“His research was . . . hold on, let me get this right.” Mulrooney took out his notebook. “Political art and propaganda in the Soviet Union during the period between the two world wars. If I didn’t know about your vic and the stolen Tiffany windows, I would have assumed that he was one of these nerdy academic types who was killed for his research or something stupid like that . . . except, well, you saw the body. Someone was royally pissed off. That was one horrific crime. Not the cozy professor kind of killing.”

“Are we sure that this codebook belongs to Latham?” Decker said.

Mulrooney paused. “You think otherwise?”

“It could have been stolen. Both Latham’s and Angeline’s apartments were tossed.”

“Whoever did it had a lot of languages at his disposal.” McAdams was turning the pages. “We need a cryptologist to break this down. There are dozens of them at Harvard and MIT. They’d do it for you for fun.”

“Yeah, this city is filled with people who can do everything,” Mulrooney said. “Before I show this to anyone outside the department, I’d like to know what we’re dealing with. Latham was one nasty murder.”

“Latham came to Tufts for a lectureship?” Decker asked.

“A joint appointment for two years with the art department and IR. What Soviet art has to do with Tiffany panels, I don’t know. But he’s obviously an art guy. One art guy talks to another art guy and pretty soon, you’re an expert in something.”

“Where did he study before he came to Tufts?” Decker said. “I heard he went to Oxford.”

“Don’t recall seeing that. Hold on, lemme see what I got on him.” Mulrooney peered through some file folders. “Uh, he had a master’s of arts from the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Sounds like something political or an online scam.”

“CREES,” McAdams said. “It’s a legitimate university program. Hold on.” He started playing with his iPhone. “It’s for people who have an interest in foreign languages of those regions and who want to work for government and diplomacy. There’s a CREES at Harvard, there’s one at U Mich, there’s one at Kansas University, there’s one at Stanford, there’s one at U Texas—”

“What about the Five Colleges of Upstate?” Decker asked.

“Let me check.” His fingers went flying across his phone. “Good call. There’s one at Morse McKinley that offers a B.A. as well as an M.A.”

Mulrooney said, “Then why didn’t he list the college on his résumé ?”

“Yeah, that is a little weird,” Tyler said. “Maybe he didn’t finish the degree.”

“And yet he got the Windsor award and a lectureship,” Decker said. “Any kind of college job is pretty hard to snag these days, let alone one at a major university in a major city.”