Lyda‘s desk was right there, Kate said, in the room where they do all the work. This wasn‘t her first mine, she was familiar with the routine. She saw something and she started keeping track. It just wasn‘t Allen she was keeping track of. He was skeptical, to say the least. Setting aside the statistical improbability of one corporate spy in a hundred-man camp, who was the second?

It isn‘t a hundred-man camp, Jim, it‘s a four-billion-dollar camp, she said. She said in her note at the bottom of the document, there may have been more incidents of data theft. She went around his desk and was out the door. Wait, where you going?

I‘ll be right back!

Bingley‘s store was down the hill, past Auntie Vi‘s and around the corner. Kate took the steps two at a time. She found what she was looking for between the sugar and the spices.

She was back in Jim‘s office five minutes later, out of breath. Got the keys to the Cessna?

Why, where we going?

To Suulutaq.

Twenty-one

What makes a cop? An observant eye and a good memory. At one time Kate had prided herself on having both. She had two bags of groceries when she was in the café that day, Kate said, her voice grim over the headset, so she knew the store was there and that it had what she needed.

There was no point in protesting after they were in the air so he shut up and listened.

Lyda‘s allergy would be known in camp, especially to people who had worked with her before.

Okay, means, he said. It was kicking up twelve to fourteen knots out of the southwest and the Cessna skipped over a few bumps. Opportunity, obviously. What about motive?

It‘s all about the proprietary information, Jim.

You think she was in it with Allen?

One possibility. He worked with her, she admitted as much to me, and Truax confirmed it.

He tried to reconcile this information with what he knew. It was about the money for her, too?

Partly, probably, but I think there are a couple of other things. For one, principle. He groaned. Sex and money were easy-to-recognize motives that were even easier to prove in court. Sex and money he knew he could handle. Principle? There was pain in the very articulation of the word.

Principle. She came out to the house on the Fourth of July, remember? Before Gammons stumbled into the yard and all the hullabaloo started she told me she was pretty ambivalent about the Suulutaq. I just don‘t know if the world needs another gold mine,‘ she said, that‘s quoting her verbatim. I think she is really unhappy about this whole project.

Ambivalence isn‘t usually a motive for murder, Kate.

Agreed, but it might have been more than ambivalence. It just clicked in your office fifteen minutes ago who was sitting between her and Demetri. He had his back to us and I thought he was Demetri‘s friend.