains her call. She was very melodramatic, said one of the top people at the magazine had effectively murdered my son and was now threatening her. She wanted to see me immediately. Frankly, I didn’t believe her. So I suggested she contact you and be prepared to present proof of her allegations. She became agitated and hung up on me.”
    “Did you try to call her back?”
    “Not last night. But on reflection, I sensed she was genuinely afraid, so I looked up her number and phoned this morning. I reached a machine. I take it she didn’t get in touch with you?”
    “No, she didn’t.”
    “Will you contact her, please? Ask if she’s all right and find out what she knows?”
    “I’ll see to it right away.”
    There was just enough of a window of time in my schedule to