Identity Theft and other stories (collection)

“I knew him a bit,” said Chiu. “Ethan McCharles. Nice guy—he always remembered my name. So many of the profs, they think they’re too important to say hi to a security guard. But not him.”

I nodded. It was as good a eulogy as one could hope for—honest, spontaneous, heartfelt.

Chiu went on. “He was married,” he said, pointing to the gold band on the corpse’s left hand. “I think his wife works here, too.”

I felt my stomach tightening, and I let out a sigh. My favorite thing: informing the spouse.

* * *

Cytosine Methylation:All lifeforms are based on self-replicating nucleic acids, commonly triphosphoparacarbolicnucleic acid or, less often, deoxyribonucleic acid; in either case, a secondary stream of hereditary information is encoded based on the methylation state of cytosine, allowing acquired characteristics to be passed on to the next generation …

* * *

The departmental secretary confirmed what Chiu had said: Professor Ethan McCharles’s wife did indeed also work at the University of Toronto; she was a tenured prof, too, but in a different faculty.

Walking down a corridor, I remembered my own days as a student here. Class of 1998—“9T8,” as they styled it on the school jackets. It’d been— what?—seventeen years since I’d graduated, but I still woke up from time to time in a cold sweat, after having one of those recurring student nightmares: the exam I hadn’t studied for, the class I’d forgotten I’d enrolled in. Crazy dreams, left over from an age when little bits of human knowledge mattered; when facts and figures we’d discovered made a difference.

I continued along the corridor. One thing had changed since my day. Back then, the hallways had been packed between classes. Now, you could actually negotiate your way easily; enrollment was way down. This corridor was long, with fluorescent lights overhead, and was lined with wooden doors that had frosted floor-to-ceiling glass panels next to them.

I shook my head. The halls of academe.

The halls of death.

I finally found Marilyn Maslankowski’s classroom; the arcane room-numbering system had come back to me. She’d just finished a lecture, apparently, and was standing next to the lectern, speaking with a redheaded male student; no one else was in the room. I entered.

Marilyn was perhaps ten years younger than her husband had been, and had light brown hair and a round, moonlike face. The student wanted more time to finish an essay on the novels of Robert Charles Wilson; Marilyn capitulated after a few wheedling arguments.

The kid left, and Marilyn turned to me, her smile thanking me for waiting. “The humanities,” she said. “Aptly named, no? At least English literature is something that we’re the foremost authorities on. It’s nice that there are a couple of areas left like that.”

“I suppose,” I said. I was always after my own son to do his homework on time; didn’t teachers know that if they weren’t firm in their deadlines they were just making a parent’s job more difficult? Ah, well. At least this kid had gone to university; I doubted my boy ever would.

“Are you Professor Marilyn Maslankowski?” I asked.

She nodded. “What can I do for you?”

I didn’t extend my hand; we weren’t allowed to make any sort of overture to physical contact anymore. “Professor Maslankowski, my name is Andrew Walker. I’m a detective with the Toronto Police.” I showed her my badge.

Her brown eyes narrowed. “Yes? What is it?”

I looked behind me to make sure we were still alone. “It’s about your husband.”

Her voice quavered slightly. “Ethan? My God, has something happened?”

There was never any easy way to do this. I took a deep breath, then: “Professor Maslankowski, your husband is dead.”

Her eyes went wide and she staggered back a half-step, bumping up against the smartboard that covered the wall behind her.

“I’m terribly sorry,” I said.

“What—what happened?” Marilyn asked at last, her voice reduced to a whisper.

I lifted my shoulders slightly. “He killed himself.”

“Killed himself?” repeated Marilyn, as if the words were ones she’d never heard before.

I nodded. “We’ll need you to positively identify the body, as next of kin, but the security guard says it’s him.”

“My God,” said Marilyn again. Her eyes were still wide. “My God …”

“I understand your husband was a physicist,” I said.

Marilyn didn’t seem to hear. “My poor Ethan …” she said softly. She looked like she might collapse. If I thought she was actually in danger of hurting herself with a fall, I could surge in and grab her; otherwise, regulations said I had to keep my distance. “My poor, poor Ethan …”

“Had your husband been showing signs of depression?” I asked.