The Forgotten Room by Lincoln Child Read Free Book Online Page B

me suddenly….” She paused. “Oh, my God, his face—it was so unlike him, purple, enraged, eyes wide and staring…but it wasn’t only rage, it was also despair, maybe helplessness…. He knocked my hand away, grabbed my shoulders, pushed me onto the desk…grabbed my neck, began choking me…. I picked up my keyboard, flung it in his face….”
    She stood up. “He let go then. I ran behind my desk, picked up the phone, dialed the front desk, then Dr. Olafson’s office. A minute later, three lab assistants burst in and hauled Willard away. He was yelling and screaming at the top of his voice, kicking violently…and that was the last I ever saw of him.”
    She turned back now and sat down again at her desk, breathing heavily.
    “Thank you,” Logan said.
    She nodded. A brief silence descended over the room.
    “Please tell me something,” Mykolos said at last. “They say he committed suicide. But I don’t believe it.”
    Logan said nothing.
    “Please tell me. How did he die?”
    Logan hesitated. The information, he knew, was being kept as quiet as possible. But this woman had helped him, to her own discomfort. “It isn’t supposed to be known.”
    “I’m not going to tell anyone.”
    Logan looked at her appraisingly. Then he said, “He used the heavy windows of the visitor’s library to decapitate himself.”
    “He—” Mykolos’s hand flew to her mouth. “How awful.” Then she balled the hand into a fist. “No,” she said. “No, that couldn’t have been Willard.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Something was obviously not right with him. He might have been sick—I don’t know. But he would never,
ever
have killed himself. He had too much to live for. He was the least rash person I’ve ever known. And…dignity was important to him. He would never have killed himself—especially not in that way.”
    This brief speech was remarkably similar to what Olafson had said—and it was delivered with the same passion. “That’s why I’m back here,” Logan told her. “To try to understand what happened.”
    Mykolos nodded a little absently. Then she glanced at him. “What do you mean:
back
here?”
    “About ten years ago, I spent six months at Lux, doing research of my own.”
    “Really? Six months is an odd length of time. Usually, research terms are measured in years.”
    Logan regarded her again. Something about this young woman convinced him he could trust her—and that, in fact, she might be able to help him in ways he could not yet know. “I was asked to leave,” he said.
    “Why?”
    “You know Lux’s record as the nation’s oldest think tank. The respected position it holds among its peers.”
    “You mean, we’re all a bunch of tight asses.”
    “Something like that. My work was adjudged to be inadequate. Not true science. Not intellectually rigorous enough. It was seen by some as hocus-pocus, smoke and mirrors. A cadre of Fellows, headed by Dr. Carbon, had me forced out.”
    Mykolos made a face. “Carbon. That prick.”
    “Well, I’m back here now. This time, as an investigator instead of a Fellow.”
    “Dr. Logan, I want—I
need
—to know what happened. If I can help in any way, let me know.”
    “Thanks. You can start by letting me putter around in Dr. Strachey’s office, if you don’t mind.” And Logan indicated the far office.
    “Of course. It’s a bit of a mess, though. Let me go in ahead of you and clear things up a bit. I wouldn’t want you to do an Alkan on me.”
    “A what?”
    “Charles-Valentin Alkan. French composer. Wrote some of the strangest music you’ll ever want to hear. Supposedly died when a bookcase fell on top of him.”
    “Never heard of him. You’re quite the Renaissance woman.”
    “I guess the Lux talent spotter thought the same way.” And Mykolos rose from her desk with a wan smile. “Come on—follow me.”

9
    Willard Strachey’s private apartment—his “rooms,” in Lux parlance—was on the third floor of the mansion, just a