Berger said, “Shockley was frantic with worry. After all, he had invested money in me. Lots and lots of money, or so he told me. I, for one, suspect he had invested other people’s money in me. So who knows to whom he was beholden. He suggested a way to slow Curedon’s progress with the FDA.”

“Tamper with the data,” Oliver said. “You plugged in false data to make Curedon look bad.”

“Not bad, heavens no. Just…not as good.”

“The higher mortality rate Decameron was concerned with,” Oliver said. “He was right. It was a technical error. But one that was done on purpose.”

Averting his eyes, Berger whispered, “It was a terrible mistake on my part.”

“Not a mistake, Doctor. A felony—”

“Detective, please,” Dorman chided. “Dr. Berger has been made aware of the seriousness of his error in judgment. There’s no need to remind him.”

Berger said, “My…crime, I think, is a by-product of the computer age. One tampers with numbers in machines, one is never confronted with the direct consequences of one’s errors. I didn’t see faces, I just saw numbers.”

“All those newfangled falderah machines,” Marge grumped. “Just suck you into sinnin’.”

“Talk about cheap rationalizations.” Decker rolled his eyes. “Satan goes high tech.”

Berger continued. “Fisher/Tyne logs its computer time meticulously. All operators have to keep precise records of their machine usage. We couldn’t use the computer on Fisher/Tyne’s end because unaccounted minutes would show up on the log.”

“So you got to the computer on your end,” Oliver said. “How’d you break into Leonard’s system?”

Berger smiled ruefully. “How do you think? Leonard was in on it.”

No one spoke. Finally, Oliver said, “Leonard was in on it?”

“Yes.”

“For how much?”

“Not an even cut, but a sizable portion. Shockley arranged it all. At that point, I was already drowning in deceit. I felt I had no choice but to agree.”

“Don’t tell me,” Oliver said. “Then Leonard got greedy.”

Berger hid his face for a moment. “It does sound like a sordid story, doesn’t it?”

“Keep going, Doctor,” Saugust prompted.

Berger said, “Kenny started whining. That he had the most to lose because he was actively doing all the illegal shenanigans. And this was true. He demanded a bigger cut and made threatening noises when we balked.”

Oliver said, “He tells on you, he screws himself up.”

“Actually, Detective, we pointed that out to him.”

“And?”

“And we never got any farther in our negotiations.” Berger wiped sweat from his brow. “Because a week later, Azor was murdered. Not knowing what was going on, I kept a low profile, stopped taking calls from either of them. Then yesterday…when I found out about Kenny and Reggie…”

He wiped sweat off his brow and bald head with a handkerchief.

“This should be self-evident. I became truly terrified.”